Page 23 of Like Grim Death: Part One
Glancing at her again to ensure she won’t wake up, I walk quietly over to her side of the bed and look down at her phone.
The number isn’t saved, but it’s an Alexandrian area code, and besides that, I have this one fucking memorized, just like I do all of my brothers’ numbers.
I shift my gaze to Ella another second, the peacefulness from my high wavering.
She doesn’t move, her breasts rising and falling so slowly. So calmly, full of what I believe is innocence.
I turn my attention back to her phone, reading the text.
Unknown: Tell Mav to send me that photo of me and Rain.
I furrow my brows, confused. I know her and Atlas are friends, since the one month birthday party we hosted for my nephew almost a month ago now. Butwhatphoto of Rain? I glance at the time on the top of her phone screen just before it goes dim.
It’s nearly two in the morning.
Why would Atlas be asking for something like that at this hour?
I grind my teeth, wanting to pluck her phone up off the charger and tell Atlas to fuck right off.
But I look at my girl again.
Her long lashes splayed over pale skin. The Cupid’s bow above her parted lips. The vibrant red of her hair splayed along the pillowcase.
She can have friends, right?
Jealousy warps and bends the muscles of my stomach, but I try to push past that overprotectiveness.It’s good for her to have friends.The more people who look after her, the better. I mean, she really only needsme,but after what went down tonight, and if something were to happen…
I close my eyes tight.
I try to calm my breaths.
She can have friends.
I trust my brothers.
I trusther.
I try to repeat it enough times inside my mind that I believe it, but even when I force myself to walk away from my girl and her phone, I can’t help but think of the graveyard dirt we spattered over the tarp wrapped around Samson’s body.
“Tomas.”He answers the call from my burner phone quietly the next night, like he’s fucking annoyed, and he probably is because it’smyname showing up on his screen. I know he knows I’m going to ask him some shit he doesn’t want to give me answers to. The line he walks between being my personal whipping boy—literally, except I gladly take the punishment instead of him—and conducting business as priest of the 6 is growing increasingly thinner.
“Shadow Villa.” I hike up my shoulder, pressing my phone closer to my ear so I can keep both hands on Rain’s sleek, black stroller as I push him two houses down to my brother’s. “Tell me what you know about it.”
Tomas groans on the other end of the line as I shoot my eyes around the street, keeping vigilant.
It looks like Halloween threw up on Corpus Avenue. Pumpkins line each of our driveways, glowing from the inside out. Pale white skeletons seem to drift in the trees with the light breeze. Behind me, the numbers666are spray painted in some glow-in-the-dark blue that’ll wash off over my garage door. All of it paid for by Ezra. That motherfucker loves the thirty-first of October like no other. Probably because getting drunk and passing out are expected outcomes after Lover’s Death, and at least this time when he does it, compared to every other time, it seems normal. He hides his problems in black plastic cups and the flash of silver from his skull flask that’s become a permanent accessory of his.
I think of him last night, staring with wide eyes at Samson Savage’s corpse. In my head, it plays out again. The way the tarp around Samson’s body crinkled as he was thrown into a six-foot pit out in the field by Sanctum. Our first corpse, a nineteen-year-old boy with an unknown killer. Elijah was silent, watching it all unfold, andBoazsure as fuck didn’t show up.
Neither did that bleeding initiate.
I don’t know how it was Atlas remained quiet throughout the entire fucking ordeal, then got in his car and drove home without a word.
I might not have given it much thought, but last night after I saw he texted my girl, it seems to be one of theonlythings I’m thinking about.
That, and everything I researched as Ella slept through the night.
“Why are you asking me that, Maverick?” Tomas’s voice is so hushed, like he’s trying to keep someone from hearing him and I wonder if he’s got someone sleeping in his bed he’s trying not to wake.
