Page 14 of The Price of Mercy
“A cat?” Scratching off a dried patch of shaving cream on his cheek, he watches me closely. “Mercy knows how to bury animals,” he murmurs, gaze narrowing at his daughter. “She wouldn’t use the oven for something small… A cow?” Shaking his head, he answers his own question in his head. There’s nofarmland nearby, and a cow would be too heavy to move. Finally, his gaze flicks from Mercy’s face to mine, and I have to stop myself from shrinking away. “You’re looking worse for wear, Sam.”
I clear my throat as quietly as I can. “I’ve been better.”
The older man chuckles humorlessly. “No shit.” Drawing a breath, taking his time, he asks another question. “Does this have anything to do with that man from the other night? Did he—” his voice hardens, deepening to an octave I’ve never heard from the jovial man, “hurt her?”
Of everyone I’ve ever met, Vinicius Morningstar has always been a polite, positive man. He has a quiet gentleness about him that makes him comfortable company. Short, thick around the middle, with kind eyes and a kinder soul, no one would mistake Mercy’s father as anything other than a teddy bear you can confide your deepest regrets or darkest secrets to, and he’d never bat an eye. From what Mercy has told me, he eagerly took over the mortuary once his own father passed away. If he wasn’t in the funerary business, he could easily be a counselor.
This side of him—a hardened man protecting his daughter—isn’t one that I’m familiar with.
I guess we all have our multitudes.
“Kane didn’t hurt her.” I caress Mercy’s upper arm with tiny sweeps of my thumb. She doesn’t stir, passed the fuck out for once. I almost envy her. “This was someone else.”
Vinicius—or Vinny, as most people call him—stares at me like he’s searching for answers to questions he doesn’t dare ask. Tension coils in the air around us. “Is it handled?”
I contemplate how to answer. By now, clean-up at the crime scene will be over. Someone from my father’s expansive team of professionals should have contacted my fraternity brothers and gotten a list of all party attendees to begin payoffs and cover ups. Hospital staff may have been ordered to keep any visits fromthe injured fraternity president and his lackeys confidential. The police officers on my father’s payroll have likely been advised of the situation, as well.
The body has been taken care of, too, thanks to Kane, Mercy, and me.
“Yes,” I answer confidently. “Everything’s been taken care of.”
Nodding, Vinny relaxes. If he suspects that we murdered someone, he’s being oddly chill about it. Then again, working as a mortician means that he’s probably seen some shit I can’t begin to imagine. Maybe it’s a good thing that he takes the unexpected in stride.
“And you two?” He tips his head towards his daughter. “Have you mended things?”
The last time I saw Mr. Morningstar, Mercy was crying her eyes out in her bedroom. Kane and I were getting into a fight on his front porch. Of course, he’d be concerned about my relationship with his daughter. My heart yearns to sayyes, we’re good, but I know that nothing is that simple. I can’t get too comfortable just because Mercy’s letting me hold her right now. There’s no telling what a clear head will bring when she wakes up.
She might resent me once the dust settles and reveals the fucking crater I’ve blown into our relationship.
“We’re working things out.” It’s as much truth as I can give without cracking my chest open and pouring my heart out. Vinicius is like a father to me, but his concern is first and foremost for his daughter, not his almost-adoptive-son. I’ve relied on Mercy as my emotional anchor for years, but I can’t place this burden on her, either, when she has just as much shit going on as I do. Going to one of my frat brothers to vent is out of the question, as is the football team. I’d rather die than go to a school counselor.
I haven’t spoken with my therapist regularly since I was a teenager, but it might be time to give them a call.
Vinny exhales slowly. “Take things slowly if you need to.Veryslowly.” Holding my gaze, he makes sure that the message settles in. After a moment, he continues, “Do I need to know anything about that other boy? Kane?”
This time, I lie by omission. “He’s rough around the edges, but I think he genuinely likes Mercy.” As much as it pains me to admit it…after seeing the aftermath of his anger—and how easily he shot and killed a man for touching Mercy—I have little doubt that he likes her as more than as a trophy kill to hang on his wall.
That’s a problem.
We aren’t playing a sexed up game of life and death anymore. Hearts are involved…and love makes people dangerous.
Zane is a perfect example of the lengths people will go to protect their loved ones from perceived threats. But if Kane has genuine feelings for Mercy, I can’t help but wonder if that will be enough for him to change course. Instead of hurting her—killing her—could he fall hard enough to back out of the game entirely?
Could he spare her life instead of taking it?
I hold Mercy tight as fear flickers inside my heart. No matter what rules we create or who wins the game, I have a feeling that things are only going to get messier from here. With so many people grabbing hold of each other, cracks are bound to form. Bonds will break. And someone’s going to bleed.
Leaving Mr. Morningstar alone in the morgue to clean up our mess feels wrong, but the older man insists. “Take my baby girl home,” he instructs, leveling me with a look that doesn’t leave room for argument. “Clean her up and tuck her in so that shecan get some actual rest. But, Sam—” He pulls out a bottle of painkillers from a side cabinet and places it in my hand. “Stay with her. I don’t want her to wake up alone.”
The unspoken truth that passes between us is that Mercy has nightmares—we both know it—and that if she has a really bad one, she’ll scream until she wakes herself up. I don’t actually know what Mercy dreams about; she’s mentioned something about shadows before, but by the time she wakes up, the images in her head turn fuzzy and indistinct.
I think that’s why she took up drawing at such a young age; she was grasping at what flickers of her nightmares she could remember. Of course, if we believe what Grandma Star has to say, it was her mom who gifted her that first sketchbook many years before I ever met Mercy, which would mean that Mercy has been having nightmares since she was a preteen, if not earlier.
“She sees things that we can’t,” Star has always said, remaining mysterious about Mercy’s affliction. But she’s said that about Mercy’s older brother Malachi, too—that he glimpses a realm beyond our own. I think their grandmother has wishful thinking about her family’s alleged psychic abilities, conjuring up fantasies that suit her version of reality.
The truth about Malachi Morningstar isn’t that he has psychic powers—it’s that he hallucinated hard enough to attack his classmates. His mother had just passed away, and after enough sleepless nights, the lines between reality and fantasy began to blur. One short stint in a rehabilitation facility later, he was cleared to return to school on a trial basis. I don’t know the full details of what happened next, but I know the aftermath: Malachi was sent to boarding school across the country. I never met him, and because of how long he’s been away, I’m not sure that I ever will. He might not return to Harlin Heights… ever. Mercy doesn’t talk about him much, and I’m never around theirolder sister Lilith long enough to ask. But Grandma Star will mention him from time to time, telling stories as though both he and her late husband are still around.
Sometimes, I worry that Mercy will follow a similar path as her brother and slip through my fingers like smoke.
