Page 95 of Dangerous Deviance
“We found the Skyline Shift,” Wil said confidently, hiding the physical pain he felt. “And it’s been dismantled. Burned to the ground.” That was a lie; as he spoke, the walls were still standing, and the Adlers’ men were raiding the buildings for files and materials. But it was close enough. “Your men are dead, including the doctors. Bates too.”
Wil kicked Bates’s fleshy remains, getting blood on his shoe. The urge to stomp on his face swelled in me, but I buried it down. I wanted his corpse to experience what Julie had. Because if he could kill her, for the sole purpose of trainingme, making it so that it wasmyfault that she died, then he needed to die just like her.
Because it wasn’t my fault. Bates was the murderer, not the women who had been coerced into the camp. I wouldn’t let him give me or them the blame for her death. It was his alone.
“I see,” Muro said. “I guess that leaves us with one option.”
“It’s a war,” Wil said.
“Tell your brothers to be ready for me,” Muro said. “And you too, Little Adler. I’ll be getting rid of your family personally.”
Wil sneered. “We’ll be waiting.”
Wil clicked off the line and sighed, the sound deep and mournful. Exhaustion was heavy on his chest, and his shoulders sunk, his weight leaning into me.
“Who would have thought that a mafia family from a coastal city would be battling one of the up and coming criminal corporations,” he muttered. “This is a shit show.”
There was no doubt about that. It was hard to tell how much they had to deal with now. If Muro had the power to create a camp of conditioned soldiers, what else did he have planned?
But there was only one way I could make this right.
“I want to help,” I said.
Wil turned toward me, his face wincing in pain. “You know you’re free, right?” he asked. “You can do anything you want. Travel. Start a family. Go to the Rubble River and visit your sister.” He shrugged, then grit his teeth. “You don’t have to be tied to me anymore.”
I wanted to pinch his cheeks until he slapped me in the face, to pull the knife out of my pocket and make him shove it against my throat. I didn’t care that we were in the middle of the campus full of dead bodies. For once in my life, I knew what I wanted. For myself alone.
“Iwantto help,” I said again, narrowing my eyes. “Did you not hear me clearly?”
“Ellie,” he shook his head, “I—”
“You’re forgetting the most important part of this,” I lightly shoved his shoulder. “I’m yours,” I glared at him, daring him to tell me I was wrong. I pushed a hard finger into his sternum. “And you’re mine. Don’t you ever fucking forget that, Wil Adler.”
He smiled, pleased that I would use his own words against him. “I hate that you kissed him.”
I raised a brow. “Jealous?” I asked. He grunted. “Are you going to punish me for it?”
“You best fucking believe it,” he said, putting a finger in his belt loop. Then he leaned down and pulled me in close, his weight crushing into me, our lips meeting. I pushed against him too, giving him just as much as he gave. His cock throbbed on my side, and I pushed in tighter, daring him to continue. Suddenly, he broke apart, glaring down at me.
“I’m serious, Ellie. This life—” he gestured around at the bodies on the floor, the flustered doctor running from patient to patient. The women in cuffs. Dr. Mercia speaking calmly, her fingers twitching at her side. “This war is only going to get worse. I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted out.”
“Take a second and listen to me,” I said. I stepped back, making sure that we weren’t touching at all. He leaned on his good leg, and I waited for a second, waiting for Dr. Bates’s voice to fill my head, for my sister’s spirit to appear, for anything to fill in the void inside of me and tell me what to do.
But nothing happened. It was just me now. And I had to do what I knew was right. For me. Forus.
“I could have walked away and never come back,” I started. “But I did come back. And I brought help with me.” I shook my head. “Iamdoing what I want. And I want to help take down the asshole that inadvertently killed my sister.” I shrugged my shoulders, then shimmied into him, enjoying his warmth once again. “Besides, I have a new family now.”
“Is that so?” he smiled. I nodded. “I better tell my brothers.”
I beamed. “I think they already know.”
“There go all my good cuffs,” Iris said loudly, interrupting us. “You know how hard it is to get rid of bloodstains?” Then she crossed her arms. “I do not have the room for all of them at the club.”
“We’ve got a few vans coming,” Wil said. That was good; I had forgotten about that part. “Dr. Mercia will make sure they’re treated before we release them, and we’ve got a connection with a hotel. They can crash there.”
She raised her brows, then tilted her head. “That works.”
We walked through the campus, and it felt like a dream. I had been through so much in the walls of those buildings. It had been hard to let go—to accept my fate as a student of the Skyline Shift, sent to kill the Adlers, or to die trying—then to change it all and come back here, to fix what I had started.
