Page 84 of Dangerous Deviance
“Because I don’t want you anymore,” I said. Her facial expression went slack, and my whole body tightened, trying to predict what she wanted.
But Ellie didn’t fight me. There wasn’t a question in her body. Only acceptance.
She sunk down into the bed, her arms limp. “So where do I go?” she asked in a voice so quiet I could barely hear her.
“I don’t know,” I said. “But you have to leave, or we’ll kill you.”
We hadn’t made official plans to kill them yet, but I knew it was a very real, near-future possibility. Ellie did too. She bit her lip, then stood, gathering the few belongings she had collected during her stay. Her hand grazed the side table, skimming over one of my knives. She glanced at it, then shoved it in her bag too. Good; she would probably need it. I shoved a bottle of water at her, and she snatched it out of my hand. She didn’t say another word to me, and I didn’t say anything either.
I took her to the woods behind the Adler House. I don’t know why I did. I guess I thought that if I could put her back there and erase everything that had happened, then maybe I could give her a chance to live for herself.
As expected, Axe and Derek didn’t care for the idea, but this was my decision. They knew not to mess with her. If anyone was going to kill Ellie, it was going to be me.
I drove further back than I had in a long time, likely deeper in the woods than where Axe had found her. Then I stopped, leaned across her, and opened the car door.
Ellie put her bag’s strap on her shoulder and slid out.
I started, “Good—”
The car door slammed shut. Ellie kept moving forward as if she had walked out of her own dream and into the real world. Into a place where she could do what was right. Where she could do what she wanted, without thinking of her sister. Without obeying Bates’s commands. Without me holding her back.
I drove back through Sage City, aimlessly taking off-ramps, going down side streets, returning to the highway, but never finding where I was supposed to go. I ended up back at the Adler House, parking next to all of the other extra cars, staring into the woods. She was out there, somewhere. And she was better off that way. I could protect her from afar. She didn’t need me.
But I wanted Ellie. I loved her spunk, her desire to fight. How equally possessive she was of me. How she was brave, even when she faced her worst fears. But most of all, I wanted to protect her. To shield her from this world. To make her mine.
But I knew I couldn’t do any of that. It wasn’t realistic for us.
I went to Axe’s workroom, sighing as I opened the door. Axe was sharpening his knives, while Derek punched numbers on a laptop, his chair leaning against a standing cage. For once, the place was empty. But a fresh bloodstain was in the corner. Someone had just left.
“How’d she take it?” Derek asked, the legs of the chair clanking to the concrete ground. I grunted in response, taking the chair between the two of them, sitting on the opposite side of the table, facing them. “That good, huh?” I gave another grunt. Axe glanced over at us but kept the knife sliding back and forth on the whetstone, the shiny metal gleaming in the fluorescent lights.
“Now that we’re all here—” Derek started.
I interrupted: “Gerard isn’t here.”
Derek shrugged. “We need to figure this out ourselves.”
“Fuck. Are we finally taking the reins?”
Derek clenched his jaw, and I straightened. Yeah. I should shut up. It was a jab at Gerard’s fickle attitude over giving us control. But Derek had already made it clear that we had to stand by our family. And this wasn’t about Gerard, but about us. I knew that.
It just didn’t make giving up Ellie any easier.
“We’ll fill him in later,” Derek said. “But what do we do about Muro? He’s a big problem.”
How simple it sounded, coming from his mouth.
Axe’s knife slid across the stone in a sharp hiss. “Take him out,” Axe said flatly.
Derek slammed the laptop shut. “That’s an option,” he said. “But we need a plan to make that happen. That, and a way to convince Gerard that it’s the right thing to do, no matter what his hang-ups are.” Derek held his chin, staring off to the side. I got the feeling he knew more about Gerard’s ‘hang-ups’ than he was letting on. “Muro has too many people surrounding him.”
“I thought he was abroad?” I asked. “Could be easier to take him out in a foreign country.”
“And easier to take us out,” Axe said.
That was true. But honestly, it was hard for me to care about what happened. Family was my life, and I had always made decisions that were in line with what was best for the family, but that wasn’t enough anymore.
I could go abroad, take Muro out, and hell, if I died in the process, then so what? Ellie had been forced in each direction for so long: always thinking of her sister, then doing what the Skyline Shift wanted her to do, and finally, whatIwanted her to do.
