Page 3 of Reckless Covenant

“Yes, Ryan.” My eyes land on him before my face fully turns.

There isn’t much more I can take from our relationship, even though I do kind of care about him. I think I loved him once, but I’ve been ready to leave for a while… ever since it all started to change. Whenhestarted to change.

However, our families seem just as involved in our relationship as we are, well… more than I am, and leaving him seems like breaking a treaty between two nations. They always insist on meeting, pushing us together, forcing us to dinners and events. Every encounter breaks the confidence I’ve been trying to build. And it’s just as hard for me to break away from my own family.

“What the hell was that?!”

I finally turn to him fully, and the exasperated look in my eyes is harder to sustain when I take in his expression, one eyebrow cocked and lips arched downwards.

“I don’t know.” I shrug.

I’m lying. It was hate. Betrayal.

This city is big, so I managed to avoid The Serpent unintentionally over the years. We’ve rarely crossed paths and I like it this way. It must have been months since the last time I saw him… God, I’m fucking fooling myself. Five months, three weeks, and… two days—my mother’s 50th fucking birthday. The fucking elite were invited. The Sanctum were too. I was sure it was either a power move, to show some sort of alliance, or my parents begging for a business deal.

Five fucking months and that night still haunts me.

If only it was the only one…

I focus on Ryan’s eyes. Brown, like a marsh, with hints of green… swampy. Nothing special sparks in them anymore.

“He was just staring at you.”

I blink and turn my gaze back toward the dark alley.

Yes, he was.

Maybe that night stuck with him too. Maybe I left a scar on his taut skin. I hope I did.

The Sanctum… they are fearless, seemingly indestructible, and my parents did business with them, or maybe just tried to.

For five months, I’ve been trying to figure out what was happening with my family. They were dysfunctional in their normal state, but lately things have shifted further. It feels different. Like we’re sitting at the edge of a cliff and any moment now, a storm will tip us over. I wish I wouldn’t think aboutus…I wish I wouldn’t be involved in this, but somehow I’m being pulled into it, whatever the fuck it is. But in this game of chess, I’m no Queen, not even a Knight… I’m a pawn. Not that I was ever anything more to my parents, to my father. I was never as important as my older brother. He is the future of this family, the one to take over whatever businesses father has, the one to take the O’Rourke name further, carry it deeper into our fucked up history.

Even our ancestors were fucked up sons of bitches. Some worse than others.

I’m not implying I’m a saint; I know where I belong, but it doesn’t mean my place is with them. As long as I’m careful, they won’t know I’m trying to get away from all of them until it’s too late to stop me. And if they do try to stop me, they will find out exactly what this family bred.

Ryan used to be my escape from them, long ago. Not anymore, not since he realized he couldn’t quite tame me, when his views started aligning with his father’s… and mine. His exertion of control these days runs deeper than I would care to admit.

His time will come though, and he will pay too.

“I think I’m ready to go home now.”

“Alone?” A scowl forms ridges on his forehead.

But I mentally roll my eyes.As if I’m ever alone.There are constant eyes on me, especially as of late. Since Ryan’s father passed away, he is slowly taking over the family business and accepting his place as the head of it. Something is brewing, and I’m not in the inner circle. All I know is that our families, before the passing of Jonah Holt, were working on something, a business deal, an alliance.

Have the terms changed now?

“Alone. I have things to do.”

“Things?” He spits the word out like the lack of respect he has toward my work isn’t already very well known. Just because I work online, it doesn’t mean it’s not work.

I get up before he can say anything else, dip down and give him a peck on the lips, as I know he won’t let me leave without the faked affection. But he catches my upper arm just as I’m almost standing, and pulls me back down, his lips crashing onto mine, in a much deeper kiss.

Some sort of claim on me, for everyone around us to see…

After The Serpent’s earlier display, such a rare one, I’m sure he feels the need to piss all over me, to make sure everyone knows who I belong to.

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