Page 58 of Damaged & Deadly

Half an hour later, freshly showered and feeling a tad better, I’m wearing a comfy pair of sweatpants with my damp hair piled high in a messy bun on the top of my head as I walk down the corridor toward Luc’s room. When he started spending so much time here, they emptied a room for him next to Jon’s in the part of the clubhouse where the kids all sleep.

I pause outside his door, listening a beat for any noises from within, before cracking the door open. I’m surprised to find the main light on inside the room. My brows furrow as I push the door open wider and quietly step into the room. I glance around, taking in the dark-colored walls covered in posters of cars, bikes, and girls. It’s a typical teenage boy's room. As I take it all in, an unexpected pang of sadness slashes across my chest. His room in our apartment never looked like this. We never had the money to paint the walls, and he probably didn’t feel like he could ask for money for magazines to put pictures up. And because I’m a heartless bitch, it never even occurred to me that he’d want to decorate his room and make it his.

Despite my guilt at my apparent failure, I’m glad he’s finally got a room that feels like his and reflects his personality. I can’t believe I once would have done anything to prevent him from having all of this—a room, friends, somewhere he belongs and can feel safe. All because of my petty grudge against gangs and my ignorant assumption that they were all filled with the same arrogant fuckwits. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Not just about Cain and Oliver, but all of the Rejects. They’re all good men who have experienced the devastation that comes from the needless violence in Black Creek. It’s that pain and grief that has drawn them all together and helped form this unstoppable army of loyal men who want nothing more than to get their revenge and see Black Creek become a safe place where people won’t have to experience that same gut-wrenching loss that they have. I firmly believe it is because of that desire and determination, the Rejects will come out on top at the end of the day. With Giovanni in the wind and the Antonellis still in power, things may look bleak now, but today’s defeat is tomorrow's win. As a group, we will rally, and someday soon, wewillsucceed.

Focusing on the lump hidden under the duvet in the middle of the bed, I move toward it and pull back the covers, then slide into the bed beside Luc. When we lived on the street, we would frequently huddle together for warmth, and even after we moved into our apartment, I’d still climb into bed with him after he fell asleep. I found it difficult to be apart from him, and I’d often wake up in the middle of the night in a panic, terrified that something bad had happened. It took me months before I could finally go a whole night without waking up and needing to reassure myself he was safe in his bed.

Resting my head on my hand, I stare down at his sleeping form. It’s been a long time since he’s needed a light on in order to fall asleep, and unease churns in my stomach as I watch him. Even in sleep, his face is scrunched, like he’s having a nightmare, although he doesn’t move or make a sound. My eyes roam over his face. He’s showered since I last saw him, making the bruises and minor lacerations stand out more than they did before. I also notice a long gash along his hairline, running from his temple to just above his ear, that has been crudely closed with butterfly stitches and looks like it will probably scar when it heals. Anger surges within me. God, I’d love to bring Santos back to life just to kill him all over again.

I lie there and watch him for a while before my eyelids start to droop. It’s been a long day—a long few weeks. So much has happened, and with concern for Luc taking center stage, I haven’t had a chance to process any of the rest of it. Still, knowing that Luc is beside me, a little battered and bruised but safe, allows me to fall into a deep, restful sleep.

It can’t have been more than a few hours, but I feel well rested when Luc stirs beside me, waking me up.

“Aren’t we a little old to share a bed?” he grumbles, rolling over to face me. Despite his complaining, a small, exhausted smile plays along his lips. For siblings, Luc and I have always been close. Sure, we have our issues, especially when I have to play mother to him, but the one positive that came out of the shit hand life dealt us is how it’s bonded us. It’s made us closer than most siblings. When all you have is each other, it makes petty squabbles over the TV remote or who ate the last slice of pizza seem pointless.

It’s only in the last year or two that he’s become more moody and withdrawn. I always put it down to his raging teenage hormones, and don’t get me wrong, that is definitely a part of it, but now that I’ve seen him hanging out with kids his own age and enjoying himself, I realize he was probably a little depressed as well. Before Jon started stalking me and befriending him, he had no one other than me in his life. There was no one at school he could talk to because I’d drilled it into him that he can’t associate with gang members, and at his age, it seems like every kid is signing up to get handed a gun and a death sentence. Not that I regret enforcing that on him. It was for his own safety, and Luc understood that, but still, it doesn’t mean he didn’t suffer because of it. Even though he’s ended up exactly where I didn’t want him to be, I’m relieved he’s finally got some friends, and I trust the kids and the Rejects to keep him safe when I’m not around. I’ve seen how guilty and upset they were after Luc was taken, and I know it wasn’t their fault. Sure, when I was walking down the aisle that day, I wanted to murder them all for letting Giovanni get his hands on my brother, but they did their best. They’re only human at the end of the day, and the most important thing is that we got him back in one piece. There’s no point in holding a grudge and being petty over it all.

“If you think I’m not going to be sleeping in here every night for the next month, you’re delusional.”

The smile drops off his face, and he gapes at me. “You’re joking, right? Please tell me you’re joking. You’ll completely ruin my reputation!”

“What reputation?” I chuckle.

“I can’t be known as the guy who shares a room with his big sister. I’m not a kid anymore, and the others will never let me live it down. Besides, I donotwant you snooping around my stuff.”

Curiosity piqued, I lean up on my elbow and make a point of peering around his room. “What stuff? What do you have hiding in here?” I make it look as though I’m going to get up and actually snoop through his stuff—although I absolutely do not need to see whatever porn mags and tissues my brother has stashed under his bed or wherever he keeps them—but his hand shoots out, dragging me back down onto the mattress.

I crash land with a laugh.

“God, I hate you,” he gripes. This time he grins, or at least, he tries to. The act stretches the skin along his temple and ends up as more of a grimace when he winces in pain.

The light moment falls away as the heaviness of everything that has come to pass flits between us. “I can’t believe he was my father,” he sighs.

I roll onto my side so I can face him. “Me neither. What the hell was mom thinking?!”

“I think she knew. That day, I think she knew it was him coming for me. She put me in the cupboard and made me promise that no matter what I heard, I wouldn’t come out. She told me to put my hands over my ears and stay quiet and wait until you found me.”

I purse my lips, trying to imagine how scary that must have been for him. He was only five then, and I’m sure he was terrified, with no idea what was happening. Nausea rolls in my stomach as I think about what could have happened if he’d made a sound or Santos had found him that day. What sort of a person would he have turned into? Would he be a Dante in the making? Worse? It doesn’t bear thinking about.

“She made a big mistake going to him for money. And looking back, I think she realized that too late. She was a mess that week. I just assumed she was twerked out on some new drug. She kept going on about how we needed to leave the house and I caught her trying to shove our belongings into bags more than once. I thought it was just paranoia from the drugs and I couldn’t let her drug-induced mind drag us out of the only shelter we had. Every time she’d get panicked and angry, I shoved a bottle of vodka in her hand and encouraged her to drink it until she passed out.” I shake my head, feeling guilty for not taking mom more seriously, but it wasn’t the first time she got a crazy idea in her head thanks to whatever concoction she was snorting or injecting at the time. “But now I think she knew she’d fucked up and was trying to protect us in her own way.”

“He found me anyway.” Sadness tinges his voice, causing a fresh wave of guilt to rise within me. Luc’s hand rests on the pillow beside mine, and I reach out, squeezing his fingers.

“That was all my fault,” I confess.

“What? Sawyer, no, it wasn’t.”

“It was. I was working in one of their clubs, trying to get intel for the Rejects, and I gained Dante’s attention, which in turn led to Giovanni looking into me. It was because of me that Santos was at our apartment. He found the photo on the wall and connected the dots back to you.”

The corner of his lips pulls down in a frown. “You couldn’t have known. He was searching for me, anyway. It was only a matter of time.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” I ask softly after a moment of silence passes between us.

He just shakes his head, clearly not ready to discuss it or not wanting to discuss it with me, which is fine. “You were forced to marry Dante because of me,” he says instead, his voice quiet and pained. “If I hadn’t got caught, you wouldn’t have had to call off the plan that day, and all of them would be dead now.”

I’m guessing someone filled him in on why I was pretending to get married the day he was taken. It almost makes me laugh when I recall the look of utter surprise when he saw me in the church. Almost. If everything wasn’t so fucked up at the minute.

Anger and guilt lace his tone, and I need him to know none of what happened that day was his fault. “Hey, you’re not to blame for any of that! We couldn’t have predicted the Grim Bastards’ move. Besides, if we’d followed through with our plan, we never would have found Evie.”

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