Page 55 of Ruthless Consequences

“We’ve already been there,” she said. “We both took different roads.”

“Nah, baby,” I said. “We wouldn’t be standing here, in front of each other, if we did.”

“That’s because you won’t let me go!” Her voice was quiet, but her eyes were like daggers.

“Not even after I’m dead.”

She opened her mouth to respond but couldn’t get a word out because I pulled her close and set my mouth against hers. Memories had softened her, and she almost liquified into the kiss. Her entire body went slack. A soft whimper echoed against my tongue. Like earlier, when reality had set in, she ripped all the light in the world away from me. But looking at her, her hand to her mouth, like she wanted to wipe me away or hold me there forever, I saw that a spark remained. A tiny hole in the lock—behind it, all she was keeping from me. All that belonged to me.

Her.

She slipped Mooch’s leash off, thrusting it at my chest. It fell to the ground because I could stop Mooch with a hand command if I had to. Then she backed up to the other side of the stoop, her ass hitting the railing.

“What are you keeping from me, Lucila?”

She tried to back up when I took a step closer but couldn’t. She had no place to run. She knew it.

We both knew she was hiding something. Hiding something from me since the day I traded my blood for blood. But whatever it was, she had buried it deep this time. It was eating her alive from the inside out.

“It’s only a matter of time,” I said, putting the hand with the word “Dark” to the pulse in her neck. It beat against my palm like a trapped animal pounding against a locked door to safety. “Whatever you bury in the darkness, I’m going to find. I’ve always found anything you tried to hide from the world and from me. Why, Lucila? Why can I find what you hide?”

“Because you rule it,” she almost spat out.

“This is much more complicated than that,” I murmured, setting the hand with “Light” on the other side of her neck. It was slim and delicate; her skin so soft compared to the roughness of my hands. “We both know it. You can’t hide anything from me because what belongs to you belongs to me. Doesn’t matter if it’s buried in the darkness or hidden in too bright of a light. That’s why you call me your Shadow Man. Because what we have exists in a place that neither of us can touch, but we somehow create it together. It follows us both around.”

I leaned down close, but she refused to close her eyes. Her hands came over mine and she sank her nails into my skin. I kissed her nose, where three freckles had appeared from the sun. Even those small marks on her belonged to me.

“Fight me. Tear me to shreds. Take your best shot, baby,” I said. “It’ll be about time. Whatever you’re hiding, it’s time. Set it free. And you’ll set us free. If you need my blood to do it—it’s yours. Rip me open like I ripped you open.”

Her breath washed across my lips as I pulled away. I unlatched Mooch’s leash from his collar. I whistled and nodded my head toward the car. He stood, stretched, and followed behind me.

“Lilo.”

I stopped on the last step. Lucila was still in the same spot, and she was staring forward, not even looking at me.

“Stay out of my life.”

She looked at me after the words were out.

Yeah, I tolerated one secret between us because of my part in it. I knew it had something to do with our wedding day. The day we lost everything but us. But this one? This “stay out of my life” secret? It really meant “stay out of my business.” And she’d put her foot over the line and into mine the moment she agreed to cover whatever deal Sonny had gotten himself into.

“See you later, baby,” I said, heading toward my car with Mooch on my heels.

“Lilo!”

I stopped, turning my head a fraction.

She nodded toward the door, which was going to be forever locked once Ma was gone. “Even though things…happened between us. I’m still here.”

That memory—of us saying vows before we even stepped foot in a church—that had been on her mind. We were edging closer and closer to the day we never talked about. Because she refused to.

“I happened,” I said, reminding her, then turned fully and left.

SEVENTEEN

LILO

PRESENT DAY

---