Page 22 of Beautiful Sinners

“Huh?”

Is he purposely being obtuse, or did I mishear what I thought he said?

“Never mind,” I say when Constantine and Hendrix walk over, apparently done with waiting on the steps.

“Hold on,” is the only warning I get before Tristan braces his arms around me and stands up.

How is he able to do that? I’m not light by any means, but he just lifted me from a sitting position like I weighed nothing. The amount of strength that must take has my belly swooping.

With his back turned to his friends, Tristan sets me on my feet and shrugs a shoulder to dry the wetness on his cheek, erasing any evidence that he’d been crying. I help him straighten his T-shirt by smoothing down the stretched fabric, but there’s nothing I can do about the dark patches dotting down his sweatpants from his knees to his ankles where the damp ground soaked through.

Finally composed, he pulls me in front of him and holds me back-to-chest with one arm across my waist. Hendrix averts his gaze from where Tristan’s hand splays possessively across my stomach, but he’s not quick enough to hide the flicker of jealousy I notice before he schools his features, and it disappears like it was never there to begin with.

“Did she tell you?”

Lines furrow deep grooves above my eyebrows. Was I supposed to tell Tristan something?

“Cillian made a vague comment alluding that he knows where Dierdre is.”

A fire ignites in Tristan’s whiskey-brown eyes. In a way, I’d rather see it than the desolation that was there minutes ago. But just as quickly, it burns itself out. He digs the heel of his palm across his brow bone and sighs heavily.

“I swear to fucking god. I can’t handle anything else right now.”

Hendrix shocks the hell out of me when he coldly replies, “Toofuckingbad, so suck it up.”

“Hendrix,” I hiss, and that iciness gets transferred to me.

“He’s not the one who just had his house blown to bits or watched his mother die right in front of him.”

“And you’re not the one whose sister faked her death and hid Aoife from us for ten goddamn years!” Tristan roars.

Taken aback by Hendrix’s remark, I dumbly ask, “Eva’s gone?”

I’m horrified when he makes a two-fingered gun with his hand and points it at his head.

I don’t remember Eva well because she wasn’t a big presence in my childhood, and I definitely didn’t recognize her when we met last night. However, that’s beside the point. Hendrix lost his mother in almost the same brutal manner as I lost mine. Wanting to give him whatever solace I can, I reach for his hand, but he moves it away. The rejection stings.

“What about your dad?”

He shrugs a disdainful shoulder. “Don’t care.”

Jackass Hendrix has reemerged, and I want to smack it out of him. I understand that he’s hurting and he’s angry, even if he doesn’t want to admit it, but it’s counterproductive.

“Will you stop?”

One perfectly formed blond eyebrow hikes up, and I mimic him by doing the same.

“We think Aleksander and Aleksei took out the Council. I haven’t been able to get hold of anyone.”

The juvenile stare-off between Hendrix and me abruptly ends. Everyone is dead? It’s as if history is repeating itself where I’m back in Ireland helplessly watching the carnage of my family unfold and not able to stop it.

“Don’t,” Constantine gruffly snaps when my eyes get glassy. “They don’t deserve them.”

He’s right. Francesco Amato, Patrick Knight, and Gabriel Ferreira were cruel, sadistic men who enjoyed inflicting pain on their sons.

I tap a closed fist to my head, trying to knock the reluctant memories loose. “The twins’ father. I can’t rem—”

“Nikolai Stepanoff.”

---