Chapter Thirty

Zayden is already to his feet, trying to follow after her when I catch his shoulder, squeezing tightly to gain his attention. His eyes snap to mine, a look of pure concern, purer than I thought he’d be able to conjure. I shake my head in silent explanation, and he takes the cigar out of his mouth, inspecting it curiously before his eyes come to the card game.

I give him another look, and to my surprise, he agrees with me and sits down, allowing Blake time to handle whatever she needs to.

“She’ll be okay,” I say more for my benefit than his.

“She needs to get out of this house, Dominic,” Zayden says as I set up the cards for a new game.

“I know,” I grit through clenched teeth. I don’t want her trapped like a bird in a cage any more than he does. But it’s not safe. Every step forward I take, we are met with a blow that takes us two steps back. We’ve been trying to figure out a way to get out from under Maxim’s thumb for years. I thought that we had done that, until Zayden went and threw us right under there yet again.

“What do we do, huh?” Zayden snaps. “You’re the idea man. You come up with the plans. Tell me a scenario where all three of us make it out alive. Where we all go along to be controllers of our own destiny.”

I’m quiet for a moment before I speak.

“Kill Maxim.”

Zayden scoffs at me, taking a large puff off his cigar before blowing it into my face.

“Genius plan. Bravo. Except for the fact that it’s impossible. The man taught us everything we know, Dominic. You think he doesn’t see every step we take ten steps ahead of us?”

“He does,” I agree. “Which means we would have to hit him with something he doesn’t see coming.”

Zayden perks up at that, leaning forward in interest.

“Like?”

“Like…I don’t know yet. I’m working on it.”

He blows out an irritated breath and leans back into the couch.

“You’re not working on shit.”

I roll my eyes at his petulance as I grab my drink. We play the game in as much silence as virtually possible for the next hour or so before he speaks.

“So, you gonna bring up this morning?”

I flick my eyes up at him before going back to the cards.

“What’s there to say?”

Zayden snorts a strangled laugh before he turns his head dubiously to me.

“I’ll be honest, I was expecting a throat punch or something for kissing her like that. I didn’t expect you to be into it. What happened to all the ‘you touch her, I kill you’ shit?” Zayden teases in a way that tells me he’s looking for a fight. I won’t give him the satisfaction, though.

“I abandoned it somewhere between you fucking her on top of our dead parents and fucking her with your knife where you’re sitting,” I say easily.

He grins wickedly as he pulls out the same knife from his pocket, lifting the handle to his nose and inhaling deeply.

“Still smells like my angel.”

I roll my eyes at him, but don’t respond.

“You know she called me,” Zayden says.

“When?”

“Last night. You were passed out drunk, apparently, and she was horny in my bed,” he says with the hint of a smirk that has me wanting to knock his two front teeth out.

I don’t respond, and he doesn’t expect me to as he continues.

“She said you told her about us having threesomes in the past. That she was jealous.”

“What did you say to her?” I ask.

He gives me a wicked smirk as he pulls the cigar out of his mouth and winks.

“I told her we’d take care of it for her.”

I frown at that. “Why would you say that?”

“Because I meant it. What my angel wants, my angel gets. And if this morning is anything to go off, you’re not as opposed to the idea as your pinched face looks right now.”

“That was when we were young and dumb, Zayden. With women who meant absolutely nothing to us. This is Blake. She means?—”

“Everything,” he finishes.

I open my mouth to argue when a blood curdling scream erupts down the hall. Zayden and I are up and to our feet, running through the apartment in a flash. He’s the first one to her door, literally kicking it down despite it not having a lock on it anymore. He has his knife drawn at the ready, and I pull my gun from the back of my pants, aimed and prepared as I scan the dark room.

It takes several seconds for us to realize there isn’t a threat, though. None that we can see, at least. There is just Blake on the bed, thrashing and screaming.

“No! Please! Not again! Please!” she screeches, the very sound shattering a piece of me as the horrors of her past are brought to just a glimmer of light.

Zayden is on her left, slowly trying to wake her up as I tuck my gun back into my waistband and come onto her right.

“Shh, babygirl. It’s okay. I’m right here. You’re just dreaming. It’s just a dream,” I murmur into her ears, causing her eyes to fly open.

She fights back harder than before, kicking, hitting, and shoving us away. Zayden and I instantly step back on instinct, our hands raised as her eyes flit wildly around the room. It seems to take several seconds for her to place exactly where she is and for her to leave whatever fresh hell she was just in and breathe.

Blake blows out a choppy breath as she runs a hand through her sweat-soaked hair, dropping it to her side before she looks up at us. Her skin is as pale as a ghost, forehead dotted with beads of sweat, and fingers left with a tremble that looks like it may never fully disappear.

I’ve seen fear, I’ve seen torture. Though I never relished in it like Zayden, I’ve killed more people than I could ever count. I’ve seen hundreds of people an inch from death in my lifetime, but not a single one of them has ever looked so defeated, so lifeless, so broken as she does right now.

Zayden goes to speak when she holds her hand up to him.

“Out, please,” she says, her voice breaking on that last word.

The sound alone is enough to send a painful pang through my chest, and we both nod as one before filing out of the room. I give her one more glance over my shoulder before stepping out of the room, but she isn’t looking at me. She’s turned away, hugging her knees to her chest and shaking like a leaf.

Once the door is shut, Zayden continues standing there, fists balled at his sides and chest heaving. We have suspected she was hurt by someone in the past. The logical answer was her father, he was obviously an abusive piece of shit with anger issues, but she was so young when they passed that it doesn’t seem like it could be that alone. No doubt her parent’s death was an added trauma that she didn’t need, and something tells me that’s only the tip of the iceberg for our girl. I mean, my girl.