23. Nitro

TWENTY-THREE

NITRO

"You good Tic?" I ask him, he's been off all day, but he's closed off and not talking to anyone.

"Goo...good." He smiles and we have to take his word when he tells us. Sometimes we do think he's lying to us, but most of the time we can tell with him. "I've bee...been watching you...you're hiding something-" he stops and takes a drag of his joint, and I turn to face him. "What is it?" he asks, and I shake my head at him.

The thing with Tic is he might not talk much, but like the rest of us we watch what's happening around us, listen to everything, and we always know if the other is hiding something, but how do I tell him what I'm hiding.

"Nothing, just tired, and waiting for Ares to finally get some answers for me." I know he will believe me, because they all know I'm waiting for something, anything.

"He's reading through them everyday, he'll find something." Tic looks over at the building when we see the receptionist walk out, about fucking time. The place closed about an hour ago, I thought she was never going to leave.

We both get off our bikes, and walk over to the surgery, and Tic locks the door behind me.

"Did you forget-" The doctor stops mid sentence when he walks around the corner and sees us. "What are-"

"We are not here to hurt you Dr. James. We only want to talk and get some advice." I walk closer to him, and he quickly backs up into his room and Tic and I follow him, and sit on the side. "Please don't be scared, like I said, I only want to talk." His eyes wide open and he stares between Tic and I, shaking his head, looking around the room. "I already got your phone when I walked through the door." Does he really think this is our first time doing this? We shut all the CCTV cameras off on the way in, so we won't be seen, so I know we will be walking out of here without any worries.

Tic slides over a chair for him, and the doctor shuts his eyes before looking back at me and Tic. He's licking his dry lips as he continues to panic. We give him a moment to get used to us both, as we look around the surgery room.

I see there is a lot of high tech things around, and if it's something like this we need to even look into the eyes, there is no way we can do it.

"How can...what do you need?" he asks, finally sitting on the chair.

"We need help, there is a camera in an eye, and we need to remove it without the owner of the camera knowing we are touching it." I stop when the chair scraps on the floor, and I sit down in front of him, pulling my chair closer. "I know I look like the person who would hurt someone, but I promise you this thing I need from you right now, is to help me."

"I don't understand what it is you want." The words still escape with a tremble, but I push my chair back and I wonder how to explain this without him pissing me off by not saying he knows what it is I want.

"Say I have a camera put in one of my eyes, would you be able to remove it?" I ask, thinking this would be a better question.

"It would damage your eyes, but I suppose...maybe it can be done. I've never done anything like it, I wouldn't know until I saw it." He looks me dead in the eye, and I can see him searching for the camera but I smile, I have my contacts in.

"Say my brother has a feed on the camera, but I don't want him knowing you are about to touch it. Is there anything we can do which makes it look like my eyes are still shut the whole time?"

He opens his mouth but then closes it. He's thinking about this one, even though I'm not sure if it can be done or not, but it's the one thing I need, one thing which has to be done.

"I would have to think about this one, the first thing I can think of is drops of dye but, I don't know how much damage it will leave the eye in the long ru-"

"What if I was dead?" I ask, and he slides his chair back and he sits up straight. "Would it be easier for you to do all of that if I was dead?"

"I want you to leave now, this is...I don't want to know. I want you to leave now," he shouts. I look over at Tic, who is looking at the machine in the room, and then I look back at the doctor, who is staring at me.

"I told you I wasn't here to hurt you, but I'm going to give you this card. If after we leave you want to help, call the number,, tell him what you can, and I will be back to talk to you." I pull out Wesley's card from my pocket, hand it to him, and to my surprise he takes it from me, takes a quick glance at it, before looking back at me. "I hope I will be making another visit." I nod to Tic and leave.

I spoke to the guys before leaving, saying we weren't going to hurt the doctor as we're asking for help, and even Wesley agreed when I spoke to him. Now I have to hope he calls Wesley and wants to help us.

Because I have no idea what will happen to the girl if Nyx and Ares get her, if they get her. It will be more pain for the family.

"You...you think he...he will call?" Tic asks as we get on our bikes, and head back home.

"Don't know, hope so," I reply. We drive back home, and let the others know what we've got. Now it's just a waiting game.

Tic starts to sing to himself and I start laughing. The man ticks when he talks, but when he sings, he's fine. I have no idea how that works, but he's happy this evening, and I'll take it.

Since the other night with Emily, I've been less talkative with my brothers. I'm not sure what to tell them and what to keep from them, but the three of them are starting to ask if my head is in a bad place, because of how silent I am with them. I don't think I can keep it bottled up much longer. The guilt, on top of the demons, is starting to kill me.

I thought Nyx was out, he must have had a change of plans, I know he wanted to get more files from Wesley. I'm about half way through mine, at the moment all I'm doing is putting them in order of when the case started, then I will start reading through them.

I sit at the table with Nyx and Esha who's busy tapping away on her phone.

"Find out anything useful?" Nyx asks Tic and I.

I go to reply, but stop when I see Ares walking into the room, and he looks pissed off. What the hell has he found out to get him all pissed off like that.

He throws the notepad on the table, and looks between the three of us. No one says anything to him, because we know what he can be like when he is pissed off about something. And the look on his face just proves that there nothing good at the moment.

"So does one of my brothers have something they would like to share with the rest of us?" He asks us all, and we all look between each other wondering what the hell he is talking about. "Well, I found out that a brother, someone I would take a fucking bullet for has fucked us all over," he shouts, throwing his jacket on the table. I shift in my chair a little, when he locks eyes with me. "Care to share?" he shouts, even making Esha jump in her seat.

"I've not-"

"Don't you fucking dare sit there and fucking lie to me." He slams his hand on the table, and Tic and Nyx turn to face me.

Fuck this can't be good.

Not sure what he knows and what he doesn't I choose to stay quiet to be on the safe side and not say too much, but what ever he's found out about, I'm fucked.

"I thought we had fucking rules, rules that three of us seem to be fucking following, but you-" He points his finger at me, and I can see the anger building, as he cracks his knuckles, glaring at me, as if he will throw a knife at me, and he won't be missing his target either. "- you fucking forgot them, the moment the fucking whore spread her legs for you." He shouts, and I stand up quickly.

"Fuck you, you know nothing-"

"I know nothing, are you fucking insane. What the fuck happened to we all talk to each other before-"

"Before what?"

"Before we showed anyone who we are. So you thought her fucking pussy was worth showing-"

"She hasn't seen my face," I shout.

"Nitro, what has she seen?" Nyx asks, and I look at him still sitting down.

I shake my head, as I look at my brothers, my family, and not sure what to tell them. "It's not-"

"What has she seen?" Nyx asks again, and I walk away from my brothers, because there is no right answer here, there is nothing I can say which can justify what I did, or how I broke the number one rule we have in place.

"She's seen my body, every part of it." I can't even look at them knowing the only thing I will see is my brothers anger because of me.

"Your fucking body, a body that is fucking covered in tattoo, tattoos that fucking woman could draw in a heartbeat, are you fucking-"

"And I told her she goes to the police about me, I'll be the one to kill her myself." I turn around to face them, Tic and Nyx still sitting down, but Ares is only seeing red right now. "She won't say anything-"

"Why? Because you've said so? She's a fucking target, a fucking job, and you thought spreading her legs was the best way to get information from her. The only person you fucking thought about here is youself, and your fucking dick," Ares shouts, and I can't fight with him because he's right. When I showed her my body I didn't think about my brothers, fuck I didn't think about myself, I thought about my dick being buried deep inside her and nothing else.

"Nitro-"

"I fucked up, I know that-"

"You fucked up? Are you fucking joking? You more than fucked up. You risked us all without talking to us about it. You risked our lives for some fucking whore, a whore you can get from the fucking pub in a second. But no-" Ares stops and takes a step closer to me, and just stares at me. Taking in a few deep breaths, he shakes his head. "You had to pick a fucking target, a target I should have killed-" He stops and starts laughing when I push him away from me, and it's his fucked up crazy laugh. A laugh when you don't know what he's thinking or what he will do next. "You think I won't kill her? You think your fucking the whore will-"

"Stop calling her that!" I shout at him, taking a step closer to him, to close the gap between us.

"That's what she is, she fucked you, a man who was ready to kill her, a man who's face she hasn't even seen. She probably fucking you to stay alive, to me that makes her a whore-" Before he can say anything else about Emily, I punch him in the face.

Fuck what did I just do?

We've never hit each other, we have fights but they are always jokes, us messing about, but we've never hit each other. And I've just hit my brother over a woman.

Nyx and Tic are off the seats quickly pushing me away from Ares, but they didn't need to because I was already taking a step back.

Fuck, fuck, fuck. I've fucked up for a woman who is a fucking target, and she has the fucking tattoo on her back.

Ares starts laughing, wiping the blood off his lip as he locks eyes with me.

"Her pussy must be fucking magic for you to hit a brother." He nods his head a few times, not sure if it's because he can't believe what I just did, or if it's because he doesn't know what to say.

Fuck I don't know what to say, because no matter how much I say sorry it's not going to matter to him.

"You fucked up here Nitro man, not Ares. He has the right to be angry, we all do. You fucked up." Nyx pushes me away. Now I'm losing my brothers because I fucked a target.

"There is nothing I can say to make this-"

"No, there fucking isn't. Rules are there for a reason, rules we all live by, but you-"

"You told Esha-"

"Don't you fucking dare bring Esha into this, don't you fucking dare," Ares shouts making sure the words echo in the room. "First of all, the three of you knew I was fucking her, I never kept that a secret. Second, the moment I knew who her family was I walked away from her, twice I walked away from her. Third, before I told her our past or told her we were the ghosts, I spoke to my family, my brother, and until everyone agreed I said nothing. The last thing, is me fucking her didn't change the fact I was going to kill her family. I followed the rules, so don't you fucking dare bring Esha into this." He takes a step closer to me, but Nyx is between us. "Esha, if my brothers were in a burning building, and you were there too, who would I save?" he asks, and I glance over to Esha who I've hurt too now.

"Your brothers," she whispers.

"I picked my brothers, and our revenge over my woman, you picked your whore over your family. Remember that." He walks away from me, shaking his head at me, and I stand there as my brothers walk away from me over to Ares and Esha.

I stay where I am, because Ares is right, I picked Emily over my family, and now I have no idea who to fix this mess. I dart my glance over each of my brothers as they are staring at me. The guilt of lying to them all this time feels nowhere close to what I thought I was going to feel. I'm angry with myself, angry I let the only family I've ever known down. The brothers who took punishments for me when I was too weak to fight.

"I'd better go back and look after this precious whore of yours." Ares gives Esha a kiss, and grabs his jacket off the table, and starts to walk out the house but i stop him.

"There's something else I've been hiding from you." I hear Ares roar into laughter, but I can't look at him. I can't look at any of them. What I'm about to tell them is worse than sleeping with her. It's a fucking lead, and I kept it from them.

I stare down at the floor, and hear Nyx. "Can't be worse than showing your tattoos to her-"

"It's worse," I finally look at them all standing by the table, and I'm thankful it's far enough to give us a big gap between each other.

"I've told you about the tattoo on her foot, but there is something else." I crack my neck side to side, ready to tell them, and for the first time in my life I fear my brothers. "She has the outline of the Gatekeeper tattoo-" I stop when all three of them start laughing, but I'm not sure why.

"I'm sorry. I think I misheard you. I thought you said Gatekeeper tattoo," Ares takes a step closer to me, and I take one back.

"You didn't mishear me, she has the tattoo-" I stop when Ares goes to take a step closer, but Nyx and Tic stop him.

All three of them stare at me, not knowing what to say to me. Ares grabs his jacket, and goes to leave the house, the three of us follow, because he's angry and that can't be anything good for anyone.

As we reach the apartment we all put our masks on, and Ares is the first to walk in. Emily looks over to us and Ares stands in front of her.

"Take off your top, and turn around." Emily's eyes go wide, shocked at Ares' words. "Take off your top or-" He pulls out a knife from his trousers. "-or I will cut it off." She looks over at me, which makes Ares chuckle, and it's a chuckle which should scare Emily, because I'm not saying anything. "No point looking at him, he can't help you. So what's it going to be?"

Emily takes a small step back and removes her tank top, she's not wearing a bra, I should be pissed off, but my brothers won't be looking because they have other things on their mind.

"Turn around," Ares tells her, and takes a step back when she does. His fingers move over the outline of the tattoo, then quickly spins her around, grabs her throat and slams her against the wall. "You've locked something away. I don't fucking care how messed up it is, or how fucked up it's going to make you after, open the fucking memory, or I will find my own ways to open the box of nightmare, and I don't think you want me to do that." He lets go, and turns to me. "You have a week to find out, or I'm taking over." Ares and my brothers walk out the apartment slamming the door as they do.

I turn to see Emily putting her top back on, she wipes the tears away from her cheeks, then walks away to her bedroom.

I leave her for a moment, and I sit on the couch, and think about how I'm going to fix this fucked up mess I've made for myself. If the demons are going to come anytime, it would be now, because I will let them play all they want with me. I deserve to be punished, I deserve to feel pain, and tonight I won't fight them either. They can eat at my skin, dig themselves into my veins, I'm not going to stop them.