“You mean the war that you’re setting up? The war that your father plans to win?” I took another step closer and breathed down on him with as much distaste as I could possibly feel in my body. Bain had no fucking idea that I was one step ahead of him. Cade didn’t know either. No one did.
This was something I had to handle on my own. Keeping my secrets close—that was what I did.
Or maybe I just held them close because I knew that the future I was currently choosing for myself and my younger brother may have made me just as bad as my father. I knew Cade and Brantley stood behind me, and they backed my decisions, but when it came to their futures too, would they be so willing to stand beside me if it meant that the people they loved could possibly be caught in the web?
Bain struggled against Cade’s hold once more, and although Cade was stronger than he appeared, Bain was just as muscular. He was stocky and knew how to use his body weight, just like me. “You think I don’t know what you’re up to, Bain, but I fucking do.” Something dark began to stir in my blood as I glanced down to the photo of me and Gemma again, and before I knew it, I was spitting in his face and getting as close as I could without risking the chance of him headbutting me like he’d tried to do to Cade. “Take another fucking photo of Gemma, and I swear to God, I will rip your fucking eyeballs out of your head.”
There was a slight twitch in his eye as his lips forced out another haughty smile. “You won’t touch me.”
“Fucking try me.” All bets were off when he included Gemma in this little game of ours. Of our fathers’. I wanted to believe that Gemma had nothing to do with this war of weaponry that was brewing and setting up the next line of gun traffickers, but after seeing Judge Stallard with Bain at the Covens, it would have been naive of me to think otherwise. I didn’t believe in coincidences.
Bain’s voice lowered as the side door slammed open. “Jack’s life is on the line, Isaiah. You won’t do a damn thing because you know he’ll be the one to suffer. Your father is even sicker than mine.”
My cheek lifted, and I could sense that Cade was confused by my reaction. Bain wasn’t nearly as good at masking his emotions as he thought, because I could see the confusion brewing in him too. “You mistake me for someone who’s selfless, Bain.” I laughed as I bent down and swooped up the rest of the photos of Gemma and tucked them into my pocket. “Think again, errand boy. You may be on your father’s payroll, but I’m sure as fuck not on mine, no matter the threats he sends my way.”
“Boys!” Coach’s raspy voice echoed throughout the hall as Cade and I began walking toward the door. He stood there with his maroon polo on and tobacco half hanging out of his mouth, even though tobacco wasn’t tolerated on school premises. “Get your asses on the bus now. We’re ‘bout to be late to Temple, and for fuck’s sake, Isaiah...wipe the blood off your knuckles. You’re on probation, and this team will be damned if you get expelled.”
Cade snorted as we briskly walked out the door with Coach following, leaving Bain with his broken camera on the floor of St. Mary’s.
As soon as we were seated on the bus with Brantley and Shiner sitting directly across from us, Cade dropped his voice. “What the fuck was that?”
I leaned back onto the sticky vinyl backing of the seat and stretched my legs out as far as I could, glancing out the window at the high, castle-like dome of St. Mary’s. “Bain’s been playing us this whole time.”
“What do you mean?” Brantley demanded, his face a mask of determination.
I craned my neck toward him. “Do you really think a guy like Bain doesn’t know we’re following him when he leaves? Do you really think he doesn’t know about the fucking trackers we put on his cars? He probably already knows there's one on the G-wagon. From the very second he knew who I was, he changed his path. He’s starting a war between his father and mine.”
“We already knew there was a war brewing,” Cade noted.
I shook my head, glancing back out to the school and wondering why Gemma’s uncle, Judge Stallard, seemed to be in the middle of all of this. I wasn’t positive if his part was large or small, but what I did know was that Gemma needed to leave now more than ever. Especially if her uncle was more than just a vessel in between two opposing sides. “Bain wanted me to see the deal at the Covens. He knew I’d tell my father that his father was moving into our territory.”
Brantley slumped back into his seat. “Therefore, you kickstarted things by telling him what you'd seen.”
I nodded again.
Silence passed as the rest of the team chatted around us. Shiner sighed and pulled his headphones on, drowning out our conversation out of respect or maybe annoyance that he wasn’t as big of a part of it as we were.
Cade glanced over at me. “So now what?”
“Now?” I asked, raising my brows. “Now we decide which side of the war we want to be on.”
Chapter Fifty-Two
Gemma
Trust was such a fickle thing. It was delicate too. Easily broken, but not easily mended. I’d trusted before, and it was a fleeting entity. Trust was volatile. Someone could take the trust they gave you and become unpredictable with it. I was jaded with the term, and the flip in my stomach when I thought about trusting someone made me queasy, but I was nearly there with Isaiah.
And I thought he was there with me too. I knew things about him that others didn’t. He shared Jack with me, even in such a small way, but he trusted me enough to tell me about his little brother and the threat of his father. I didn’t take that information lightly, which was exactly why I was doing this alone.
I just hoped that it didn’t ruin the little trust that we had in each other as of late. He trusted me when I’d told him I would stay in my room all night. And when he’d said it, and I agreed, the idea was just barely a seed sprouting in the back of my head.
Now it was full on blooming, and with each step that I took toward the side door of St. Mary’s, well past curfew, another seedling sprouted.
The hallway was quiet and motionless. Sloane had fallen asleep early tonight, which was to my benefit, and either she thought the guys were already back and that I was sneaking out to see Isaiah, or she didn’t wake up, because I had no missed texts besides the one from Isaiah that said they were on their way back to the school from Temple.
My heart pounded as my foot hit the pebbled stone beneath my shoes, and the cool moisture from the night air hit my warm cheeks. The hood was pulled up over my head, and the feeling of someone lurking behind me made the hairs on the back of my neck stand erect.
Bain wasn’t leaving the school tonight. I knew that because of his conversation earlier in the evening. I called it fate. It was like a stronger force had aligned all the stars and put me in the perfect spot to overhear his phone conversation at dinner, bringing me to my current decision. He had been tucked away in the same little corner that Isaiah had pulled me into earlier to do things to me that made me blush at the mere thought, chuckling into the phone.