Chapter Eight – Giselle
I didn’t go that far from the party, and to be honest, I was surprised Zander didn’t try to follow me even though I’d told him not to. He had a habit of doing that, of tailing me like a stalker, aggravating me to my core.
I couldn’t stay there, next to Luca, talking to him like nothing at all was wrong. It couldn’t be enough that I was here; simply being here would never be sufficient. I had to face down demons at every turn, and Luca, with a younger version of his father’s face, was definitely one of those vicious demons… even if he was witty and sarcastic and acted nice enough.
Did he know what his father had done to me? Did he know what his father got up to? It sounded like Rocco had a wife, so he did these things while married. What a fucking asshole.
They all were. They had to be. Everyone back there was either a Black Hand heir or they would be, if their father-slash-parents got the position on the Hand Piper was vacating. You couldn’t be nice if you were on the Hand. You had to be vile and venomous, willing to do whatever it took to get the job done, whatever you had to in order to protect what was yours.
I hoped it was one of them. God help us all if my father won out. My father knew no allegiance, no love, no anything to anyone but himself. That much had become clear to me, especially on that night three years ago.
After a few minutes of wandering away, I stopped walking, folding my arms over my chest. The thin leather jacket felt tight on my chest, the gloves a size too small. Or maybe that was just because I’d gotten riled up while talking to Luca.
Whatever. It didn’t matter. One step forward, one step back. No matter what I did, no matter what I tried to do to take back my life one piece at a time, the scars were still there, tucked neatly away under my skin. I couldn’t ever truly shake them. They were a part of me, and they would never, ever disappear.
I closed my eyes, seeking to calm myself. Wrestling with your emotions when they were at war inside of you was not the easiest thing, let me tell you. If someone said it was easy, they were a liar—or they just didn’t know how good they had it. I could show them a thing or two about a shitty life.
I didn’t know how long I stood there like that, but it must’ve been a while, for I heard footsteps approaching me. Dead leaves crunching beneath shoes. My eyes were slow to open, and I turned, thinking it was Zander.
But it wasn’t. The person who’d broken away from the party in search of me was the last person I thought it would be—mostly because I didn’t know him. He didn’t know me. I didn’t even say a word to him at that other party Atticus and the Hand threw.
Nix.
The words of my father surfaced in my brain. How he wanted me to get close to Shay’s guys. The weakest link. I didn’t know if that would be Nixon Hawke or not; I didn’t know Shay’s relationships with them all that well, and Nix was pretty hard to read. He seemed emotionless half the time.
“I thought you were someone else,” I muttered, frowning to myself as I looked away. Internally, I struggled. I didn’t want to do what my father had told me, obviously. Stealing anyone’s boyfriend was a low blow, and I was no homewrecker.
Plus, using my feminine wiles, so to speak, in order to get what I wanted was not something I’d ever really leaned into, for obvious reasons.
Nix said nothing, and he leaned his back against a nearby tree, crossing his arms much like I held mine. The only light there was came from the moon above, and the lack of it made his eyes appear dark. He stared at me for a few moments, and then he shifted his gaze away from me. Whatever he was thinking, I couldn’t tell. Like at that party, he was impossible to get a read on.
“If you’re not going to talk, why follow me out here?” I asked.
That got him to speak: “If past events are evidence of anything, it’s that you’re never safe when you’re alone, even when you think you are.”His voice was a little scratchy.
I narrowed my gaze at him, unsure of what he was talking about. Was he referencing all the shit with the Cobra? How the Cobra had gone off the deep end and killed some of their own? I didn’t know what to say to him. “So, you thought you’d be the noble one and follow me out here, even though I clearly want to be alone? Makes sense.”
“There is not someone less noble than me, Giselle.” His voice came out in a whisper, and I recognized then just how rough it was. Scratchy, almost like it hurt for him to speak.
Hmm. If that wasn’t a blinding sign that I should focus on him and see if I could pull him away from Shay, I didn’t know what was. Hey, my father couldn’t come at me and say I didn’t try. Even if I didn’t succeed, I’d at least have tried. Just… couldn’t be too obvious while doing it.
I unfolded my arms, walking over to him. I stood beside him, studying him now that there was less than two feet in between us. “I suppose no one in Cypress is noble,” I whispered. “What makes you less noble than the others, I wonder?”
“There’s a lot you don’t know,” he said.
“Then why don’t you tell me?” I tilted my head, letting my eyes fall to examine him once more. Being so close to him, I was able to see just how tall he was. Not overly muscled, but strong enough.
He turned his head away from me, and the motion caused my attention to move to his neck. Something was there, on his neck, but I couldn’t quite see what it was with all the shadows. “Not my story to tell.”
“What is…” I inched closer to him, acting hesitant while hoping I sounded completely innocent. “…that? On your neck?” It wasn’t any jewelry, and it didn’t look like a tattoo, but again, the shadows were not helping the situation. I couldn’t see what it was, but it almost looked like… well, something really, really bad.
Nix said nothing, but he did reach up to his neck and pull his collar down, bending his head back to expose his neck to me as much as he could. Though it was dark, the action gave me enough of a view to see what it was.
A scar. A thick, white scar that lined his neck from side to side, like someone had tried to slit his throat.
Fuck. No wonder he couldn’t really talk without sounding a little raspy. In all my life, I’d never seen someone with a scar like that, let alone someone walking around as if it didn’t bother them at all.
“Where did you did get it?” I asked, wondering how bad the pain was. Sometimes I felt numb, but a wound like that… oh, there wasn’t a doubt in my mind that injury had to have hurt like a bitch. I couldn’t imagine it.