They’re out of the car, shoving me back in when I try to follow. I watch them run across the lawn in the rain, juvenile delinquents dressed in black sneaking through the night. Thunder rumbles overhead drowning my objections. Glass shatters. Volleys of explosions follow. One of them escapes through the broken window, and my brothers duck, racing for the car and piling in, high from the thrill. Fireworks paint the inside of the house with smoke and streams of fire.
“You’re fucking crazy,” I yell as the car shoots down the street. “What if there are kids in those houses? What if one of those hits a person?”
“Not a person,” Royal says quietly, his voice undercutting the adrenaline-fueled chatter of my brothers. “A Darling.”
twenty-five
Crystal
By the time we pull up at the next house, my head is spinning, and I think I’ll be sick. Royal and King change places, and my brothers hop the fence and run up a long driveway, disappearing into the darkness. “Make them stop,” I beg King. “They’re going to get hurt. I know you don’t want that, King. You’re not even going to be here next year. You won’t have to deal with it when the Darlings come for revenge. And why do you need to make Dad king in a town you won’t even live in? What does it matter? Can’t we please just go home? You’ve made your point.”
King drops his forehead to the steering wheel. “I told you to stay home, Crystal. I told you not to get involved, that you wouldn’t like what we do.”
“Fine,” I say. “Take me home. Hell, let me out of the car and I’ll walk home. I don’t want any part of this.”
“But you are a part of it,” he says. “This is who we are, Crystal. Not just us. You, too.”
Before I can answer, my brothers are leaping over the wrought iron gate. Lightning flashes, blindingly bright, silhouetting them as they come for the car like thieves in the night. I shrink back, stifling a cry when they pile in beside me.
“They’re on to us,” Royal says, pulling off his black stocking cap and shaking the water from it. “Let’s get Devlin’s next. His dad’s a pussy. He won’t fight back.”
“No,” I say, lurching across Baron and grabbing for the door handle. “He helped you, Royal. If it weren’t for him, we never would have found you and gotten you out. Don’t hurt him.”
“Devlin’s not even there,” Baron says, dropping me back onto my seat in the middle. “Calm down.”
“Mr. Darling is a good man,” I plead. I don’t know when I started crying, but my face is streaked with tears, and I can barely choke out the words.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Royal snaps. “Does Devlin’s dick move like a snake, or what’s got you so hypnotized you believe their brainwashing?”
“Want us to drop you off with Dad?” King asks, pulling up to the end of Devlin’s driveway. He switches off the lights and turns the car around, so we’re facing the exit to the neighborhood, as Duke reaches behind us to grab giant boxes of what might as well be dynamite. Lightning licks the sky again, lighting up the beautiful old house behind the rows of bowing trees over the walkway.
“No,” Royal says. “She said she wanted to see, so she’s seeing. Maybe when it’s over she’ll understand what being part of this family really means.”
He gets out of the car, slamming the door hard. Duke hops out, but Baron grabs me when I try to dive out after him. “I’ll stay,” Baron says. “This one shouldn’t take more than two people.”
I kick and scratch at him, screaming for him to let me go, but he pins my arms down and holds me there, forcing me to watch or close my eyes. I don’t want to see the door where Mr. Darling kept his evil father out, where he stood up to the most powerful man in Faulkner to defend his choice to let the cops search his house—to giveuspeace of mind. I can’t watch the lightning light up my brothers as they skip up to the front windows, full of boyish glee, high on danger and the urge to destroy, to wreak havoc on the world that gave them a mother who can’t be bothered to give them the discipline they need, a father who orchestrates evil and hands out approval when they carry it out, and enough free passes to make them feel invincible.
I can’t hate any of them. I pity them. I weep for them, and for the unsuspecting town my father has unleashed them upon. I weep for Mr. Darling and his silly little wife, and I pray they get out unharmed. I weep for Devlin, for the grief he will feel when he sees what they’ve done to his home, the house where he’s lived since childhood with the balcony where he’s stood gazing at me so many times. And I weep for myself, because I am part of this family, because it’s in my blood like chocolate, and I can’t escape it.
And I rage for Daddy, who’s probably standing at his darkened study window with a drink in his hand, watching the house of his enemy lit up from within like a bomb.
By the time Royal and Duke return, I’m sobbing uncontrollably in Baron’s arms. No one speaks as we pull away, the car creeping out of our neighborhood with an unwilling passenger, like the truck that took Royal.
“You did it,” I say, sinking back against the seat, spent. “You set up the whole kidnapping, didn’t you, Royal?”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“But I do, don’t I?” I press. “Dad would do anything to take down the Darlings. Even use his own children.”
“Fuck you, Crystal,” he says. “Anything I did, I did for you. I didn’t know you’d turn traitor in a week. I thought you were stronger than that. Better than that. I thought you were a Dolce.”
“You really did,” I whisper to myself, horror growing inside me. “That’s why you wouldn’t tell me the truth about what happened.”
“Fine,” Royal snaps. “Here’s the truth. Your preciousDaddyplanned the whole thing. Yeah. He was going to get the Darlings framed for kidnapping me. He said that if I didn’t go along with it, they’d go after you. And you know what? I shouldn’t have bothered. Because when they went after you, what did you do? You bent over and let them fuck you in the ass.”
“That’s not what happened,” I whisper, but I’m too sickened by his words to put any conviction in mine.
“Tell her the rest,” King says. “Tell her what happened.”