Chapter One
Triplets? Triplets? Triplets!
The phrase echoed in my head like a bad song.
Are they fucking kidding me? How is this possible?
It couldn’t be. This had to be a joke. Some kind of mindfuck. Another Elite game.
They had to be high.
“What the fuck did you say?” I asked, my voice trembling. When the hell had that started? The trembling? The cold suddenly bit into me.
“Grayson is your brother,” Brock repeated, more slowly this time as if the words would finally sink past the blockade that refused to believe him. His startling aqua eyes implored me to understand. “You’re triplets. Grayson, Kenna, and you.”
And in just seconds, my world, everything I thought I knew about myself, about my family, ripped to shreds. I shifted in his lap so we weren’t as close, because even faced with disorder, some part of me radiated constant awareness of Brock Taylor.
“No, I don’t have a brother or a sister. I think I would know if I had a brother and a sister.” Yet, even as the denial left my lips, doubt crept in.
Kenna looked so much like me. Identical almost.
“Would you?” he asked, his expression still hard and tense. It was only because of me that he sat in Grayson’s Jeep instead of beating the living shit out of my stepbrother, Carter. Again.
The other back door opened, Micah shoving Grayson inside beside Brock and me before I could demand Brock explain. Seeing Grayson distracted me.
My so-called brother’s fists clenched as he hit the back of the seat, releasing a groan of rage. “I want to kill that bastard,” he seethed.
Unconvinced any of this was true, I thought perhaps I was living in an alternate universe. No other explanation made sense to me.
Fynn slid into the driver seat as Micah climbed into the passenger front side. As soon as the doors closed, Fynn slammed the running vehicle into gear.
“I’ll deal with you later,” Brock growled at Grayson. “Fynn, get us out of here before the cops show up,” he ordered.
I had a feeling the reason Grayson hadn’t hopped into the driver seat of his Jeep was because he would have run Carter down with his car. Rage vibrated off him in waves.
Sneaking a glance out the window despite telling myself not to, I caught a glimpse of Carter as Fynn whipped the car around, tires peeling over the parking lot pavement.
Carter looked… furious.
His blond hair disheveled, blue eyes wild, Carter’s little kidnapping plan had been foiled. God knew what he was capable of next. But I got the horrible feeling his target had shifted from Brock to me. My stepbrother wouldn’t forget the Elite coming to my rescue.
He despised them.
What I had once thought smacked of envy and jealousy, I now realized burned of bitterness and contempt. It had become a race to see who could take down whom first.
The Elite.
Or Carter.
And somewhere along the way, I got caught in the crosshairs.
FML.
Micah turned in his seat, glancing back at Brock and me, a serious note in his light blue eyes. “She okay?” he asked as if I was incapable of speaking for myself.
I was shaken up, clearly, but not so much that I couldn’t talk.
Micah Bradford. The Elite playboy. Flirting came naturally to him, but tonight, he’d been stone-faced and serious, a side I hadn’t seen before. I had always considered Micah harmless.