Dylan
I preferred the darkness.
I felt at home.
I watched as lights started to go out in the clubhouse. One by one, until even the large building was covered in the blackness of the night. The only illumination came from the full moon above, stars twinkling brightly in the warm California night sky.
The minutes ticked by fast as tomorrow was determined to show its face. Though I wasn’t sure Reaper’s plan was the right one, it wasn’t my choice to make. Did I agree with facing the bastard head-on? Yes, but not at the risk of everyone else. I got why he did what he did. It was the right thing. The others had a right to know the situation; I wouldn’t have given them a choice. If I was in charge, I would have made them leave. This wasn’t their fight. It wasn’t mine.
It was Max’s.
Tomorrow was unknown.
No one knew what would happen. All the preparation in the world wasn’t going to stop death. And death was here. Waiting in the shadows, biding his time, ready to pounce when the time came to take the soul that belonged to him.
Laying on the ground, I looked up at the stars wondering if she was up there. Was she looking down upon us now, cursing us, screaming at us? I bet she was. She didn’t know any other way.
“Well, sweetheart, tomorrow is the day. There’s no stopping it.”
“No there isn’t.”
Sitting up, I watched as my sister walked over and laid beside me. “Thought I’d find you out here.”
“Why are you up?”
“Couldn’t sleep. Still talking to yourself, I see.” She smiled, bumping my foot with hers.
“Where’s the Italian?”
“Yelling at Luciano. He showed up an hour ago. Gio and Massacre are giving him hell.”
“Why’s he here?”
“Don’t know. Doesn’t matter anyway. Gio will make him leave. In fact, Gio wants us all to leave. He doesn’t agree with Reaper’s plan. He doesn’t think it will work.”
“Because it won’t.”
Silence surrounded the stars in the sky. With my sister beside me, I felt strangely odd, almost as if I was thrust back in time to when we were kids, sleeping under the stars in Tennessee. Those days were good memories before the nightmares began. When we were young and innocent of the world, too young to care.
“You know Kitty told me everything, right?”
God help me.
I knew she didn’t come out here to look at the stars with me. I knew my sister. She couldn’t bite her tongue if her life depended on it. She always had something to say and generally, it was how I was fucking everything up.
Sighing, I growled. “I know.”
“She wasn’t jealous, Dylan. In fact, she was relieved. She knew that if anything happened to her, you wouldn’t be alone.”
“I am alone.”
“You don’t have to be.”
I did not want to talk about this.
I knew where she was going with her words as my stomach coiled tightly. I just wanted a few minutes of silence. To think of nothing. Was that too much to ask for? All hell was going to break loose tomorrow and I needed to clear my head.
To prepare for what I needed to do.