“We need to be patient. We can’t take down a twenty-year operation in a day. Give me some time to think, make some calls. In the meantime, keep your head down, avoid your father, and don’t go anywhere alone.”
He palmed my neck. “Valentine’s day is in ten days, Roman. How do you expect me to do this? To ignore everything he’s done? If he didn’t kill Foster then he knows who did, andstillhe’s going to stand in front of the community and unveil a memorial for a kid he could’ve saved but didn’t.”
It was a lofty level of fucked up—as morbid as it got—to host a memorial for a man you murdered on a day dedicated to love.
It didn’t feel fair to ask Sebastian to pretend like he’d never found a ticket out of this nightmare, but I was licensed for war.Trainedfor combat and bloodshed.
He just had to trust me.
“We’re in our own little unit now, baby bird. Do you trust me?”
“With everything.”
“Then I’ll get us out of this. I promise.”
CHAPTERFOURTEEN
SEBASTIAN
Love was a funny thing—this idea of giving someone the power to destroy you but trusting them not to.
I trusted my daddy bird… it wasmeI had less faith in.
There’s always talk, this murmur of sorts, that excuses the lack of trust in others and makes it something acceptable.
Especially when you’ve been hurt…
… over
…. and over
… and over again.
But rarely does anyone speak about how difficult it is to trust yourself after a decade of condescending comments, minimized opinions, and undermined gut instincts by the one person who was supposed to be programmed for protection.
Daddy bird was resolute. Unshakeable. He was everything my father wasn’t, and the clear juxtaposition between the two made it easy for me to run to him. Daddy’s actions were kind, his tongue told no lies. His fists bled for me rather than because of me. He was the protector I’d been waiting for, and I recognized him almost instantly.
My father was a villain that acted as a hero, and Roman was a hero that took the role of villain—a part he played just for me. While Arthur fled Hell, feigning as though he wasn’t its creator, Daddy let the flames touch his skin and learned how to survive inside of it.
I survived too, but I did it by hiding, and now that I was ready to fight, I wasn’t sure I knew how to.
If Daddy was the hero, and Arthur was the villain… then who the hell was I?
CHAPTERFIFTEEN
ROMAN
He was radiant—beautifully out of place in this sacrilegious prison. His skin was extra pale today, porcelain and ghostly in a way that made the tint of his lips look bloody. The bottom one was plump, swollen and bruised as though he’d been gnawing it all day.
I wanted to suck it into my mouth.
Curls danced across the tight skin of his forehead, the ends tangling with his eyelashes. Nimble fingers flicked the wayward strands out of the way, and our eyes locked.
“Baby bird,” I greeted.
He made an ugly sound, lips curling. With a violent swing of his foot, my office door slammed hard enough to shake the frames on my walls.
I lifted an eyebrow. “Hard day?”