We laughed as the man damn near fell trying to get out of the window.

  Looking back to where Trix had gone, the front door swung open, and she waved us onward.

  “Let’s go.”

  We closed the small distance between us and the house, filing inside single file.

  The place was nice; all open like my house was except this one having an upper level.

  It was clean.

  The hardwood polished, throw pillows nice and neat on the sofas, and a curio cabinet still stocked with half-full bottles of liquor in it.

  “I think someone lives here,” Ace stated.

  “No, they’re dead,” Nyx solemnly replied.

  “Yeah, they’re in the garage.” Trix hitched a thumb over her shoulder in the general direction of where that was. “On a good tip, they have a fresh generator running and the water works.

  “It’s not warm, but it’s better than nothing.”

  “Then that’s my cue,” Addy said. “I’m going to get cleaned up.”

  “Want some help?” Cam asked.

  What did he just say?

  “The fuck if she does.”

  He looked at me with an amused ass grin on his face. “Calm down, killer, I meant with this.” He slipped the gear bag from his back and passed it to Addy.

  “Thanks, Cam,” she said softly.

  She looked at me, her gaze lingering for just long enough for me to see everything I needed to. That’s when it happened, that’s when I took a second to look into her instead of at her.

  Something clicked between us. Like two pieces of a puzzle finally coming together.

  I don’t think either of us knew right then what it was, but we both felt it.

  That was the first time I saw her look afraid.

  For a second and I thought she was going to say something, but her eyes dropped, and she turned away, making her way towards the stairs.

  He killed his family before he hung himself.

  I’m sorry was written on the garage wall in orange crayon with a frown face at the end. I’d waited until Nyx disappeared to get cleaned up too, before checking it out.

  I was an asshole, but I wasn’t going to shove more death in her face.

  The man had used a bedsheet on himself.

  Due to the amount of blood coloring the blanket where a woman and two smaller bodies lay, I pictured this being a messy family affair.

  They couldn’t have been dead too long either, the smell wasn’t to the unbearable point yet, whatever that may have been.

  I wasn’t one of the people who would ponder why he did it. Not everyone was strong enough to survive in this world, and sometimes those weak motherfuckers dragged everyone around them down with too.

  I shut the door, and then walked over to the dining area where Maliki was sitting with a glass of water in his hand. I took the chair opposite his.

  Ace was on one of the couches allowing Trix to brush out his shoulder-length hair.

  Cam had the map spread out in front of him on the floor.

  I turned my attention back to Maliki. “How are you holding up? We haven’t gotten to talk since this whole shit show started up.”

  He swallowed an ice-cube and shook his head. “The bitch I thought I’d always be with is our nark. Feeling pretty shitty and stupid about that, Z. She lured our baby bro into a trap. She used me.”

  I wouldn’t refute his claim. I already had Gwen picked out as our nark, one of them at least. It made sense.

  “All those fights she picked so she could find an excuse to bitch and disappear….she’s dead, Z.”

  I wasn’t going to refute that either. Disloyalty wasn’t tolerated. The Bitch was going to die. More so she needed to. That wasn’t going to make him feel better right this moment though.

  I wasn’t a relationship guru, but I had basic common sense and life experience. Betrayal burned, some deeper than others but regardless of who did it or why the shit could make a decent man flip the script and turn into a monster.

  “Then you take all the time you need to make things right with yourself, and then you’ll find another—someone a fuck-of-a-lot better.”

  He nodded and took another sip of his water, glancing towards the staircase for the fifth time since I sat down.

  “Little Miss Death?” I questioned.

  “Who?” He glanced back at me. “You mean, Nyx?”

  Bingo.

  I smirked.

  “Don’t give me that confident ass look, Z. She’s cool, that’s all.”

  “Malik, cool is what you said the first time you saw a pussy.”

  Trix snickered from the living area, letting us know she was eavesdropping.

  “She’s a down ass chick, she’s sexy as hell too, but she’s one of them. And she has some deep issues.”

  I leaned forward and clasped my hands together, resting my elbows on the table. “You know what that all sounds like to me, Malik? Bullshit excuses. You got issues too. And one of them? My girl is one of them.”

  He shook his head, laughing quietly. “Just leave it, man. We both got too much shit to deal with.”

  He was holding back.

  Maliki knew me like the back of his hand, and vice versa. I’d drop it…for now.

  What about you? What’s the deal with you and Adelaide?”

  I shrugged. “It’s complicated.”

  “Try me.”

  I was still thinking of what just happened between us a few moments ago and what I saw. I knew I could talk to Maliki about anything though. He was more an extension of me than anything else, and that’s how Addy felt—like she was part of me already.

  Even then I could feel her grief as if it was my own and I couldn’t make sense of why it was. I didn’t feel shit like this. “Can’t wrap my fucking head around it. I feel like something inside me was asleep, and whatever it is, it got woken up the other night.

  “It’s…primal. And…”

  I ran a hand through my hair growing uncharacteristically frustrated.

  “Adelaide.”

  I glanced over my shoulder at, Cam, who was approaching with the map in his hand.

  “That’s all you need to know. It’s Adelaide.”

  I raised my brows at him. “That doesn’t make any fucking sense.”

  “It’s as simple as the sky being blue and the sun being hot. You two got a long ways to go yet. Stop trying to make sense of it and just let shit be.”

  I watched him spread the map across the table.

  “He knows,” Trix said without turning away from her task.

  “I figured it out before we even left Copperfield. I figured this was coming.”

  “Nothing to say about it?” I waited for him to tell me what everyone else did. I was a sick piece of shit like my father

  He sat down, and his silver eyes met mine, showing nothing but something akin to mutual respect. “Nope. I know my girl. I don’t know you, but you’re not him. I won’t intervene in anyone’s personal relationship; just know I have no problem ever stepping in if she needs me.”

  The my girl shit irked me. It wasn’t meant in the same way that I used it, though. I was now beginning to understand that. I didn’t care about having his respect or not, but I was glad to have it nonetheless. I stood, rounded the table to the curio cabinet, grabbed a bottle, my bag from a chair, and then headed for the stairs.

  “We leave at sundown,” I called over my shoulder.

  At the top of the stairs, I went for the bedroom all the way at the end on my right-hand side. I’d heard this door shut earlier and knew Addy was on the other side.

  Pushing it open, the sound of the shower running greeted me from the attached bathroom.

  I slipped in and used my boot to close the door, taking a look around the room. It was simple. A queen sized bed was centered with moss colored linen, matching dressers, and a flat screen.

  Sitting the bottle down on a nightstand, I removed my shirt and then plopped my ass down, reaching into my front pocket.

  I could hear muffled crying from behind the bathroom door.

  I wanted to shove an arrow through the skull of whoever took her friend away.

  Also knew she needed to cry now and get it out of her system. I didn’t feel any sympathy for her. Sympathy was easy. Empathy, however,…empathy was my understanding that it could have easily been one of mine that we lost today.

  This was her parents’ fault for keeping her so sheltered while trying to tell her what the Badlands was all about from within a secured compound.

  Addy was a self-indulgent princess who had always been protected. That was in there, she was out here now, with me. It was time someone showed her what the Badlands really was.

  I knew she would be just fine, though, because I’d been right about her.

  She looked like a deviant angel, and behind her eyes lurked something savage.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Quindecim

  The water was ice cold.

  Like tiny razor blades dragging over my skin. I welcomed the stinging sensation, but it did very little to take away the ache in my chest.

  I’d done so well holding it together, and then I thought of her empty room back home. Her silence was a comfort I never realized I’d taken for granted.

  She listened to me and heard every word I ever said. She protected me, never judged me. She’d always been there—a huge part of my life, and now she was just…gone.

  I tried to swallow, but it felt as if there were fragments of glass in my throat. Every breath was a bit harder as something hitched in my chest. A storm gathered behind my eyelids. I placed my back against the wall and a hand over my mouth, I couldn’t hold it back. The tears fell.

  I had never lost anyone before—not someone I was close to.

  Maybe it was karma teaching me a lesson. I did a lot of terrible things in life, and I was far from done adding to my rap sheet. To many, I wasn’t a good person, and perhaps bad people weren’t allowed to grieve.

  But I did. I was.

  This hurt.

  I didn’t try to stop my tears from falling, only muffle the sounds that seemed as if they would rip open my chest and fill the house.

  After pain, there would be anger, and that’s what I was waiting for, she’s what I was waiting for, practically screaming eternally for her to wake up. I needed her.

  This had to be ten times worse for Nyx. I wanted to go to her, but I knew her well enough to know she wouldn’t want my shoulder to cry on, she’d only offer me hers’.

  I let my tears subside, getting out every last hiccup before I turned the shower off and climbed out. Goose pimpled prickled my arms and legs from the shift in temperature. My hair dripped onto the tiled floor as I wrapped a fluffy towel around myself.

  It was a little weird to be in a strangers’ home helping myself to their things, but it wasn’t as if they would be using them again.

  Having left my gear bag in the bedroom, I pulled open the door and promptly froze.

  Zane was in there—shirtless.

  He was laid back on the bed with one forearm thrown across his face. I stared. Even with my mind in a million other places, I could appreciate how well he took care of his body.

  “If you touch it, you’ll be able to memorize it better.”

  I sighed and shook my head. “What…” I cleared my throat, cringing at the sound of my voice. “What are you doing?”

  “Waiting for you,” he casually replied.

  “Shirtless? With a bottle of Grey Goose?”

  He sat up in one fluid movement, muscles flexing as he settled his back against the suede headboard.

  He looked down at himself, over at the nightstand where the liquor was, and then to me with an almost boyish smile on his face. “Looks like it to me, yeah.”

  “Zane,” I groaned. “I’m going to say something I never thought I would say to you. Please not right now.”

  “I actually imagined you saying please for a lot of other reasons.” He patted the space on the bed he was making look ridiculously small. “Come sit down.”

  “Like this?” I gestured up and down my towel-clad body.

  “Just like that.”

  “Um, no.”

  “No?” he repeated back.

  “N-o. No” I tightened my grip on the towel and slightly shuffled backward.

  His eyes tracked the minscule movement.

  A slow, deviant grin almost predatory in regard split his face in two. I knew not to trust it. It made my heart beat in a distrustful rhythm.

  Just as I knew no matter how good his body would feel beside me, especially right now, going near him with nothing but a towel for armor wasn’t wise.

  His eyes perused me from my feet to my head as if he had x-ray vision, burning through the fabric. By the time he was done with his thorough examination, I could feel the red in my cheeks, causing his grin to grow wider.

  “You’re picturing it, aren’t you?”

  I furrowed my brows, not following him. “Picturing what?”

  “My dick destroying every fuckable hole on your body.”

  Now I am.

  “No…” I heaved an exasperated sigh. “You are something else, Zane.”

  He clicked his teeth at me in mock disappointment. “Addy, aren’t you in enough trouble already from that lie you this morning?”

  Trouble? I quirked a brow. “Does this behavior work with most women? Or is this a specialty reserved just for me?”

  “Most offer me their pussy like it’s a rare delectable; never seeming to realize ten other bitches have walls and a clit just like they do.”

  I hid a laugh behind my hand; the sound rattled inside my hollow chest. “So then why do you want this one?”

  “Because its mine?” He blinked at me as if I were a late bloomer in the thinking department. “You’re not bitches. You’re my princess.”

  Aw, that was sort of sweet.

  He patted the bed beside him again.

  “We don’t have time for this.”

  “You’re right. We don’t have time for what I have in mind, but we do have time for something...else.”

  I had a good idea what this else would involve.

  “Not leaving till sundown,” he added, pulling a lighter from his pocket.

  “Screw it,” I mumbled, walking across the room. Zane and I were grown; I knew I had nothing he hadn’t seen before. This was the logic I came up with to make me think nothing would happen between us.

  It was bullshit. He couldn’t look at me without my mind going to all the places it shouldn’t. We were meant to be rivals, enemies—debauched royalty of opposing empires. Yet, every thought I had of him was lecherous.

  I kept one hand tightly clasped around the top of the towel as I climbed up onto the bed. His torso on open display I got a clearer picture of the shaded tattoos all over him.

  “What’s your favorite color?” he asked as soon as I was positioned beside him, offering me the joint he’d just sparked.

  “Red, why? What’s yours?” I questioned, taking the joint from his hand and bringing it to my lips.

  “Black.” He slid closer to me so that our arms were touching, and I was tempted to snuggle into his warmth.

  After expelling a breath of smoke away from his direction, I passed his joint back and nodded. “That’s fitting.”

  “Favorite food?” He placed a hand on my thigh, just below the hem of my towel.

  “Scrambled eggs.” I laughed lightly. “Is this twenty-one questions?”

  “I was going for fifty, actually.”

  “Why?”

  He let his ash drop off onto the floor with a shrug.

  “You know that’s someone’s carpet?”

  “So? They’re dead. This is their bed too, which has been fucked in a dozen times.”

  I wrinkled my nose and glanced down at the neatly made comforter. “That’s gross. Why do you always have to go there?”

  “That’s all our world is, princess. Sex, power, pain, and us—the degenerate fucking youth.”

  He reached for the bottle of goose and unscrewed the lid, passing it right to me without drinking any.

  I shrugged and brought it to my mouth, taking a healthy swig. The burn was everything, settling deep in my gut. I took another and he laughed before finally answering my earlier question.

  “Plus, I think I should get to know the gorgeous woman I’m going to be spending the rest of my days with.”

  I nearly choked.

  “Shut up.” I wiped my mouth with my wrist and handed the bottle back to him, diverting my gaze to a blank space on the comforter, feeling my cheeks warm. He’d sounded sincere.

  Asshole Zane, I could barely deal with, sweetheart Zane would annihilate me.

  “Are you fucking blushing?”

  “No?” I mean, “No. Stop screwing with me. You know you and I—.”

  “We’re do or die,” he interjected.

  I shifted and looked over at him, seeing he was serious.

  “I…don’t you know I’m no good for you? You hate me, Zane. I can see it every time you look at me.”

  “Every time?” he cocked his head to the side, stare boring into mine.

  I rolled my lips, looked up at the ceiling, and counted to three. Zane was a mystery I was trying to solve in spite of all my protest not to.

  He was danger. He was carnal sin. His soul was black, and his hands stained red. He was everything I lived and breathed in the flesh.

  He was tempting, so tempting.

  I exhaled a deep breath and sat up on my knees, successfully dislodging the palm imprinting on my skin.

  “Zane, we aren’t friends. We aren’t lovers. Hating me even a little is enough for me to say—.”

  “Fuck this.” He slammed the bottle down keeping his eyes locked with mine.

  There was a momentary lapse of four seconds, and then he pounced. A small squeak flew from my mouth as I went from being on my knees to flat on my back staring up at him.

  “Friends…lovers…mine. I’d say that trumped both the other titles.”

  “You hate me!” I reiterated, pushing on his solid chest.

  “You keep saying that.” He dropped his hands to my thighs and spread them apart, fitting himself between them.