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Bishop flexes his hand. “Dad! Fuck!”
Hector chuckles, and I can see his smug smirk from here. “I mean it. Nothing is to happen until the ceremony. We can’t take heat before it.”
We all agreed, and Bishop hung up the phone, his eyes falling on all of us.
Nate, Eli, Cash, Hunter, Jase—because the old fucks are always here anyway—and the silence that spills among us is deafening.
I shuffle in my chair.
Jase slinks down onto the ground, pulling his knees up to his chest. “Anything we missing here? You guys talk as if you know who has been doing all of this shit?”
“We do.” Bishop nods his head. “We’ve just been—”
My eyes collide with Bishop’s.
“—waiting.”
I sneer, the adrenaline already settling in my blood. I need it.
“Want to fill us the fuck in?” Jase crosses his arms in front of himself.
I run my tongue over my teeth. “Garcia.”
There was a reason why they called it frostbite. It would literally bite at your skin until you could no longer feel. I sank my nails into the white snow, my jaw clenched shut. It got progressively worse as I aged, I found out. My father wasn’t just an evil man, he was straight-up vile. He wanted to humiliate, torment, and destroy people in a way that you could never see on the surface. He worked his sins by hiding it behind human nature. I hated him. Fucking despised him.
“What you thinking about, boy?” Elijah said opposite me.
My eyes found his, my jaw tensing so hard that my teeth gritted beneath the tension. I didn’t answer him. He was Lucan’s right-hand man in this business. I soon found out after he raped me all those years ago. See, Lucan didn’t pull that shit anymore. Elijah was the last; now he just likes to humiliate me by making sure Elijah is always around when he’s with us. I swore one day he would go down, as would Lucan, only differently. I had to be smart when it came to Elijah. SO fucking smart.
I kicked out my leg, the snow melting against the heat of my skin. We had been in this goddamn igloo for four hours straight, waiting for a drop. I was fucking done with the trade, almost close enough to filling Uncle Hector in on Lucan’s little secret. I wanted to. Every fucking time I saw him, but then she came to mind. It wasn’t worth it. Civilians, other people—they didn’t mean shit up against Saint. Sad but true.
“Something going on in that head of yours?” Elijah asked, leaning his elbows on top of his knees. “Something you want to do to pass the time? I mean, I think you and I both know that I don’t mind bondage…”
I bared my teeth. “If you touch me, I will kill you, Elijah, and trust me, I don’t want to do that. Yet.”
Elijah laughed, his smirk so fucking smug I wanted to reach forward and punch it right off his face. “Settle, settle, Vitiosis. You’re a little old for my taste now…”
I ground my teeth, my fists clenching so hard in my palms that crescents indented. His phone was against his ear when he got a call.
“Ava, how’s my favorite little sister?”
Yeah, I’ll get you real soon, motherfucker.
Saint
I watch as my blood fills the little syringe, slowly and carefully. It’s a much-needed distraction from the weird things I have been imagining. It’s gone from shadows, to faces, to a name. Ava Garcia. I know what I have to do, but it’s going to have to wait until I land back in the United States. I want to study his reaction when I say her name. Maybe I’m having wild dreams that are invading my everyday life, or maybe I’m losing my mind. I guess I’m ready to find out.
“How soon can you get me results?” Madison asks the doctor, whose loafers cost more than some cars. Huh. Why am I not surprised?
“For you, I can have it back within a couple of hours.”
“Thank you,” Madison says, resting her head back on the sofa.
I clear my throat. “Will this work? I mean, because Bishop and I are only half-siblings? I know that we share fifty percent DNA, and half, like—” I pause, trying to rack my brain. “Twenty-five percent. Will this work?”
The doctor nods his head, pushing his glasses up his nose. “Yes, because you and he still share twenty-five percent of that DNA, which this baby will hold fifty percent of his DNA. If this comes back inconclusive, it means the child is not his.”
Madison lies backward on the sofa as another doctor rubs jelly over a small ultrasound wand.
“I’m nervous,” Madison whispers.
“Have you had an ultrasound yet?” I ask, watching as the nurse rubs the wand over her belly.
“No.” Her cheeks flush. “I guess I haven’t felt like I wanted to. And at first, I didn’t know if I was going to keep it.”