Page 119 of Brutal Devil

“I told you, I don’t write fiction.”

“I know you did. But riling you up is fun.” He presses a cool glass into my hand. “Drink. You’re probably dehydrated on top of everything else. The doc isn’t sure what those bastards gave you to knock you out. You need to flush it from your system.”

“You’re annoying, you know that?” I try to glare at him, but my vision isn’t the greatest right now, so I just bring the glass to my lips and take a long pull.

“Not a lot,” he says. “Slowly. Take your time.”

“You should be someone’s mother,” I tell him, frowning.

“Yeah, except for the part where I have a dick.”

“Ew.” I take another sip of water. “I don’t need to know about that, Alessio.”

“Fuck.” He rubs his jaw. “I didn’t know you knew my name. No one’s called me that in years.”

“I saw it on the back of a picture at Priest’s penthouse,” I admit. “I was snooping.”

He chuckles. “I’m sure you were. What else did you find? I’d love some dirt on my big brother.”

I try to shake my head, but it hurts so fucking much that all I do in the end is wince.

“No dirt.”

It would be easier if I had.

But everything I’ve experienced personally, everything I’ve seen, leads me to one conclusion. Priest isn’t the monster I thought he was not so very long ago.

“That’s disappointing,” Saint says.

“Yes.”

A silence falls, and I drink some more water.

“I wish I could hate him,” I say.

“Understandable. You’ve been through a lot, and my brother was a part of that.”

“This is the part where you’re supposed to convince me that he isn’t all that bad and I should follow my heart.”

I’m only half serious. My mind is all jumbled from shock and the concussion. This may be PTSD. I feel like I’ve just stumbled out of a war zone, and now I’m expected to return to life as normal. How can I?

And who am I, now that everything has changed?

“I’m not going to tell you a thing, Luna,” Saint says. “You’re smart as fuck. You’ll know what’s right for you.”

He’s hedging. I frown at him, trying to figure out what he’s actually saying. While I was being evaluated by the doctor, Priest and Saint were alone in the hall. They seemed to have been having an animated conversation while Priest dripped blood all over the marble floor. What were they saying? What did Priest tell him?

“Am I smart?” I ask wistfully, my grasp tightening on the glass. “I don’t think so. If I were, I wouldn’t be feeling any of the emotions that I am right now. In fact, I wouldn’t even be sitting here. I’d be demanding to get on the next flight back to Iowa.”

“Do you still want to go back there?” Saint asks.

I blink, uncertain.

I don’t know if it’s the concussion or something else, but thinking makes my brain hurt.

“I don’t know,” I confess to my glass of water.

And that’s when the doc emerges, looking relieved as he addresses Saint instead of me. “He’s all stitched up. It’s a miracle none of the bullets hit bone or lodged in any place that would require significant surgery. I’m not equipped to perform that here. He should make a full recovery.”