Page 28 of Dance With A Devil

Chapter Five

Wyck

The moment I killed the call the house seemed to shrink around me, airless, coffin tight.

I am a jealous man. Not because I doubt my worth; I doubt the world’s restraint. Athens isn’t a woman you “share.” She is an orbit, every Devil is just another moon circling her gravity, pretending we’re not all owned by it.

I pace the study, rage coiling tighter every lap. Karter knows sex isn’t the medicine she needs right now, she needs truth, but he still had to bury himself in her first. Typical.

I’ll break his jaw for that.

I yank the liquor cabinet open, pour a double shot of whiskey, knock it back. The burn barely registers, just adds heat to the fire already eating me alive.

The front door creaks. Laughter follows,herlaugh, soft and bell clear, dragging nails down my spine. Tiger bounds toward it; my feet follow.

I catch them in the foyer: Athens kneeling to pet the beast, Karter looming behind her with a box of journals under one arm and that shit eating grin spread across his face.

Something inside me snaps.

I cross the marble, fist first, hammer Karter in the gut, then drive another into his mouth. He staggers, coughs, blood on his lip, still smiling.

“Wyck! What the hell?” Athens shrieks.

I don’t answer. I swing again until Maeve wedges her tiny body between us, brogue sharp as broken glass. “Touch him once more an’ I’ll skin the pair o’ ye!”

Gage hauls me back. I’m shaking, muscles loaded, starving for more violence.

“You had no right,” I snarl at Karter, knowing I’m wrong but past caring.

He wipes blood from his mouth, gives me that lazy Devil grin. “I had every right. She asked me to take the pain away, and I did. She’s not just yours, Wyck. Accept it or I’ll ram it through your thick skull.” He leans close enough to bleed on my shirt. “And next time, I won’t stop.”

He turns, guides Athens toward the stairs. She rounds on me, eyes blazing.

“You didn’t even ask what happened. You just swung, like always. I’mdonewith it.”

They disappear. The silence afterward feels like a tundra.

Maeve clicks her tongue. “Well, ye bollixed that proper, didn’t ye?”

I ignore her and shove past, heading outside to retrieve the journals. Gage trails me.

“Not my place, sir,” he says, voice calm, “but I watched my best friend murder my mother, and I learned one thing: ask questions before you swing. Keeps regret to a minimum.”

I stop. The words land harder than Karter’s grin. I breathe once, only once.

“I never planned to share her,” I admit. “But the day I found her again, I knew I couldn’t keep her.”

Gage nods, steps aside.

I pop Karter’s passenger door, haul the box out. Heavy, full of the history they stole from her.

Whatever’s in these pages, we’ll pry it open together, bleed the truth dry, and nail the corpses of every liar to the gates of Cliffside.

Because if Bash, or anyone, tries to script her life one more time?

The Devils will write the final chapter in blood.

And I will start with my own father.