Page 69 of Heartless Heathens

“I’ll be the judge of that. Bring her to me at your earliest convenience, Carmine.” He used my father’s name, a name I despised because it had nothing to do with me.

The same name my mother ensured would turn into nothing but a whisper the moment he brought his first mistress home to sleep with in front of her. After that I became Sonny, something less of a reminder of my father’s ugliness.

“I’m in school, remember? I recall it was your decision. I’ll see what I can do,” I said, clicking the phone off as quickly as possible.

If he wanted her, there was nothing I could do to keep her away. Eventually he’d get his talons into her, shred her to pieces. It was the only thing he was good at. Everyone he touched turned to hate.

But I could make him wait.

It was bad enough the students on campus were salivating over her. Lincoln Rugsley had eyed her for far too long for my comfort. That guy. Sometimes, during calculus, I daydreamed about cutting him open and hanging him from his insides.

He just had one of those faces you know?

It was my mistake. I owned it. I shouldn’t have paraded her in front of Frollo and the rest of the student body during a clouded moment of rage. Now they circled above like vultures waiting to pick at her carcass.

“Sonny?” She dug me out of my head.

“Reesa,” she said the annoying girl’s name, startling the shit out of me because I definitely wasn’t thinking of her at all right now, and the fact that she was caught me off guard. “She said that people who touch each other, the way that… you… and Felix touch me. She said that they really like each other?” She asked with a nervous laugh.

Her insecurities were showing and it made me want to unhinge my jaw and eat her alive.

“And you want to know if I like you?” I asked, raising both eyebrows high into my forehead.

She nodded and I hardened my stare, letting her know I didn’t like her response.

Or rather, the way she responded.

“Don’t ask me that again, Pet. You may not like the answer.” I looked at her with a sobering stare and she looked down, her heart visibly splintered into pieces from my answer.

“Go. Go back to Felix’s room,” I told her and she padded away without so much looking back in my direction.

I didn’t need her to try to pry her way into my thoughts or my heart.

Especially if he’d be taking her away from me.

Iwokeuptofeet tangled into mine.

A confusing realization, since I’d last remembered being at the Court of Miracles.

Once I opened my eyes, I could see the girl asleep on the opposite end of the couch, curled up as much as possible like she was trying to avoid getting in my way. It was unnecessary, the couch was gigantic, so despite me being six-foot-three, there was plenty of room. She was asleep sitting up, but her feet entwined through my legs like she’d been searching for warmth throughout the night.

Sonny was insistent on calling her his pet but so far I hadn’t seen him actually take any responsibility for her and a large part of me kept wondering why in hell we felt any obligation to do anything but send this girl off to the poorhouses.

It might not have been luxurious, but at least there, people were getting hot meals every single day. Could the same have been said for her if she had been locked up in that belltower all week before we’d found her?

Or rather, before she stumbled into my room?

My body was still sore. Even if it hadn’t been a long one.

They would give credit to the meds of course, reinforcing the need for me to take them. Felix thought I was too stuck in my own ways, that I didn’t want to take them because I thought it affected how others saw me.

I didn’t give a shit what other people thought about me, if they thought this was a handicap or if it made me less than them in any way. No, I hated the meds because of how they made me feel. A groggy fucking zombie who couldn’t keep his memories straight and had a hard time getting a boner from all the fucking benzodiazepines.

It wasn’t like it kept me from shutting down or kept me from needing a three day stay at a crypt following an episode. It just locked my body down, kept me sedated and docile.

It wasn’t for my benefit.

It was for everyone else’s.