Page 43 of Rule the Night

Back on.

I choked back laughter. I didn’t know these assholes well enough to laugh with them.

Poe shook his head and took a bite of eggs, obviously annoyed.

“Is your sister’s boyfriend the one you want dead?” Remy turned off the blender and poured his smoothie into a glass.

The question almost knocked the wind out of me. For over a year I’d harbored my desire to kill the man responsible for June’s death, but I’d never spoken it out loud to a single living soul, not even Bailey.

“That’s none of your business,” I said.

I’d lost the Hunt, was living here like a slave-slash-housekeeper. My story — June’s story — didn’t belong to these men.

“I wouldn’t blame you,” Poe said quietly.

There was an ocean of quiet pain in his words, but before I could respond, Bram stepped into the room.

The atmosphere shifted, like it had when he’d moved in the holding room before the Hunt.

It had been easy to forget how huge — how monstrous — he was when he’d been out of sight. But now that he was in front of me again, it was impossible to deny.

Unlike Poe and Remy, Bram’s upper body was covered by a white T-shirt, not that it did anything to hide his cut biceps and chiseled pecs. He was wearing different jeans than he’d worn during the Hunt, but the denim didn’t seem any more equipped to contain his body than the other ones.

It was hard not to stare at the scar that bisected his face, not because it was ugly but because it made his features even more interesting. It was like looking through a kaleidoscope, and I had to force myself not to study him, not to try and make sense of him.

Probably futile anyway.

He stomped past me without a word and made his way to the coffee machine.

Remy flashed him a too-bright smile. “Morning, sunshine.”

Bram grunted and set to work making himself a cup of coffee. When he turned around, he took in the skillet and my half-eaten plate of eggs.

He ignored me and turned to Poe, who was buttering the toast that had popped out of the toaster. “New girl cooking already?”

Wow, really? Rude.

“I cooked,” Poe said. “Going to make a store run with Maeve today.”

“I can take you,” Remy said to me. His blond hair was still tousled from sleep (or maybe from the gym in the hall?) and his hazel eyes looked green in the sunlight streaming into the kitchen.

“No fucking way,” Bram said. “If you take her we’ll have nothing but granola and chicken.”

“Most commercial granolas are loaded with sugar,” Remy said, taking a sip of his smoothie.

“Um, excuse me. I’m right here, and my name is Maeve.”

Bram turned to look at me and for a long moment I felt like I was falling through space, nothing but vast emptiness in his eyes. “I know your name.”

The moment passed so quickly I might have imagined it.

He dug around in the fridge and emerged with what looked like a chocolate muffin.

Remy made a sound of disgust. “That shit’s going to kill you.”

Bram flipped him off and put the muffin on a plate in the microwave.

I ate my eggs in silence, taking it all in. This was… a lot: the bickering between the three men I’d only known for less than twenty-four hours, my new living arrangement, the cameras, the background check they’d done into my past.