Page 5

When we reached Rev’s room during the tour, I gasped at the fact that everything looked to be exactly how I thought he would have left it. His bed was made the way he used to make it when we were kids. His clothes were neatly hanging in his closet, and nothing was out of place.

“We thought you may want to look in there before we pack anything up,” Cruz stated. “We told ourselves if you didn’t stop by before the beginning of next year, we’d pack it up ourselves.

The tour ended with us in the secondary living room that was more private and had an entertainment section with a bar and a wall of dark liquors.

I opted for a glass of water and passed on any whiskey, rum, or bourbon since I’d previously had tequila and didn’t want the guys to see what happened to me when I mixed light and dark liquor.

While Storm and Cruz took a seat, motioning for me to do the same, Cruz leaned adjacent to the liquor wall, a picture of infuriating ease with one hand wrapped around his own drink, and the other resting on his thigh.

Titan snagged the remote control to the fireplace and turned it on. And while it looked like Cruz was watching what his friend was doing and wasn’t looking at me directly, I knew he was by the slow curve of his mouth, and the way his fingers tapped against the glass as if he needed to be moving.

If I keep observing him, he’ll make me lose focus on the reason I’m here.

You couldn’t grow up with Cruz and not recognize how distracting he could be at times.

I could feel my anxiety creeping back into my bones, the feeling a reminder that it was always there.

That uncontrollable grief that curdled into rage every time I looked at him, or Titan, or Storm.

My brother was gone. Dead and taken away from me way too soon.

And no one had given me a straight answer as to why.

I knew the kind of man Cruz was. He moved through the shadows and often spoke in half-truths and unreadable silences, giving off an aloof demeanor that put others at ease by thinking there was no way this goofball was a threat once they got over how brawny he was.

Yet, he was far from being a clueless bystander.

There was so much more to him than others gave him credit for.

Done with stalling, I slammed my empty water glass onto the table, the sound cracking through the quiet room.

Cruz masked his smirk, his face going stoic.

Storm’s eyes softened in a way that showed sympathy, but nothing else.

While Titan’s unreadable gaze only pissed me off since I couldn’t tell what he was thinking.

Even before I’d seen Rev’s room, my insides had felt like a storm gathering on the horizon, ready to destroy anything in its path.

My chest tightened from the ache in the pit of my stomach that made me want to yell at all three of them and demand the answers I’d been waiting on for the past five months.

“Are one of you gonna tell me the truth,” I asked, my voice raw as I stood from the couch and began pacing, “or are you gonna keep feeding me lies?”

Cruz’s expression didn’t change, but something flickered in his eyes. Yet, it was gone too fast for me to catch it.

“Be careful what you ask for.” His voice was low and smooth.

“You may think you know what we do, but you ain’t ready to hear the entire gritty truth of it.

You’re grieving and out for vengeance. Trust us.

We get it.” He took a step toward me, with Storm and Titan standing to move closer as well.

Being surrounded by all three of them was intoxicating as hell for reasons I would rationalize later.

“We’re on your side,” Titan added, his voice soothing me in a way I didn’t expect. “We won’t rest until we find out who did this.”

“It’s been five months,” I reminded them.

“And it consumes our mind daily,” Storm chimed in. “We’re already living an unhealthy lifestyle when it comes to cracking this case.”

“Yeah, well, it’s not fast enough for me.” Opening my oversized Micheal Kors bag, I pulled out three file folders and handed one to each of them. “In this file, you’ll find that no detail has been left unturned.”

“What the fuck is this?” Cruz asked, flipping through pages.

After clearing my throat, I disclosed, “It’s your agreement that you understand that Rev left me his majority share over every part of his IT business and home ownership as advisor of this property.

My goal is to sell The Omega House as quickly as possible, but do you three the favor of splitting the equity evenly. ”

“You’ve got to be shittin’ me,” Titan huffed, slamming the file closed without reading more of it.

“Can she do this?” Cruz asked, looking between Titan and Storm.

“I can,” I answered for them. “According to the records I was given by our family lawyer, you all signed the paperwork that placed The Omega House under Rev’s LLC and made him primary owner, manager, and advisor of the business, and each of you employees of the house.

While you may have made The Omega House your home, it now belongs to me and I ca—” My voice cracked and my throat started closing in.

Yet, I pushed through my emotions to finish what I came here to do.

“I can’t move on with my life until my brother gets justice.” Clearing my throat, I stood tall, smoothed out my dark blue jeans, straightened out my peach blouse that matched my peach stilettos, and looked each of the guys dead in the eye before slapping them with the final news.

“The only way that I will consider selling The Omega House to each of you is if you keep me abreast on everything you learn about my brother’s killer. I don’t buy that car robbery bullshit, but I need to know who really shot him. After his killer is put behind bars, then we’ll talk business.”

Up until now, I hadn’t given them an ultimatum. But this was my way of throwing shit out there and seeing how they reacted. Especially when they assumed I would just keep asking what happened, which I would. However, I needed to play the long game when it came to my brothers’ best friends.

“When we do find out who’s responsible for Rev’s death,” Cruz stated, “trust us, Santari … we won’t ask for justice, we’ll take it.”

My eyes widened and my heart started turning inside out at his words.

It wasn’t so much that he spoke of retaliation, but the way he said it.

I knew Cruz, and for a man who many thought always spoke out of his ass at times, only those who knew what to search for realized that you needed to read between the lines of what he said.

Cruz, Storm, and Titan would find out who did this. And when they did, the person responsible would pay.

And I needed to be here for it all.

“Oh, I almost forgot.” I dug in my bag and pulled out another set of keys. “About a mile away, there is a big, white truck parked in a spot in a public lot.” I tossed the keys to Cruz, who instantly caught them and looked to the guys.

“What are these for?” he asked.

I smiled even though I doubted it reached my eyes. “Those are the keys to the truck that has all my belongings. I’m subleasing my place and moving in with you three to pack up Rev’s things and make sure I’m not left out of the loop.”

The men all shared a look a concern, but it was Titan who said, “We don’t know if that’s a good idea.”

“It’s not your choice,” I reminded them. “I own this place. Remember? Either I move in, or you all move out. Simple as that.”

Cruz looked to the floor and shook his head as he cursed under his breath.

Storm ran two fingers down the middle of his forehead, and mumbled something like he was trying not to react to my words.

And Titan crossed his arms over his chest, pinning me with a deathly stare that I assumed was supposed to make me back down.

It almost did … but I didn’t.

While I still wanted to know exactly why Rev had been shot and how he was actually killed, I also read the warning in Cruz’s tone. They were stalling like they already knew the truth would break me. Like they didn’t want me to know the details in case I wouldn’t be able to heal from it.

And maybe I wouldn’t. But I was already shattered and scared about what my future looked like without Rev in it.

He was my big brother. My protector. The one who could make me laugh, dry my tears, and threaten anyone who harmed me.

With Rev in my life, I always felt safe even during the times we weren’t close geographically.

After my boss bitch speech, I found myself returning to my Mercedes to get a breather as the guys went and got the truck and had me moved into one of the empty rooms on the second level within two hours.

It wasn’t until I was lying in bed surrounded by unpacked boxes while staring up at the ceiling, that all the emotions I’d kept bottled up today came crashing over me like a tsunami.

Rev, you should be here. He should’ve been the one sleeping in this house, not me.

I was so confident that I was doing the right thing, but everything felt wrong.

The sheets were too soft, the room too warm.

Rev’s room was down the hall, and yet his presence was everywhere in this space.

It used to be his office. The guys hadn’t told me that, but I remembered when I used to come here and this room was off-limits.

If they packed it up and made it a guest room, it was because they didn’t want Rev’s private stuff lying around.

His bedroom was filled with his clothes and material things. Yet, this room had been his sanctuary. Cutting on the lamp on the nightstand, I felt my anxiety rise again. Is that my brother’s cologne that I smell lingering in the air? It didn’t make sense, but I smelled it all the same.

My throat was thick as I tried to swallow past my pain. Was this a mistake? Moving in with them, letting myself sink into their world while pretending like I wasn’t drowning in the space he left behind? In the parts of me that were so broken, I would never be able to be pieced back together.

I may have been soft-spoken, but whenever I was upset, my wails were loud and uncontrollable. In the past, I would try and calm myself down, but ever since Rev’s death, I hadn’t been able to stop the flood of emotions from escaping me once they started.

So I cried for the sibling I no longer had.

I wailed for the future he’d never get to live.

And I sobbed for my parents who lost a son, while weeping for his friends who lost their frat brother and best friend.

I wasn’t sure how long it was until my body got tired of fighting the emotions that were wreaking havoc on every part of me, but eventually, I drifted off to sleep, only to be awakened by the wind hitting my window.

In my haste to escape to my new room, I hadn’t grabbed a glass of water like I usually needed to sleep in the middle of the night. I could have just gotten some from the bathroom faucet, but I wanted the filtered water downstairs.

Lightly opening the wooden door, I made a mental note to put some oil on the hinges so that it wouldn’t be so loud when it creaked open. However, I stopped dead in my tracks, the gasp that left my lips barely above a whisper as I stared at the sight before me.

What in the world?

My body was frozen, but my eyes were roaming over each figure that was lying on the floor outside of my bedroom.

Cruz was on his side, Storm was on his stomach, and Titan was on his back, all three of my brother’s best friend’s sleeping on the hardwood floor as if them being there was completely normal.

They must have heard me crying. And I couldn’t deny that my heart did this weird fluttering thing at the idea that they were so worried about me, that they fell asleep outside of my door.

It wasn’t just that they were there that choked me up again. It was that Rev used to do the same thing growing up.

I managed to keep myself together enough to tiptoe back into my room, open my box of blankets, and return to the hallway to cover them up as best I could without waking them.

When I got to Cruz, as soon as the blanket covered part of his arm, his eyes popped open, pinning me in place. Yet, instead of a look of concern or surprise, his expression was intoxicatingly dark and dangerous in a way that I didn’t expect.

Then he licked his lips, and I saw it. The flash of his tongue ring that I forgot he even had. Or more like I forced myself to forget it and not focus on his mouth too long because staring at it made me feel things I’d buried.

I was frozen in place and thought at any moment he’d ease up the tension in his features. But instead, his nostrils flared, and his breathing grew more ragged as his eyes roamed lower, stopping on my chest.

Crap. It was only then that I realized that he could probably see straight down my shirt, and I wasn’t wearing a bra.

Plus, seeing his tongue ring had made my nipples grow hard.

Even more baffling, I realized a few seconds later that I didn’t mind him looking. In fact, I liked it.