Page 53 of The Lost Kings

Kingston

PRESENT

O ver the past year and a half, there were things I’d done that I wasn’t proud of. There were places in my own convictions I wasn’t true to, and yet it always came back to this core belief that there was one person on this planet worth risking all of it for.

My twin and I waited in the shadows for him to come out. It wasn’t easy to sneak up on Scotty James, but we discovered, through time, that it wasn’t impossible. Our anger at the man demanded blood, but his dedication to protecting Presley would keep him alive.

For now.

The door clicked shut behind the manor, and we knew his dogs would sniff us out first, so we waited for them to trot off toward the opened steaks we’d left by the exterior tree line.

Scotty assumed the dogs were just relieving themselves and wouldn’t think anything of them heading that way or being gone for a few minutes.

Gio raised his tranquilizer gun and peered through the night vision scope, then pulled the trigger twice.

Once he gave me the signal, we moved from around the house and toward Presley’s uncle .

We placed our blades at his neck to keep him in place. “A word, Scotty.”

Scotty’s expression only revealed the smallest flinch, which wasn’t nearly as satisfying to me. “What the fuck do you two want?”

“Your head on a spike would be a good place to start, but because we love Presley, we’ll settle for a little blood.”

He tried to move out of our hold, and I pressed my blade farther into his neck, drawing enough blood that it was making a mess.

“Gio’s stabbed you before, not sure why you’re doubting we’ll do it again.”

“Where are my dogs?” Scotty rasped, masking the pain he was obviously in.

Gio clicked his tongue a few times as if he were calling the dogs. “Shame. Guess your beasts aren’t as invincible as you thought. Don’t worry, Scotty, they’ll be ripping throats out within three to four hours. Once they wake up, ensure they remain hydrated.”

I pressed my blade a little farther now just to fuck with him. His wince made me smile.

“Why did you keep our texts from Presley? You promised we’d be able to communicate with her and yet you routed all our texts to your phone. Why do that for so long knowing we’d eventually come back?”

He winced again and I decided to lower my blade for the moment and wipe it on Scotty’s jacket. “I only wanted her to have a little bit of time to get over you two. She needed some space to process what happened. Sixteen was too fucking young for her to be so infatuated.”

My blade was back at his throat. “So you waited until she turned eighteen?”

Scotty made a gurgling sound, which meant I’d gone too far with my blade. I let up and waited for him to continue.

“I waited until she was seventeen. I showed her your texts six months after you left. She didn’t want to know what you said then, which was around the time that I had introduced Adrian’s alliance. Carter fucked us over and we needed the help.”

Gio glanced over at me, but I refused to let Scotty see that we weren’t made aware of any of this. Six months…it was still longer than it should have been, but it would have made a world of difference to us if we were able to communicate with her that soon.

Six months .

“So when did she see them then, because at some point they stopped going unanswered.”

He gave out another little groan, moving his neck. “The night I texted you to come home, she stole my phone, which held all your communications.”

She’d known six months in and didn’t dare look until a year after…and instead she started seeing Adrian.

I released Scotty slowly. “Are you going to attack us or do I need to cut a tendon in your leg to keep you here?”

“Fuck off. Just let me go check on my dogs.”

Gio and I both let him go and he immediately took a piece of cloth from his pocket and placed it to his neck. “You’re not going to end up with her. She’s outgrown you both…let her go before you ruin the family.”

With that he jogged off toward the tree line where his dogs were sleeping.

“What’s going through your head right now?” Gio asked apprehensively.

I was doing sit-ups, and I’d already done push-ups and a few other regular workouts, but I usually made him keep track of my time. Today, I was just going until shit hurt, and with as conditioned as I was, shit wasn’t hurting nearly fast enough.

Sweat landed on the mat as I stopped moving and glared over at my twin .

“She chose him over us.”

Gio dipped his head, and I hated seeing him hurt. I despised that I didn’t only have to experience the pain, but had to see it on his face, knowing exactly how his heart felt because mine mirrored his.

Once his attention was on me, he tried to defend her, “She was hurt…thought we’d abandoned her; there was shit we’d said that?—”

Not fucking happening. “We explained all of that to her in our calls and our texts. We’ve done nothing for the past year and a half but sacrifice ourselves so that there’s a future we might one day have. We’ve done everything for her, and she still fucking chose him.”

Every time she’d go to Adrian’s, I’d watch through a lens how happy she looked and how more of herself she’d become. She’d shed a layer until she was stripped down to the version of herself she’d only once given to us.

I couldn’t stop this feeling because even after last night, she’d left us for him.

A murderer. A man who was pretending to be someone good.

I stood and moved over to the punching bag and began to hit it.

My brother’s voice followed me. “What do you want to do?”

I turned toward him and asked, “Do you honestly think she’ll ever be ours?”

My brother’s gaze found the floor and I left the bag, placing my hands on his shoulders. “Gio, she’s toying with us. She will do anything to protect her family, including entering an arranged marriage with Adrian.”

“She doesn’t know who he really is.” He tried to argue, but I shook my head, emotion beginning to clog my throat.

“If you try to tell her, she won’t listen. I dare you to try.”

Gio stepped back and ran his hand through his hair. “And if she doesn’t listen?”

“I know what I want…but I also know I’ll take it and walk away.”

My brother scoffed and picked up a jump rope. “You’d just fuck her and walk? ”

The idea of not having Presley’s heart made me afraid, but the idea of her giving it to Adrian made me so angry that I gave my brother the most honest answer I could.

“Yeah…I’d take her virginity so Adrian couldn’t have it and then I’d just walk.”