Page 60 of The Lost Kings

Kingston

PRESENT

S ometimes when I closed my eyes, I could see blood smeared on a wall, and a dead man’s eyes staring at the ceiling.

I could hear a man begging for his life.

And I’d feel this darkness begin to swell inside my chest like a thundercloud.

It used to be in small increments, anger and rage that would eclipse my good mood.

Presley was the sun to most of those clouds, but now, all I could think of was how she’d chosen him .

She chose Adrian even before she agreed to marry him, so her bullshit excuse of why she decided to agree to this marriage was a lie.

I knew it was coming, and yet hearing the words leave her mouth made every dark place inside me quake.

My heart spasmed and everything in me wanted to run in front of her to stop her.

I needed to take her back into that room, rewind time and not get up.

I wanted to go back and tell her what it meant that she’d let me be a part of taking her virginity.

That it wasn’t just something I did to piss off another man.

It meant everything to me. Yet I spewed a different version of truth, hoping she’d accept the lie .

She accepted it just like she did when she was sixteen, and now I was staring at her from across the room, completely out of reach as she stood next to Scotty and her father. She’d changed into real clothes and probably showered to get rid of any trace of us.

Something about that made the darkness worse.

I wanted her to crave us the way we craved her. The way we hadn’t stopped thinking about her for nearly two years. The way even now, we both watched her every move as though she were the person who’d decide if we lived or died, and where our next breath came from.

She was our universe, and we’d somehow convinced her she was worth less than the soil under our boots.

“What’s this about?” Dad asked, glancing between us and where Presley stood.

She lifted her chin, strong and defiant. “The twins have indicated they’d go to war with us, potentially Adrian, and while they haven’t communicated with which army they’d be doing that, the threat is significant enough for us all to talk about it.”

Our father didn’t look surprised, even a little bit. He looked…sad.

I felt my twin stiffen as our father regarded us with that disappointed expression on his face. Amber eyes, same dark hair that was starting to grow silver along the edges, and more wrinkles than I remembered. “Tell me you didn’t.”

How were we supposed to respond? We hadn’t hidden the hearts inked into our chests, but he’d yet to see them.

But now, as he stood there, his gaze dropped to my chest, and I felt bold enough to reveal our truth.

Tugging the hem up, I revealed my skin and looked over to see my brother copying my movements.

Dad’s throat bobbed as if he were holding back emotions, but it was our mother making her way into the living room who saw them that had me shoving the fabric down.

“What have you done?” The fear in her voice and slight tremble had me backing up the smallest step .

Gio flicked his eyes at me. I saw the same guilt and the same shame I carried.

“Why would you do this?” Dad demanded.

Presley stepped forward, dark brows crumpled. “What did they do? I don’t understand.”

“They resurrected and now lead the thing their father worked nearly twenty years to bury,” Scotty supplied with a blasé tone that had my anger surging.

“We wouldn’t have touched El Peligro if we didn’t feel like we needed an army,” I argued.

Kyle laughed. “You fucking idiots.”

Juan spun and glared at him. “No. Of all the people who will criticize them for this, you won’t be the one.”

“They threatened to take sides against us, Juan. That makes them my enemy.”

My brother tried to smother a laugh, which had everyone glancing at us. “Sorry.” He smiled. “You act as though we’d be in trouble if we were your enemy…what we have built, you would never be able to stand against.”

I added, “You were so busy looking for an alliance for Presley, you skipped right over us. Dad had this powerful tool at his disposal all these years, and not a single time did he offer to pull on the power it could wield. It wasn’t until we went to Mexico and we began to revive it, that we realized its full potential. ”

I’d never seen my father angry, not really to the point where tendons bulged in his neck or his eyes watered, but I knew it the second my mother walked up and slapped us across the face that this was more serious than we understood.

“You have no idea what you’ve done. It wasn’t a viable option for a reason. ”

“I thought I could wield that gang, the power it provided, but then we had a family, Son. We had people to protect and El Peligro isn’t something you carry on your shoulders if you’re trying to protect someone.

You think what you’ve done will protect Presley, but it will end up being the death of her.

The very reason you can’t look in the mirror, the thing you hate most about your life. ”

I bit my tongue to stop myself from spewing all the shit inside my head that swirled and swirled and fucking swirled. Half the shit Presley lived through she wouldn’t have had to if Dad had just asked us to step in and help him with the gang, but he never trusted us.

“We aren’t worried about protecting Presley anymore. She’s proved she can save herself and same with Kyle. I don’t give a fuck what danger faces them. They’re on their own but we have a score to settle with Adrian Adesso. If you align yourself with him, we’ll be at war.”

Presley blinked, and some sick part of me wanted to see her cry again. I needed to know that what we’d said bothered her. Kyle was the one who stepped in front of his daughter and settled his glare on us.

“You can hate me. I know what you saw when you were ten, Kingston. I know you witnessed us handling someone who had come in to hurt members of our community. You weren’t given the context for the murder, but it was more than justified I can tell you that.

You’ve grown resentful of me, and now you’re misplacing your anger on my daughter.

Speak of her again as if she’s your enemy, and I promise you, we will be at war.

Be considerate and don’t make your father and I shoot one another because that’s what will end up happening. ”

Gio shifted next to me and I knew this was getting too close to things we never wanted touched.

Presley had her own category between us, and in everything, she was to be protected and kept safe.

We would never harm her, but we had to give a good show that her choosing Adrian didn’t ruin us.

I would say whatever I had to in order to save face and not let on that she’d fucking gutted me with that news.

“Adrian Adesso is responsible for the hit placed on you ten years ago. I don’t know how Scotty missed it, but he did. The three brothers were raised by a man named Markos Mariano.” I explained calmly.

Our mom’s head snapped up, her blue eyes blazing as bright as fire as she whispered. “What name did you just say?”

“Markos Mariano. He was the head of the Mariano family, but he had a business partner named Lucian Adesso. Someone Kyle had killed eleven years ago. Markos raised the boys, and for whatever reason, perhaps he just cared exceedingly for his late partner, but he raised them to hate you, Kyle. Their hatred for you goes deep enough for this elaborate charade he’s pulling with Presley. ”

“Son of a fucking bitch,” Kyle whispered, reaching for his phone.

Dad glanced over at Mom, his gaze narrowed in a way that meant they were communicating silently. I heard her walk up to him and ask, “Why would he go for Kyle and not us?”

Dad shook his head and pulled Mom closer. I looked between them, unsure what their connection to Markos was.

Scotty cleared his throat and stepped closer. “I’ve done my research. If there was a connection to Markos, I would have found it. This is baseless and, in my opinion, birthed from a place of jealousy and hurt over not being the person Presley could rely on.”

Fuck. Him.

My jaw was tense from how hard I ground my molars together. It took all my strength not to attack him, when my mother harmlessly asked, “What does he mean, jealousy over what?”

Scotty smiled at us. “Presley has agreed to marry Adrian Adesso.”

I pulled a gun out and aimed it at Scotty’s head. Gio copied me without missing a beat.

I was prepared for Scotty to pull one in defense, or even Kyle, but I wasn’t prepared for Presley to.

She had the one we’d found that day in her closet pulled and aimed directly at me.

She was a better shot than I was, so even if I did take a risk to shoot Scotty, her shot would land dead center in my chest.

“This is crazy, lower your guns. All of you,” my mom cried, completely outraged .

Dad slowly moved in front of us, then he placed his hand on the barrel of our guns until they lowered. The second they were down, Scotty, Kyle and Presley lowered theirs.

“I think I more than proved my point,” Scotty said before moving in front of Presley as if he was worried we’d actually harm a single hair on her head.

Everything felt too fast and out of control.

She wasn’t really going to marry him. She couldn’t.

She was ours.

“Presley, don’t do this,” Gio said, voice barely restrained. His fists kept clenching around the gun at his side.

She turned to look over her shoulder, but her gaze was empty as if we weren’t there.

We’d broken something inside her.

I realized as she walked away from us, and it felt as though she took my heart with her, there were a few things I had to come to terms with: The most dangerous version of Presley would always be the one that didn’t include us.

We taught her about the beauty of stars and the importance of soil.

In turn, she shared our passions with us; she had her cows and her ranch, but I believed it was all tethered to us.

Without us, I didn’t want to know what would come out of her.

There’d be nothing left but darkness.