Forsaken (The Secret Life of Amy Bensen #3)(73)

“Remind me not to piss you two off.”

“We will,” Amy promises, scooting forward to kiss me on the cheek, whispering in my ear, “I adore her.” Then she leaves to join Dr. Murphy and Liam up front.

I reclaim my spot by Gia.

“I love her,” Gia says. “She’s not an * like you, at all.”

I smile. “I love it when you talk dirty to me.”

She laughs and then flinches, her lashes lowering as she whispers, “You haven’t seen anything yet.”

I lean down and kiss her cheek, wishing like hell I could keep her out of this. She knows my sins, and she isn’t afraid. But this is war—a war I have to win, no matter how vicious, illegal, or bloody I have to be. And she’s going to see who I really am.





EIGHTEEN



IT’S NIGHTFALL WHEN WE ARRIVE safely at the sprawling Hamptons beachfront retreat we will call home for an indefinite period. I give Gia my T-shirt and settle her into a real bed, with Dr. Murphy carefully monitoring what becomes her rapid progress, and also tending to the wound on her hand that was becoming infected. By morning we have supplies, clothes, and all the comforts one might want from a vacation home, and I try to keep Gia in bed, focused on recovering, not on the unknowns outside these walls. Not an easy task, considering she wants to get up and join the roundtable in the kitchen Liam has labeled “the War Room.”

Both my sister and I rise to the challenge of occupying Gia in her bedroom “prison” as she calls it, relieved when she agrees to a Matrix movie marathon while I’m present, reverting back to Sex in the City while I spend time chasing leads on Rollin with Liam and Tellar.

I also get a lot of one-on-one time with Amy. We talked for hours on end, and still I hold back information to protect her. I have to protect her. It’s all bittersweet. She’s angry with me and happy to see me. And I’m angry with me, and happy to see her.

Days pass and each morning I wake from nightmares of the fire. And each day I get hungrier for this to end. Day four is the breaking point for me. I jerk upward from the bed, and I am still half-living my sleep-induced fantasy of slamming Rollin’s head into the window as I’d wanted to the last time I’d seen him. If I’d killed him, my parents would be alive.

“Chad. Chad.”

Gia’s voice breaks into the haze of my half-sleep. “Are you okay?” Her hand comes down on my arm, a soft caress over my skin that sends a chill down my spine, but I do not pull her to me or kiss her as I normally would. I am too on edge, too out of myself, and in need of a release that she can’t give me right now.

“Nightmare,” I murmur, throwing off the blankets and walking to the shower, turning on the hot water and climbing inside before it even warms up, shivering in the cold, savoring the heat. The water pours over me, and I do not fight what I feel. I revel in the hatred inside of me, no matter how toxic it might be. I buried it for years. I need to feel it and deal with it now.

The curtain moves and Gia climbs inside, naked and too thin, wrapping her arms around me. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“You should be in bed.”

“I’m feeling better. But you aren’t. Talk to me. Please.”

I could shelter her. I should shelter her, but I do not. “Remember when I told you I strangled the man who set the house fire?”

“Yes. I remember.”

“Liam uncovered some details about Rollin. He was disinherited right before the fire. I gave him money that day. I think he set the fire and then disappeared.”

“That explains so much. It answers questions you needed answered.”

“Knowing who and why only makes me angrier. But father or son almost killed you, too. If I get the chance, I will kill them, Gia. The bruises from my beatings might be fading now, but I’m still broken. I’m trying not to be that man for you and for my sister, but you need to know that the part of me that wants them dead—he’s still a part of me.”

“I know who you are. I know what you are. And I know what you feel more than you realize, I think.”

I study her, this woman who does seem to see me for all that I am, and I don’t know what to make of it. “I am not a scientist or a doctor. Or a billionaire architect. I’m a treasure hunter, a man who walks lines I shouldn’t walk. A thrill seeker. An adrenaline junkie.”

“A man who knows when the payday isn’t all that matters.” She smiles. “And a man who really, really loves the word f*ck.”

And just like that, I’m laughing. I’m f*cking laughing and pushing her against the wall and kissing her. Gia does that for me. She’s changing me. In this moment, I feel it. I feel her. And us. And I feel something I haven’t dared in a lifetime, it seems. A reason to live that isn’t hate and revenge. But the hate and revenge still feel pretty damn good.




AN HOUR LATER, I leave Gia and Amy for a final checkup with Dr. Murphy before Coco is to pick the doctor up to escort her on an extended vacation meant to ensure her safety. I, in turn, claim a spot at the kitchen table opposite Liam, with Tellar on my left, and join their work to turn Rollin into our endgame. And I do not miss Liam’s intense scowls, or the ridiculous fact that his black T-shirt is perfectly pressed. He knows we don’t have control over this situation, and he’s overcompensating. Nor do I miss the irony of my opposite approach, with my fantasies of banging Rollin’s head into a windshield. Tellar, it seems, is somewhere in the middle of the two of us, and I can only hope that gives us balance.