Kings of Chaos (Dirty Broken Savages #1)(53)

The titles stand out in gold on the spines, things like The Works of Edgar Allen Poe, The Prince, The Odyssey, and The Iliad. Books like they make you read in high school, full of shit you’ll never care about again.

I take a couple off the shelves and check them out, running my hands over the smooth leather of the covers and the embossed letters of the titles. I flip through one, The Odyssey, and am surprised to see little notes in the margins.

Whole passages have been underlined, and the handwriting is cramped off to the side, but I can just make some of it out.

I don’t know anything about books, but reading the stuff in the margins feels like getting a peek into someone’s soul. Whoever wrote these notes had a soul full of rage and pain, and they were connecting with the pain felt by the characters in the books.

Each book I pull off the shelf to look through is like that, with little notes off to the side and underlined parts. Some words are circled, others crossed out. It’s like whoever did it dedicated themselves to reading each book and finding the parts that either pissed them off or resonated with them the most.

I’m putting a few of them back and reaching for another one when someone steps into the room.

“What the fuck are you doing?” a deep voice intones behind me.

Gage.

And he’s pissed. As usual.

I turn around to look at him, and something in the way his face looks so guarded and angry makes me pretty damn sure these books are his.

I’m still on edge, feeling exposed from what happened with Ash. I hate that these men have gotten under my skin. That was never supposed to be part of the plan. I was just supposed to fuck with them, not let them fuck with me back.

“Just exploring,” I tell him, shrugging. “Seeing what there is to see in here. Found these books.”

“You shouldn’t go poking around in other people’s shit,” he snaps, his broad frame looming in the doorway.

I shrug. “It was all just here, so I figured, why not? They’re yours, aren’t they? Or at least, you’re the one who wrote these things in them.”

His jade eyes flash with irritation, and I know I’m right. He wouldn’t care so much if they weren’t his and he wasn’t the one who’d gone through all the trouble to make these notes.

“So what’s all this about, then?” I ask, flipping open one of the books to a random page. It’s got so many notes on it I can barely make them all out, and I lift an eyebrow. “There’s some heavy stuff in here. One of the characters is talking about… I don’t even know what. The suffering they’re going through. And then you wrote a whole tiny little paragraph about how they don’t even know what true suffering is.”

“Stop it,” he grits out, a warning in each syllable.

I don’t stop, though. Because this feels good. More addictive than any drug. I want to poke at him, want to get under his skin the way they’ve all gotten under mine.

“This part right here about the ‘darkness that you can’t escape’ is pretty poetic,” I say with a little smirk. “Maybe you’re in the wrong business. You should stop abducting women from alleys and take up writing full time. It seems like you’d have a lot to pull from for inspiration, judging from what you wrote here.”

That seems to be the last straw. Gage moves forward, marching up to me and yanking the book out of my hand. He crowds into my space, pressing me up against the shelf until the wooden ridges of it dig into my back.

“You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about,” he hisses. “So you should shut your mouth.”

He’s so close, but I don’t back down. “Maybe I don’t want to. Maybe I want to know more. Maybe I want to figure out what makes you work, Gage. How you ended up the way you are.”

“That wasn’t the deal,” he snaps.

“Fuck the deal,” I reply. “I’m guessing you used to live in that shithole apartment building you took me to.”

“What?”

“I’m not an idiot. You knew it way too well for it to be somewhere new to you, or somewhere you only go when you need information. Plus, Meredith talked to you like she cared. That shit takes time. What’s up with that?”

“None of your fucking business.”

I can feel the rage pouring off him, but I don’t back down. He’s not going to hurt me—that wouldn’t be in his best interests, considering he needs me alive to kill Ivan—and if he did try to, I could just hurt him back.

So all he can really do is stand there while I push his buttons, getting more and more pissed off with no real outlet for it.

It feels good to be on the instigating end, finally, to be the one doing the pushing instead of getting pushed. And I keep riding the waves of that, leaning into Gage and not letting him get away with his non-answers.

“What was it like?” I press. “Living there? How old were you? Young?”

“Shut up.” His expression closes down some, fury blurring out any other emotion. He’s uncomfortable, but relying on anger to get through it is a tried-and-true method. I know that well myself.

“Why don’t you want to talk about it? You took me there, so it’s not like I don’t know.”

“That was for a purpose,” he spits. “Not for you to go digging around in my life.”