The engine rumbled between my thighs as Lauren shot me a look before continuing up the sidewalk, her bear-sized shepherd mix leading the way. She’d changed into linen shorts and a tank top since church and had switched out her heels for a pair of flip-flops. Her hair looked different, too, like she’d run her fingers through it. Or at least I hoped it was her who’d done it and not some, as of yet undiscovered, significant other who I would obviously have to kill, violently, so there would be nothing left between us, and I could—
Another not-so-sneaky peek over her shoulder at me.
I grinned, my murderous thoughts forgotten. Nah, she was single. I’d bet money on it. Or if she was seeing someone, it wasn’t serious enough to warrant bloodshed. A person in a happy, committed relationship wouldn’t be shooting looks at me like this. And they definitely wouldn’t have responded to me like she had in the church hallway. That spark between us was still there, burning even hotter now than it had when we were teens. I’d felt it the second I got close to her, knew she did, too, from her reaction alone: dilated eyes, slightly parted lips, the way she’d arched into me on instinct and then immediately tried to banish me to hell when she realized what she’d been doing.
I shook my head, glad that some of the old Lauren was still in there. Yeah, she’d been shy and studious, but she’d also been a little weird, and that was one of the things I’d liked about her most.
Earlier, she’d been so distracted trying to pretend she didn’t still want me that slipping a discreet tracker into her handbag had been child’s play. I knew she hadn’t discovered it afterward because she’d led me straight to her house. I mean, I’d already known where she lived because I’d made it my business to learn everything about her over the years. The tracker was just so I could keep up with her when I wasn’t free to watch her in person.
She disappeared behind the cars lining the street between us, and reluctantly, I pulled my gaze away and inspected my surroundings. This side of the city was nice. The cars were mostly luxury European models, the brownstones were in good repair, and enough plant life was crowded together that this neighborhood felt like a small oasis of green in a concrete desert.
I might have barely graduated from high school, but math was never my issue. If I’d been born into a different life, a different family, I could have made a career out of it. Hell, if things had gone better between me and Lauren, I might have. She was the only person who ever told me I could be more, that I didn’t have to follow in my father’s footsteps. No wonder Dad was hell-bent on keeping me away from her.
If my memory was correct, Lauren charged a monthly forty-dollar flat-rate fee for her Me4U page. With that, you got her entire backlog, four new videos a month, and endless photos of her. It might seem pricey, but over sixteen hundred people had subscribed, which meant she was pulling in over three quarters of a million dollars in revenue a year, not including all the tips she received and paid requests from subs like me who wanted her all to themselves for a few minutes. That kind of money was harder to predict, but based on her rates, I was guessing it added several thousand to her monthly income.
Lauren could more than afford to live in this part of town, and something inside me always loosened at the sight of her so at ease. She looked content, happy. Like she belonged. Every time I’d seen her here had been the same.
Lauren was okay. What happened back in high school hadn’t ruined her life. She’d found her footing and made something of herself, grown into someone who didn’t take shit from anyone. Her attempting to knee me in the balls and then threatening to face-tase my brother proved that.
My phone buzzed in my pocket. I dug it out to see a text from my father.
Now, was all it said.
I sighed. That was our code for an emergency, the sign to drop whatever you were doing and get home immediately. The temptation to ignore the order for once was strong, but Dad wasn’t one to cry wolf. Shit was going down.
Reluctantly, I guided my bike out of the parking spot. It’d be faster to go south down the street, but Lauren was headed north, and I couldn’t resist one last look at her. Revving the engine higher than necessary, I pulled into the lane, my head turned just enough to see her watch me pass.
Don’t worry, Lo. I’ll be back soon.
“I’m telling you,” Alec said, “it’s the perfect size for a head.”
I stabbed my shovel into the ground and turned to face him in the lantern light. It was ten o’clock at night, and we were playing the age-old game of Guess What’s in the Box.
“Why would he have us bury a head?” I asked.
My brother shrugged. “I don’t know? Future blackmail on whoever killed the guy?”
“It’s something else,” I argued. Dad was too smart to hold on to body parts.
“Fine,” Alec said, spearing his shovel into our halfway-dug hole and hefting out another load of claggy soil. “It’s a priceless chalice.”
“Gold bars,” I countered. “It’s heavy enough for it.”
“Maybe,” Alec said.
I let him dig on his own while I stretched my shoulders. My muscles were starting to tighten up, and I was worried the knife wound had bled through its bandages because there was a stickiness dripping down my side that felt too thick to be sweat. We’d been out here for an hour already, fighting through layers of clay, but Dad told us to dig the hole deeper than normal, so that’s what we were doing.
My phone dinged with a familiar notification. Alec seemed like he was fine on his own for a few more minutes, so I pulled it out of my pocket to see a photo message from Lauren on Me4U. She was in a well-appointed bathroom with bright marble floors, dark patterned wallpaper, and antique brass fixtures. Her outfit was ridiculous. Not because it was ostentatious, but because all it would take was one brush of my fingers to have that loose-fitting white silk minidress sliding down her curves.
Want to see more? the message read. Below was an option to tip her twenty dollars. Lauren did this at least once a week, so I knew that if I hit the tip button, I’d get another, spicier photo as a reward. This was where she must make bank. The message went out on blast to all her subscribers, and I was sure the vast majority of us were more than willing to shell out twenty bucks to see her tits or ass or—please, god—her completely nude body, bent over the bathroom sink, waiting to be taken from behind.
I glanced up at Alec, but he was still sweating away digging the hole, so I tipped Lauren. A few seconds later, the second photo hit my inbox. She stood in the same position, but with her arms braced on the counter behind her and her head tilted back. Her dress was pooled at her hips, tits on full display in the golden light.
Goddamn. What I wouldn’t give to step into the picture and suck one pert nipple into my mouth aft—
“Or it’s so heavy because it’s lead-lined,” Alec said, jarring me back to reality.
I locked the phone and stashed it away. Now wasn’t the time to daydream. Hefting my shovel, I started digging again, and even though I knew I would probably regret it, I took Alec’s bait. “Why would the box be lead-lined?”
“Plutonium.”
He had obviously started using drugs. “Fucking plutonium?”
Alec grinned, looking unhinged because of the harsh angle of the lantern. “Why not? Dad’s gotten awfully cozy with that Bratva guy.”
“Boris? He’s not Bratva. He’s a butcher.”
“Suuure he is,” Alec said, his tone exaggerated.
I shook my head. “You and your conspiracy theories. It’s obviously some kind of test.”
He lifted out another load of soil, and I stabbed my shovel down as soon as his was clear, both of us working in tandem, as we had countless times before. The amount of random shit buried in this part of the forest would one day confuse the fuck out of a future archaeologist.
“What do you mean, it’s a test?” Alec said.
“I bet there’s a tracker in here or something, and he wants to see how deep it needs to be buried for the soil to dampen the emission.”
“Now who’s the conspiracy theorist?”
I shrugged. “Or maybe he ordered us to do this because he knew that not knowing would drive us crazy.”
Alec threw his shovel aside and dropped to his knees. “What’s in the box?” he yelled, doing his best Brad Pitt impersonation.
I shoved his shoulder. “Would you shut the fuck up? There could be campers out here.”
He wisely shut up, and we got back to shoveling, our game forgotten. It felt like an hour had passed while we worked, enough time for me to get annoyed by how long this was taking. I’d planned to go back to Lauren’s tonight but it looked like that wouldn’t be happening.
“Why does he always order us to bury shit for him right after it rains?” I asked.
“Because he’s a bastard,” Alec said. “Hey, can I ask you something?”
“Might as well. We’re going to be here all night.”
“What’d you say to Lauren earlier that made her threaten to tase me?”
“Told her to look at your mole,” I said. “She was probably offering to remove it for you.”
He threw a handful of dirt at me. “I’m being serious.”
I sighed, wishing I was out here with Stefan instead. Blessedly silent Stefan. “No idea,” I told Alec.
“Quit lying.” He shot me an annoyed look as he stabbed his shovel back in. “You must have really pissed her off. I’ve never seen Lauren so mad.”
“You see her a lot?” I asked, eyeing him in the lamplight.
“Just every now and then when I go to church with Mom.”
“And why exactly have you turned into such a choirboy all of a sudden?”
He shook his head. “Uh-uh. You’re not turning this around on me. What’d you say to Lauren?”
“I don’t know,” I lied. I knew exactly what I’d fucking said. “Something about how much she wanted me back in high school?”
Alec groaned. “No, you didn’t.”
I went back to shoveling and ignored him.
“Please tell me you didn’t,” he repeated.
I shrugged, feigning ignorance. My relationship with Lauren, past, present, and hopefully future, was none of his goddamn business. I knew he was probably judging the shit out of me, but I’d said what I said to see how she responded to being provoked, and even though it might have pissed her off, I was pleased with the results. Because it gave me the answers I’d been looking for.
“God, you’re fucking thick sometimes,” Alec said.
“What do you mean?” I asked, playing into the conversation for his sake.
“You ruined her fucking life.”
I stopped digging. “No, I didn’t. I thought so, too, at first, but she’s fine now. Lives in some fancy neighborhood and pulls in nearly as much cash as we do.”
He frowned. “And how do you know that?”
Careful . . . “I checked up on her.”
“Checked up on her how, exactly? You get Josh to do some side work for you?”
“Yeah,” I said, because Alec thinking I’d asked our cousin’s boyfriend for help was preferable to him finding out what I’d really been up to.
My brother eyed me. I kept my expression stone-cold. He was almost as good at sniffing out bullshit as I was, and nearly a minute passed in silence while he waited for me to say more. I knew better than that.
Finally, his attention returned to the hole between us. Down went his shovel. I picked mine up, and we got back to work.
“It doesn’t matter how well she’s doing now,” Alec said. “You still destroyed her back then. Telling people you never touched her was fucking low, even for you.”
“I did it to protect her.”
“How could that have possibly protected her?” he demanded.
“Better people think she was living in a fantasy world than that we actually hooked up.”
“I call bullshit,” he said. “You threw her to the fucking wolves because you didn’t want to be part of the drama.”
Now I was getting pissed. I threw her to the fucking wolves because they were better than the lion waiting behind a nearby tree. If only Alec knew how far our father had been willing to go back then, how far her father had been ready to go right along with him. They’d been gearing up for some Romeo and Juliet–style shit, and I’d done what I had to do to stop them.
I’d kept it all to myself back then, not just to protect Lauren, but to protect my brothers from the reality that our father was an even bigger monster than they realized. And I wasn’t ready to come clean now, because I was still grappling with how to break free from Dad and had no idea how to tell my brothers they were about to be on their own with him. Instead, I settled for a half-truth to get Alec off my back.
“That’s not what happened,” I said, forcing myself to stay calm. “You’ve seen all the shit Mom’s been through because of Dad. Because of us. Everyone at school freaking out about Lauren proved that any woman I ended up with would be put through the same hell. I cared about her too much to do that to her.”
I cared about her so much that I’d broken both our hearts to keep her safe.
Alec’s expression shifted into reluctant understanding. “Fine, but you still could have come clean after everything died down and she transferred schools, just to clear her name.”
I nearly groaned. “Jesus, I get it. You think I still owe her an apology.”
“Yeah, you do,” he said. “You owe that woman the fucking world. You owe that woman the favor of all favors. If you want a second chance with her, you better be willing to do whatever it takes to gain her forgiveness.”
Getting lectured by my younger brother. What had my life come to? “Look, whatever does or doesn’t happen between me and Lo is none of your goddamn business.”
I expected Alec to snap back, or at least make some snarky comment, but his expression was sober in the lamplight. “Hey, why don’t you get out of here? The hole is deep enough. Just help me lower the box down, and I can fill the rest in myself.”
I eyed him. Where was this coming from? The sudden topic change was suspicious as hell, and it made me wonder if he was serious about his conspiracy theory bullshit. “You’re not going to try and open it as soon as I’m out of sight, are you?”
He shuddered. “Fuck, no. We learned that lesson five years ago.”
A memory tried to float to the surface, but I squashed it down, back into the black pit of ugly things in the bottom of my psyche that I worked real hard to suppress. “Then why?”
Alec broke our gaze and set his shovel aside. “You still call her Lo.”
I shook my head. “Don’t read into it. This isn’t some love story. This is about scratching a ten-year-old itch.”
He ambled over to the box. “Whatever you say.”
“I’m serious,” I told him, following in his wake. “I just explained why that romantic shit isn’t in the cards for me.”
He leaned down and grabbed his side of the box. I followed suit, and together, we hefted it aloft. The fucking thing was well over a hundred pounds, an outrageous amount considering it was barely larger than the box my motorcycle helmet came in. The sounds of our grunts and cursing drowned out the nearby crickets as slowly, carefully, we lowered it in. I pulled half the muscles in my back by the time it was finally in place, and I could tell from the way my shirt clung to me that I was freely bleeding. At this rate, I would never heal.
Alec straightened with a groan, his hands on his hips. At least I wasn’t the only one in pain. He turned to me with a grimace. “Why don’t you think you’re worthy of love, Nic?”
“Fucking hell,” I ground out, spinning away.
“Because you should know that you are,” he continued, and I could hear the grin in his words. “Worthy of love.”
Only the threat of being overheard by a nosy camper kept me from hitting him with my shovel. I’d have to find some way to pay him back for this later, but for now, I was taking him up on his offer and leaving him out here to finish the job on his own. Dad kept saying I needed to trust Alec with more responsibility, and here was his first test.
“Don’t get eaten by a bear before you’re done,” I told him.
“But afterward is fine?” he asked in mock outrage.
“After is perfect,” I called over my shoulder. “And if you say anything to Dad about Lauren, I’ll tell him about that mistake you made last year.”
“You wouldn’t,” he hissed.
I threw him the middle finger and kept on walking.
