As soon as the buzzing of the tattoo gun stops, I realize I don’t know how long I’ve been sitting here, head tilted back and lost in my thoughts. But I’ve had enough time to think. I love her. I love him. Fuck what they both want, I’m going to give them what they need.
I stand from my chair, reaching for Lilith. “You done?”
“Yes.” She flashes me a smile that has a direct line to every single emotion I ever buried. “Look!”
She flashes her hands up, and sure enough, Fallon tattooed King over her fingers on one hand, with rebel over her middle finger, but on the other hand, she has Kyrin tattooed over every finger, too, with the Kiznitch star over the same middle finger.
“I know you’re hiding something, Ky.” She steps closer to me, and I feel my palms sweat.
“I am.”
“Then you’re going to tell me. Tonight.”
I shake my head. “Come on. Let’s go home.”
She follows me out the door, and when we start making our way back, leaving Maya to dance to her own tune with Keaton, I wait until it’s just her and I and nothing else. The walk back to the lake house is a little longer, but if anything, we need it.
“Just to be clear, if you try to run from me, I’ll catch you.”
“I’m not a runner. I prefer to just kill whatever is in my way.” She smiles up at me, and if it wasn’t for the full moon, I wouldn’t have been able to catch it. “Kyrin, what is it? You both come barreling into my life and knock down every single wall that was ever built around my humanity, and now you’ve left me exposed and dealing with feelings I’ve never had to deal with before.”
“Like jealousy?” I tease, though I know I shouldn’t. It’s not my style to play like that, mainly because it doesn’t interest me, and when I know I want something, it’s mine. I don’t fuck around after that. But I made a mistake. Out of desperation, I made a choice, but I knew deep down it was the wrong one. Truth is, though I’d never tell her this, she and I make sense. She thinks we would never work without Eli, but she’s wrong. I’d rather have one than have none.
Her fist flies into my arm and I laugh, wrapping my arm around her neck and pulling her into me. I kiss the top of her head. “I need to tell you something, but it’s going to cost me, just so you know.”
“Cost you? How?”
“I took a blood oath. We take it a little seriously here…” I’m being generous. People have died for less. She doesn’t need the stress of that on top of what I’m about to tell her, so I leave it out. I’ll handle it how I handle it—hopefully without her being there to see.
She searches my eyes. “What is it, Kyrin?”
“When I tell you this, I need you to not fly off the handle. I have a plan, and Kill is on his way to the lake house right now. Okay?”
“Okay, but what?”
Fuck. “Kennedy doesn’t just have information that she’s using to blackmail Eli with. She has someone she’s blackmailing Eli with.”
“Who?” Lilith asks, and I know that once I say these next words, everything I just asked her to do is going to fly right out the window.
“His child.”
She pauses, her mouth falling to a frown. “What? I didn’t know he had a child.”
I wrap my fingers around hers. “That’s interesting that you say that, but comforting, nonetheless.”
“Why?” She gazes up at me in the way I’ve come to crave. I need her. To be around her, beneath her, inside her. Lilith is worse than poison. She’s venom straight from a snake bite.
“Because, baby…” I wrap my arm around her lower back. “You’re the mother.”
The three things that every King has are their will to die for the people they love, the will to kill for the people they love, and the will to do absolutely whatever is necessary when it comes to the people they love. It has even passed down to the girls of the EKC. Madison, Bishop’s woman, for one. She hid all sorts of crazy shit from him, ran from him, caused a whole lot of drama—all for the sake of love. I get it now. Even when Kennedy knocked on my door all those months ago, giving me that folder, I didn’t believe it. So, I went into Midnight Mayhem, under the guise of working for The Kings, knowing they wouldn’t question it at all—all to see her again. Find our child, and kill her for hiding it from me, only what I found instead was even more alarming.
She didn’t know anything.
At first, I thought she was just hiding it. She was emotionless when I arrived, careless and filled with so much chaos it fucking dripped from between her thighs. Right up until Ky and I fucked it all out of her.