Isaiah
“I’m not waiting.”The chair I was forced into toppled backward as I jumped to my feet.
My uncle was pacing back and forth in front of me, chewing on his nail. He sliced his attention over to me as he stopped dead in his tracks, and seeing his green eyes made my stomach roll. They were the same fucking shade as Gemma’s, and now that I knew she was his daughter, it was hard to look at them.
“You will fucking wait, Isaiah. This is much bigger than your ego, so sit down.”
My blood rushed. “This has nothing to do with my ego, Tate. He’s probably fucking her right now! She’s probably screaming for help, and no one is there to scoop her up and take her away from danger!
“You don’t think I’ve thought that already?” The vein on my uncle’s forehead was throbbing as we met chest to chest. It was only the two of us in his office. Brantley and Cade were getting things gathered and making sure Sloane and Mrs. Fitz were calm enough to leave alone with the nurse without ruining our plans before we even got a chance to step foot near the Covens. “She’s my goddamn daughter, and I’m the whole reason this poor girl is stuck with a man like Richard Stallard!” He turned around and slammed his fists onto his wooden desk, and a few things fell off the side as his head dropped. “This is so fucked up. All of it is. From the moment Emily got caught… I wouldn’t be surprised if your grandfather had known she was pregnant with my twins. He probably sent her there on purpose, allowing me to think I was doing a good thing by her, but really, he was sitting back, laughing his ass off over the fact that I was losing everything in my life.”
“I don’t trust Bain,” I said, ignoring my uncle’s revelation that my grandfather was a real piece of shit. My father was just like him. Later on, maybe he and I could bond over our paralleled fucked-up childhoods, but right now we needed to go get our girl.
Our girl.
My chest caved in one single swoop. This truly was fucked-up. All of it. Gemma and I were destined to burn from the second we connected. The messy web had grown wider, and it was tangled with a disturbing past and wicked lies. She and I were innocently thrown into a life neither of us wanted or deserved.
And after it was all said and done, I wouldn’t be deserving of her at all. I would kill Richard and burn the Covens to the fucking ground and hope my father was inside, too. I didn’t care. Bad people deserved bad things. And they were both monstrosities.
My uncle turned back around. “Was it true? What you said about Journey and Bain?”
“Does it matter? The blackmail seemed to work.” I paused. “Unless he’s playing us. I don’t trust him. He could have been lying. We need to go to the Covens.”
“We have to wait for Jacobi!”
As soon as my uncle had let the cat out of the bag that my older brother was in the FBI, we immediately went to his office and called him. He was on speaker, and the first thing out of my mouth was, “Where is Jack?” Apparently, he was safe, and although I’d hated my brother for years, and the first time I’d spoken to him in a long time was the other day when I told him he owed me and I demanded he take in Jack—his little brother just as much as he was mine—there was still a part of me that trusted him. I trusted Jack to be in Jacobi’s care versus anywhere near my father when he realized that I’d betrayed him.
“No fucking offense, but I don’t give a fuck about the FBI’s plans to take down my father or Richard. Or the Covens. My only concern is Gemma, and that should be your only concern too!”
We were chest to chest again, and his face was as red as mine. Maddening heat covered every inch of my skin, and every time her name would fly off my tongue, it felt like another part of my soul cracked a little more.
Uncle Tate’s hands wrapped around my face, his fingers pushing into my scalp. “Do you really think you’ll be able to just walk into the Covens and get her? If she’s really there, no one is going to give you the key, Isaiah. You’ll probably be shot on the spot, especially if the Covens has switched allegiances. If they are no longer being supplied by your father, they will not think twice about shooting you right between the eyes! You should know this. Why do you think they’ve been hidden all these years? They’re smart and ruthless, and they take any threat they see, whether it’s true or not, and demolish it.”
“I’ll find another way in, then!” My entire body shook with...shock? Fear? Adrenaline? I was ready to break a neck or two if it meant getting his hands off her.
I’m coming, Gem.
“You will not be able to just walk in there, Isaiah! We need to wait for the phone call from Jacobi and figure out the best way to handle this! He’s been working with the ATF, and they are constructing a plan right this second. We don’t even know if Gemma is actually at the Covens. Can we trust Bain? Probably not. I should have never let him stay at this school. If it had been up to me, he would have been gone. But, Isaiah, you’re going to cause more harm to her by harming yourself. Think about her! She will never forgive herself if you die trying to find her! She is just like her mother. She puts everyone before herself.”
“Did someone just say Gemma?”
My uncle and I both spun around quickly, and my hands were already in fists. I locked onto two shadowed eyes, one of them black and blue, with dark hair hanging over his sliced eyebrow. He was my height but skinnier than me, standing right there in the threshold of my uncle’s office. “Who the fuck are you?”
“He’s with me.” My stomach was like a catapult to the floor when the person speaking in a shy tone stepped to the left and farther into the room.
My uncle’s hands fell to his side as his jaw unhinged. “Journey?”
“Did you just say Gemma?”
My throat constricted as I stared at Journey. It was like seeing a ghost. My eyes immediately flew to her bare arms with the wounds now turned into scars. What was she wearing? She had on a...dress? A gray, smock-like dress hid her skinny frame and cut off just above her bony knees. She had on thick gray socks that went up to mid-calf, but they were covered in dirt and mud. The guy she stood next to completely enveloped her short height with his. He took a step forward and placed his body half in front of hers protectively, and my thoughts immediately went to Cade. He was going to go ballistic.
“Journey,” my uncle whispered, shock rooting him right to the floor.
I quickly moved past the surprise, ignoring the way everything in the room seemed to shrink even further, and saw two blue eyes that looked as cold as mine, staring directly at me. “How do you kno—”
Holy shit.
I was instantly coated in ice. A chill came over me as I took a step forward. “What the fuck,” I mumbled, looking at my uncle and then to him. I did that a few more times, and I felt the blood drain from my face. It was obvious. So fucking obvious. “Tobias.”