Dynasty (Boys of Winter 1)

All eyes bounce around the car, the four of them trying to figure out who will be the one to break, but when I’m met with more silence, I push harder. “I swear to god, now is not the time for your bullshit. You have two fucking seconds to tell me what the hell just happened, or I will personally make it my mission to make your lives hell.”

“Aren’t you already?” Grayson grunts from the front seat.

My hand whips out toward him as I feel Carver’s eyes on me through his rearview mirror, but I refuse to look up. Cruz’s hand snaps out and catches my wrist before I can grab hold of Grayson’s head and pull it right off his damn shoulders. “NOW,” I demand, more than done with their bullshit.

It’s been secret after secret, and every step of the way, I’m being hand-fed just a little bit of information to keep me quiet, but not anymore.

Cruz lets out a sigh, and I can tell that he’s going to be the first to break, but when King speaks up, I’m shocked to my core. “It was Dynasty,” he explains, making a deep groan come from Carver in the front seat, who clearly doesn’t approve of King’s admission. “After seeing that the cops were holding you for longer than what’s legal, they stepped in and handled it.”

“What do you mean they handled it? How the fuck could they have anything to do with this?”

Carver slams his hand down over the steering wheel and I glance up to meet his stare in the rearview mirror. “Can’t you just say thank you for saving your ass again and be done with it?”

“Get fucked,” I growl at him. “I don’t know what the hell has crawled up your ass today, but this is my life, and if some distorted prestigious group is messing around with it, then I deserve to know exactly what the fuck is going on. Stop being such an asshole and put yourself in my shoes for a change. How would you feel constantly being left out in the dark and not being able to do a damn thing about it? I know I don’t know you all that well, but something tells me that you wouldn’t be able to handle it at all. You’d be more than a little bitch about it.”

Carver’s only response is to tighten his jaw as his knuckles turn white around the steering wheel. Not giving me a fight, I turn back to King. “Explain,” I say, giving him my best no-bullshit tone.

I watch him for a second as his head falls back against the headrest, and he lets out a sigh, clearly trying to figure out the best way to explain whatever crap is about to come out of his mouth.

“They were trying to hit you as an adult,” he explains. “Even though your papers technically don’t say your birthday is for another month, but with no official birth certificate, they thought they’d get away with it on a technicality, claiming that you could have already been eighteen.”

“That’s bullshit. Are you fucking kidding me?”

He doesn’t respond, just continues on with his explanation. “They were desperate. They held you for the twenty-four hours that they’re legally allowed to keep an adult, but not having sufficient evidence, they exercised their rights to keep you for another twelve, but Dynasty wasn’t having it. They wanted you out, and so you got out.”

I scoff, glancing around the car to see if anyone else thinks his comment is as ridiculous as I do. “They just wanted me out, huh? It’s that easy? Just send your henchmen to go and get the damsel and call it a day. Fuck off. Who do you take me for? I’m not a fucking idiot. They had me on murder charges. Murder charges. They knew I did it. There’s no way in hell they just let me walk. I was supposed to be going away for a very long time. It was an open and close case.”

Cruz sighs beside me, scooting down on the seat to get comfortable. “They have to let you go when Kurt Williams ceases to exist. You can’t murder a man who was never here.”

My brows pinch as I turn to look at Cruz. “What?” He just nods, letting his comment sink in as I feel the other guys turning to look at me. “Cease to exist? How the fuck? What does that even mean?”

Cruz meets my stare. “The body they found. Gone. The filed paperwork. Erased. The crime scene photos. Deleted. All that’s left are their memories with not a damn thing to back them up. Dynasty completely erased Kurt Williams out of existence, and when someone doesn’t exist, how could you have possibly murdered them?”

I slice my gaze up to meet Carver’s as he flies through the streets, desperate to get home. “You … Dynasty did that? They have that kind of power?”