In Peace Lies Havoc (Midnight Mayhem 1)

Dad doesn’t flinch, his eyes staying on mine. “Would I have put anyone else on her if it wasn’t?”

“Motherfuck!” I storm out of the house, slamming the front door. I should have known my father knew all along. He wanted the reveal. He got it. I take a seat on the steps, just as the door opens and closes. I already know it’s Kohen behind me. Call it twin fucking intuition. We always thought we were in sync with the girls, too, but I’m not so sure anymore since I couldn’t pick out that it was P. I didn’t even think of the fucking scar because I was too blinded by lust whenever she threw her clothes off.

“You fucked her,” Kohen states, leaning behind me.

“Yeah.” I swallow, looking out to the dark night. “I did. Should have pegged it when the fuckin’ turned into some other deep shit.”

“Don’t blame you.” Kohen sits behind me, and I shuffle around to face him. Kohen’s story isn’t mine to tell, but when he lost Dove, he lost all parts of himself that could show any emotion. He’s dead inside, and not in a way that is a challenge for a new girl to take. I mean he’s clinically insane. There’s no coming back for Kohen, ever. Some people lose themselves on the path we travel every day, and whether they know the road back or not, they just choose not to take it. That’s Kohen. He doesn’t want a life without Dove. There will be no one else.

“You don’t?” I joke, an eyebrow quirked. “I’d kill you if you fucked Dove while thinking she was P. Fuck brotherhood. I’d straight up cut you.” I pull out my pack of smokes, banging the edge on my palm until a fresh one slips out. “You coming back to Mayhem?” I flick open my Zippo and blaze up the end.

“Nah.” He turns his head sideways, looking out to the empty paddocks that lead to the street. “I don’t know what I want to do yet, but I know I don’t want to be around the people of Kiznitch or Mayhem in general.”

I blow out the smoke. “Fair, fair.”

“So you watched her dance, huh?” Kohen grins, and I know that in his sick, perverted mind that images are flashing behind his eyes. The final act was something else entirely when Kohen was in Mayhem. One day, I hope he comes back.

I throw dust at him jokingly. “Yeah. It was almost fun.”

“Almost?” He licks his lips. “Come on. Give me something.”

“It would have been all the way fun if I wasn’t trying to hate her all of the time. Resenting you for maybe having another shot at being happy, but still being happy for you. I don’t know, Koh, it was fucked. I wanted her, but I hated her, because she reminded me of P, and I resented you for having her and hated myself for wanting her, and my head space was ugly. I wanted to fucking kill her, just to take it all away.” Silence stretches between us, and I puff on my smoke a few more times. When I think he’s not going to answer, I raise my eyes up to his and find him watching me carefully.

“You would have, too.” His face is emotionless.

“Would have what?”

“Killed her,” he says. “You’re trained to do it, King. You took your first kill at sixteen years old for the sake of fuckin’ love. Does she know what you were doing the day Dove was killed?”

I shake my head, flicking the ash off the end of my smoke. “I doubt it. P then didn’t know what I was doing, so P now won’t.” I was training for a kill; I just didn’t know that kill would end up being her mother.

“Well, maybe Dad and Mom still have hope on some grandkids.” Kohen smirks.

I flip him off. “Fuck you.”

Memories are a cruel reminder of what you don’t have anymore. I thought I wanted to know everything, be opened to all that was taken from me all those years ago, but as I stay rolled in a ball on my bed, squeezing my eyes shut, I watch that day over and over again on repeat. I have to force myself not to seek out Killian and demand he slam that box closed again.

Bang!

Bang!

Bang!

Bang, bang!

There were five shots, and then I was running. I saw the car, and Dad climbed out. I was angry with King before I remembered, and now I’m livid. There’s just the small fact that when I opened that box of memories, everything I felt for him rolled in tenfold. Now I’m angry with him, but I’m also other things for him.

Nothing is going to change the fact he wanted me dead.

That he had tormented and stalked me for years. He was The Shadow, the man I feared. Now the man I feared is also supposed to be the man I loved? Fuck. That.