Twenty minutes later, we’re pulling up into a long driveway that’s lined with shrub bushes. Jack groans beside me, so I quickly floor it forward, pulling up right outside the front door.
A woman comes rushing out, shoving her hair out of her face and panic struck in her eyes. She must be mid-forties.
“Jack?” She hurries down the marble stairs and straight for the door without giving me a second glance. It’s not until Jack is out and under her arms when her eyes connect with mine.
She freezes. Something I can’t quite piece together flashes over her eyes. “Hello.” She looks up to a window that overlooks the driveway before coming back to me. As soon as I look up to what had caught her attention, the curtain has already moved and whoever was standing there is gone.
“This is Persephone, Mom. She helped me.”
The woman eyes me skeptically before nodding. “Come inside.” I follow behind them, closing the doors to King’s car. I pat the back of my pocket for my phone before realizing I left it at the compound.
We hit the inside of the foyer and the door slams shut behind me. Chills break out over my skin, like a warning that maybe I shouldn’t have come to this house.
“Perse, can you help me?” Jack says, reaching for my hand. My eyes fly from his awaiting hand to his mother, who is beside him. “Perse?”
I step backward, but crash into someone behind me. Before I can scream, a hand is over my mouth and I’m being lifted off the ground.
“What are we doing with her?” the man says from behind me as I kick and shove away from him.
“We don’t have much time,” Jack says, massaging his head with his bloody hands. “King will come here first.”
“The Brothers of Kiznitch don’t know this house,” his mom says. “We can tie her up in the shed outside.”
“In the shed for now. Then I’ll gather everything I need to deliver her. This bitch. They’re crazy about her.”
His mom eyes me up and down. “She’s the ugly twin obviously.”
I scream again and bite down on the palm that’s covering my mouth. I want to rip out her hair and chew on her eyeballs, but not because she called me the ugly twin, because she is obviously hiding something I don’t know.
I’m being lifted off the ground before I can process anything.
The grip that P has around me is as tight as a fucking vise, but her acting up and throwing her tiara across the room because I beat up Jack tugged on my final string. When she was a kid, she always had this idea that she could fix people. Not just hurt people but really fix them. She’d always ask if you’re okay and what you were thinking. That’s P, always a healer.
The door to P’s room swings open and I raise my head from between my shoulders as Killian glares at me from across the room. The room is shit. There’s too much pink. “You’re both fucking exhausting. You know that, right?”
I chuckle, sitting up straight. “I do.”
“And in other news.” Killian strolls in, falling onto my bed and leaning against the headboard. “Have you seen the new girl?”
I roll my eyes. “There are two of them, so I’m going to need you to cut it down.”
A pillow hits the back of my head. “You know I’m a brunette man.”
I snort. “I know you’re a Maya man.”
“Man, fuck that. She knows the deal. We don’t touch, kiss, or anything. She’s like the little sister that I wanted to fuck for a very brief period of time.” He pauses, blows out a breath of air, and then taps me with his foot. “What’s up with you? Moodier than usual.”
I rub my hands over my face. “Don’t know.” I know. “Ever since finding out that Dove is P, it’s fucking with my head.”
Silence stretches out. “And what did you do?”
“I almost killed Jack.” Images flash over my head.
“Good.” Killian stands and rounds the bed, dropping down on the floor opposite me. “He should be dead.”
“Oh, he would be.” I laugh, shaking my head. “Only I wanted to give her the power to do it, instead of taking it all for myself. Man, do you know how hard it was for me to rein in all of my rage and hand it to her on a fuckin’ silver platter?” I bring my eyes to Killian below my hoodie. “I tormented this chick for the better part of her life, Kill. I hid in the corners of her bedroom and heard her screams in her nightmares. I’d watch her toss and turn in her sleep. Sweat would pour off her body every night and I watched.”
“You actually added to her nightmares.” he adds.
I glare at him. “Yeah, so I know she doesn’t want me, and that was never the end game. All the shit we were fed as kids, the meal which we fed each other, it’s gone stale. We both know that.”