Mad Love (Slateview High 3)

He would live.

He would survive like he always did.

But he would no longer have any power over me.

And I wasn’t even a little sorry about that.

Twenty-Three

If I thought the event planner my dad had hired to make arrangements for the wedding in July had been moving fast, well… that was nothing compared to how fast things moved after I agreed to marry Misael.

Nathaniel sent me and the Lost Boys upstairs to pack a bag, and it was agreed that I would stay with him and Josephine until after the wedding. I would’ve protested that I wanted to live with my boys, but since the wedding was planned for just one week away, I decided not to raise a fuss. Claudio was already making plans to secure us a house in a part of Baltimore where a lot of his crew lived, and I had a feeling he would have it all taken care of in just a few days.

Kace, Misael, and Bishop moved around my room silently as they helped me pack, and when I had everything I needed for the moment, they carried my bags down the hall. I hesitated at the top of the stairs, gazing down the hallway in the direction of my parents’ bedroom. Should I go wake my mom and tell her goodbye?

The thought died almost as soon as it arose. It was so late it was early, and my adrenaline had spiked and ebbed so many times tonight that I felt like the walking dead. I didn’t have it in me to deal with whatever my mother’s reaction would be. And besides, I would see her at the wedding—if she chose to come.

When we returned to the study, I was relieved to find that the guns had all been lowered. Not that I expected my father and Claudio to get along at all, but it would be awkward to have weapons drawn as I said my vows. My father still looked angry and bitter, but he made no further protest as all of us headed for the door. He followed behind us, and although his bearing was still stiff and imperious, he looked… smaller somehow. As if his almost inhuman seeming power had been diminished in my eyes.

He was wealthy and domineering, but at the end of the day, he was just a man.

And he had lost this game.

I turned to him as everyone began to file out the front door into the cool darkness outside.

“It didn’t have to be this way, Dad. I wanted to love you. All my life, I’ve wanted to love you. I’ve wanted you to be worthy of it. But I can’t wait any longer for you to show a side of yourself that doesn’t exist.”

His brows lowered, a muscle in his jaw jumping. “You are my daughter in name only from now on, Cordelia. What you’ve done is unforgivable.”

I shook my head. That would’ve hurt me once, but now it just made me smile sadly. “I don’t need your forgiveness. And I don’t need your love. It took me eighteen years to realize that.”

Bishop’s arm wrapped around my shoulders, solid and comforting, and the other two boys fell into place around me as we walked out of the house and down the front steps.

Leaving my old life behind for good.

The heavy thump of dance music vibrated through my whole body as we made our way through the club. Spotlight was as packed with sweaty, gyrating bodies as it had been the first time we’d come here, and a smile tugged at my lips as I remembered that evening.

It’d been three days since my ill-fated prom night, and I could still feel the lingering effects of that night everywhere in my body. My bruises had settled into dark purple marks, and the scratches and scrapes that decorated my body had scabbed over.

The boys were still beat to shit too, but they were healing up as well. Misael had gotten the wound in his shoulder stitched up, and although he still favored that arm, he could use it if he was careful.

More than my lingering injuries, it was my mind and heart that felt the brunt of the events of prom night. Although I felt safe at Nathaniel’s house, I still had a hard time sleeping peacefully. Images of prone bodies with blood seeping from them filled my nightmares, and Eli’s face appeared in my dreams frequently. I had hated him when he’d been alive, and I knew he would’ve killed us if he’d gotten the gun from me. But that didn’t make it any easier to process the fact that I had been the one to kill him.

I understood much more of what Kace had gone through in the aftermath of Flint’s death, and the blond boy had been the one to hold me while I cried when everything finally hit me the night after prom. He had sat with me for what must’ve been hours in my borrowed room at Nathaniel’s house, not even speaking, just offering me the comfort of his presence and his understanding.

In a striking contrast to the trauma that still haunted me, wedding plans were well underway. I had assumed it would be a pretty simple affair, maybe even just a courthouse wedding. But apparently, the pomp and circumstance mattered as much as the marriage certificate itself, because it was shaping up to be lavish and well-attended. Josephine was handling a lot of the details, working with Claudio’s people and asking my input on things without overloading me with minutia.

It made sense, in a way.

This was a symbolic tying together of families, and Claudio and Nathaniel both wanted their people to be well aware of what this meant. The two men had formed a full alliance, and this wedding was a gift from Nathaniel to Claudio.

Their first order of business as a combined force would be to deal with Luke Carmine—and that was what had brought me and my men to the club tonight.

Just like he had the first time we’d come to visit Muse, Kace led us to the back of the club into a red-walled room filled with black leather furniture.

The man waiting for us grinned when we stepped inside, gesturing for us to sit down.

“My friends. Good to see you again.”