SWNOVELS Tiny Dark Deeds: Chapter 52
Ares
My phone rang just when it felt like I’d fallen asleep for the second time tonight.
Bru Sloane.
Squinting at the screen, I found that weird. Bru was just down the hall from me so if he needed something, he just could have come in.
I answered. “Hello?”
“Wolf.” Short breaths followed, like he was moving around or something. “Hey. Can you meet me downstairs? I’m out back behind the safe house.”
The fuck?
I sat up. “Uh, why are you out back behind the house?”
“I can’t explain. Just… can you hurry? Please?”
The guy was breathing, hard, and he clicked off the line before I could ask any more questions. He sounded freaked the hell out.
He sounded scared.
I didn’t know what to make of it. I just slipped on some shoes and grabbed a hoodie. What the fuck was he doing outside and not in bed? He didn’t know things were safe now and that the parents had stopped Dorian’s grandpa. The mothers hadn’t shared the details of how when I’d heard them talking to the dads about moving in on the prick.
But I could have guessed.
My dad had seemed okay tonight when I’d seen him, and I’d asked for specifics, but he hadn’t given them. I’d actually only gone to bed because he’d promised to talk to me about it with Mom after Sloane came back. They’d said they wanted to speak to us about it together.
I didn’t know what that meant either, but I hadn’t cared. I just knew our parents had made things safe again, and that’d been enough for me to be able to go to sleep.
I had been until this shit now with whatever was going on with Bru. It shouldn’t be physically possible for him to be outside. We had security everywhere at the safe house.
I saw no one on the way downstairs, but I knew we had agents watching the house. There might be less now with Dorian’s grandpa no longer in the wind. I didn’t know, but Bru definitely shouldn’t just be outside.
The cold shot straight through my fucking body the moment I hit the backyard, and I grabbed my arms. “Bru? Kid?”
I whispered-shouted his name, spotting him not far from the house. He lingered in the shadows, appearing to freeze just as much as me. Even in the dull lights on the property, he was visibly shaking, his head whipping around. Snow up to my ankles, I crunched my way out to him. He spotted me and ran straight toward me.
“Wolf? Wolf!”
“Kid? What the fuck you doing out here?” But then, he showed me.
He didn’t have to do much.
He merely had to step into the light flooding off the house, his face splattered in red dots.
His hands.
The same pattern followed along his chest, and my eyes widened.
“Wolf, I…” He held his hands out, staring at them. The kid was two shades of white, eyes red and bloodshot. He looked up. “Ares.”
I didn’t know what I was looking at. I didn’t know what he was showing me but that was definitely blood. “Kid, are…” I swallowed. “Are you hurt?”
He shook his head, incessant about it. “It’s not mine. It’s not mine.”
“Whose is it?” I stepped close, and he backed up.
“Don’t. Don’t touch me. Don’t—” His lips pinched together, a fear lacing his eyes I’d never seen. “Ares, I need your help. I fucked up and…” He gazed around. “I’m scared, bro. I need help.”
“Okay. How can I help?”
“I don’t know what to do. I don’t. I…” He had his hands up now, looking like he was about to run. He laced them above his head. “I shot Callum.”
What?
“I shot him. He went down. I don’t know if he’s dead. I don’t know if he’s sending someone for me. I just ran. I ran, Ares. Please help me.”
Oh my God.
His hands shook in his hair. “He’s probably sending people after me, and I—”
“No. He’s…” I raised a hand. “Come inside. Come with me.”
I waved him to come, but he was panicked and wasn’t moving. I ended up grabbing him, physically pulling him with me inside. His legs weren’t moving right, and again, I had to drag him to get him to come with me. I didn’t think we were making much noise, but Thatcher’s door opened as soon as we passed it. The guy had sleep in his eyes, but they shot open when he saw me with the kid.
“The fuck,” Thatch started, but I growled.
“Shut the fuck up,” I warned, low, but was loud enough that he did. I told him I was taking the kid back to his room, and Thatch said he’d go get Wells. Bru looked like he wanted to protest about that, but at this point, he wasn’t able to do much anyway besides walk.
He wasn’t even doing that right. The guy was literally convulsing. I got him into his bathroom, and by then, Thatcher had gotten Wells. We all piled into a bathroom that barely fit one of us, the kid in front of the sink while he rehashed what had happened to Thatcher and Wells.
“How the fuck did you even get outside and around security?” Wells asked him while I helped the kid wash his hands and face. He started to by himself but was having a hard time with it.
“I heard. I heard…” He closed his eyes, taking a second when I told him to slow down. With a breath, he opened them. “I heard your moms talking earlier tonight that your dads were going after Callum. Said they’d found him and I heard something about a hotel. Where he was at, I guess.”
“I heard the same thing,” I said, news to Thatcher and Wells when they looked at me. “You guys were asleep.”
“Well, you should have fucking woken us up,” Thatcher grit, and Wells nodded.
“Agreed,” Wells said. “But that still doesn’t explain why you’re covered in blood and managed to get around security.”
“There weren’t many guys around tonight,” Bru stated, looking at us. “The ones who were left mentioned that many of them were going over to that hotel to help. They talked about the room too and where Callum was at. Anyway, with security thin, I found an opening. Took a gun before I left. I lifted one off one of the security guys’ yesterday. I wanted to go after Callum myself.”
What the hell?
Bru rubbed his hands, rocking. “I know your moms said that your dads were going after him, but…” His expression changed, hardening. “I also heard them say Callum had security, and it’d be hard for any of them to get to him. But if Callum knew it was me, just me… that I came to see him, I knew he’d see me. If anything, just to use me. Use me against Sloane, and he wasn’t going to fucking use her anymore!”
The bathroom silenced, Bru’s face red.
He snarled. “He wasn’t going to use her anymore. Me.” He glanced up. “I wasn’t going to let him, and when I got there, he let me right in. I shot him. Shot him three times.” He lifted his hands, clean now, but he analyzed them as if he still saw blood. “He went down, but I didn’t see what happened after that. I just left like a little bitch.”
“Kid…” I swallowed, and he cringed.
“I came back here after. Took a ride share and the guy’s probably wondering about that too. I had blood all over me.” His lips moved, quivering. “I’m going to go to prison and—”
I grabbed his arms, making him look at me. “What did you do with the gun?”
“Tossed it.”
“Do you remember where?”
He nodded. “In a lake. Why?”
“We just need all the facts,” I said, putting off that I was calmer than I actually was. I grabbed Thatch. “Go get my parents. My dad’s back. He’s with my mom, and, Wells, you go get the rest of the moms.”
They both started to go without question, but Bru leaped toward them. “No. No, if you do that, they’ll call the cops. I’ll get locked up. I don’t want to go to prison, Ares.”
“Hey. Hey.” I got his shoulders, keeping his focus. “Our parents are going to help. My mom and dad are going to help, and they’re not going to let anything happen to you. None of our parents will.”
“But Callum,” he started, his eyes coated in a wet sheen. “He’s going to send someone after me. He’s going to kill me, Ares.”
I shook my head. “My parents told me tonight things are safe,” I said, telling the group. “They’re actually bringing Sloane and D home in the morning. They wouldn’t be doing that if Callum was still an issue.”
More than one person went quiet, silent. My parents had told me the situation had been taken care of, but it seemed only the four of us in the room knew how. Bruno Sloane had taken someone out for my sister…
His sister.
The kid and I were connected, and he’d done something for her I could never thank him enough for. If it was true and he’d done what he had, that was something none of us kids had been able to do. We’d been forced to sit back while our parents took care of things. They’d wanted to protect us.
Meanwhile, Bruno Sloane had protected all of us.
“He’s dead?” Bru said the words in a haunted state. I was sure he’d wanted to protect Sloane tonight, but who ever wanted to take a life? The kid had a good heart, a pure heart, so doing what he’d done had to have taken something deep inside him.
It might have even taken something from him.
I think Wells, Thatcher, and I all saw what that same sacrifice had done to Dorian. He’d been different after he’d gotten back, darker.
Bru looked at us. “I’m scared.”
He’d said that outside, but he didn’t need to be. We had his back. I had his back. “Nothing is going to happen to you. I’m going to take care of you. You understand?”
“But why?” He shook his head, cringing. “I’ve been nothing but an asshole to you lately. Trusted Callum. Let him hurt her. Hurt you and your family.”
He kept getting this wrong. Dorian’s grandpa didn’t just hurt my family. He hurt our family, the kid’s and mine. “You’ve had my sister’s back basically her whole life. You were with her when I couldn’t be, so as far as I’m concerned, that makes us boys for life.”
“Brothers,” Wells said, taking one of the kid’s shoulders. “We’re brothers. All of us.”
“We are.” Thatcher completed the circle, and if D was here, he’d be doing the same. Our brotherhood wasn’t just biological, and we weren’t just friends. We were champions for each other and protected in whatever way we had to because that was what family did for each other. The kid was one of us.
He was legacy just as much as any of us.