Breaker (Unmasked #3)

14. Chapter 8

Chapter 8

Breaker

I t rained late last night, leaving the world a dull gray. Instead of washing away the ugliness of last night and cleansing the earth, the ground is muddy, saturated with swirling black water, splashes of dark mud marring the white marble chips in the garden beyond the drive. Wet leaves float in the dark puddles in the stretch of lawn toward the cliffs overlooking the sea. Bitter winds blew in overnight, churning the ocean, waves spraying over the cliffs.

Outside the library window matches how I feel. Gray. Angry. Like the sun set yesterday and won’t ever shine brightly again and the waves will always beat against the jagged rocks like angry fits, in a rage now that she’s gone.

Not like we deserve anything brilliant and happy. Delilah does though. Cora certainly.

Just not us.

“She tried to run.”

I don’t bother turning from the window as Viper walks in. My muscles ache with fatigue. my head hurts, and I’m so swallowed up with guilt, I can’t bare to see any of his.

Father left last night, but sleep was impossible. I don’t think any of us did. He left after he had come into our house, drug our fucking hearts through the mud, then told us to clean ourselves up, and keeping moving. Because he knew, he knows, we will. We’ll do everything he asks, like we always do.

Like he trained us, beat into us. We just accept his rule like fucking spineless followers because we’re too scared of what he’ll do to us if we don’t.

I’m tired of following his command. I’m tired of worrying that one of us will suffer if we don’t listen.

Now Cora’s the one suffering and the thought that his sick control over us is now affecting her makes me want to scream. Rage.

I lean over, and grip the windowsill, my chest tight with fury. My finger taps the wood, as I collect myself, trying my best not to slip over into the rage I felt earlier.

It does none of us any good.

“Did you hear me?” Viper asks, his boots scrapping on the rough wood floor as he stops behind me. “Delilah went searching for keys and tried to—“

“Do you fucking blame her?” I ask, standing upright. I shake my head. I’m not mad at him. Wait. Yes, I am. I’m mad at him as much as myself. As much as Strike and Reap. “We sent Cora away.”

He makes a sound in his throat, and doesn’t meet my eyes when I glance over my shoulder to look at his face. For someone so erratic and temperamental, Viper is a terrible fucking liar.

No. He’s an accomplished liar. I’m just able to see through his bullshit.

I turn to face him, but his gaze drops. I angle in closer, using my height to crowd him, trying to force him to meet my eyes. “What’s that face for?” I ask.

He shrugs, lifting one large shoulder.

“Viper,” I say, keeping my voice even.

Another shrug. “I feel like shit,” he says stepping away, eyes still downcast, as he settles into the wingback chair. Looking down at his hands, his fingers twist and stretch the fabric of his mask and some remote part of my brain worries that Delilah will walk into the room, but what does it matter anymore?

We’re keeping her prisoner. She’s not allowed to leave until we say so.

And we’re not ready to move ahead, so her leaving isn’t allowed. Delilah isn’t prepared. Fuck, I don’t think even Reaper is ready for the next step, much less the rest of us. We’ve only just accomplished the first task.

Get Delilah on our side, train her, and that just went to shit.

The second part can’t begin until we’ve gone over all the details with her. And we can’t do that until she’s learned to listen. Follow our lead. Then we can sit her down and give her step by step instructions on what we need her to do.

A gross feeling, like slick vines, knot in my stomach at the thought of what we’re going to ask her to do.

I can’t believe we were okay with this plan. But then we agreed to it before we knew her.

My eyes float to the doorway. “Where is she?” I ask.

Viper scoffs, finally meeting my eyes. “If you follow the screaming, you’ll find her in Reaper’s room.”

My brow lifts.

“He tied her to his bed so she wouldn’t try to run again.”

My shoulders slump. We just keep making things worse.

“She’s never going to forgive us,” Viper mumbles, dropping his head back and looking up at the ceiling.

I sink to the sofa next to his chair, stretching my legs out. Yeah. I think we just seriously fucked all the progress we made with her.

“We need to tell her,” Viper says, rolling and unrolling his mask. “We need to tell Delilah why we sent Cora away. It’s the only way we’re going to get her back. She’ll understand.”

I take a deep breath. Maybe he’s right. Maybe we just need to tell her the truth.

My conversation with her in the dining room slams back to me. She had been so upset that we kept things from her, trying to wait until she was ready and able to handle the scope of what her father is, but that had been a mistake. Assuming we knew what was best for her. Yet that’s what we’ve always done. Assume we know the correct way of doing everything.

I glance back at Viper to find his eyes pinned to the sofa across from us. My gaze drifts over, snagging on something tucked between the seat cushions. I lean forward, seeing it’s a slip of pink fabric.

Cora’s underwear. Tossed aside and discarded like they didn’t hold her most intimate places, covering them up and keeping them from us. But then we stripped them off and tossed them aside like they were nothing.

Like she was nothing.

I squeeze my eyes closed, my shoulders slumping.

I was trying so hard not to hurt her. All of us were. The thought of our Little Red scared and confused—alone— was so unbearable that none of us could follow through with Reaper’s orders. Not even he could, the manipulative ass.

Cora is tough, but so delicate in many ways, and so different from Delilah. Parchment paper skin covering steel bones. But I think when I was trying to keep from scaring her, or harming her even more, I forgot that that this all we know how to do. We take. We consume. We break apart and rip away and fucking ruin lives. We don’t protect. We aren’t given jobs to rescue people. Fallon trained us from an early age to be brutal in every single way. Every order meant to destroy.

That’s all we’ve done with them. With Delilah and Cora. We stripped them bare, forced them to accept us, trust us, then fucked them over in every sense of the word. And those pretty pink panties I loved so much symbolize all we’ve done to them.

In my need, in my total desire to consume them, I didn’t even hesitate to break them in ways that maybe aren’t repairable. All I wanted so badly was to have them. Taste them. Own them. And the worst part is, they let us.

And now this.

Cora gone. Delilah devastated.

And imagine, just yesterday morning I was fucking content with who I’ve become.

Breaker.

Of things, of men.

Of pretty, innocent women if it means I get what I want.

“Breaker?”

My eyes dart to his, the turquoise blue so vibrant against the dull gray in the room. Like he shines with star-kissed life.

His brows knit. “Care to share with me where that mind of yours just traveled to?”

After everything we’ve been through, Viper can read me so clearly. And I him. We all can. When you survive hell together, the bond that’s created is more than a brotherhood. It’s a metal chain linking us together, sewn to our bones with the vile things we’ve survived and other people’s blood.

Viper’s plush lips turn down. The urge to lean over and suck that top lip into my mouth, taste his breath as it fans my face makes me look away.

I’m so rattled, so upset that I feel out of control of my body and my mind. When I feel like this, that tight strangled stretching under my ribcage, I know I’m too close to the edge and need some space.

“Where’s Strike?” I ask, avoiding the topic of my scrambled thoughts.

My stomach lurches. Shit. I still haven’t gone to check on him. He’s probably a mess. When Striker makes a promise, he keeps it even if it costs him more than he’s getting in return. And the fact he promised our Little Red she wasn’t going back must be ripping him apart.

On top of the fact, we just went her back to the man who killed Hunter. The one man Striker refused to admit to himself, to Hunter, to anyone, he was completely in love with. Part of me wonders if that’s why he’s thrown himself in so deep with Delilah and Cora. He knows what it’s like to lose something before you can make it yours.

Maybe we all should take a chance and dive in. Truly take our girls and everything they could be to us. Not just a means to an end, not just a mission, not just an obsession we’d fed and fed and fed.

But really have them. Really give ourselves over to them too. However that may look.

Viper groans, scrubbing a hand over his jaw. “Last I saw him, he was trying to talk to her, but she was screaming so loud, I dared not go in the room.”

He rubs his eyes and stretches. With bags under his eyes, and face drawn tight, he looks just as exhausted and upset as I feel. My hands itch to reach for him. But I don’t. I don’t because I think he’d let me touch him, bury my face in his neck. And I’m not sure I’d stop there.

Neither one of us deserves the luxury of comfort right now. Not when Cora is enduring god knows what.

Pushing up from the sofa, I snag Cora’s underwear from between the cushions and pocket them before walking toward the door.

“Where are you going?” Viper asks.

“I need to check on Strike.” I pause in the doorway, looking back over my shoulder. “Have you seen Reap?”

He shakes his head, expression dour. “Not since he informed me she tried to run and to leave her until she learned her lesson.”

What a clusterfuck.

I’m so sick of breaking things. For once I’d love to fix something. A mistake. A heart. Right a wrong without violence or blood. My entire life I’ve been told there’s only dark, monstrous things inside me. That I’m just like my father. I’m not him. Even though he trained me to be just like him, nothing about my mind or my soul match his. Fallon is cruel and controlling. He uses affection as tool. My brother’s safety as a punishment when I don’t do exactly as instructed.

I may have my father’s eyes, but I don’t have his heart.

They do.

I have to make this right.