Comprehension dawns on her. “You…sell drugs?”
Eli howls a laugh. “She’s adorable.”
He places a gentle hand on her shoulder. Aries’s mere gaze knocks it off.
Eli clears his throat. “No, we sell it for him,” he informs, dropping his voice to a covert whisper. “The boss never touches the product, love.”
Comprehension coerces panic. Opal flings fretful looks around her.
Eli answers on his behalf. “This isn’t even all of us. A lot of them belong to different gangs, but those gang leaders answer to Aries.”
“Enough show and tell.” Aries lunges for her. “You’re coming with me.”
His hand clamps down on Opal, and he drags her through the ground level of the den. The sea of black and leather parts for him, everyone deaf to Opal’s cries as she fights and squirms in his grasp.
They reach the garage and Aries hits the button that opens the door. It raises with a clank and churn, unleashing a wave of westering light.
Opal ogles the ocean of luxury cars as he moves to swing open the door to a black Dodge Durango.
She gawks at him.
“Get in the car.”
“No!” Her voice goes high. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“You want to stay here with the felons?”
“Better the pawns than their king.”
Aries closes the gap between them, looming over her menacingly. His gaze holds nothing, any remnant of familiarity dissolves in the shadows that are his eyes. A cold, chilling mask of insentience grafted into his sculpted face.
“Get in. Or I will put you in.”
Fear nudges Opal into the car. He slams the door shut behind her and rounds the car, fishing out his keys. He climbs in, turns on the car, reverses out with reckless anger, and dashes down the road.
Opal jerks on the seatbelt. “Can you slow down?”
“What were you thinking?” Wisps of dark hair cling to his temples. “If you were there, that means you were looking to score.”
He cuts her with a sharp look. “Doing drugs now, princess? I thought you were smarter than that.”
“I sell drugs. I don’t take them.” Veiny hands white-knuckle around the wheel. “Besides, I know what I am. You are better than that…so damn better.”
Opal falls silent, visibly deflating, a fresh sense of shame creeping on her.
“How long have you been using?” he asks with his eyes locked on the road.
“It’s not like that, okay?” she mutters. “I’m not a junkie looking to get high. Eli has been supplying me with stimulants that help me focus, help me sleep less and work harder.”
“There’s no noble reason for poppin’ pills, princess.”
“I haven’t been using long, only a couple weeks—when I need it.”
He nods vigorously. “Right, from today, you’re going on a permanent detox. I’m cutting you off.”
She throws her gaze outside of the window, suppressing her protests.
“What?” he barks again.
“I have my solo performance coming up, auditions, and—”
“I don’t give a shit, Opal. None of my people are selling to you, and no sale happens in Braidwood without my word.”
Her eyes remain on the passing scene before she gives him a long side-eye.
“Tell me why a war band of criminals is taking orders from an eighteen-year-old?”
“Reputation and legacy,” he says, anger still simmering in his voice. “They revered my grandfather, who was in bed with the mafia and politicians. And I was at his side since I was old enough to fire a gun.”
Opal steals a full glance, then looks away meekly.
“Since we’re having a heart-to-heart,” he says without an ounce of tenderness in his voice, “why you taking drugs to work harder?
“Last time I checked, you’ve always been a snobby, smart kid. Didn’t you just win that mathelon last year?”
A glimmer of surprise.
Aries bursts into a scathing laugh, no humor just overflowing with scorn. “Pathetic.”
A frown strikes her face. “Excuse me?”
Aries lets out another scornful laugh. “Unlike you, I wasn’t born into a perfect life, going to an elite school that offers rich-people opportunities that come with having a silver spoon shoved up your ass.”
Disgust tightens her face into a knot. “You’re vile.”
“And you’re a pill-poppin’ brat.”
She snaps her head forward. “Stop the car.”
“No.”
“Stop. The. Car.”
“No.”
Aries stomps on the brake, bringing the SUV to a jarring standstill.
Opal wastes no time and bolts out of the car, banging it shut. She storms onwards, a lump lodged in her throat and tears rising in her eyes, soon blurring her vision as she marches on blindly.
Aries throttles the wheel several times before the SUV catches up to her, drawing toward the shoulder of the road.
Aries rolls down the opposite window to call out to her.
“Opal.”
“Go away,” she says with her face to the asphalt, trying to hide her tears, wiping at them angrily.
“Opal.”
She marches on.
Aries pulls the car to the curbside. He jumps out and rushes after her.
“Get back in the car.”
“Or what?” She whips around. “You’re gonna hurt me?”
He goes dead still. “What’s wrong with you?”
His anger flares. “You know I’d never hurt you.”
He sniffs and looks away momentarily. “Just because I’m grown doesn’t mean I outgrew you.”
She flings her gaze away, looking to hide her reddened face.
“Opal.” A resonant echo. “It’s not safe out here. Just let me take you home, and you’ll never have to see me again.”
A long pause. “I didn’t say I wanted that.”
“We can…grab an early dinner at a spot not far from here.” An impish smile threads through his lips. “We can even get dessert.”
Something inside of her leaps to accept, but she’s already late and knows her family will be waiting.
She shakes her head. Reluctantly, wordlessly, she returns to the car. Aries stares after her before he follows suit and they resume the journey in a suffocating silence.
Opal mutes her astonishment when they arrive in her neighborhood, half an hour later, without aid or direction from her.
“You remember where I live?” she whispers.
“I have a good memory.”
“Could you…park two houses down? My family can’t see you.”
Aries cracks into a smirk, a mischievous gleam in his eyes. “Ashamed to be seen with me? Last time I checked, mama and papa bear liked me.”
“They never liked you,” she says, a laugh slipping through. “Worse now that you’re a kingpin.”
They both share a laugh, short and stupid.
“Well, that’ll be our secret.”
The car rolls to a stop.
“Thanks for the ride. Though under duress, it is appreciated.”
“You’re welcome, princess.” He shifts to look at her fully, dark eyes boring into dark eyes. “I don’t want to see you again.”
“…What?”
He smiles sheepishly, crooked, and devastatingly attractive. “I mean at the den. Next time we meet, it’ll be at a place less depraved.”
A grin worms its way onto her face. “I’d like that.”
“And we can talk. There’s about almost seven years’ worth of stuff to catch up on. And none of it is good.”
Opal nods sadly, eyes lowering.
“Give me your phone.”
She hesitates before she hands it to him. He inputs his number before he gives it back to her.
“Call me if you need me.” A fledgling smirk tugs his lips to the side. “Or if you just want to.”
She looks away coyly, unable to stop her smile. “I doubt that.”
She saves his number regardless and exits the vehicle. Opal walks to her house two blocks ahead, but Aries doesn’t leave.
Instead, he waits, and he watches her cross the pathway to her front door, soon vanishing out of sight.
He starts the car and makes the hour journey back toward the Badlands, and to his house on the other side.
Only now does his mind register his shock at what just happened—how one of the six just fumbled into his life on this day of all days.
The timing is too strange to him. The news of Keila’s disappearance has even reached the darkest corner of the Badlands, and only one resident had the merit to care about the missing, upper-class teenage girl.
Aries had wanted to cut himself off from that world in which he did not belong.
To the Braidwood elitist, he is worse than an outcast. He is a danger—a criminal.
Aries had deluded himself into pretending he didn’t care about them, but he does. And over the years, he has checked up on all of them from afar.
Aries is aware that Akin rose to be a star player, Opal’s a genius—foolish, but still a genius, Mia has kept a low profile…
And Keila.
Before her ordeal, she was a victorious athlete with gold medals in sprints and long-distance running.
Apparently, she wasn’t fast enough.
Aries can no longer feed himself the lie of coincidence. He knew the moment her face popped up as a missing person. Aries has tried to go on as normal, but the looming peril only grows.
Now Opal has fallen into his life out of nowhere. A chance he knows he won’t be able to let go of.
By the time he arrives home, darkness has had the last swallow of light. He parks in the driveway, exits without locking the car, and saunters to the single door under a dark dusk.
He enters and prepares for incoming.
Calum flashes into view and rockets toward him. Aries goes low to throw him over his shoulder effortlessly, walking with him to the dining room. He is enticed by the smells, luring him in by the nose.
“I almost got you,” Calum huffs, pounding his fists on his back.
“Sure you did.”
Grandma Adeline places the last plate on the table, everything surrounding the sheet pan quesadilla with jalapeño ranch.
Stuffed with cheese and avocado, this giant, melty cheese sheet pan quesadilla is good on its own, but Adeline likes to take it over the top with a side of homemade jalapeño ranch for dipping.
“Just in time, boy.”
Aries sets his little brother down and he runs to occupy his chair. Aries sits down beside him and Adeline seats herself across from him, placing him under her scrutiny.
Aries takes off his jacket and drapes it over the back of the chair. They all take hands and Adeline says a brief prayer before she lets the boys dig in.
“How was work?” she asks flatly.
He glances at Calum and nods steadily. “Fine.”
“I’m sure,” she says disdainfully.
After dinner, grandma Adeline collects the dishes to wash them all. Aries offers to help out but she refuses and instructs him to help Calum prepare for bed instead. She knows how he has missed his big brother of late.
Calum bathed before dinner, so all he has to do now is brush his teeth.
“Hey, I know it’s stupid, but can you, like, read to me?”
Aries looks down at the twelve-year-old with an arched brow. “Why’d that be stupid?”
After a brief teeth cleanup, Aries escorts him to his bedroom. Calum crawls up into his bed, nestling himself inside.
Aries strolls to the bookcase, eyeing the shelves, his finger sliding across the spines. Calum’s eyes follow, watching the silver shimmering on his knuckles from his many rings.
“What story you want to hear?”
“Again?”
Calum huffs like he’s annoyed with his brother’s incompetence. “She’s a frickin’ badass.”
“You cuss all the time.”
“Do what I say and not what I do, and you will go far in life, little one.”
Aries drops down on the edge of his bed, the mattress dipping beneath him. He starts to read the story, but ten pages in Calum is lulled to sleep.
Aries gets up to slot the book inside the gap between the books on the shelf. Before he leaves, he plants a lingering kiss on Calum’s forehead.
With a shower on his mind, a name yanks him to a halt.
He follows the sound to the living room. Grandma Adeline is lounging on the recliner, watching the news on almost max volume with an image of Keila front and center.
The news anchor informs the public that there is nothing to report—no update, no development, only that the local authorities are still on the hunt.
“Switch that off.”
She flinches, her frail chest heaving from fright as she pivots to look back at her grandson in the archway. She sees the haunted look in his eyes that emerged the day they announced her disappearance.
“And why on earth would I do that?”
“Switch it off,” he snaps.
Grandma Adeline rises from the seat in a way that belies her age, slow yet daunting.
“Have you lost your damn mind?”
She shuffles over to him. He dwarfs her by miles but his esteem for her makes it appear like she’s nearly seven feet tall.
“You think you can talk to me like that in my own house, boy?”
He turns his face to the floor in submission.
Content, her anger subsides. Blemished skin carved with creases, dreary gray hair tied into a single, long plait, the darker strands entwined with a few strands of her late husband’s hair.
“I got a call when you were out.”
“Narcs?”
“Worse.”
“No.” He shuts her down. “It can’t be.”
“I was just surprised as you, Ari.”
“I’m tired. I’m going to sleep.”
He walks off faster than she can call for him. She decides it’s better to let him go for now.
By the time midnight comes, sleep eludes him still. Aries rises from his bed and slogs out of his room, sleepy and shirtless.
He goes to the kitchen, flicks on the lights and ambles to the fridge, exhausted. His eyes linger on the six-pack before he plucks out a bottle of water.
He hobbles to the kitchen table and collapses on the chair with his legs spread wide, head held low. He unscrews the cap and inhales the water so quickly the plastic clenches, contracting until he drops it from his mouth.
“Can’t sleep?”
His head levels, his back facing the archway.
She walks in and settles on the chair adjacent to him.
“You have to talk to him.”
“I don’t have to do anything.”
She sighs exasperatedly.
“He’s your father. You’ll have to forgive him at some point.”
“He stopped being my father the day he walked out.” He meets her gaze with long-preserved hate smoldering in his eyes. “He’s dead to me. And if he comes near Calum, I’ll rip his throat out.”
“A father doesn’t do what he did.” He lengthens himself in his seat. “Calum was crying for months, every night, asking me why daddy doesn’t love him anymore or what he did or why he left us. He even thought it was his fault.”
Sorrow and rage war within him. “I can take a lot, but I won’t stand for him getting hurt by that asshole. Not while I’m still breathing.”
