hand balled into a fist. She raised it and pressed down on his arm. “Please, Kai. Don’t hurt him. I love him. Please don’t hurt him.”
I backed away.
The guards were moving behind us. Three thundered downstairs.
Their yells of “clear” ricocheted around us.
“What is she talking about?”
Both Bennetts heard my quiet question. Both stilled.
Brooke frowned, her bottom lip pausing in its trembling. Understanding dawned, and her fist fell away from his arm again. “Oh, Kai.” A whispered regret. “What did you do?”
“All clear,” one of his guards yelled for the last time.
Kai dropped his arm from his sister and pointed downstairs. “Down. Now.”
She pulled her gaze from me, meeting his. “What did you do to both of us?”
She didn’t expect an answer. A defeated slump in her shoulders, she headed down.
I started to follow.
Kai’s hand touched my hip, halting me.
He inclined his head, his voice so soft only I could hear. “Please don’t think the worst of me right now.” He caressed my waist a moment, then rested his forehead to mine and expelled a sudden rush of air. His entire body had been tense. Some of it now dissipated.
I watched as the tension returned, and he moved away, his head down.
“I haven’t earned it with this one,” he added.
He went downstairs to deal with his sister, and as was my pattern, I followed.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
“Pack.”
Kai pointed to the bedroom as soon as he got downstairs.
The basement was filthy. There wasn’t a better word to describe it. The couch Brooke sat on looked like it had dried milk on one end, right over its mustard paisley pattern. The rest of the room wasn’t any better. Empty water bottles filled one corner. Pizza boxes littered the floor. A television sat on a card table, a PlayStation on top and game controllers down below. A faint musty smell lingered, mixing with old cigarettes and dried puke.
The Network didn’t use places like this. If the upstairs looked the same, I would’ve tagged this as an addict’s house. The Network used empty apartments, houses that had been foreclosed. Not places like this.
Brooke remained on the couch, at the one end that seemed fine to sit on. Her hands were tucked between her legs, and her eyes narrowed on me again before she wrinkled her nose. Raising her chin, she rolled her shoulders back.
“I will not.”
“You will too.”
Kai went to the bedroom, grabbing a bag from the ground and throwing it onto the unmade bed.
“Kai, don’t!” Brooke was off the couch, heading in.
He began rifling through the closet, tossing clothes onto the bed. He threw another handful over his shoulder. “Start packing, Brooke. I mean it. You are not staying here.”
She grabbed the clothes from the bed and began putting them away in a drawer.
I watched for a second. There was something slightly comedic about this, and in that second, I knew Kai was telling the truth. This was a sibling fight. Brooke huffed, her eyes strained. She wasn’t crying, pleading. She wasn’t scared for her life. She was…annoyed.
She’d been wailing before, but the second he began to force her to leave, her chest puffed up in indignation.
“You lied to me.”
I hadn’t meant to say it, and both of them paused and looked over at me.
I stared at Brooke, the wind knocked out of me.
She bit her lip and her head folded down, but not before I saw the regret.
“You told me it was life or death. You told me if he found you, he would kill you.”
I was floored.
My voice rose. “You have no idea what I’ve put myself through, what you put me through! Was your boyfriend worth it?”
She looked back up. A shimmer of tears rested there, ready to spill. “What do you know about him?”
I could feel Kai watching me, could feel the weight of his gaze.
I moved my head from side to side, resting a hand on the doorframe. My legs felt as if they could go out from under me. “Just that all this was for him. Were you ever scared your brother would hurt you?”
“Yes!” She clutched a shirt to her chest. “Levi is everything to me. Everything! He’s my air, my food, my—my—my world! He’s the sun and the moon and the stars…”
Then where is he?
If he was the reason for all of this, why wasn’t he with her? Why had we gone to New York?
But I didn’t ask those questions, because my loyalty had switched. I moved to stand behind Kai.