killed his own wife and was about to kill his own son,” Alistair explained. “Sounds pretty mobster to me.”
“Uh, I think we might be close cousins of the mobster. We are white-collar crooks,” I said, and everyone chuckled. “Yeah, my dad uses intimidation tactics, but he’s a coward. That’s why I haven’t seen his face. We’re learning how to fight back and defend ourselves, and he doesn’t know what to do. All that power my dad exercised over me came from his ability to terrify me into falling in line, but I’m not doing that anymore, and I have all of you guys with me, so he’s panicking. He’s upset that I picked a woman who knows how to swing a blade better than I do.”
“I’ll slice his fucking throat when I get the chance,” Nikita growled in response.
Cherri wiped her eyes, then wiped Kyle’s eyes, and she turned to face us. She seemed exhausted, but for the first time in months, as we looked at her, she seemed closer to her normal self. “Fuck, you guys, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry for everything. I’m such a shitty person. I’ll do whatever I have to do to make it up to you guys.”
“Oh my god,” Alistair moaned. “No. We just went through this with Nathan, and it took him like six months to get through it.” He looked over at Avery with legitimate concern on his face. “I don’t want to have another self-pitying friend. I can’t do it. I’m so tired.”
Avery burst out laughing as she wrapped an arm around Alistair’s head and gently patted it. “It’s okay, honey. Calm down.”
Colette started to laugh too. “Oh my god. We are so destroyed from this year. We all need therapy and lots and lots of sleep.”
“I don’t get it,” Cherri whimpered.
I smiled at her. “Let’s just say I’ve pretty much tapped out their reserves for patience in that particular area. We’re gonna say we forgive you and leave it at that.”
As the words left my lips, I thought about Brayden and wondered if I would feel the same about him. I was still refusing to think about the fact that he’d betrayed us because if I thought about it too hard, I was going to fall into another deep, dark hole.
“I just feel like that’s too easy,” Cherri replied. “I mean…” She looked over Colette. “I hurt you so badly.”
“Yeah, but Nikki got to kick your ass back, so that’s good enough for me,” Colette said, then looked over at Nikita and flashed her a wink.
“Oh my god,” Jaxon said breathlessly. He stood up, slinging Colette over his back. “Sorry. We’ll be back.”
Colette giggled as Jaxon carried her off toward the stairs. Alistair pointed up after them. “You did say that Sicily’s room is soundproof, right?”
“Yeah, but down here isn’t,” I grumbled back.
“So, they’re a thing now?” Cherri asked. “Like, a real thing?”
She looked at Avery for the answer, and Avery smiled. “Yeah, they’re crazy about each other. She’s made him a bit more sociable, and as you can see, he’s made her a bit tougher. It’s really sweet.”
Cherri frowned. “I’m sad that I missed it.”
“I said you were missing out on a lot,” I replied.
She nodded. “Yeah. I was just so angry and sad. I miss Deon, and I wanted to blame someone for everything that happened. Not just with Deon, but with Miss Abrams and with Deon’s disappearance to begin with.”
“Disappearance?” I asked. “What do you mean?”
“Back when Deon first got arrested, we were having a picnic for our first date, and this body, quite literally, fell from the sky and splattered in front of us. Deon walked over to see if the guy was okay, and some cop started screaming at us, saying we did it. We had no choice but to run, and I guess Deon doubled back to protect me.”
“Oh, wow,” Avery said. “I didn’t know that.”
“Yeah. I didn’t find out until right before shit hit the fan.”
Kyle looked up at me from where he was sitting. “So some guy just randomly splats on the ground in front of your half-brother, and then he goes to prison for it. Then, four years later, some woman jumped out of a building that also had nothing to do with him, and he got blamed for it again?”
“Shit,” I hissed.
I didn’t know everything about what had happened, but it was becoming clearer that my father was to blame for all of our troubles, not just recently, but even