Page 106 of I Will Revel in Glory (Death by Daybreak MC 3)
Cat continues to stare at me, analyzing me … no, more like dissecting me. He’s cutting me apart with his eyes, shredding me to pieces. The thing is, I don’t crumple easily. I look up and meet his gaze unflinchingly.
Will my baby have these same accursed eyes? I wonder, thinking how odd it is that Posey and Queenie had blue eyes like Nellie while Gaz and I ended up with these red-brown ones. Blue is a recessive gene, so … Cat must have a recessive blue-eyed gene in there somewhere. I mean, shit, even this high school dropout knows there’s more than one gene that controls eye color, but the gist is the same.
I suddenly can’t decide if I want my baby to have these eyes or if the sight of them on another person’s face would make me sick. My palm slides across my belly as I exhale.
“I’ll tell you what was in those packages,” Cat says, smoking his cigarette and staring at the dirt beneath his feet. His gaze is darker than I’ve ever seen it, laced with violence. “Anything your brother could sell to the mafia: maps of the compound, employee files, copies of receipts from our suppliers.” Cat lets out a dark laugh. “He was smart enough to know we keep everything on a closed system, that we’d notice a digital trail. Guess he figured he could print it all out and get things done that way.”
“How long have you known about Gaz?” I ask, and Cat lifts his face up to stare at me.
I am not the one who’s supposed to be asking questions here. It’s all there in that sharp look on his face. Shut your fucking mouth. I do, my hand still resting absently on my lower belly. Cat notices and quirks up the edge of his lip in a snarl.
“You, pregnant. Never thought I’d see the day. You sure you want to bring another person into this fucked-up world?” Cat finishes his cigarette and then drops the butt to the ground, crushing out the embers with his boot. Even he’s smart enough not to start yet another fire around here.
“It feels like my entire family is dead,” I say, not bothering to sugarcoat it. “I guess I just wanted to see if I couldn’t make a new one.” Cat just keeps looking at me like he can’t figure me out. But he can. He knows. He understands me because we’re exactly the same on the inside. “Anyway, Queenie didn’t get to have her baby, so maybe I’m having one for her?”
Cat says nothing in response to that, and I feel myself getting frustrated.
“I am on the club’s side,” I plead with him, stepping forward, my hand still over my stomach. Somehow, I can sense that I’m just a little bit safer this way. “Your officers, they’ve been sickeningly loyal to you from the get-go. The only thing they ever did was cover up my mistake. I took Grey and then I crashed into a mafia roadblock; they were here for him anyway, Cat. They would’ve attacked the compound that day regardless.”
“You should be dead,” he tells me, but his tone of voice neither raises nor lowers. It’s thick and dark and poisonous, the voice of the devil. One of Reba’s Bible quotes flickers in my brain like hellfire: You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.
Fuck.
Me and Cat, we are unholy nightmares.
“But I’m not dead. You killed Gaz to keep me here.”
Cat ignores me.
“How are you contacting the mafia boy?” he asks instead, reverting back to business. He hasn’t once mentioned if he’s excited by the idea of a grandchild or not, if he even cares at all.
“Video calls mostly,” I say as thunder rolls through the sky, shaking the world with its grumble, and a similar sound breaks from Cat’s throat. He hates himself right now; I can see it. He hates himself because he knows that he should kill me—club law would demand it—but he can’t do it.
He can’t do it because he loves me. Just like I love him. We love and hate each other in equal measures. We consider each other to be monsters.
“And what do you give him in return, huh? You expect me to believe this boy’s helpin’ ya outta the kindness of his heart.” Cat laughs at that, but not like he’s happy about it, obviously. More like he’s going crazy on the inside, coming apart at the seams. “You fuckin’ him, too? Or just my officers?”
“I never slept with Grey; I don’t love him,” I reply, and Cat howls at that.
