Page 59 of Ravaged By the Dark (The Righteous 2)
Renee allowed Arek to guide her. Her mind was a swirl of thoughts and emotions that she couldn’t even start to comprehend. All this time, she thought she’d been sheltering J.J. from the horrors of the world, and in reality, he knew more of what was going on than she even did.
He felt like he needed to protect her all this time? The monsters in the house had been real.
She’d failed him. On some level, she’d screwed up as his sister, and this knowledge throbbed like a deep pain in her chest.
“You can stay in here,” Arek said. She glanced at the lush, beautifully decorated room before sitting on the edge of the bed. She might have been impressed with the expensive home if she didn’t feel like her entire world was crumbling into a million little pieces around her.
“Can we talk,” Arek asked, and she shrugged. Arek closed the door and walked toward her. She cocked her head and really looked at him.
The logical part of her brain said she should run away from this man. He’d openly admitted to murdering more people than he could or even wanted to remember, yet fear was far from what she felt. Then again, she was no fool. She knew what her brother and so many others in one gang or another did. Kids dying on the streets had become a normal occurrence.
Just another gangbanger face down in a gutter.
“Did you want anything? Food or a drink, maybe,” he asked as he sat beside her.
“No, I’m fine.” His hand rubbed a circle on her back—the simple, kind gesture clogged her throat with emotion. The last time someone did that for her was her dad. He was the first in a long line of people to let her down, to break their promise, and to rip her heart out.
Arek wiped his hands on his jeans as his knee bounced, making the bed shake. Nervous energy flowed off his body, an emotion she never expected him to feel. Apparently, they were both out of their element.
“Do you have a first-aid kit? I can take care of that bruise while we talk.” She reached up and touched the dark lump forming beside his eye.
Arek’s lips lifted in a cocky grin. “If you want to touch me, you don’t need an excuse.” He laughed, but she crossed her arms and glared at him. Holding up his hands as if he surrendered, he said, “I’m good. I’ve had worse.”
“I bet.”
“Renee, I wanted to talk to you about what I’ve done. I don’t want you to think I’m some serial killer that slaughters just anyone because I have sick fantasies or because they piss me off.” She raised her eyebrow at him. “Okay, I don’t kill everyone that pisses me off, and I can’t deny they have died in sick ways, but not because it is some sick fantasy of mine.” He smiled, his eyes warming with the joke.
Or was it?
“I don’t think you’re helping your case.”
Arek stood and walked away to turn and pace the large bedroom. His strides were abrupt as he thought. He was like a caged animal. She could practically feel the raw power inside of him, but under that was a restlessness—the restlessness she understood. Her entire life, she felt on edge, like she should run, but the monsters, as J.J. would say, could always find her.
“I wasn’t always like this. It’s not like I grew up wanting to become some notorious killing machine. My brother and I had a great home life, a loving family, lots of friends, a very typical middle-class existence. I don’t have some sob story about my childhood to point to that made me change. We were as close to normal as you can get.”
He stopped pacing and turned to stare at her.
“We decided to enlist. It felt like a glamorous idea. You know, twin brothers saving the world. We were nineteen and stupid. Our parents didn’t want us to go. We were both great athletes, and they envisioned us playing baseball or maybe football, but enlisting was certainly not what they wanted for us.” Arek sighed and rubbed his face.
Renee could read the conflicted pain within his soul. The twisted roots seeped deep into his past but haunted him still.
“Fuck, we were stubborn. I don’t know how my mother didn’t kill us. She should’ve killed us so many times—well, at least me anyway. Trev was a fucking saint. The thing is, when we enlisted, we didn’t understand the reality of what happens in war, but what we saw…what I had to do….”
He looked away from her and stared at the wall like he saw something more—another time, maybe.
“We were good at what they trained us to do—no, we weren’t good, we were downright scary. They realized pretty quick, Trev and I have this…twin connection thing, I guess. It’s like this feel for one another. We could work as a team, and we were deadlier than any other duo.”
He rubbed his hand up and down the back of his neck, his muscles flexed tight.
“Soon, we were asked to do jobs that no one else was stupid enough to attempt, but we jumped at the chance. We were cocky and wanted to prove ourselves. We wanted to make a name by being the best. That is how we ended up as SEALs. We were pointed in the direction by our command staff, and that was it. It was all the encouragement we needed to become one of the shining elites. We earned nicknames of death and wore them like badges of honor. I still use mine when I’m out in the field.”
“You don’t have to tell me all this, Arek.”
He sat beside her again and took her hand in his, the size comparison glaring as she stared at their hands. He was truly lethal. He could snap her neck if he wanted to, and yet she’d seen these same hands offer so much kindness. It was hard to comprehend the two different sides of him in one body.
“I want to tell you, at least what I can.” She nodded, and he sighed. “We were approached to take on a job that was never to be spoken of again—Trev was given the lead and the task to pick our group. Not everyone he chose was from the same unit, some weren’t even Navy, but we all had one thing in common—the ability to get a job done and get the hell back out.”
He started to play with her fingers as he continued to speak.
