Marcus’ hand slams against the wall beside my head. “If this is your way of begging for forgiveness, you’re doing it wrong. When you beg for your life, your knees should bleed.”
I raise my brow, pushing off the wall and putting myself right in his way. “Do I strike you as the type to beg for forgiveness to the three men who brought me into a world full of bloodshed and brutal murder?”
Marcus towers over me. “No, but you strike me as the type to know what’s good for her.”
I narrow my gaze, the anger boiling beneath the surface. “I’ll never beg on my knees for you.”
“That’s fine,” he mutters darkly, shoving into me and dropping his head down low so his mouth hovers just above my ear. “I prefer you on your back.”
I swallow hard and push him off me, surprised when he actually moves. “Get off me,” I snap. “It’s the middle of the freaking night. I’ve just had your father’s men drag me out of bed to play the most fucked-up game of eeny, meeny, miny, moe, attempted to fly, and then was fucked while hanging off the top of your twisted castle. You said it was time to talk, so let’s talk. Otherwise, I’d like to go back to bed and pretend that none of this happened.”
Marcus lets out a sigh, narrowing his eyes on me for a moment before finally stepping out of my way and indicating for me to take a seat. “What do you want to know?” Roman questions as Marcus steps around me and heads back toward his couch.
I drop down on the couch and bring my knees up under myself, not sure where to even start. “I want to put a bullet between your father’s eyes,” I tell them, figuring I don’t want to waste time beating around the bush. May as well get it all out on the table.
“Join the club,” Levi mutters. “We only let him get away tonight because we still need him.”
“Because you’ll be overthrowing him soon?”
“Soon enough,” he says. “For now, we need him to keep making deals and running the family business. When we’re ready and have what we need, we’ll play our cards, but only when it counts. We can’t afford to fuck it up. So for now, we just have to be patient and endure it.”
I nod, surprised to have a full and honest answer out of him. This is usually the part where they give me just enough to keep me from going insane and get up to walk away, only when they each remain exactly where they are, looking at me expectantly, I realize this is really it. They’re going to tell me what I want to know but, if I push them too far, I’m just going to end up right back at square one.
“I, umm … I don’t understand why you guys keep trying to protect me. You’ve made it perfectly clear that I’m just an object taking up space in your home, yet you went to kill that guy in the warehouse and then protected me against your father when he tried to shoot me in the dining room. I just … why?”
Marcus sighs, leaning forward onto his knees as his gaze drops to the coffee table, realizing that this question is directed at him. “Wish I could tell you,” he murmurs, struggling with what to say. “But I honestly don’t fucking know. We’ve had girls here before and I’ve just let them perish when my father has decided they’re not worth it, but not you. You’re a fighter. You throw our shit right back at us. You’re intriguing. You interest me, and until I can figure out what that means, I won’t be allowing him to take your life.”
“And if you decide that I’m not as intriguing as you originally thought?”
He shrugs his shoulders. “I guess we’ll have to see if that happens.”
Levi pushes off the edge of the couch. “This is unfamiliar territory for us,” he explains. “Our father offers us girls to keep here as entertainment, and there’s only been one that we’ve gotten close to. She was a dangerous game and it didn’t end well for anyone involved. It would be smart for us to keep our distance.”
“You mean Felicity?” I question, my gaze hesitantly falling back on Roman’s. “You were in love with her, weren’t you?”
He watches me for a long moment and no one says a damn word until he finally nods. “I was,” he says, the pain radiating out of his eyes and warning me not to push him on the topic. He’ll share what he’s willing to say and nothing more. “I would have married her. She was carrying my kid, but this here,” he continues, pointing out the scar running from the tip of his brow, right through his eyes and all the way down to his cheek bone. “This is what happens when you allow yourself to get too close in our world.”