Giving Away by Lola King

CHAPTER 22

‘I’ll take my bow

I won’t make a sound

I whisper truce

As the ashes hit the ground’

Scars – Boy Epic

Five hours earlier . . .

Jake

“You made the right choice, brother,” Nate murmurs as we wait to be invited into Bianco’s office.

I didn’t have much of a choice, I want to retort but I keep my mouth shut.

We’re sitting on the two red velvet armchairs right outside his door, facing the opposite wall of the hallway. Nate went in a half an hour ago to give him the paperwork Rose and I signed, then came back out.

I’m fuming, fucking raging. There’s havoc exploding in my head and my heart, but I keep still. The migraine beating against my skull is threatening to make me throw up every minute or so. My thumb is still sore despite the painkillers, my chest feels so fucking tight, and I can feel every single one of my ribs every time I take a breath. I can’t even breathe through my swollen nose courtesy of my own flesh and blood.

And yet, that’s not why I’m so angry.

Of course I’m angry at Nate. That’s not news though, I’ve always hated him. I’ve hated him for so long it’s like a dull ache in my heart that never ceases to exist.

But right now, I want to break every single one of Rose’s bones. That’s how angry I am at her. How could she do this to me? How could she sign? We expected Nate to threaten us. We expected him to bully us into signing and we both promised we wouldn’t give in.

I have vague memories of last night. I remember Nate finding Jamie in the house and I remember her cries when they tied her up and she watched me get beaten up. Guilt twists in my guts for putting her through this. That’s not how her senior year was meant to go. I burst into her life and fucked her tranquility. Tranquility she more than deserved after what she’d been through with her dad and brother.

Rose was there when I came back to reality, and I wish I never did. I couldn’t face her, I couldn’t talk to her, I couldn’t tell her it was okay because it really wasn’t. The way she apologized broke my heart. I know she was scared for my life, but I was still too mad to forgive her. It’ll come. Just not now. Because of her, the first thing I did after being released from the hospital was come here. So here I am, 7:30 am, waiting for Bianco to let us into his office.

“Stop making this face, Jake. You would have done the same in her situation.”

Can the fucker read my mind or something? I glance at Sam walking in circles, his phone to his ear. I can’t see him properly because of my swollen eyelids and I can’t hear what he’s mumbling because of the ringing in my ears. I’m running purely on adrenaline right now and I could shut down any minute.

“That bastard isn’t letting go, you know that?” Nate grumbles in the seat next to mine.

I’m not sure what he means but I know I’m about to understand when he gets up, annoyed. He walks to Sam and snatches the phone from his hand.

“I think you need to start taking my advice more seriously, mate. You and my sister are not a thing. You’re never gonna be a thing so stop feeding her hope by checking on her every time you do something wrong,” Nate says, exasperated.

“I just want to know she’s alright,” Sam growls after Nate gives him the phone back.

“I’ll save you time. After what we did last night? Probably not.”

There’s only one thing Nate and I will ever agree on and that’s that Sam is not an option for our sister. Not now, not ever. I don’t even care how it sounds. It’s not fucking happening. Nate is about to sit back down next to me when the door to Bianco’s office opens to a petite blond with big brown eyes.

“Boys, please come in,” she tells us.

I walk in and Nathan follows.

“Anne,” he purrs as he brushes her arm walking past her.

“Nathan,” she replies in a sweet voice.

I roll my eyes as much as I can in my state. He fucks everything with legs and then dares trying to break me and Jamie up.

“Jake,” Bianco chuckles, sitting on his pine green leather chair. “You’re a sight for sore eyes,” he smiles, his voice dripping sarcasm.

I’m only capable of offering a chesty grunt in response. I prefer not to engage with him, he would love that too much. Nate takes a seat opposite his boss, but I can’t sit down, it makes it too real.

“You should sit, son. This could take a while. Unless you’re feeling extra compliant today?”

I take the seat next to Nate and wait in silence. I remember spending time here after the fights. If I won, he would open a bottle of champagne and incite me to drink. It didn’t matter that I was thirteen. He would celebrate until the bottle was finished and I remember blacking out on the Persian rug covering the old parquet. If I lost…

I swallow the lump forming in my throat at the thought of how Bianco used to hit my already beaten body when I didn’t bring the money from the fight back to him.

“Thank you for signing, Jake,” he smirks then turns to Nate. “I just hung up with Gloria, she said she would go over the paperwork and send it to Judge Joly tomorrow. She is going to be busy with her family today. It is the new year after all.”

The new year. Jamie’s birthday. I didn’t even get to wish her a happy eighteenth birthday, let alone give her a present.

“What was her daughter’s name again?” Bianco asks.

“Emily,” Nate replies straight away, and it brings my focus back onto the conversation.

“Right, don’t let her forget that we know where Emily takes her precious dancing classes.”

“What the hell could you possibly want with her?” I growl. I don’t care for Emily like Luke does, but she is a close friend. She’s Jamie’s best friend and I wouldn’t forgive myself if anything happened to her.

“That judge needs to know we don’t forgive mistakes. Hopefully, she won’t make any when she approves Nathan being your new legal guardian.”

I shake my head slowly. Nate has been spying on us for months. He and Sam made sure to find out who our close friends are just so they could use everything and everyone against us.

“Onto important things, for both of you,” Bianco says more seriously. He grabs something in the mahogany desk’s drawer, opens a file, and slams it on the desk. “Do you know who this is?”

Nate barely glances down but I have to lean closer to see. No glasses, no contacts, swollen eyes. I still manage to see a CCTV picture of a man. His head is turned slightly to the side, looking somewhere on his right, but I can still see his face and it’s familiar, though I couldn’t place who he is if my life depended on it. He must be around the same age as Nate, barely twenty probably. The main element I’m guessing Bianco wants us to see is the tattoo on the side of his neck. The seven moons showing the phases of the satellite.

“Quite obviously a Wolf, but I’m guessing you figured that one out yourself,” Nate smiles.

Bianco smiles back but he doesn’t lose his focus. “This Wolf, boys,” his finger jabs the picture, “is Aaron Williams.” His smile turns smug when he adds, “I heard you both fucked his little sister, Jamie.”

To be continued…