Psycho Ex Boyfriend (Standalone New Adult Romance) (The Alpha Brotherhood Book 2) (26 page)

“I didn’t know.”

“Yeah, right,” I scoff, popping open a bottle of wine. Goddammit. I just opened the last one we had from our anti-honeymoon to Europe. If it wasn’t so fantastic, I’d pour it down the drain.

Adam sighs. “I swear. I just found out.”

“It sure didn’t sound like you just found out.”

“Alright, more specifically, I found out about the little kids about six months ago.”

“The little kids? Does that mean there are
older
kids, too?”

“Unfortunately, yes.”

“Oh, my God.”

“Look, I didn’t known about
any
of it until a year ago. And at first I was just suspicious and I honestly didn’t want to find out for sure.”

“How can you just turn a blind eye to this? After everything you’ve been through.”

Adam growls. “Don’t fucking pretend that you know what I’ve been through.”

“How many kids, Adam? How many boys are out there?”

“We are not discussing this.”

“If you want to stay together, we sure as hell are.”

“Why?” he snaps. “What the fuck does it have to do with us? With you?”

“Oh, I don’t know Adam!” I yell back. “I only want to have your fucking kids one day, one day relatively soon. So gee, I have
no
idea why the fact that you’re helping your father, who will not be my children’s grandfather, no fucking way, would affect me at all.”

He’s quiet for a few breaths. “I didn’t think about it that way.”

“Yeah. Obviously. And you don’t think about kids like they’re someone to love and protect, do you?” I ask. Adam doesn’t answer. “Do you?”

“I don’t know.”

“You clearly don’t. You were watching videos of ten year olds beating the shit out of each other while the others screamed and egged them on. Did you feel
anything
when you saw that? Because I had to stop listening and get on a fucking plane.”

“Bree, I… The place echoes a lot. It probably sounded a lot worse than it was.”

“Holy shit. Holy fucking shit, I can’t believe this.”

“It’s how I grew up. I suppose you could say that I normalized it.”

“That is
so
fucking comforting, Adam.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know what to do. I still don’t.”

“That is a huge fucking problem for me. Like, deal breaking huge.”

“Sabrina…”

“Is that how you want to raise our kids?”

He sighs. “I don’t really think about it. Honestly, I don’t even know that I want any. But you do, so I figured—”

“I’m not going to be a single mother, Adam. Kids deserve a father.”

“Then maybe I shouldn’t be him,” he says. My heart breaks in half, my chest collapsing as I choke out a sob. “I’m sorry. It’s over, isn’t it?”

“Until you do the right thing, you’re fucking right it is.”

“I don’t know what that is,” he confesses, his voice cracking.

“Yes, you do. You’re just a fucking coward.”

“Sabrina…”

“Goodbye, Adam.” I hang up the phone and cry my eyes out until I don’t have any tears left. I can’t believe he’s like this. How could I not see it? There’s no question about what to do, no question at all.

He’s not who I thought he was. Or rather, he’s not who I deluded myself into believing he was. Never has been. Never will be. We were doomed from the very first day we met.

Adam

Age 28

I wanted to make it work. Hell, I wanted to do the right thing. It’s just far, far more complicated than Sabrina could ever imagine. She doesn’t get it. How could she? I can’t just make a phone call and let the shitty system figure it out. It eats kids alive, just like it did my sister.

Maybe Sabrina doesn’t understand that. She got lucky. It started out rough for her, sure, but she still wound up in a fucking castle in the end.

I fly out there immediately, but I’m too late. She’s on a date with a lawyer. Someone just perfect for her. Someone I’ll never be. I’m fuming, absolutely livid. I can’t believe that she moved on so quickly. It’s hard to believe that she wasn’t already thinking about it.

And of course, I have to even the score. She doesn’t know about it, but then again, she does.

It’s over. It’s really over.

Days turn into weeks. Weeks into months. I move back to Chicago because she wasn’t the only reason I was going back, but without her it’s a cold place in more ways than one. I don’t even bother letting her know that I’m here. We never run into each other. I don’t pry into her life because I don’t want to know.

Luckily, I already had another obsession lined up. Destroying the man that destroyed my sister. Jordan Marlowe.

Shane is already here when I arrive. He’s just as consumed by this as I am, but I still don’t understand why. Little fucker has tunnel vision, always has. I hardly see him and when I do, this is the only thing we talk about.

Marlowe is almost bled dry. The writing is on the wall and he can’t even read it. He’s a thug trying to go legit and he has no idea what he’s doing. It’s not his world. It’s ours.

The man has no idea how to manage money. Taxes do him in at the end because he’s not used to paying them. He takes loans to cover the difference, we buy them up, sometimes paying more than they were worth just to be the one holding the strings. Shane has a private lawyer that’s a fucking genius at creating shell corporations and an unpierceable corporate veil.

Marlowe has no idea that it’s us. Not a clue. He even approaches some of our employees and wants to do business. We refuse. There’s no goddamn way in hell that I’m dealing with that fucker on paper. Not until I move in for the kill.

My fucking brother beats me to it. I literally drop my phone when one of our informants tells me that Shane stormed into one of Marlowe’s fucking strip clubs and told him everything. My ears ring when I hear it and I call a car immediately. I think I might actually kill him. The only thing I can think about is getting my hands around his neck. Impulsive motherfucker!

Shane’s protégé, one of our last legitimate little brothers, is there when I arrive. I don’t work with Maddox very much, but I need to, because
clearly
Shane doesn’t have his fucking head on straight.

The kid’s a little afraid of me as we wait for our deluded brother to arrive. God, he looks so young. For a fleeting moment, I forget about killing Shane and wonder what those other kids are like. Two are 18, three 17. They’re in college. The tip of the spear with only my father to guide them. And then they’ll mold what’s left of the ten 14 year olds who have no idea what’s about to happen to them. And whoever survives that house where 21 little kids are tearing each other apart.

My stomach churns. What the hell am I doing? Nothing. I’m doing
nothing
to help any of them at all. I rarely think about it at all. What the fuck is wrong with me?

Shane walks into his house. He’s holding an unconscious girl in his arms, just like my informant told me he would be. She’s wrapped in blanket and I think she must be wearing his jacket, because he’s not.

“What the fuck were you thinking?” I shout.

“I should be asking you the same thing,” Shane replies. “Get out of my home. Both of you.”

“I don’t fucking think so.” He’ll have to drag me out of here himself and his hands are full at the moment. “You just exposed everything. Half of those deals aren’t even finalized, Shane.”

“It’s less than a third,” Maddox says. “He can’t stop it now anyway.” Jesus fucking Christ! The kid knows about it? This is supposed to be off the fucking books.

“That’s not why Adam’s pissed,” Shane laughs. “He just didn’t get a chance to let Marlowe know he won.”

Considering he pimped out and killed my fucking sister?
“Yeah. You’re right.” Truthfully, I had decided it was best if Marlowe never knew that I was involved at all. It would have been safer. But I don’t need Shane to know that. “That was my fucking moment, Shane. I’m the one that made this happen.”

“That is absolute bullshit,” Shane says boldly. He’s not exactly wrong. He moved faster on this than I did. And he found the shady lawyer that did most of the grunt work.

But that doesn’t change the fact that, “I’m the one that actually lost someone.”

“You have a lot of goddamned nerve.” My brother snarls, clenching his teeth.

“You took a trophy.” What the fuck is he going to do with her? She must belong to Marlowe. He’s not going to… Holy fuck. This is so sick. What have I done? “Do you have any idea how risky that is?”

“A trophy?” Maddox asks, clearly disturbed.

“Adam, you’d better tread lightly.” He turns the girls face to me, but I have no idea who she is and why would I? “She most certainly isn’t a trophy. Remember that girl our investigators couldn’t find?”

“What?” Oh, fuck. That scarred up little kid. The little girl that lived with us back at the foster home, the one he was so attached to. I should have known. “Shane, I—”

“Don’t bother,” he interrupts me. “You blocked the investigation.”

“They didn’t even have a name,” I remind him.

“Those guys can find anyone,” Shane growls back. He’s right. “I still would have helped you if I got her back.”

“That’s not why I did it,” I admit. I didn’t think it would help us, and the last thing I needed was Shane losing his motivation. But I tell him, “You can’t turn back time. All we can do is move forward.”

“That is your philosophy, not mine. I found her stripped naked on stage in front of screaming men, getting auctioned off.”

“Jesus,” Maddox says, glancing in my direction, looking for an answer.

“So I don’t care that you didn’t get to feed your ego by making your little speech. Get the fuck out of my house.”

I can’t stand to look Shane in the eyes. And I can’t bear to see that girl, another casualty that I didn’t think about because it didn’t suit me. No wonder Sabrina doesn’t want me anymore. I’m a fucking monster.

I turn without a word and enter the elevator to get as far away from my brother as possible. I have someone far more important to worry about.

Sabrina.

Marlowe knows what we did. He’s scrambling to stop it now. Once he figures out that he can’t he’ll be looking for revenge. That’s why Shane took that girl home instead of to the hospital. He’s protecting her. He won’t let her get caught up in the crossfire.

It will not take much for my nemesis to figure out how he can make me pay for ruining his life. There’s only one way that he could ruin mine back. He can’t take my money like I did his. The only thing he can hit is my heart. And that still belongs to Sabrina.

Holy shit. I tell my driver to turn around and head directly to her office. She’s out with a client. My stomach turns. I don’t want to make a huge scene at her workplace, nor leave any record that I was even there, so I don’t leave a message.

Don’t panic. This literally happened less than two hours ago and that idiot Shane strolled in there, not me. We have a lot of brothers. It will take Marlowe at least a day to connect the dots and that’s if he remembers getting my sister murdered, which I doubt he will. The odds of him figuring out who Sabrina is today are virtually zero.

Shit, what about her sister? Sun followed Bree’s footsteps and is in the middle of her first semester at Northwestern. Okay, this I can actually do something about right now. Time to make some calls.

Christ. It’s ten o’clock at night. Where the fuck is Sabrina? Whatever client she’s with either works late or she went out afterwards. I can’t stand the idea of going home without knowing, so I break down and call her. At first I think she answers, but she doesn’t say anything and all I hear is background noise. There’s lots of giggling. Her luscious ass must have picked up. Goddamn it.

Well, giggling at a bar is better than getting murdered by a thug, so I suppose I’ll take it. Even if she is on a date. That idea only mildly annoys me today. As long as she’s safe.

I end up waiting in the lobby of her building until 1:00 in the morning to find out. Sabrina stumbles through the revolving door and doesn’t notice me. I don’t call any attention to myself. My pulse rises and my dick hardens as I watch her wait for the elevator. Then my eyes and nose start to sting. I haven’t seen her for three months. I’ve been living in the city almost the entire time, knowing she was close but so far away. I could have called. I could have dropped by. Instead I suppose I was waiting for fate to step in and bump into her.

Sabrina leans against the wall and takes off her uncomfortably high heels, yawning. Her hair is sleek today. Still curly, but longer than unusual. I inhale, hoping to somehow catch a scent of whatever she must have combed through it this morning.

I need to know if she’s being followed. Ah, fuck it. She’s not, I’m just being paranoid. So I rush through the elevator doors just before they close.

Her full lips part in surprise when she eventually looks up and sees that it’s me. I don’t even attempt to stop myself from kissing them.