Page 22 of Pain

Unfortunately, I could see every piece of his reasoning, and though I didn’t want that end point—the part where I died—that didn’t mean I could necessarily argue with him about the mental steps he was taking.

I was the reason that attack had happened. Devil hated Knight and did everything he could to undermine Knight’s operations, but he never would have taken physical action against him. He’d had about a million opportunities and had never taken them, and there was one very good reason for that.

He wasn’t willing to go toe to toe with Knight, and it wasn’t that he had any sentimentality for his one-time best friend. It was bigger than that. Darker.

He was scared of Knight.

Devil was insane and reckless, and he’d do just about anything to get ahead. But Knight was smart. Crafty. He planned things to within an inch of their life and then executed them like a master. His plans always worked.

He always won.

Devil simply wasn’t willing to go up against that and lose. He’d never been brave enough, and I thought he probably knew that if he hurt anyone in Knight’s crew, Knight would kill him without a second thought. It had kept Devil in line, for the most part, ever since I’d known him.

Evidently, he’d changed his mind, though, and there was only one reason for that.

Me.

Even worse, I was the one who’d told him exactly where I was. Turning on my phone, seeing all those messages from Devil, had brought him roaring back into my mind, and it had done more than that. The attack almost immediately after that confirmed my fear that there was some sort of tracking program on the phone.

The moment I’d turned it on, Devil had known exactly where I was, and he’d attacked.

Did he want me back that badly? I doubted it. Far more likely he was making a statement. As far as he was concerned, Knight had taken something that belonged to him, and that was evidently enough to make him forget that he didn’t want to go up against Knight in a war.

He’d decided it was war, after all.

And thanks to me turning on my phone, he’d known exactly where to start that war.

I bit my lip, thinking through that particular issue. True, I couldn’t be completely positive that my actions had brought Devil’s crew in, guns blazing and bullets flying. But the timing worked, and I knew Devil well enough to think it highly likely that he’d programmed something into my phone to track me, just in case I ever managed to get away.

He would have wanted to come find me. Find me and take me back.

Or attack whoever had taken me.

So this was my fault in more ways than one. Not that I could tell them that. It would just strengthen Gemini’s point about needing to send me back, and no matter how guilty I felt about bringing the Steed down on the Banshees, I wasn’t interested in putting myself in danger by going back to Devil.

I wasn’t ready to go back.

I wasn’t ready to leave Knight.

I understood the first emotion easily enough. Devil would kill me the moment he had me under his thumb again—or make me wish I was dead. But as for not wanting to leave Knight...

I took the idea and turned it over in my head, trying to figure it out. Where had that thought come from? I barely knew the man. I didn’t even know his real middle name or birthday. There was exactly zero reason for me to feel attached to him.

And yet...

And yet he didn’t know my middle name or birthday, either, and he’d thrown himself over me to protect me from a hail of bullets in the garage. He’d reached down and helped me up off the sidewalk yesterday, then brought me to a place where someone could help me. He’d been furious when I told him that Devil had hurt me.

He’d taken me under his wing and protected me more than anyone else in my entire life ever had.

And thinking about him did something to my heart. Something that I didn’t understand and which I didn’t want to look at too closely.

I didn’t want to think about being attached to him.

Didn’t want to think about what it might mean, or how it might have happened.

Before I had to do any thinking about that, Knight started speaking again in the room next to me.

“We’re not sending her back, Gemini, and that’s final. I’ll remind you again that you’re not the president here. I am. That means my word is law, and until and unless we vote otherwise, what I say goes. Do you want to put it to a vote?”