Breakers (Academy of Stardom Book 3)

Pen

Water from the shower slides over my back as I sit on the tiled floor, hugging my knees to my chest. I can’t seem to move, let alone feel.

Every time I close my eyes, I see York bringing his baseball bat down on Frederico’s knees. I see Zayn and Xeno crouched over him, one with a knife pressed into his throat, the other with his finger shoved deep into the gunshot wound in his chest. I feel Dax’s arms tight around me and smell the metallic scent of blood, violence and revenge in the air. It doesn’t matter how many times I wash myself; I can’t rid myself of Frederico’s cries or the light leaving his eyes. I can’t turn off the sound of his voice as he struggles to speak.

“David…”

I can’t stop seeing the blood or the bodies as my mind flicks through the photo album of tonight’s events. It doesn’t matter if my eyes are open or shut, those memories are crystal clear as though playing out in front of me right now. So here I remain, hugging my knees to my chest in the bottom of Dax’s shower, waiting for the numbness in my body to infect my mind.

“Kid?” Dax enters the bathroom. his voice sounds far away, lost beneath the screams of dying men.

“I’m fine,” I mutter, unfurling my body slowly as I push upwards to stand on stiffened legs, my muscles tight from the cold.

“Jesus fucking Christ, the water’s freezing! Your lips are turning blue!” He leans behind me, turning the shower off.

“It is? I hadn’t noticed.”

“Kid… Fuck…” A moment later a warm, fluffy towel is wrapped around my shoulders as he eases me out of the cubicle. Like me he’s scrubbed tonight from his skin, but despite the fact he’s no longer covered in blood, I still see the stain reflected in his eyes. “Come with me, Kid.”

I follow him without argument, too numb to do anything else. He guides me back into his bedroom and eases me onto the edge of the bed. “Let me see your neck,” he says, lifting my chin.

“It doesn’t hurt,” I reply, my words empty, hollowed out like all those dead bodies seeping blood.

“It isn’t a deep cut… It shouldn’t take long to heal.”

“I guess that’s something,” I reply.

“Fuck, we could’ve lost you. I shouldn’t have brought you along. Why the fuck did I do that?” He cups my face and presses his lips against my forehead, then sits on the bed next to me and wraps his arms tightly around me, but even his hug isn’t enough to comfort me this time.

“Are they back yet?” I ask, pushing out of his hold, and pulling the towel tighter around me. It’s been almost two hours since we drove away, leaving the rest of the Breakers behind to deal with the carnage, stopping only to drop Beast back at Tales to a furious Grim who threatened to kill him herself for daring to get shot.

Dax shakes his head. “Hud called, he’s with them now. They’re debriefing.”

“Debriefing?”

“Yes.” Dax chews on his lip as he regards me. It’s a nervous tick, one that I’ve not seen in a very long time.

“What aren’t you saying?”

“Being an informant has its perks, Kid, but I ain’t sure that murdering a small army is one of them. There will be a lot of red tape to cut. It’s gonna take a bit of time getting them out.”

“Out?”

“Of custody. There were a lot of dead bodies, Kid.”

“Yeah, I know. Don’t remind me.”

Even to my own ears my voice sounds empty, like an abandoned building with cracks in the walls and all the windows smashed in. I’m in shock, I know that, so processing what happened tonight is going to take time. Right now, I’m caught between being fervently on the side of my Breakers and disgusted by what I witnessed. Logically, I know it was a ‘them or us’ situation but that doesn’t mean I am comfortable with any of it. Violence is something I’ve tried to avoid at all costs. Growing up with David, I’ve lived under the constant threat of it; I’ve spent my entire life avoiding it where I can and seeking comfort in dance. Having to witness the men I love embrace that side of themselves has well and truly shattered the illusions I built. Yes, they may have gotten into fights as kids but nothing like this. It’s easy to turn a blind eye when you’re in love, but to have part of their natures revealed in such a shocking way… it’s hard to stomach. At least for me it is.

“If it makes you feel any better, violence isn’t something that comes naturally to Zayn. York either,” Dax says, reading me expertly.

“That’s not how it looked tonight.”

“What you saw tonight was the men who love you doing everything in their power to protect you. Nothing more. Nothing less.”

“You don’t need to cover for them. I saw the look in their eyes. I’m a big girl,” I say.

Dax sighs. “I’m not protecting them. It’s just the truth. I’ve always had anger inside of me, you know that. Growing up with my dad the way it was makes it all too easy to slip into violence. York and Zayn have had to embrace it to survive. It hasn’t been easy for either of them. I’ve seen them battle every fucking day with the things they’ve had to do.”

“But it’s easy for you?”

“Maybe that’s not exactly the right word to use. Not easy, not at all, just easier. I don’t think about the person in front of me. I just think about—”

“Your dad?”

“Yes. If I allow myself to think anything else… Put it this way, I wouldn’t be standing here today.”

“You mean…?” I shift slightly, so I can get a better look at Dax.

“On my darkest days, I’ve thought about it. That makes me a coward, right?”

“No. Jesus, no. It makes you human, Dax,” I choke out, tears forming like a stone in my throat. The thought of Dax even considering taking his own life has me all twisted up inside.

“What about Xeno?” I ask.

“Xeno uses violence as a way to cope.”

“To cope? With what?”

Dax frowns. “I’ve never really been certain. He hasn’t let any of us in enough to explain. I was hoping one day you’d be able to find out. Though I reckon it has something to do with the numbness that takes over after a kill. There’s a certain kind of peace to be found there… At least for him.”

Considering how numb I feel right now, I can understand that. I didn’t kill Frederico but I sure as hell didn’t try to save him either, so that makes me as guilty of his death as the rest of them. Maybe that’s the real issue here, my own guilt. “And how do you deal with a night like this, Dax?”

“I shut myself down. Sometimes I dance. Sometimes I drink myself into oblivion. Occasionally, like Xeno, I’d find a woman to fuck…” His voice trails off as he tips my chin up and gently pushes a few strands of wet hair off my face.

“What?” I whisper. It might sting a little, but I’m not upset. I know they’ve slept with other women before me. My jealousy seems trivial now. It has no place here.

“It never meant anything. No one ever came close to how I feel about you. I know it’s the same for the rest of them.”

“You don’t need to justify yourself to me, Dax. I just hate that you had to find a way to cope because of the things you did.”

Dax presses his thumb and forefinger against his eyes, rubbing them. He looks as exhausted as I feel. Dark shadows rim his eyes, and his cheek is turning a deep shade of purple, matching the night sky that edges the horizon as dawn begins to rise.

“You were really brave tonight, Kid. So fucking brave. What you did…” Cupping my cheek, he strokes his thumb across my cheekbone. “I’m so fucking sorry.”

“You can’t protect me from the violence. Not anymore. I’ve lived on the fringes of it since I was a kid. This is your life… and now it’s mine.” My voice breaks as I try to keep my shit together. I can’t afford to break. I won’t. It’s not as if I haven’t seen a man killed before now, so I don’t know why I’m taking this so fucking hard.

“It’s a life we live for now. It’s not a life we’ll be living forever. I promise you that,” he says vehemently.

“You still believe that the plan is going to work after what happened tonight?”

“It already is…. The drugs have been in circulation for a couple of weeks now. There have been whispers building on the street that Dancing Shoes is a dud drug. We expected some kind of backlash, just not exactly this.”

“Do you think David and Santiago know about what you’re doing with Hudson?”

“No, I don’t. Believe me, if they did, things would be a hell of a lot worse right now. I think David believes Jeb screwed over Santiago and that we were in on it too. It makes sense that he sent in Dante’s Crew to take us all out as a way to prove his loyalty to Santiago. Not to mention send you a message. Kill two birds with one stone and all that.”

“But Jeb believed it was you guys, David and Grim…”

“Precisely, and he was only partly wrong. He believed we’d done it to set him up and take over the Skins… I don’t think he would’ve come to that conclusion, at least not this quickly, if he hadn’t seen how we reacted to Frederico’s attempt on your life. The second he walked out of the alleyway we all knew he had to die. It was him or us.”

“Now that Jeb’s dead, where does that leave us?”

“By killing Jeb, David and Santiago will believe one of two things… Either we killed Jeb because we found out he was screwing Santiago and wanted to show our loyalty, or because Jeb found out that we were. It doesn’t really matter what story they choose to believe, though knowing your brother, he’s already persuaded Santiago that it was us all along, given how this is going. We just have to up the ante now, lure Santiago to the U.K so he can sort us out.”

“By sort, you mean kill, because that’s what he’ll do, right?”

“He’ll almost certainly try, but the key is he’ll be on U.K soil and we’ll be ready for him.”

“Just like you wanted.”

“Yeah, just like we wanted,” Dax replies with a tight nod.

My jaw begins to chatter as Dax kneels on the floor at my feet and begins rubbing my thighs over the towel to dry me off. His hands are warm, and I see the intent in his eyes as though he’s trying to rub away the events of tonight with his sheer will. But he has to know I’ve already scrubbed my skin raw of the blood. The terror and the violence aren’t so easy to rid myself of.

“Don’t.”

“Don’t what?” Dax asks, his hands stilling.

“I can dry myself.”

Swallowing hard, he nods, then climbs to his feet. I feel tears clogging my throat, but I refuse to let them fall. Fuck that. I survived years of my brother’s abuse. I’m strong enough to get through this, whatever it is that I’m feeling right now.

“When will it happen?”

“That I don’t know, but we have to be ready for anything.”

I meet his gaze and nod. “I’m scared,” I admit. I’m fucking terrified.

“I know, Kid,”

“So what happens now?”

“Now you get dressed. You’re gonna eat some food and then we’ll wait for news.” Dax says as he strides over to the chest of drawers and starts rummaging around, looking for something.

“What about David?”

“As far as Interpol can tell he isn’t in the country. There’s been no sign of him entering the U.K. through any of the airports or shipping ports.”

“He’s doing this all remotely?”

“It looks that way.”

“And Santiago?”

“Ah, here they are,” Dax says, ignoring my question. He pulls out some clothes from the drawer and hands them to me. “I figured you’d need something comfortable here for when you stayed over.” He hands me a pair of soft, grey, flannel pyjamas. I take them from him gratefully. “I cleared out the chest of drawers of my stuff and filled it with clothes you might need when you stay over. You should find everything you need in there.”

“You bought these?” I ask him as I stand, allowing the towel to fall away.

Dax swallows hard, but like the gentleman he is, keeps his eyes firmly fixed on my face and away from my nakedness. “Yes. Are they okay?”

“They’re perfect, thank you,” I say quietly, my heart hurting in a way I can’t describe as I pull them on. He watches me closely as he rests against the vanity unit.

“Kid—”

“You didn’t answer my question about Santiago,” I say, interrupting whatever he was about to say.

“Interpol has had no flags that he’s entered the country either.”

“Do you really believe this plan will work, that Santiago will settle this personally himself and walk into the trap?”

“You want my honest opinion?”

“Yes, please. I’d rather that than you lie to protect me.”

“I think Santiago would happily use your brother to try and take us out first. Whilst he’s known for dealing with betrayal and disloyalty himself, on this occasion I don’t think he’ll step foot in this country with your brother offering his assistance. That’s why your brother’s got to die, Kid. Only then will Santiago step in.”

“Are you saying what I think you’re saying?” I ask.

Dax swipes a hand over his face before looking back at me. “Xeno’s moving on to Plan B, or at least part of it. He’s flying out to Mexico. He’s going to kill your brother.”

For a moment I just look at Dax in shock, then fear expands in my chest, pouring out of my mouth in a rush of anger. “The fuck he is!” I shout. “When was this decided?”

“He called whilst you were in the shower. Gave me a heads up.”

“This is bullshit!”

“Kid—”

“No! Xeno is not going to Mexico. This is not happening. It’s a death sentence. You know that, right?” Dax clamps his mouth shut, refusing to answer me, but I can see he thinks the same. “I will not lose him now. I won’t!”

“Kid, nothing you say will make him change his mind.”

“I don’t care. I’ll fucking tie him to a chair if I have to. He’s not doing this,” I exclaim, storming out of Dax’s bedroom and into the front room.

“What are you doing, Kid?” Dax asks as I sit down on the sofa.

“Waiting.”

“They’ll be hours at the very least. Maybe even days…”

“Then I’ll make myself comfortable,” I reply stubbornly, folding my arms across my chest.

Dax is wise enough not to argue with me. He knows as well as I do that I won’t back down.