Chapter 36: Chapter 36

Aries comes out of the bathroom with his damp hair split curtain-style in the middle, inky strands brushing over thick black brows.

His white towel is slung low beneath his hips, exposing his defined V line. He flows into his bedroom right across the hall to find his business phone ringing. He goes to it and answers.

“Rodríguez wants another sit down. Something about an interest increase.”

“And Jax?”

“He assumed you’d say that you don’t negotiate. But respectfully, Jax likes to pull stunts. I wanted to pass this up the chain.”

“Jax is right. I don’t negotiate. But I know why he’s nervous, he must’ve heard about our last shipment being intercepted by patrol.

“We have the situation contained, let him know that. He knows he has never lost an investment with us.”

“I’ll pass it on.”

“And what about my brother’s guard?”

“Daniel sent a team. They have eyes on him and the perimeter. He’s safe, boss.”

Only when he ends the call does he hear the commotion in the distance. He throws the phone on the bed and changes into something casual.

His only plan is to spend today with family regardless of the many things that demand his attention. With Jax running his operation and Danny supervising, he knows he doesn’t have to worry on that front. At least not for today.

He puts on his white sweatpants and sneakers.

The arguing only grows, voices booming behind his door. He darts to the dresser and yanks out the drawer.

He takes out the gun and checks the magazine to see a full chamber. He locks it back and tucks it in his waistband.

He goes for the door, taking his short-sleeved top and black hoodie with him before exiting his room, slipping them on in the passageway.

“Leave before he sees you,” he hears his grandmother beg.

“I need to know if my son is okay.”

“I told you because I thought you should know. Not for you to come. Aries does not want you here.”

Aries wavers at the sound of the masculine, orotund voice. The voice has changed, eroded by time, gravelly but still is enriched with buoyancy.

A voice that can make you believe in every word he speaks, even if you know it’s a lie.

Aries hangs back, sheltered by the dark corners of the interior, forever shrouded in a gloom because the house faces away from the sun.

“Where is he? Let me talk to him. He’s my son, too.”

“Did you forget that when you dumped them ~both~?”

“I—”

Unsettled by a presence, exuding both authority and danger, he squints at the shadowy, Titan-shouldered silhouette, darkness obscuring his face. His father’s chest inflates with many breaths bound in one.

Aries reveals himself, prowling forward like a predator toying with its prey that’s woefully surrounded. But it’s only him.

“Answer her question.” He steels his resolve, banishing his emotions. “Did you forget?”

His father swallows hard. He has changed. His hair is no longer black but silver fox. He sports a salt-and-pepper sartorial, Methuselah beard. And his jewel-like eyes are like island waters, a malachite green.

His imperious nose, his angular cheekbones curved down toward a flinty jaw like Aries’s. And it only arouses his anger at how their resemblance is so clear.

Aries’s father takes a moment to absorb the moment, scanning his son’s strength-honed physique. “How you have grown.”

Aries’s eyes skim over his royal blue, custom-tailored suit accessorized with a gold Rolex.

“How you haven’t.”

A cloud passes over his father’s eyes, dimming the light. “I just wanted to see if Calum was alright.”

“He’s fine,” he says in a way that can make ice shiver. “You can leave.”

“Aries, I just wanted to see my boys. I have a right—”

A short burst of laughter. He cuts himself off.

“A ~right~?” His glower heats up to a look that can melt steel. “You left that right with my dead mom after you left. I’m not mad. That would mean that I care. But you have no sons.”

“Charles,” a feminine voice calls out from the other side of the front door.

“Who’s that?”

His father’s face shutters close, his eyes cast to the ground, seeking refuge from his gaze.

Aries goes up to the door and swings it open.

A blonde and blue-eyed woman dazzles him with a flawless smile. Her outfit drips designer fabrics, her dress snug to her lean, hour-glass figure.

He looks beyond her at their car, a Mercedes-Maybach S-Class. But it’s not empty. A disgruntled teenage boy sits in the back seat, staring back at them.

“You must be Aries,” she says ecstatically, recognizing him immediately. “My, you are so handsome, just like your father.”

“You must be the whore he was bangin’.”

Her Barbie-girl smile vanishes.

He gives her one last, scornful once-over. “I’ve seen you before. Nice to see you finally went through puberty.”

Aries stands aside to glare back at his father.

“You…you are brave.” He fights against the chaos of his rage, quickly losing control.

“You bring one of your hoes to my house”—he points through the doorway at the car parked on the curbside—“and I’m guessing that little shit over there is our replacement.”

“He’s your half brother,” Charles booms, voice echoing with vim. “I wanted him to meet his brothers.”

Another laugh, longer and much more sinister. “You have one point two seconds to get out of my house.”

“Not until I see Calum. I will see my son.”

Aries’s derisive grin thins into a terse line.

“Aries,” Adeline warns, foreseeing havoc.

Aries whips out his gun and aims it at his father’s forehead. His young wife screams and runs off, heels clicking down the decrepit driveway back to the car. Charles’s trembling hands fly far above his head.

Adeline approaches Aries cautiously, trying to placate him and talk him down. But every word of reason falls on deaf ears. Violent thoughts pummeling any sense of calm and rationality.

“If you go near him, I’ll make your bastard son an orphan.”

Fear prickles him, drying his throat. “You wouldn’t. You wouldn’t kill your own father.”

Aries takes the gun off safety and moves close enough to press the barrel against his forehead.

“I have no father. Stay away from my brother. If you go behind my back, you won’t even get near his room. I have men watching him.”

Charles lets out a wobbling laugh. “Thugs, you mean. So it’s true, you have taken over for your grandfather. Asami told me—”

Aries frees a bestial sound and drives his father rearward until his back hits the wall.

“Keep my mom’s name out of your dirty mouth.” He brings the gun down to stab it beneath Charles’s chin, forcing his head up an inch.

“Ye, I took over. So you should know I don’t make threats. Go near Calum.” His expression shifts into something callous. “And I won’t even kill you. Nah, your plaything and yo boy will be the ones to bleed.”

Charles gawks in horror, terrified of his own son, horrified that he’s a monster of his own making.

“It’s my fault you’re like this,” he murmurs, thinking aloud. He holds his gaze tenaciously. “I know nothing I say can undo what I did. But I want to make it right.”

A wave of rage crashes through Aries. “The only reason you’re still breathing is because I don’t want my grandma to see what I’d do to you, if she wasn’t here. Leave, before even that won’t stop me.”

Fear flickers in Charles’s grass-green gaze. “~Aries~.”

A smirk cracks Aries’s stony facade.

“I don’t care what you did to me. But Calum.” His face warps into a dark and forbidding scowl. “He still has nightmares of our mother who overdosed in front of him.

“All because you left us with an unstable junkie. And you’re looking at me like I’m the monster?”

“I love you,” his father yells back, a single tear leaks from his eye. “I love you and Calum. What I did was irremediable. I turned my back on all of you and that is a shame I’ll carry to my last day.

“I’m not here for forgiveness. I’m here to make things right. I was an idiot, I was cruel, and I was selfish. But give me a chance to prove myself to you, my son.”

Aries goes quiet with cold fury, quavering from the rage rattling its cage.

“Please,” he begs. “I will do anything. I can’t change the past, but I can fix the future. I need you.”

~I needed you~, Aries’s mind screams.

“Get the fuck out.”

Charles yields and creeps to the side to stand in front of the doorway, keeping his hands up.

“I will always be your father. God knows you deserved a better one.” He glances back to watch his step, walking backward.

“I’ll be staying at the Four Seasons. I’m not leaving until you’re ready to talk to me. No matter how long, I’ll do whatever it takes.”

Once he’s out, Aries slams the door in his face. He drops against it, his forehead and his free hand planted on the surface before he pushes himself up. Too much rage coursing through him, volatile and mounting like pressure.

“Aries,” his grandmother breathes, not knowing where to begin.

He darts past her desperately, making his way to the connected garage. He bursts inside, rage blazing inside him, almost too painful to restrain.

He ignores his car and flings a fist at the concrete wall with a roar. The wall trembles at the impact. A crater forms around his fist, fragments littering the floor with tiny chipped blocks.

He pulls back, breathing deeply, staring at the wall freshly indented with a rough imprint of his knuckles.

He straightens up at the shuffling sound rushing to the garage. Aries turns away and dashes to the car, pretending to check something under the Durango.

The door swoops open. “Are you okay? What was that?”

He straightens up. “Nothing, let’s go see Calum.”

“Aries, I’m sorry. He was trying to get in touch with you before, for a while now. But when I told him about Calum, I didn’t think he would come.”

He doesn’t blame her. “Say nothing about it to him.”

***

“This is our billionth time doing it!”

“I’m sorry,” Aries says, picking his hand up again. “I’m focused. I’m here. Let’s do it.”

They go over their super-secret handshake again. Calum starts from the beginning and they go through a complex series of interlocking hand movements, ending with two beats on the heart and clasping their hands together.

Aries pulls him closer to peck his forehead.

“Hey, that’s not part of it.”

“Now it is,” he says, dropping his hand and moving back to return to his seat beside the bed.

Aries doesn’t even realize that he has fallen into a chasm of silence, his mind reeling over what happened.

Unable to get his words—his lies from out of his head, tormented by the echoes, images tattooed behind his eyes, his voice still running through him like rapids in a river.

“Aries!”

He snaps out of his daze, his mind climbing out of the pit.

“You’ve been weird since you got here,” Calum says bluntly. “More serious than usual. Is something wrong?”

Aries shakes his head, attempting a smile. “Only thing I’m worried about is where our food is at.”

Calum shakes his head with the same sense of broodiness. “That’s not it.”

He takes a measured breath. “What, are you a mind reader now?”

“I can only read yours. You always have the same look when something’s wrong.

“The last time I saw it was when we were eating dinner. And gran-gran was watching the news and…” Calum’s cheeks scrunch up in deep thought. “That girl came on the screen. You looked how you’re looking now.”

“I’m fine,” Aries says dryly. “Only thing on my mind is you.”

The door opens, unleashing an aroma. Grandma Adeline comes in with two full bags of takeaways from Calum’s favorite diner. She sets the bags on the table placed at the foot of the bed with a tantalizing smile.

“Dinner is served.”

***

Opal sits at her cluttered table, textbooks stacked on each other, study notes sprawling over the surface.

Her focus is fixed on her laptop she has been stealing back from her father’s study ever since her mother repossessed it from her.

It’s an old habit. Every time she feels like Opal is underperforming, Daiyu confiscates something near and dear to her and hides it in her father’s study.

But every night when everyone else is in a deep sleep, Opal is awake and alive. She works on her designs, a lot of her art drawing inspiration from introspection. And what she has seen in the other world.

Her phone shrieks. She jolts in fright. She didn’t even think to put it on mute because no one other than her family calls her. Opal grabs it and answers without looking just to silence it faster.

“Hello?”

“Opal.”

She can hear his despair-gripped voice, wrought with something sorrowful.

“Aries?” she says tenderly.

“I’ve been driving…not knowing where I’m going. I—I can’t think straight.”

He would never say it. But she knows what he’s asking. What he needs.

“Then come to me.”

She puts down her phone and detours to her closet to pluck off her cream woolen cardigan. Opal slips it on and tiptoes through the house even in socks.

She unlocks and opens the front door and breezes out, closing it softly behind her. Opal waits on the stoop for his arrival.

After twenty minutes, a black BMW cruises down the road and parks nearby. Aries exits, matching his car, his hood drawn as he makes his way to her.

Opal stands up, greeting him with a smile, but it falters when she sees him. His depthless eyes are like Stygian stones in the moonlight.

The only emotion Aries will happily express is his anger. Any other is forbidden like it is a sign of weakness. But now, not even he can conceal his anguish. At least not from her.

Opal’s response is resigned to silence. She doesn’t want him to feel like she’s pitying him because that’s how he would interpret it. Instead, she instructs him to take off his sneakers and motions him inside.

Once they enter and Opal locks the front door, she leads him to her bedroom and allows him inside first. Opal glances down the gloomy corridor. She enters and closes the door behind her.

Aries places his sneakers in a corner, staring at her unorganized table.

“I didn’t mean to bother you,” he mumbles. “Everyone is asleep, but I thought you’d be up studying.”

“Wrong,” she says with a hint of amusement. “I wasn’t. At least today.”

“Then what were you doing?”

She doesn’t even hesitate to show him. Opal goes to her laptop and wakes the screen with a stroke of the touchpad.

Aries comes closer and settles down on the chair to inspect it. He scrolls through the collection of designs that look like professional illustrations.

“You did this?”

She hums a yes.

“This looks like it belongs to those studios that do anime mock-ups. You know, before they animate them and make it into TV series. It looks~ that~ good. How come you’ve never shown this to us?”

She shrugs. “Never showed it to anyone because it’s just…a hobby.”

“Playing golf is a hobby. This is talent.” He swivels on the chair to face her, manspreading.

“You out here doubtin’ yourself, but you had this gift all this time? Only adding to your many talents. Why don’t you do something with it and post them online? The world deserves to see this.”

Opal wanders back. “Maybe one day. But we’re not here to talk about me.”

She plops down on the foot of her bed, setting him with an analytical stare. “What happened?”

His gaze sinks to his lap, his jaw tightening as if gripping onto the words.

“If you don’t want to talk, fine. I will.” She blows out a burdened breath. “I recently found out that my sister is sick.”

Aries lugs up his gaze to look back at her.

She nods steadily. “Ya. I know. I’m here picking fights with my sister when she’s been trying to tell me she’s dying.”

She smiles sadly, the black pearls of her eyes sparkling with fresh tears.

“All this time, I’ve been pushing her away, wasting time—wasting years. Aries, I’ve hated her for so long, I didn’t even know how to stop. Now…nothing else matters.”

Aries rises from his seat and saunters to her, moving to tower over her.

“What are you doing?”

“Come here.”

She tries to push him away, but he doesn’t budge. Not even an inch.

“You don’t want my pity. And I definitely don’t want yours.”

Aries lowers himself to his knees, looking up at her earnestly. Something about the potent look in his eyes wrings out the last of her tears.

She falls forward and he captures her in his embrace. Opal rests her head on his shoulder, arms wrapped around his neck. Her pulse drums beneath her skin, hoping he will not hear how loud and how hard it beats.

She pulls away just by a hair’s breadth. Infinitesimally close, they share breaths. Her eyes stray to his plump lips, beckoning a taste.

“Don’t.” A hoarse whisper. “Don’t do it.”

His breathing is labored. She shifts closer to graze her nose against his, relishing in the way his throat works at the intoxicating proximity, only provoking him further.

“Opal,” he breathes her name with regret, warning and devastating desire cascading through a single utterance. “You can’t. Not with me.”

“I didn’t say anything,” she whispers sensually.

“Your body is saying it for you.”

Her eyes glitter dangerously, and she shoots forward. Aries falls back to evade, landing on the carpeted floor, using his arms as pillars behind him.

Opal crawls between his legs, only coming closer, forcing him even lower until his entire back is pinned flat with her hands on either side of his head.

His breath catches in his throat, his eyes exploring her length.

“What is it you want?”

“What I want doesn’t matter.” His eyes trace over features longingly. “No matter how bad I want it. In my world, loved ones are a liability.”

Opal’s breaths stutter. She hoists herself straight so fast, she fumbles but leans her back against the foot of her bed.

Aries peels his back off the floor, elongating his spine and bending his knee to rest his wrist on it.

“It didn’t stop your grandfather,” she argues.

“He was foolish,” he says, voice cured in frost. “Calum broke his leg, and my first thought was this payback for a hit I did with my crew? It wasn’t. But it could’ve been.”

Opal tries to control something that’s uncontrollable. “Have you…killed someone before?”

His expression wavers, then a cold mask falls into place.

His silence is a reply on its own. Then, he speaks.

“When I was young, younger than Calum, my grandfather took me to this basement with a man strapped to a chair and his goons around him. All he told me was that men who did bad things were to be punished badly.”

Her eyes flick up to his stony stare, expertly evicting the warmth that had existed.

“He held me in a headlock and forced me to watch his men beat the man to death.

“A few years later, there was another man in his place. A traitor. My grandfather made me kill him execution-style, one shot to the back of his head. It wasn’t cruel. It was a lesson.”

The pit of her stomach falls away.

“You asked me once to show all the parts of myself. If I did, you would hate me.”