The Lonely Hearts Club

Chapter 42: A Fucking Disaster (Hades)

Working out at five in the morning is painful—especially after you spent all night watching movies and talking with Bree.

I don't want to be here.

I want to be with her.

"Does your little girlfriend know what you really do yet?" Nicks asks as I finish bench pressing.

"She's not my girlfriend."

"Sure," Angelo laughs from where he's sprawled on the ground, using the wall as a backrest. "Sure, keep living in denial."

"I'm not." I snap.

"Well whatever she is to you, you obviously like her a lot," Nicks says. "You spent all day with her yesterday and she's living with you."

Because she got a fucking bomb threat at her old place and is being stalked by a psycho.

Anyone would do the same thing I've done.

Nicks is swinging on the pull-up station like it's a monkey bars, staring at me with a challenging look in his eyes.

"You obviously spend a lot of time with her, so have you told her what you do yet?"

I don't want Bree to know.

Not yet.

She thinks I'm a security guard, that's enough.

"I told her I killed my dad." I say.

I also told her she was the only who knew I killed him.

But the thing is Joey and Nicks and everyone know everything about me, so they don't really count.

"What about all the other people?" He pushes. "You tell her about all of the other people you've killed?"

"I'm not doing this."

"You have to tell her, tell her Malice isn't just a bar, you tell her what it really is."

"Leave him alone," Angelo says. "I like Bree, I don't want her to be scared away."

"That's the problem," Nicks says. "She will be scared away when she finds out, which she will, whether that's sooner or later."

"Fuck off," I snap. "I'll tell her when I'm ready."

I'm never going to be ready, there are just some things I can't confess.

"Cause that's gonna go down real well," he clears his throat, preparing himself to mock me. "Yeah so I'm in charge of torturing people—"

"That's enough." Joey says sharply.

Alright, so maybe Malice isn't just a bar, but Bree doesn't have to know about any of this yet.

She doesn't need to.

Malice is a criminal organization founded by Joey and Lana and we're all part of it.

In other words, we're a gang.

I like to consider us the vigilantes of the underworld because what we do is good for the community.

We help bring justice to victims.

What's so wrong about that? Nothing.

People only have problems when they figure out how exactly we acquire information and get justice.

The methods are cruel and tortuous, but when officers of the law do nothing, people need to take matters into their own hands and we help them with that.

Sometimes, what we do to people, no matter how deserving it is, can be quite traumatic.

That's why we have Coco.