The Lonely Hearts Club

Chapter 70: The Meeting (Hades)

I still haven't recovered since last night.

I'm pathetic, I know.

I've lost my edge for real now and I don't think there's any turning back.

I woke up this morning to Bree soaking my bloodied hands in water and gently easing away the grime with a towel.

When I call her angel, this is what I mean. No one else would do that for me. Fuck, I don't even do that for me.

We fell asleep together, watching that shitty horror movie with the couple and ghosts. I had shit dreams about everything and my back fucking hurts, but I can't be focused on that. No, I need to be focused on trying to lower my heart rate.

Bree's calm, I'm not. That's not how it should be, I should be the one consoling her after what she saw, not the other way around.

"Thank you for coming everyone!" Lana says cheerily.

It's not like we had a fucking choice.

Meetings are always at Malice, but last minute, Lana decided to run it in her and Joey's apartment living room considering we were all in the same building and on the same floor.

Their apartment here is very different to their main house.

All the pictures on the walls are of random actors pretending to be a family including a mother, father, daughter, and son, all people who look nothing like Joey or Lana.

There are stuffed toys on the floor of perfectly designed bedrooms, newspapers on the coffee table that Joey buys every week to use as a prop, and just the right amount of clutter to make it seem like people live here.

You see Joey is paranoid. He has it like this so if anyone breaks in, they won't know it's his and Lana's apartment, and instead will think it's just an average family.

Not that anyone could break in, the place is locked down like a fortress.

"So, Bree, obviously last night you saw an interesting situation," Lana laughs nervously even though nothing about it was funny.

"I wanted to say something about—" Nicks begins, and I still can't even look at him.

"Shut the fuck up," Joey snaps. "Don't interrupt Lana."

"Basically Bree can choose to join our organization or leave and never come back," she continues breezily. "Have you by any chance decided yet?"

What the fuck? I didn't know this.

When was this the plan? I hate both of those options.

Cold horror washes over me, what if she decides on the second option? I won't be able to deal with that, she won't be able to deal with that.

Joey is psychotic, he'd never, ever let her just leave like that knowing—

"I'll join," Bree says.

"Yay!" Savvy claps excitedly like Bree just said she was going to her birthday party and not signing her life away to corruption.

"Good choice." Joey praises and it takes me a little by surprise before I realize my initial thoughts were correct.

"Very good choice." Lana nods.

"Because, if you chose to leave, considering the immense security risk, we would have had to kill you—"

"Joseph!" Lana gasps. 

As much as it pisses me off that Joey keeps talking about killing Bree, I'm not surprised by it.  Lana may have given Bree that running away option, but it was never genuine.