Jenna Black - Dark Descendant

Playing with guns had appealed to my wild nature, and of course I thought of Dave as older and wiser. To tell the truth, I never even considered telling on him.

About a month later, Dave had some of his friends from school over. I was out shopping with Mrs. Garcia. Mr. Garcia was supposed to be keeping an eye on the boys, but they were old enough not to need constant supervision. He was comfortable sitting down in the living room and watching a baseball game while the boys played video games in Dave’s room.

Dave was now making a habit of sneaking into the gun safe. Wanting to impress his friends, he’d stuck a gun into his dresser drawer. I’m pretty sure he thought it wasn’t loaded, or that he’d fired all the bullets the last time he’d snuck it out for some target practice in the woods. One of his friends found out the hard way that there was one bullet left. The gun went off in Dave’s hand, and he’d have his friend’s death on his conscience for the rest of his life.

Dave told all in the aftermath, and when the Garcias found out I’d known about the gun, they couldn’t wait to get rid of me. They couldn’t find it in their hearts to be mad at Dave, their flesh and blood. So instead, they heaped all the blame on me. It was blame I’d never accepted, and my bitterness and anger when they packed me off was monumental.

I should have learned my lesson. No, the death hadn’t been my fault, and yes, it had been wrong of the Garcias to blame me. Even so, there’d been a life lesson I could have learned if only I’d opened my eyes to it. I wasn’t to blame for the death, but I could have prevented it.

Now that it was too late, I’d finally figured it out: I should have told Anderson the truth about Jamaal’s threats. But even the best hindsight couldn’t change the past.

I managed to dozefitfully through the darkest hours of the night, but was up and out of bed as soon as the sun peeked up over the horizon. I was tired, dejected, and on the verge of a headache, but I knew I wasn’t getting any more sleep. I ventured down to the kitchen and made a pot of coffee, then fixed myself two hearty mugs full and took them back upstairs to my suite. With the tribunal at nine, I knew the rest of Anderson’s clan would be getting up earlier than usual, and I didn’t want to run in to anyone.

If I’d thought I could avoid the tribunal, I’d have done it in a heartbeat. Pissed off as I was at Jamaal, I thought that having his eye put out and then having to live with the guilt of leaving Steph to Alexis’s tender mercies was punishment enough. He might still think I was a spy—Steph getting hurt proved that Konstantin was a bastard, but not that I wasn’t in league with him—but I seriously doubted Jamaal would make another unsanctioned attack against me.

I wasn’t really one of Anderson’s people, no matter what he claimed to Konstantin. And moving into the house hadn’t even saved Steph. There was no good reason for me to follow Anderson’s orders and attend the tribunal. Maybe I should have just packed my bags and gone home. But Jamaal was being punished on my behalf, so when nine o’clock rolled around, I headed for Anderson’s study.

Anderson had pulled in additional chairs from somewhere and pushed his usual furniture to the walls. Jamaal sat with his back to the wall on a metal folding chair, and the rest of the chairs were set up in a semicircle around him. In the center, directly facing Jamaal, was Anderson, his chair larger and more comfortable-looking than all the rest, looking almost like a throne. The others were all ranged around him, and there was only one empty seat, between Maggie and Blake. Apparently, I was the last to arrive.

Dragging my feet a bit, I made my way over to the empty seat. No one was talking, the tension in the room so thick I could almost feel it sliding against my skin.

Jamaal sat with his head bowed and his hands clasped in his lap, the picture of penitence. His eye was no longer bandaged, but it wasn’t finished healing yet, either. The flesh all around the socket was swollen and bruised, but the eye itself seemed to have regenerated. I breathed a little sigh of relief at that. Like I said, a bleeding heart.

“Where’s Steph?” I whispered to Blake as I took my seat. I didn’t like the idea of leaving her alone, although I supposed having her sit in on the tribunal wouldn’t be such a hot idea.

“Still sleeping,” he answered, his voice equally soft. “She took a Valium, so she’ll be out for a while.”

I wanted to ask where Steph had gotten a Valium—it didn’t seem like something the Liberi would have around—but just then Anderson called the tribunal to order. He asked me to tell everyone exactly what had happened last night, and I squirmed. Silly, perhaps, seeing as it was after the fact and everyone already knew, but I didn’t want to sit there and publicly rat Jamaal out. Guess I still wasn’t over my fear of being seen as a tattletale.

“Is that really necessary?” I asked. “We all know what happened.”

“It’s necessary,” Anderson said in a clipped voice that told me he didn’t appreciate his orders being questioned. Gone entirely was his usual, easygoing manner. This morning, he was all alpha-male leader, grim and intimidating.

I struggled to come up with a tactful way to explain the situation, but to my surprise, Jamaal put me out of my misery.

“I fucked up,” he said quietly. He raised his head and looked us squarely in the eye, one by one. It wasn’t a gesture of defiance, but one of accountability.

“I convinced myself Nikki was working for Konstantin, and I decided to teach her a lesson,” he continued. There was misery in his eyes, but his voice was flat as he recounted the facts. “I thought if I ambushed her at the auction, I’d have the time to do what I wanted without fear of being interrupted. I waited by her car, and when she came running into the parking lot, I jumped her. She tried to tell me Alexis had her sister, but I wouldn’t listen. I told myself she was lying again, and I wouldn’t let her leave. She managed to fight me off.” Was there a hint of approval in his voice when he said that? Hard to believe he’d approve of me taking out his eye.

“But my attack delayed her, and she was unable to get to her sister in time. Because of me, Alexis brutalized an innocent woman.” His voice wasn’t so flat anymore, and the words rasped out of his throat. “I have no excuse for anything I’ve done, and I’ll willingly take whatever punishment you think I deserve.”

A long, tense silence followed Jamaal’s speech. I glanced at the other Liberi , trying to be subtle as I read their faces. There were a couple of people—specifically, Maggie and Jack—who regarded Jamaal with expressions of sympathy. Logan and Leo looked neutral, like they didn’t care what happened to Jamaal one way or another. Blake was giving him a death glare, and Anderson looked cold and deadly.

“You’ve broken our trust,” Anderson said, and he sounded about as warm as an iceberg. “You disobeyed my direct orders, and you hurt someone who was under my protection. Pack your bags. I want you out by noon.”

Jamaal’s jaw dropped, and his face turned ashen gray. “No,” he whispered, not in refusal but in dismay. “Please.” He gripped the seat of his chair until his knuckles turned white, as if he were holding onto it for dear life. “Anything but that.”

My throat tightened in sympathy. Damn it, it was too easy for me to empathize with him! I’d been kicked out of too many homes in my life not to know the sickening lurch of it. And most of the homes I’d been kicked out of hadn’t really felt so much like homes to me as way stations. Jamaal might not have an easy rapport with the rest of Anderson’s people, and he definitely held himself a bit aloof, but this was truly his home.