by Sybil Bartel
Copyright © 2020 by Sybil Bartel
Cover art by: CT Cover Creations
Cover photo by: Wander Aguiar
Cover Model: Kaz van der Waard
Edited by: Hot Tree Editing
Formatting by: Champagne Book Design
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.
Warning: This book contains offensive language, alpha males and graphic sexual situations that may be disturbing to some readers. Mature audiences only. 18+
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Books by Sybil Bartel
Hard Truth
Dedication
Epigraph
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Epilogue
Shameless
Heartless
Scandalous
Merciless
Reckless
Ruthless
Fearless
Callous
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Books by Sybil Bartel
The Alpha Antihero Series
HARD LIMIT
HARD JUSTICE
HARD SIN
HARD TRUTH
The Uncompromising Series
TALON
NEIL
ANDRÉ
BENNETT
CALLAN
The Alpha Bodyguard Series
SCANDALOUS
MERCILESS
RECKLESS
RUTHLESS
FEARLESS
CALLOUS
RELENTLESS
SHAMELESS
HEARTLESS
The Alpha Escort Series
THRUST
ROUGH
GRIND
The Unchecked Series
IMPOSSIBLE PROMISE
IMPOSSIBLE CHOICE
IMPOSSIBLE END
The Rock Harder Series
NO APOLOGIES
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HARD TRUTH
I couldn’t escape the hard sins of my past.
I couldn’t unsee the truths in my mistakes.
Every breath she took was a reminder of the pain I’d caused.
Growing up at the mercy of a madman, I swore I would never give anyone that kind of power over me again. But here I was, on my knees, begging for a life I lost.
Except no amount of forgiveness would bring it back.
*HARD TRUTH is the fourth book in the Alpha Antihero Series, and it is not a standalone story.
The Alpha Antihero Series:
HARD LIMIT
HARD JUSTICE
HARD SIN
HARD TRUTH
For Mom and Dad.
“Candle was earth. Dark and dirty between your hands, he rubbed across your skin and left marks as his scent soaked into you like a memory. You smelled him after every rain, and you felt him every time you fell. He’d cradle you if you needed to lie down in the woods, but he’d never lift you up to touch the stars.”
—Kendall, from ANDRÉ
On his knees, with André Luna’s arm around his neck and another guy holding a gun to his temple, Tarquin yanked his shirtsleeve up and held his arm out. “What did you say to me in the swamp?” he demanded.
My hand over my mouth, my heart was being ripped from my chest. Tears streamed down my face, but I didn’t answer him. I couldn’t. I knew what he wanted me to say. I remembered exactly what I’d said to him as we sat on that filthy public bathroom floor in the old hunting preserve.
I’d kissed his cheek and told him to stay true.
He’d told me he’d give me his honor and strength.
But that was seven years ago.
“What did you fucking say to me?” Tarquin roared, bringing me back to the heart-crushing present as he jammed his finger against two words boldly tattooed on his upper arm. “You told me to stay true.” His voice cracked. “You said stay true.”
Every single part of me fractured.
Urging me toward the front door, Talon spoke quietly in my ear. “It’s gonna be okay, darlin’.”
I cried harder.
Nothing was ever gonna be okay.
“I stayed true, goddamn it!” Throwing Luna off, ignoring the gun pressed to his head, Tarquin shoved to his feet and surged toward us. “I fucking stayed true.”
Turning away from the only man I’d ever loved, I choked on grief and regret and so much pain I couldn’t breathe.
“Keep movin’, darlin’.” Talon opened the front door. “Keep movin’.”
“Shaila!” Tarquin yelled.
Rushing me out of the house and toward a black truck, Talon glanced over his shoulder as he opened the passenger door. “Hop in.”
My knees buckling, my chest hurting, no air coming into my lungs, I no longer knew if I was doing the right thing.
“Come on, darlin’,” Talon urged. “If you want to do this, we gotta go now.”
I didn’t want to do this.
I didn’t want to do any part of this. It hurt more than the past seven years, and I didn’t know how I was going to survive. But what had been going on in that house wasn’t living either, and I couldn’t put us through that anymore.
My choices stripped from me for seven years, I stepped up on the running board of the truck.
“Shaila!”
“Up you go.” Talon shoved me in and slammed the door.
The sob wrenched from my chest.
Talon got behind the wheel, cranked the engine, and threw the full-sized truck in reverse as cold AC blasted me in the face.
I didn’t cry. I completely shattered.
&nb
sp; Backing out of the driveway too fast, Talon spared me a glance. “Hard part’s over.”
The hard part was only beginning.
I swiped at my face and tried to stop the horrible crushing panic robbing my breath, but I couldn’t fucking breathe. Rocking and holding my stomach as the image of Tarquin’s anguished face replayed over and over in my head, another soul-crushing sob escaped, and I started to shiver.
A hand landed on my shoulder. “Darlin’.”
I flinched. “I-I-I’m good.” My hands curling in, my breath coming shorter and shorter, it felt like I was going to die.
“Shaila,” Talon snapped.
Oh God. I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t feel this kind of pain and survive. Oh God, oh God, oh God.
The truck jerked to the side of the road, Talon threw it in park and rummaged behind the seat. A second later a horrible-smelling fast food paper sack was shoved in front of my face. “You’re hyperventilatin’.” Talon cupped the back of my head. “Inhale.”
Short breaths hammering my lungs, my hands like claws, I couldn’t inhale.
“Inhale,” Talon barked.
I tried to breathe in.
“Again,” he commanded.
Tears running down my face, my sobs fighting my lungs for air, I breathed in again.
“That’s it,” Talon clipped. “Keep goin’.”
I breathed into the dirty paper sack, over and over, and my hands slowly uncurled, but every other part of me broke.
A minute, a lifetime later, Talon took the bag away from my face, and moved his hand to my shoulder. “Keep breathin’, nice and slow.”
Air was coming in now, and I was no longer sobbing, but the tears, they kept falling. “Please,” I uselessly pleaded. “Tell me how long this hurt is gonna last, because it’s too much.”
He dropped his hand. “I can’t tell you that.”
My breath hitched with another cry. “How do people survive this?”
“Keep breathin’, nice and slow, one breath at a time.”
“I’m tryin’.” Shit, I was trying.
“Keep goin’. That’s how you do it, darlin’. One breath at a time. Then one day at a time. The next thing you know, you’re not thinkin’ about the hurt every wakin’ moment of your life.”
I glanced at him. “You sound like you lost someone.”
His nod was short and clipped. “I did, once.”
“I’m sorry.” I didn’t wish this kind of pain on anyone.
“It was a long time ago.”
Swiping my face, desperately trying to shove all my feelings down, I rubbed at my chest. “What did you do?”
“Same thing you’re doin’ now,” he reassured. “One moment at a time.”
“I don’t know if I did the right thing,” I admitted in a tearful whisper.
After coming all this way to rescue me, he didn’t hesitate in giving me the choice to undo it all. “Do you want to go back?”
Yes, a million times yes, but I knew it wasn’t the answer. “I can’t. Not now.”
Turning in his seat, Talon studied me a moment. “You want my take?”
Giving up on trying to stop the tears, I wrapped my arms around myself and shrugged.
He took it as assent. “I walked into the middle of a Candle shitstorm a week ago. He was pissed off at the world, on edge, and lookin’ about as out of sorts as I’ve ever seen any man, which is sayin’ somethin’, because I’ve never seen Scott that fucked up.”
I shivered, from the cold AC, from the pain in my heart. “How do you know him?”
“I’ve crossed paths with him over the years.” Talon reached over and turned down the air-conditioning. “He’s always been on the edge, but last week was elevated. Now it’s six days later, and I’m not seein’ how he’s come down any.” Talon eyed me. “I’m not sure it was safe for you to be there, darlin’.”
The air around me warmed up, but I rubbed my arms against a chill I couldn’t fight. “He’d never hurt me.” Not physically.
“I’m gonna keep my opinion to myself on that particular matter, but I am goin’ to give you advice about what I just saw.” As if making sure I was listening, he paused. Then he gave me his own brand of wisdom. “You need to give him time to cool off.”
More tears slid down my face.
“I’ve said my piece, darlin’.” Talon threw the truck in gear and pulled back out on the road. “Just give him time.”
We couldn’t go back in time. That was the problem. “There’s no fixin’ what he’s upset about.” Why did Tarquin have to ink himself with my words? Nothing would change what he saw in the clubhouse, and nothing would undo what I’d recklessly told him about Daddy blackmailing me. I couldn’t undo any of this, and that hurt worse than not knowing all those years why he hadn’t come for me.
“I don’t know ’bout that, darlin’,” Talon disagreed. “Time has a way of healin’ all wounds. One way or another.”
“It’s the or another part I’m worried ’bout. What if me and Tarquin can’t ever find our way back to each other?”
“Can’t never could.” Using the same words my nana used to say before she died when I was a little girl, Talon laid the saying in my lap as if it were an absolute.
“Haven’t heard that in awhile.” Only a Southerner would use that phrase. “Where you from?” Not that it mattered, but I was grasping at anything to distract me.
“Here and there,” he answered noncommittally.
Trying to force myself not to think about Tarquin, I told Talon about my nana. “My grandma was from Mississippi. She used to say that to me when I was little. I miss her more than I miss my own mama. If she were here now, she’d probably scold me for bein’ rash with my emotions right before she offered up another of her sayin’s meant to comfort.”
“Sounds like she was a good woman.”
“She was.”
“So tell me, Shaila Hawkins.” Talon spared me a glance as he drove twice the speed limit. “What’s our destination?”
I shoved every single minute of leaving Tarquin down deep and swiped at my face. If I’d survived the past seven years and detox, then I could certainly pull my sorry self together and figure out my next step.
Inhaling past the grief lodged in my chest, I garnered what little courage I had left. “I’d appreciate it if you could spare me a few twenties and drop me at the nearest cheap motel.” One night to just… learn how to breathe without an Army Ranger biker in front of me, and tomorrow would be a new day. I’d worry about the how of it then.
With only one hand on the wheel and driving too damn fast, Talon frowned as he rubbed his chin, but he didn’t say nothing.
“Okay, forget the twenties. Just a motel then.” I’d figure something out. I hoped.
“It’s not the money I’m worried ’bout, darlin’.”
It hit me like a slap across the face. It was exactly about the twenties. “With all due respect, because I appreciate the rescue more than you know, but I’m not lookin’ for a lecture on drug addiction. I been clean a week, and I ain’t goin’ back down that road. Not ever again.” Not if I had anything to say about it.
“Good to hear.” Talon nodded once.
I waited for him to say more, but he just kept driving like Satan was on our tail.
“Fine.” I pulled my legs up, realizing belatedly that I still didn’t have any shoes, not even a pair of flip-flops. Desperate to stop seeing the image of Tarquin’s face as I walked out, trying not to think for one single second about the two words tattooed in big fancy block letters on his arm, I stared out the window at the flashes of ocean between houses and condos. “Go wherever you’re goin’. I’ll figure somethin’ out.” I’d sleep on the beach if I had to.
“How much did you know ’bout Hawkins?” Talon asked abruptly.
My stomach churning, my chest caving in, my life too goddamn full of shit to play games, I laid it out. “I don’t do vague. You got somethin’ to say, say it. You wanna know what kinda piece
of shit my daddy was, you’re lookin’ at the hard evidence. I didn’t become addicted to pills all on my own. He force-fed ’em to me like candy until I couldn’t say no, didn’t even want to say no.”
Taking his eyes off the road for way too long, Talon eyed me.
“I’m not what you should be lookin’ at when you’re doin’ sixty in a thirty-five zone.” Sweet mercy, he needed to pay attention to his driving.
He focused back on the road, but he didn’t slow down. “You ever hear ’bout him havin’ other kids?”
“No, but I wouldn’t be surprised.” Daddy had never been a one-woman kind of man.
He took a corner like we were on the racetrack. “So you never met anyone?”
“Can you slow down?” He drove like shit. “And no, I never met any other unfortunate soul saddled with a murderer for a daddy except Tarquin Scott, and we all know how that turned out.”
“Hmm.”
“Quit beatin’ around the bush and say what you gotta say.” If he didn’t want to help me past this ride, so be it. I didn’t need him or anyone else.
Narrowly missing another car, Talon slammed on the brakes.
Thrown against my seat belt, my grief made a grab for anger, and I lashed out. “Jesus fuckin’ Christ.” I looked behind us to make sure no one was about to barrel the hell into our back end. “What the hell are you doin’? You can’t drive like you own the road with traffic crawlin’ all around us. Slow down!”
Stopping at the red light he’d slammed on the brakes for, he stared at me. But he didn’t just stare. He looked a little like he was gonna be sick.
Alarm spread. “What?”
He inhaled quickly, then spit words out. “You had a half brother.”
Every beat of my heart since I’d walked out of that little house on the beach was an agonizing reminder of what I’d left behind. But five random words strung together in a particular order and Talon managed for one elusive moment to make me forget about Tarquin Scott.
My heart racing, my bones aching, I didn’t know how I felt. All I knew was Talon didn’t say I have a brother. He said something that meant a whole other thing. He said had.