by Marie James
“I want you to listen to me.” I jolt in his arms, startled that he’s still awake.
“Please don’t tell me goodbye,” I beg. I have no idea if that’s what he’s planning to say, but he has to know that leaving will destroy me.
“Things are volatile right now.”
“Tell me what’s going on.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Please,” I beg again. “Don’t say it.”
My shoulders tremble, sobs taking over my body.
“Baby,” he soothes, but even his attempt at calming me won’t work right now. “You asked me weeks ago if you were worth dying for.”
I cry even harder, the tears rushing down my face so fast I don’t even bother to wipe them away.
“You are, Molly. I’d die a thousand deaths to have you, to keep you safe.”
“I am safe.” If he starts in on that shit about hurting me again, I’ll lose my fucking mind.
“I’m not.”
The two words chill me to the bones.
“Lynch?”
“He’ll never allow it, and I can’t stay here and not have you.”
He is leaving. The determination in his voice is surer than the day he paced at the foot of my bed after kissing me in the hallway.
“We can run together.”
“No.”
“I can’t stay here without you.”
The threats of self-harm come to mind again, but I’d never do that to Briar, and as much as being without him will hurt me, I’d still never hurt myself.
“It’s not for forever.”
My body stills.
“I’ve got to get away, find someplace that’s safe for both of us. I’ll send for you,” he vows, and for a split second I almost believe him, but I know better.
He’s preparing me to wait forever, because the alternative, what’s really going to happen is unfathomable. He’s trying to spare me the grief.
“He’s going to kill you.” I fight his grip on me until I can turn in his arms. His eyes are squeezed tight, his lips a flat line even when I reach up to kiss him. “He’ll have to kill me, too.”
His eyes open, blue pools filled with resignation and pain staring back at me.
“I’m leaving.”
“You’d never leave the club. It’s your life.”
“You’re my life. I don’t need them if I have you.”
Even in his warm arms, cold seeps into my soul.
His words are blasphemous. If any Ravens Ruin member heard him speak those words, Lynch wouldn’t bat an eye before stringing him up in front of everyone for the betrayal. Even if there’s a good chance he’s made the same vow to Zoe, he’d never give anyone else the same allowance.
“He’ll kill you for that.”
He doesn’t flinch.
“He’ll kill me for what we’ve already done. Leaving tonight is our only chance. I’ll send for you.”
His lips brush my nose before he draws me in closer. I listen to his lies. I try to convince myself that things will be okay, that Lynch won’t send every member of the club after him when he rides away.
In the darkness with his arms holding me tight, I let sleep take over. Little do I know he’ll never even make it off the property.
Chapter 34
Briar
I lied to her last night, and I can’t help but feel guilty as I brush my lips against her cheek. Leaving her like this is the hardest thing I’ll ever do.
I expect the pain washing over me and the burn in my gut telling me to turn around and hold her just a few minutes longer.
What I don’t expect, is a fist to make contact with my face the second I step out of her room.
Well, that’s another lie. I knew this day would come, I’d just hoped for a little more time.
I don’t even fight them as they wordlessly fit a bag over my head. They don’t make threats. Intimidation and fear will come shortly. I already know how this day will end.
After they drag me down the stairs, the cool morning air engulfs me only for a minute before another set of stairs lead me to my fate. The dank basement always smells like bleach tinged with copper. The DEA would have a year’s worth of work if they ever came down here with their magic spray and a couple of black lights. So many people have died down here that they’d be hard pressed to separate each set of DNA left behind. Mine will only add to the problem.
I’m lifted, hands tied behind my back before the mask is removed.
“You don’t seem shocked, Brother.”
TJ’s cold, dead stare penetrates me as Lynch wraps his heavy rope around my neck.
“Aren’t you going to explain?” TJ asks.
“Will it make any difference?”
Lynch’s fists slam into my stomach, and it takes all I have not to teeter off of the wooden crate and end things before they even begin. The pain shooting through me makes me aware that the fist outside of Molly’s room was TJ’s. No one hits as hard as Lynch, and he’s got the fury of a man betrayed when he strikes me again on the chin.
“I told you she was off limits.”
TJ’s chuckle echoes around us when Lynch pulls back, giving me only a moment’s reprieve before hitting me again.
“How do I keep every man in the club from going after her if my own goddamned VP can’t keep his filthy hands off her?”
“Who told you?” I manage to sputter. It’s not that I need an explanation, I just need to make sure that Molly wasn’t the one who spilled the news. She may suspect what happened today after I’m gone, but I don’t want her to know for sure. If this little meeting is coming on the tail end of her confession to Lynch, they won’t be able to hide the truth.
“She’s used her fucking keycard more than once to go into your room.” Lynch hits me twice more.
My knees weaken making my boots wobble the crate under me. Stiffening, I try to stand taller. I know what’s coming, but giving up isn’t an option.
“She was in there over three hours the other night,” TJ adds as he pulls his knife from his belt. Even with only the single light hanging from the ceiling, it manages to seek and glint off the metal in his hands.
“Have you been inside my baby sister?” Lynch’s face distorts in disgust as he asks the question.
“S-she isn’t a baby,” I foolishly stammer.
The only blood I can smell now is my own as it clogs my nose, forcing me to take shallow breaths from my mouth.
Four hits in rapid succession, all of them to my ribs, are Lynch’s response.
“Have you been inside of my sister?” He growls each word slowly, and in my barely conscious state, I’m grateful he enunciates each one.
“I haven’t fucked her.”
His face twists up, shock at my truth clouding his eyes before he snarls again.
“I didn’t ask if you fucked her.” TJ stands a little taller on the other side of the room, and I know he’s chomping at the bit to get his turn. “Have you been inside of my sister?”
Silence surrounds us, the echo of nothing but my boots trying to hold on the only periodic sound.
“This will go a lot faster if you just fucking tell the truth,” TJ says in a bored tone, but I know better.
“I-I’ve been—She’s had her mouth on me.” Another hit to the face. “I’ve had my mouth on her.”
TJ winces, or at least I think he does. My left eye is swelling shut, and my right eye leaks with tears of regret for not holding her just a few more minutes, not kissing her again. I’m going to die today, and I’ll do it without knowing what she feels like from the inside.
Everything we shared was worth what I have coming, but the heartache I’m feeling from not being able to spend a lifetime with her will be an agony I’ll suffer forever in hell. I’m sure of it.
The pounding in my ears grows louder, and it isn’t until I hear TJ curse and look over his shoulder in the direction of the stairs that I realize someone is pounding on the door.
“Let me in!”
/> My strength is renewed at the plea in Molly’s voice, and even this close to death, I want to yell and tell her to stop, or she’ll hurt her hands. She shouldn’t suffer an ounce of pain because I couldn’t keep my greedy hands to myself.
“Why?” My eyes snap back to Lynch. “Why did you do this?”
I shake my head, but the rope scratching the tender skin of my neck is a brutal reminder that I don’t have much time.
“Please.”
“Don’t beg me now, Brother. Tell me why you went against a strict order.”
“Tell her I betrayed you.” His eyes widen in surprise. “Tell her I betrayed the club. Tell her I did something worse than l-love h-her.”
My last words come out on a sputter, the emotion too strong to hold it in any longer. Tears burn my injured eye, but the pain is nothing compared to the hollowness in my chest at the thought that she’ll blame herself. I’ll be gone without her knowing that even though she’s the one who came on to me, even though she’s the one who pushed me into action, it would’ve happened soon anyway. I was losing my mind with needing her, with loving her and not being able to tell her or show her how I felt.
I’ve been sick with it for the last year and a half. She never saw me outside her dorm or on campus the dozens of times I watched her. She’ll never know I drove two hours round trip just to watch her leave her building to walk to class. She’ll never know that my happy place, my wildest dream was to just be able to hold her, to kiss her lips at will. I had already given up on the idea of sex. I didn’t need that. I just needed her.
“Swear to me, Brother,” I beg with a cough because the rope is tighter now.
“Why don’t you want her to know the truth?”
Surely there isn’t pain in his voice, but the possibility that there is somehow makes this easier for me. This is nothing like what happened when we were forced to bring Zoe down here. I can’t deny I didn’t know. He’s warned me away from her at least a dozen times, and I didn’t listen. Unlike Zoe, I don’t have an ace in my pocket. I have no way to prove my loyalty when my actions have done nothing but prove otherwise.
“S-she begged me to tell you. I knew it would come to this if I d-did,” I pause, taking a long, painful breath. “I asked her who would love her if I’m gone, and now I know the answer. You will love her. TJ will love her. S-she’ll need you after this. T-tell her I b-betrayed the club.”
He stares at me and I know I’m only seconds away, but the pain in his eyes is evident now, and it kills me to know this will hurt him, too.
“You love her?”
I nod, and the morbid reminder of the rope makes itself known once again.
“And I love you, too, Brother.”
I don’t even think about it. I would change my mind if I did, but my hope and my time have run out.
“Tell her I betrayed the club,” I beg one last time before I step off of the crate.
The rope tightens on my neck, my breath cut off, and I know it’s the last one I’ll ever take. I can only hope that in my death, they give me one last gift, that my loyalty to the club over the last ten years is enough to protect her from the truth. Without them, she has no one.
“Well that was ballsy,” TJ chuckles.
I look up at him, gasping, but somehow crumpled on the floor rather than hanging from the steel beam running across the ceiling.
“You were testing me?” The question rushes out raspy and disjointed.
“Take care of her,” Lynch says close to my ear.
“Welcome to the family.” TJ’s words don’t match his actions when he pulls his boot back and nails me in the ribs.
I guess he’s not very happy that Lynch got all the action up until now.
Chapter 35
Molly
My throat burns, but it’s nothing compared to the pain in my hands.
When pounding on the door didn’t work, I switched to kicking it, but all that’s done is left me broken and crumpled against the unrelenting heavy wood.
I’m on my feet, eyes swollen from sobbing when the two men who’ve broken my heart open the basement door and walk out.
My sore fists meet Lynch’s chest first. Instinctively, I know he’s the one who carried out the threats.
“All he did was love me,” I wail as my oldest brother stands there and lets me rain my hatred down on him.
“He did more than that,” TJ mutters, drawing my ire in his direction. I’m able to get a hit to his face, and I watch with murderous glee as blood trickles from his nose. Unaffected, he licks it as it pools on his upper lip. “He claims you sucked his cock.”
My eyes widen, and even in my pain, I somehow manage to also be embarrassed.
“I’m not listening to this shit.” Lynch walks away without another word, and a second later, TJ follows.
My knees are weak, threatening to give up on me when I’m left alone, standing at the top of the stairs, unsure of what I’m about to face.
If I run, I can pretend nothing happened. If I walk away right now, I can do exactly what he was hoping for. I can imagine he’s away, looking for a place for us to call our own, and not have to face the truth of what actually happened in the basement.
He deserves better though. He’s earned a proper burial, not denial and the indignity of what the others may do.
Twice, I nearly trip on my way into the belly of the basement, but I’m statue still when his crumpled form comes into view. Frozen at the bottom of the stairs, I cover my mouth to keep from heaving on the floor.
The sight of the rope still around his neck is too much. He doesn’t deserve this. I did this to him. He warned me what would happen, but I was mistaken by thinking love would conquer all. I was wrong in believing my brother, especially after finding love himself, would understand what Briar and I felt for each other.
Scared to touch him, knowing confirmation will gut me, it takes a long moment before I step off the bottom stair and cross the room to his body.
“Baby?” A gasped whisper fills the room, and a rush of cold chills washes over me.
Looking around the room, my first foolish thought is that he’s now a ghost, his soul, loving me so much, isn’t able to find peace in the afterlife, but then his body rolls over, and dead men don’t move.
The brutality of my brothers’ vengeance is all over his face in the form of cuts and bruises, and I know it’s going to take days if not weeks for the swelling to go down in his eyes.
With my arms around him, I use my hands to search his torso for more injuries. Telling by the hissing air rushing past his clenched teeth, he’s hurt everywhere, but he’s alive, and right now, that’s all that matters.
“We need to get you out of here before they realize they didn’t kill you.” With futile effort, I try to lift him but he’s so heavy, I don’t even manage to budge his shoulder from the ground.
“I love you,” he gasps.
“Baby,” I whisper on a choked sob as my hands work over his body again.
He’s hurt somewhere I can’t see. He knows how this ends, but I’m grateful, even in my hatred and anger with the two men in my life that were never supposed to cause me this much pain, that they left him long enough so I could tell him goodbye.
“Where did TJ stab you?” The rope is all Lynch, but TJ isn’t one to walk away without getting a piece of someone himself. I’ve seen the two of them in action more often than not. Publicly displaying betrayal in front of the entire club as a deterrent to the others was always my father’s style. I watched a man die for the first time when I was four years old, and it happened regularly after that.
“Tell me you love me,” he begs. “Tell me you’re mine forever.”
“Forever,” I answer, hating that forever may only last a couple more breaths.
“I would trade spots with you,” I confess on another sob as I situate us so his head is resting in my lap. “I can’t do this without you. I won’t.”
I didn’t think I could hurt myself, but the idea do
esn’t seem so foreign right now. Something quick will be better than the slow, agonizing death I’ll suffer with him gone.
“I want your lips on my cock.”
“What?”
Looking down at him, both eyes are swollen shut, but a small smile tilts his lips up. “Not right now, because I’m sure I’ll be pissing blood for a month, but eventually.”
“You’re dying, and all you can think about is your dick?” I shake my head, thankful he’s acting exactly like himself. It’s the best goodbye he can give me. “Typical.”
His laugh is the most amazing sound, but then it turns into a gurgle and a wracking cough.
It seems like an endless wasted time before the coughing stops. Turning his head, grimacing from the pain, he spits blood on the floor before turning his face back to me.
“I’m not dying, baby. They weren’t trying to kill me.”
Even though it seems like it weighs a ton, he lifts his arm and cups my cheek with it.
“What the hell do you call it then?” I ask, letting myself believe him if only for a little while.
“They were giving us their blessing.” His smile grows wider, the split in his lip becoming worse. “Tell me you love me, and you’re mine for forever.”
“I love you.” Turning my head, I press my lips to his dirty palm. “I’m yours for forever.”
“Worth it,” he mutters before his arm drops, and he goes completely lax in my arms.
I don’t know how long I’m screaming for help, but my pleas are barely a whisper before I hear footsteps on the stairs.
“He finally told them, huh?” Ronan crouches beside me, looking down at the lifeless man on my lap with a smile on his face.
“You owe me a hundred dollars,” Chains says as he joins us.
“You both owe me five hundred each,” Professor says as he joins the fucking party like Briar unconscious in my arms is an everyday thing to them.
“Bullshit,” Ronan hisses.
“I said less than six months,” Chains qualifies. “It’s only been two and a half.”
“You both said he’d end up dead. Look.” Professor points at the slow, ragged inhalation barely registering on Briar’s chest. “Still alive.”