by Lana Grayson
“I wasn’t here,” Rose whispered. “No matter who asks, I wasn’t here.”
Lyn had been dancing. Her blonde hair swept into a pony-tail, and she tugged a thick sweat shirt over the black mini-skirt molded to her ass. She peeled Rose from her arm and glanced down the corridor toward the bar.
“Anyone see you come in?” She asked. Rose shook her head. “Go downstairs. Give me your keys. I’ll store your car. Need anything else?”
“I’m thirsty,” Rose said.
Fucking hell. She wasn’t thirsty. She was stalling. Lyn nodded.
“I’ll get the whiskey.”
Why didn’t we order some Chinese and have a picnic too?
I grunted for Brew to move and forced him down the stairs to Lyn’s storage room. The place looked like Keep organized it during a high. Boxes alphabetized by contents. Files tucked into cabinets. Costumes arranged and labeled. Meticulous. Not a place for a murder.
I shoved Brew into a chair and left his hands bound.
Rose sat on the stairs. She didn’t look at either of us.
I never lost control, but every second she curled on the stairs was another jolt to the heart. Shit was getting out of hand, but the solution wasn’t any clearer.
Brew wasn’t a stranger. Christ, I was more family to him than Rose. I nominated him to be my Sergeant at Arms. My muscle. A weapon I counted on, and a man who’d do anything for the club.
Anything.
I wasn’t a forgiving man. But even if I could forget his betrayal with Exorcist, Rose huddled against the wall. The backpack set at her feet. I couldn’t forgive anyone that placed her in danger.
Not even her big brother. The one who promised to protect her.
The one who needed to protect her from me.
Lyn returned after a minute. She guarded her steps on the stairs. Afraid of what she might find or afraid of what she’d witness. I left Brew bound in the chair. She tensed.
“Luke called already.” Lyn took a swig from the bottle before handing it to Rose. “I never saw you. What the hell have you done?”
“Nothing I can’t fix,” I said.
“There’s not enough whiskey in the world to fix this.” Lyn waved a hand toward the chaos that was my next ten minutes. “You want me to take the kid out of here?”
“Don’t you dare.” Rose was in no position to make demands. I let her pretend anyway. She knelt before Brew, offering the bottle. “Do you want a drink?”
Brew stared only at me. “Not sure it’ll do a lot of good, Bud.”
“Please?”
“I’m fine.”
The bottle shook in her hand. “Let me help. I…I can pour it for you.”
“Jesus Christ. Let me die with some dignity.”
She flinched. I debated taking a drink too, if only to down the bottle, shatter it, then slice my wrists on the glass. Lyn called to her.
“Let’s go,” she said. “You don’t want to be here for this.”
“I’m not leaving.”
“If you ever want out.” Lyn’s words cracked like a whip. “Then you’ll come with me right now. Leave this behind. Forget it.”
Rose’s eyes met mine. The gentle chestnut wasn’t the lethal bite of Lyn’s gaze. It didn’t poison with threat or lash with a strike. It just revealed the venom already there. The darkness. The desecrated shade of violence that might have reduced me to my knees and begged her for forgiveness if there was one shot in hell she’d offer it.
“There is no out for me,” she said. “Only dying, and I’d rather not do that today.”
The basement door flew open. The final Darnell stomped down the stairs, raging and ready to make his own equally bad decision.
I was starting to think their family didn’t survive on blood. Liquid mistakes surged through their veins.
I snapped the safety off my gun.
Only one way to find out.
I grabbed Rose, pinned her against my chest, and pointed the gun at her head. Her little fingers dug into my arm, but she stayed quiet. Lyn didn’t.
“Don’t be an idiot,” she groaned.
Keep slowed his steps. His pupils dilated, but it wasn’t a drug confusing him into choppy laughter.
“Yeah, right,” he said. “Maybe if you weren’t fucking her.”
Brew swore. Rose tugged harder at my arm. I snorted her apple sweet confusion from my head and let her go. My gun found a new target. Keep’s gaze followed it to his bound brother.
“That I’ll believe,” he said. He held his hands up and sat as I directed him. “What snapped in your fucking head?”
“Go upstairs, Lyn,” I said. “Consider next month’s payment received in full.”
“What a goddamned relief.” Lyn’s heels might have punctured holes in her stairs. “By all means then, carry the fuck on.”
The door slammed. Keep pulled Rose close. I lowered the gun, but I didn’t put it away.
“Show Keep what’s in the bag,” I said. “Then you can tell him what you’ve been up to.”
Rose didn’t answer. She pushed the bag into her brother’s lap and looked away. Keep whistled as he peeled the zipper.
“I’m a fucking junkie, and this is too much meth for anyone, let alone my goddamned sister.” Keep tossed the bag aside and stared at the gun in my hand. “What the hell is going on here?”
“Recognize it?” I asked.
“Recognize what?”
“I found the same drugs in your sock drawer,” Rose whispered.
Keep rubbed his face. His hand wove over his shaved head. “I had porn on my laptop. You go through that too?”
I didn’t like the way he talked to his sister. She didn’t like how I threatened her brothers. We were even.
“Where’d you get Temple’s meth?” I asked.
“Must have found it.”
“Found it.”
Keep shrugged. “All the junk is messing with my memory. I don’t remember.”
“Jesus Christ.” Brew tested the bindings on his wrists. He might have broken out of the wires with a bit of effort and blood, but neither of us wanted the mess or the panicked kid. “I gave him the drugs.”
“You did what?” Rose squealed. “I knew you were enabling him! How could you?”
Brew ground his jaw. “Bigger fucking picture, Bud.”
“He was able to score it for me,” Keep said. “Christ, if this is your idea of an intervention, I’ll take rehab instead.”
Brew lost his temper and swore again. “I’m running the drugs, you idiot. Temple and Exorcist made a deal. Temple is fighting with the Haitians. Lots of bad blood there. They were willing to distribute in the valley again, and I bought from them as a show of good-faith.” He stared his brother down. “They didn’t trust anyone but a Darnell.”
Keep slammed a hand on the stair. The threat of the gun parked him next to his sister.
“You betrayed Anathema,” I said. “And you got Rose involved.”
Brew frowned. “Rose wasn’t supposed to be there. Temple wanted me, but Ex wanted her. Ex got it in his head that someone neutral should be at the meet. He was just using her.”
I wanted nothing more than to fire the gun. “And now he’ll kill her.”
“Looks like it.”
Keep sobered up quick. He stared at Rose. “You got in this mess?”
Her voice lost the sweet tone and dropped to a terrified, breathy whisper. “Ex made me do it. I…told them I’d only give the bag to my brother. I didn’t…I thought…”
Keep stood. He looked from her then to me. His expression broke. Perfectly sober, like we ripped the drugs from his veins just to stuff it with glass instead.
“Holy fuck. You knew there was a rat.” His voice lowered. “You thought it was me.”
Rose sniffled. Like nails on a chalkboard. I didn’t want to add offending her brother to her list of horrors. The bill for a decent shrink when all this was done would bankrupt the club.
“I don’t believe this.” Keep’s ha
nds started shaking. He didn’t hide it. “Why the fuck are you working for Exorcist?”
Brew swore. “You think I’m doing favors for that cocksucker?”
He stood. I slammed him down into the chair. “Get your goddamned facts straight, Thorne. I got nothing to do with Exorcist.”
“Don’t lie in front of your little sister,” I said. “Sets a bad example.”
“I was making a deal with Temple. For Anathema!”
I didn’t like having a rat in my club. I didn’t like second-guessing my brothers and covering my steps like a damned pussy. But someone lying to me?
That was worth wasting a good bullet in a bad brain.
“Temple dealt with Dad back in the day,” Brew said. “But they don’t trust anyone else. They wanted into the valley, and Luke worked with me.”
Rose edged against the wall. “Luke?”
“He made the arrangement. We needed Temple to trust me enough to do the deal and get them the money. We planned a way to end this fucking war.”
“How?” My voice layered with all the violence my straining hands hadn’t delivered.
“Temple needed the money to get my father out of jail.”
“Oh, my God.” Rose paled. Keep grabbed her before she stumbled. “The fifty grand was for Dad?”
“They have a judge. Believe me, Temple wants Dad out of jail more than us.”
I doubted that.
Rose fought against Keep until he released her. She held herself. Rocked against the wall like she did on the picnic table. She didn’t get sick, but her face paled. Sickly. White.
I could practically imagine the bruises on her cheeks that once haunted her perfect skin.
“He can’t get out of jail,” she said. “He can’t.”
“Temple needs a little time and a lot of money.” Brew held my gaze. “Luke doesn’t like how you’re running things, but he knows Exorcist isn’t the right leader of The Coup or Anathema.”
“Great, he’s a fucking traitor to everyone.” My headache cast halos around Rose. Or maybe she just earned her own. Christ only knew, but I doubted he’d tell me while I aimed a gun at her brother. “So you wanted to give Luke and The Coup the drugs they’ll need to resell. Make a profit. Buy guns. Slaughter us all in our sleep.”
“Temple wants to deal with Blade Darnell. They don’t care what colors he wears, so long as it isn’t an orange jumpsuit.”
“And you went to Exorcist with this information?”
Brew narrowed his eyes. The gray in his hair fooled everyone. He was thirty-eight, had a couple years on me, but he wasn’t old yet. Just dangerous.
“If my father tells Temple MC that Exorcist is a liability, they won’t hesitate to take him out.” Brew spoke like he held the gun, but he hadn’t pulled the trigger. “You can’t take out Ex, Thorne. Not without starting a major fucking war. But Temple can. Get me the fuck out of this chair, give me the drugs, and I’ll fix this. Rose didn’t make any friends, but we can keep her safe.”
“Jesus Christ.” Keep started laughing. “I always knew you had the brains, Brew, but holy shit. Killing Ex and getting Dad out of prison. That’s goddamned brilliant.”
The gun weighed heavy in my hand. I swore and shoved it under my vest.
“This can’t work,” I said. “What if Luke turns on you?”
“Luke doesn’t want another war. He hates blood.”
“He’s weak.”
“He’s smart.” Brew tugged the bindings on his wrist. “You want Ex dead? Let me finish the deal, and I can get my father out of jail by the end of the month.”
Rose’s choked sob stole the air out of my lungs. She clutched her chest and gasped. I didn’t know if she wanted to scream or cry or reach for the knife tucked in Keep’s shoe and end it right there. She blinked through tears at Brew.
“He can’t get out of jail. Don’t you dare let him out of jail!”
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Brew asked.
“How could you!”
Brew looked at Keep. He shrugged. I wished I had the answers, but it wasn’t like anyone felt like sharing their secrets with me.
“I’m not a traitor, Rose,” Brew said. “I’m doing right by our family.”
“If that were true Dad would stay rotting in a cell.”
A gun hadn’t pissed off Brew. Neither had the wires cutting into his wrists or being hauled into a dingy basement that meant to serve as his coffin. But no one talked about Blade like that in front of Brew. Not even his baby sister.
“He’s our family,” Brew growled.
“He’s never been a father to me.”
“Since when?” The bindings snapped. Rose cried as Brew stood. I reached for my weapon. “Dad provided for you. Fed you. Clothed you. Yeah, he got in some legal trouble and we had to pull you from school, but Christ, Rose, how fucking selfish can you be? So you missed a few classes? Dad’s lost the last four years of his fucking life!”
Rose pushed away from Keep. She wiped her tears with the heel of her hand. More spilled.
“Are you that oblivious?” She asked. “Or do you just not care about me at all?”
“Of course I care about you! I fucking love you, Bud.”
“Then act like it! You’re supposed to be my big brother!” Her voice lowered. “But you never looked. You never stopped to talk. Neither of you ever put it together. You were too busy with Dad and Anathema to stop and think about what was happening to me.”
The realization hit me before her brothers.
“Oh fuck,” I whispered.
I didn’t know if she deliberately avoided my gaze or if she couldn’t break her attention from Brew. I had witnessed a lot of sick shit, but nothing turned my stomach or broke me down.
Until now.
Until the truth sucker-punched me in the gut and I could do absolutely fucking nothing to force that horror from my head.
Brew wasn’t the only one keeping secrets.
Difference was, Rose clung to hers for twenty-one years. Only now the truth scratched, clawed, kicked, and maimed its way out of her.
I had no idea if any of us could fit her bloodied and mangled pieces back together.
“I took care of you when Dad got put away,” Brew said. “Gave you money. Gave you a car. Came every time you needed me and then ran away with my tail tucked between my fucking legs when you flipped shit and pushed me out of your life. Don’t you bitch about me caring.”
“Then why are you letting him out of jail?” Rose yelled. “Why would you do that to me?”
“Because he’s our father.”
“You really don’t know?”
“Know what?”
She looked from Brew to Keep. I envied their blank expressions. That split-second of utter confusion and innocence that was robbed from Rose. She hesitantly met my gaze.
I braced myself, but I wasn’t made of stone. My flesh could be torn, my bones snapped and crushed. If I could have spared her the pain of her past, I’d have taken on every last torture she endured.
Her voice hollowed. Broken and flat.
“Dad abused me,” she whispered. “He raped me from my sixteenth birthday until the day before he was arrested.”
All the drugs in the bag wouldn’t have shielded Keep from the truth.
And only the bullet in my gun would have eased Brew’s shock.
Both men collapsed. Fell to their knees upon the stairs. My world rocked with them. Shattered and split and flung off into misery.
“Are you…” Keep didn’t look at her. “How…when?”
“He beat me as a kid.” Rose’s voice cleared, if only because her brothers cowered at her feet. “You remember that.”
“He beat us all,” Keep said. “He didn’t…”
“Molest you? Take pictures for his friends?” Rose swallowed. “Guess I was just lucky.”
“Bud—”
“Don’t call me that!” She backed away from Keep’s hand. “That was his nickname for me.”
&nbs
p; “Sorry.” Keep’s twitching turned violent. “I didn’t know…we didn’t know.”
“He only…he started…it was worse after Mom died. He said he was lonely.”
Brew made his first noise. A guttural profanity that didn’t sound human.
He raised his eyes to her.
He didn’t deserve to look at her face.
“You can’t let him out of jail,” she said. “You can’t.”
He exhaled. I doubted he wanted to take another breath. “Temple has the money. They won’t care what Dad did. They just want to sell.”
Keep sneered. “Then let Dad out. We’ll be waiting for him.”
They could play vigilante all they wanted. It wouldn’t give Rose her childhood back. It’d just make an even bigger headache. More blood.
“You kill Blade, and Temple comes after Anathema,” I said. “And they’re strong. Organized. Half my men are in jail or dead, and I’ve got a gun pointed at my Sergeant at Arms. We wouldn’t stand a chance.”
“So what?” Keep ground his teeth. “We just let him out?”
“We go to war with Temple, everyone dies. Including Rose.” The thought might have ended me right there. A blow to the head or a bullet to the chest didn’t hurt as much. “Let Temple have their money. We keep the drugs. Sell it ourselves. Make a profit, find some guns, and then deal with Blade once he’s out of jail.”
“Ex is looking for those drugs,” Brew said. “You keep that bag, and it’s the start of another war.”
Naivety didn’t win battles. But I didn’t expect to win. I expected to survive.
“We’re already at war.” The gun rested heavy in the holster. “This will be our last stand.”
Brew reached for Rose. She stiffened but didn’t pull away. He didn’t hesitate. She fell into his embrace, buried her head in his chest, and was lost under the shaking of her curls as her silent sobs wracked her entire body with a sorrow I’d commit to memory.
Every last painful shake, every mournful gasp for air, every shamed and humiliated and helpless shade of pink staining her skin with a blush that had no right to desecrate her beauty.
I hated it.
And that was why I’d remember it. That’s why I needed to remember it.
No one would ever hurt Rose again. Nothing would ever reduce her to shades of her memory and fears of her past. I’d go to war to prevent anything from harming her again.