by Lana Grayson
“Martini says her cousin is very good at cleaning up messes.”
Lyn snorted. “I hope he’s got a big enough broom.”
She nodded to the screen. Rose’s song ended, but it wasn’t Thorne who hopped onto the stage to take the microphone.
It was Blade.
And he forced an arm over her shoulders, dragged her close, and greeted the club with a wide, Cheshire grin.
“Son of a bitch,” I said.
Lyn was already out the door. I followed, racing through the darkened hallways and avoiding eye-contact with friends I grew up with. They ignored me, too enamored by the girls with their hands down their pants to realize a dead man lurked within their ranks and plotted murder.
“Friends!” Blade held his beer to the crowd. More than a drop spilled on Rose. She ducked away, but he held firm on her arm. “Brothers! It’s good to be home.”
Anathema cheered—fifty brothers who had no idea what Blade Darnell considered home.
He took a swig of his beer before passing it to Rose. She held onto it, like she always did when he hauled her to the clubhouse and kept her around for whatever perversion he planned. Within seconds, Rose transformed from a beautiful and healing woman into the freckled, timid little girl living in lies.
“I’ve been sitting in that cell for three goddamned years,” Blade said. “Just waiting for the day to stand with my brothers and wear my cut again.”
More cheers. Thorne seethed near the stage, his attention focused only on Rose. She soothed him with a tiny wave.
Neither of us could do a goddamned thing to help her.
“Gotta say boys, I never thought I’d have a chance to hold my little girl again.” Blade didn’t hug. He trapped. Rose stiffened. “Nothing is more important to me than my family. I have one remaining son and my beautiful Rosie-Bud. And I lost too much time. Look at her! All grown up into a woman now!” His attention smothered her as the brothers gently cat-called her. His voice lowered. “We have a lot of catching up to do.”
The club clapped. Keep paced below the stage, finally subdued by Thorne’s punch to his side. He didn’t collapse, but the pain distracted him from fucking everything up.
Blade raised his hands. “I got a request. Let’s get a nice song playing. It’s about time I had a dance with my daughter.”
Lyn grabbed me before the gun aimed. I blinked away the blurred rage as Rose took the microphone and unstrapped the guitar with a deliberate slowness. She passed it down to Thorne. The neck broke in his grip.
She straightened, but not before she kicked Blade’s beer off-stage. She apologized and signaled to Martini to make another drink.
My fucking pride and joy saved the day, getting the drugs into Blade herself.
Rose faced Anathema, the spotlight, and my father’s fingers pressing against her hip.
And she smiled.
“Hey guys.” Anathema’s new queen earned a cheer just for looking cute and acknowledging the brothers Thorne ruled. “I hope no one minds if I say a few words? After all, this is a time for celebration.”
The applause gave her enough time to slip a nod to Thorne and Keep. She straightened, but she didn’t push my father away, even as he crushed her against his side.
“Anathema has been torn apart for too long,” she said. “This is our chance to unite it once more. We were fractured. We were frightened. But now, we’re whole again. Families reunited. Past sins forgotten.” Her words laced with an innocent sweetness. She took Blade’s hand. “I propose a toast.”
“Oh, good girl.” Lyn cheered with the rest of the men.
A surge of adrenaline washed through me, combating a poisonous frustration that bound me in the shadows until my vengeance came. Martini ducked through the crowds and danced her way to the stage. She offered them a tray with two beers, but she forced one into Rose’s hand. The other she let pass to Blade.
Keep hauled Martini into the mass of men crowding the stage before Blade got too good a look at her. He guarded her to the bar and patted her ass as she skipped behind the counter.
The asshole pressed his luck.
“To Blade.” Rose lifted her beer. Blade gave her a lecherous look. “To Anathema’s loyal Vice-President and…the man who raised me. Enjoy your newfound freedom. Welcome home.”
Rose took only a sip of her beer.
Blade chugged his to the cheers of the men and women celebrating his tangled, deceitful life.
I might have neglected Rose while she grew up in silent anguish, but she never once let me down. Now was my chance to prove myself to her. I’d protect her like I should have done years ago.
Blade helped her from the stage, deliberately holding her hips too close as Thorne simmered a few helpless feet from them. The dance floor cleared and the song shifted from sensual R&B to a classic ballad. He pulled her into his embrace.
He’d regret that.
“Cut the music,” I said to Lyn. “Get her out of there.”
“Brew.”
The jagged panic in her voice stilled my heart. Lyn dug her nails into my arm before I turned to wait in the office. She didn’t have to stop the music. Thorne yanked Rose away from Blade and forced her behind him as Sorceress’s door slammed shut. The thud of the door resonated like a punch to the face.
Anathema’s brothers spread out, offering the uninvited intruder a clear path to his ultimate death.
Knight slowly tread within the club. His cut—with the false patch labeling him president of The Coup—cast off his shoulders. He tossed it over his arm. He didn’t bear a weapon. Instead, he handed a six-pack of beer to the nearest brother, as if Anathema’s traditional apology for crashing a party still applied to the man who tore the club in two and bore the responsibility for a bloody street war.
Lyn’s whisper scraped with a raw fear. “What the hell is Luke doing here?”
“Not on your guest list?”
She didn’t dignify me with a glance. “He’s not welcome here.”
“Like hell he’s not.”
Thorne greeted his wayward brother with a sneer and a dagger released from his belt.
“Private party,” Thorne said.
Knight studied the swarming men he once embraced as his brothers. His baby-blue eyes passed from Thorne to Blade.
“I was invited.”
“Doubt that.”
Blade clapped Thorne on the shoulder. “I told him to come.”
“Shit.” I whispered.
Lyn tensed, and, like a snake waiting to strike, she hissed. “Goddamned idiot.”
“This is a party.” Blade’s words slurred.
Martini did have too heavy of a hand. I crushed my jaw to silence my profanity. If he passed out on the floor, I wouldn’t get a chance at him. My hand gripped the gun in my vest. I was already dead once. No harm in taking the shot and earning the repercussions. Killing myself tasted a lot better knowing I’d have his blood to wash it down.
“Parties.” Blade held up a finger. “Weddings.” A second finger joined the first. “Funerals, births, graduations. Peaceful fucking times. That’s when you start to rebuild. When you start to talk. When you start to make peace.”
Peace?
Blade declared war in the middle of Sorceress, and Knight walked into his own funeral. Coincidentally, a great place to forge whatever bullshit alliance Blade proposed.
Knight held his arms out.
“Just paying my respects,” he said. “Not here to start a war.”
“Easy enough to end it right here.” Thorne pulled a gun. Blade knocked it away.
I braced for the gunfire that would ruin everything we planned, but Rose dove forward and seized Thorne’s arm before he started Anathema’s second revolution in the middle of Sorceress.
“Grab a beer!” Blade laughed, his words mucking together. “Fuck your stripper. Have fun for once, Luke, my boy!”
He spun reaching for Rose again. Thorne’s gun aimed, but it was Keep who swooped in and winked toward the restless crowd.
&
nbsp; “Christ, Dad. You’re already having too much fun.” Keep wrapped Blade’s arm over his shoulders. “Let’s get you some water so you can enjoy the rest of the party.”
Blade rubbed Keep’s shaved head and laughed. “And this from the junkie wasting my good name. At least Brew only traded the drugs.”
Lyn frowned. “I can’t trust you men to do anything right.”
She adjusted her vest, popping the top button and spilling the girls dangerously close to a thousand dollar show. She hopped onto the dance floor and called to the DJ to start the music again.
“My girls! On the bar!” She shimmied with a sexy grin for the entertainment of the bikers. “I want a shot of tequila from a slut’s belly button. Anyone else joining me?”
Martini whooped and thunked a bottle of Lyn’s most expensive brand on the bar. The men cheered as the dancers shed their vests. The men paired up with a partner and a slice of lime, and the club’s focus shifted from war to tits.
Keep hauled our father out of Sorceress, and Thorne edged past Knight with Rose before her tears revealed too much. Knight greeted her. She returned his smile with a cold silence, ignoring the man who got her kidnapped and nearly killed just three months ago. Knight sighed a sullen profanity.
The dark enveloped me as I snuck from the riotous party, back to the ninth circle of hell where I belonged with my father. Keep waited for me in the parking lot. His fist was bloody, and Dad’s nose crushed awkwardly to the side.
“Must have tripped.” Keep grunted as he helped me haul the limp body into the bed of the truck.
“Uneven gravel around here,” I said.
“Dangerous.”
I didn’t bother with the bungee cords. A little tossing around wouldn’t hurt the bastard any more than I planned. Keep tried to reassure me, but he squeezed my bad shoulder.
“You sure you don’t need help?” He strained over the words. He stayed sober for too long. For this. To help end it. “She’s…my family too.”
She was, but Rose wasn’t his responsibility.
She was mine. The betrayal. The exile. Rose’s past. The burdens fell to me.
This was a pleasure I wouldn’t share.
I didn’t bind my father’s hands.
I didn’t fear him. I wouldn’t mourn him.
He wouldn’t cower from his end, bound and broken. He’d look me in the eyes while I did it and taste the justice my bullet delivered.
Anathema’s Chapel was the closest I ever got to a holy place. It was a shrine where men ruled like gods and punished like demons. I sat him in his rightful chair as vice-president, a seat I admired when I was a kid and Dad ruled the road. Like everything else in life, I never looked hard enough to see the cracks.
The fortified room was built away from the warehouse’s main walls. It connected with its own separate utilities, protected with reinforced concrete and the aid of technology to detect wires and taps and other bullshit electronic surveillance that men used to infiltrate without earning the dirt and grime staining their souls.
We guarded everything Anathema with security and brute force and absolute devotion.
And we were destroyed by what lurked within.
“You gonna kill me now?” My father stared into the darkness.
“Yes.”
“In cold fucking blood?”
I didn’t bother sitting. We wouldn’t be there long. My gun rested on the table, aiming for his chest. I made sure he understood what it meant.
“What’s so cold about it?” I stared into his eyes. “You betrayed Anathema. You put a fifty thousand dollar bounty on your son’s head. You told Goliath where to find Martini.”
I leaned over him, my voice the raking sound of a scythe slicing through dead air.
“You raped my daughter.”
“Oh, so she’s your daughter now?” Blade laughed. “Is she calling you Daddy? Looking for piggy-back rides and money to go to the mall?”
“I trusted you with her.”
“All of this...” He waved a hand over the room. “All the secrecy, hauling me out of my fucking party, setting me up at Sorceress...all this is because of Bud? Are you that blind? Do you have any idea the chaos you’ll cause if you kill me?”
“Anathema survived our chaos. We thrive on it now.”
“Temple isn’t just chaos. It’s annihilation. Kill me, and no one will be left to protect Anathema.”
“Don’t pretend like you betrayed Anathema to save it.”
“What? Like you did?” He laughed. “Brew. Ain’t nothing selfless in this world, even your finger on the trigger. You want to kill me so you can avenge little Rosie, destroy the only remaining evidence of your fuck-up, and then sleep well at night.”
“I don’t care about myself.”
“Sure you do. You’re a Darnell. We come first. Always. In everything. In business. In the club. In relationships. I raised you to be smarter than this.”
“You raised me to be a monster.”
“If you’re gonna shoot, do it now, Point-fucking-blank so I don’t have to look at your worthless goddamned face anymore.”
He shouldn’t have goaded me. I grabbed the gun, but he rapped on the table with his knuckles.
“Do me a favor before I die. Ask yourself this, son: Are you killing me to satisfy poor, rough-fucked Rose, or are you killing me so Thorne will sit you back at this table?”
“Both.”
“You admit it?”
I nodded. “The only way I’m a part of Rose’s life is if I’m with Anathema again. And I don’t care if I have to rip Temple and The Coup apart limb-by-fucking-limb to prove my dedication. I’ll earn my spot back in Anathema, and I’ll be there for her again.”
“Doesn’t matter. Kill me, and your family will be murdered. Temple ordered the complete massacre of Kingdom and Sacrilege MC. All the men you met are dead, killed because you showed up to the wrong place at the wrong time.” Blade’s grin chilled me. “They’ll turn on Anathema next. They’ll do worse to Baby Rose Bud than I ever did. Are you willing to take that chance?”
“Are you ever gonna apologize for what you did?”
“Repentance? What good is it?” Blade leaned against the chair, extending his hands.
“You have no shame.”
“I fed her. Clothed her. Educated her. Ain’t my fault she’s sensitive.” He tested me, his eyes narrowing. “Lots of fond memories in that little pink bedroom, Brew. Where were you, son? You got out of jail when she was four. Didn’t see you around. You could have taken her. You could have raised her. You could have helped her.” He sneered. “Shame you never cared enough—”
The gun fired before I realized I drew it.
One bullet.
One second.
One fucking lie.
I dropped the weapon. My breathing didn’t come easier. I didn’t expect it to ever gentle. No major pain lifted. No guilt released me. No joyous celebration raged in my soul.
I was twenty-one years too late to save anyone.
But that didn’t mean I couldn’t start being the man she needed now.
I didn’t bother looking at the mess. My voice shot like another bullet.
“I cared.”
The party lasted well into the night without the guest of honor.
I made it out before anyone noticed Blade was missing. Anathema would figure it out soon enough, but we’d be on the run as soon as they started to search.
And then?
I hadn’t thought that far ahead.
The door locked behind me. I rested against it, releasing a breath I held all night. The jumble of panic and adrenaline hadn’t passed yet. I needed a drink. Maybe two. But the shot I took from Lyn’s bellybutton still buzzed in my head.
We’d done it. At least our parts of the plan.
The door to the bathroom was closed. Steam rolled from under it, and the shower pattered against the tiles. Brew returned, but I had no idea which man I’d find under the water. The road was kinder to him than he
was to himself, but the chains of guilt and loathing should have freed him.
In his exile, Noir protected himself from horrific memories and heartache with violence and consuming vengeance.
At home? The ink in his blood strengthened in the shadow of Anathema. Surrounded by his brothers and fueled with the power of his club, Brew was reborn. Stronger. Fiercer.
Honest.
I loved them both, but he still hated himself. That wasn’t something fists and bullets could fix.
That responsibility fell to me.
I slipped out of my clothes before I entered the bathroom. The heavy steam rolled in the hot water, and I breathed in the cleansing heat entangling my body in the swirling mist. The air thickened with warmth and teased with his scent.
He didn’t respond as I tip-toed into the shower. Brew faced the wall, arms flexed and bracing against the tile. The water trickled over him, tracing the thick lines of tattooed muscle that tensed under the heat. The tribal bands lashed against his shoulders and back in sweeping brands and haunting emblems. His actions and mind may have betrayed Anathema, but his flesh remained loyal, inked with every sworn vow and pledge of honor to his brothers.
His head lowered. His face was framed by dark hair that deserved its flecks of grey. Thirteen years separated us—a lifetime of bloodshed and violence, wrath and vengeance, and devoted, unconditional love. Years of mistakes. A day of redemption.
The water poured over his straining body, rampaging even in stillness. He flexed his fists against the wall. Let the shower scald him. Absorbed the sins of the club to right a wrong he took as his responsibility.
Now the deed was done.
And he looked as lost as ever.
I ducked under his arms, pressing my back against the tile where he stared. His eyes opened. The coiled smoke still smoldered within the heat and dampness of the shower. My skin flushed against the spray of the water, the delicate skin over my chest and belly pinking.
It wasn’t just the water.
My body flushed under the intensity of Brew’s gaze.
His stare seared with lusted hunger and desperate claiming. He feasted upon my offered nudity and traced my bared flesh with the path of his eyes.
A droplet of water formed over my chest, gently rolling along the goose-bumped swell of my breast. The water beaded on my stiffening nipple, nearly boiling where the tease of my skin tightened for him.