He crushed the can in his hand. The crackling echoed like snapping bones. “Thorne decided he’ll be the one to keep an eye on you.”
I dropped my purse. “Thorne?”
Keep nodded once.
“You can’t be serious.”
“Sorry, Bud.”
“But what does he want with me?”
Keep couldn’t meet my eye. “He said he’d keep you safe.”
“Why can’t you keep me safe?”
“That wasn’t his motion.”
“Oh, Christ, Keep.” I shifted away, nearly collapsing on the couch. “What’s he want in return for protecting me?”
Neither of my brothers spoke. The silence sizzled, broken only by my ruptured breathing.
“You wouldn’t let him,” I whispered. “If he tried, you wouldn’t let him. Right?”
“He won’t hurt you,” Brew said.
I shivered. “Don’t do this.”
“He’s offering, you can’t refuse, let’s just go.”
I shook my head, digging my fingers into the couch. “Don’t you dare make me.”
Keep tried to mediate. He failed. “He’s not going to do anything that would hurt the club.”
“What about hurting me?” My words pinched into a whimper. “You wouldn’t whore out your own sister.”
Brew picked up my bags. “Let’s go.”
“How could you?”
“Now, Rose.”
“I don’t believe you.”
He didn’t meet my eyes. “Don’t make me carry you too. I’ll toss your ass in the trunk with the luggage.”
I seized a desperate breath. The last taste of my freedom, and I hyperventilated over it. I trusted my brothers. I loved them. And even if I feared them, I dreaded what might happen to them so deep inside the club. I never thought they’d hurt me.
I never thought they’d let something like this happen.
That they could be so cruel.
As cruel as him.
“If you make me...” The words silenced themselves. “I will never forgive you.”
Keep picked up my purse and strung it over my shoulder. He wrapped an arm around my waist.
“It’s for your protection.” Keep pulled me to the door. “Come on. He’s waiting.”
I had prayed for protection for so long, the words practically carved within my soul. I just never thought I’d need to be protected again.
Not since Dad went away. Not since I forgot that nightmare. The fears flooded back to me.
Terrified of my own brothers. Of a mistake I didn’t know I made. Of a life I had no choice to live.
And now?
It was right to fear the man offering to protect me.
But how frightening was what he protected me from?
Thorne Radek murdered three men before he turned twenty.
He also broke his arm playing kickball with my brothers when they were ten.
He ruled Anathema like a warlord laying siege to a rebellious village, leaning into the sharpened blade when Exorcist announced the creation of The Coup with his dagger at Thorne’s neck.
And my mother had loved him like another son.
The worst part about Anathema’s dedication to family was how intertwined the MC was within my own. I knew things I shouldn’t, I kept quiet when I should have screamed, and I accidentally lived outside the law because that was my life.
The presents under the Christmas tree were stolen from other children. I rode my bicycle to the club dealer to help poison my mother. My dollhouse hid ammo. My vocal instructor taught me because it was cheaper than buying four new tires after ducking a rehearsal.
The men in my family twisted in crime, ruled a part of the city most people didn’t know existed, and feared only the day they took their last ride. They didn’t believe in hell or conformity. Brotherhood was everything.
The men I trusted most I also feared. And the man who created us, who was supposed to love and protect us, reveled in his sin. But he lived behind bars confident I’d never reveal just why I wept in joy at his arraignment.
But some things were more terrifying than my father.
Anathema was the ultimate terror.
And my brothers delivered me to its leader.
They escorted me to Pixie in formation. Keep leading, Brew tailing, and my car caught in the middle of their rumbling engines, composing its own dirge with humming tires and the roaring heraldry of Anathema. Just how they preferred. They tuned their bikes loud enough to echo the streets with their presence. The rest of the world noticed, recognized their rockers, and then pretended they hadn’t felt the vibrations through their feet.
I didn’t have that luxury.
And I knew what awaited me at the end of our makeshift procession.
Two prospects unlocked the gates behind Pixie. They open carried, each wielding one visible gun. They probably packed more. But when Dad was VP, they didn’t have the barbed wire fence bordering their parking lot. Or the active guards. They bought security cameras—most businesses in the area used them—but the motion sensors and lights were new.
Keep mentioned thousands of dollars of upgrades to the bar and warehouse. Additional security measures. My brothers forbid me from frequenting Pixie because they feared what would happen when Exorcist outgrew his hole across the river. The block would transform from shady industrial district to Syria in one gunshot. Pixie’d be reduced to smoldering rubble, and Anathema would declare World War Three.
So why did they force me to the front lines?
I kept my mouth shut. My brothers didn’t deserve a single word from me—even if it was to curse them with every expression they taught me as a child. They crowded me into the bar, and Keep stashed my bags in his office. I matched their scowls. If nothing else, the Darnell family was easy to read.
Brew pointed. “This way.”
I remembered the bar. The narrow steps upstairs led to old hotel rooms from the fifties—the ones with flowered wallpaper, twin beds, and powder blue porcelain in the bathrooms. Keep undertook some modern renovations and designed some practical, but charming, rooms. He offered the lodging to the officers.
I guess that included me.
Except I didn’t get my own room.
Brew and Keep knocked on the suite at the end of the hall. They pressed me before them, each one hovering over one of my arms. They might have meant to protect me. It felt like they’d be there to hold me down.
They delivered me into the bedroom of a known murderer.
My feet stilled at the door’s threshold. Brew didn’t care. He nudged me forward, grabbing my arm and shaking me to stillness before I stumbled into the room. He held my elbow a little too tight.
I ignored it.
I had to.
Everything below my trembling lip went numb.
Thorne waited for me.
He sat at a carved table, his shadow darkening more than just the reach of night. His phone conversation ended, and he tossed the cell on the table. Next to a .45 millimeter handgun.
Thorne didn’t need weapons to intimidate me. He didn’t need to sit in silence and watch as my brothers presented me to the true anathema like a sacrificial lamb. He stared at me with eyes as gray as gunmetal and as dark as the intent of each bullet.
I wasn’t a fool or a coward. I knew when it was appropriate to be frightened. It wasn’t weakness. Fearing Thorne was survival instinct. A man like him expected people to cower.
Someone who showed no fear wouldn’t be awarded his mercy.
I adopted the guitar as my preferred instrument. Thorne chose a gun. I might have played my fingers to callouses, spent years in dedicated study, and practiced music as if it were my only salvation from the wickedness of the world, but one of us was more proficient with their instrument. I only hoped he wouldn’t demonstrate his skill.
Thorne studied my body. An appraisal head to toe. He scrutinized every part of me, from the wayward curls slipping from behind my ear to the dark wisp of my s
kirt drifting over my skin.
I’d have been insulted if I hadn’t done the same to him.
I knew many hardened men. Most of Anathema, especially the younger generation with time served, kept themselves in peak physical form. Thorne was no exception. A black tee shirt bulged over the muscles under the material. The leather cut strapped over his barrel chest, almost as if the vest restrained the power simmering beneath the patches. Like my brothers, his cut shared the emblem of the scarred demon, the sprawled lettering of Anathema, and the charter’s location.
But only one man wore the label declaring his legacy as president.
And he happened to be the most attractive man I ever saw.
Except he was the one who dealt with my freedom in the shadows of a heretical “church,” bargaining my safety in deals God couldn’t imagine and the Devil feared to claim.
Darkness shrouded Thorne. From the pitch of his leather to the blackness of his hair framing an expression that belonged only in the underworld of the night. He nodded toward my brothers.
“Any problems?” He spoke intentionally soft, though the words still roared through my head like the revving of a chasing engine.
“No,” Keep said.
“Were you followed?”
Brew shook his head. He didn’t say a thing. Either a form of respect or an untasted threat.
“Good.” Thorne nodded to the door. “Leave us.”
My brothers hesitated as long as they dared, but even Keep’s tensed muscles and Brew’s gruff exhale presumed too much within Thorne’s presence. They gave me three seconds—enough time for my gasped breath and an infinity of crashing heartbeats—as their apology. I didn’t know if they were cowards for leaving me or if they were smart to turn away so quickly. Thorne’s wrath was a worse consequence than the violation of their little sister.
Keep nudged me as he turned away. I ignored the touch. Thorne noticed.
“Close the door after you,” he said.
Brew swore, but Keep pushed him into the hall. The door scraped shut. The latch clicked.
I stilled. My chest weighed heavy with silenced songs and muted fear. I stared at Thorne, but I imagined more than just the man before me.
In Thorne, I saw the rushing pavement barreling toward my head.
The trail of smoke coiling from a recoiling gun.
A prince donning leathers and denim instead of a cape, searching for the princess who left her helmet at the patch-over gala.
A monster.
A devil.
A man who made my heart pound in terror and crash against my chest with the secrets I sang only in songs.
“Sit.”
It wasn’t a request. He didn’t stand or pull the chair out. He didn’t wave a friendly hand. Didn’t smile.
My refusal tasted so good on my tongue I decided to keep it clenched between my teeth. Better to let Thorne think he intimidated me than reveal the desperation simmering in my silence.
I slid across from him. Close enough to study the worn scratches on his vest, to sense the strength resting within his stretched-taut shirt, and to savor the baritone of his voice harmonizing in my thoughts.
The quiet broke me. I didn’t have the courage to stare him down, but I had more pride than to lower my head and allow his appraisal. The breathy whisper was not the pitch I wanted, but, cast upon his altar, it was fortunate I didn’t simply scream.
“What do you expect from me?”
Thorne’s gaze shifted over my body. “What are you offering?”
I swallowed. “Nothing.”
“What a bargain.”
“You wanted me here. I’m here.”
“Your brothers were very prompt.”
I savored a particularly harsh remark and tucked it deep within my chest. “They kicked my door in, packed my bags, and dragged me here.”
The twitching of his lip was a remnant of a smile that might have once been attractive—before the prison term and the violence, the responsibilities of the club and the retaliation that consumed his every desecrated breath.
“They always were loyal.”
“Right. After today, I’m not sure I would consider them my brothers.”
“We’ll see.”
The weight binding my chest only constricted my words in a hush of panic. I ignored his gaze.
“I’m not a whore,” I said.
Thorne leaned away, resting his arm on the edge of his chair. His shirt stretched taut over his strength. The leather cut rode stiff over his muscles.
“I didn’t call you a whore.”
“And forcing my brothers to deliver me to you? In the middle of the night? Bringing me to your bedroom?”
“You can take your clothes off if you like. It’d make this conversation more interesting.”
“And if I don’t?”
“Then you stay dressed.” His eyes narrowed, a threat of chilled indifference. “I’m not going to fuck you.”
I flinched at the word, but I leapt at the sincerity in his voice.
“You aren’t?”
“Disappointed?”
“I—no.” I swallowed before my voice warbled into a new octave. “I don’t understand.”
“What’s there to understand?”
“You’re just...offering me protection?”
Thorne tapped his fingers next to the gun. “Are you refusing?”
“I don’t think I can.”
“You’d be right.”
“I’m not sure what my brothers told you—”
Thorne didn’t need to speak or move to interrupt me. The sting of his stare stole my words. “They told me everything I needed to hear. You need to be kept safe.”
“So you’re...my bodyguard?”
“Unless you’d rather be my prisoner?”
I shook my head.
“Then we’ve come to an understanding.”
I sucked in a breath. “No, we haven’t. I don’t know why I need protecting. Or why you have to do it. Or why I’m even at Pixie.”
“This is where I’m staying,” Thorne said. “And you’re here because you’re staying with me.”
“Where?”
He gestured over the room.
“Here?”
He nodded.
My gaze graced his most ominous piece of furniture.
“There’s only one bed here.”
Thorne grinned.
“I told you I’m not a whore.”
He didn’t look away from me. “You could sleep in the bar with all the other men tonight, but I don’t think you’d get much rest out there either. You’ve grown up...Bud.”
God damn it. I pushed away from the table, but his voice thickened with unrepentant command.
“We’re not done. Sit down.”
The chair recaptured me. I wondered if Thorne needed ropes and chains to restrain someone, or if he’d bend their own will to strap them down.
He hadn’t threatened me. Hadn’t even raised his voice. But Thorne ruled as though everything he touched, everything he wanted, anyone he saw, belonged to him. And it wasn’t stage presence. Even my best performances of my own original material would be lost within his conquest.
I didn’t need a patch to harbor my demons. My own scarred monster burrowed within me. Doubt. Uncertainty. Submission. It was far easier to surrender to an authority like his than it was to admit the shame of admiration I felt in his shadow.
His power enthralled me. And, like everything anathema, offering myself to his will would lose me to the very hells of the world.
His studied me. He wasn’t old—only mid-thirties. His hair hadn’t even started to gray like Brew’s. He let it grow long, though his thick jaw cleared of even the faintest stubble. Meticulous with a blade. I didn’t need to wonder where he learned the steady hand.
“What do you want from me?” I asked.
“I was going to ask the same question.”
“Because you’re so magnanimous?”
“I live to serve
,” Thorne shrugged. The rise of his broad shoulders only made him appear larger. “What is it that you want most? If you’re a good girl, I might make it happen.”
“I want to go home.”
“No.”
“You can’t just keep me here.”
“I already am.” He offered me a heavy moment of silence while he surveyed the table. “Seems pretty damn easy actually.”
I wished his voice hadn’t carried the insult so smoothly. It layered on me, sticky.
“This is exactly what I mean,” I said. “I want to go home. I want to leave this place. I want to be rid of this godforsaken MC.”
Thorne laughed. “Why? Anathema has been good to you.”
“Like hell.”
“You’re still breathing. That’s a perk of this godforsaken club.”
“And the only reason I might be in danger is because of your feud with The Coup.”
“Danger exists everywhere.” Thorne’s amusement preached a secret he hadn’t yet revealed. “Consider us...firefighters. We don’t blame the fire. We just make it our job to put it out.”
“This is not like firefighting, and you know it.”
“Enlighten me.”
“This club ruins the life of everyone it touches. My mother is dead because of the runs you organized, Keep is following in her footsteps, and Brew’s been in jail three times now. I didn’t even meet him until I was four years old.”
Thorne nodded. “And your father?”
I swallowed before the bile rose into my throat. “Jail too.”
“Don’t blame your family’s troubles on Anathema.”
“What family?” I asked. “The club took my family.”
“You have two brothers who love you enough to see you protected.”
“Is that what this is? A demonstration of their love?”
“I haven’t smacked that smart mouth of yours yet. Consider that a demonstration of their respect.” Thorne’s jaw tensed as I adopted the silence he so desired. “Anathema hasn’t stolen your brothers. The drugs did though.”
I looked away.
“Keep’s in trouble.”
I shrugged. “I guess.”
“He was clean before.”
“Probably because he couldn’t afford to kill himself.”
“And he can afford it now?”
Warlord (Anathema Book 1) Page 7