Knight (116 page)

“They know I’m here.”

“Fantastic.”

“You’re a liability,” Thorne said. “The longer you stay here, the more accidents we gotta bleach from Lyn’s carpets. Do your only fucking job and get out.”

“I can’t. My father is protected.” I clenched my jaw as Martini pressed a towel against the cut on my head. She usually went looking for trouble, but coming after me was the smartest move she made. She was lucky. I wasn’t about to tell her the danger she avoided. “He’s got a plan and a hell of a lot of allies. But if I stay here, Temple’s gonna start fucking with Anathema.”

“You’re just gonna let him go?” Keep cursed. “Fuck it, I’ll shoot the prick.”

“Please.” Rose didn’t look up. “It’s over, and I don’t want to think about it anymore. You guys need to forget about it too.”

I frowned. “Some things a man can’t forget, Bud.”

“What if I ask you to try?”

“Ask me anything else.” I swallowed my pride. “I ain’t gonna beg for a second chance. He’s living now, but so am I. I’ll take care of this. Just gotta get Temple off my ass.”

Martini shuddered. Her breathing unraveled as the minutes passed, like it hurt just to whimper a quick sigh. My vision cleared enough to see in the basement’s low light.

And I didn’t like what I saw.

Her eye was blackened. The bruise trailed down her neck, covered by nothing. No scarf. No shirt collar. The ink and its possessive hatred stained her skin. It was like she didn’t have time to wrap a scarf over her neck.

Like she escaped so fast she didn’t have time to cover what she was running from.

“You can’t shake Temple,” she murmured. “And you can’t let your father live.”

The shudder in her voice tapped a gun barrel against my head. I tried to get her to look in my eyes. Guilt stopped her. That I understood. But I didn’t expect the fear or the shame flaring her cheeks.

“Why are you here, Darling?” I should have said how fucking bad I missed her, but the confusion growled the question instead. “I thought you were staying with Red?”

“Your father has a fifty thousand dollar bounty on your head.”

The room silenced. Rose’s cry was muffled by Thorne’s hand, clapping over her mouth.

“What?” I stared at her. “A bounty? Who told you that?”

“I was there when Temple’s president told Sacrilege about the bounty.”

There was more to it than that. Something she kept from me, something that deliberately hid the truth. But Martini was smoother than the awkward clip of her words. She was a born liar and tease, but even this she couldn’t spin. Whatever she saw terrified her enough to drag her ass three thousand miles across country to find me.

And not because she wanted me to protect her.

Because she wanted to rescue me.

“What the hell happened to you?” I touched the bruise on her cheek. She twisted away.

“Can we go somewhere and talk?”

Thorne didn’t apologize for being a Grade-A dick. “No.”

She ran a hand through her hair. The motion tugged at her shoulders and she winced. She hardened her expression before I tallied the marks on her skin.

I counted more bruises than pale softness. The injuries were new.

“Temple trapped Sacrilege,” she said. “They told Sam they owned the club now, and their first job was to finish off all the other officers in Kingdom. There’s not much of a war left, Brew. It’s a slaughter, and we’re next. They’re gonna kill both of us because we’re the only ones who were at the cottage.”

“Bullshit.” I spat and rubbed the blood from my lips. A couple punches to the head and suddenly I was thinking clearer than ever. “It’s not about the cottage. My father knew I was coming for him to settle the score for Rose. He put the bounty on my head to make it seem like he was working with Temple. He planned to kill me before I killed him. He’d cover it up with a drug war to save his ass and come out the victor with Temple.”

“Are you sure?” Keep squinted. “Dad’s smart, but to use Temple to fuck you?”

“He’s the reason Temple and Kingdom are at war. Temple had Kingdom under surveillance, and Kingdom was wise to it. That’s why they hired me to do the drops between them and Sacrilege. But Dad must have recognized me.”

That was why the envelope of money at the cottage had my name written on it. The money wasn’t a payment or a bribe. It was a warning I didn’t heed.

“And now he wants you dead,” Thorne said. “And he’ll fuck Anathema to do it.”

Rose bit her lip. “He almost did it too. You might have died.”

Lyn snorted. “Brew’s like a goddamned cat. Only seven more lives to go.”

Martini silenced them with a short-lived sob. She hated the tears. So did I.

“I’m so sorry,” Martini said. “I came as fast as I could. But...I got...Goliath was...”

I didn’t want to ask it. I already knew.

“What happened to you?”

Martini didn’t let the truth shame her. I wished I was as strong.

“Goliath found me.”

And I wished I were brave enough to hear the rest.

“He took me home, but Temple stormed my bar and held Red hostage. We escaped, and I might have burned down my bar. I’m not sure if I killed Toviel Aren.”

Thorne handed Rose off to Keep and paced the room, his hands alternating between his hair and his gun. “You think you
killed
the president of Temple MC?”

“He took a shotgun blast to the chest, but he was still living when I torched him with a Molotov and a bottle of Everclear.”

“Jesus
fucking
Christ!”

Lyn laughed, her green eyes glistening with a serpentine glee. “I like this girl, Brew. She can take care of herself.”

Martini didn’t share the proud smile. She never spoke the full truth in her life. Now was a shitty time to start. I’d take a thousand of her little white lies over her honesty now.

“What happened when Goliath found you?” I whispered.

Martini didn’t meet my gaze. She shifted against the floor. Uncomfortable.

No.

Hurt
.

Rose breathed out first. She tugged on Thorne’s arm. A signal to give us privacy. She knew.

I couldn’t be alone with this confession. I didn’t trust myself to handle it.

“Did he hurt you?” I asked.

Martini’s act wasn’t convincing. “I can take care of myself. I did take the express route down the stairs though. That wasn’t fun.”

It wasn’t what I asked. “What did he do to you?”

“God, I need a drink.” Her laugh sounded more like a whimper. “Can I get you anything—”

I reached for her. She let me cup her cheek if only to focus on me and not the others in the room.

“Darlin’—”

“You already know. Why torture yourself?”

“Tell me.”

“It’s not the same, Brew. Don’t you dare blame yourself—”

“
Tell
me
.”

She shed only one tear before masking her expression again. Not for the benefit of Rose or Thorne, my panicking brother, or the pacing Lyn. She tried to spare me from the truth and her fear and her pain.

She guarded me even though I failed to protect her.

“He raped me, Brew.”

Where was the gun against my head now? The rope around my neck? The poison rotting my gut?

She didn’t fight me. I lifted the back of her shirt. A crisscross of heavy-handed welts and bruises tore at her flesh.

A belt. A fucking
belt
.

“I’m fine,” she said. “I don’t care about what happens to me.”

“I do.”

“My only concern was to find you.”

“And mine should have been to help you.”

The honesty destroyed me. Rose sat only a few feet from me, tears on her cheeks. The absolute
compassion
and
understanding
resonating from the broken innocence of her gaze was just another slice of the blade in my heart.

I owed Rose everything—a lifetime of happiness, the promise of security, and the haunted, horrible moments of her past replaced with love.

But I couldn’t give her those things. Thorne got closer to her than she ever was with me, and his honesty and devotion were uncompromised. She wasn’t mine to protect anymore.

The one who needed me most knelt bruised and violated at my side, cleaning
my
wounds with a damp towel.

“I’m sorry.” There wasn’t much else to say, but nothing sounded so useless.

“I know.”

I sucked in a breath. My lungs refused it until her hand grazed mine. I didn’t deserve the touch.

“It ends now,” I said. “My father. The connection with Temple. Everything that has destroyed us and the club is because of him. It’s time for justice.”

“Brew.” Rose shook her head. “You can’t. Those men almost killed you. And if you stay here any longer, they will. You have to leave.”

I grunted as I stood. “Not until this is done.”

“Well, I don’t want it to be done.” She parted from Thorne and squared off against me again, just like she did from the day she learned to talk to the last time I pushed her away. “Not if it means putting you in any more danger.”

“You won’t be safe if he lives.”

“I wasn’t the one getting pummeled, Brew.
You
were.”

I swore. “What the hell were you doing here anyway?”

“Saving your life!”

“My life isn’t for you to save.”

Rose frowned. “Well, someone has to stop you from throwing it away all the damn time.”

“Thorne, take her home,” I said. “She shouldn’t be around for this.”

She shook off his arm. “Would you just listen to me?”

 “Don’t have to.” The girl scared the ever-loving fuck out of me, and I wasn’t about to let her see me crumble. “I do what’s best for you, Rose. Always have. Always will.”

“Oh my God, Brew. Listen to yourself. I don’t need you to kill for me. I need you to stay alive. Just talk to me and listen to my music and give me a hug every once in a while. Be a
normal
brother, for once in my life. I just want my big brother!”

“For Christ’s sake, Rose, I’m not your fucking
brother
!”

I said it before I realized what happened.

The snap of all goddamned common sense recoiled in my brain. It was a shot that should never have been fired, and a secret I never meant to reveal.

Martini’s hand drew away. Keep stared, his pupils blown with confusion instead of whatever poison he chose for the night.

“
What
?” Rose whispered.

“You heard me.”

“I don’t understand.”

Thorne swore. His scowl only upset Rose more. “Jesus Christ. How many fucking secrets does this family have?”

Rose’s eyes—innocent, wide, and the same damn color and depth I shared—filled with tears.

“You’re not my sister.” I hadn’t admit

ted the truth for twenty-one years. “You’re my daughter.”

“I can’t deal with this right now.”

It was all Rose said.

I poured my fucking heart out, scraped the secrets from my soul and the lies from my past, and
she
couldn’t deal.

I sat, bleeding and sweating, broken and shuddering, with twenty-one goddamned years of adrenaline surging through me, and she didn’t even look at me.

Neither did my brother, staring at me in the first lucid moment he caught in three months.

Keep didn’t recognize me, and it wasn’t the haze of the drugs causing it.

I didn’t recognize myself.

Rose stormed upstairs before Thorne grabbed her. Lyn followed, cursing every last man who wore an Anathema patch.

Rose didn’t want me.

Her entire life was nothing but a series of beatings, abuse, and negligence. Her mother—a twenty-something druggie piece of ass I tapped as a teenager—never wanted her. I thought what I did was right. I kept her, but then I threw her aside too.

Rose grew up begging for me to listen and protect and love her, as if I didn’t think of her as the piece of my heart beating outside of my body. I never thought I could love as much as I loved that girl, and I hated myself for letting her go that long without realizing it.

She didn’t want me.

I ruined her.

Keep’s hand trembled more than it should. It’d either punch through the wall or shatter to pieces, depending on how quick the drugs wore off. He didn’t swear. His own brand of dispassionate indifference struck harder than if he hauled off and hit me.

“Pixie’s empty,” he said. “Rose and Thorne stay at his house. Reaper won’t notice if you spend the night. I’ll keep the guys out of the suites.”

“I’ll find somewhere on my own.”

“Temple ain’t getting into Pixie.” Keep nodded to Martini. “Make him follow. I’ll hide his bike in the warehouse and call Gold to, uh, help clean up here.”

Martini tugged on my arm. The darkness under her eyes wasn’t just where Goliath beat her senseless. She was exhausted.

But she still reassured me.

I caused Rose misery and destroyed myself in the secret. And now? My only salvation limped on busted knees and winced against the welts that thrashed her skin.

Martini was my second chance. I was supposed to keep her safe.