Deadly Chaos (Steel Roses Book 2)

by Samantha Bee

  Kade takes a deep breath before pinning Noah with a look. “Once you know this, you're all in. For life.” I notice Ryder straightening out of his slump as he hears Kade's words. So similar to what we told him when we initiated him. We aren't exactly initiating Noah, but he's going to be privy to information that will ensure we have to keep him close.

  "This isn't some high school drama or family issues that I'm going to tell you. This is information that is vital to all of our safety. That includes yours once you're all in. If you aren't completely sure about this, then turn around and walk away."

  Noah nods and the look burning in his eyes proves to me he may not understand the details, but he does understand the ramifications of hearing this story. He's been all in for a long time, even if he didn't understand it. Even with as pissed as we all are at her, we all would go all in for Scar every damn time.

  "I've never been more sure of anything else in my life."

  We all nod but none of us acknowledge the truth behind his words. He's sure about her. About her being worth it. Being worth the danger we are putting him in. Sure about all of us being together for her. Kade is finally getting what he wanted. A family.

  We are just missing our centerpiece.

  Will we be able to put our broken pieces back together?

  Will Scar even give us the chance to try?

  Kade takes a deep breath and trades a serious look with me. I know how much he's dreading this conversation even if he was the one to start it. I tilt my head in encouragement before turning around and grabbing a bottle of whiskey and handing it to him. We are all going to need it for this.

  He takes a long swig before closing his eyes and sighing. "The first time I killed someone, I was ten."

  Ryder's slumped head snaps up and Noah stiffens as he stares at Kade. He refuses to look at anyone's eyes, keeping himself closed off from what he's scared to see in their gazes. These are secrets even Scar has no idea about. I study both men in front of me. If they show any inclination of judgment or condemnation towards Kade I will end them here and now.

  We said all in and that means all the fucking way in. There is no room for judgement when we are all a bunch of psychopaths. I know we dragged Ryder into this world, but he's already gotten his hands bloody. I have no idea what to expect from Noah but there has to be a reason he was drawn to Scar's wildness. Most guys find her exciting for a little while, but they can't handle her for long. Noah has been different. I'm praying we weren't wrong about that. I’d hate to have to kill him.

  I watch closely and while they both look shocked, I see no hints of pity or disgust in either of their gazes. Rather, instead I find empathy in Noah's gaze. Not sympathy of realizing the pain in Kade's voice. No. Full blown empathy of knowing what it's like to stand in his shoes.

  There's more darkness in Noah than I ever would have guessed. He's looking at Kade with a hell of a lot more understanding than could come from mere sympathy. Somewhere in his history he dipped his hands in blood, and probably far too young just as Kade was forced to.

  "My dad was abusive and a drunk," Kade continues. "He was in and out of jail for as long as I can remember. Not really anything special from where we grew up. None of the parents in our neighborhood were worth a damn." I sigh and nod in agreement. We grew up in the worst of the worst areas. Just butting up against one of the most prominent cities in the country. That's how we first happened to meet Scar.

  Kade continues to fill in the other two of how his mom abandoned him and my heart aches for the little girl we met in such a low moment as he talks about her. “She was this little beacon of hope in our otherwise dark lives.” His words make my chest clench with the pain. It seems like all of our lowest moments have been connected to each other. Even when we barely knew each other, had no connections, had no idea how much we would all mean to each other, the three of us were always there for the very worst moments of our lives. Even when we didn't realize that.

  Noah and Ryder both look at me with questions in their eyes. Kade talked so affectionately about that little girl but didn’t say much else about her. Gave away no hints that it really was the first time we had met Letty. I give them a subtle nod to confirm their suspicions. Letty was our light for a lot longer than you would think. We may not have grown close until foster care when we were seventeen, but she gave us hope as we watched her from afar after that day in the park as kids.

  "My dad was falling further and further into debt to feed his habits. He was running out of options and ways to stay alive. People were getting tired of his antics and getting ready to just get rid of him and write off their losses," he hesitates, his eyes still scrunched closed as he tilts his head back towards the ceiling.

  I almost finish the thought for him so he doesn't have to actually speak the words. Even after all these years I know how deep it cuts him, even if he always hated the scum that was his father. I don't get the chance to though before Noah beats me to it. "So he offered you up as payment."

  He doesn't say it as a question but rather as a statement. Already knowing that's exactly how this played out based on the little information he already had. Maybe we should initiate Noah. He might be just as good as Scar at making connections and figuring shit out. It wouldn't hurt to have another analytical brain on the team. Kade, Ryder and I all aren't too bad with it, but we tend to let our emotions rule us in a way that Scar doesn't. Noah seems to be cut from the same cloth. I can see the upheaval swirling in his eyes and still, not an ounce of it leaks into his voice.

  Kade nods before continuing. "There was a fighting ring in the area. He offered me as a participant to pay his debts." He shakes his head. "It wasn't like the fights we host now."

  I sigh and shake my head, Noah didn't know about that. "Okay, so obviously, we host cage fights. We can bring you to one this week so you can see more of our world," I interrupt to explain to Noah.

  "Right, sorry." Kade shrugs before continuing. "Ours are more organized, fighters with real training, fair matches for the most part. We try to keep them as equal as possible for the best fights. They didn't care about skills, they wanted as brutal as they could get them. Even when it meant stacking the odds against a fighter to guarantee their deaths being a bloody and fucking savage one."

  "It was kill or be killed?" Ryder surmises and I see the look of respect in his eyes. I find the same look reflected in Noah's eyes. They both realize the type of shit Kade had to fight against in order to survive.

  Kade nods. "I fought in those rings for three years. I had to kill a lot of people that I wish I never had to. The guilt of that still sits with me, but it's not like I can go back and change the past. Even though I hated it, I learned to crave the fight. It's why I was never able to fully walk away."

  He pins me with a look, and I know he's thinking about how we first set up the fights and made sure to focus more on skill than brutality. We wanted even matches not death matches. It's why we allow the tap out, even if it's seen as a pussy move. It's also why we refuse to clean up other people's kills without an exorbitant fee. It hinders a lot of people's ability to take it that far. But you still know what you are signing up for. Every time you climb into our ring you're putting your life on the line, but it's you who makes that choice. No one else. Not for anyone else's debts.

  "Social services took me away when I was thirteen, but by then, it was a part of who I was. I couldn't quite give up the fights. I spent my teen years fighting just not in the same shady rings. The only time I took a break was when I became close to a lost and broken girl. She was so different from us. Unlike anyone I had ever met before. She made me feel more whole than I ever thought possible." His eyes fill with pain as he stares at me, still refusing to look at either of the other guys in the room.

  Everyone in the room stiffens knowing he's talking about Letty. It's impossible for my stomach to not churn as I remember just how lost she really was when she first came to the group home. So small and scarred, completely devastated, and so frail sh
e seemed just a breath from blowing away. So far from the little girl we met in the park that day, so far from the girl we watched from a distance for all that time. She was finally within our reach but without the vibrancy we had known as her signature. I see my ache reflected in Kade's eyes. I know he will eventually forgive her, but fuck if it isn't painful for all of us right now. She will give us the chance to forgive her, won't she?

  I think that may be my biggest fear. I look around the room, the silence weighing heavily on us as we all get lost in our thoughts of the girl that has become our whole world. She has to come back and apologize, right? She will realize she needs us just as much as we need her. Does she know just how bad we all ache for her? Crave her? I don't think she could possibly understand the depth of our feelings for her or she would never have done this to us.

  For all her bullshit, Scar is a caring soul. She would never cut us this deep on purpose. Right? I've spent eight years at her side, fighting for her, supporting her, pandering to her whims, as Kade calls it. He isn't fucking wrong though, is he? Maybe I should have been pushing her for the last eight years instead of letting her run the whole time.

  I always knew denial and avoidance were her best friends. I let her because opening those wounds again seemed too painful. I was terrified that I would lose her for good. That if we dug deep and opened them, her demons would win and take her from me. That she would finally lose the silent battle I knew she was waging. I knew every day she had to fight for every breath she took, she had to convince herself every moment was worth living, had to push down her doubts and fears that told her to give up and satisfy her demons with her own blood instead of that of her enemies.

  The harder she fought for revenge, the less she had to fight against her demons. The less faded she seemed. So I let her push them down, lock away her emotions, focus on satisfying her craving with blood and mayhem as long as it wasn't her own destruction. I'm now realizing those wounds festered, became infected like Roe's cuts, causing bigger problems in the long run. I was so scared to lose her, and I still ended up losing her, to the infection of her soul where all her doubts multiplied until she believed she couldn’t have both her revenge and our family.

  If I could go back, I would do everything differently.

  I would help her heal instead of hide, grow instead of run. Maybe then she would have had the strength to fight for us the way we are all fighting for her.

  I cough, trying to clear the regret from my throat that's slowly suffocating me. "When we both aged out of the group home, we moved and started up a more official fighting ring. That's where the start of our empire grew."

  I include Kade in our empire because he was there from day one, even if Scar never saw that. He supported her without ever knowing it. Even though I kept them far from each other for selfish reasons, I couldn't keep them far from each other.

  I'll always regret the decisions I made back then. Maybe if Kade had been with her from the start, we never would have ended up in this position. He has been so good for her since he came back into her life. He may have pushed too far too fast this time, but maybe it never would have gotten to that point if he had been there from the start. If I had never separated them.

  I know his anger and resentment towards me are bubbling over with her gone now. He hates me for leaving him behind back then, for keeping them apart and yet still so close. I hate myself for it too. I know we have to do something to sort our shit out, I just don’t think it’ll be possible until we have our ray of light back. Even if now she glows like a black light, illuminating the darkness even as she herself is drowning in it.

  "It's bigger than we ever could have imagined, and it sated my deepest most base desires. Gave me the chance to unleash the havoc that terrorizes my psyche. Gave me a place to let out my aggression without having to feel guilty about it." He sighs and finally looks at the other men in the room, letting them see just how conflicted he feels about this side of himself. "It allowed me to appease that side of myself, and still be the happy go lucky guy that you two know. That guy isn't an act or facade, it is who I am. I've always been good at finding the silver linings, been able to laugh even when everything looked so goddamn bleak. I've never struggled to have fun, even when everything was falling apart. It's two parts of a whole, I'm both. Kade and the King of the Rings. Brutal and bloodthirsty, high energy and a good time."

  I think everyone in this room understands better than most could. We all have almost dual natures based on the shit we've been through. Who we were always meant to be, and who we were forced to become to survive. I wouldn't have expected it from Noah, but his understanding is clearly born from more than just being a compassionate person. This is a darkness you can't comprehend without having touched it, experienced it, been dragged down into it yourself. I wonder when he will share his story with us.

  "Eventually, I found out the rings that gave me a place to appease my demons were also used to help protect the girl I once thought was lost to me. In a way she was. She was completely different when I saw her again but still, she settled me in ways no one else has ever managed before. The darkness didn't seem quite as all encompassing as it once did. Gave it more purpose, protecting one of the only things that has ever mattered to me."

  The same heavy silence fills the room as we all look at each. The anger bleeds out of Kade as his body slumps forward and he drinks more whiskey. The look of desolation mimics what I feel in my own soul so damn closely as he shakes his head and whispers, "And now she's gone."

  The silence is tense for several moments before Noah finally breaks it. "What if we found her?"

  No one answers him as we all roll around the thought in our heads. We are all so fucking pissed with her, but it's no secret we all want her back. I've been trying to track her down, but she isn't in any of her known safe houses and she isn't using any of our resources to stay hidden.

  "She took out her tracker," Kade mumbles and I stagger back, not having expected him to have looked for her at all. I know deep down he wants her back, but he's been so damn vehement about her selfishness, I didn't expect he'd been trying to track her down too.

  "She has a tracker?" Noah asks, clearly taken aback by it.

  I laugh. "The girl does some dangerous fucking shit. We all have trackers."

  He chuckles, not so much with amusement but just more his own surprise. "Well, even without that, I might be able to find where she is."

  I raise my brows at him. "How? I've been trying but can't manage it. She isn't using any of her known accounts."

  He nods towards the television. "I can try and at least track her movements, see if we can pinpoint a pattern. I can also try to find her presence online." He continues to explain with a bunch of jargon that I just can't follow. It does sound familiar though. The way he's talking is the same as someone else we know.

  I look up to find Kade already staring at me with the same fucking grin I know is spreading across my face. Noah looks back and forth between us and his eyebrows draw in together in confusion.

  "You're a hacker."

  His grin is slow to spread across his face and the slightest bit of pink heats his cheeks and ears as he nods at me. "It's been a while since I've really used that skillset, but this is something worth doing just that."

  I could kiss him. He just might be able to solve more of my problems than just tracking Scar. "I need a few things from you. We lost our best hacker."

  Noah's laughter eddies out of him like he didn't mean to laugh. "Scar?" he questions.

  Kade throws his head back and cackles, more amusement in the sound than I've heard from him since she left. "What happened to not spilling her secrets, huh, Bossman?"

  I shrug. "Not my fault Noah put it together." The woman has my loyalty but so do these men. I'm bringing Noah on, with or without Scar's knowledge. She lost that right when she abandoned all of us.

  Chapter Five

  I pace back and forth across the living room that still doesn't feel like m
y own.

  I look down at my watch again and can't suppress the twitch that takes over my body. Fuck. Why am I so damn nervous about this? There isn't really any conceivable reason for me to be this wound up. Yet here I am. Unable to contain the fucking energy swirling through me as I wait for Declan to arrive.

  We’ve spent more time together than I ever would have assumed based on that first meeting. I think he spends more time here than he does at his own place now. His presence eases some of the weight off of my shoulders, though not all of it.

  There is still always this overwhelming feeling of loss that has been my constant companion since I chose to leave the guys. I can't help but ache for them in ways I never thought would be possible for me. I do my best to shove that feeling down as far as I can.

  Who cares if Kade was right? Maybe he isn't as right as he thought he was? The sex was good but that's all that I needed. I'm missing the good sex and the comfort of familiarity. It's nothing that special. Right?

  I blow out a long, dramatic breath as I check my watch again. I've told Declan a little about the guys. Okay, I've told him quite a bit about them, but it's impossible to explain everything without giving him too much information about me. Information that could put both of us in danger. Instead, he just gets to listen to me ramble and rant about the four men who have monopolized my mind. How the hell do I take back the real estate they've stolen from me?

  I run my fingers through my hair as I worry about them once again. I hope they're doing okay.

  I'm so lost in my own mind that I miss the sound of keys jingling in the lock. "Pretty girl, what have you been panicking about now?" Declan's deep voice draws me out of my thoughts, and I look up at his large frame filling the doorway. He's leaner than Kade and Luca but taller and bulkier than Noah. Why are all the men in my life so damn tall?

  Oh. Well, I guess it's just Declan now. I fight the urge to slump at the thought, but I know D spots it anyways. He sighs as he closes the door and pulls me into his arms. He pets my hair like he always does. "Thinking about them again?"