“If I do, it will get back to her father.”
He was stony, and I got it, but I didn’t give a shit. There was more on the line than his dick being tied into knots over a woman with a sob story.
“Then it’ll get back to her. She sounds shrewd. She’ll either figure out a way to get here or she’ll spin it out and reel her father in.”
Link’s eyes flashed. “You treat her like shit and I’ll—”
Nyx leaped up and clapped a hand on his shoulder. “Reel it in, Link. This is Rex. He ain’t gonna treat her like shit. You know that.”
And that Link cared enough to speak out against me told me just how far gone he was too.
What the fuck was going on?
Maybe pigs really had started goddamn flying if Link was falling for a fucking virgin.
Nine
Lily
Our pool house was territory I’d never dared enter. See, when someone’s brother told them to stay out of their room, most sisters would probably ignore the edict just to be a pain in the ass.
But my brother wasn’t like other siblings, and I’d avoided his place like it was Pandora’s box. Of course, only when he’d died, had I realized how the pool house actually was Pandora’s box. The second I’d gone in there was the second my eyes had been opened to the reality that was my family.
Of course, I’d already known to a certain extent.
My father raped me to punish me.
My brother raped the maids and made me watch.
I was the star of my own horror show, for God’s sake. This wasn’t Little House on the Prairie…but I’d been curious. With the fear of him gone, knowing he really was dead and buried, I’d wanted to see what his place looked like.
In my mind, I’d imagined blood on the walls, shackles drilled here and there. That first time, I’d almost been disappointed to find a regular living space. A nice lounge with the requisite massive flat screen and a comfy leather sofa complete with more game consoles than anyone could ever need. Followed by a simple bedroom, oak four-poster, navy blue comforter with green tartan pillowcases of all the damn things, plus a couple of dressers.
A bathroom, a small kitchen, an office area that looked mostly unused, and French doors that opened onto the pool.
Simple.
Expensive, sure, but simple.
No virgin’s blood collected in bottles on the countertops in the kitchen. No whips and chains on the floor.
Just a regular home.
Even while I’d been surprised, I’d known it was a lie. No way could the evil that was Luke not have spread into his living space. So I’d gone looking. Even then, I hadn’t really known what I was looking for, but I’d been snooping for something until I’d hit a pay dirt so dark, I knew Link and the men who’d helped him recover Luke’s captives would never get over what they’d found.
God help me, I’d never get over what I’d found either.
A webcam stream.
A webcam I was going to use in the vain hope I could do something to tarnish my brother’s name. As a Lancaster, Luke’s memory was protected. Revered, almost. But if I could throw some mud on it, then anything that was endangering Giulia Fontaine’s safety was suddenly derailed.
At least, that was my thinking.
And it was why I was entering the belly of the beast once more.
As I slipped behind Luke’s desk, eying the expensive piece of equipment like the monster it was, I blew out a breath and tapped in his passcode, something I’d learned from watching him log into his phone, preparing myself for what I was about to uncover.
42—our apartment number in Manhattan. Luke’s most favorite of our homes.
33—the floor we lived on in.
41—the street of our building.
With the computer unlocked, I eyed the desktop. It was a chaos of folders and screenshots that had landed there, and I found the file that had started it all.
‘Heaven Can Wait.’
As a folder name, it had been weird enough to make me click on it, then the link that took me to a web page was the start of a nightmare sequence I’d never forget. I’d used the coordinates of the webcam to guide Link to the property, but I bypassed it today, not wanting to see where those poor women had been held captive, and instead snooped around the folder. I was certain there’d be information on the rest of the computer, but in here, I felt sure there’d be something incriminating.
Well, more incriminating than everything I’d already uncovered, of course. But it wasn’t like I could release this to the cops, not when I was trying to court my dad into believing I was on his side in this war against the MC. I was only useful if I was playing both sides against each other, and my dad had enough friends to cover this up before it made more than a splash in the cesspit that was his pool of influence.
For a second, I thought about the day he trusted me. The day he put me into his will. The day when I got him drunk, seduced him into following me, when I’d push him down the fucking stairs and laugh over his broken body.
The notion made the hairs at the back of my neck stick up on end.
Fuck.
I wanted that.
So badly.
And not just at some random point in the future.
I wanted it today. Now.
Anger washed through me, but there was no point in feeling like that. I needed to make shit happen. So I got on with stuff. Even if the picture of him lying at the foot of the stairs was at the back of my mind all the while, I rummaged around the folders on Luke’s computer. Then, I winced when I saw a folder full of .mp4 files.
Videos.
I closed my eyes as I reached up and rubbed them.
Whatever those videos contained was not going to be nice, and if I watched them, there was no guarantee that it would achieve anything other than making me want to vomit and tear out my eyes for the rest of my life.
But…those women had endured what had been done to them. My brother was no longer alive to punish, and my father was intent on castigating an innocent woman, ripping through an MC in the process to get to her.
Now, I knew MCs weren’t good news. I knew the Sinners were involved in shit that made them the opposite of decent people, but, and it was a big but, Link was a brother. Link who had only ever given me pleasure, even though I’d offered myself up on a plate. Link who seemed to cherish my innocence, even though I was anything but. He was a brother to those men for a reason.
To me the term ‘good’ didn’t come with a black or white definition. Just like the term ‘bad’ didn’t. But I knew what evil was. I’d lived with it all my life. Link wasn’t evil. And anyone he considered family by choice wasn’t evil either. I just knew it.
Like he knew I was thinking of him, my burner cell buzzed, and I pulled it out of the slot in my yoga pants to eye the screen so I could see part of his message without opening it.
Link: Where you at, sugar tits?
My lips curved at the nickname. Why he insisted on calling me that, I really didn’t know, but I was surprised that it didn’t insult me.
I wanted to cave in. Wanted to pick up my cell and reply to him, get involved in a conversation that would amuse me, turn me on, and take my mind off what I was about to do, but my father would be home in a week, and I should have already finished up on what I’d started here.
The first time I’d come into the pool house, I’d had to sneak in. Today? I had the freedom of movement that came with my father’s absence.
So, once more, I sucked it up and got on with shit.
I clicked into the first file and immediately hit the cross on the video player.
Bowing my head, I clenched my eyes closed and tried not to see what I’d just seen. But unseeing wasn’t possible.
My trouble was I had a feeling.
A gut instinct.
And my gut usually wasn’t wrong, especially where my family was concerned.
In this instance, I knew my father was involved somehow with what Luke had been
doing. The apple didn’t fall far from the tree, after all. Plus, I knew Luke wasn’t averse to blackmailing our father. Even though Father gave Luke everything, to a man like my brother, everything wasn’t always enough. There was always something more, something he might need leverage for.
Which was what I was looking for.
Leverage.
I’d thought that maybe my father might own the land on which this hellhole lay. I thought I’d find some connection that way. I hadn’t imagined that Luke would record what he did to the women. Which, if I was right, meant there might be footage of my father doing stuff too.
My throat grew thick at the prospect of checking out the thousands of files in the folder, and because I couldn’t bear to watch a woman enduring what that bastard had put them through, I began to look at the file names. Videos were separated into folders by women’s names. Tatána. Sarah. Alessa. Amara. There were more, but Link had told me there were four, and from the footage, I knew there were four cages.
Cages.
My God.
Bile burned in my throat, making me want to puke as I thought about how many lives Luke had taken. Then, eyes watering from the need to sob, I persevered.
Within each woman’s folder, there was less categorizing, so I had to scan through file names. When I saw a series that had our mother’s birthday as the title, I frowned, taken aback by that.
When I clicked into it, curious, I almost unclicked when the footage streamed into the pit. It was a weird kind of camera. Not clear, not HD quality, but that grainy green light that told me it was either infrared or something that helped cameras record in poor light. The women’s eyes were black from that coloring, and their bodies were contorted in the cages they were contained in as they tried to get comfortable.
I couldn’t even imagine what they were thinking, lying there, nude, beaten, starved. Cold. God, just seeing this made me want to wrap them up in blankets and pour hot toddies down their throats.
And the worst thing was, this was tame. This horror was before anything bad happened to them for the day.
I sucked in a breath, waiting for whatever Luke had deemed worthy of smearing our mother’s date of birth with, and then…it happened.
A little explosion of light fucked with the camera, and I figured that meant the opening to wherever this hellhole was had just been breached. The women all froze, and a few whimpers of surprise and fear escaped them before they were quickly contained, and then, the echo of footsteps sounded as a pair of boots appeared on the staircase into the pit.
Was I surprised when, with each stair descended, my father was revealed?
Not really.
I just didn’t understand why Luke had used Mom’s birthday as the code.
Had he also known that Father had killed her? Would Luke have even cared if Father was behind her murder? I couldn’t imagine it, but who knew how my brother’s warped mind worked?
A part of me was praying that Father had gone down there to release the women. Stupid, considering I knew the women had only been saved by the MC who Donavan Lancaster deemed unfit to be in the same town as him. So when he stepped toward one of the cages and kicked it, I knew I had enough. Knew he was down there with the same intent as Luke’s.
I hit stop because I didn’t want to see anymore.
I’d felt my father’s wrath. I couldn’t cope with seeing more of it.
As I stared at the file list, I sagged back into my chair and began to sob. Tears poured from my eyes as my emotions ravaged me. For a second, I drowned, suffocated in them, and then, like a ray of light peering through the gloom, I knew what was happening.
It was the calm before the storm…A calm that was founded in relief.
I had him.
I.
Had.
Him.
My phone buzzed again and, a little blindly, I reached for it. Through tear ravaged eyes, instead of reading the text, I connected a call to Link, and the second he said, “Sugar tits?” I started sobbing once more.
Through a bucket load of snot and more tears, I heard him demand, “Lily? What is it? What the fuck’s going on?” I heard his fear for me. I heard his concern. For me. And that just made me cry even more.
Nobody other than Tiff had ever really given a shit about me, and even then, I’d never been able to truly bring her into the fold because I was hiding so much from her. Not just because there was so much ugliness to hide in my life either. I had to keep her safe. Had to protect her.
But Link? He knew the shit I had in my life already.
He knew the good and the bad, worse, he knew that ugly streak too, and he still cared.
I could hear him rambling on the other end of the line, and I realized he thought my father had returned and had done something to me, which was what shut me down.
“Link?” I rasped, my voice sounding unlike my own. “I think I have a way to destroy my father.”
Silence fell at that.
Then, “Are you at home?”
This wasn’t my home. I didn’t have a home. But I merely whispered, “Yeah.”
“I’m coming to get you.”
“Do you know someone who’s good with computers?”
“I know a few someones,” he said gruffly. “I’ll be there soon. Okay?”
“Okay.” Then I sucked in a breath. “Can you come in a car? Without your cuts? I don’t want anything to stop this from happening. The guards won’t let you in if you look like you’re from the MC.”
He grunted. “You sure you got something to take him down? Or do you just ‘think’ it?”
I’d been stupid using that word. “No. I’m positive. This is his end.” And somehow, I thought it would be better than him lying dead at the foot of the stairs.
“I’ll only ride in a cage for you, babe.”
My lips curved. “The sacrifice will be worth it.”
“It’d better be,” he grumbled. “Soon.”
“Soon,” I whispered back as I cut the call. Blindly, I stared at the screen for a second, then I reached for my other cell, my legit one, and I patched it through to Alix.
“Ma’am?”
“I have guests coming over. They’re Tiffany’s friends. She should be over a little later too,” I lied. “Let them in.”
Alix cleared his throat. “Your father wouldn’t approve of a party, Miss Lily.”
I knew that better than Alix did, but I appreciated him giving me the heads up. “Can you just not tell him until later?” I murmured. “Please, Alix.”
He blew out a breath. “If they’re gone before sundown, I’ll just tell him Tiffany came over.”
Gratitude filled me. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome, Miss.”
I cut the call and stared at the computer screen.
My burner cell buzzed once more.
Link: In a cage. On our way.
Me: Thank you. Try to look like party guests. Message me when you’re five minutes away. I’ll come and greet you.
Link: Party guests…Yeah, that’s not going to happen.
Me: Just try.
When I received a bucketload of ‘eye roll’ emojis, I just smiled. Yeah, I smiled. After what I’d seen, what I’d just found…I smiled.
Maybe that was the miracle from today, a miracle that came in the shape of a gruff biker who managed to take away some of my misery and replace it with amusement.
* * *
Maverick
My gaze switched between Giulia, whose head was on her folded arms, snoring away from her place at the dining table, and Ghost, who was trying, and failing, to eat a sandwich she’d been given forty minutes ago.
All the women were finding it hard to acclimate to eating regularly, and after being starved, that didn’t come as much of a surprise. In a way, you’d think it would be easier to stuff your face after being denied, but the stomach adapted, and after so long in captivity—not that any of the women knew how long exactly, because they’d had no concept of time where they
’d been held—they were simply not used to eating.
Amara would routinely puke if she ate too much, and Tatána wasn’t even trying all that hard. Ghost, on the other hand, was trying, but she didn’t get very far.
I had a feeling Ghost tried for my benefit, and I wasn’t about to try to stop her from doing that. Even if she often failed.
There was a time when my past, present, and future had all blurred into one, and for those moments, I’d had nothing. No one. Not even the family I’d chosen for my own. On a roadside in Benghazi, my body broken, my eyes wet from pain, and the sun and smoke burning them, a part of me had died.
Only now, when I looked at Ghost, did that part feel like it was alive again.
I wasn’t sure why.
She didn’t really talk to me, and when she did, her eyes were always downcast. I preferred to think she was shy rather than scared of me, because if it was the latter then I’d probably feel like blowing my brains out…and I thought about doing that way too much as it was.
When I looked at her, I felt hope. I felt something. And it was weird. Really weird. Really, very weird because I didn’t know why.
I hadn’t had sex in so long that my cock didn’t even twitch at all the shit I saw in the clubhouse. I didn’t think about sex, didn’t want it, because my brain was focused on other things. Like the will to carry on. Like the fact I was needed in the clubhouse, by my brothers, my family. Sex wasn’t something I needed because, though my body wasn’t broken, my head was.
I accepted it, and I think the broken parts of me were attracted to the broken parts in Ghost.
Which, when I thought about it, was the most fucking depressing shit I’d heard in like, forever. But it was true.
I didn’t mean attracted in the regular sense either. Even if I could see she was a beautiful woman when she wasn’t forty pounds underweight.
I meant ‘attracted’ like with a magnet.
Something about her pulled me in, reeled me toward her like I was a fish on a line, only death wasn’t in my future when I looked at her. Life was.
Link: SATAN’S SINNERS’ MC: TWO Page 20
