by Tillie Cole
“I’m tired,” I said and sighed. Charley knew I was lying. But mercifully, she didn’t say anything. She leaned in and kissed my cheek.
“You’re sure you don’t want me to stay with you?”
“I’m sure,” I said. “But thank you. I . . . I just need to be alone.” With a tight hug, Charley went to leave my room. “Charley?” I called. She turned. “Could you make sure no one else disturbs me until morning? That they know I need time alone? Please?” Charley nodded and left.
In her wake, I locked all the doors to my bedroom so no one else could come in. I walked back to the mirror and gazed at myself in the dress. And I imagined it all differently. I imagined it was Tanner I would meet at the end of the aisle. I imagined it was his face that would watch me walk toward him.
I turned away from the mirror and lay down on my bed. Closing my eyes, I let the tears fall. I let the salty drops fall onto the lace of the dress, my pain woven into the delicate fabric. Good. I wanted tomorrow to be ruined. I wanted to burn the bastard wedding to the ground.
Hours ticked by, and darkness enveloped the room. My eyes felt bruised from the tears I had shed. My eyelids had started to fall, sleep closing in, when I heard a clicking sound from the hidden door in my wall. The door behind a tapestry. My eyes sprang open and my heart started thundering in my chest.
Only a couple of people knew of the underground tunnels. One of whom was . . . “Mi amor?” I whispered. Hope and fear mixed into one heady cocktail as I felt a warm draft dance over the exposed skin on my back. Warm air from the open hidden door.
Someone was behind me. They were silent, but I felt them there. My hands fisted into the sheet beneath me. “You came,” I whispered, feeling my chest swell with relief. “You came for me before it was too late.”
Only silence followed. Taking a deep breath, I turned on the bed, just as something pricked my neck. A man dressed in black with midnight eyes stood before me. I went to scream, but a hand came over my mouth, muffling any noise. Instinct kicked in, and I started fighting back against the intruder. I kicked out my leg, hitting him in the stomach. I hit his muscled arms with my fists. Pure fear made me sink my nails into his skin, clawing and clawing, tying to throw him off. But with every kick and punch I felt my muscles getting weaker, losing strength. My neck. He’d injected something into my neck. Panic, thick and deep, surged through my veins. But I had nothing left in me to fight with. Black spots danced in my eyes, blurring my vision. My kidnapper picked me up and headed for the secret tunnel. The last thing I saw was the reflection in the large wall mirror: a man dressed in black leather, carrying me, a stolen bride, away into the night . . .
. . . and then it all went black.
Chapter Five
Styx
We walked out of Flame and Maddie’s bedroom in their cabin. He was getting better. Still sedated and would be for a few more days, but he would pull through.
Ash sat on the couch, playing poker with Zane and Slash. The three prospects were as thick as fucking thieves. “We’re out,” Ky said as we passed them.
Just as I set foot out of the cabin, my cell rang. “We have her.” AK’s voice came through the loudspeaker, so Ky could hear and respond.
“Good. Now, get the fuck back. And don’t hesitate to take out any assholes that get on your tail. We need that cartel slut back here,” Ky said. “We have Diablos and some of our other chapters near every check-in point. You don’t call to say you’re good, they’ll be there. If this war goes to the road, then so fucking be it. We’re all on standby.”
“On it.” AK hung up.
Ky looked my way. “A few days and they’ll be here.” He paused. “Then the real fucking war will start. You ready for this, Prez?”
The fire that war always sparked in me flared to life. “B-born ready.”
Ky punched my arm, smiling his fucking Hollywood smile. Prick was getting a hard-on at the thought of killing. Fuck, none of us sinners could stop the adrenaline from surging at the thought of taking some of these Klan and cartel fuckers out . . . For me it would be slowly, with my German blade.
As we walked to Ky’s truck, Viking and Rudge were by the fire pit outside the Psycho Trio’s cabins. Viking had a bloody nose. Both of them were bare chested. Rudge smiled at us, his knuckles red from where he’d clearly smashed Viking in the face. These assholes were tapped in the head. “Foreplay?” Ky asked, leaning against the truck. “If so, wait until I’m gone before you bend Vike over, Rudge.”
“Hey!” Vike said, licking the blood from his lip. “Why would I be the bottom?”
Ky stared at Vike, assessing him. “Just get that vibe from you, brother.”
I wondered if the red giant would argue back, but he just shrugged and tossed another log on the fire. Nothing ever affected the fucker. “Rudge is teaching me how to bare-knuckle box.”
“Looks like you’re winning,” Ky said sarcastically, pointing at his bruising eye and split lip.
“This?” Vike wiped his nose. “Nah, just let the wanker get in a few for luck.” Vike said “wanker” in a British accent. The guy was a total damn train wreck. “Besides, I get off on being hit.” He winked at us. “Like the rough stuff, you know? It’s no fun if blood and punches ain’t involved.”
“You speak the gospel, brother.” Rudge started shadow-boxing around Ky. Ky glared at him out of the corner of his eye, then quickly swiped out and knocked the fucker to the ground. Rudge, being as unstable as he was, just laughed, his teeth covered in blood from his own now-split lip. I smirked, slapping my best friend on the back. Rudge jumped to his feet.
“Touch me and die,” Ky warned. Rudge pretended to close in on Ky. I was sure my VP was gonna kill the fucker on the spot. Then, laughing, Rudge moved back to Vike, and the giant ginger threw his arm around his neck. “Your prez not calling you back to London town?” Ky folded his arms. “You know you’re not actually required to be here, right?”
Rudge put his hand over his Union Jack tattoo. “Ky, my brother, my mate, I’d never leave you guys in this war alone.”
“Seriously, you can. In fact, I’ll buy your fucking plane ticket if you just wanna fuck off back to the Big Smoke.”
Rudge came over and put his hand on Ky’s shoulder. My best friend wore death in his eyes. “My prez told me to take all the time I needed over here with our mother chapter. Actually . . .” Rudge smiled a shit-eating grin. “Been thinking about Austin as a permanent thing.” He rubbed his hand over his chin. “Just mulling shit over right now, but I’m getting a good feel for Hangmen HQ here in good ol’ Texas.” His face turned serious. “I think you guys need some Barnaby Rudge in your lives. Reckon it’d be dull as fuck out here without me.”
“You serious?” Vike said from across the fire pit.
“Like I said, I’m mulling shit over.”
“Yes!” Vike shouted, jumping on Rudge from behind and taking him to the floor. I grabbed Ky by the collar of his cut and made him get in the truck, ignoring the fucking idiots punching each other’s faces in celebration near the fire.
“That prick’ll give me a fucking heart attack. English douchebag,” Ky spat. We were silent on the way back to my cabin. Kept my cell near just in case we got a call from AK.
Ky dropped me off at home, promising to tell me if he heard anything from AK and the rest of the brothers. When I walked through the door, I couldn’t see Mae anywhere. “Mae?” I shouted, kicking off my boots and grabbing a beer from the fridge. There was food on the stove, so I knew she was here somewhere.
I checked every room until I found her in the back room we never used. It was just full of junk, and a bunch of club shit I inherited when my old man took the trip to the boatman. A familiar-looking trunk was open, and Mae was curled up on a dusty old chair, reading some kind of leather-backed book. “Styx!” Her hand flew to her chest. “You scared me.”
Leaning down, I gripped her hair and took her mouth. As always, my bitch melted into me. She tasted of chocolate. I broke away, took
a sip of my beer, and asked, “W-what’s th-this?”
Guilt flashed in her wolf eyes. “Don’t be mad.” She rubbed her stomach. It was huge now. My kid was big, if the doc Mae was seeing had it right. Mae was only small. I wasn’t sure how she was gonna get our kid out. My chest tightened. It fucking terrified me. The thought of anything happening to either of them kept me awake at night. “But I decided to clean out this room. Apparently it is called nesting. Getting ready for the baby.” She rubbed her stomach again. “Anyway, I found this trunk and started looking through it to see if it was worth keeping.” I frowned, trying to remember what was in it. There seemed to be about twenty different trunks and boxes in this room.
Mae went to get to her feet. I held out my hand and helped her up off the chair. She laughed, and the fucking sound of it was still the best thing I’d ever heard. I pulled her close and put my hand on her stomach. Just as I did, Charon moved around. I couldn’t help but smirk. “He knows his papa already.” Mae’s head fell to my chest. She looked up at me, and her lip twisted. She was nervous.
“Wh-what?”
“It—the trunk—seems to be all your mama’s possessions. What was left after . . . after she died. Her journals go up until she came back here. Including the ones written after she had run away . . .” Right up until my pop shot her in the fucking head in front of me, I wanted to say, but I held back. My stomach tightened when I looked at the trunk. I remembered it then. Recognized the old brown leather and her faded name on the front. But then my veins frosted with ice. I didn’t want to know a thing more about that slut. I’d forgotten I still had the trunk. Hadn’t thought of my mama in years. And if I ever did, I fucking rid myself of the memory straight away. Fuck that shit.
But looking at that trunk, I remembered it. Remembered how I’d hidden it after she’d been shot. Sneaked it away from my old man so he wouldn’t find it.
Then never thought of it again.
“B-burn them,” I said. Mae’s head shot up. Her mouth was parted in shock. “D-don’t want a-anything of that s-slut’s. Burn them.”
“River.” Mae shook her head disapprovingly. Her voice soft, she added, “She was your mother.”
I stepped back. Mae’s hands fell from my waist. Anger fucking ate at my stomach, and I had to breathe deeply just to calm the fuck down. “No. Sh-she wasn’t. She f-fucking left me for the D-Diablos. She didn’t give a f-fuck about me.”
Mae’s eyes filled with tears. “She did, River.” Mae picked a journal up off the top of the trunk and brought it over to me. “If you read them, I think you may understand her more.”
Mae’s huge fucking wolf eyes locked onto mine, and some of my anger faded. “B-babe,” I said, and pushed my hand through her hair. I stepped closer, but I stopped when I got to the bump. It was now so big I couldn’t get my wife as close to me as I wanted. “I d-don’t give a shit a-about that wh-whore.” I grabbed the journal from her hand and held up the tattered pages. “And y-you sh-shouldn’t either.”
I tossed it to the trunk, then kissed Mae on the mouth and backed away to go into my office.
“She lived this life.”
Confused, I turned around. Mae had the journal back in her hand. She came closer, a nervous look on her fucking gorgeous face.
“She had a baby in this outlaw life.” Mae ducked her head. “She had a baby boy with the president of the Hangmen.”
Something tugged in my chest at the shake in Mae’s voice. I pulled her closer to me and waited for her to look up. “I-I’m n-nothing like my old man.” I believed it. I fucking did. But I knew it wasn’t entirely true. Fuck, I killed whoever got in my way, and felt fuck-all emotion over it. I ran this club with an iron fist, and I had no problem killing anyone who turned against it. But I had Mae. And my asswipe of a father never gave a shit about anyone but himself. Hell, he shot my mother one minute, and the next slapped me on the back and went to the bar so he could sink his dick into the slut he’d told to wait there for him while he did so.
Taking Mae’s cheeks in my hand, I stared into her eyes. She looked fucking scared. Mae tried to dip her head, but I didn’t let her. “Wh-what?”
Mae released a deep breath. “She had you in the middle of a war.” My fucking stomach fell as Mae’s eyes filled with tears. “She had the same fears I do.” Her shoulders sagged, then whispered, “Of losing you. Of being killed herself, being a target . . .” She held her stomach, lip trembling. “Of them coming for Charon . . . of us losing each other. Of not having the life we’ve dreamed of for so long.” Mae swallowed. Her face had gone white. She was fucking shaking. It fucking cut me in half to see her this way. “I just feel . . . I just feel that since we found each other again, there has been so much happening. Helping my sisters find freedom, the threats to the club, and now this war.” Mae’s breathing hitched, and she rubbed her stomach, where she kept our son safe. “Now that we have Charon, I feel fear so much more strongly now. We have more to lose. I can’t bear the thought of anything happening to him . . . to any of us.”
Untapped rage rushed forward as I thought of anything like that happening. “N-no one will touch you. Either of you. I-I’ll f-fucking k-kill t-them if th-they t-try t-to, I—”
I cut my words off when my stutter became so bad that I couldn’t fucking speak. How the fuck could I assure Mae that nothing would happen to her when I couldn’t even speak?
“Shh.” Mae put her hand on my cheek. “I love you, River Nash. But more than that, I trust you. I know you would never let anyone hurt us. You’re a good husband. You’re a fierce president . . . but more importantly, you’ll be an excellent father.”
Out of everything Mae said, that was the one thing that hit me. Because the truth was, I was like my father—Shade “The Reaper” Nash. I was like him in so many ways . . . and he was a shitty dad. What the fuck did I have to offer a kid? What—
“You are not him, and you are too good to treat your son as he did you.” I stared at the fucking conviction in Mae’s eyes and let go of some of the poison in my veins. But a trace always remained. Because neither of my parents had given two shits about me. I was about to be a dad, and the only references I had were a prick who beat me and a slut who left me with a man she fucking despised. What the hell did that say about her? About either of them?
“I never knew I could love anyone the way I love him. I didn’t believe it was possible. Dark brown hair, chubby cheeks, and perfect lips. Right now he has dark blue eyes that I could stare into for days, but I know that color can change.” I turned my head, confused as to what Mae was talking about. Then I realized. She was reading aloud from the journal. My heart kicked into a sprint. These were my mother’s words . . .
“I never want to let him go. I keep the door to Shade’s room in the club locked so that nothing bad can ever come near him. So this club can’t pollute him. At least not yet.” Mae’s voice wavered, and I had to swallow a fucking lump that was building in my throat. “Is it normal to be unable to ever look away from your child like this? To want to shield him from all the bad, and only give him the good? Because I must do that. Whatever it takes, I will protect him and keep him safe. My baby, my River . . . my baby boy who now owns my whole heart, will be safe from this life. From his father. I have to find a way . . .” Mae wiped at her cheeks while I stood in the hallway like a statue. Mae looked at me. “She loved you, Styx. She loved you so much that on some of the pages the ink is smudged from where she’d been crying as she emptied her heart into the journal.”
I couldn’t fucking speak. I knew no words would come out of my mouth right now even if I tried. Mae came to me and took my hand. “She was sixteen when she first met your father. He was thirty-two. He got her pregnant not long afterward. She was a lost soul. Had run away from home.” My jaw clenched. I didn’t want to hear this. I knew shit about my mother, and never wanted to know. She went to the boatman when I was ten, but left me long before that. Of course, that didn’t stop Mae. She just fucking barreled on like she’d ba
rreled into my life. Bitch was the only one who I’d let get away with this shit. Mae’s hand pressed against my face. “She ran away from home when she couldn’t take any more of the abuse.” I froze. Mae’s expression fell to one of sympathy. Because my old lady knew what abuse felt like, had the scars on her thighs to prove it. Of course, there were all kinds of abuse. She must have seen that question in my eyes. “Sexual abuse, Styx. Abuse like I endured.”
My hands fell away from Mae, and I had to step back. My fingers curled into fists and my jaw clenched. “It was her older brother,” Mae said. I closed my eyes and just tried to fucking breathe. I may have been a stone-cold killer, one of the most lethal Hangmen to ever wear the Dark Lord on his cut, but this club didn’t tolerate that shit. In fact, I’d rip the rancid cock off any fucker I knew did.
Happily.
Especially after Mae . . . after seeing what she and her sisters went through. What it did to them, how it fucking destroyed them for most of their lives. Kept a part of them forever fucked up.
But my mother . . . the woman I barely remembered and never tried to. The one who left me to the fists and daily ridicule of my father . . . My mother had a brother. Something else I never knew.
“He was a lot older than her. Her mother and father weren’t around much. Her father was lost to drugs, and her mother killed herself when your mother was only nine.” Mae took a deep breath. “Styx . . . she was only eight when he raped her for the first time. Her older brother. He was sixteen.” I saw that look in Mae’s eyes, the one that showed pain and . . . fuck . . . sympathy, because she knew exactly what that felt like. She’d been eight too when that bastard Brother Jacob had raped her in that joke of a cult.
“M-Mae.” I shook my head and picked up my beer from the table next to me. I downed it and tossed the bottle in the trash. “St-stop.”
