A breath escaped him. “That’s what Indy said.” He released a rueful laugh. “But I don’t know how true that is. I just… I wanted to see you before because I wanted to check in on you. Indy’s been giving me shit about not visiting, and she got Giulia to work on me.” He scraped a hand over his jaw even as his shoulders were bunching. “I didn’t want to. You know I’m fucking pissed at you for getting caught.”
Not for committing the crime. Never that in my family, I thought wryly.
Not wanting to talk about it, I just grumbled, “I know.”
“Well, I had no choice but to cancel the visit—”
“Why?” Before he could finish, I leaned in and demanded, “They’re saying the Sinners are at their weakest in here, the cunts. Making out there was some kind of bomb, but I ain’t heard shit from any of you.” I pulled a face. “My phone ran out of credit so I couldn’t call.”
“Shit. I’ll get it loaded up. The burner still working? I know those things are old and clunky as fuck.”
“It’s fine.” I wafted a hand. “Is it true?” I demanded.
“We’re never weak,” was his arrogant answer, then he winced. “But the compound… we were bombed, Quin.”
“What?” I snapped, jerking upright in surprise.
“Keep it down,” he hissed, and I immediately slouched in my seat, reacting to his command like a soldier on patrol. “You know I’m not supposed to talk about shit like this, but I wanted to keep you in the loop.”
“Christ,” I whispered back. “Who the fuck would even dare?”
“We’re working on it. But…”
“How is everyone?” I interrupted. “What the fuck is going on, man?”
“We lost Jaxson, Matty, Kingsley, Jingles, and Jojo. As messed up as that is, Bear’s…”
My eyes flared wide. “Please tell me he’s okay.” Rex’s dad was like my fucking grandfather. “Jesus, please tell me he’s okay, Nyx.”
“I can’t, Quin. I can’t. He’s in a bad way.” His chin tipped up. “Look, we can talk about that after—”
“After? We’re talking about my fucking family here, Nyx. I need answers!”
But he plodded on. “I have to ask you something. Maybe even tell you—” Another hiss escaped him. “Indy’s gotten together with a biker. Remember Cruz?”
“Course I remember. It ain’t been that long.” Plus, that fucker had the coolest negative ink going.
“Well, they’re together.”
“Shit, and she didn’t tell me?” I complained, pissed again.
“She’s coming to terms with it,” he said wryly. “When the blast happened, I knew she was one foot out the door. We found out at the hospital that night that Giulia was pregnant, so when I heard her about to leap out of the life, I just… man, I couldn’t let her go back to New Orleans.”
My mouth turned down at the corners. “Agreed. That place wasn’t good for her.”
“No. It wasn’t,” he said with a nod. “Anyway, I told her, and she stuck around, but you know…” He cleared his throat. “You know my hobby?”
I frowned, but it didn’t take much to figure out what he was talking about. Nyx wasn’t exactly the kind of guy to knit, nor was he the type of man to whittle in his spare time.
He meant the pedos.
The killing thereof.
“Yeah, I know.”
“Indy pleaded with me not to do that anymore. She said I needed to stick around to protect my kid, because…” He gulped, then closed his eyes like he was about to reveal something horrendous, where I was just clutching in the dark trying to figure out where the fuck he was going with this. “Because,” he repeated, chasing down air like it was tequila, “I needed to do for my kid what our mom and dad didn’t do for her.”
For a second, the words hung around me like a toxic gas. They didn’t disperse. Didn’t disintegrate. They just hovered there, choking me, poisoning every breath I took.
Then, as the realization of what he was saying hit me, I rasped, “No.”
He dipped his chin. “Yeah, Quin. Yeah. Kevin got to her.”
In my ears, I could hear a kind of howling that I was too self-contained to allow past my lips. But inside my head, the screams were there.
Fuck, was this what Nyx had to cope with?
This endless scream?
I stared at him blindly, blankly.
“Not Indy. No.” I shook my head, needing to believe that fucker hadn’t gotten to her, but Nyx’s eyes were goddamn wet.
Fucking wet.
He was crying.
Jesus fuck.
It was true.
My skin prickled with tingles of sensation as I stared at him, willing him to take it back, to say it was some kind of messed up joke, but it wasn’t.
He started talking, but my ears weren’t listening. My head wasn’t on the conversation. It was on my older sister. The one I was closest to. Who had been there for me when I’d been sick, who’d watched over me before and after my transplant operation. Who’d protected me, who’d defended me…
Then I thought of the time I’d caught her using bleach on her skin like it was body soap from Bath & goddamn Bodyworks—
Was that because of Kevin?
A hundred other things filtered through my memory banks, and the cascade of memories only came to a halt when a guard barked, “No touching!” and I realized that Nyx had grabbed my wrist and jerked me forward.
Nyx’s hands popped up to break the connection, but when I stared at him, dazedly, he demanded, “Did he get to you?”
“Kevin?” Slowly, dumbly, I shook my head. Then, because I couldn’t cope with this anymore, because this was the last thing I could fucking handle, because I needed out and the walls felt like they were closing in, and because I needed to get to my sister and to fucking hold her and to tell her that she was insane for keeping this from me, I hissed, “Nyx, Indy told me James Lacey was running for mayor? Was she right?”
“Yeah, we had the other tossed out on corruption charges. He won.” He scowled at me. “What the fuck does that have to do with anything, Quin?”
“Listen to me,” I snapped, and for the first time, Nyx actually did. He straightened up, his head tilted to the side, just so, and I knew I had all his focus. “About two days before I was arrested,” I whispered, ducking my shoulders, “the cops came to me. They gave me a file of information, and they showed me how I’d committed a crime that I hadn’t committed.” His eyes widened, but I raised my hand to stall him. “It was all there in black and white. Where I was, when I was, how I was. By the end of the file, with the pictures there in front of me, I thought I’d blacked out and had gone for a fucking ride, but I hadn’t. Nyx, I hadn’t.”
A breath escaped me, and for the first time, it felt full.
Whole.
Like a weight off my shoulders. Like my chest was no longer being compressed.
I tipped my head back, just appreciating the sensation, before Nyx ground out, “Quin? What the fuck are you telling me?”
Slowly, I rolled my head back down so I could look at him, and I rumbled, “I’m innocent. The cops, those fuckers, they told me if I didn’t do as they instructed then they’d have me thrown in jail. If I behaved and complied with their wishes, I could go on my merry way, but they’d expect some ‘thing’ from me.”
The scowl I knew had pedos pissing themselves made an appearance. “What?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. They wanted me in their pocket, I guess. I was new to the Sinners. Maybe they thought they’d get an in with me. Well, I wasn’t about to have that. I’m many fucking things, but I ain’t a snitch. So here I am. But I can’t be here anymore. Not when—” I closed my eyes, trying to avoid the howling in my ears. With a shaky hand, I tapped my temple. “Nyx? There’s a… Christ, it’s like a scream in my head.”
My elder brother hissed. “I know, Quin. I know what that feels like.”
That wasn’t good news.
“I can’t be here. You hav
e to get me out.”
“I’ll figure something—” He snarled under his breath. “Why didn’t you fucking tell me?”
“And get you into shit too? No goddamn way. If I can’t be in prison, how the fuck can you be? You need your freedom even more than I do!” I sliced my head from left to right, unable to even comprehend the notion of Nyx behind bars. If I was close to slicing my wrists with a sharpened plastic spoon, he’d just bash his head against the wall until he fucking died.
“What does Lacey have to do with anything?” he whispered, hunching his shoulders as he leaned closer to me.
“His kid was one of the cops who framed me,” I snarled, feeling like I was grinding my teeth into dust as I spoke. “I need you to get Rachel to figure something out, Nyx. Can you do that for me? Please.”
He swallowed at the sight of my desperation. “I can, baby bro. Give me a couple of weeks. I’m going to work on this, and in the interim, you maybe need to get tossed in the hole. There, you’ll be safe.”
“Okay. But please…”
“Second I’m out of here, I’ll be on the phone to Rex, Quin.”
Nodding, I caught his eye. “I ain’t doing good in here, Nyx, and I sure as hell ain’t gonna do good in the fucking hole.”
“No fucking wonder.” He shook his head, his eyes loaded with guilt at his lack of faith in me as he breathed, “You’re innocent.”
Mouth pursed tight because I felt like sobbing, I just gave him another brisk nod. “I am.”
Twenty
Amara
Growing up in Ukraine, poverty was too common. Some days, it felt like we all lived hand to mouth, and even that seemed like a luxury.
I knew there were those who didn’t live that way, but in my tiny corner of the country, where everyone was a farmer and where the weather dictated the state of our stomachs for upcoming months, being poor was as normal as going to bed cold at night.
I’d come across the American version of luxury before.
Whenever Sir would take us from our pit and would have us brought to his home where we serviced him, I’d get a taste of how the rich lived.
That house belonged in a fairy tale. It was something a king would live in. With marble floors everywhere that gleamed like mirrors. Often, that was the only time I saw my reflection, when I was on my hands and knees, staring into the tiles. My dead eyes looking back at me as I recognized that escaping home, escaping poverty had given me exactly what my father had warned me about—a fate earned with the hole between my thighs.
A future dependent on a man’s whims.
I’d just never anticipated how bad those whims could be. To be stored like a loathed hunting dog… a nightmare in itself. To be fucked and abused, beaten and punished—no dog should endure what I had. What Alessa and Tatána had.
That was why I was here.
Standing in front of a house my owner had once lived in and recognizing that this place was even more of a palace than the one he’d taken us to.
It was the size of a government building back home, and the driveway alone was majestic. The fountain was the size of a pool, and the statues looked as though they belonged in a museum. When a maid answered the door, it was surreal to be welcomed into the house. Not to be forced to crawl in, not to be made to beg for a shower, not to be raped, not to be tormented…
I entered like a human being.
Because I was a human being.
Not an animal.
Not something to be mistreated.
Slowly but surely, Tiffany and Lily had proven to me that despite everything I’d endured, I was worth something.
It was what had given me the courage to be here today.
“May I take you to the kitchen, ma’am? That’s where Miss Lily is.”
Ma’am.
Pizda.
Me. A ma’am.
Lancaster, if he’d been buried, was probably rolling around in his grave.
His staff calling me by a polite title.
I hoped he heard from wherever he was. I hoped he’d be doing the hopak dance in his six by four earthly prison that could never be as horrendous as where he’d stored me, Alessa, Sarah, and Tatána. Never mind the other girls who’d perished before us.
“Ma’am?” the woman asked with a gentle smile.
I swallowed, and though I rarely used English, rarely wanted anyone to know I could speak it, I softened at her smile, at her gentle and calm demeanor, and whispered, “I’d like to speak with Alessa please.”
“Of course. She’s in the poolhouse, not in the kitchen. Would you like me to take you to her?”
“If you don’t mind.”
“It’s my pleasure. Please, follow me.”
Her pleasure.
Truly?
Was it really her pleasure to walk me across a hall that practically sang with every step I took as the click of my heels echoed harmoniously around the chamber?
To take me through a room that looked like it was fit for a queen before we headed outside into a garden that was as big as my father’s farm? That was neat and tidy and completely useless, all of it fertile soil that was being used to grow things such as flowers and grass. One didn’t grow potatoes in a backyard like this…
Then there was the pool, with the property that perched beside it which was clearly the ‘poolhouse,’ yet in Ukraine, it was large enough to fit a family of six.
The wealth here was perverted. Disgusting.
Which, I supposed, meant I was disgusting too because I’d accepted Lily’s offer a second after she’d made it. It wasn’t enough to buy me happiness, to clean my past or my body or my soul, but it was a security I needed. Craved.
Ten million.
Lily gave it to us as if it were pocket change.
It almost amused me to think of what Tatána had done. With all her sneaking around, she’d tried to make herself a better life, when all she’d had to do was wait. She didn’t have to spread her legs for a man who was more interested in the clubhouse than her, she didn’t have to be beholden to anyone to have more security than we could ever have imagined…
She just had to wait.
Impatience had always been her problem. As had stupidity. It was why her nose had been broken so many times by Sir.
The maid drew me back to my thoughts as she knocked on the door to the poolhouse, and when it pulled inward, revealing Alessa to me, I tipped my chin up in greeting.
“Thank you, Mary,” Alessa told the woman who bowed her head, accepting the dismissal with yet another small smile that she beamed at me before she made her way back to the house. To me, Alessa questioned, “What are you doing here?”
“I wished to talk to you.” Since the blast, and since she’d come to the house where I was now staying, this was the most I’d talked. As a result, my throat felt a little rusty.
“What about?”
“Alessa? Who is it?” Maverick called out.
I cast a look at the hall behind her, then returned my attention to Alessa. We’d never been close. Sir had never encouraged us to be that. If anything, he’d rewarded us if we stood firm, dependent on only him. The other one, the younger one, had actively pitted us against each other, and when it came down to survival, we’d all thrown each other to the wolves.
That was why, after all we’d been through, she’d been able to come at me the other day. There was no love lost between us, but… I wanted that to change.
I was alone.
She was alone now, whether she realized it or not.
If only she’d accept Lily’s offer—she wouldn’t have to depend on a man for support, and she’d have money of her own. Just like me. We’d be able to do as we wished, go where we wished. Lily had given us freedom. She’d liberated us. With that new freedom, I found that I wanted to be with someone who understood where I’d come from and how it affected me. Us.
“It’s Amara,” Alessa said in English. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
“He has you at his beck and cal
l?” I queried in our mother tongue, my gaze drifting over the shadows under her eyes, the misery in them.
She wasn’t happy.
Neither was I.
But for different reasons.
And I was finding that I didn’t have to be happy to feel at peace. Apparently, the two didn’t come hand in hand.
“No, of course not,” was her brisk reply. “If anything he wants nothing to do with me.”
“Charming.”
She shrugged. “It’s the nature of his illness.”
I’d heard about this ‘illness.’ “You believe it?”
“Believe what?” she demanded, scowling at me. “That he can’t remember me? You think he’d make that up?”
“Tatána betrayed his brothers, the club. Maybe he remembers what you are, what we are, and he wants to be rid of you. We’re used goods, Alessa. What use are we to a man?”
Pain flashed in her eyes, telling me she felt the same way as I did. How couldn’t what we’d been through affect us? Affect our dealings with men?
“Maverick wouldn’t do that. He knew everything before and he was the one who made us—” She gulped. “He encouraged the feelings between us to develop. If you came here to punish me for the other day by besmirching his character, then you can just go. I did what I had to do. I needed to know if you were like that bitch.”
Her words were spat out, but I heard her insecurity, and though we weren’t friends, I had no real desire to play on her vulnerability as, in the past, I might have done.
Instead, a little tired, I murmured, “I understand why you did what you did.”
She squinted at me. “You do?”
I shrugged. “In your position, I’d have done the same. You had to establish that you weren’t involved with Tatána, you had to make them know you were innocent.”
“And you didn’t?”
“They spoke with me. I told them the truth. As much as I know of it anyway. You beating me was unnecessary. I had no desire to lie for her or that odd man of hers.” I straightened my shoulders. “Before you say anything, I only saw him once and I told Link about it. Anyway, I didn’t come here to make you feel guilty or to accuse you of anything. I wanted to know if you were going to accept the money Lily offered.”
Maverick: A Dark MC Romance (A Dark & Dirty Sinners' MC Series Book 6) Page 18
