by Zoe Hill
Oliver Tennyson, not being dead, was top of his list.
Turns out, he got that right, at least.
Poppy’s elation at having her brother back is short-lived. After he’s taken his fill of her affection, he pulls his pistol free and aims it at me. I cock my head to the side, searching his face for answers while his little sister slaps his chest.
“Put that down, Ollie,” she commands. “Spenser is not like Harrison.”
He ignores her instruction, instead, concentrating solely on me. Acting as if her assault on him is akin to a fly buzzing around his head, Oliver uses his other hand to pull a small console that’s no bigger than a garage remote out of his pocket. He presses a button and a red light at the top lights up.
“Get on your knees, both of you.”
The desperation in his eyes is one that I know intimately. I raise my hands on either side of my head and step out of the vehicle. He pushes Poppy toward me, then steps out of my reach. Gripping Poppy’s wrist, I make her kneel in the dirt next to me.
“When did you meet her?” All color drains from Oliver’s face when I continue, “My Aunt Rosalie, I mean.”
“The day after I put a bullet in her husband’s head to prove to them that I was trustworthy.”
“Sounds about right,” I muse. Jerking my head toward the vehicle that’s speeding down the dirt road, I ask, “That ours or yours?”
“Mine,” he replies. Pointing at the bushes on the other side of the road, he says, “Yours will be here shortly. For now, I need you to hide over there and keep your mouths shut until I’m gone.”
“No!” Poppy shouts at her brother. “I’m not letting you go. Please. Come home.”
After I raise my eyebrow, he answers my silent question about his sister with a sharp nod. I slap my hand over Poppy’s mouth and wrap my arm around her waist. She struggles to free herself, screaming from behind my palm. Denying her the opportunity to exchange goodbyes with her brother, I sling her over my shoulder, then run across the road and down the embankment until we’re hidden behind the bushes that Oliver directed us toward.
Hand over her mouth, I hold Poppy while she sobs like her heart is broken and tears stream down her face. The torrent of sorrow wets my skin and hurts my heart, but I don’t allow her to break free until I’m sure that her brother is gone, and the coast is free. As I release her, she lashes out. Her wild slaps rain down, stinging my face, and her kicks make my shins smart.
Silently, I take it all until she’s spent.
As her energy flags, I hear two vehicles approaching. When they stop, and familiar voices begin calling our names, I pick her up and hold her against my chest like a bride as we head back to the other side of the road. She is quiet for the short walk, apart from the ragged breaths that shake her body.
On the way, we pass by the abandoned SUV that still contains my uncle’s dead body, and his brain matter splattered over the front window. Seeing the mess settles the last of the fear that’s stalked me for two decades.
He’s really gone...
Yet the satisfaction I thought I’d feel after his demise hasn’t dawned. Part of me believes that it never will. Revenge may be a dish best served cold, but I think mine has come a little too late. The damage he caused is too engrained to be fixed.
I’m not even sure if it can be healed.
Poppy’s parents come into view and she twists in my embrace to shout at them, “You knew, didn’t you?”
Confusion clouds her father’s eyes. “Knew what?”
“She saw him?” Poppy’s mom directs her question at me.
“He was the driver.”
Relief strips years from Eloise Tennyson’s face. “He’s still alive then.”
“For now,” I reply.
Poppy’s father gives his wife a look that would strip paint as the meaning behind our stilted conversation begins to make sense to him. He stalks over to me and wrenches his daughter out of my embrace. Lowering her back to her feet, he pulls her into him, wrapping his arms around her and cupping the back of her head. Although her face is hidden, I see that her shoulders are shaking as she weeps.
“Zricha,” I plead. When I try to touch her, she darts behind her dad. “I found out when you did. I wouldn’t keep something like that a secret.”
“Promise?” Hope brightens her voice by the merest iota as she poses her question.
“Promise.”
Poppy emerges from behind Bennett. I take her hands, ready to accept the apology kiss she’s rising to her tiptoes to give me, only to be interrupted by the one voice I never want to hear again, now that Harrison is dead.
“Spenser,” my dad calls from the second van. “We need you to come with us.”
“Impeccable timing, like usual,” I grumble beneath my breath.
“I think you should hear him out.” Poppy touches her fingertips to the middle of my chest. I place my hand over hers, trapping her palm against my heart as I hold her tight with my other arm. “I think it might help you.”
“It’s important,” my brother says, coming up behind us. He stands as close to me as he can without actually touching. I growl, a low sound that vibrates my chest and makes Poppy laugh lightly. Smiling down at my woman, Stirling quips, “I’d say it was nice to see you, except we only meet when blood’s been spilled, so maybe next time?”
“Third time lucky?” she offers.
“I’ll hold you to that.” Stirling inclines his head. Clamping a hand down on my shoulder, my brother murmurs, “Come with us... there are things you need to hear.”
When Poppy offers her agreement by flexing her fingers against my heart, I reluctantly acquiesce. “All right. Let’s get this over and done with.”
Lifting my shoulder, I shake his hand off and he returns to the van. Once we’re alone, I find myself lost for words. Sensing my uncertainty, Poppy presses her fingers against her lips and then lays them against mine. Before she walks back to her dad, she says, “You don’t have to say anything, I get it. They’ve let you down too many times for you to forgive. That’s fair, but maybe if you listen to their side, it’ll give you a fresh perspective? If not, you still have me... I’m not going anywhere.”
Poppy’s advice rings in my ears as I turn to face my parents. Finding various degrees of desolation displayed in their expressions, I drag in a ragged breath to steel myself for what’s to come.
They want absolution.
I’m not sure if I can give it.
Even if we tore down the Coalition with our bare hands, my family would still be a mess. The bad things far outweigh the good. Any trust that once existed has been destroyed. Love doesn’t even come into the equation. We all bear the scars of their choices, and I’m not sure if there is any way to come back from the past we share.
Even if we had a magical reset button, I’m not sure I’d want to press it.
What would it change?
***
After a silent journey back to the Samaritan’s Soldiers compound, my head is a disaster zone filled with questions and allegations and a driving need to hurt someone. The residual effects of the drug they used to knock me out have worn off and I’m filling with a restless energy that’s quickly zapping my ability to control my urge to take out my frustrations on someone’s face.
As I battle with my rage, counting to empty my head of all conflict, my mind circles back to one question.
Why hasn’t Harrison’s death given me closure?
I should be on the top of the world right now, instead I feel like I’m teetering on the brink of eternal damnation, and the person who’s going to push me over the edge is the man sitting across the room from me. My father’s eyes have barely left me the entire time my brother has been cleaning up the injuries I sustained while I was unconscious.
His attention is making the fire beneath my skin flare. Being so close to him makes my blood boil in my veins and my body burn from the inside out.
“I think I’ve bandaged up all your boo-boos,” Stirl
ing announces. His poor attempt at a joke falls flat. Never one to give up his self-appointed role of peacemaker easily, he tries again, “Come on, people. This should be a celebration. We should be clearing the air and deciding who’s going to piss on his grave first.”
“Roman put a contract on your head,” Dad reveals. Standing, he crosses the room until he’s opposite me. “Bennett and Eloise have agreed that you can stay here. They’ll give you a new identity and you’ll be able to join the MC if you wish. Bennet will even arrange therapy so you can continue to make progress past allowing Poppy to touch you.”
Falling into an abrupt silence, my father spins on his heel and strides toward the door. His hand is on the handle when I ask angrily, “That’s it? You palm me off on someone else, then leave?”
Dad leans his weight against the closed door. His shoulders slump, and his voice is tired when he says, “What do you want me to say? I am a failure as a father. Everything you said on the way to the church was right. I’m a monster. I enjoy hurting people... not you or your brother, but I don’t blink before ending someone else’s life. The list of things I’ve done wrong in my life could reach the North Pole, and half of that list would be my crimes against you. My own flesh and blood.”
He turns to face me. Resting with his back against the door, he continues purging his conscience, “Harrison was always bad. I knew that. I saved your mother from him, only to serve my son on a platter to him fifteen years later. When I asked Roman if I could kill him, I was relieved when he said no. What type of father does that make me? The worst kind... I didn’t even take your request to finish him to a vote. I accepted Roman’s decree, then buried my head in the sand and pretended that my brother didn’t exist.”
“Wh-y?” my voice cracks over the simple word.
Mom doesn’t wait for him to answer. She shifts from her chair at the table to the seat closest to mine. Closing her eyes, she takes over the retelling of a sorry tale that happened years before my birth. “If Harrison died, then this family forfeited their stake in the Coalition. Your dad made a deal with Roman when I was eighteen that he wouldn’t kill his half-brother, no matter what he did, because expulsion from the table means death for us all.
“It was the only way to save me from a marriage to your uncle that would’ve sentenced me to a lifetime of pain and misery, and then a painful death. In the eyes of the Coalition, Harrison was the legitimate heir to the Greaves’ position at the able because he was born in wedlock. Your father, although older, was the result of your grandfather’s liaison with a Serbian prostitute. He was never supposed to reach the pinnacle of power within the Coalition. In fact, your grandfather, who was the head at the time, expressly forbade bastard’s—as he called them—from sitting at the table.”
Stirling voices the question that’s been spinning around my brain since Mom began speaking, “How would Dad lose his seat if Harrison died?”
“Because Roman would reveal to the other members the truth about your grandfather’s death,” my dad replies. He appears to age by decades as he walks across the room to take a seat in the chair facing me. “I killed my father to save your mother. That’s how Roman became the head of the Coalition. That was the deal we made. I was given a seat at the table and permission to marry your mother if I murdered my father. It was an unsanctioned kill and would be punishable by death if it came out. With me dead, your mother would be married off to Harrison to re-secure the Ingram-Greaves’ alliance. It seemed like the perfect solution. I hated my father for what he’d done to my mother and I was in love with your mother.”
Reaching across me, Dad takes hold of my mother’s hand. “Of course, I had no idea that Harrison was really Roman’s son until much later. His affair with my stepmother was a well-kept secret that only surfaced once I’d taken care of the obstacle between them. I solved every problem they had. I took out the competition, and my presence at the table with the other heads of the Coalition set the precedent they needed to secure Harrison’s position should the truth about his paternity come out.”
“It’s all my fault.” Mom dabs at her eyes with her free hand. “If I hadn’t fallen in love with you. If Rosalie hadn’t asked you to help me escape my engagement to Harrison... Roman would have had nothing to manipulate you with back then.”
“I regret nothing about our love,” Dad protests. He lets go of her hand, leaving his seat to crouch in front of me. “What I do regret is the destruction that our love brought down on your head. I’m sorry, son. For everything.”
As we look at each other, the tension between us grows. It’s like he’s caught me in an invisible lasso, and he won’t allow me to yank free until I accept his apology. Pulling tighter the longer we stare, the cord tethers me to him. His perspective melts into my memories, and all the warnings he gave me when I was young begin to make sense.
The hole he punched in my heart the day he dismissed my revelation about my uncle’s abuse begins to close... just a little. I don’t think it’ll ever fully heal, but his apology is definitely patching the raw edges. An eerie calm settles over me, and I begin to see my family with new eyes.
Maybe we were all doing our best to survive impossible circumstances?
At first, my left hand has a mind of its own as it lifts from my lap and my fingers straighten out to touch Dad’s forehead. As I trail my fingertip, with a feather-light contact that barely singes my skin, between my father’s eyebrows and down his nose, my touch becomes deliberate.
I am in control as I trace over his top lip and down his chin.
A solitary tear rolls down his face, racing my finger down to his neck. I travel the same path he would when I couldn’t sleep as a kid, from his forehead to beneath his jaw and down to the center notch of his collarbones. The gut-wrenching sob that erupts from his mouth when I finish strikes me like a bullet to the chest. Dad touches the scarred remains of my index finger for a mere heartbeat, then he pushes upright and strides out of the room.
I lower my hand to my lap and try not to give away how much connecting with my dad shook me up.
“Fuck,” Stirling curses in a guttural tone. “That was—that was...” Trailing off, he rocks back on his heels until Mom places a hand on his shoulder to stop him. “Jesus, Sabra. I can’t believe you did that.”
“The damage he inflicted on you broke him too.” Mom pats Stirling’s cheek, then she retakes her feet. As she steps in front of me, I stiffen. Her voice is filled with kindness when she says, “Oh, honey. I know that telling you the full story wasn’t some magical cure. Please trust me not to touch you until you ask.”
The lump that lodged in my throat when Dad ran away from me is impossible to swallow down, so I settle for nodding. The smile that lights up my mother’s face is stunning, and I realize that I’ve missed it. While my memories of Poppy and her family have returned, I’m beginning to grasp that I still have some gaps when it comes to my family.
“Why did the Montgomery’s change their last name to Tennyson?” I ask.
Worry flickers across Mom’s face, but she tamps it down quickly. “Because of Harrison. He knew how much Poppy meant to you, and we worried that he would continue to look for her once he was ex-communicated from the top tier of the Coalition. His entire life revolved around his need for revenge against your father and he knew that he would hurt your dad the most by hurting you.”
“That doesn’t make me feel like chopped liver, at all,” Stirling mutters. I roll my eyes at him, and he chuckles. “Oh, come on... that was funny.”
“Mildly,” I drawl.
“I’m going to find your dad and make sure he’s all right.” Mom fluffs Stirling’s hair. “I want you both to remember that we are doing everything we can to bring the Coalition down. There will be setbacks, but we will prevail in the end.”
A heavy silence invades the room after she leaves. My brother and I stare at each other. In his eyes, I see my own conflicted emotions reflected back at me.
“Well, that story was too far-fe
tched to be made up,” Stirling quips. “Don’t ya think?”
“When did you find out?”
Immediately contrite, he doesn’t even try to deny it. “I found out a little bit here and a little there over the years. The bulk of it was lobbed at me on the way here after Bennett called Dad to tell him you’d arrived here and that we should come to offer you support.”
“Did you remember Poppy from the start?”
My brother snorts. “Hell, Sabra. I remembered them all. When Mom told me that they were going to give you the contract to kill the Montgomery’s, I expected you to balk straightaway. Color me surprised when you trotted off to New Haven, ready to murder the girl you were so protective of when we were kids.”
Shooting daggers at him with my eyes, I growl, “Shut up, dickhead.”
“Why don’t you shut up?” Stirling wisecracks. “You’re the one with the memory problems... it wasn’t me who decided to kill his friends. I’m the innocent one in all this mess.”
When I jokingly lunge for him, he falls onto his ass. Covering his head with his hands, he acts like I’m about to kill him, screaming in a bad imitation of an elderly female. “Oh, please. Please. You big, mean, scary man. Spare a little old lady’s life.”
He looks completely ridiculous—which is his intention. I try my hardest to bite back my laughter, but it tumbles out of my mouth anyhow. Peeking out from under his arms, my brother smirks. Together, we burst into laughter. I end up sitting on the floor next to him, holding my ribs, when I can’t contain my mirth. Every time our eyes meet, we set each other off again.
Anyone listening in would think we’d lost our minds.
I think we’ve finally found them again.
Once we have purged it from our system, Stirling lightly kicks my boot. “When are you going to go get your girl?”
“I don’t know.” I shrug. “With all the shit that went down today, do you think she’ll still want me? She knows what I am now...”
“Always with the overthinking,” my brother interjects. “She’s been head over heels for you for twenty years. All you need to do is man up and talk to her... the rest will work itself out in time.”
