The secret Paddy holds over my head.
How my love for her brother and my fear of losing him lead me to keep Shari’s visit to myself.
My university acceptance and the reasons why I turned it down.
My devotion to Sam and my worries about him.
Every word I just overheard Leo and Paddy speak about Carly, Brian, and Vic.
As I continue talking, imparting every morsel of information I’ve gathered over the past three years, her face loses colour. She’s as white as a ghost. Her eyes are haunted, weighed down by everything she’s just learned.
“You need to tell Brian the truth,” she commands when I finally stop speaking. “I’ll find Vic and my father.”
She helps me to my feet. I unlock the door and pull it open.
We step outside together. I see Brian stomping toward the front entrance with rage on his face. Alanah turns away from me when Vic comes into view, clicking the ends of the tongs in his hand together like crab pincers as he chases his laughing son and Colleen’s two sons around the sand pit.
“Brian,” I yell, running over to him.
He stops.
He spins to face me.
Opening his mouth, he shatters my heart into a million pieces with his next words.
“Well, well, well,” he snarls at me. His handsome face is full of hatred. “If it isn’t Anita DiAmore. Princess of the Ugly Bastards. Deceitful bitch. Lying whore.”
Before I can offer any defence, the world explodes around me.
The walls of the building blow out, raining chunks of concrete and shards of glass over us.
The ground lurches beneath my feet.
My world turns pitch-black.
TWENTY-FIVE
Brian
Chaos reigns. Dust clouds the air. Heat burns the side of my body that faces the building. Flames lick at the roof of the clubhouse we just finished constructing and embers float down over me, singeing my skin before they extinguish.
I can’t hear anything but ringing in my ears. My body is pumping with adrenaline, yet my feet won’t work. I feel like I’m stuck in mud.
“Sam! Anita! Alanah!” I scream through the din. “Sam! Alanah! Vic! Sam! Anita!”
My legs remember how to work, and I run for the closest door. I need to find my son. My sister. My girl. Someone to help me.
Anyone who can make sense of what just happened.
Tripping over something before I’ve take two steps, I fall to my knees. My eyesight clears enough for me to recognise what I fell over.
It’s Anita. Her head is bleeding and her neck is bent at an awkward angle.
“Fuck,” I cry. Scrambling over the gravel to her, I lift her upper body into my lap and cradle her head. “Wake up, Nita. Wake up, baby.”
She doesn’t stir. Devoid of signs of life, she’s a deadweight in my arms. I shouldn’t care—not after what I discovered about her minutes ago—however the sight of her, broken and unbreathing, rocks me to my core.
My brain knows she’s a spy and her feelings for me were fake. Nothing between us was real. Common sense says it’s for the best that she’s dead because she can’t hurt my club anymore.
Unfortunately, I still love her, despite it all, and I’d give almost anything to change the last words I said to her.
It’s going to take a second to get my heart on board with my head.
A second explosion, smaller than the first, but still powerful, rumbles through the air. The couple of people who didn’t run out of the yard when the first blast hit drop to the ground.
When it stops, almost no one gets to their feet.
Nothing really registers with me for a dozen or so minutes. I hold Anita’s body, and I run through the last few years in my head trying to work out where it all went wrong. Since the night we patched into the club, nothing has been the same. If I could go back to then, I don’t know if I would become a Black Shamrock.
Being one has caused me nothing but heartache.
“Bri,” Vic’s voice beaks through the eerie silence that fell after the last explosion. His voice rips me from my dark thoughts and brings me back to the terrible reality of my life. “I’ve got Sam.”
God, I’d forgotten about my own son.
I deserve everything that’s happened.
Blinking to clear my vision, I look at him. He’s clutching four little bodies in his arms. I identify them by their hair—two shocks of strawberry blond, Kaden and Lucas; one bronze-brown, his son Mik; and a blond, Sam.
They’re covered in dust. Dirty and crying. Struggling against his unforgiving grip.
All four of them seem to have escaped relatively unscathed. How? I don’t know.
It’s a miracle.
“Thank fuck.” My voice is strangled, the lump in my throat stifling my relief.
“Almost everyone’s accounted for,” Cole joins us. He takes his sons from Vic, cradling them both and kissing the top of their heads over and over. Once he’s had his fill, he offers a status update. “Got the women out the front. The enforcers are putting the fire out. The rest are creating a perimeter around the yard. My dad and Leo are waiting to head off the cops. The fuckers who did this rode off just before the second blast. Shit load of injuries, but none fatal except…”
He trails off, eyeing me with sympathy.
I hold Anita to me, rocking our bodies back and forth.
Is it justice that she was the only casualty or a cruel joke?
“I’m so fucking sorry, Bri,” he murmurs. I grind my teeth, determined not to give into the burning behind my eyes. It doesn’t matter that they don’t know the truth about Anita yet, I refuse to mourn a woman who built a life with me on a bed of lies. “Frankie didn’t make it. Seems he was right next to the first device.”
The small amount of oxygen I’d been able to drag into my lungs leaves me in a whoosh. I collapse over Anita, my body turning to liquid as reality sets in.
I’ve lost the woman I love and my father.
I guess my question has been answered… this is a cruel joke.
There’s no justice to be found. Not where death is involved.
“Take them out the front. Tell no one about her,” Vic directs Cole, who scoops up the four boys and leaves as directed. He crouches down next to me. “Bri, you’ve gotta let her go. You’re crushing her, and we need to make sure you don’t make her injuries worse.”
With disbelieving eyes, I peer at the woman in my arms. Her eyes are open. She’s breathing. She has curled her body into mine, maintaining a steel grip on the front of my shirt where she clutches it in one hand like I’m her only lifeline. I hadn’t felt her move. Her desperate grip on me hadn’t registered either.
“How? Why?” I don’t know what I’m trying to say. My brain is frozen. “I thought.”
Anita’s mouth moves. No sound comes out for the first few words, then I hear her. “I’m sorry.”
Trembling overtakes me. Shock kicks in. I try to get my arms to let her go, pleading with my mind to direct my body to leave her. She is a viper that I need out of my life. When my limbs refuse to move, my prayer changes.
I pray that everything Paddy told me is a lie.
If it’s a lie, then I can keep her.
Vic puts his hands on either side of my face. “Look at me.”
Anita tightens her grip on my shirt. “Please, Brian.”
She hasn’t dropped my gaze since I met her eyes after I realised that she wasn’t dead. Deep in the chocolate-brown depths, I see her truth—or more lies. Who knows?
Silently, she implores me to listen to Vic.
“I can’t.”
“You can,” she promises me. “Trust us.”
“You’ve got to get her out of here,” Vic directs me in a stern tone. I finally lift my gaze from Anita’s to his. His eyes flash. Anger and self-righteous resolve are lobbed at me like missiles. “Alanah has filled me in with the bare essentials about why this happened. We’ve been set up. Paddy and Leo are up to something.
Anita is not the enemy.”
His words wash over me. I sag under the relief, before I remind myself that they can’t be trusted. Despite the cold facts, and my need to absolve Anita of any culpability, I can’t allow myself to believe him.
It’s all too neat. They have everything tied up in a nice bow.
Blame the O’Brien’s for everything. Make someone else the fall guy when we thwart their plan.
Paddy warned they would try this.
“You’re full of shit.” My voice lacks conviction when I disagree. Clearing my throat, I try again. “I know what you’re up to.”
Vic shakes his head at me. He lets go of my face and struggles back to his feet. When he leers down over me, I realise that he’s hurt. His arm is hanging strangely at his side and he has a wound above his left ear.
“Don’t let your need to always be the victim fuck up your entire life,” he warns me. “You have a good woman, a beautiful kid, and me, Cole, and Alanah. If you choose wrong, you’ll lose all of us and any chance you had to have a life you can be proud of.”
“Brian.” Anita struggles to sit up in my arms. Her voice is scratchy, filled with pain that becomes more apparent the longer she speaks. “Let me explain. I know I lied to you, but—”
“No.” My answer is unequivocal. “I’m not falling for your tricks.”
Sobbing, Anita tries again. “I love you. That was never a lie.”
I want to believe her. I want her to be mine. I want her to be my person—the way my sister is for Vic.
I also know that what I want isn’t possible.
There is no person for me.
“Paddy’s heading over here,’ Vic informs me. He stands up straight and glares toward the approaching figure. The expression on his face hardens into something dangerous. “The choice is yours. Take her and hide her from both clubs until this blows over or sign her death warrant when he sees that she’s still alive. If she stays, she’s dead—the only choice then will be who kills her. The Ugly Bastards or us.”
With an absolute certainty that I feel deep in my marrow, I make my decision. He’s right. This is my choice. I can’t keep blaming everyone else for the deceit and destruction that follows me through life.
Holding a hand out to Vic, I let him help me to my feet as I lift Anita with me.
“Take care of Sam,” I order, infusing my voice with the promise of his death if he fails me. Vic simply nods and takes a few steps toward Paddy. “Don’t let him out of your sight.”
“I’ll watch him like he’s my own.” His answer fades into the middle distance when he strides away to intercept Paddy.
Anita clings to me, a low groan puffing from her lips with each movement.
Paddy is barely ten metres away, arguing with Vic, when I duck around to the back of the bombed-out building with my girl in my arms.
I know it’s a stupid thing to say. She wasn’t ever truly mine to begin with.
Explain that to the hole her deception has left gaping wide in my chest.
We might never find our way back to each other after all the half-truths and outright lies, but I refuse to be the reason she dies.
The clear resolve to fight to the death I saw in Vic’s eyes when he stood, stooped and injured, to protect me from Paddy’s approach has confirmed the suspicion that I’ve been pushing to the back of my mind for the past year or so.
Vic has my back whether it helps his cause or not.
Paddy wouldn’t fight for me unless there was something in it for him.
When someone shows you who they really are, believe them the first time.
Paddy has demonstrated multiple times over the years that he’s not above selling out his own granny to get what he wants.
Vic has stood by my side through everything.
Punishing him for doing exactly what I’ve done myself is wrong.
He fell in love with the wrong woman. My sister.
I fell in love with the daughter of the enemy. A liar.
At the end of the day, the fact remains that Anita has had enough ammunition to bring the Black Shamrocks to their knees for months.
Instead of selling us out, she did what Vic has done and stood by my side without complaint. She helped me raise my boy and build a new chapter of an MC that’s in direct competition with her family.
That’s got to mean something in the scheme of things.
TWENTY-SIX
Anita
Slumped in the front seat of the car Brian stole from one of the people at the Black Shamrocks compound, I try to find the words to adequately explain how sorry I am for what’s transpired.
Everything I come up with falls short.
How do you make someone believe that you love them when you’ve done nothing but lie to them?
Every atom in my body aches. I know nothing is broken because Brian checked when he pulled into a parking bay after we hit the outskirts of the first town out of Emerald. He also patched the gash over my eyebrow and promised me pain relief at the next stop for any residual headache and discomfort.
I guess it’s whiplash caused by the blast knocking me off my feet.
Knowing the reason doesn’t make the ebbs and flows of the pain any easier to tolerate. Even the steady rocking rhythm of the car can’t take the edge off my agony.
“I don’t think you should go to sleep,” Brian breaks the silence that’s invaded the vehicle since he pulled back onto the road. “You hit your head pretty hard.”
The fact he still cares should bode well for me, unfortunately the cold tone he used to deliver his concern says otherwise.
With effort, I turn far enough in the seat to see his side profile. He stares directly ahead, intent on the road ahead of us. Too intent. It’s clear that he’s stopping himself from looking at me. I made enough noise to wake the dead when I shifted positions. There’s no way he wouldn’t have chanced at least a glance at me to see what I was up to now.
“Brian,” I say his name, loving the way it rolls off my tongue. The muscle in his jaw clenches, but he gives me no other indication that he heard me. Reaching across the centre console, I touch his lower arm. “Please let me explain.”
He jerks away from my fingers like they’ve burnt him. “Don’t.”
“I love you,” I try again. Brian shakes his head and continues glaring out the windshield. “I messed up. I lied to you. I kept lying to you even after I fell in love with you because I was scared that I’d lose you if I told you the truth.”
I lay it all out. I expose my bad deeds. I bare my heart to his scrutiny.
At this point, I have nothing to lose.
“Right from the start, I was attracted to you. You felt it too. I know you did.”
He snorts. “So what? Because I wanted to fuck you, I somehow deserved this?”
“That’s not what I’m saying, and you know it.”
My arms aren’t quick enough to stop my body from lurching forward when Brian slams on the brakes and brings the car to a sudden stop on the verge of the road. I don’t hit the dashboard or move more than three or four inches forward before his solid arm has been slung in front of me to pin me against my seat.
Same as when he told me not to go to sleep, there’s a disconnect between his actions and the words he says.
“Look,” he snaps, unclipping his seat belt and turning to face me. “The only reason I’m doing this is because I don’t believe you deserve to die for what you’ve done. Vic was right. If the Shamrocks don’t take you out, the Ugly Bastards will. Once I get you to a safe place, that’s it…”
He trails off, apparently unable to finish his sentence. I wait, knowing that the final blow is still to come—all the while praying that it won’t.
“There’s no coming back from this, Anita,” Brian delivers the death knell that heralds the end of our relationship. “You’re not the person I thought you were. I’ll never get past that.”
Without waiting for me to speak again, he slams the car into drive and peels back o
ut onto the road.
I let his declaration hang in the air, unanswered.
It lingers; a sad indictment of two misfits who can’t seem to make the other listen and understand.
How does he not see how much I’ve given up for him over the past five months? How can he be so unaware of how wonderful he is that he truly believes I only stayed with him to see my brother’s plan through? How do I make him hear me?
Darkness falls a few hours later. The lights of approaching vehicles illuminate the interior of the vehicle every now and then. Each time it happens, I catch a glimpse of Brian. He’s acting like he doesn’t care. The hurt that wafts from him mixed in with waves of betrayal and sadness to complement tells me otherwise.
“How far away are we?” I ask.
He shrugs. “Two or three hours more.”
“Where are you taking me?”
“To my cousins,” he replies. His overly stiff posture collapses a little and he glances at me. “My mum is from Sydney. Her family disowned her when she married a biker. They love me and Alanah, so I’m hoping they’ll take you in until I can find somewhere more permanent. No one will think to look there. It’s the safest place I can think of for you.”
“Thank you,” I tell him. “You really didn’t have to do this for me.”
“It’s not a big deal.”
“What if they refuse? Will we go home?”
Finally, Brian looks at me properly. His emerald gaze is narrowed, lethal intent emanating with razor sharp precision. “No. I’ll keep asking until one of them agrees.”
He’s such a stubborn, proud man. It’s hard to see him like this. All I want to do is hold him and apologise. I know he won’t willingly accept it, but the downcast tilt to his lips and the resignation in his eyes that he lets me see before he turns his attention to the road again spurs me to try.
We have maybe three hours tops left together.
I can either fight for what I want or curl up in this seat and admit defeat.
This time when I reach across the dark cabin of the car and touch him, I make sure he can’t pull away. Intertwining my fingers in his, I ignore the way he refuses to return my grip and instead concentrate on the lack of struggle he mounts.
Butch (Black Shamrocks MC: First Generation Book 3) Page 16
