Exiled (Anathema Book 2) (22 page)

Brew
pulled away from me. It wouldn’t be the only time. It wouldn’t be the last
time.

The
pain in his voice devastated me.

“
Dad’s
out
.”

It
was all she needed to say. The call ended as soon as she whispered. So did my
life.

Rose’s
voice cracked into a hollow shell—the same timid hush I heard so many goddamned
times when she was growing up. She stayed quiet even when he wasn’t around,
like he’d hear what she was saying and the secrets she kept and the lies he
forced her to spread.

He
got out.

The
goddamned bastard who ruined me. Ruined her. Ruined the entire family.

And
I had no idea he caused any of the pain.

Every
sin I bled, I committed because of him. When he said Temple planned to bribe
his way out of jail, I immediately counted the money strapped beneath my
dresser drawer. I didn’t question it. He was my father, and, despite the oaths
and mottos, blood was more important than even the Anathema MC.

I
betrayed my club for him. I sold myself to The Coup because they were the only
way to get Temple to trust me to complete the deals and get the money for his
bribes.

The
drugs rolled in, the money passed around, and I acted as the surrogate Blade.
The eldest son—splitting time between family, duty, and foolish fucking hope. I
knew my crimes. I only hoped my betrayal would free my father and heal
Anathema.

Except
Blade didn’t care about Anathema’s split. Knight and I did. We played our
games, made our plans, and fucked ourselves in the blood it spilled. Our goal
was to reunite Anathema and The Coup, and a free Blade would have done it. But
lies and betrayal only bred rats.

Rose
almost died. I almost died. Temple lost their guaranteed deal and demanded
blood. And it was all to protect a monster.

The
phone clenched in my hand. It had been coming. I counted the days, tallied the
hours. But now? I didn’t think it’d be
now
.

I lurked
across the country, trapped in the middle of an undeclared gang war.

I
just had the greatest fuck of my life, and I was fighting my every goddamned
urge to not carve out my heart and hand it to Martini.

My
worst nightmare protected her.

Rose’s
fear stopped me before I twisted Martini and me into more darkness. She thought
she dominated me. Thought we denied our natures. She rode me with the
confidence of a dominatrix flexing a whip, but she never struck. She only
tangled us in the leather. She bound us and lured me close and trapped herself in
temptation.

She
believed she was safe. Dangerous fucking girl.

We
both would’ve been damned, ensnared within her desires and lost within my
remorseless sin that desecrated what might have been beautiful.

The
phone call spared Martini by sacrificing Rose—the one I swore to protect. The
one I never did.

Rose
didn’t ask me for anything. She wouldn’t. Not now, not ever, but even a girl
with stolen innocence couldn’t imagine what I planned. She leaned on Thorne for
protection, comfort, and love, but even the most ruthless and devoted president
of Anathema had no power to touch Blade Darnell.

If
my father was out, it meant a hell of a lot of changes for an already
unrecognizable club. The vice-president patch belonged to him. It sewed on his
cut years before Anathema fractured, earned through his allegiance with Temple,
and maintained by all the wealth that poured into the club. He’d bring in
money. Power.

He’d
start another war.

I
pulled on my jeans as Martini wrapped herself in a sheet. She rubbed her
flushed face, but it took a perk of her eyebrow and my name soft on her lips
before I remembered she was there.

Before
I remembered what we’ve done.

Before
I realized what I’d lose when I finished what my father started twenty-one
years ago.

“What’s
wrong?” Martini tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. She tugged the sheet
higher across her chest, as if I hadn’t explored what she hid, as if I hadn’t just
emptied myself inside her.

“That
was Rose.”

It
wasn’t like Martini to let anything go. She had to push and question and dig.
Curiosity was kinder to the cat than it would be to her. No wonder she was in
trouble. Rose had no choice. Martini made the wrong ones.

“What’d
she say?” She asked.

“My
father got out of prison.”

“Oh.”

She
shimmied down the bed. She looked tiny all tangled in the sheets. Young.
Vulnerable.

I
knew better than to fuck her, especially with the thoughts raging my head and
hardening my cock. I flinched when she reached for my hand. She flinched too.
Not an apologetic wince, but a recoil. She hadn’t shrunk from me since the
first time I met her.

My
searing blood froze, and she didn’t even realize how badly it hurt. Martini was
a shit nickname for her. She was a second Blade. She spoke and slashed through
my defenses. Exposed everything raw and wicked inside me.

“What
does she want you to do?” Martini’s voice was too gentle for the implications.

“She
doesn’t want anything.”

“Nothing?”

The
words tasted foul. “She asked for my help when she was a kid, but I never
helped her then. So she stopped asking a long time ago.”

“She
must be scared.”

“She
has Thorne.”

A
psychopath to protect her from a psychopath, but at least he was good to her.
Never hit her, took care of her, loved her more than he loved the club. It was
the only reason I let her stay with him, and the one reason I ever slept at
night.

Martini
twisted her fingers in the sheet. “Are you…going to go after your father?”

“I
have to.”

“And
you’re going to kill him?”

“Yes.”

She
fiddled with her hair again, twisting the ends before swiping it behind her
ear. The silver in her eyes glistened—hard. She didn’t want to ask, but she did
anyway. Damned the consequences and surged forward, without looking where she
was going.

“Can
you kill your father?”

“He’s
not my father. Not anymore.”

She
chose her words carefully. Not delicately enough. “He’s the man who raised
you.”

“He’s
the man who poisoned me with his lies. What I learned from him I should forget,
and everything I got from his blood is a curse.”

I
reached for my shirt, but what the hell would I do with it? It was one in the
morning. We had ridden all day, and the sex that normally refueled me left me
exhausted, mentally and physically drained. My strength once allowed me to
conquer a woman. Tonight, it punished me. My arms hurt from gripping the bed,
my shoulder punished me for tensing as Martini arched and whimpered and fought
her own needs while she rode me into oblivion.

“Are
you able to kill a man?” She whispered.

“I’ve
done it before,” I said. Her expression shifted, caught between a false bravery
and the vulnerability of being trapped, naked and fucked within a killer’s bed.
“Does that scare you?”

“Does
it scare you?”

“Christ.”

“I’m
sure it scares him.”

I swore.
“This man destroyed my family. He broke Rose, and we’re only now putting her
together. She won’t ever be right.”

“But—”

“There
is no
but
. This is what I have to do. It’s the only reason I’m still
alive.”

“Okay.”
She nodded. “Okay. I understand.”

She
didn’t, but I didn’t expect her to understand the bottomless, bile-ridden
depths of my hatred. She was no stranger to ugly violence, but revenge wasn’t
ugly. It was pure, raw, and honest. An eye for an eye regulated Anathema MC even
if we were blind to my father’s crimes. The vile, disturbing things he did to
Rose transcended the accepted punishments for a band of anarchist outlaws,
living beyond the shadow of justice.

My
revenge wouldn’t be emotional. It’d be exacted for one reason and one reason
only.

Rose.

“What
are you doing?” Martini sat up. The sweet swell of her breasts peeked from the
sheet. My cock screamed, but I ignored the thoughts pooling my blood. The
things I wanted to do to her, the ways I had to restrain my urges—I’d cut the
goddamned cock from my body if it meant never subjecting her to the monstrous
desires blackening my soul.

I shoved
a shirt into my bag. “Packing.”

“You’re
leaving now?” She reached for her phone. “It’s the middle of the night. We need
to sleep.”

“I
won’t be able to sleep.”

My
shoulder burned as I hauled the traveling bag onto the table. A bottle of
painkillers rolled on the inside. I popped a few and chewed. Bitter. The pills
and I had a lot in common.

“Okay,
then we should think about this,” she said.

“What’s
to think about?”

“…Me?”

I
dropped the bag.

Fuck.

She
folded her arms over the sheet, but it didn’t hide her. Any of her. The creamy
pale skin, the mused blonde wisped edges of her hair, the distance in her
silver eyes. Her body heated, exploded on me, revealed her deepest thoughts and
fears and joy…

…Then
got tossed away as soon as the phone rang.

Fuck.

The
bag weighed heavy in my hands. The weapons inside were only part of the weight,
their intentions another. I dropped it to the table.

The
open road didn’t ask for much, and my solitude the past three months hadn’t
demanded any responsibilities aside from finding a gas station to refuel and a
bar to drown in my exile.

I
never expected a companion. Not that I deserved one. My life was too dangerous
for any more complications. Taking her on was a mistake. Keeping her with me
would be fatal. For both of us.

Goliath.
Temple. Kingdom. I didn’t want to imagine what would happen to her if she were taken.
I had the self-control and conscience to deny any sadistic urges. But war had
no rules, and men no morals. Martini acted tough. She learned to take a punch
and come out smiling. But her world darkened with such shadow she’d never find
her way home without getting lost in the mire.

If
she made it home at all.

Fuck.

Leaving
her was no better than the years I spent ignoring Rose.

Rose
needed me, but splitting from Martini meant tossing her to the wolves. They’d
maul her, destroy her, and break her, and I wouldn’t be there to rescue her.
Rose had survived, but Martini’s mouth would satisfy an enemy only until it
opened and no one else lined up to shove a cock in it before she got herself in
trouble.

I
tensed, swallowing my profanity. Every second that passed trapped Rose with my
father. But every second I stayed with Martini protected her from the dangers
stalking us both.

So
who had more time?

Neither
of them.

And
I knew it.

“Brew,”
Martini said. “Please. Talk to me.”

“Why?”
I tossed the bag to the floor. “I got nothing good to say.”

“Take
me with you.”

The
sheets dropped. She flushed as she wiggled to the edge of the bed, reaching for
my hand. The softness of her body offered me everything. Comfort. Forgiveness.
She might have asked me for my still-beating heart, and, like a fool, I would
have dug the breaking fragments from my chest.

“Take
you where?”

“Home.”

“To
Goliath?”

She
frowned. “No. To Anathema.”

I
suspected she was wild—a miniature deviant who got off on danger. That
confirmed it.

“Ain’t
no way I’m letting you near Anathema.”

“Are
they any more dangerous than Temple?”

“Temple
is an army armed with smuggled weapons and trained soldiers. Anathema is a dented
grenade that lost its pin. You get me?”