Knight (54 page)

“Okay.”

“You need to come with us.”

I hid behind a throw pillow, but unless the decorative cushion was made of Kevlar, it didn’t offer the protection I wanted.

“Come
where
?”

Keep sighed. “Pixie.”

“You’re kidding!” I sucked in a deep breath, but even my singer’s lungs couldn’t hold enough. “I
just
came from there!  You nearly wrecked the place because I
was
there!  You insulted me, dragged me around, and kicked me out!”

“Time to go back.”

“No!”

“Don’t argue, Bud.”

“Don’t call me
Bud!
”

“It’s not safe for you here.” Keep shrugged at the busted door. “Especially now. We’re going to keep you hidden for a while.”

I stayed still and tried to prevent my heart from exploding. Counting to ten never did a damn thing for me, but I used to play some Hendrix or Santana to stifle my family’s inherited temper. Too bad I pawned my only form of anger management.

“You want to
hide
me?” I ground my teeth. “After I tell you I want out, that I want nothing to do with the MC, and that I want to live my
own
life, you decide to
hide
me in Anathema?”

“Gotta keep you safe,” Brew said. “I’m not taking any chances.”

“And what if I want to risk it?”

“Not gonna happen.”

“Why?” I pitched the pillow at him. “What gives you the right—”

Brew stood, towering over me and the couch. “I earned that fucking right. What I say goes. You’re coming with us.”

“No.”

“Club voted,” Keep said. “They agreed.”

“I’m not even a part of the club!” I ran my hands through my hair. “You can’t vote on someone’s life who isn’t in Anathema!”

“We did. Majority rules.”

“You’re all insane,” I said. “Good God, no wonder Mom was always high. It’s the only way anyone can handle this.”

“Hey,” Keep snapped. “Leave Mom out of this.”

“Right.” My gaze fell to his arms and the bruised tracks near his elbow. “I know how sensitive a topic it must be.”

Brew ignored me. “Pack a bag. We’ll keep you in hiding until this all blows over.”

The cell practically burned my hand. I groaned. “I can’t go into hiding. I just got a callback. They want me to play at Club Sanctuary.”

Keep grinned, but the expression faltered as Brew shook his head.

“That club is on the other side of the river. No way.”

Now he declared war. My insides chilled, shattered, and impaled me on every last bit of ice flushing through my veins.

“You can’t stop me from doing this,” I whispered. “You aren’t that cruel.”

Brew rubbed his face. “You aren’t listening—”

“How could you do this to me!”

“You have no idea what trouble you might have caused.”

“This is the
only
thing I’ve ever wanted!  Since I was a little kid!”

“It’s just one gig. There will be more.”

“Not if I flake out on this!  This is my reputation we’re talking about.”

“There’s more to life than music.”

“You sound just like Dad.”

“Good.”

“It wasn’t a compliment.”

Brew pointed a thick finger in my face. “You better resolve whatever problem you have with Dad, because I’m tired of it. He did everything for this family, and he’s still protecting us, even behind bars.”

“Dad never protected me.”

“Do you want to die?  Is that it?” Brew’s words cut like a profanity. “You’re in trouble, Bud. You fucked up. You went where you weren’t supposed to and blundered into the war. Suck it up and listen to me. I’m trying to help you before your brains get splattered all over the goddamned town as a message.”

For as dearly as I loved my brother, there were times I didn’t like him much. Keep took my hand and squeezed.

“We’re keeping you safe,” Keep said. “We’ll have fun. I’ll let you reprogram Pixie’s jukebox.”

My shoulders shrugged, a weak surrender. Brew swore as he stalked to my bedroom. I followed, tripping over shoes as he turned with a darkening glare. “I won’t even ask why your bag is already fucking packed.”

I swallowed. “At least I’m ready to go?”

“Finish.”

“I will…as long as you promise you’ll let me go to the gig. It’s only for two hours. I swear, you can tie me up and leave me in the supply closet the rest of the time. Just please let me do this.”

I stuffed the last bit of my clothes in the suitcase and yelped as Brew stole the bags from my hands. He headed for the door, and I nipped at his heels.

“It’s just for one night!”

“It’s not up to us,” he said.

“What do you mean it isn’t up to you?”

Keep rummaged in my fridge and downed a can of pop. I much preferred him drinking the Coke to the alternatives.

He crushed the can in his hand. The crackling echoed like snapping bones. “Thorne decided he’ll be the one to keep an eye on you.”

I dropped my purse. “Thorne?”

Keep nodded once.

“You can’t be serious.”

“Sorry, Bud.”

“But what does he want with me?”

Keep couldn’t meet my eye. “He said he’d keep you safe.”

“Why can’t you keep me safe?”

“That wasn’t his motion.”

“Oh, Christ, Keep.” I shifted away, nearly collapsing on the couch. “What’s he want in return for protecting me?”

Neither of my brothers spoke. The silence sizzled, broken only by my ruptured breathing.

“You wouldn’t let him,” I whispered. “If he tried, you wouldn’t let him. Right?”

“He won’t hurt you,” Brew said.

I shivered. “Don’t do this.”

“He’s offering, you can’t refuse, let’s just go.”

I shook my head, digging my fingers into the couch. “Don’t you dare make me.”

Keep tried to mediate. He failed. “He’s not going to do anything that would hurt the club.”

“What about hurting me?” My words pinched into a whimper. “You wouldn’t whore out your own sister.”

Brew picked up my bags. “Let’s go.”

“How could you?”

“Now, Rose.”

“
I don’t believe you
.”

He didn’t meet my eyes. “Don’t make me carry you too. I’ll toss your ass in the trunk with the luggage.”

I seized a desperate breath. The last taste of my freedom, and I hyperventilated over it. I trusted my brothers. I loved them. And even if I feared them, I dreaded what might happen to them so deep inside the club. I never thought they’d hurt me.

I never thought they’d let something like this happen.

That they could be so cruel.

As cruel as him.

“If you make me...” The words silenced themselves. “I will never forgive you.”

Keep picked up my purse and strung it over my shoulder. He wrapped an arm around my waist.

“It’s for your protection.” Keep pulled me to the door. “Come on. He’s waiting.”

I had prayed for protection for so long, the words practically carved within my soul. I just never thought I’d need to be protected again.

Not since Dad went away. Not since I forgot that nightmare. The fears flooded back to me.

Terrified of my own brothers. Of a mistake I didn’t know I made. Of a life I had no choice to live.

And now?

It was right to fear the man offering to protect me.

But how frightening was what he protected me from?

Thorne Radek murdered three men before he turned twenty.

He also broke his arm playing kickball with my brothers when they were ten.

He ruled Anathema like a warlord laying siege to a rebellious village, leaning into the sharpened blade when Exorcist announced the creation of The Coup with his dagger at Thorne’s neck.

And my mother had loved him like another son.

The worst part about Anathema’s dedication to family was how intertwined the MC was within my own. I knew things I shouldn’t, I kept quiet when I should have screamed, and I accidentally lived outside the law because that was my life.

The presents under the Christmas tree were stolen from other children. I rode my bicycle to the club dealer to help poison my mother. My dollhouse hid ammo. My vocal instructor taught me because it was cheaper than buying four new tires after ducking a rehearsal.

The men in my family twisted in crime, ruled a part of the city most people didn’t know existed, and feared only the day they took their last ride. They didn’t believe in hell or conformity. Brotherhood was everything.

The men I trusted most I also feared. And the man who created us, who was supposed to love and protect us, reveled in his sin. But he lived behind bars confident I’d never reveal just why I wept in joy at his arraignment.

But some things were more terrifying than my father.

Anathema was the ultimate terror.

And my brothers delivered me to its leader.

They escorted me to Pixie in formation. Keep leading, Brew tailing, and my car caught in the middle of their rumbling engines, composing its own dirge with humming tires and the roaring heraldry of Anathema. Just how they preferred. They tuned their bikes loud enough to echo the streets with their presence. The rest of the world noticed, recognized their rockers, and then pretended they hadn’t felt the vibrations through their feet.

I didn’t have that luxury.

And I knew what awaited me at the end of our makeshift procession.

Two prospects unlocked the gates behind Pixie. They open carried, each wielding one visible gun. They probably packed more. But when Dad was VP, they didn’t have the barbed wire fence bordering their parking lot. Or the active guards. They bought security cameras—most businesses in the area used them—but the motion sensors and lights were new.

Keep mentioned thousands of dollars of upgrades to the bar and warehouse. Additional security measures. My brothers forbade me from frequenting Pixie because they feared what would happen when Exorcist outgrew his hole across the river. The block would transform from shady industrial district to Syria in one gunshot. Pixie’d be reduced to smoldering rubble, and Anathema would declare World War Three.

So why did they force me to the front lines?

I kept my mouth shut. My brothers didn’t deserve a single word from me—even if it was to curse them with every expression Keep taught me as a child. They crowded me into the bar, and Keep stashed my bags in his office. I matched their scowls. If nothing else, the Darnell family was easy to read.

Brew pointed. “This way.”

I remembered the bar. The narrow steps upstairs led to the old hotel rooms from the fifties—the ones with flowered wallpaper, twin beds, and powder blue porcelain in the bathrooms. Keep undertook some modern renovations and designed some practical, but charming, rooms. He offered the lodging to the officers.

I guess that included me.

Except I didn’t get my own room.

Brew and Keep knocked on the suite at the end of the hall. They pressed me before them, hovering over one of my arms. They might have meant to protect me. It felt like they’d be there to hold me down.

They delivered me into the bedroom of a known murderer.

My feet stilled at the door’s threshold. Brew didn’t care. He nudged me forward, grabbing my arm and shaking me to stillness before I stumbled into the room. He held my elbow a little too tight.

I ignored it.

I had to.

Everything below my trembling lip went numb.

Thorne waited for me.

He sat at a carved table, his shadow darkening more than just the reach of night. His phone conversation ended, and he tossed the cell on the table. Next to a .45 millimeter handgun.

Thorne didn’t need weapons to intimidate me. He didn’t need to sit in silence and watch as my brothers presented me to the true anathema like a sacrificial lamb. He stared at me with eyes as gray as gunmetal and as dark as the intent of each bullet.

I wasn’t a fool or a coward. I knew when it was appropriate to be frightened. It wasn’t weakness. Fearing Thorne was survival instinct. A man like him expected people to cower.

Someone who showed no fear wouldn’t be awarded his mercy.

I adopted the guitar as my preferred instrument. Thorne chose a gun. I might have played my fingers to callouses, spent years in dedicated study, and practiced music as if it were my only salvation from the wickedness of the world, but one of us was more proficient with their implement. I only hoped he wouldn’t demonstrate his skill.

Thorne studied my body. An appraisal head to toe. He scrutinized every part of me, from the wayward curls slipping behind my ear to the dark wisp of my skirt drifting over my skin.

I’d have been insulted if I hadn’t done the same to him.

I knew many hardened men. Most of Anathema, especially the younger generation with time served, kept themselves in peak physical form. Thorne was no exception. A black tee shirt bulged over his muscles. The leather cut strapped over his barrel chest, almost as if the vest restrained the power simmering beneath the patches. Like my brothers, his cut shared the emblem of the scarred demon, the sprawled lettering of Anathema, and the charter’s location.