Knight (61 page)

She didn’t listen. Brew shouted as she sprinted to The Coup’s abandoned bikes. We crowded her, but she knelt beside the seat, reaching inside and ripping wires from one of the engines.

“Revenge later, Bud.” Brew reached for her elbow. She coughed as she batted him away.

Her attention focused on another bike. I argued until I realized what the diva did. Rose’s hand slipped under the handles, jamming into the wires underneath. She followed the trail to the starter on the side of the bike. Disconnected it. Then she wound the wires in her hand together, shoved the edges into the starter’s plug, and listened for a second over the howl of sirens threatening the street.

Brew swore at her. “Rose—”

She hopped over the seat and flipped the switch.

The bike rumbled and started.

Jesus Christ, how did this girl know how to hotwire a motorcycle?

She met my gaze. The smoke and fuel, terror and pain, destroyed her voice. She whispered, but I didn’t doubt the threat.

“I don’t ride as a passenger,” she said. “Now we can go.”

Despite the blood pouring off of her, the kidnapping, concussion, and torched warehouse, my cock hardened as she gripped the handles of the bike.

I passed her my helmet. Her hands trembled as she buckled it. Brew offered to help, but she turned from him before he touched her.

“Ride to Pixie,” I told her. “And don’t fucking stop for anything.”

I straddled my bike. Rose waited for me.

“We’ve got to go fast,” I warned.

“I can ride fast.”

The grim determination in her voice almost overshadowed her fear.

Almost.

The sirens and flashing lights chased up the road. I took off. Brew and the others waited for Rose. She wobbled pulling out onto the street. One glance at the smoke filled sky behind her and the groaning warehouse shuddering under its supports and she was out like a shot, bursting out in front of me and accidentally leading the Anathema MC away from her own kidnapping.

It shouldn’t have gotten me off.

I didn’t care.

For the first time I didn’t regret stealing the kid and forcing her into the middle of the MC.

Rose wasn’t some helpless little girl.

She was as Anathema as her older brothers. As her old man.

And she’d help me restore the club, even if it meant I’d force her to betray her family.

And when I had enough evidence to prove Keep was the one responsible for getting her kidnapped, bloody, and nearly incinerated, he’d be tossed in the shallow grave right next to Exorcist.

I hadn’t ridden a bike in years.

Not since the last time Dad forced me onto his bike. When he had one too many and told my brothers he wanted to
take me around the block
.

They thought he needed the fresh air and an excuse to duck out of a bad poker hand.

I knew better.

And they should have known too.

I wished they had known.

Dad had wobbled onto the bike and buckled my helmet for me. He rubbed my shoulder, squeezing it, before pointing behind him and ordering me on. He’d warned for me to hold tight, and wouldn’t leave the parking lot until I wrapped my hands low over his waist. Pressed my chest into his back.

He always liked that.

He’d laid the bike down just outside the theater on Washington. Passed through a red light going fifty when he should have been traveling twenty-five. He fell off. I wasn’t so lucky.

The right side of my body eventually healed. It was the one scar my brothers didn’t ignore.

I was eighteen, and, for the first time, they defended me against Dad.

And he had beat me mercilessly for it before I left the hospital.

I didn’t have the experience or skills of the rest of the club. I sped away from the warehouse in blind panic, away from the fire and the guns and the
favors
.

Except I didn’t realize what I had done. Thorne passed me in seconds, overwhelming my motorcycle with the confidence of a rampaging warlord charging down the unfortunate prey falling under his sword.

He didn’t look at me. Didn’t shout. Didn’t do anything but push his bike ahead of mine and glance in his mirror to ensure I fell into the proper formation behind him.

I didn’t care if I was the first to Pixie or the last, so long as I got away from Exorcist.

My arms burned where ropes dug into my flesh. I still tasted the oil soaked gag they shoved in my mouth. That wasn’t as bad as what glistened on my skin under the streetlights.

Glass.

They meant to destroy the entirety of the warehouse. My ears still rang from the gunfire. My body bled from the pulverized light bulbs. My lungs hardened with ash, soot, and chemicals.

I should have died.

The only reason I escaped, the only reason I lived, was because Exorcist wanted it.

I had no doubt once I did the jobs they asked they’d probably kill me. Then they’d kill my brothers and Thorne.

I gripped the handles on the bike and accelerated to the highway. We raced down the strip that would deliver us across the bridge, to where we’d be
safe
.

Safety didn’t exist within Anathema, only the peace-of-mind of knowing when an enemy wouldn’t interfere in club business. No one talked about how they achieved that peace, but everyone knew how to get it.

I stared ahead at the road. My dress—buttercup yellow, stained with blood and fuel, scorched and ripping in the battering wind of the open highway—didn’t belong in the formation. The demon on their backs trapped me within the hellish underworld.

But it also protected me.

I stared at the scarred monster patched on Thorne’s cut. The horned demon represented fear and distrust and every horrible promise lingering in nightmares. But this time, in that moment, racing to a childhood home-away-from-home and seeking the security of men hardened by prison time, violence, and a blood brotherhood, I was never more thankful for Anathema.

It’d be the only force possible to save us from what was to come.

Thorne relaxed our speed after the bridge. We crossed off the main roads and kept to the lesser traveled paths as the sirens wailed across the river and helicopters circled overhead. The prospects waited for us at Pixie’s gates, and Thorne drove us into the secured compound.

I parked the stolen bike and ripped the wires from the ignition. It choked and died. I kicked it over to ensure it stayed dead. Thorne took his helmet without a word. Brew shouted enough for both of us.

The bar’s door opened. My vision burst into blinding haloes. I shrieked as a pair of arms grabbed me around the midsection, jostling everything bruised, potentially broken, and seeping blood.

“Keep!” The pain dissolved the air from my lungs. “
P—Please
.”

Thorne grabbed his shoulders and tossed my brother back. I crumbled to the ground. The pained gasp echoed, and I whined over the horrifically rough gale in my breath. The coughing cleared most of the smoke, but the crushing rawness of my throat would haunt my nightmares until I grabbed a piano and ensured my pitch hadn’t been completely destroyed.

I blinked through tears and flinched even as a pair of gentle hands rested on my arms. A whip of blonde hair coiled over Jocelyn’s shoulders, and she forced my chin up to examine the cut on my forehead.

“Are you okay?” She asked. “Jesus Christ. Were you riding Luke’s bike?”

I didn’t know whose bike I stole. I sighed. Ex forced Luke and his crew to split before dumping the diesel, breaking the lights, and smacking me around. I hated everyone in Ex’s Coup, but I regretted stealing Luke’s bike.

Keep dropped to his knees. “You look like shit.”

Lyn stared him down. “I could say the same about you an hour ago.”

“Get inside.” Thorne gritted his teeth and offered me his hand. Keep did the same.

I refused them both and groaned as I crawled to my feet.

“What the hell happened?” Lyn followed close. She swore as Brew pushed her from his path.

“Did they hurt you?” Brew asked.

I glanced to the mirror behind the bar but didn’t recognize the dirty, matted, bloody woman staring wide-eyed. Scotch emerged from the office and cursed his Hail Mary. He rushed to grab us drinks and pushed whiskey toward Thorne. I was offered a bottle of water. I would have preferred the alcohol if only to pour over my head. At least it might have cleared the reeking stench of fuel from my skin.

Lyn pulled a first-aid kit from behind the bar, but she tapped her nails against the hard plastic. “She needs to go to a hospital.”

Brew pushed her aside. “She’s fine. What the hell happened, Rose?”

Without the roar of the bikes and the rush of the wind, the quiet erupted in my head. I flinched as Brew stomped to face me.

“Someone jumped me after the show.” I swallowed over my aching throat. “He threatened me. I tried to get away.”

“I told you.” Brew pointed at Keep. “She needs to carry a gun.”

“I don’t want a gun.”

 Brew ignored me. “What did Exorcist do?” His words weren’t questions. He demanded his answer. Thorne knocked back a shot of whiskey and waved a hand to calm him down. No dice. “Did he say anything?  What did he want with you?”

I shook my head. A burst of glass glittered out of my curls. My eyes itched. That was probably bad. As were the cuts spanning my body and the bitterness of fuel in my mouth. The concussion. The agonizing breaths.

Now that I sat still, breathed, relaxed, the injuries ruptured through my body, undulled by my panic and fear.

Why didn’t Brew care?

“Rose.” He stared me down. “What happened?”

The truth poisoned me as much as the diesel. I shook my head. Exorcist played me for a rat. Someone who would betray the club.

Except I had to do it.

The meet-up. The exchange. The money and the drugs and the gun to my head that forced me to deal with the monsters who only ever trusted my father.

I had to stay quiet. Ex would try to kill them anyway. At least hiding my forced job would keep them alive until I figured out what the hell I could do to stop Ex from securing all the money and all the influence and all the goods he needed to run the city and destroy Anathema.

“Nothing,” I said. “They wanted to lure you to the warehouse. To try to kill you.”

Brew didn’t believe me. He frowned, just like Dad. The same temper, same frustrated mannerisms. His jaw twitched.

“I told you going to sing was a bad fucking idea.”

He stole the whiskey from Thorne and took a swig. The bottle slammed onto the counter. It shattered. Lyn groaned and jumped before the drink spilled over her corset. Thorne threw back the last drops of what remained in his tumbler.

“You had to fucking fight us.” Brew pitched a rag at the mess. “Every
fucking
thing we say. Take the money. Get the guitar. Stay in Pixie. Don’t sing. Every goddamned thing. Jesus Christ, I don’t know how Dad got you to fucking shut up and behave, but I wish he taught me how to make you obey your fucking family.”

I stiffened. I doubted my brother would have mimicked Dad’s preferred punishment.

Lyn and Thorne studied the scene, their gazes meeting for the briefest of moments. My cheeks flared.

I clenched my teeth. “Are you
blaming
me for this?”

Brew held his arms out. “You tell me. You think long and hard about what we told you to do, and what would have happened if you listened.”

“Like I had a choice. You
voted
on me, remember?  You dragged me here.”

Keep rubbed the inside of his elbow. I ignored the spreading bruise from whatever vein he missed.

“For your own good, Bud,” Keep said. “We only want you to be safe.”

“You can’t keep me locked in a bar forever.”

I looked to Scotch and Gold for help. They ducked away. Lyn crossed her arms and smiled. At least one show of support.

Thorne stared only at my brothers. At Keep. His gun-metal eyes darkened like he already pulled a trigger. My stomach flipped. His silence frightened me more than Brew’s shouting.

“I’ll lock you wherever I want.” Brew didn’t just threaten. Not this time. “You’re my responsibility.”

“And you’re supposed to be my brother.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Act like it!  Give me a hug. Tell me you’re glad I’m safe.”

“You would have been safe if you listened to me in the first place.”

I sucked in a breath if only to stave off the tears. It didn’t help. The air crowded my aching ribs, and I winced. It gave Brew more courage.

“I didn’t do anything wrong,” I said.

“You wandered off after the show.”

“To get
paid
.”

“I told you to wait for us.”

“How was I supposed to know Ex had guys waiting?” I asked.

Brew wasn’t used to me arguing with him.

First time for everything. This wouldn’t be the last.

“Did you even try to fight?  Did you even think what would happen if Ex got a hold of you?” Brew ran out of ways to blame me. He pointed a finger toward my head. “I fucking told you never to hotwire a bike!”