Sarah.
“Who’s Sarah?” Did he have another sister he’d never mentioned before?
“Saylor is Sarah.”
He wasn’t clearing up her confusion, he was creating more. She did a little shake of her head and, once again, forced her gaze from his chest to his face as he began to explain.
“Hated the name Michael ‘cause of what was attached to it. Saylor hated the name Sarah for the same reason. We both wanted to be free of that life and start new. In school, I began to tell people my name was Mickey and refused to answer to Michael. Once Sarah freed herself from their grip, she changed her name to Saylor and took the same last name I was usin’ in an effort to scrape off the remains of this life.”
“But to be free of one prison, she had to be locked up in another,” Reilly murmured.
Holy fucking shit. That was heartbreaking. Saylor had never talked about her childhood. Not once. All the times they’d hung out together, either with the rest of the sisterhood or even on their own, she only talked about stuff currently happening. On a rare occasion, she’d bring up an entertaining story from her time spent in a juvenile detention center.
“Yeah.”
“That’s fucked up.”
“Yeah,” he agreed.
But wait, she needed to circle back. “So, those scars are from when your father punished you for touching your sister?”
“And other things.”
“Worse than touching your sister?” Because a brother touching a sister in an inappropriate way was pretty damn bad.
“Nothin’ worse in his eyes than me touchin’ Sarah.”
“And did you?”
He sucked on his teeth for a second, took a deep breath and lifted his bearded chin a notch. “Not in the way they thought.”
She was almost afraid to ask, “What did they think?”
The slow roll of his Adam’s apple caught her attention. She could see he was on the fence about continuing this conversation or shutting the whole thing down.
While she didn’t blame him for not wanting to talk about it, she also needed to know what the hell had gone on. Not only to be supportive for Rev while here and back at home, but for her club sister Saylor. Even if Saylor never found out that Reilly knew, Reilly could still know the truth and respond appropriately to a situation, if needed.
However, she would never spill any of Saylor’s secrets. If Saylor wanted to share them with others, that would be her choice and her choice alone.
Maybe that was why Rev hesitated. Because they weren’t only his secrets, they were Saylor’s. Their secrets were intertwined like a knotted shoe lace.
Holy shit, she hated to even ask this, because it was not the Rev she knew. “Did you… touch your sister inappropriately?”
She made sure the question was soft and not accusatory because she definitely didn’t want him to cut this conversation short. If he did, she would never stop wondering and questioning who the real Rev was. Who she thought he was.
But, holy hell, this trip was barely two days old and had been enlightening. And not in a good way. Worse, it wasn’t even over yet.
“You think I’d do that?”
Guilt washed over her for even asking if he would. “No, but… I mean, I assume you were young. Young kids don’t always know the difference between what’s wrong and what isn’t. We learn that from our…”
“Parents,” Rev finished for her when she didn’t. “Never molested my sister. I only ever tried to soothe her when she was upset.”
“They thought you were molesting her when you were actually consoling her?” For shit’s sake, now she hated his parents even more!
“Yeah.”
Again, the story had to go deeper than that. A simple hug was not sexual. A brother hugging his sister was not sexual, damn it!
“But why did she need so much consoling?” she prodded gently.
“I’m pretty sure someone else did.”
“Did what?” Reilly sucked in a sharp breath. “Molest Saylor?”
“Sarah,” he corrected.
God, this separation of two children into four hurt her brain. She understood their need for that coping mechanism, but for her, it was like dealing with people who had two separate personalities or were two separate people. However, this was different than a personality disorder they couldn’t control, it was a choice both of them decided to make.
“Who molested Sarah?” she repeated with the correct name. Her pulse was racing because she already knew. There was no need for him to confirm it.
She now knew why Saylor wanted nothing to do with her family, why she kept committing crimes to get pulled from the household, why she didn’t want to go home after juvie, and why she changed her damn name.
Why Rev didn’t want Saylor to come “home” with him to visit their dying father.
Reilly forced herself to swallow the rage that had rose out of her chest and into her throat. “Do you know for sure he did that to her?”
Holy shit, the man needed to die. No wonder Rev wanted to see his father’s end through.
“When I was punished, I was taken outside. When she was…”
Reilly held her breath.
“He only ever did it in her room, with the door closed and she’d cry for a while afterward. He never used a switch on her. He’d…”
The breath rushed out of her as his face twisted and his hands clenched into fists.
“What else would make her cry like that? When I was whipped, I wasn’t allowed to cry without addin’ to the number of strikes. But she cried every fuckin’ time after he left her room. Every damn time. I’d go into her room once they went to bed, once it was safe. I’d crawl into her bed and hold her. I’d beg her to tell me what was wrong, what he did and she never would.”
Why did he look guilty? How was any of this his fault? “He probably threatened her not to tell.”
“Or he brainwashed her into thinkin’ whatever he did was normal. ‘Cause to him it fuckin’ was. I think it was accepted among all of them. However, it was never fuckin’ talked about and since I wasn’t a female, it didn’t affect me like it did her.”
“Shit,” she whispered. “Why would it be accepted?”
“It was—probably still is—a father’s job to prepare any daughters he had to be obedient to her husband. This way he could hand her off to a worthy one. No man would want her if she acted out or wasn’t submissive.”
“The way Matthew’s wife looked.”
“Yeah.”
“This… church… it’s more than a church, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s a damn cult, almost like the Shirleys,” she concluded.
His tattooed chest rose and fell. “Yeah.”
“Jesus Christ, how many fucked up groups are there like this in the world?”
“Bet more than we know.”
“That’s scary,” she whispered.
“Ain’t it?” He shook his head. “Think about it. Wouldn’t be hard to take a brotherhood like the Fury and twist it into something darker, like a cult. Wouldn’t be hard at all.”
“Which is why Trip is careful not to let the club turn back into the Originals.”