“You’re not happy to see your mother?” She pouts.
“No, I’m not. You’re the last person I ever want to see.”
“You ungrateful brat, I just saved you from a life with scum.”
“No, you kidnapped me from the man I love. You can’t handle me loving someone other than you, it’s how you operate.” Despite what Carson has done, I do still love him, even though I shouldn’t. This experience just proves we shouldn’t be together, but I’m not going to say that to her or this Hunter guy.
Her jaw clenches. “How do you even know these guys?”
“Hunter, here, is your half-brother.” The wind gets knocked out of me then. What the hell?
Hunter places a hand on my shoulder. “If this bitch told me that when I first nabbed you, I would have gone about it in a different way. And I sure as fuck wouldn’t have used you as bait against Hangman.” Hunter sounds as pissed as I feel.
I turn to look at him and he’s pissed for sure, he didn’t know about us being siblings either.
“This bitch isn’t my mother, but seems she hooked up with my old man back in the day. Asshole’s dead so you don’t get to meet him,” he tells me. I always knew my dad wasn’t the man that created me but being in this situation now hurts. Knowing I have a brother? And he’s the enemy of the man I’m with. I don’t know how to process this.
“Can we not go to war with the club?” I ask him hesitantly. “There has to be another way, since I’m Hangman’s Old Lady and you’re my brother, there must be something we can do.”
“Might be too late now, but I’d have agreed with you if we hadn’t already sent word to Hangman that we had your ass. He might not be so lenient now.”
“Just let me talk to him.”
“What about Wrath, that old fuck betrayed his club, do you think he’s gonna let him just walk away?”
I shake my head, I’m not sure what all Carson does within the club, as it’s not my business, but judging by his nickname—Hangman—it’s gotta be along those lines. “I don’t think Wrath will get off.”
“We’ll work something out. Now that I know I have a sister, I’m going to protect you the best I can. If that means setting aside this damn grudge with the Untamed MC, so be it. The others will be pissed and might overthrow me, but I’ll deal with that on my own.”
When he’s done talking, I realize I forgot all about my mother. She’s oddly quiet and staring at me. “What?”
“Are you going to talk to me, actually, and not just spew hate?”
“I told you before, if you admit to what you did, I would forgive you. I won’t forget—I still have nightmares from everything—but I’d at least treat you with some respect.”
“I’ve done nothing wrong. As a child, you deserved the shit you got.”
My teeth clench, “As a child, I deserved for you to throw me to the ground and stomp on my ribs? As a child, I deserved to be choked out, to be punched, to be told I should have been aborted?” I start screaming at the end, and Hunter stills next to me.
“And if that wasn’t enough, when I was old enough to finally fight back, you abused me in different ways. What about punishing me by not talking to me for a week all because I moved in with Tomas? Or punishing me by saying I don’t love you all because I watched a movie with my boyfriend instead of you? That’s abuse, too. And let’s not forget you opened your legs for another man while married to dad.”
Eileen doesn’t get to respond because suddenly Hunter takes out his gun and blows a hole in her head. “She had it coming. If I had known she hurt you as a kid, I wouldn’t have even allowed her to see you. But the bitch came storming in here last week, asking for my dad to talk about you.”
I stare at my mother’s lifeless body. Why doesn’t this hurt? Why am I not crying over the death of my mother? She really did fuck me up as a child. She destroyed her marriage, but death—was that too much? I don’t have the answers for anything, and I’m not sure how I should feel when Hunter suddenly pulls me from the room.
Wrath follows behind us as we get out of the office, I didn’t even realize he was nearby. “Sorry you had to see that, but I couldn’t take that bitch talking again, and if you kept going on about how she hurt you it would have been worse. She’s lucky I didn’t hand her over to Hangman for retribution.”
“Can you put her body somewhere the cops will find it, so we can at least give her a funeral?” I ask shakily.
“I can do that.” He nods to someone, and they get up and go back to the room. Probably to deal with the body.
“Has Anara ever mentioned me?” he asks me suddenly.
I frown, not really understanding. “No.”
He sighs. “Used to be my old lady, but I treated her like shit, cheated on her right in front of her a lot of times. She finally left me, now she’s with Dirty. I’m happy for her. I couldn’t make her happy but I’m glad she’s found that with someone else. Sucks it ain’t me, though.”
What a random conversation this has become.
“Let’s go. Hangman is on his way and, no doubt, he’s going to have his men hidden around the forest. He’d be stupid not to. Except now, we’re just handing you back, declaring a truce between us.”
A few guys roar out complaints about this and Hunter shuts them up. “Justine, here, is my sister, her old man is Hangman, the only solution is to call a truce between our clubs.” That shuts the guys up and another speaks.
“Getting sick of this damn war anyway, time to change.”
“Agreed,” Hunter grumbles to me, giving me a wink. “Time to get you back to your man.” Except he’s not my man, not anymore.
Chapter Fifty-one
Hangman
Justine stands next to the President of the Jack’s Devils, looking almost like she belongs there, her arms hugging her stomach to fight off the cold. “You took what’s mine,” I growl out.
“She also belongs to me. She’s blood,” Hunter tells me, and it rocks my body back.
Justine is chewing on her lip when I look back to her. “Explain that.”
“Seems dear old dad had an affair with Justine’s mother when she was just sixteen and had Justine here. She’s my sister. If I had known that, I would have found a different way to get to you. Except now, I can’t declare war because it would hurt her.”
What the fuck do I do with this information? I knew Justine was Victor’s kid from the background check we did, but I didn’t know that Hunter was his kid, too. I thought he was Jack’s, the original VP of the club that was killed in a police shootout last year.
“So, what, we go back to our territory and play happy family?” I ask sarcastically.
“In all honesty, yeah, I’m calling a truce. I can’t hurt you without hurting her, and she’s had enough pain in her life. I was gonna wrap you up a present, but I couldn’t hand her over. Had to end her myself.”
Confused as fuck. “What are you talking about?”
“Justine’s mother, she got a bullet in the head. I was going to leave her for you to deal with, but after the shit that Justine yelled at her, I couldn’t take it and ended her myself.”