King’s brow furrowed as I mouthed, “What’s going on?”
We stared up at the ceiling, their floor, and there was the muffled sound of boots thumping as someone clearly started pacing. With every step they took, the floorboards groaned and eddies of dust twisted and twirled around us.
Some must have gone up my nose because the urge to sneeze hit me.
My nostrils itched with the need, my eyes watered, and I sucked in a huge breath to stop it.
The tiniest noise escaped me as I contained the blast. My brain rattled with the aftereffects of trying to keep it quiet, and my lips ached where I’d accidentally bitten them as I slapped a hand over my nose and face—
“Did you hear something?” Nyx demanded.
Only, Bear, who was still stomping, clearly heard nothing as he ground out, “How do you know Carly was being abused by Kevin, Nyx?”
I swore that my heart stopped throbbing at those words.
Kevin Sisson.
I hated him.
He was a creep.
He had a way of looking at me and all the girls my age, sometimes younger, that reminded me of how Axel looked at my mom.
But there was a twenty-year age difference between Mom and me, and no one should be looking at young kids like that. Not even King, who said I was his girl and whose chest puffed up whenever he called me that, looked at me like Kevin did.
I shuddered and King sent me a questioning look, even as he tightened his arm around me.
“I caught him,” Nyx said miserably. “Them. I-I found them.”
Nyx wasn’t a bully. But he was mean. He was hard. So when I heard him start to cry, my whole being rejected the sound.
Nyx wasn’t the kind of guy who cried. He was angry, so angry… Maybe this was why. God.
Maybe.
This.
Was.
Why.
I guessed I had an answer for the unthinkable thing Carly had done.
Shoving my hand against my still-aching mouth, I tried to contain the moan of pain that wanted to pop out and only succeeded when King turned my face into his throat once more.
“When?” Bear barked.
“Years ago.” Nyx gulped. “I-I was too scared to come forward. Too scared to say anything. He threatened me, and Carly, she said…”
“What did she say?” Bear rasped softly when his words waned.
“That she’d deal with it. But Dad… he loves Kevin. That’s why he’s always at the house—”
There was silence then.
Deathly silence.
Bear’s feet came to a halt. “You think she told your father and he didn’t believe her?”
I heard a loud sniff, then a whispered, “Yeah. I think that’s what happened.”
More silence.
It thudded like it had its own heartbeat.
It pulsed through the room like the fallout from a nuclear bomb, only being broken by:
“Leave this to me, Nyx.”
Five words.
I might have been thirteen years old but I knew what they meant.
“No!” Nyx snapped. “Carly killed herself because I was a pussy. Because I didn’t put a stop to this—”
“This ain’t your job, Nyx. Ain’t your duty. This is above your pay grade. I’ll see to it.”
“She’s—” His voice broke. “She was my fucking sister.”
Bear sucked in a breath. “Leave this to me.”
It was a command.
An order that the fifty-plus men in the MC would immediately obey.
But Nyx wasn’t like those fifty-plus men.
Not just because he was a guy.
Not just because, as a part of his heritage, he was a man now.
But because he was Nyx.
Everyone knew a wildness flowed through his veins. Everyone knew that he was rabid and feral. Until it came to family.
Family was his weakness.
My throat tightened as I thought about poor Carly, and King squeezed me again in comfort.
Nyx didn’t reply to the Prez, just stomped off, and as the door opened and smashed to a close, letting music from the bar trickle in, I heard the remnants of the wake the MC threw on Carly’s behalf.
“Fuck,” Bear rasped under his breath before he repeated, “Fuck.”
There was silence again, then the tread of boots, and the soft snick of the door.
“I need you to tell me that Kevin didn’t touch you like that.”
It was the first time I’d ever heard King talk that way—just like his daddy.
Swallowing, I turned to him. “No. I didn’t let him near me.”
In the meager glow from my flashlight, I saw his eyes narrow. “Because you knew he was… a creep?”
I bowed my head. “He looked at me how the brothers look at the bunnies.”
King’s fingers went to my chin, and he urged my head higher. “Did you know about Carly? Did she tell you about this?”
“No,” I whispered truthfully.
His shoulders slumped. “If she didn’t tell you, then she wouldn’t have told anyone else.”
He wasn’t wrong.
I might not have been here a long while, but Carly and I—
My eyes burned.
We were more than just friends; we were like sisters.
I’d lost my sister ten days ago.
Five years might have separated us, but she’d taken me under her wing the first day I showed up at the compound with Mom and Axel, and this was the first time I’d been without her for an extended period of time.
I’d been her shadow. She’d been a safe space for so long, so adjusting wasn’t easy. Knowing that I’d let her down, that she’d thought I was too young to confide in hurt even more.
“Nyx won’t listen to your dad,” I told him after he held me for a good twenty minutes.
Twenty minutes of me crying, of me accepting his hug and of giving it back to him.
His voice was soft, sad. “No, I know he won’t.”
My throat bobbed at the admission.
That feralness, the wild streak in Nyx was about to be channeled somewhere.
The man who would find himself at the center of Nyx’s crosshairs was about to have a brutal death at the hands of a teenager…
I didn’t have any pity in me to waste on an animal like that.
A sick predator who’d taken my best friend from me.
I’d always believed the world was black and white, but it was the first time I recognized there was gray…
So much gray.
Sometimes, I realized as I nuzzled into King, letting him gently kiss my temple and pet my hair as he tried to soothe my tears and my grief away, gray wasn’t a bad thing.
It was, in fact, the best thing in the world.
TWENTY-TWO YEARS, THIRTY-ONE DEAD PEDOPHILES, AND ONE CHILD LATER…
From: [email protected]
Subject: License
You should thank whoever you bribed at the township. They came through with the licenses.
Rachel
From: [email protected]
Subject: Re. License
Who says I bribed anyone?