Knight (78 page)

A gun hadn’t pissed off Brew. Neither had the wires cutting into his wrists or being hauled into a dingy basement that meant to serve as his coffin. But no one talked about Blade like that in front of Brew. Not even his baby sister.

“He’s our family,” Brew growled.

“He’s never been a father to me.”

“Since
when
?” The bindings snapped. Rose cried as Brew stood. I reached for my weapon. “Dad provided for you. Fed you. Clothed you. Yeah, he got in some legal trouble and we had to pull you from school, but Christ, Rose, how fucking selfish can you be? So you missed a few classes?  Dad’s lost the last
four
years of his fucking life!”

Rose pushed away from Keep. She wiped her tears with the heel of her hand. More spilled.

“Are you that oblivious?” She asked. “Or do you just not care about me at all?”

“Of course I care about you! I fucking love you, Bud.”

“Then act like it! You’re supposed to be my big brother!” Her voice lowered. “But you never
looked
. You never stopped to talk. Neither of you ever put it together. You were too busy with Dad and Anathema to stop and think about what was happening to
me
.”

The realization hit me before her brothers.

“
Oh fuck
,” I whispered.

I didn’t know if she deliberately avoided my gaze or if she couldn’t break her attention from Brew. I had witnessed a lot of sick shit, but nothing turned my stomach or broke me down.

Until now.

Until the truth sucker-punched me in the gut and I could do absolutely fucking nothing to force that horror from my head.

Brew wasn’t the only one keeping secrets.

Difference was, Rose clung to hers for twenty-one years. Only now the truth scratched, clawed, kicked, and maimed its way out of her.

I had no idea if any of us could fit her bloodied and mangled pieces back together.

“I took care of you when Dad got put away,” Brew said. “Gave you money. Gave you a car. Came every time you needed me and then ran away with my tail tucked between my fucking legs when you flipped shit and pushed me out of your life. Don’t you bitch about me
caring
.”

“Then why are you letting him out of jail?” Rose yelled. “Why would you do that to me?”

“Because he’s our father.”

“You really don’t know?”

“Know what?”

She looked from Brew to Keep. I envied their blank expressions. That split-second of utter confusion and
innocence
that was robbed from Rose. She hesitantly met my gaze.

I braced myself, but I wasn’t made of stone. My flesh could be torn, my bones snapped and crushed. If I could have spared her the pain of her past, I’d have taken on every last torture she endured.

Her voice hollowed. Broken and flat.

“Dad abused me,” she whispered. “He raped me from my sixteenth birthday until the day before he was arrested.”

All the drugs in the bag wouldn’t have shielded Keep from the truth.

And only the bullet in my gun would have eased Brew’s shock.

Both men collapsed. Fell to their knees upon the stairs. My world rocked with them. Shattered and split and flung off into misery.

“Are you…” Keep didn’t look at her. “How…when?”

“He beat me as a kid.” Rose’s voice cleared, if only because her brothers cowered at her feet. “You remember that.”

“He beat us all,” Keep said. “He didn’t…”

“Molest you?  Take pictures for his friends?” Rose swallowed. “Guess I was just lucky.”

“Bud—”

“Don’t call me that!” She backed away from Keep’s hand. “That was
his
nickname for me.”

“Sorry.” Keep’s twitching turned violent. “I didn’t know…we didn’t know.”

“He only…he started…it was worse after Mom died. He said he was
lonely
.”

Brew made his first noise. A guttural profanity that didn’t sound human.

He raised his eyes to her.

He didn’t deserve to look at her face.

“You can’t let him out of jail,” she said. “You
can’t
.”

He exhaled. I doubted he wanted to take another breath. “Temple has the money. They won’t care what Dad did. They just want to sell.”

Keep sneered. “Then let Dad out. We’ll be waiting for him.”

They could play vigilante all they wanted. It wouldn’t give Rose her childhood back. It’d just make an even bigger headache. More blood.

“You kill Blade, and Temple comes after Anathema,” I said. “And they’re strong. Organized. Half my men are in jail or dead, and I’ve got a gun pointed at my Sergeant at Arms. We wouldn’t stand a chance.”

“So what?” Keep ground his teeth. “We just let him out?”

“We go to war with Temple, everyone dies. Including Rose.” The thought might have ended me right there. A blow to the head or a bullet to the chest didn’t hurt as much. “Let Temple have their money. We keep the drugs. Sell it ourselves. Make a profit, find some guns, and then deal with Blade once he’s out of jail.”

“Ex is looking for those drugs,” Brew said. “You keep that bag, and it’s the start of another war.”

Naivety didn’t win battles. But I didn’t expect to win. I expected to survive.

“We’re already at war.” The gun rested heavy in the holster. “This will be our last stand.”

Brew reached for Rose. She stiffened but didn’t pull away. He didn’t hesitate. She fell into his embrace, buried her head in his chest, and was lost under the shaking of her curls as her silent sobs wracked her entire body with a sorrow I’d commit to memory.

Every last painful shake, every mournful gasp for air, every shamed and humiliated and helpless shade of pink staining her skin with a blush that had no right to desecrate her beauty.

I hated it.

And that was why I’d remember it. That’s why I needed to remember it.

No one would ever hurt Rose again. Nothing would ever reduce her to shades of her memory and fears of her past. I’d go to war to prevent anything from harming her again.

With an angel like Rose to live for, I had no excuse to die.

I needed my guitar.

Just one song. Just one chord. One note. Something. Anything. Just noise that could clear the silence from my head, and the screaming from my memory, and sounds and grunts and clipping of headboards from my past.

I needed to play. A hard song. Something that took a lot of concentration and bruised my fingers and forced me to work.

Except I learned those songs already. Clapton to Metallica, Hendrix to Santana. I burned through those challenges. I used those melodies to unburden my mind and lose myself in a reality of pure music.

It was all a delusion.

Why did I punish Keep for his addiction? Mine was worse, and I didn’t have chemicals surging through my body controlling my thoughts. I just had me. My own mind. My own actions. My own distractions that never really worked, it just tucked it down, down, down and muffled the cry of my past in jazz and blues and rock. I played songs I hated and songs I adored and songs I never even listened to because I had to learn the tabs before the silence took me again.

Before
he
took me again.

Sorceress had plenty of music, piped in and cheap and straining the speakers with rough bass that would break the subwoofers before the girls dancing broke any wallets. I had no guitar. No piano. Not even a damned kazoo. And I couldn’t sing along to the re-mastered hip-hop pumping the girls’ hips.

My throat closed not long after I spoke those horrific words. I could sing any genre without straining my vocal cords, but the truth punished my throat like I gargled with sulfur, swallowed a cigarette, and slashed my windpipe to prevent the revelation from scorching my lungs.

One bottle of whiskey wasn’t enough. And sharing it with my brothers wasn’t a family bonding moment. I lived every day with the secret of the man our father truly was.

They needed the drink more than me.

They needed the truth more than me.

My brothers idolized a monster, and like a devout churchgoer losing faith, the world felt a little smaller, a little darker, and a little crueler. There was a lot to learn, and I didn’t think we had enough time to understand it all.

Thorne didn’t let Brew go, but I didn’t think he was going anywhere. The drop-off time came, went, and extended far beyond any courtesy Exorcist would have tolerated. The Coup would either think Brew turned or that Thorne finally killed him. Either way, they warned of blood and violence and my brothers already tried to say goodbye.

I didn’t know what I hated more—their apologies, their guilt, or the thought that I would never see them again.

And that I would be the reason.

Thorne hated it more than me. He hauled me from the steps and forced me into the club. Lyn nodded us into her office. She calmed down, but only because neither of us were covered in blood.

Thorne closed the office door. The thumping music and jeering crowds drowned into silence.

No guitar. Just quiet. Just the rasping cadence of my breath and the soothing, masculine exhale from Thorne.

His breathing was music enough, or had been, before I left his bed the last time. Before everything was ruined, and everybody was lost, and I had just laid in his arms and traced the ink on his chest and let myself feel safe for those few seconds before dawn.

He was either a blessing or a curse. My captor became my guardian, hero, and warden. Now he was something more I didn’t want to admit.

But I had no other secrets to keep from him, and that relief was the only solace I had experienced the whole day.

He didn’t reach for me. I hoped it was because of our argument from earlier—words we shouted that neither of us meant that protected us from the truth. I prayed he’d be angry about Exorcist. Or that he would gloat for being right about the danger I faced. I wished every warm and comforting feeling I experienced in his bed was imaginary.

I handled his wrath and his pride and his indifference.

But I couldn’t take his
pity
.

He watched me in silence. Sighed and sat on the couch, spreading his arms out over the back. Inviting. Intimidating. I could only imagine slipping under his arm and resting against his chest.

And so I did.

His heartbeats jumbled with mine. They didn’t sync or pulse in time. I didn’t think they ever would, but that was okay. So long as he still had a heartbeat.

The tee shirt stretched thin over his chest, and the cut fell away. The black angry ink etched into his flesh stained through the white cotton. I brushed my hand along his shoulder. He didn’t push me away, but his hand fell against the leather of the couch before he dared to touch me.

I didn’t expect anything from him. A million shameful moments ruined me before he even thought of me as anything but his best friends’ younger sister. I wondered how he looked at me now.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” I said.

He hesitated. “I understand why.”

“I am sorry.”

“I’m sorry too. You go through all that shit, and I make you suffer more.” He met my gaze. “I can’t let Brew go.”

“He doesn’t want to leave. I think I crushed them.”

Thorne’s hand curled into a fist. He still didn’t touch me. “It isn’t your fault. None of that is your fault.”

“I had to tell them.”

“I know.”

“They would have let him out of jail.”

“I wish they would.” Thorne’s jaw tensed. “I’d kill him myself.”

“And Anathema would rip itself into chaos.”

“They’d understand.”

Thorne was smarter than that, but his rage wasn’t. I shook my head.

“When I was a kid my mother filed charges on my father for knocking her down the stairs. The next day my father and two of his crew took turns throwing her down the basement steps and threatened her with a baseball bat until she climbed back up. She withdrew the charges from the hospital. Brew had to take me in for a week while she recovered.” I didn’t let the bitterness sharpen my voice. Mom convinced Brew she was clumsy. When Brew argued with her, she insisted it was better for her to be the klutz than me. “Dad got her heavy into drugs after that. Two years later she was dead. Believe me. You can’t touch my father. Not even now.”

“Anathema is a different club now.”

“But the rules are still the same. You can’t kill my father. You’d become the traitor. There wouldn’t be a safe place in the city for you.”

“So fucking what?” He meant it. “I want you safe. I don’t care whose blood I have to spill to do it.”

“I am safe with you.” That truth came easily. “I should have felt that way with my brothers. I never did. But it wasn’t their fault. I treated them horribly because I was too afraid to tell them the truth. And I was too afraid to tell you the truth.”

“I don’t want you to be afraid of me.”

I leaned forward, brushing my fingers over the dark stubble on his jaw. He stilled, grabbing the couch to keep from touching me. I didn’t have anything to prevent me from moving.

Gently, as if I hadn’t done it before, I brushed my lips against his and savored the sweetest, kindest kiss of my life.