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Chapter 18
Lark
“You have to convince them to find him, Ray. No matter what you’re thinking and feeling right now, please.” My brother looks like I do. A haunted ghost with nightmares in his eyes.
My dad is with Penny in the room beside us. The club has extra rooms for guests and emergencies. When the Angels rolled into Gray’s yard, they found me clutching Penny tight, cowering on the far side of the yard, well away from the inferno that was Gray’s house. I didn’t dare trust myself to drive. Didn’t want to be anywhere near the car with a fire raging so close. I realize now that I was in shock. I knew they’d come, and I was waiting.
Raiden wasn’t with them, but came fast in his truck. I remembered most of the men from the flower planting, but I was seeing nothing, registering nothing. All I heard were garbled voices belonging to huge black shadows.
Finally, a heavily muscled man with long dark hair and ice dead eyes knelt down in front of me. He called himself Gunner and explained that he was the club’s VP. He called Raiden to come. I’d never seen a scarier looking man in my life. A body just knows when there’s evil around, but instead of fleeing from it, I flung myself at it. I cried and gripped Gunner, Penny caught between us, like he was salvation and not a demon made flesh. He held me until Raiden came with my dad in the old sedan.
My dad.
He’d been at the house, but his bringing our father told me that he’d already been alerted to the danger. I hadn’t managed to tell Gunner anything in all the time he stood in the yard with me and Penny, but the guy running security must have picked up enough that Raiden was warned that he and my dad could be potential targets.
I can still hear Penny crying quietly. The doors to both these rooms are open. Raiden took us straight here. The brothers haven’t got back yet, or if they have, they haven’t gone into church. They might have bits and pieces of the picture from the cameras, but Raiden needs me to talk.
I climb into that icy shell inside myself and tell him everything. I’m so numb that the only thing I feel while I’m talking is the agony of my daughter’s soft cries. She’s going to remember the night her mother turned into a demon, backlit by the amber glow of her father’s life being reduced to ash, for a very long time.
Gray loved that house so much. He had so many dreams for it.
I had so many dreams for us.
I refuse to let this become a tragedy.
The new me is ravenous, a harpy bent on vengeance.
“We need to find Gray,” I snap, drawing on the deep well of black hatred inside of me for strength. “Please.”
“I can’t make anyone do anything.” Raiden stares darkly ahead and then he slams across the room and puts his fist through the wall. It caves inward around the blow. I bite down on my bottom lip so I don’t scream. I’ve never seen my brotheruse violence before. I’m not afraid of him, but I do need him to channel this into energy that helps us mobilize.
He spins, panting, eyes gone black. “Every single one of my club brothers is going to take this like an arrow straight to their black biker hearts. As far as club politics goes, Gray always tried to convince me to take the VP position. No one can overrule the prez, but in his absence or death, the VP makes decisions. That’s not me.” He emphasizes that with a finger to his t-shirt, right overtop his heart. “Gunner’s a good man, but no one is going to be happy hearing that we’re about to be plunged into the middle of a war because Gray lied to all of us. What he did is almost worse than what his father did.”
“I didn’t know that it was Gray’s dad that gave you up.”
“Gray was supposed to put him to ground,” Raiden thunders. “The club took a vote on it when I was still locked up.” He makes fists again, but he doesn’t lash out. “He neversaidthat he had. Just kept saying he wouldn’t be a problem anymore, he’d taken care of it. We wanted to respect his grief and how hard a decision it was for him. But this… fuck. He must have known that this would come back to haunt us all.”
I grasp Raiden’s arm. He’s an inferno, anger burning bright at the surface of him. He doesn’t understand that I am now vengeance itself. I will stop at nothing to find Gray. “If they won’t do it, then take me yourself.”
“Are you insane? Even if I did know how to find Zale and his men, I’m not going to let you anywhere near them.”
“Gray is your best friend and your brother. He’s been it for me for life, but he’s been it for you in a completely different way. I know that you’re angry and shocked at all of this, but he needs you.”
“Does he? I don’t even know if I know who Gray is. It’s hard to know a person when all he’s done is lie to you.”
I try to breathe, but my lungs are cinders and ash, just like Gray’s house. “It’s more complicated than that. If anything, I seduced him. He had no idea until he took me to prom that I felt anything or that he did. He wasn’t waiting on me or grooming me or loving me before I was legal. He’s not sick like that. If you want to be mad, be mad at me. I’m the one who messed everything up. Twice. Maybe this time too. If I hadn’t been there, Gray could have fought back.”
“Gray signed his own death warrant when he refused to put his fuck of a father into the ground.”
This isn’t the Raiden I know and love. This is the man who went to prison for five years because of Zale Grand. He’s angry with me and with Gray, angry at the lies and the loss of his freedom, at the life stolen from him, and now at everything he believes in being put at risk. I don’t have time to argue with him, so I go for something that I know will be far more effective.
I slap him. Hard.
“They cut off his finger as a message! What else are they going to do to him? This is the man I love!” I grasp his t-shirt and pull hard enough to tear it. “You have no idea whoIam anymore, if you think that I’ll sit here and do nothing while he’s being tortured. He’s the father of my daughter and he’s my whole heart. There is nothing I won’t do to get him back. I’ll be at his side however long it takes him to heal. He’d rather be dead than lose the club, but if we have to leave Hart and never come back, we will. I walked away from him once. I promised I’d never do it again. I’ve wasted so much time and now it’s all run out. I willkillfor him. I might not know anything about how to do thatand I’m not trained like you, but I’ll find a way. If you won’t take me to them and the club will do nothing, I’ll figure it out myself. You take Penny and dad and get out of Hart before it explodes.”
Raiden’s hands curl around mine, prying me off him. “Calm down.”
“That’s the least calming thing you can say to anyone.”
