Chapter 20
CHAPTER TWENTY
“CONTAMINATED” BY BANKS
LARK
Abeam of sunlight tickles my face, my eyelids fluttering open to the semi-darkness of a room which I don’t recognize.
“Morning, Little Bird,” a deep, husky voice says beside me, and twisting my head, I see Knox staring at me with softness in his hazel eyes.
“Do you often stare at women when they sleep?” I grouch, and he chuckles, the rasping sound making my core clench. I wince at the slight ache there, my body heating as memories from the balcony yesterday flit before my eyes.
“Only when they’re beautiful birds in my bed,” he replies, reaching a hand out to push aside some of my tangled hair. I’m actually feeling kind of fresh, which is a surprise considering our activities yesterday at the races.
“Why am I not more gross? More cum-covered?” I ask him, earning Knox’s raised, dirty-blonde brows and a devilish grin.
“Our illustrious leader cleaned you up himself before he left last night after I called dibs.”
“I’m not some fucking dog toy to call dibs on, you know,” I tell him, my lips pulled down in a pout.
“That is what bothers you about what I just said? Not the part about you being unconscious and having someone clean your sweet pussy?” he asks, his fingers toying with the strand of hair that he pushed back before.
“I’ve had worse done to me when I’ve been unconscious, Knox,” I say quietly, dropping my gaze to his bare, inked-up chest and trying not to fall into those dark memories when I would wake up with no knowledge of how I got the bruises on my inner thighs or the sharp ache in my cunt.
His fingers still, and I chance a glance upwards to see his jaw clenched so tightly I’m surprised that he doesn’t crack a tooth.
His gaze settles on mine, and I take a sharp inhale at the fire that rages in his eyes, hot enough to burn the entire world down.
He drops my hair before cupping my face in his warm palm.
“I will kill them all, Little Bird. Every fucking cunt who touched you without your permission will drown in their own blood.” His voice has dropped until it’s the savage whisper of an avenging god, and my heart thuds in my chest at his vehemence.
I don’t know what to say, how to process his words.
I’ve never had someone on my side, a protector.
Well, not since Mom passed away anyway. It’s always been me, myself, and I up against the monsters that make up the Dead Soldiers.
I swallow, deciding that it’s too fucking early to process everything that’s being thrown at me.
“What’s the beef between you and Devil Man?” I ask, having noticed the tension between the two men frequently. He sighs, his exhale almost pained as it leaves his lips. His hand leaves my cheek, and runs through his thick hair, leaving it deliciously disarrayed.
“He blames me for June’s death,” he confesses with a slight hitch in his voice. Unconsciously, I reach my hand up and tangle my fingers with his, his own gripping mine tightly back.
“What happened?”
The skin around his eyes tightens, and it’s only now that I can see he, like Aeron, is older than me by some years.
“She snuck out to meet me after Aeron forbade her to leave their home on her own, but June was full of fire, much like you are, Little Bird, and wouldn’t listen.
You two probably would have gotten on like a fucking house on fire.
” He gives a rueful laugh, and my lips tug up into a smile at his words.
I would have liked a female friend. “Anyway, she was walking towards me, with that swagger she had that said ‘fuck you’ to the entire world. I don’t remember seeing the car, but suddenly I heard gunshots, three—Bam!
Bam! Bam!” His body twitches with each one, as if he’s remembering each shot as if they were for him.
“Then the squeal of tires as the car sped off. I had instinctively crouched down, hidden in the shadows of a building, but when I looked up, it was like the entire fucking world had stopped. Somehow, Jude was there, a crumpled and unresponsive June held in his lap. I scrambled up, dropping next to him, and there was so much blood, Lark. It covered her.” His haunted eyes glisten, and my own fills with tears at the picture he’s painting; of Jude holding his own twin as she died in his arms. I almost miss that he called me by name, my stomach dropping with the sound of it on his lips, like when you fall from a great height.
“Jude was crying, screaming at me to just do fucking something, but the light in her eyes had gone. She wasn’t there anymore, and there was nothing I could do. Fucking nothing.”
“It wasn’t your fault, Knox,” I tell him, letting go of his hand and wrapping myself around his body, pressing our naked bodies close. “You didn’t pull the trigger.”
His body shudders, his arms encasing me and pulling me even closer so that not even a breath of air remains between us.
“I couldn’t protect her when I needed to, Little Bird. I couldn’t do anything but watch her bleed out, knowing that it was me she was coming to see.” His voice is thick, like the words are being pulled from him after being trapped for so long.
“Knox, this happened around eight years ago right? After…after they shot my mom down?” He nods.
“You need to forgive yourself for something that you had no control over. It wasn’t your fault,” I tell him again, willing this powerful man to believe it as I snuggle into his body, his pounding heartbeat under my cheek.
“Shit happens that we can’t control, that we can’t do a fucking thing about apart from keep going and hope that one day, things will be better.
” Tears are streaming down my cheeks, landing on his chest and making his ink darken.
I didn’t know until this moment that’s what I needed to do; admit that my mother’s murder wasn’t my fault.
That everything which followed wasn’t my fault.
“Hey, talk to me, Little Bird,” Knox’s gentle voice breaks through my sobs, his face coming into view as he pulls back a little. A pang of guilt at letting my trauma take over runs through me.
“T–this isn’t about m–me,” I hiccup, swiping at my cheeks.
“You’ve just helped me, beautiful. Let me help you,” he pleads, his lashes dipped in moisture and his eyes sparkling with unshed tears.
“My mom snuck Rook and I out for burgers and milkshakes the day she was s–shot,” I tell him, my lower lip trembling.
“It was my twelfth birthday, and she wanted to treat me. She stepped out of the diner afterwards and I remember hearing what sounded like a car backfiring and then she was on the ground and there was so much blood.” The memories try to resurface, but although they hurt, they don’t overwhelm me like they once did.
“I held her like Jude did with June, watched as she died. After that, well, you know the rest.”
“Oh, baby.” Knox’s voice is thick again. He pulls me back into him, and I sink into the comfort he’s offering, even though a part of me knows I shouldn’t. That this can’t—won’t—last. “I’m so fucking sorry, Little Bird.”
I draw strength from a man for what feels like the first time in my life as we hold each other, and the guilt doesn’t feel as all-consuming as it usually does.
However, a new guilt rears its ugly head, leaving me with a pain in the back of my throat and a tightness in my chest that no amount of air will ease. It’s for something that is yet to pass, something which I also cannot stop.
After spending the morning dozing in Knox’s arms, hunger forces us to leave the cocoon of safety that his bed now represents, and we head downstairs, hands intertwined.
“Morning, Nightingale!” Jude hollers, bounding over to us and wrapping me up in his arms, taking a deep inhale of my hair like it’s the first full breath he’s taken all morning. “Morning, Daddy Knox.”
Knox growls as I giggle, his hand tightening in mine.
“Is there anything to eat?” I ask Jude, placing a kiss on his scruff-covered chin. “I’m fucking starving.”
“For you, my lady? Anything!” Jude declares, stepping back and giving me what I think is supposed to be a knightly bow, but his untucked, Hawaiian shirt and checkered pants ruin the vibe somewhat. “What would my Nightingale like?”
Before I can answer, Aeron comes storming in, phone pressed to his ear and his face thunderous.
“One second, Dad. I’m putting you on speaker now,” he says, looking at me and placing a finger over his mouth in a ‘be quiet’ gesture.
He strides over to the kitchen island, and we follow, Tarl joining us. Knox has a firm grip of one hand, Jude the other as Aeron sets his phone down and hits the speaker icon.
“Boys,” a deep voice greets, and I shiver at the anger lacing the man’s—clearly Adam Taylor, Aeron and Jude’s father, leader of the Tailors—tone. “Has our little bird sung yet?”
All eyes flick to me, and my pulse picks up, my muscles tensing as if ready for flight. Knox and Jude squeeze my hands to reassure me, but it does little to quell the churning of my stomach.
“Not exactly, but we’re close,” Aeron replies, his ocean eyes trained on me as he speaks.
“Well, that is a shame for her. This morning I had a report that they targeted the stables last night, blown to all fucking hell by Dead Soldier scum.” Sharp intakes follow his words, and my eyes widen, still caught in Aeron’s stare.
“We’ve lost some prize horses, including Blue.
” Jude stills next to me, and it takes a moment for me to register the name.
Blue, or Bluebell, their mother’s horse.
A breath rushes out of me at the memory of the beautiful, gentle creature, and her, no doubt, grizzly end.
“And we know it was the Dead Soldiers?” Aeron asks, and I wonder how many other people it might be. How many other enemies they have.
“They left their calling card wrapped around Jim’s bloody neck,” his father replies, and I bite my lips just in time to stifle my gasp of horror.
Jim was so kind, and now like so many before him, he’s dead at the hands of my father’s gang.
I know what the calling card is; army tags my father likes to drape around the slit neck of his victims. “So, we need to know where these scum are hiding, where they scurry off to, and that little bird of yours needs to fucking tell us.”
I’m still trapped in Aeron’s stare, and for a moment I swear it turns pleading, begging me to tell them. A pit in my stomach opens at that look because I can’t. Not until I’ve secured Rook’s safety, which he’s refused up to this point.
“We will get the information,” Aeron tells his father, his voice tight and jaw clenched. My body stiffens, all my muscles screaming at me to run, far and fucking fast.
“I don’t doubt you, son, but I’ve sent Earl along to help give some…support, perhaps add to your persuasion.”
I shiver at his words, bile stinging the back of my throat. Earl, as I later found out, was the one who opened up my back, and my wounds there twinge as if in memory.
“When will he be here?” Aeron asks, his voice sharp and cutting, like when I first met the heir to the Tailors.
“About an hour, maybe less,” Adam Taylor answers. “Get the intel for me, boys, and let’s take those fuckers down once and for all.”
“Yes, sir,” Aeron says, the others mumbling the same as they all stare at me, sorrow shining in their eyes.
My legs feel weak, and my breaths saw in and out of my throat, the threat of pain leaving me trembling. The warmth and safety from this morning, of lying in Knox’s arms, evaporates like smoke, leaving just uncertainty and terror in its wake.
How much will they hurt me? How far will they go? And how far will I go in order to protect my brother?