Chapter Four
Banshee
Every morning, she went for a walk. She took the dog outside and spent at least an hour, sometimes two or three, walking around the grounds.
Alone.
Except for the dog.
I knew what she had been through; we all did. And when I found the motherfucker who hurt her, he was a dead man. This son of a bitch had been drugging and raping women for months. Jack’s old lady, Sam, had almost been a victim. She would have been a victim had Jingles not been with her that day.
Aspen shouldn’t be here. She never should have been in Diamond Creek. Where the fuck was her husband?
Yeah, I knew she was married.
Her piece-of-shit dad married her off to someone else when I said no. He’d waited until I moved here with King and the others. Maybe he thought I’d forgotten about her.
That wasn’t happening. I’d thought about her almost every day since the first time I saw her.
Athens, Texas, 2015
“What the hell are we here for?” Dutch asked.
“Picking up the shipment,” I repeated for the third time. Jason ‘Dutch’ Miller was twenty-four years old, and I swear his mother dropped him on his head as a child.
Consistently.
It was like he had anterograde amnesia. Short-term memory loss. His road name should have been Dopey.
“I hate coming here. Kronos is a scary motherfucker,” LA whispered.
“Then don’t piss him off.”
How I ended up with these two was a mystery. Sometimes I felt like Steele knew exactly who I was and why I was here. It was the only explanation for why I constantly got the shit jobs. Picking up a shipment wasn’t so bad, but these two were morons.
We pulled into the Gods of Mayhem clubhouse early in the morning. It was an understated building from the front. An old warehouse from the twenties. Probably the home of a bootleg operation during Prohibition.
It had two floors and windows all along the front.
But in the back was a maze of rooms and hallways you could get lost in.
Kronos had built it up over the years, creating a small, enclosed area for his children to play.
The building stretched out and around, making a large square with a grassy family area in the middle.
It was actually quite ingenious if you thought about it. The brothers’ families could be outside without the threat of danger. Well, that was how it used to be. Nowadays, we had drones that could fly undetected through the air. Drones that had weapons attached.
When you were the president of a one-percenter club, your family was never really safe. That was why most men didn’t take on an old lady. They were a weakness to be exploited. Kronos had found that out the hard way when his oldest daughter disappeared.
We pulled up in front of the clubhouse and shut down the bikes. I had just swung my leg over the seat when the most beautiful woman I had ever seen came rushing out the front door.
“Shug, get your ass back inside!”
“No, I’m meeting my friends.”
She waved to Zeus and blew him a kiss. I hadn’t heard he had taken an old lady. But there was no mistaking the love on his face as he shook his head and smiled at her.
She was gorgeous. Her honey-blonde hair trailed in the wind as she ran to her car. The skirt she wore flowed around her ankles, short enough to see her cowboy boots.
The tank top under her cut spread across her chest as if it was made just for her. I watched her until she climbed into her car and spun out across the gravel lot.
“She’s gonna get herself killed.”
“I didn’t know you’d taken on an old lady,” I said. It took every ounce of control I had not to stare at the taillights as they sped down the road.
“Fuck no. That’s my baby sister.”
“Irene?” I asked, the blood draining from my face. “Isn’t she like ten?”
“Just turned twenty, actually. Feels like just yesterday when my parents brought her home.”
I pushed my helmet, which was still in my hand, against my cock, willing it to go down. If Zeus knew I’d gotten hard from one look at his baby sister, I wouldn’t be leaving here today.
I looked down the driveway again. The dust had settled, and there was no trace of her. Shaking my head, I told myself she was off-limits, not just because she was Kronos’ daughter, but because I was thirty-five fucking years old. Too old for her.
“Let’s get you packed up and on your way.”
We followed Zeus inside. LA caught my attention and waggled his eyebrows at me. I shoved him forward, and he laughed. Asshole. At least I knew Dutch wasn’t likely to remember shit.
I wished I could say that I’d forgotten about her after that visit. But hell, I still thought about her constantly over the years. After I’d told her father no, I checked in on her. When I wouldn’t submit, he found someone who would. Kronos married her off to someone else. A member of another club.
I might have lost my chance, but I still had the memory of her.
Until now.
Now she was here. In Nebraska. In my clubhouse. And it was time to find out why.
I stepped outside. The air was dry and brisk. I knew where she’d gone. She walked the same route every morning. The only variance was when she sat by the tree with Diesel.
I’d watched her from the window in my room more than I wanted to admit. Wondering what she thought about while she sat there, her hand buried in the dog’s fur.
Did she think of me?
I followed her path and found her exactly where I knew she would be. Diesel’s head popped up, and when he saw me, he laid back down without a thought.
He trusted me.
But would she?
I sat down beside her and waited for her to say something. When it was clear she wouldn’t, I asked, “Why the hell are you here?”
My voice was gruffer than I had planned, and Diesel let out a low moan, letting me know that despite the love and time I had taken to train him, he would pick her over me.
That was how it should be. It was why I’d picked him for her. I’d been working with a breeder for two years now. Helping to train her dogs. They were protective, but also therapeutic.
“King said—”
“Where the fuck is your husband?” She rolled her lips between her teeth, and her eyes dropped to her lap. “Baby girl, what happened?”
“So you do know who I am?”
“Of course, I fucking know.” I let out a frustrated sigh and pulled my knees up, resting my arms on them. I wasn’t frustrated with her. In fact, I was angry.
With myself.
“How did you get here? And does he know where you are?”
“I can’t tell you. I promised I wouldn’t contact anyone from my life before.”
“Yet here you are in my clubhouse.”
“You can’t tell King. He’ll call my father.” Her eyes were wide with panic, begging me not to give her away.
“How long have you been gone?”
“Two years,” she whispered.
“You know this has to be killing them, right?” I turned my head and looked at her. She was still gorgeous as ever, even with her dark hair. “First Diana, now you?”
“I doubt they even know I’m gone.”
Diesel crawled closer, pushing between me and Aspen. Pushing me away from her.
“Diesel, stay.” I set my hand on the dog, willing him not to interfere. I wanted to be close to her. Wanted to touch her. “Why wouldn’t they know you’re gone?”
Her hands twisted in her lap as Diesel whined. He watched her for signs of stress and scooted closer.
“Before I left, I hadn’t spoken to them for months.”
“Are you still married?”
She nodded. I tilted my head from side to side, letting my neck crack to relieve some of the tension. It wasn’t working. If she were still married, that meant she was running.
“He put his hands on you?”
She didn’t answer, not even silently. She pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around her legs. It was all the answer I needed.
“Tell me what he did, baby girl.”
“Banshee, please. He doesn’t know where I am. I’m safe here.”
“It doesn’t work that way, and you know it.”
She pushed her hands against the ground and jumped up, glaring at me. “I know how it fucking works. I won’t start a war over that son of a bitch. He doesn’t want me, and I don’t want him.”
“Irene,” I started.
“Don’t! Don’t call me that. My name is Aspen. Irene died. She’s gone.”
I got to my feet and grabbed her arm as she tried to leave. The way her body stiffened beneath my hand told me everything.
“He put his hands on you,” I growled, and Diesel growled beside me, baring his teeth. My fingers loosened around her arm, but I didn’t let her go. Not yet. I stared into her green eyes. I never should have walked away. “This is my fault.”
“Oh, fuck you, Banshee.”
She wrenched her arm out of my grasp and stalked off. I admired her ass as she moved toward the clubhouse, adjusting my dick as it thickened. She wasn’t a kid anymore, that was for sure, but there were still fifteen years between us.
I’d never seen her angry like that. After that first time at the clubhouse, when she’d sashayed out the front door full of sugar and sass, and climbed in her car, ignoring Zeus, every time I saw her, she was subdued.
Quiet and submissive.
I wanted to know what had happened that had pulled the life from her eyes, the fire from her blood. You didn’t put two people like Kronos and Rhea together and get a docile child. Not if Zeus was any indication.
No, the Cooper children were tough. They had to be, growing up in a one-percenter club. That kind of environment didn’t treat weak people well. Then again, maybe that was why Diana disappeared. Maybe she ran. Maybe she wasn’t cut out to be like her mother.
Or maybe she just didn’t want to be.
Aspen was tougher than she thought. I didn’t know what Pepper had subjected her to, but I knew what she’d endured here. The fact that she was still standing, still willing to tell me to fuck off, meant that she was strong.
Despite what she thought, it was my fault. I should have taken her. I should have made her mine. She deserved to be worshipped like the goddess she was.
She reminded me of my sister. Kaylah was stronger than she thought. I didn’t help her either. I didn’t find out what my father was doing to her until after she ran away.
I went through her room searching for a hint. Anything to tell me where she’d gone. It wasn’t until I found her diaries that I learned what a sick son of a bitch my father was.
He’d been raping her for three years. From the time she was thirteen years old. And she never told me.
I knew Aspen hadn’t told Kronos about whatever Pepper had done. The guy might be an asshole, but he loved his children. She could have told him, and he would have helped her. He would have started a war.
The Silver Shadows would have backed him up. It wasn’t like when Diana disappeared. The Gods of Mayhem had allies now. Allies that would have had their back.
It didn’t take a genius to figure out he had abused her. The question was, how much? Physical was a given. I would bet my bike on that being the reason she ran. With physical abuse came emotional abuse. You didn’t have one without the other.
Then there was sexual abuse. Some men, especially bikers, believed women were their property. And to some extent that was true. If I’d taken Aspen when she was offered to me, she would have been mine. She would have worn my patch, telling the world she was my property.
But she would have been so much fucking more. The truth was, if she was mine, she would have owned me. Hell, maybe she already did.
Maybe she always had.