Chapter Twenty-One
Aspen
I spent two hours with Haizley, talking about my sister and my family. How her being here would affect my life, and the life of the club.
When Banshee finally came back upstairs, he explained everything. Mimic and Kytten were her children. I had been living with my niece and nephew and never knew. Not to mention my brother-in-law.
I had her whole family here with me.
Diana had met Bane when she went to college in New York City. They’d fallen in love and gotten married without telling my parents, or our brother.
Zeus would be devastated when he learned Diana had gotten married without him. Though I understood why she’d done it. Our father would never allow her to marry a Soulless Sinner.
I’d thought Bane and Valhalla were soulmates. They had children together. Children they hadn’t raised, but they had been together before he met my sister. There was so much in her story that was missing, and the only way I would understand it all was if I spoke with her.
But that meant telling her my story. Telling her about what our father did, what Pepper had done. What I did. How it was Valhalla who’d gotten me out; given me a new life.
I wasn’t sure I was ready for all that. But I knew Diana. She wouldn’t wait long. I still needed to tell King about the money.
I lay on the bed with Banshee’s arms around me. Here I was safe. In our bubble, no one else had access. I wanted to live in this room forever.
“You have to talk to her.”
“I know,” I said with a dramatic sigh. “I just don’t know how.
She’s been gone so long. Neither of us are the same people we were the last time we were together.
I was eight years old, for crying out loud.
Now I’m an adult. And she has adult children.
” I sat up and looked at him. “How do I do this? How do I tell her what happened? She’ll hate him. ”
“You aren’t responsible for her emotions.”
“It’s not that simple, Banshee. She was everything to my father. And he was everything to her. I can’t be the reason there is a wedge between them. I can’t give him another reason to hate me.”
“Baby girl, first, he doesn’t hate you. Don’t get me wrong, I want to punch him in the fucking throat for what he did, but he doesn’t hate you.
” He pulled me back against his chest. “Second, I’m pretty sure Bane will be the reason there is a wedge between your father and your sister.
Kronos will lose his shit when he finds out they’re married. ”
I turned my head back to look at him.
“Why does that make you smile?”
“Because he fucking deserves it. I can’t wait to see the look on his face when he learns the truth.”
“I can,” I muttered. “It means he’ll be here. And he’ll know everything.”
“Baby girl, the war has already started. It had nothing to do with you.”
I knew he was right. But I knew my father. Or at least, I thought I did. He knew Pepper had put me in the hospital, and he did nothing. I was foolish in thinking he would go scorched earth for me now.
Diana, however… when he found out what George Stone did, not only to my sister, but to her children.
Well, that would be a problem. The Silver Shadows were aligned with the Soulless Sinners.
Not only now through Bane being Mimic’s father, but also Pippen and Amber.
Amber was family. Also, there was Melissa.
Pippen and Melissa shared a child. Danika.
Melissa wasn’t Dani’s biological mother, but Pippen and Sypher had made her Dani’s mom when they left her in Melissa’s care. And with Melissa being Gunner’s baby sister and Ghost’s old lady, well, the Silver Shadows and the Soulless Sinners were connected.
My father would have to make a choice. I knew what choice he would make. Even if I were still living with Pepper, still the willing wife of a Death Dog, my father would always choose Diana over me.
“You ready to head downstairs?”
“No.”
“Baby girl.” Banshee sat up, bringing me with him. “You have family downstairs. Diana is not to blame for what your father did.”
I pulled away from him. “I don’t blame Diana.”
“Don’t you?” he asked. My eyes dropped to the sheet between us. Maybe I did. But not because I thought she was responsible. I knew it wasn’t her fault, but if she’d just stayed home. If she hadn’t demanded to go away to school, she wouldn’t have disappeared for twenty years and ruined our family.
Ruined my life.
“I don’t blame her. But maybe I blame her actions.”
“Maybe you need to talk to Haizley a little more before you talk to your sister,” he suggested.
I shook my head. “No, I know what Haizley will say. I am entitled to feel the way I do, but putting the blame on anyone other than Pepper for my being hurt isn’t productive.
He is responsible for his actions. Diana was entitled to live her life the way she chose.
She had no way of knowing how it would affect ours.
Dominoes fall; there is no way to stop them. ”
Haizley and I’d had this conversation many times already. I wanted to scream at my sister. I wanted to force her to accept her part in the way my life had spiraled. But that wasn’t fair to her. Especially now that I knew her life had also been hell. She hadn’t abandoned us to live a carefree life.
She had been separated from her husband. Abducted and locked away. Her children taken from her. Her life had been worse than mine, and that was the crux of the problem.
I was feeling guilty.
For years I had hated her. Hated her for disappearing. For being the good daughter. The favored daughter. The daughter that was never forgotten. It wasn’t her fault.
It was my father’s.
I waited in my room while Banshee sought out Diana. He’d offered to find her and bring her here so we could talk in private. I paced the room, anxious about hearing everything she’d been through. Anxious about telling her everything she’d missed in the time she was gone.
The soft knock felt more like a sonic boom, and I froze in place. I stared at the door until another, firmer knock broke me out of my fear.
I opened the door and there she was. She looked older, but still the same. Her blonde hair was a shade darker than it had been, and I unconsciously reached for my own. I’d dyed it religiously since leaving the hospital and coming to Diamond Creek.
Her eyes were the same—the color of my father’s favorite whiskey. The lines etched around them were new. They spoke of a life lived hard.
Alone.
Afraid.
She’d lost everything, and yet, she stood here in my doorway smiling at me. Happy to see me after all these years.
“May I come in?”
“Oh, yes.” I stepped back, holding the door open wide enough for her to pass through. She looked around the room, her eyes catching on the small pillow on the bed.
“You still have it.”
I read the words embroidered on the pillow. Chance made us sisters; Hearts made us friends.
“No, I had a new one made.”
She turned to look at me, tears in her eyes.
“What happened?”
I closed my eyes against the burn of tears that threatened to fall. How did I tell her that the man who raised us, the man who loved her beyond reason, didn’t love me the same way? That I was a throwaway on his quest to find her.
“Why don’t you go first?” I said while leaning against the dresser. I motioned for her to sit on the bed. When she patted the spot beside her, I hesitated.
When we were younger, we used to sit on the bed in my room, and I would tell her everything. How my day at school went, who I was friends with, what my dreams were. There was nothing I didn’t share with my big sister.
When I didn’t move from my spot, Diana sighed and began her story. She told me everything. Starting with her dorm roommate, who introduced her to a guy named Barney, who ran a place called the Gentlemen’s Club, to meeting Bane, who she called August.
I found that interesting. I never called Banshee Elijah, unless we were in bed. I guess because I’d met him and fallen in love with him as Banshee, that was who he’d always be.
She told me about George Stone and his pursuit of August. She even told me about Valhalla. Only, she called her Meredith. When I heard what Valhalla had done, how she’d been the one to lock her away, tears fell down my cheeks.
It didn’t make sense to me how the same person could be a savior and a villain. Valhalla had rescued me years after locking away my sister. Had she known who I was? Was she laughing the entire time, knowing she was rescuing me while enslaving my sister?
She told me about the men who saved her. Shame, a member of the Soulless Sinners, and Crispin Sinclair.
He was another person who didn’t make sense. He’d walked into this club and forced Pippen to go with him, while threatening Grace’s life, yet he’d risked his own life for Diana.
Because everyone loved Diana.
Everyone wanted her.
“That’s everything,” she said, ending her story with how she had come to be here. In Diamond Creek, Nebraska. In the Silver Shadows’ clubhouse.
Mimic and Kytten.
Her children.
My nephew and niece.
“Would you share your story with me?” she asked.
I’d been quiet while she talked, listening while trying to come up with a way to tell her everything.
“You won’t be happy when you hear my story.” She tilted her head to the side and bit her lip. “After you disappeared, things changed.”
“I’m sorry.”
I didn’t accept her apology; it wasn’t hers to give, and she didn’t yet know what she was apologizing for.
“Why didn’t you come home?” I asked. “When you left Bane, why didn’t you come home?”
Diana dropped her hands to her lap and took a deep breath. “Because I knew I wouldn’t be safe. My children wouldn’t be safe. And the club wouldn’t be safe. Daddy would have gone off half-cocked and probably gotten himself, Zeus, and the others killed.”
I barked out a caustic laugh. I guess I wasn’t so different from my big sister after all.
“Yeah, well, he did that anyway. He and Zeus spent weeks tearing through New York looking for you.”
“I heard,” she whispered.
I told Diana about what life was like after she left. How I was sheltered and locked away in my own way. I knew it wasn’t comparable to what she’d gone through, but it was my experience. For a young girl who was barely a teenager, it was traumatic losing a sister, losing a father.
“He was there, but he wasn’t,” I explained. “He tried until he didn’t.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that when I graduated college, he decided that he would choose a husband for me. Someone he trusted.”
“Is that why you’re here? Are you married to Banshee?”
I shook my head, a chuckle falling from my lips as I stared at the ceiling. “Banshee was the man he chose for me. But he said no. He said he was too old for me and I deserved more than being used as a pawn for politics. That I deserved to live the life I chose.”
“He was right,” Diana said with a smile.
“Except that wasn’t what I got.” Her smile fell, and she opened her mouth to say something, but I cut her off. “Instead, I was married off to a man who beat me and put me in the hospital.”