38. Piper
THIRTY-EIGHT
PIPER
Terror ricocheted through my being. My pulse erratic as I turned and started to run. My heart manic and my mind trying to process through what I had just witnessed.
Theo had killed two men.
Killed them as if it were an act he committed every day.
Hatred boiling in his aura and violence oozing from his flesh.
Sickness churned in my stomach, nearly making me stumble as I fled.
I had no idea where I was going or what I was going to do.
The only thing I knew was I had to get away. That I couldn’t stomach this. That I couldn’t wrap my head around what Theo had just done.
I’d known he was dangerous, hadn’t I? I had known it from the beginning, and I chose to turn a blind eye.
But I could never unsee this.
Panic careened through my veins, and I fumbled in the direction of the cabin that had come to feel like a home. A cabin he instructed me to stay locked behind the doors, but when I heard the glass shatter and Alicia’s scream, I had to try to help her.
I couldn’t sit idle when I was sure she was in trouble.
And that trouble was something I couldn’t handle.
I felt like a fool who’d fallen into a false security. Like peace could ever really be meant for me. As if running wouldn’t be a permanent fixture of my life.
Running was the only thing I could do.
I had to get out of here.
Get my son and grandmother to safety.
“Piper!” Theo’s voice cut through the air. Not quite a shout but a command that hit me like a blade to my back.
A whimper of fear raked out of me, and I pushed myself harder. I didn’t take the time to make it back to the path that led to the cabin.
I cut across the land in front of it, fumbling over the snowbank in hopes it would get me to the porch faster.
The loud grumble of a motorcycle engine revved as it approached, blazing up the lane before the single headlight rounded the corner and came into view.
Tires squealed as the bike skidded to a stop.
A fool, I whirled to look over my shoulder.
River rose like a wraith from the metal.
A beast in the night.
Is that what they were?
How?
What was happening?
“Two down. I don’t think there are more, but we need confirmation. Secure the area. Cover me.” Theo ground out the instruction right before his focus flew to me.
Terror and confusion rebounded, and I forced myself forward. My legs felt like I had no control over them as I plodded through the snow.
I knew when Theo had started to move.
His presence swarming me from behind as he came straight up the road.
A violent echo that reverberated through my being.
“Piper,” he grated, a harsh desperation wound into the word.
The soles of his boots thudded against the pavement as he enclosed.
A shock of adrenaline blasted through me, and I pushed myself harder, trying to scramble through the snow that was deeper than I anticipated.
One of my legs sank into a hole. Buried to the knee. The shift in movement tossed me forward, causing me to fall.
On a gasp, I caught myself with my hands ramming into the freezing snow.
I gasped and choked as I crawled out of the deep snowdrift, desperate to climb back onto my feet.
Though I was bent.
Unable to fully stand as I basically crawled up the single porch step.
I finally managed to haul myself upright just as the crash of energy swamped me.
Right there.
Too much to bear.
“Piper,” Theo gritted as he reached for me.
A hopeless cry erupted from my throat when he looped an arm around my waist.
“No!” I shouted. I twisted out of his hold, whirled around, and began to slap my hands against his chest to deflect his attack. “No. Stay away from me.”
Big hands curled around my wrists, and I knew there was no chance of breaking free of the shackles.
A hazy glow from the sconce that hung next to the door was barely bright enough to illuminate his face.
Every harsh, ferocious line was etched in shadows and secrets.
Wind lashed through his black hair and those eyes struck like black flames in the pitch of the night.
The man was written in menace and peril.
Dangerous.
I’d known it. I’d known it.
And I’d let him steal my stupid heart anyway.
I knew it when I felt it breaking anew.
The fractured pieces that had barely been held together fully splintering apart.
“Let me go,” I wheezed. I jerked and thrashed and tried to break free.
He only tightened his hold. “Piper, listen to me.”
“No. I don’t want to hear it. Just let me go. I won’t tell anyone. I promise. Please just let us go.”
Theo’s jaw clenched. “I would never fuckin’ hurt you, Piper. Never.”
I whimpered. “You…you killed them. I…”
I wanted to rein the words back in. Maybe if I didn’t bring them out into the world, they wouldn’t be reality.
Only a figment of my messed up, traumatized mind.
As if I was taken back to that horrible night.
Blood.
So much blood.
I couldn’t suppress the chaos that flooded from my tongue. “You…I saw you. I saw you.”
And somehow, I knew the police wouldn’t be coming.
I knew these sins were done in the dark.
Theo was a criminal.
A…murderer.
My mind spiraled as fast as my spirit.
Alicia. The little girl. The way Theo had seemed to freak out when they came outside so Lucy could play in the snow.
What was happening?
Air ripped from my faltering lungs.
Theo tightened his hold, and he dragged me closer to the raging fire of his body. “Need you to listen to me, Piper.”
My eyes squeezed closed as if I could guard myself from his plea.
“Please.” The word he released was gravel.
Fear sloshing through my veins, my eyes slowly peeled open, and my attention traveled back to the other cabin.
Alicia was limp and being held in River’s arms.
Sobs ripped out of her.
But she wasn’t fighting him.
She wasn’t trying to escape.
It looked like she was weeping in relief.
Confusion bound me.
A clash of dread and want and failing hope.
Hope I’d been a fool to fall into.
“Look at me, Piper.” Theo’s desperation drew me back to him.
My eyes locked on his brutally beautiful face.
“We aren’t who you think we are.”
A maniacal laugh bubbled up my throat. I choked on it as it got stuck on the barb of razors that had formed.
He’d already told me, hadn’t he?
Warned me?
“Told you I wasn’t close to being a good man.”
“Want to make it clear that if you’re afraid of something or someone? I’m the exact kind of trouble you need.”
“You just have to trust that I can handle anything and everything you’ve got. No matter how dark or ugly or horrifying it is, it’s no contest to the lengths I will go for you.”
“And who are you?” I croaked.
Edging me backward, he pushed me into the shadows on the far side of the porch. My back hit the wall.
I was trapped.
His presence overpowering.
I should scream.
Beg for help.
But I was stuck. A prisoner to his will.
He grabbed both my wrists in his right hand, and he forced them up over my head and tacked them to the wall behind me.
Then he lifted his left hand and flexed it between us. The one with the stacked Ss with the dagger running through and an eye in the middle.
The skull on the top now made so much horrible, terrible sense.
And I was still the stupid fool who wanted to find safety in him.
“Warned you I wasn’t a good man, Piper, and I meant it.”
He paused, and his throat trembled with reservation.
“But it was worse than just being less than good. I was a bad man, Piper.” It was a coarse confession. “A fucking horrible beast.”
I shivered, and it didn’t have anything to do with the cold.
“Maybe it was formed in my years on the street as a teenager. Or maybe it was just who I was from the beginning. But I got to the place where the only concern I had was for myself. Consumed by greed and self-satisfaction and that unyielding quest for survival. Until I met my crew. River and Otto and Kane and Cash. Raven. These unlikely people who became my family. But beyond them? I had no care, Piper.”
He inhaled a haggard breath, and his teeth ground as he kept forcing out the revelations that I really should deflect.
Fight him off and get out of here before this got any worse than it already was.
But I couldn’t move.
The pain that oozed out of him had me locked tighter than the strong hand he had bound around my wrists.
Grief clouded his moonlit eyes. The spark dimmed in shame.
“Because of it…I lost—” He clipped off whatever he was about to admit, but my spirit was sure it had everything to do with whoever he referenced last night. Whoever he thought he couldn’t love and had failed.
“It became clear I couldn’t keep living the way that I was, and I guess maybe it all came down on my crew at the same time.
This sinking realization that we were nothing but monsters.
That we’d long outlived our desperation to survive and had become the beasts that we tried to endure when we lived on the streets. None of us could go on that way.”
Hesitation brimmed in him, the effervescence that wisped right before a pot came to a full boil.
“What I’m about to tell you can’t go beyond you and this family, Piper. Even if you turn and walk away from me right now, I am trusting you with this.” Theo ground through the words.
It was a burden I wasn’t sure I could withstand. But I couldn’t reject it, either.
Erratically, I nodded my head.
Theo’s tongue stroked out to wet his lips. “That life was destroying us, Piper. Stealing every good thing that we had. The mistakes we made coming back at us full force. Fiery arrows shot directly from Karma’s hands.”
Theo swallowed hard, and I shook beneath the weight of what he was confessing.
“One night, River stumbled on this woman whose husband was coming at her with a knife. River took him out. God knows it wasn’t the first blood that any of us had spilled, but it was the first time it was done for the right reason.
For protecting someone who couldn’t protect themself. ”
He lifted his left hand and squeezed it again, flashing that same tattoo. “That was the night that Sovereign Sanctum was born.”