Chapter 31
Aiden
“The house Roz took you to is owned by Jennifer McNally, so who the fuck is that?” I question Mia like she’s anyone else who’s made the mistake of lying to me.
“That’s my mother. Her new husband’s name is McNally,” she whispers, still rubbing her wrists.
“Before her, the same Michael Crawford who owns your car owned the house.”
“My grandfather.” Her voice cracks, and I fight the urge to help her bring the feeling and circulation back to her limbs.
“My name is Mia, short for Emilia, but my last name is Tyler. Crawford was my mother’s maiden name.”
“We searched for Amelia,” I say skeptically. “Spell it.”
She does, and although it’s not without immense fucking effort to doubt her, I know the serum is forcing her honesty.
I run the back of my knuckles along my jaw and settle back in the chair across from her.
We searched for Mia, Maria, and Amelia. McNally too, but came up empty. Stone’s been updating me every hour.
I will myself to stay calm. I should’ve killed her already. Instead, when she looked up at me with those fiery, begging eyes, I fucking couldn’t bring myself to hurt her. If I kill her, the spark that burns within her, the heat that makes me feel, would be snuffed out.
“Who’s the fucking Hound, Mia?” I continue to grill her, because this is what I want to know the most. I wasn’t prepared for the way my blood boiled when I saw his arms around her.
“What are you going to do to him if I tell you?” A deep fear blooms in her eyes. Love. And this is when I snap, because even through all of this, she’s still fucking pushing me.
I stand and heave my chair across the room. Mia jumps and yelps the moment it crashes into the wall and shatters into pieces on the wooden floor.
“I’ll gut every last dog in that entire fucking club if you don’t give me his name!” My voice booms through the stifling cabin as rage courses hot through my veins.
“He’s my brother!” she screams. “He’s the sergeant at arms for the Hounds.”
“He’s your fucking brother?” My voice echoes through the cabin, and she nods, her lip trembling. “And your father, the one you rode with…he was a Hound?”
Her shoulders drop. “Yes.”
I’d let my mind run wild. I thought she was the Hound’s ol’ lady, that they were in on this together.
I was imagining him touching her, kissing her, winding his hands up in that platinum hair.
I was dreaming up all the ways I was going to very gruesomely put an end to him in front of her.
But now, staring down at her, it’s the closest I’ve ever felt to relief, knowing she doesn’t belong to that fucking Hound.
“And you didn’t think to fucking tell me that?” My voice gets louder. She flinches as I turn to face the window but doesn’t dare move from her chair.
“You never would’ve hired me if you knew.” Her eyes light with anger.
I scoff. “You’re right about that.”
“You never would’ve even let me in the door,” she bites out, and those blue eyes grow fiery again as she tries to get me to understand.
“Right again.” I set my jaw hard. “I would’ve tossed your ass into the fucking dumpster. Now, I’ll ask again.” I move closer to her. “And you’ll be a good little girl and tell me, so I don’t have to start forcing you to answer. Why would the sister of a fucking Hound want to work at my club?”
Mia is vibrating with adrenaline as she makes the stupid mistake of lunging at me. The serum is coursing through her, and I know her mind is going a million miles a minute right now. The way she looked at me when I called her a little girl should have been a warning that she was about to lash out.
She surprises me by taking her heel to my knee, hard, and that gives her enough time to bring her elbow to my chest and the outside of her palm to my throat almost simultaneously.
The little fucking brat actually manages to stun me, and then her body is on mine instantly as we hit the hardwood floor.
This isn’t like when she tried to fight me before. She’s fueled by rage and adrenaline, not lust, and that makes her more precise and powerful.
“She said one of you was there!” she screams as she cries, pounding her fists against my chest. Her eyes are almost fucking delirious. “And now I’ll never get to ask her!”
Her eyes blaze as her hand comes up, but I grip her fist before it connects with my face. The way she’s trying to fight me sends all the blood in my body to my cock, because Christ, she’s so goddamn beautiful when she’s trying to kill me.
Mia’s fire sparks my own as I reach down and slide my hands up her slip of a dress.
Gripping her plush hips tight, I flip her over until I’m hovering above her.
She kicks and claws at me when I move my forearm tight to her throat against the floor.
One wrong move like this and I’m crushing her windpipe, and she knows it.
“I don’t have a lot of fucking patience, Emilia,” I say. “Choose your next words wisely. If you don’t tell me exactly what the fuck you’re talking about, this will be your last fucking breath.”
She nods slightly and whimpers, and my cock pulses again.
The balls on this fucking woman, thinking she’s going to attack me?
Yet, even now, knowing she lied to me, knowing she’s the sister of a rival club member, I can’t for the life of me stop myself from wanting her.
In fact, seeing her like this, makeup smeared all over her pretty face, dress barely clinging to her perfect body, I’m fucking desperate for her.
“My sister!” Mia blurts out, barely able to manage the words around the weight of my forearm at her throat.
Her blue eyes blaze with anger. “Gator raped her! Your brother helped. We thought that was it, just the two of them, but she remembered there was someone else. Either you or Dagger.” She hisses, squeezing her eyes shut.
And something in me tenses as ghosts from the past reach across time and space.
Tyler. I instantly register who she is and what she’s talking about. Her fucking sister? I strive to recall the poor girl’s name.
“Nicola,” Mia breathes out with sad eyes, as if she’s reading my mind.
I haven’t thought about the girl or that disgusting time in our club’s history in almost two years.
We breathe in sync, our eyes locked as I register her reasoning and what she’s accusing me of.
I push off her to take a minute, standing to pace the floor.
She scoots back against the wall, clutching her throat and choking.
I run my hand through my disheveled hair while she curls herself in her little corner.
Taking a beat, I pull out a smoke and light it.
Neither of us speaks as I smoke. The idea that she thinks I could have had something to do with her underage sister’s rape makes me fucking sick, but suddenly I put the pieces together.
She had to have been out of her mind to try to work for me, but she’s fueled by grief, and grief can make a person do some pretty fucked-up things.
“What happened to your sister was a fucking tragedy.” I turn to face her. “Our club was different then. I don’t know what your sister thinks she saw…”
“Thought,” she corrects so quietly as she stands that it’s barely audible. “She died six weeks ago because she couldn’t fucking live with what happened to her.”
She gulps back a sob. “She overdosed. Heroin. I found her.” Her voice is so quiet on the last part it’s barely a whisper.
Shame reaches out and sucker punches me in the gut with a lead fist, because I just gave Mia a needle full of drugs.
“Make this all make sense, Mia,” I say. “Now.”
Mia places her hands on her hips, ready to fight again.
“We were downtown the day she died. She turned as white as a ghost when she saw your bike, the only one with red parked out front of the Yard. You were sitting on it, talking to Dagger. There were other men there too, but I was sure she meant it was one of you.”
I let what she’s saying register. That she is here on her own accord, not because the Hounds, or anyone else, sent her.
I will myself to harden to her, remembering that I wouldn’t have had to do this if she hadn’t fucking lied to me in the first place, but it doesn’t work.
Because I think she’s brave as fuck for crossing over enemy lines for her sister.
To find out the truth, no care for her own safety. A soldier fighting for her family.
Impulsively, I set my smoke on the edge of the counter and pull a fresh syringe from the bag, as well as the spare vial of serum I brought with me. Carefully, I fill the needle. I can hear Mia almost panting with the fear of what’s to come.
“This isn’t for you,” I tell her as I tap the needle. “Continue.”
She sucks in a deeper breath.
“I—I’ve heard Mason talking about Lavish.
He said the Disciples owned it, that the Souls always hung around there.
So I made a plan. I figured if I worked there, then I could find out who you were.
I didn’t know you fucking owned it until I went in to apply,” she says quickly.
“When I found out you were Marco’s brother, it fueled my assumptions.
” She struggles for words. “It made sense it was you.”
I move toward her slowly.
“Why? Because I’m the president of a club that rivals your family’s? Because we’re all scum? Is that it?” I ask, flipping the needle over and offering it to her.
She looks at it, then back up at me, understanding what I’m asking as I pull the sleeve of my shirt up. I tap my shoulder.
“Find out.”
Mia doesn’t even hesitate. She takes the needle, pulling the cap off with her teeth, eyes burning as she forgoes my shoulder and plunges it straight into my neck, a smug look of satisfaction washing over her pretty, infuriating face as she empties it, spitting the cap to the floor before handing the needle back to me.
“Fuck,” I bite out as I take it. Tossing it into the bag, I pick my smoke up from the counter and take a deep inhale.
“Christ,” I mutter, reaching around to touch the spot where Mia stabbed me. Of course my neck is bleeding.
“You deserved that,” she says, and I almost smirk at her brazenness. “And, to answer your question, it’s not because you’re a Disciple. I just thought…if I could get to you, or someone close to you, to prove you were there then, you would pay,” she continues. “I need someone to pay.”
I drop my cigarette and crush it under my boot on the worn floor.
A long beat of silence passes between us as the adrenaline starts to flow through my veins.
It wasn’t a perfect dose for my size, but it will do the trick.
And maybe then she’ll understand I’m not the kind of man to hurt a fucking child.
I look down at her from my full height, holding the back of my right hand up to her so she can see the scars that blend into my tattoos. I steady my voice. “These scars are from surgery. Two plates and ten pins,” I offer. “My hand was broken in six places. Ask me how.”
She reaches her finger out to trace the scars but stops herself, balling her fist at her side instead.
“How?” she whispers softly.
“On Gator Freeland’s fucking face. And then on Marco, when he tried to stop me after I found out what he did to your sister.
I would’ve fucking killed him and Gator if Archer and Raef hadn’t pulled me off.
So…I can promise you, Mia…the last place I’d ever fucking be is sitting idly by while those two fucking pigs raped a sixteen-year-old fucking girl. ”
* * *
Mia
Aiden’s voice booms, loud and threatening in the quiet space, and I take a step back to absorb his words as he watches me. I know what he’s saying is true. Because this drug destroys the barrier between your brain and your mouth.
There was a world where I imagined he was there that night. A world where he turned a blind eye to Marco and Gator’s abuse of my sister. There was never a world in which I thought he’d fight against it.
“He was your brother. It made sense to me that you stood behind his order—”
“I didn’t stand behind shit! I had no idea what those two fucks were planning. Marco deserved to die,” Aiden growls. “And he wasn’t my fucking blood. I was glad when your family killed him.”
I recoil. Mason said they were brothers.
“I don’t understand.” Confusion and pure vulnerability line my tone as I realize maybe I’ve bitten off more than I can chew. I should’ve done more research; I should’ve delved deeper.
“In all your thorough investigative work, you never pieced together that he was my stepbrother?” Aiden seethes.
“My father married his bitch of a mother when I was thirteen. She convinced him to adopt Marco and give her bastard kid our last name. Any other fucking questions?” he asks, his voice full of suppressed rage.
Utter despair fills me as I sit in the face of a glaring dead end. I look at this man before me, his eyes reflecting the same question that lingers in mine. We both made wrong assumptions, we both fought, and it turns out we were on the same side all along.
“Yeah, actually,” I challenge, not knowing what else to do.
I turn my eyes up to his and hope my mistakes cancel out his.
I may have lied, but he kidnapped me and drugged me, so I’d say we’re even.
“If I’m not the spy you thought I was, and you aren’t the monster I was convinced you were… then what are we?”
Our eyes lock as we realize the only truth left between us.
We’ve been dead wrong about each other this entire time.