Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
Hades
“What the fuck?” I muttered, reaching for my gun. Then I froze. Cold metal pressed hard against my spine. Hard enough to bruise.
“Don’t make any sudden moves,” a rough voice warned. I froze, my hand hovering over my piece, as I stared at Zeus sitting at the bar next to my brother, Iapetus. King, the president of the Silver Shadows, stood behind Zeus with a gun pressed to the back of his head.
“Give me one fucking reason I shouldn’t blow your head off and paint this bar with your blood,” King snarled.
Zeus raised his hands slowly but didn’t turn. “How about you tell me what the fuck you’re pissed about, and maybe I can come up with a reason that satisfies you.”
Zeus’ voice was even and controlled, but I knew him well enough to understand how quickly he could flip the situation. He was a coiled spring wound tight and ready to snap. Ready to paint these walls with King’s brains if given half a chance.
King stepped forward as his officers stood protectively around him, guns aimed at the Gods of Mayhem. My brothers aimed back, fingers on triggers, safeties off. The air hung thick with tension and the promise of violence, blood, and death.
I quickly scanned the room. The Golden Skulls stood with the Silver Shadows against the Gods of Mayhem. We were outnumbered, but it wouldn’t be the first time. Thank God Reaper had followed Montana to the hospital.
King was controlled; he didn’t let his emotions rule his decisions. He didn’t kill first and ask questions later the way Reaper was notorious for.
“You told me you didn’t know who Nemesis was,” King hissed, his voice dripping with venom.
“You calling me a liar, motherfucker?” Zeus snarled back, his tone dangerous as I stood helpless, my anger building while I silently dared King to make the wrong move.
“You want to know who killed your father?” King asked, barely controlled rage pouring off him in hot, violent waves. “You want to know why his throat was slit? Why someone opened him up like a fucking sacrifice?”
Zeus slowly stood from his stool and turned to face King, staring down the barrel without flinching. “Give me a fucking name.”
“I did it,” Indie announced, sidling up next to King. A Silver Shadow prospect and old lady to Mimic, she was the only woman who’d stayed to fight. Small, fierce, and utterly unafraid. “I sliced his throat.”
Her words hung in the air like a death sentence.
Zeus’ eyes widened a fraction before narrowing on the prospect, his face contorting with pure, unadulterated fury. He turned his angry gaze back to King and snarled, “I want her head. I want to watch her bleed out on this goddamn floor.”
“That’s never gonna fucking happen,” Mimic said.
One of King’s enforcers and Zeus’ nephew we’d only recently learned about, the kid’s head was fucked up.
He was unstable and dangerous in the way that didn’t allow for hesitation as he pointed his gun at his uncle without a second thought. “I’ll put a bullet in you myself.”
“Your father was Nemesis,” Indie said, her voice steady and unflinching. Like she was commenting on the fucking weather.
“Bullshit,” Zeus spat. “My father was Kronos.”
“She’s telling the truth, Zeus.” Cerberus, the VP of the Brotherhood of Bastards, stepped out of the shadows like the three-headed dog guarding the gates of hell.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Morpheus, the president of the Brotherhood of Bastards, demanded, his voice booming throughout the room.
“King, maybe we should talk in church?” Cerberus suggested.
“No.”
King never took his eyes, or his gun, off Zeus. His chest heaved as his nostrils flared. He was a bull ready to charge, ready to gore, ready to kill.
I quickly glanced at Poseidon, who shook his head, the movement almost imperceptible. He didn’t know any more than I did. We were all in the dark here, stumbling through the underworld without a guide.
“Lucas Cooper was a Bastard. His road name was Nemesis,” Cerberus told the volatile group, each word dropping like a bomb.
“When?” Morpheus growled, his face darkening as rage built like a storm.
“He left in 1980. You and Gabby were only eleven.”
“My father was only fifteen fucking years old in 1980, asshole,” Zeus seethed, his hands clenching into fists, knuckles white with the effort of not reaching for his gun.
“Your father is my age. He was born in 1960.” Cerberus’ voice was matter-of-fact, clinical. Like he was reading a fucking obituary.
The sound of a pin dropping would have rivaled a gunshot in the silence that followed. The room felt suffocating, as if the walls were closing in on us, pressing down and stealing the air from our lungs.
It wasn’t possible. Kronos was only twenty years old when Zeus was born. That was what we’d been told, what we all believed, what we’d built our entire fucking understanding on.
Zeus looked at me, and I watched his world shatter. Every doubt I’d had about why my father didn’t want us telling Rhea the truth came slamming back like a freight train. Brutal and unstoppable.
“Kronos didn’t have the brand,” Atlas argued, lowering his gun, his voice uncertain.
“He did,” Cerberus countered. “If you couldn’t see it, it’s because he had it blacked out or covered up.”
I closed my eyes as the image flashed in my mind, clear as day and damning as hell.
Kronos’ left pec and shoulder were tattooed solid black, a dark void covering up what he’d called a “drunken mistake.” A woman’s face on his chest. He’d claimed he blacked it over the day he met Rhea, covering up his past for his future.
That fucking bastard.
That lying piece of shit.
I searched for Asclepius. He stood in the corner, head bowed and eyes on the floor, refusing to meet anyone’s gaze. Guilt written all over his fucking face.
“Asclepius!” I shouted, my voice echoing off the walls.
Zeus looked at his uncle as King kept his gun trained on Zeus’ head. Despite the revelations pouring out like blood from a wound, King refused to relent.
“Uncle Isaac?” Zeus’ voice cracked with emotion, breaking on the name. “Tell me he’s fucking lying.”
When Asclepius shook his head and refused to look his nephew in the eye, Zeus’ face crumpled. He turned to Indie, his voice hollow. Empty and broken. “Why? Why the fuck did you kill him?”
Completely unafraid of what Zeus might do, Indie took a step forward.
She was small but fierce, a survivor who’d clawed her way out of hell.
Scarred and damaged but still fucking standing.
She looked around the room and stated clearly for everyone to hear, “Because he was a fucking pedophile who raped me for years.”
The words hit like a sledgehammer. Brutal. Unforgiving. They rang with a truth we’d never known, never suspected, never wanted to fucking believe.
“You lying bitch!” Zeus lunged for Indie, his hands reaching for her throat, murder in his eyes. Pure, unfiltered rage. A shot cracked through the air, deafening despite the openness of the room and the gaping hole in the front wall.
Zeus flew back against the bar, a bullet wound blooming red on his shoulder, blood spreading across his cut like spilled wine. Before anyone else could retaliate, I yelled, “HOLD YOUR FIRE!”
I rushed to Zeus as he slumped to the ground, blood pouring from the wound. Behind me, Mimic growled as he wrapped his arms around his old lady, pulling her back protectively.
“I would’ve shot him in the fucking skull,” Mimic said coldly. No remorse, no hesitation.
I looked up at King, my anger barely contained. A living thing clawing at my chest. “You didn’t have to shoot him, asshole.”
“He fucking lied to me.”
“I didn’t lie,” Zeus snarled through clenched teeth as Atlas grabbed a bar rag and pressed it to Zeus’ shoulder, applying pressure to stem the bleeding. “I didn’t know anything about this shit.”
“Get him cleaned up and meet me in church,” King demanded before turning and walking off, slamming through the double doors of the club’s meeting room.
Morpheus stepped forward, and Zeus, Atlas, and I all looked up at the giant man hovering over us. Zeus’ uncle was a force of nature barely contained, rage and violence simmering just beneath the surface.
“They didn’t know, Prez,” Cerberus said, his hand on Morpheus’ arm, trying to calm the storm brewing in him.
Morpheus turned and punched Cerberus in the face, knocking him to the ground. The sound of bone on bone echoed through the room, brutal and final. “YOU FUCKING DID!” he bellowed.
“I didn’t know shit, asshole. I didn’t know where Gabby went. And I sure as fuck didn’t know what he’d done to Karlyn, or I would’ve killed the bastard myself!” the old man shouted back as he slowly got to his feet, rubbing his jaw.
Morpheus stormed off through the open hole in the front of the building, his fury barely leashed, ready to tear the world apart.
Cerberus shook his head and turned to Nav. “Pull the officers in,” he ordered before walking toward the same double doors King had pushed through.
“I don’t take orders from you, old man!” Nav shouted.
Cerberus held his hand up over his shoulder and flipped off his son as Atlas and I helped Zeus to his feet and set him on a stool.
Once I was sure he wouldn’t fall over, I walked over and drove my fist into Asclepius’ face, sending him sprawling.
His jaw cracked under my knuckles as bone and cartilage gave way.
“You’ve got some shit to answer for,” I said, standing over him. Asclepius rubbed his jaw and nodded without a word. “Go fish that fucking bullet out of his shoulder.” I hauled him up and shoved him toward Zeus.
This might not have been our war, but it was about to become our fucking problem. It sure as fuck had just become my job to guide us through this shit. Through the darkness, the secrets, and the blood.
Because that was what I did.
I ruled the dead and the damned.
And we were all damned now. The Titan who devoured his children had been devoured by his own sins.
Leaving us to pick up the pieces.