Chapter Thirty-Four
Kytten
I came downstairs, and all I wanted to do was snuggle little Rosie.
The last few days had been rough. Learning Magyk was working jobs behind Val’s back, was a shock in itself.
But to find out Syrena was the only Nyght Nymph allowed to pull girls and boys from the Trick Pony had my stomach bottoming out.
Especially after what she’d said to Thorne about the children she had ‘helped.’
The emotions I had been going through in the last few days were intense. Cash was at my side every minute. He never left me to deal with it on my own. Except for when I called Dr. Dunaway, who helped me process what I was feeling and what I now suspected.
She’d known all along what Syrena was doing.
I hadn’t told Cash. I wasn’t sure he wouldn’t leave and hunt Val down. Thorne had killed Syrena. Cash was with me, but he confessed he felt cheated not being able to take her down for me.
I knew what he meant. But Thorne needed it more than Cash did, and Cash agreed. Knowing there was someone else complicit in my abuse meant Cash would go on a rampage, and I couldn’t let that happen.
Finding Indie in the arms of Sam, crying, I knew she was here to stay. There was something about Sam that just pulled you in. She was a mom. And for those of us who no longer had a mom, it was everything.
I’d thought of Val as a mom. She’d raised me from the time she’d picked me up off the streets. I thought she loved me. I always knew Amber would come first, but I had no idea she would throw me to the wolves.
My phone rang, and when I saw that it was her, I went outside before I answered.
“Hey, Val.” All those years of pretending everything was great sure would come in handy now.
“Hey, Kytten, I’m in Scottsbluff. Any chance you could meet me for dinner?”
“Sure. Cash is busy though, so it will just be me.”
This was something I had to do on my own.
“Well, you’re the one I want to see.” I could hear the smile in her voice.
“I’ll head out in a few minutes. Why don’t you drop a pin where you are?”
“Sounds good, I’ll see you soon, sweetheart.”
The phone disconnected, and I stared at it. She didn’t sound like Val. I mean, it was her voice, but there was something different in her tone. I knew I should bring Cash, but it was important I did this alone.
Going back inside, I went up to our room. “Hey.”
“Hey, Rosie.” He grabbed my hands and pulled me against him. I loved that he wanted to touch me all the time.
“Val called; she wants me to meet her for dinner in Scottsbluff.”
“Okay, when do you want to go?”
I pulled my lip between my teeth. “I need you to stay here.”
“No fucking way.”
“Cash, I need to talk to her alone. I need answers.”
“You know the rules. You can’t go alone.”
“I have to. This is Val; she won’t hurt me.”
“This shit with the Death Dogs—”
I cut him off with a kiss. It was the quickest way to distract him. “I’ll take a car instead of my bike.”
“Baby,” he groaned.
“I love you. But I have to do this alone. Don’t make me regret telling you beforehand.”
“Don’t make me turn your ass red for sassing me.” I smiled as I squeezed my thighs together.
“I have to do this.”
Cash heaved out a sigh. “I know. King is gonna kick my ass when he finds out I let you go alone.”
“I love you.”
“I love you more,” he repeated.
“Not possible.” I kissed him hard before backing up. I had to get out of the room before he took it further and I said to hell with Val.
I slipped downstairs and out the back door. I found Indie’s car and hopped inside. She hadn’t left the clubhouse since Sting tried to kidnap her from The Coffee Shop, and she was so shaken, I had driven her car home. Which meant the keys were in it.
I pulled up to the gate, and Archie opened it, letting me drive through without question. There were definite perks to being the VP’s old lady.
I followed the GPS on my phone to the pin Val had sent. Somehow, I wasn’t surprised when it brought me to an abandoned warehouse instead of a restaurant.
Everything I had been feeling came to the surface. Every doubt I’d had about Val since the moment Magyk confided in me was proven true when a man I hadn’t seen in a decade tapped on my window with a gun in his hand.
Dakota fucking Stone.
He opened my door and pulled me out.
“Well, well, well,” he said as he shoved me forward. “My fucking father knew what he was doing when he hid you from me.”
I walked into the warehouse, Dakota’s gun at my back, to find Valhalla, the president of the Nyght Nymphs, an all-female MC that made their name helping women and children get away from abusive homes, the woman who raised me, sneering at me.
“You little bitch. You should have told me who you were.”
“You should never have let Syrena touch me,” I sneered back.
She shrugged. “Probably. But knowing who you are now, I’d do it all again and then some. Had I known who you were then, I would have let that man have you. I should have let him fucking kill you.”
She fucking knew! She knew what was happening, and she did nothing to stop it. All my shame, my guilt, the pain I endured from years of self-harm—it was all her fault.
“Did you help him?” I pointed at Dakota. “Are you the reason my mother disappeared?”
I knew the moment I saw Dakota there was more going on. Cash was going to kill me when he found out. If I survived long enough to tell him.
“I did help him. She didn’t fucking deserve him. HE WAS MINE!” she screamed before she backhanded me. My face twisted from the force; I felt the sting of the slap down to my toes.
“What the fuck are you talking about? You had Bane.”
“I am talking about August, you little cunt,” she snarled, then she began to laugh. “You don’t know.”
She turned to look at Dakota. “They don’t know? He never told them?”
“I assumed she would have told them,” Dakota said, watching me.
“Told me what?”
“Who your parents are,” Val answered.
“I know who my parents are. Justin Peterson and Vivian Greenbush. Nav found our birth certificates.”
“She fucking lied! She’s a goddamn lying whore!” Val screamed.
She was unhinged; it was the only answer.
How could I have missed it all these years?
I knew she was obsessed with Bane, but I thought she loved him.
I’d always assumed it was just unrequited love.
She’d told us the story about how they’d been caught making love and ripped apart, only to have her daughter ripped from her arms right after she gave birth.
But this was insanity. This was a woman possessed. She wasn’t making sense. August Lansing had nothing to do with my mother.
“Your mother was a whore. She worked at the Gentleman’s Club, and she seduced August away from me. She trapped him by getting pregnant with you.”
What she was saying didn’t make sense. My mother wasn’t a whore. She was perfect. She was a warrior. She was a goddess.
“She even lied about her name. She wasn’t Vivian Greenbush. She was Diana Cooper.”
“What?”
“The missing daughter of the Gods of Mayhem. Irene’s older sister,” Val said, her voice singing like a child, as I tried to piece together her ramblings.
“Aspen?” I whispered.
Val laughed hysterically. If what Val said was true—that my mother was Diana Cooper—that meant Aspen was my aunt? I shook my head. “You’re lying. What game are you playing, Val?”
“No more games. I won!” She threw her arms in the air and spun around. “All those years she was locked away. All those years she lost. She thinks she can just come in and take what’s mine because that asshole Sinclair found her and took her?”
Found her? Took her? Was my mother still alive?
She rushed up and got in my face, spit spewing from her mouth with her words. “She doesn’t get to fucking win. Not after everything I’ve done!”
“Mere, we need to get this shit done. I want that kid.”
Val sauntered over to Dakota. “Don’t worry, baby,” she purred as she ran a finger down his chest. “You’ll get him.
Once she calls him, he’ll run to her. And once we have them both, I’ll contact that bitch.
She’ll watch her spawn die before I finally end her fucking life like I should have done a decade ago. ”
He wanted my brother. He wanted Thorne. He’d taken him from me years ago, snatched him off the street and tortured him. Like hell I would call my brother and lead him back into the lion’s den.
“I won’t call him.” Val whipped her head around and glared at me.
“You won’t have to. Where’s her phone?” she asked, spinning back to Dakota.
“In her car.”
“Find it. I’ll text him, and he’ll come running.”
“Don’t bother. I’m already fucking here.”
I spun around and cried out when I saw my brother standing at the entrance to the warehouse. “Thorne, no!”