Chapter Forty-One
Mimic
I heard Bane curse, and I winced involuntarily.
“August, calm down.”
“Calm down?” he shouted. “My son has a fucking brand on his back and I’m supposed to calm down?”
“Mimic?”
I turned around and faced my president. Casting a quick glance at Bane, I didn’t know how to read the rage I saw on his face.
“How?” Bane asked. “How the fuck did you get branded without any of us knowing?”
“August, please sit and let Thorne explain,” my mother said, pulling on Bane’s arm.
I grabbed my T-shirt and threw it on over my head. I ran my finger over my cut and hesitated. I didn’t know if I had the right to put it back on. Not until I told them everything.
I looked up at King. “Put that fucking cut on your back.”
“Let me tell you—”
“My fucking officers will wear their cuts in church until I tell them to take the motherfucking thing off.”
I swallowed my protest and did as I was told. Indie helped me put it on and rubbed my back as I sat in my chair next to my mother.
“Rose and I were ten years old when Dakota Stone knocked on our door and took our mother from us. We stayed in our house for a few weeks, waiting for her to come back. When the landlord showed up looking for the rent, he had no idea who we were. Thinking we were homeless kids, he chased us out.”
I looked over at my sister. Cash had her in his lap, his arms cocooned around her as she cried. I knew this wasn’t any easier for her than it was for me.
“We lived on the streets for months. Eating out of garbage cans, stealing what we could. I left Rose hidden away while I went to get food. It wasn’t the first time I had made her stay back.
And until the day I die, I will never know if I made the right decision given everything that has happened to us both.
“I went looking for food. I’d done it more times than I could count. I had a routine. Specific places I went to. That was my mistake. That was how he found me.”
“Who?” Jack asked.
“Dakota Stone.”
“FUCK!” Bane slammed his hand on the table.
“August, please.” My mother rubbed his arm, trying to soothe him.
“Bane, if you can’t fucking control yourself, get the fuck out,” King said, his teeth clenched together.
“That’s my fucking son, King.”
King sat forward. “Either shut your fucking mouth or get the fuck out. He may be your son, but he’s my brother.
I’ve known him a fuck of a lot longer than you have, and I’d like to hear the whole fucking story, so when I put the bounty out on Dakota’s fucking head, I can explain to his brothers that if they stand in my fucking way, they’re dead too. ”
I stared at my president. My nose burned with tears I refused to shed. Indie leaned over and whispered, “I told you so.”
I barked out a small laugh. “You did.”
“Next time, listen to me.”
I brought her hand up and kissed it, and said, “Always.”
“Continue, Mimic,” Cash rasped.
I looked at my brothers. The men I had lied to and been so afraid to lose if they ever learned the truth. They were angry. Each of them sat with their hands fisted, knuckles turning white. But as I looked in their eyes, I knew their anger wasn’t directed at me. At least not yet.
“Dakota brought me to his father. He had stepped down as president, letting Montana take over so he had more time to spend with me.”
“What did he want with you?” Blade asked.
“He knew who my father was. He and Dakota made sure I knew my father was the reason I was there.” I kept my eyes on King.
I couldn’t look at Bane. “At the time, I didn’t know who my father was.
They never told me his name, only that he was the reason I was there.
All I knew was that he was a Soulless Sinner.
So when Nav told me his name was Justin Peterson, aka Shame, I had no reason to doubt him. ”
“What did they do?” Gunner asked.
“They put me in a cell. Every day, Dakota would pull me out and beat the shit out of me in the name of training me. If he hurt me too much, usually breaking a bone, or causing stitches, George gave me time to heal, but that meant I spent days in the cell. He gave me books to read to pass the time. Medical journals.” I paused and looked at Bane.
“Guess I know why now. Encyclopedias, math books. I’m not sure if he expected me to actually read them, but I had to do something to stay sane, because when he couldn’t beat on me, Dakota used other tactics to torture me. ”
“Like what?” Jack asked. “And how much of this does my wife know?”
“She knows most of it but not all. She has a way of making you talk even when you don’t want to.” I smiled. “She’s a lot like my mom that way.”
Jack smiled. I needed to talk to both of them later and let them both know that my relationship with their family wasn’t changing.
Those girls were still my sisters, and Sam was still my momma.
I’d explain it to my mom as well, but I knew her well enough, despite all the things Dakota tried to say, that she would open her heart to Sam and the two of them would be friends.
“He talked about my mother. Said things that weren’t true, trying to break me. He brought women in and raped them in front of me. All of this shit went on for years until I turned sixteen and almost beat the fucker to death.”
“Why didn’t you?” King asked.
“George stopped me.”
“How?”
I stared at my president. This was the moment I found out if I still had a place in this club. I’d never leave Diamond Creek, not if my sister was living here. But I might not be welcome at the clubhouse.
“He knew about Rose. He said he knew where she was and he would tell me how to find her.”
King turned and looked at Cash. The two of them had a silent conversation between themselves. They did it often during church and outside of it. Cash nodded, and King turned back to me. He leaned back and waved his hand. “Continue.”
“He didn’t let me go until after Dakota had healed up. That was when he branded me. Dakota held me down, and George burned the Soulless Sinner brand into my back. He told me he owned me now, just like he owned my father.”
I looked at Bane out of the corner of my eye. He sat silently next to my mother, his head down, while she rubbed his back.
“He sent you here, didn’t he?” King asked.
I hung my head. I couldn’t look at him when I answered, “Yes.”
“Why?”
Nav asked that question. The whole time I had been telling them everything, his hands were on the table. It was the only time I had ever seen him without a computer.
“He knew Amber was here. He sent me to watch her.”
“Son of a bitch,” Jingles cursed.
“Why?” King asked.
I lifted my eyes. His face was blank, completely unreadable. I’d gotten to know this man over the years. I respected him. Admired him. I wanted to yell at him to scream at me. Hit me. Something. Anything to show me what he was feeling.
“He didn’t want her leaving here. He knew she was a club girl and wanted to make sure she stayed that way.”
“Did you give him information about the club?”
“No, he never asked about the club. Only Amber.”
“Would you have?”
This was it. The moment of truth. The answer that would determine my place. Only I didn’t have an answer. I answered as honestly as I could.
“I don’t know. I’d like to think I wouldn’t, but I had been searching for my sister for so long. He told me that coming here would lead me to my sister.”
“He fucking lied,” Bane growled.
“What?”
“He didn’t know about Rose.”
“How do you know?” my mother asked him.
“Because Amber is his sister.” He looked at me.
“George was a master at games. At making people believe he knew more than he did. He knew Amber was your sister because he knew you were my son. He had a picture of you and your mother. But Rose wasn’t in it.
Only two people knew your mother had twins, aside from you and Rose.
And that was your mother, and Crispin Sinclair.
Val didn’t even know until she saw a picture Sinclair had. ”
“But he said that Amber would lead me to my sister.”
“Did you ever mention Rose to George?”
“No. Even after he started talking about my sister...” Son of a bitch. I dropped my head into my hands. “He played me. He never used her name, and neither did I. He always said, your sister. I just assumed he meant Rose because I didn’t know I had another sister.”
“Why did George Stone have such a hard-on for you, Bane?” Blade asked.
“The world thinks my mother is Julia Craven. Her name is on my birth certificate. I called her mother. But my real mother is Barbara Stevens. Her mother, Patience Wolf, is a descendant of one of the five founding members of the Golden Skulls.”
“Wait,” Rose said. “So we are connected to the Golden Skulls?”
“Yes,” Bane said. “When I was twenty years old, George Stone drugged me. Meredith Doherty, Valhalla, had sex with me at the time and got pregnant with Amber and Dante. George thought he had his in to take down the Golden Skulls from the inside. And with my link to the Cravens, he thought he’d be able to take over the Society.
Only Amber and Dante disappeared, and he had no way of finding them.
Little did we know, Dante ended up prospecting for the club.
“When I met Diana, George knew exactly who she was. Her connection to the Gods of Mayhem only excited George. So when he found out she was pregnant, it put her in danger.”
“Why?” I asked.
“He wanted you,” Bane said. “The day of my sister’s accident with the Stone boys, we found out through an ultrasound that we were having a boy. We never saw Rose.” He smiled at my sister. “You were hiding behind your brother.” She smiled back at him; she’d always been more accepting than I was.
“George was responsible for the accident my sister was in. He had been sleeping with Amy and thought he was the father of her baby, so he tried to kill her.”
“Weren’t all four of his sons with her in the car?” Jingles asked. “I remember when that happened; the news of it was all over the city.”
“He was willing to sacrifice his children to make sure Amy didn’t have his baby.”
“Jesus Christ,” Colt said. “And I thought my father was bad.”
Not much was known about Colt’s family. At least not among the brothers. I didn’t know what King knew. I looked over at King. He was watching me, paying no attention to what Bane had said.
“Everyone out,” he announced. “Except Mimic.”
“King,” Bane warned.
“Get the fuck out, Bane.”
“August, let’s go. You know as well as I do how this goes.”
It was a mindfuck that my mother was not only accepting of how the club worked, but that she even knew about it at all.
Indie tugged on my hand. “It’s okay,” I said. My eyes never left my president. I was prepared to accept my fate.
Once the doors closed behind the last person, King and I were alone. He didn’t say a word. He just sat there staring at me.
“I’ll accept whatever you say. But I won’t leave Diamond Creek. I won’t leave my sister again.”
King took a deep breath. He stood up and walked to the side of the table where I sat. “Stand up.”
I stood holding my head high and looked my president in the eye.
We were the same height. It took all of my self-control to stand there and not let him see me sweating.
Or shaking. When he moved, he grabbed the back of my neck and pushed his forehead against mine as he said, “You should have told me everything from the beginning. You fucking lie to me again, I will beat the shit out of you and strip that fucking patch from your chest.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“You were a fucking kid, Mimic.” He leaned up but held onto my neck. “Now you’re an adult, and when we find that cocksucker, he’s yours.”