Striker

45. Chapter 40

Iwake up to an empty bed. My hand sweeps over the rumpled sheets, seeking her.

Him.

I flash on the last several hours: Him in bed with me, retaking me but slower, his full lips pressed to my slick flesh as he moved deeply with such gentle strokes I felt all the darkness, all the terrible things I overheard leaving me.

My belly flutters, skin warming as if he was touching me again. I curl onto my side, drawing my knees up to my chest. I’m not sure what to think about the fact I slept with one of my kidnappers. If that’s even what I could call them anymore. I can’t deny the dark, dangerous attraction that has led us here. To this place where they’ve gone from our kidnappers to the men I—we—crave. Men who protect Cora from evil. From men like my father.

Like them.

They aren’t all bad.

No. Not like them.

No. These men are nothing like Rune.

She’d never have trusted them enough to beg them to stay if they were.

After Striker left, I held Cora for a long time. There was no need to talk anymore. She must have slipped away when I fell asleep, and I wonder where she is now. If she found Striker or if she’s with Viper or Breaker. I wonder, too, what they are telling her about their brother.

If Striker’s kissing her again.

I like the thought of him kissing her. Of him gifting her with the same heated passion he’s given me.

Closing my eyes, I press my face into my pillow, trying to put my thoughts back in order. I don’t know what any of it means. I have no idea what happens from here. A huge shift happened between us all, leaving me hanging on to my sanity by a thread.

The thought of going home makes my stomach churn. There’s no way I can face Rune any time soon. I also know that I can’t stay here forever. Rune Corporations may be the company my father built, but it’s mine. I’ve spent my entire life learning, preparing myself for the day I took it over. And I’m not going to let that go.

The men’s words ring in my head.

I’m theirs. To do with as they please.

I just wish they’d tell me what it is they have planned.

Sitting upright, I lean over to turn on the lamp in case Cora comes back when my eyes land on the dark figure in the doorway. My fingers curl into the bedding, recognizing the cut of his body. I bring my knees up to my naked chest, dumb considering he’s seen every inch of my skin.

“You were going to send her to him, knowing he was hurting her.” It’s not a question.

“We had orders,” Reaper says.

“That you aren’t following now.”

“No.” Reaper moves forward and holds out his hand. Disappointment floods me when I see he’s still wearing his mask.

“Why?” I ask, but I know he doesn’t need me to explain what I’m asking. Why were they going to send her back?

I can feel his indecision like a thorn. He doesn’t want to tell me, but he needs me to understand. “There would have been, there will be, dire consequences. One’s far worse than defying an order.”

I don’t know what he means and when I open my mouth to ask; I close it, not wanting to push too far too soon. Not sure if I really want to know.

“She’s not leaving,” he says as I take his hand and place my feet on the cold floor. I can’t see his black eyes in the dark room, but I feel them on me, moving up and down my naked body the same way his hands did. Slightly invasive. Possessive.

“Where is she?” I ask.

“With Viper.”

I jerk at the feeling of his warm hand on my bare thigh. Heat surges through me, as he trails it up higher and grips my waist like he can’t stop himself from touching me.

From the way they talk, they seem to share everything, so the possessive grip he has on me is confusing, since he doesn’t seem to mind that Striker was inside me. If anything, I think he likes the idea. He did that night in the club. That alone should have been a clear sign that these men clearly share women often and enjoy it.

Women.

Cora and me.

My chest constricts at the thought of them with other women. With someone else besides us and I exhale slowly, not sure how to digest the thought.

I glance back up at his face, but it’s just darkness.

“He told me,” I say, my voice barely a whisper.

I feel his body go completely still.

“About your brother.”

His fingers flex on my hip.

“Striker told me my father killed your brother. That’s what you call each other? Brothers? That’s why you want revenge. That’s what—who—Rune took.”

“Rune killed a piece of us,” Reaper says. “Viper, Striker, Breaker. They are the only brothers I have left.”

His family. The one he created.

I keep silent, hoping he’ll reveal more. Reaper has been so vague, they all have, and to possess this little piece of information makes me feel privileged he’s allowed me to hold one of his many secrets.

The feeling spreads in my chest, loosening that tightness. I want more. Of their secrets. Of him. Of them.

When he doesn’t explain further, I say, “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Reaper says. “He was justified in killing him.”

My brows knit. “Justified?” I ask, moving closer to him, wishing I could see his face. I remember every bit of skin he’s let me see. The shape of his lips and the scars across them are burned into my memory like a brand. “Justified like you were in taking Cora and me?”

His grip tightens on my hip before he drops it and steps away, turning toward the door. “Get dressed.”

“Why?”

Reaper stops midway and turns around. “As much as I’d like to watch your ass bounce as you walked down the stairs, I have a feeling you’d prefer to be dressed for what I’m about to show you.”

My heart does this weird flip before it hammers. “What are you going to show me?”

Neither one of us is going back, but I’m smart enough to know that they didn’t do all this so we could stay in a crumbling mansion in the middle of nowhere forever. They have a plan, and it involves Cora and me.

“Get dressed, Kitten.” Reaper walks through the open door and says over his shoulder, “It’s time you learn what your father truly is.”

***

As we walk into the dining room, I wrap my sweater around me tightly, but the chill seems to have settled in my bones, refusing to leave, nerves jittering with dread. I’ve waited for weeks for answers and now I’m not so sure I want them. The things I”ve already learned are bad enough.

I stop in the doorway, surprised to find the room empty. I glance at Reaper’s back, then to a large box, like the ones that hold files, sitting on one of the dining room chairs.

“Sit down.” Reaper points to the table as he removes the lid from the box.

“I don’t want to,” I say, my nerves jumping higher.

“Trust me Kitten, you’re going to need to be sitting for this.” Reaper pulls out a file, but keeps it to his chest until I pull out a chair and sit. On instinct, I place my hands on the table, palms down, waiting. When I realize what I’ve done, I jerk them away and set them in my lap, focusing on my fingers as I curl them into the thick fabric of my sweater.

It appears they trained me well.

Taking a deep breath, I look up at Reaper’s masked face. “What’s in the file?” I ask as he opens it.

“You father’s sins.” Reaper lifts the corner of a piece of paper, then glances at me. I could swear it’s like he doesn’t want to show me the contents, but that would be a foolish thought. I’m here because of whatever that file contains.

“Sins that can be linked to him?” I ask. My father is good at covering his tracks. Hell, I’m good at covering his tracks.

Reaper doesn’t answer. He picks up a thick sheet from the file and lays it on the table, sliding it in front of me.

I lean over to examine the picture. A large wooden lodge with a green metal roof, massive sheets of glass for windows, and thick pillars framing carved wooden doors take up the entire image.

My brows knit. “That’s my father’s lodge.” Even though I’ve never been, he has enough pictures of him and his friends on this same front porch that I recognize it. Although after Cora’s parents died, he removed all the framed photographs of them from the walls.

“It is,” Reaper says and sets down a picture of my father next to a large buck hanging upside down from a pole. “His members only lodge.”

That unease I felt walking down here roils in my stomach. “Why are you showing me these?”

Reaper places another image in front of me. “Our father used the land for the final test when he started the school.”

My head jerks up to him. Father? School?

“The final test,” Reaper says. “The wilderness, Father called it. It was how we proved ourselves. How we showed our father we were ready.”

“Ready for what?” I ask. But I take in his uniform and his mask and I already know. Ready to be killers. Guns for hire. Trained to kidnap, kill, do whatever. I’ve heard of men like them, mercenaries that will take any job that pays high enough, not caring about politics or justice.

Not caring about fairness or morals.

Money. That was it. Money and power.

But the one lesson my father taught me that sticks more than the others was once you accepted money for doing a job, a part of you was always in debt. Rune always said just because you were paid for it doesn’t mean things are settled. Someone still knows what you did for money. Or worse, what you paid someone else to do.

My gaze slips down to the images, my head whirling with questions. “So Rune knew about this…” My mind trips over the word. “This school and…”

“The wilderness,” he says for me. “We would complete our final task of surviving on our own, with no weapons, nothing but the few clothes on our backs for a week. We would have to…” his voice trails off, but then he says, “Father would use the land and Rune would turn a blind eye, promising no interference.”

I shake my head, none of his words settling. “I don’t understand.”

“Rune and our father used to be close,” Reaper says, laying down another image.

This one looks different from the others, so I lean over, trying to make out what I’m seeing. At first, it’s just shades of black and cream and slashes of rusty red. Placing my hands back on the table, I stand, leaning over the image, trying to make sense of it. Then I see it.

My hand flies to my mouth, and I stumble back, my legs hitting the chair.

He catches it before it falls over. “Sick, yes?”

My gaze snaps to Reaper. Bile rises in my throat and for a second I think I might vomit, so I sit back down, inhaling slowly through my nose.

Reaper places another image next to the first. Like I can’t control my eyes, they move to it and I regret it immediately, but I can’t look away.

“You said they were close?” I ask, my gaze snapping to him, his words finally breaking through.

“Yes. Past tense.” Reaper lays out another picture, and this one is worse than the others. I grip the table, trying to keep focused on his words.

“Friends?” I say, my eyes bouncing from the images to Reaper, trying to sort through my memories but coming up blank. I know all my father’s friends and associates. “You said used to be.”

Reaper’s eyes seem to darken, like they’re suddenly full of shadows. “Close friends until our father took a job he would later regret.”

Reaper slips another image onto the table and I can’t look at anymore, so I focus on Reaper’s mocking skull mask and black eyes.

“Then,” his eyes flicker away and I swear I see something flash in them, but he lays another image down. “Rune had an idea.” He slides another picture toward me and I suck in a breath. “He thought of a way to make the wilderness a little more exciting.”

Bile stings my throat. He places another and another until I squeeze my eyes shut, but it doesn’t help. They are all I can see. Pieces. Fragments. Bits of people chopped up, limbs torn from carcasses. Bodies riddled with bullets. Pretty floral nightgowns soaked in blood, molded to small breasts and creamy thighs.

How many times has Zane invited me to my father’s lodge? How many times has Clyde kept me from going? How much money have I hid over the years, as membership fees, enormous sums of money being handed over to my father out of nowhere for no reason?

“Rune liked the idea of a hunt,” Reaper says. “He wanted the excitement. So he decided to change the rules.”

Another picture lands before me, but I turn away.

“He didn’t want to sit back and watch us in the wilderness. Rune wanted to be out there, in the heat and mud himself. He wanted to be the one tracking for his food. Surviving off the land and his skills.”

My father always got excited in the fall. When it was time to go to his lodge and meet his friends. They’d spend a week there every year and when he’d come back, he’d be different. Changed in a way I didn’t understand. Somehow more excitable, but calm too. Like something within him was placated.

Reaper places another image, but I bolt up from the chair, bending over, trying to control my breathing and the swirling in my head. Is tumble away, bracing my hands on the wall, bile churning, threatening to come up.

“Others loved the idea too. Going out to the wilderness, tapping into their baser instincts. Feeling the excitement, feeling the adrenaline. But he didn’t want to send multimillionaires out in the wilderness to snare rabbits and shoot squirrels.”

“What do you mean?” I hear myself saying, but it’s like I’m not even in the room anymore.

“What’s the best way to make the wilderness feel a tad more brutal?” Reaper asks.

My stomach sinks.

“Rune decided to add prey to the hunt.”