Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
“Oh, come on. Thought we were being honest with each other, trusting each other.” His voice held a cruel edge.
What was he doing? What did he want? For her to run away?
“I’m wicked to the core, sweetheart. You had to suspect the truth.
You’re the one who did all the digging on me.
That’s when you knew I was your perfect assassin. ”
Javion was getting closer. Cass had picked a really piss-poor time for the confession, but it was too late to change things now. She doesn’t love me. She should fear me. I need her to understand that truth. Now. Before…
Before he allowed himself to hope for something that just would not, could not, happen.
“Your father…he was the former leader of the Night Strikers.” She’d dressed. Fast. Good. Because if she’d been naked when Javion came in, he would have needed to fight the guy.
Sweetness, I wasn’t kidding. No one gets to see what is mine. When it came to her, he wasn’t quite rational. Then again, maybe he was never overly rational. As to the statement that Agnes had just made…
Fun point. “Actually, my uncle was the leader of the Strikers. My dad was his second-in-command. Most people didn’t get that, though, because my uncle liked to stay in the shadows.
He was all about pulling the strings from behind the scenes.
He let my father be the public face. Let his enemies focus on my old man.
And all the while, though, the biggest threat was standing in the dark.
” Is the sonofabitch still in the dark? Because Cass had truly thought that he’d eliminated Winston Striker.
Only Levi had sure as hell made him second guess that belief…
Levi had to be lying, right? But…a few details nagged at Cass. Made him doubt. Worry. He didn’t like to worry.
The biggest point of concern? Winston’s body had never been recovered. Still, Cass had watched that bastard go off the edge of that cliff.
He’d personally forced him off the edge, after all. But no body had ever been discovered.
“Cass…” A careful exhale as she sighed his name. “I read the report. We talked about this before. Your father drove into oncoming traffic. And I don’t believe that you would kill Javion. He’s your friend.”
“In this game, friendships come and go.” They were also often as fake as everything else in his current life.
“As for blood bonds? Those don’t really matter.
My father and my uncle were my enemies. Every twisted order that my uncle gave…
” And Winston had certainly relished those sadistic dictates.
“My father carried out with zero hesitation. No matter who he hurt in the process.”
And he had a flash of those last moments with his father.
Those fucking last moments that were lodged into his brain.
He’d been chasing his father down that long, slick road.
Night had surrounded him. The flash of lights from other vehicles blinded him every few moments as his motorcycle ate up the distance between him and his old man.
He’d been so close to the bastard, after tracking him for so long. His father had glanced back. Then gunned his motorcycle faster. His father had shifted lanes into oncoming traffic even though the damn big rig had been right there. Cass had shouted out a warning.
Why did I do that? Why did I tell him to stop?
But there had been no stopping. The collision had been brutal. The sounds burned into his memory. The crunch. The thud. The shattering of glass and metal. The way his father had cried out even as his body slammed into the pavement. Such a twisted mess.
Cass had braked his bike. Ran to him. Somehow, his dad had still been alive.
Nearly every bone broken. Some shattered.
Blood everywhere, but the tough sonofabitch had still been breathing.
Still…talking. Heaving breaths. Rasping voice.
“You…think I don’t r-regret what I did?” His father’s face had twisted with rage and grief and pain.
A face that had looked so very much like Cass’s own—just older, with more lines.
More pain. The same fury. “You th-think I don’t…
w-wish I could have chosen your m-mother? Chosen y-you?”
But he hadn’t chosen them. He hadn’t protected them. His mother had been gentle and kind. She’d been everything sweet and good in the world. And she’d nearly been broken by the Strikers. His father had claimed to love her, but she’d fled into the night, taking Cass with her.
And…
His father had never followed.
The truck driver had jumped from his rig. He’d been yelling and calling for help. Cass had put his hands on his father’s blood-soaked chest. A long hunk of metal—probably a piece of his smashed motorcycle—had pierced his dad’s chest.
“St-staying away was the…b-best thing I could…d-do...”
Cold, brittle words. Like abandoning a child was some sort of good deed. Give the man a freaking medal. As if…
As if you weren’t responsible for my mother’s pain. As if I didn’t know the truth.
Then his father hadn’t said another word. His eyes had closed. He’d died right there, with Cass’s hands on him. With the shriek of sirens in the distance. Cass had stared at him as pain and bitterness raged through him, and he’d thought…One down. One to go.
“Cass?”
He blinked. Focused on Agnes.
“It’s okay.” Her fingers squeezed his. Cass looked down in shock to realize that he was holding her hand. When the hell had he done that? When had he grabbed her hand to hold?
She squeezed his fingers again. Tighter, harder this time. “It’s okay. You’re not alone. I’m not going to run from you. We’re partners.”
“I killed him,” he said again.
“I saw his rap sheet. I know the things that your father did. The drugs, the weapons. The hits.”
Yeah, because his bastard of a father had been one cold-blooded killer. His uncle’s favorite weapon. Aim and shoot. Let him do all the dirty work for you while you stay in the shadows. Give him the orders, and he’ll do anything you want. He can take all the blame.
And in the end…
He came after my mother. “He let her go for years. My mother. Let her go. He let us both go. Acted like we didn’t matter.
That we weren’t good enough for him to be bothered with us.
I was two years old when she took me away.
Ran away in the night. She started a new life.
Just me and her at first.” He had flashes of that life, every now and then.
The little Christmas tree in the studio apartment.
The train he’d found waiting on Christmas morning.
The birthday cake she’d baked and the dinosaurs she’d painted on white poster boards for him.
“Eventually, Gray and his mom joined us. They had their own…issues.” He wasn’t gonna tell her about Gray’s father.
Not an MC member. A monster who’d worn the skin of a hero instead.
Pretending to be the perfect guy in society, but he’d been just as twisted as Cass’s own father and uncle.
Gray’s story wasn’t his to tell, though, and, shit, it was hard enough to share his own past.
Cass swallowed. “My mom lost her hearing in an accident when she was a kid. She taught me sign language, taught me how to read lips—she was a pro at that.” He could remember when they’d gone to restaurants and she’d been able to tell him what people far across the room had been saying, just by watching their mouths move.
“I used to think she had superpowers.” He’d loved his mother so damn much.
“No one else could pick up a conversation from the other side of a room. No one else could watch strangers in a mall and tell you exactly why they were arguing without ever hearing a sound from them. No one else could…” Cass stopped.
Agnes sent him a soft smile. “She sounds incredible.”
Her hand still held his. No, correction, his hand held hers. But he made himself let her go. “She would have liked you.”
Worry came and went on her face. “You sure about that? Sometimes, I’m not overly likable.”
“What the hell? Damn straight, you are likable.” Why would she think anything different? Who had she been hanging with? Who had told the woman she was not likable?
She shook her head. “I’m pretty sure I can be a pain in the ass.”
“You’re my pain in the ass,” he groused. “And I like you plenty.”
She smiled at him.
Javion was heading for the main entrance.
Cass couldn’t keep walking down memory lane.
He needed to cut to the damn chase. “He let my mother go for years, and then one day…he sent a killer after her. I came home, and she was gone.” Cass hated this memory.
They’d been happy for so long. His mom, him, Gray, Gray’s mother—hell, she’d escaped her own pain.
They’d all been together. A family. Things had been good, dammit.
Until they’d been a nightmare. “I knew it was a professional hit when I came in. One shot to the head.”
“Oh, God, Cass.” She threw her arms around him. Held tight.
Had that part not been in the files she’d read on him? His profile? Huh. Maybe Gray had covered that up.
“Everything changed then.” Fast. Because he had to get the words out.
“My world went to shit. Gray and I—well, I guess you could say our paths diverged. I turned to the streets. Gangs. Fighting. I knew I had to go into the darkness in order to find the bastards who hurt her.” A pause.
“My father. My uncle. I had to get into their world and hunt them down. As for Gray, my cousin was meant to protect the world. He became a Marine. I became a killer.”
“Your father drove into oncoming traffic. How many times do I have to remind you of that fact?”