Chapter 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Hades
She was fucking here.
I wondered if she’d come with the others. If she’d ridden in that beat-up truck of hers or if someone had brought her. The thought of another man’s hands on her made something violent twist in my gut.
Apollo droned on about Kronos and his accomplishments in and outside the club.
I couldn’t focus on his goddamn words. His voice was tight, strained.
Those of us who knew the truth understood he was struggling.
Torn between loyalty to the man he once respected and the girl standing on the outside of the group.
A girl who’d come to mean everything to him.
A sister young enough to be his daughter.
A replacement for the baby sister he’d lost. Apollo had found Indie in a park one day.
A literal starving artist he’d pulled under his wing.
He encouraged her art, taught her everything he knew about tattoos and piercing.
Gave a shit about her when no one else did.
Then she disappeared.
Despite her age, he’d mentored her and provided her with fake identification, making her older than she was. When she vanished, he didn’t look for her. Wouldn’t let Coeus search for her despite his worry. Just let her disappear like smoke, like she’d never fucking existed.
Then one day, he found her in the Silver Shadows’ clubhouse.
And watched her kill his president.
My eyes scanned the crowd. Most were brothers in the club, eating up the praise Apollo spewed about their president like it was gospel truth.
They didn’t know the real story. Not yet.
A few old ladies of the older brothers were sprinkled in.
The club whores were crying, making a goddamn spectacle like they were losing something precious.
There were even people from the town. Civilians who thought they knew the man we were burying.
And her.
I knew the moment she felt my stare. Her body shivered, a full-body tremor that I felt in my fucking bones. She backed up a step, looking around, searching. When her eyes finally landed on me, something snapped.
Not a break in the connection, but the slam of a door, sealing her inside. She was mine, and whether she accepted it or not, I was coming for her. Coming to claim what belonged to me. Coming to mark her so thoroughly that every man in this fucking town would know she was taken.
Her hands twisted in her skirt, and I smiled. She felt it. There was no mistaking the fear in her eyes. She wanted to run, but something dark, something invisible, tethered her to me. It bound us together in a way that made my chest tight and my cock hard.
Light surrounded her. Her golden hair formed a halo that gave her the look of an angel, but there was something else, too. Something I knew all too well. A secret hidden in the depths she tried to conceal. Darkness wrapped in sunshine. Violence disguised as sweetness.
I winked when Apollo came to the end of his speech. One he hadn’t wanted to give but relented for Rhea. All of this was for Rhea. This show, this farce. This fucking lie we were all perpetuating.
The officers stepped forward, all but Zeus and Asclepius.
Together, we lowered the casket into the ground as Rhea sobbed silently in the arms of her son.
The rope bit into my palms, rough and unforgiving.
The weight of the coffin pulled at my shoulders, my back.
Heavy as fuck. Heavy with secrets and sins and decades of evil.
Three days ago, Atlas, Zeus, and I had made a pact to find the truth. As the coffin holding our president sank into the ground, I said a prayer that we could clear this fucker’s name.
I didn’t believe in prayer. Didn’t believe in God. Not the almighty one who sat in the sky looking down, watching, judging as his creation fucked everything up. Not the benevolent father who gave a shit about the suffering of his children.
But today I prayed we didn’t have to dig this son of a bitch up, because he was fucking heavy.
I felt the rope slip and pulled it tight.
I wanted nothing more than to drop this fucker, let gravity do its work.
Because despite humoring Zeus, I knew everything we’d learned was true.
The way my father reacted was enough to convince me Lucas ‘Kronos’ Cooper was as evil as Indie said he was.
As twisted and depraved as the evidence suggested.
We stepped back as Rhea and her children moved to the edge of the grave. Aspen went first. Her face, clear of tears, didn’t surprise me. Not given what her father had done to her. The way he’d effectively sold her to the enemy. Traded her like property to secure a goddamn treaty.
Zeus told me she’d forgiven him. They’d worked their shit out, but I wasn’t convinced. She lifted the shovel and threw dirt over his grave without a word. No tears. No emotion. Just cold, calculated finality.
Diana came next, her husband Bane at her side. She looked up at him, tears streaming down her face as she shook her head. He kissed her forehead and silently took the shovel, doing what she couldn’t. Protecting her even from this. Even from the simple act of burying the man who’d fathered her.
Then it was Zeus’ turn. I watched as my best friend looked down into the hole where his father lay and took a deep breath. His eyes found mine, and I nodded, reminding him this was for his mother.
The mother who never failed him. The mother who needed his protection. He nodded and scooped up a shovelful of dirt, tossing it over the coffin. The sound of dirt hitting its mark was louder than I expected. Hollow. Final. The sound of earth claiming what belonged to it.
Zeus held the shovel out to Asclepius, his uncle.
Kronos’ younger brother. Asclepius shook his head, refusing to participate.
Zeus whispered in his ear, and I knew he was giving him an order.
Asclepius narrowed his eyes at Zeus, but he kept his mouth shut.
Jaw clenched. Fury radiating off him in waves.
He turned and walked away, disobeying whatever Zeus had said to him. Zeus moved to follow, and I grabbed his arm, shaking my head. Now wasn’t the fucking time for a scene. Not with Rhea watching. Not with the whole goddamn club bearing witness.
Zeus took a deep breath and turned to his mother, who stared after Asclepius. Rhea took the shovel, and for a beat, we all waited to see what she’d do. Her eyes tracked her best friend, her brother-in-law, as he walked away from her husband’s grave. Abandoning her in her moment of grief.
“Where is he going?” she whispered. Her voice was small, broken. Lost.
“He’s struggling, Mom. Just like the rest of us,” Zeus answered.
We were all struggling, but not in the same way. Zeus struggled with the war in his heart, the one that carved a canyon so deep between truth and duty. Between the father he’d loved and the monster he’d been.
Asclepius was struggling with his guilt. The secrets he’d kept for decades would eventually come out, tearing a rift between him and the woman he was in love with. Had always been in love with. Would always love, even knowing she could never be his.
We all knew it.
Kronos knew it, and I wondered if that was why he’d done what he did.
He was a selfish bastard. He could have let Asclepius have Rhea.
She would have still been in the club, eventually.
Instead, he took what his brother wanted, making it impossible for Asclepius to be loved back by her, even in death.
Claiming her. Marking her. Destroying any chance his brother had at happiness.
Rhea gripped the shovel and stared down at the grave.
She crouched low and whispered something we couldn’t hear.
Then she stood, drove the shovel into the dirt, and poured it over the coffin.
The dirt scattered across the wood. A final goodbye to the man she’d loved.
The man who’d betrayed her in ways she didn’t even know yet.
She dropped the shovel and walked away.
It wouldn’t have been a biker funeral without a raucous party after. Rhea disappeared the moment she left the grave. Zeus motioned for Pegasus, a prospect, to follow her. Hours had passed since either of them had sent more than a text.
Rhea knew Zeus would never let her walk off without protection.
She’d been part of a club her whole life.
She knew the rules. But Pegasus was our best prospect, the most promising.
He could give Rhea the space she needed while still protecting her if something went down.
Smart. Loyal. Capable of reading a situation and adapting.
The attack hadn’t ended the threat. The Death Dogs’ numbers were decimated after the battle in Diamond Creek, but Satan’s Angels had chapters all over the country.
A few years back, the Golden Skulls had taken out quite a few.
Others got arrested, but their numbers still remained high.
Still a threat. Still circling like vultures, waiting for weakness.
Letting Rhea out with only Pegasus was a risk, but Rhea wasn’t a woman you could contain. She was a force you didn’t want to battle. Even Kronos chose his arguments wisely when it came to his wife. He’d known when to push and when to back the fuck off.
I didn’t agree with Zeus or my father about keeping her in the dark. When she learned the truth, and she would, we were all fucked. She’d burn this whole goddamn club to the ground. And we’d deserve it.
“You heard anything from Pegasus?” Zeus asked, leaning against the bar beside me.
“No, but he’ll protect her. Today was a lot for everyone, especially her. She lost the love of her life, brother. She’s hurting. She needs to know the truth.”
“Not until I know the truth. I’m not telling her shit until I can confirm it,” he said, lifting his beer to his lips. The bottle stopped halfway to his mouth, and his expression twisted into a sneer. I glanced over my shoulder to see what had grabbed his attention.
I’d expected the scowl to be because of Indie. She’d done a piss-poor job of staying out of Zeus’ line of sight. I’d barely gotten him to agree to hold off on his revenge. Barely convinced him to wait until we knew the whole fucking story.
If what we learned turned out to be bullshit, I’d help him take her out.
Her old man too, despite the war it would spark outside the clubhouse and inside his family.
Mimic was Diana’s son, Zeus’ nephew. But seeing the kid with Indie, he wouldn’t take lightly to her being killed, and he might have to be neutralized with her.
Collateral damage. Necessary casualties.
But the anger twisting my president’s face had nothing to do with Indie. And everything to do with the dark-haired beauty who’d made our lives hell growing up.
“What the fuck is she doing here?” I asked. Other than a few glances in town, I hadn’t seen or heard from the woman since Aspen married Pepper. She’d vanished from Athens like she’d never existed.
Regina Brooks had been Aspen’s childhood best friend, and the bane of Zeus’ existence. “Irene!” she screeched across the room, her voice cutting through the noise like a knife.
“Reggie? Oh my God!”
Aspen dashed across the room, and the two women collided in a hug, rocking back and forth. I kept my eye on my president, whose face had gone dark. His eyes were locked on Reggie. Predatory. Possessive. Hungry in a way that made my gut clench.
“I’m so sorry about your dad,” Reggie said.
“Brother, tell me you didn’t.”
“Didn’t what?” he asked without bothering to look at me, and I knew the answer before the words left my mouth. Knew it in the way his body had gone rigid. The way his jaw clenched.
“Did you fuck your sister’s best friend?” I hissed.
The corner of his mouth hitched slightly. The only recognition that he’d even heard me. The only admission I was going to get.
“When?”
“When what?” he asked, finally tearing his eyes away from the woman and looking at me.
“When did you make the biggest fucking mistake of your life? Because when your sister finds out, we’ll be burying you next to your father, and I want to know what to put on your headstone.”
“It was ages ago. She was looking for Shug, and when I told her she’d gotten married, she was pissed. It just happened.” He shrugged and looked back in Reggie’s direction. Like it was nothing. Like he hadn’t just admitted to fucking his sister’s best friend.
“Is the kid yours?” I asked.
His eyes snapped to mine. “What kid?”
“Reggie’s got a kid, man. Didn’t you know?”
“No, I didn’t fucking know. What kid?” He pushed off the bar, and I grabbed his arm.
“Brother, don’t do something stupid.”
Zeus looked across the room, and I followed his gaze.
Reggie turned and saw him. A look of unmistakable fear spread across her face, there and gone in a flash, replaced by hatred so sharp it cut through the room.
Raw. Visceral. The kind of hatred that came from being hurt by someone you’d cared about.
Aspen turned and looked in our direction, her brow furrowing as she glanced between her brother and her best friend. Confusion. Suspicion. The pieces starting to click together in her mind.
“How old is the kid?” Zeus asked.
“I’m not sure. Three or four, maybe.”
“That fucking bitch,” he snarled, pushing off the bar and stalking forward. I stood to follow him, and my eyes landed on Lettie. She was still here, tracking Zeus as he stomped across the room. Watching. Assessing. Those beautiful eyes taking in every detail.
“Did you have my fucking kid?” Zeus shouted. Someone lowered the music, and Reggie crossed her arms over her chest, trying to hide her fear behind bravado. There was no question Reggie was a tough bitch. But she’d always been half in love with Zeus. Always wanted what she couldn’t have.
“What are you talking about?” Aspen asked, her eyes darting between the two people glaring at each other.
“Nice to see you too, Kane.”
I closed my eyes and shook my head. Reggie was playing with fire, and by the smirk on her face, she knew exactly which buttons to push. Knew exactly how to make Zeus lose his shit.
“Answer my fucking question,” Zeus hissed.
Reggie stared at him. The whole room waited with bated breath for her answer. Only, Reggie wasn’t the type of woman to be forced into doing shit she didn’t want to do. She reminded me a lot of Rhea. Strong. Stubborn. Willing to burn the whole world down before she’d bend.
“Did you sleep with my brother, Reggie?” Aspen asked. Banshee had come up behind her and slid his arm around her waist, ready to yank her out of harm’s way if he needed to. The way Zeus and Reggie stared at each other told me the man was fucking smart.
I wanted to clear the fucking clubhouse before the war brewing between these two brought the whole building down. Before blood was spilled and relationships were shattered.
“Maybe we should take this into church,” I offered, trying to get Zeus’ attention.
“Maybe she should answer the fucking question.”
“Fuck you, Kane.”