Chapter 27
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Hades
Apollo’s voice cracked on the last word. Something in my chest twisted. Sharp. Vicious. Not sympathy. Recognition. The sound of a man who’d been carrying weight too fucking long and finally felt it crushing him. Bones splintering under pressure. Lungs collapsing. Heart giving out.
I leaned back in my chair, my eyes on Apollo without really seeing him anymore.
All I saw was Lettie. Golden hair catching sunlight.
That soft smile hiding something darker underneath.
The way she’d looked at me in my room after I’d made her come apart on my cock.
Like she’d found something she’d been searching for without knowing she was looking.
If Apollo was right, if she was Colette, then someone had stolen that from her.
Stolen her family. Her history. Her fucking identity.
For five fucking years she’d been living two miles from the answers she didn’t know she was supposed to be looking for.
The rage that thought triggered was immediate.
Visceral. The kind that made my hands curl into fists on the table, knuckles white, tendons straining.
The kind that made me want to find whoever took her and make them suffer in ways that would make Kronos’ death look like a fucking mercy killing.
I’d peel their skin off in strips. Break every bone in their body one at a time.
Make them beg for death and deny it until they’d paid for every second they’d stolen from her.
But underneath the rage was something else.
Fear.
Cold and sharp and fucking terrifying.
Because if Lettie was Apollo’s sister, then she had a family. A real one. People who’d been searching for her. People who loved her before I’d ever laid eyes on her.
And what the fuck did that make me?
The man who’d claimed her without knowing she already belonged to someone else? Would she still want me when she realized she had a family who wanted her? Would she look at me the same way when she understood I’d been keeping her from people who’d been searching for twenty-three years?
Fuck that.
She was mine. Vote or no vote. Blood relation or not.
She was mine the second I saw her standing in the clubhouse yard with sunshine in her hair and darkness in her eyes.
Mine the second she let me touch her. Mine the second she came apart under my hands and looked at me like I was the only man who’d ever made her feel that way.
If Apollo wanted his sister back, he could have her.
But he’d have to go through me first.
And I’d put him in the fucking ground before I let that happen.
“You think it’s possible, Rykard?” Zeus asked, his eyes locking on Apollo’s father.
Rykard took a deep breath before nodding. “Possible. Not certain.”
“What would make it certain?” Atlas asked.
Rykard didn’t answer right away. His gaze moved to the table, then to Apollo. “I don’t know,” he said. “Seeing more of her. Talking to her. Maybe nothing. Maybe a test.”
“No,” I said immediately.
The word came out harder than I intended. Sharper. Like a blade slicing through the tension in the room. Zeus’ eyes cut to me. Cold. Calculating. The look of a man about to remind me who the fuck was in charge.
“No?” he asked.
“No one’s getting close enough to my woman to stick a needle in her over a hunch.”
My woman.
The words felt right in my mouth. Tasted like possession and promise and something I wasn’t ready to name yet. Something that burned in my chest and made my blood run hot. She was mine. And I’d put a bullet in anyone who tried to take her from me. Brother or not.
“A DNA test would prove it,” Coeus said.
I turned my head slowly. Let him see exactly what I thought of that suggestion.
Let him see the violence simmering just beneath my skin.
The promise that if he pushed this, I’d make him regret it.
I’d break his fucking fingers one by one.
Make him understand that touching what was mine came with consequences.
Coeus leaned back in his chair, hands lifting slightly. “Or we wait.”
“Smart,” Ares muttered.
Apollo held up a hand before I could say something to make this worse. “I’m not asking for that. Not now. Maybe not ever if she doesn’t want it.”
I looked back at him. Studied his face. Saw the exhaustion carved into every line. The grief that had lived in his eyes since the day his sister disappeared.
He meant it.
He wasn’t going to force this on her.
Good.
Because if he tried, I’d put him in the fucking ground right next to his sister’s kidnapper. I’d make it quick. Clean. A bullet to the head. Because he was my brother and I respected him. But I’d do it without hesitation if it meant protecting Lettie.
“I mean it,” Apollo said, like he could read my thoughts. “If she’s Colette, then every choice was taken from her before she was old enough to know what a choice was. I’m not taking another one.”
Something in my chest loosened. Not much. But enough that I could breathe without feeling like I was about to explode. Without feeling like I needed to put my fist through the table. Through Zeus’ face. Through anything that got between me and Lettie.
Apollo understood.
He got it.
This wasn’t about him getting answers. This was about Lettie getting to decide what she wanted to know.
And if she decided she didn’t want to know? If she decided her life was fine the way it was and she didn’t need some long-lost family showing up to complicate shit?
Then that was the end of it.
I’d make sure of it.
I’d bury this conversation so deep no one would ever find it again.
“I asked her to meet Dad,” Apollo said. “She agreed.”
“When?” Zeus asked.
“Today. But I don’t know if that should happen now.”
My hands tightened on the armrests of my chair. The wood creaked under my grip. Protesting. Threatening to splinter.
Today.
He’d asked her to meet his father today, and she’d said yes. And now he was sitting here telling us she might be his missing sister.
Fuck.
“I want to meet her,” Rykard said.
I looked at him. Studied him. Searched for any resemblance to the woman I was beginning to suspect might be his daughter.
What I saw was the same grief Apollo carried, but older.
Deeper. The kind that had settled into bone and become part of who he was.
The kind that had hollowed him out from the inside and left him a shell of whatever he’d been before his daughter disappeared.
He’d lost a daughter.
His wife had killed herself over that loss.
And now he was sitting here, staring at the possibility that his daughter had been alive this whole time.
Living two miles away.
Close enough to touch.
Close enough that he could have passed her on the street a hundred times and never known.
“I’m sure you do,” I said. “But wanting doesn’t mean shit to me.”
Rykard didn’t flinch. Didn’t get defensive. If anything, he looked like he respected the answer. Like he understood I was protecting something precious. Something that mattered more than his pain or Apollo’s pain or anyone else’s fucking pain.
Good.
He should.
Because that was what a father fucking did. They sacrificed their own happiness for their children. Gave up their own desires to make sure their children were safe and happy.
“I don’t want to scare her,” Rykard said. “I don’t want to walk up to her and start asking questions she can’t answer. I don’t want to hurt her.”
“Then don’t,” I said.
“I won’t.”
The words were simple. The vow underneath wasn’t.
I held his stare for another beat, then nodded. He meant it. Just like Apollo meant it. They weren’t going to hurt her. Weren’t going to force this on her. Wouldn’t take away her choices the way someone else had.
Which meant I didn’t have to hurt them.
Yet.
“Her mother,” Zeus said, dragging us back to the part none of us wanted to touch. “What do we know about her?”
“Not much,” I answered. “Rumor is, she never leaves her room, much less the house. I still haven’t met her.”
“Convenient,” Atlas said.
“Maybe,” I agreed. “Or maybe she’s just lazy and miserable like Lettie says.”
My eyes cut to Apollo.
“She treats Lettie like shit.”
Apollo’s fingers tightened on the wheels of his chair. Knuckles going white. Jaw clenching. “Yeah.”
“You know that how?” Zeus asked.
“Lettie doesn’t hide it as well as she thinks.
” She didn’t. Not to someone who knew how to read pain.
Not to someone who’d spent his life learning the language of trauma and survival.
Not to someone who recognized the signs because he’d lived them himself.
“I’ve heard the woman scream for Lettie from her room.
Lettie claims there’s nothing wrong with her other than being lazy. ”
I’d seen it in the way she talked about her mother.
The dismissiveness that was really protection.
The way she apologized for the woman before anyone could judge her.
The way she said it wasn’t her mother’s house, like she had to remind herself she owned the fucking place.
Like she had to convince herself she had the right to exist in her own home.
“She lives in Lettie’s house,” I added. “Lettie supports her. Takes care of her.”
“And what if she stole her?” Zeus asked.
The room went cold.
No one said anything.
Because that was the thought none of us had wanted to put words to yet.
If Lettie was Colette, then someone had taken her. Someone had raised her. Someone had lied to her every damn day of her life. Someone had let Apollo’s mother die not knowing her baby was alive.
And if that someone was the woman living in Lettie’s house, eating Lettie’s food, taking Lettie’s care?
I was going to kill her.
Slowly.
Painfully.
In ways that would make her beg for death long before I granted it.
The thought didn’t shock me. Didn’t make me hesitate. It settled into my chest like a promise. Like something I’d already decided and was just waiting for confirmation to execute. I’d make her suffer. Make her understand what she’d taken. Make her pay for every second of pain she’d caused.
Apollo took another breath, then another, until he could speak without his voice breaking apart.
“We don’t know that her mother did anything,” Apollo said.
“Maybe she adopted her illegally,” Atlas added. I turned and saw the look on his face. Atlas was thirty-eight years old and had been a patched member for almost twenty years. When he was eighteen, he found out his parents weren’t his parents.
They hadn’t just adopted him; they’d done it illegally.
He had no idea who he was or where he came from. He tried to convince us that shit didn’t bother him, but looking at him now, there was no mistaking the pain in his eyes.
“We don’t know who took Colette,” Apollo agreed. “We don’t know if Lettie is Colette. All we have is instinct and a nickname.”
“And her face,” Rykard said.
Apollo looked up at him. Rykard’s eyes were wet, shining with tears he was fighting like hell to hold back. He slipped his wallet from his back pocket and removed what looked like a picture. He stared at it for a moment before handing it to me.
Fuck.
Apollo’s throat worked. I watched him swallow. Watched him try to hold himself together. Watched him fail. The grief cracked through his defenses and bled out into the open.
I held the picture in my hand, afraid to look at it. When I finally lowered my eyes, I stared at a picture of Lettie. Only, it wasn’t her. The woman in the picture was older by maybe a decade. But she had the same long blonde hair, the same green eyes and creamy skin.
“I need to know,” Rykard said. “But not at her expense.”
I watched him for a long moment. Studied his face. Saw the hope he was trying like hell not to feel. The fear that if he let himself believe, it would destroy him when he was wrong. The desperation of a man who’d been searching for decades and finally had a solid lead.
“Good answer,” I said, handing the picture back. I refused to say out loud what I now knew had to be the truth.
Rykard’s mouth twitched. Barely.
Zeus tapped his fingers on the table. “We keep this tight.”
“I don’t want the club digging into her,” I said.
Zeus’ eyes lifted. “This is club business.”
“She is not club business.”
“She became club business the second you called a vote,” Zeus said.
I leaned forward. So did Zeus. The air between us went sharp. Dangerous.
Atlas shifted in his seat.
“Careful, brother,” Atlas said softly.
I didn’t look away from Zeus. “She’s mine.”
“And you’re fucking mine,” Zeus shot back. “My VP. My brother. My responsibility. If your woman has a stolen identity tied to a missing child, that affects this club.”
“She doesn’t have a stolen identity,” Apollo said before I could respond.
Both Zeus and I looked at him.
Apollo swallowed. “Not like that. If she’s Colette, she didn’t steal anything. It was stolen from her.”
That shut us up.
For half a second, anyway.
Zeus leaned back first. “Fair.”
I stayed where I was. Leaning forward. My blood was running hot. Adrenaline spiking. Violence coiling in my muscles like a snake ready to strike.
Because that was what this was really about.
Not club business. Not missing children. Not DNA tests or investigations or any of that shit.
This was about Lettie.
My woman.
My queen.
And I’d burn this whole fucking clubhouse down before I let anyone hurt her.