Chapter 44
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Hades
I heard my name. Not Brock. Not baby. Not a sound I could convince myself belonged to anybody else.
“HADES!”
Lettie’s scream ripped through the festival and took every sane thought I had with it.
I turned. She was gone. For one second, the world narrowed to the empty space where she’d been.
My hand reached back and found nothing. No warm fingers.
No trembling wrist. No soft body close enough to protect.
Just air. Then everything in me broke loose.
“Lettie!” The crowd moved wrong. People turned toward the sound, not away from it.
Bodies shifted. Someone shouted. A woman screamed when I shoved past her too hard, but I didn’t stop.
I hit the edge of the booth and drove through the gap between the quilt tent and the honey stand, following the last place her voice had come from.
Ares was behind me. Hermes too. Zeus barked orders that snapped through the chaos like gunfire. “Lock the street down. Nobody leaves. Find cameras. Find vehicles. Now.”
I barely heard him. I was already in the service lane behind the booths, boots hitting dirt and crushed gravel, eyes cutting over everything at once.
Boxes. Coolers. Trash bags. Extension cords.
Tire tracks. A smear in the dust where someone had stumbled or been dragged.
A crushed lavender bundle near the wheel of a vendor trailer.
Lettie’s lavender. I bent, grabbed it, and the scent of her hit me hard enough to make my vision pulse red.
“Fuck.”
Ares stopped beside me. “Hades.”
I looked down the lane. Empty. No Lettie.
No Zander. No damn air in my lungs. I ran past the trailers, past the generators, past the portable toilets and the delivery van parked crooked near the alley mouth.
Tire marks cut through the dirt where a vehicle had pulled out fast. Not wild.
Not panicked. Controlled. That made it worse.
He hadn’t lost his nerve. He’d planned this.
I turned back toward the booth, and the crowd split before me because whatever they saw on my face reminded them they had a survival instinct.
My blood was loud. Too loud. It roared over everything until the only things left were Lettie’s scream and the empty place where my hand should’ve found her.
Zander.
The polite bastard from every festival. The man her mother had trusted. The man she’d left the house to see.
I hit the booth like a storm. Claire stood near Rykard, crying, shaking, putting on the same broken-woman show she’d used to keep Lettie chained for years.
Rykard looked half dead and half ready to kill. Apollo had one hand locked around the arm of his chair, knuckles white. Zeus stood between the crowd and the table, face carved from stone.
“Where is he?” I asked.
Claire blinked at me. “What?”
I moved so fast, Ares caught my arm before I got both hands on her. “Where the fuck is he?”
“I don’t know!”
“Wrong answer.”
Her eyes flew wide. “I don’t know. I swear I don’t know.”
“Don’t fucking lie to me.” My voice didn’t sound human.
Zeus stepped into my line of sight. “Hades.”
“Move.”
“No.”
That one word hit like a chain around my throat. President. Brother. The only man in this town who could stand between me and murder and expect me to hear him. Barely. I pointed at Claire. “She knows.”
Claire sobbed. “I don’t. He comes to the festival, but I don’t know where he stays.”
“It’s Dakota,” Hermes said from behind me. Every head turned. Hermes held up his phone, eyes flat. “Got a hit off the plate number from a vendor. Dark gray SUV. Registered to Dakota Stone under a shell company. Coeus is digging.”
Claire went still. There it was. Recognition. Not of the name, maybe. Not all of it. But enough. I saw it. So did Zeus.
Rykard took one step toward her. “Dakota?”
Claire shook her head too fast. “No. No, he said...”
“He said what?” Zeus asked.
“He said his name was Zander.”
“Liar,” Apollo rasped.
Claire looked at him like she hated him for still existing. “That’s what he told me.”
I lunged again, and this time Zeus caught me with both hands planted on my chest. “Use your head.”
“My head knows she’s gone.”
“And if you kill the only bitch who can tell us where, she stays gone longer.”
That landed. Barely. I dragged in air through my nose. It tasted like dust, lemonade, and rage.
“Bring Cerberus,” I snapped.
Ares was already moving. “On it.”
“The truck,” Zeus called after him. “Don’t put that monster on a bike.”
Ares disappeared through the crowd at a run. Claire made a strangled sound. “No.”
I turned slowly. “No?”
Her eyes darted toward the road like she could run.
She couldn’t. The Gods had boxed her in without touching her.
Rykard to her left. Zeus in front. Me close enough to see the pulse beating in her throat.
Apollo on the other side, broken and shaking, but watching her like he’d crawl out of that chair on bloody hands if she moved wrong.
“I didn’t know he’d take her,” Claire whispered.
The festival seemed to drop away. There it was. The truth. A crack.
Zeus’ voice went deadly quiet. “Start talking.”
Claire pressed a hand to her mouth. Her lipstick had smeared. Her eyes were wild. Without the performance, she looked older. Meaner. Smaller. “He loved me,” she said.
Rykard made a sound of disgust.
“He did,” she insisted, like that mattered, like love in her mouth meant anything clean. “Every year he came. Every festival. He listened. He understood what it was like to want something and have people keep it from you.”
“People?” I asked. “Or children?”
She flinched.
Apollo’s voice was barely there. “How long?”
Claire didn’t look at him. “Years.”
“How many fucking years?” Rykard demanded.
“Since we moved here,” she cried, her eyes on Zeus. “You should know. He came here for you.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Zeus snapped.
“Your father.”
The noise disappeared. Zeus’ knees buckled and I grabbed his arm before he fell.
“What?” he asked the bitch again.
“That’s why he started coming here. To meet Kronos.”
My stomach turned.
“He said his family ruined him,” Claire whispered. “Kronos was helping him get back at his brothers.”
Zeus’ jaw flexed.
“Keep going,” I ordered.
Claire shook her head. “I didn’t know he was dangerous.”
I stepped closer. “You mean you didn’t care until he took something you thought belonged to you.”
Her face crumpled. I wanted to tear it off. “He was sweet,” she said. “He brought me things. Flowers. Books. He remembered what I liked. He called me Carol like I was a woman and not just some sick thing in a room.”
“You’re not sick,” Rykard said. “You’re poison.”
She glared at him. “You don’t get to judge me.”
“I do,” he said. “I damn sure do.”
A truck engine roared from the side street.
Cerberus announced himself before I saw him.
The sound wasn’t a bark, but a roar. Deep, savage, furious enough that every person near the booth backed away at once.
The prospect driving barely had the truck stopped before the back door flew open, and Ares hauled the massive black dog out by his collar and a fistful of leash.
Cerberus hit the ground like hell had grown legs.
He went feral. Not restless. Not protective.
Feral. He lunged toward the booth, teeth bared, body shaking with rage.
His head whipped from the table to the crowd to me, then toward the service lane.
He smelled her absence. He knew. Whatever lived in that dog’s bones understood Lettie was gone, and the grief in him turned violent.
“Easy,” Ares grunted, both arms straining. “Fuck, he’s strong.”
I took the leash. Cerberus snapped his head toward me, eyes wild.
“Find her,” I said.
His body went still for half a breath. Then he dragged me.
Not walked. Dragged. Through the gap beside the booth.
Past the quilt tent. Into the service lane.
He hit the dirt where I’d found the lavender and let out a sound that turned my blood to ice.
Nose down, shoulders bunching, he followed the trail to the drag mark, then to the place the SUV had waited.
There he lost it. He threw himself against the end of the leash, snarling at the empty road, claws digging gouges into the dirt like he could rip the trail back out of the ground.
“Vehicle,” Hermes said behind me. “Trail ends here.”
“No shit,” I growled.
Zeus came up beside me. “Cameras?”
“Checking,” Hermes said. “Vendor dashcam caught the SUV heading east out of the service lane. Coeus is pulling traffic cams.”
I looked back at Claire. Ares had dragged her closer. She stared at Cerberus like she’d finally understood Lettie belonged to more than her lies.
“You know where he’d go,” I said.
She shook her head. Cerberus lunged toward her so hard Ares cursed and I nearly lost the leash. Claire screamed. Good.
“Try again,” I said.
“I don’t know!”
Cerberus barked once, violent and sharp.
Claire sobbed. “He mentioned a place once. That’s all. I don’t know where it is.”
“What place?” Zeus asked.
“A house. Quiet. Away from town. He said he liked places people forgot about.”
Hermes’ fingers flew across his phone. “Property records under Dakota Stone. Shell companies. Rentals. Hunting leases. Give me more.”
Claire cried harder. “He said there was water nearby. Not a lake. A creek, maybe. He said you could hear it from the porch when it rained.”
Ares glanced at Zeus. “That narrows fuck all in East Texas.”
“Shut up and let her bleed details,” Zeus said.
I crouched in front of Claire, still holding Cerberus back with one hand.
“Listen to me. Lettie’s gone because you wanted to be loved by a man who used you.
You spent years whining to him about my woman neglecting you, about the club taking her time, about me putting her first. He took her because you taught him she mattered. ”
Claire shook her head, tears streaming down her face. “No.”
“Yes.” I leaned closer. “So now you’re gonna make one good choice in your miserable fucking life and tell me where he’d take her.”
Her lips trembled. I watched the memory surface. “He hated the clubhouse,” she whispered. “Asked about it constantly. Asked if she went there. Asked who could get in. I told him she didn’t like crowds there. I told him she loved her gardens.”
My hand tightened on the leash until leather bit into my palm. “What about the gardens?”
“He asked if she had places to hide. I said no. I said Violet was too soft for hiding.”
Rykard made a broken, furious sound. He’d never heard that lie before, but I had. Soft. Harmless. Useful. Every word they’d used to miss the truth of her.
Hermes’ phone buzzed. He looked down. “Traffic cam caught the SUV eastbound on County Road 19.”
Zeus’ head snapped up. “Where does that lead?”
“Old farms. Abandoned properties. One Stone shell company owns a parcel off Mill Creek Road. Warehouse structure. Industrial. No active utilities except a private generator permit filed last year.”
Claire covered her mouth. “Mill Creek.”
I stood. Cerberus strained toward the road like he understood. Maybe he did.
Zeus turned. “Ares, Hermes, with Hades. Rykard, you stay with Apollo.”
“No,” Rykard said.
Zeus looked at him.
Rykard’s face was gray, but his voice held steel. “That’s my daughter.”
“And that’s your son,” Zeus said. “He can’t ride, and I’m not leaving him here with her.”
Apollo’s eyes burned. “Go.”
Rykard looked down at him.
Apollo’s voice broke as he looked up at me. “Bring her back.”
Rykard closed his eyes for one second, then nodded once. “Bring my baby home.”
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. If I spoke, everything inside me would come pouring out wrong.
Zeus pointed at Claire. “Lock her down. Nobody touches her until I say.”
Rykard’s smile was terrifying. “That’ll be the hardest order I’ve ever followed.”
I handed Cerberus’ leash to Ares long enough to swing onto my bike. The dog tried to come with me, losing his mind when I moved away from him and toward the road.
“He can track at the property,” Zeus said. “Bring the truck behind the bikes.”
Ares hauled Cerberus toward the truck with a string of curses. Hermes was already on his bike. Brothers mounted up around us, engines cracking through the festival like thunder. People stared. Let them. Let Athens remember the day somebody took what belongs to the Gods of Mayhem.
I started my bike and looked once toward the booth. Lavender lay spilled across the table. Lettie’s chair sat empty. The striped cloth fluttered in the wind like nothing important had happened. But everything had. My woman was gone.
My Lettie.
My poison flower.
My soft-looking, sharp-edged, brave, broken, stolen woman who’d looked at me with three names cracking her apart and still tried to stand on her own feet.
Dakota Stone took her because he thought she was leverage.
He was wrong. Leverage was something you used to force another man’s hand. Lettie wasn’t leverage.
Zeus lifted two fingers. The bikes moved. We tore out of the festival and onto the road, engines screaming, Cerberus raging in the truck behind us, and every mile between me and Lettie became one more reason Dakota Stone wasn’t going to live long enough to regret touching her.
Because for Lettie I’d leave hell.
But for anyone who tried to take her, I’d bring it with me.