Chapter 45
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Lettie
Consciousness returned in pieces.
Cold concrete beneath me. The smell of rust and motor oil. A single bare bulb swinging overhead, casting shadows that moved like living things across corrugated metal walls.
A warehouse.
Abandoned, judging by the dust and the way sound echoed off empty space.
My hands were zip-tied in front of me, the plastic cutting into my wrists as I sat in a wooden chair that was bolted to the floor.
Professional.
Planned.
I kept my breathing shallow. Even. I catalogued everything I could without moving.
No windows. One industrial metal door, the kind that locked from the outside. The bulb overhead was the only light source. Twenty feet away, a workbench held tools I couldn’t quite make out. Closer, maybe ten feet to my left, a camping chair sat empty.
Waiting.
Footsteps echoed from somewhere beyond the door. Heavy. Deliberate. Coming closer.
I let my eyes drift shut. Kept my body loose. Played the part.
The door opened with a metallic screech.
“I know you’re awake, Violet.”
Zander’s voice. Except it wasn’t the Zander I knew. That harmless man at the festival had been a costume. A mask he’d worn while he waited for the perfect moment.
I lifted my head slowly. Blinked like I was disoriented. Let confusion and fear flicker across my face, which wasn’t hard to fake when my heart was actually pounding and my mouth tasted like copper.
“Where—” My voice came out hoarse. Perfect. “Where am I?”
“Exactly where I need you to be.”
He stepped into the light, and I saw him clearly for the first time without the festival crowd and chaos obscuring my view.
Mid-forties. dark brown hair going gray at the temples.
Steel-gray eyes that looked like they’d been carved from ice.
Tall. Broad-shouldered. The kind of man who’d learned violence young and perfected it over decades.
A predator.
Dangerous.
“Please,” I whispered, letting my voice shake. Letting tears well up in my eyes. “I don’t understand what’s happening. Why did you—”
“Shut the fuck up.”
I flinched. Genuine reaction that time. His voice had gone from calm to vicious in a heartbeat.
He dragged the camping chair closer and sat down facing me. Close enough that I could smell cigarettes and something chemical. Close enough that if my hands were free, I could reach him.
But they weren’t.
So I waited.
“You want to know why you’re here?” He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “Because you’re the weakness. The soft spot. The thing that makes the Gods of Mayhem stupid.”
I said nothing. Just looked at him with wide, frightened eyes while my mind worked.
“I’ve been planning this for months,” Zander continued, his voice going conversational now, like we were discussing the weather.
“But I’ve been here for years. Meeting with Kronos.
Using your mother like she was a fucking tool in my hand.
She was so eager to please, so desperate to keep you locked down tight.
And it worked beautifully. Until this year. ”
He stopped pacing and looked at me like I was a puzzle he’d already solved.
“Until Kronos died. Until you became something the Gods of Mayhem actually give a shit about. Suddenly you’re not just the girl with the garden.
You’re the old lady of their vice president.
You matter to them now. And that...” He smiled.
“That changes everything. That’s power, Violet.
Real power. Not the kind that comes from a patch or a gavel or a vote.
The kind that comes from knowing exactly what will break a man and having the balls to use it. ”
I let a tear slide down my cheek. “I don’t... I don’t understand.”
“No, you wouldn’t.” His smile turned cold. Empty. “You’re just a bitch who sells herbs and fucks a biker. You don’t understand what it takes to build something. To inherit a legacy. To carry on work that matters.”
I made my voice smaller. Softer. “What work?”
His smile widened.
And then he started talking.
“You know what the problem is with this world?” Zander stood and started pacing again. “People get in the fucking way. They take things that don’t belong to them. They ruin carefully laid plans because they think they know better.”
I watched him move. His left leg dragged slightly. He shifted his weight to the right when he turned. Something old. Something that still hurt.
“Reaper took Remi from me,” he said, his voice rising. “That little bitch was supposed to be mine. My father promised her to me. A gift. A reward for loyalty. Well trained on how to please a man. But Reaper, that prick, decided to come back from the fucking dead.”
His hands clenched into fists.
“And Bane. Fucking Bane took Diana. She was supposed to stay locked up. Supposed to rot in that asylum where she couldn’t cause problems. Where she couldn’t tell anyone what she knew.
She was leverage, too. Insurance. As long as she was confined, Kronos stayed compliant.
Stayed focused. But Bane fucking found her.
Rescued her. And suddenly the system wasn’t as airtight anymore. ”
Diana. Zeus’ twin sister, Rhea’s daughter. Mimic and Kytten’s mother. It was all true, everything she’d shared with me.
Ten years locked away from her children, her husband. From her family.
“My own father,” Zander spat, “had a plan for that kid. An infiltration. Someone to burrow into the Silver Shadows from the inside. Mimic was supposed to be the tool that did it. But the little fuck grew a conscience. Refused his role. Decided loyalty to some pussy biker club mattered more than what he was groomed to do. Decided a woman mattered more.”
His jaw clenched.
“I told my father it wouldn’t work. I warned him from the very beginning, but he wouldn’t listen. He was too stubborn, too set in his ways. The kid wasn’t broken enough. My father thought because he won one fucking battle with me, the kid was ready.”
I didn’t dare move, didn’t draw attention to myself. So I just sat there listening, taking it all in.
“That bitch he’s with now—Indie. She killed Meredith. Killed Kronos. Destroyed the bloodline that built this empire. And they’ll both pay for that. For refusing the purpose they were given.”
I kept my face neutral. Sympathetic. Like I was listening to a man share his pain instead of confessing to decades of planned atrocities.
“And Montana.” His voice dropped to something venomous. “My older brother. The heir. The golden fucking child who was supposed to lead the Soulless Sinners into greatness.”
He turned to face me fully.
“You know what Montana’s problem was? He didn’t have the balls to do what needed to be done.
He talked about honor. About protecting the club.
About keeping the legacy alive. But when it came time to actually get his hands dirty, to do the work that mattered, he fucking folded like the pussy he is. ”
Zander moved closer. I could see the rage in his eyes now, years of resentment crystallizing into something sharp and deadly.
“I was my father’s legacy,” he said quietly. “Not Montana. Me.” His hand slapped against his chest, and I flinched. “I was the one who understood what George built. What he inherited. What he was trying to pass on.” Zander stood, tossed the chair aside, and resumed his pacing.
“Devlin Scott and my father didn’t just commit crimes, Violet. They built a system. A machine designed to grind up women and children and turn them into profit. Into power. Into leverage.”
His voice had gone almost reverent.
“It was beautiful. Efficient. Self-sustaining. The Trick Pony was just one piece, one location. But the methodology, the infrastructure”— his voice had an awe to it that had the hair on the back of my neck standing up—“that was genius. You take vulnerable people. You break them. You use them. And when they’re used up, you disappear them into institutions or graves, and no one asks questions because the system protects you. ”
Bile rose in my throat, but I kept my face soft. Kept my eyes wide and horrified in exactly the way he’d expect.
“Kronos learned it from them,” Zander continued. “Lucas Cooper. President of the Gods of Mayhem. He was younger than George and Devlin, but he was smart. He watched. He learned. He took their system and expanded it. Made it bigger. Better. More sophisticated.”
Indie’s words flooded my head. The abuse, the rape, the hypnosis that turned her into what she was today. Kronos was responsible for that.
“And I learned it from all of them,” Zander said. “From George. From Devlin. From Kronos. I learned that the beauty of the system is, it doesn’t matter if one man dies. The machine keeps running. The Society keeps protecting it. Another man steps in. Another generation inherits the design.”
He crouched down in front of me. Close enough that I could see the broken blood vessels in his eyes. The way his pupils were dilated. High on something. Adrenaline maybe, or drugs, or the power he thought he had.
“Kronos was working with me,” he said. “With Arizona. With Zephyr. We were going to take over the Federation. Consolidate power. Bring all the clubs under one umbrella where we could control everything. The trafficking. The guns. The drugs. The money. Everything.”
Arizona. Zephyr. Names I didn’t know but would remember.
“The Gods of Mayhem killed Arizona.” Zander’s voice went flat. Dead. “My brother.”
He stood up abruptly.
“They took everything from me. But the network survives. It always does.”
His voice rose with each word.
“They destroyed years of planning. Years of careful cultivation. Years of building relationships and networks and power structures.”
He was shouting now.
“They killed the future I was owed!”
I flinched, letting him see me shrink back in the chair. Letting him think his rage was working.
“So now they pay,” Zander said, his voice dropping back to something cold and controlled. “All of them. Zeus. Hades. Every brother who rode with them. Every person they love.”
He looked at me.
“Starting with you.”
I let tears stream down my face. Let my voice break. “Please,” I begged. “I didn’t... I didn’t do anything. I don’t even know these people. I just—”
“You’re fucking Hades,” Dakota interrupted. “You’re his weakness. His soft spot. The thing that makes him human instead of the God he pretends to be.”
He pulled a knife from his belt. Long. Serrated. The kind designed to cause maximum damage.
“And when he comes for you, and he will come, because men like Hades can’t help themselves, I’m going to make him watch while I take you apart piece by piece.
“Then I’m going to kill every brother he brought with him.
Burn the clubhouse. Destroy everything the Gods of Mayhem built.
And when Zeus is the last one standing, when he’s lost everything and everyone he loves, I’ll tell him it was all because the Gods of Mayhem let Kronos die.
” His voice dropped to something venomous.
Zander crouched down again, pressing the flat of the blade against my cheek.
“You’re not a prisoner, Violet. You’re a message. A declaration of war. A promise that the system they tried to destroy is bigger than them. Stronger than them. And it will outlive every single one of them.”
The knife was cold. My skin burned where it touched. I could smell rust and oil and my own sweat. My heart slammed against my ribs. The zip ties cut deeper with every breath.
But I kept crying. Kept my voice small and broken. Kept my eyes wide and terrified.
Because Zander was pacing again. Talking. Revealing names and plans and conspiracies like I was already dead. Like none of it mattered because I’d never leave this warehouse alive to tell anyone.
His pupils stayed dilated even when he moved into the light. His hands trembled slightly when he wasn’t gripping something.
An old injury. Something chemical in his system. Rage that made him sloppy.
I filed it away. Every detail. Every word. Every weakness.
The door was metal. Locked from outside. But the hinges faced inward.
The workbench had tools. Twenty feet away. Too far with my hands tied. But if I could get free—
Zander’s voice rose again. Something about Montana. About inheritance. About being owed.
I let myself shake. Let tears run down my face and drip onto my shirt.
Let him see exactly what he expected to see.
A terrified girl. A victim. A message waiting to be delivered.
Not a woman who’d been killing monsters since she was old enough to understand what wolfsbane could do.
Not someone who’d spent her entire life learning to survive by wearing whatever mask kept her alive long enough to strike back.
Not Lettie Foster, who’d looked at Brock’s darkness and chosen it. Who’d poisoned men for sport. Who’d learned that sometimes the only way to stop a predator was to become something worse.
Zander kept talking.
And I kept listening.
Kept watching.
Kept planning.
I kept waiting for the moment when his arrogance would give me the opening I needed.
Because Brock was coming.
And when he arrived, Zander would learn what happened when you mistook fear for weakness.
When you mistook softness for surrender.
When you took something that belonged to a man who’d burn the world to get it back.
The knife moved away from my face.
Zander stood.
Started pacing again.
And I breathed.
Shallow. Even. Controlled.
Ready.