Chapter 13
Keys stared wide-eyed at the candy bar displayed before him like evidence in a trial.
A cold sweat coated his entire body, and he felt like a kid caught in a lie by his parents.
He couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t think, and for one solid, terrifying heartbeat, he could have sworn he felt a noose tightening around his neck.
The candy bar was not the priority, and yet it would have taken an apocalyptic phenomenon to get him to look away from it.
That fucking candy bar… It had been a joke!
The snack bar had plenty of candy, soda, popcorn, and even a chocolate fondue fountain.
The candy bar had been nothing more than a prop, like a trinket at a kids’ arcade.
It symbolized the prize of a twisted game rather than being true motivation.
And yet here it was, held up like the damning confirmation of his betrayal.
It could have only been Scar who’d ventured into the woods to retrieve it.
Only he could without setting off Keys’ sensors or being noticed by the Riley brothers.
In the years Keys had known Scar, he’d thought of him as a ninja on more than one occasion.
Doors, windows, walls… They were only suggestions to Scar.
Hell, Keys had tested his new security system on Scar before he’d advertised it to any clients.
Keys could only imagine Scar’s leisurely stroll through the woods to get the candy bar while bullets were flying about.
But if Scar had known about the candy bar, he had to have been eavesdropping on Keys a lot longer than tonight. How much did he know? It wasn’t like he would have told anyone, but still, it begged the question of what Keys’ mute brother knew.
Ghost tossed the candy bar onto the table with the rest of the snacks. It landed in the bowl of popcorn, shooting popped kernels everywhere. Keys and Rose both jumped like a bomb had detonated, and yet, Ghost never even blinked.
“Where do you suppose we should start?” Ghost asked, crossing his arms over his chest. His tattoos looked especially menacing in the dim light of the hallway.
Keys tried to swallow the lump in his throat. He never meant to betray the club, but intentions aside, that’s how Ghost would see it. Keys had kept a major secret from the club that would affect not only the Via Daemonia but also the Non Cras.
“Ghost, I—” But the words halted on his tongue when Ghost held up his hand.
“If the next words out of your mouth are not an introduction, I will drag you down into the cellar myself. Do you understand me?”
Fuck. Keys’ and Rose’s grips on each other’s hand tightened to the point of pain, and yet neither of them let go.
Keys felt lightheaded as he admitted, “I can’t.”
Ghost raised a ginger eyebrow. “Can’t or won’t?”
Rose buried her face into Keys’ upper arm, stepping further behind him. Keys wanted to tell her that, no matter how outwardly angry Ghost got, he would never harm a woman or an innocent, but she spoke first before he could. “Please. We’ll go. Just—”
“No!” Keys shouted, spinning around to face Rose.
He might be leaving his back exposed, but Ghost would never do something as dishonorable as attack him from behind.
Not that he thought Ghost was going to attack him regardless.
Ghost might be pissed as fuck at Keys, probably even hurt that Keys would keep secrets from him and the club, but he would never blindly attack or act on that anger in malice.
Wrapping his arms around Rose, he drew her to his chest. She practically burrowed into him, clinging to his Lord of the Rings t-shirt like it was her lifeline.
Keys pressed his mouth against the top of her blonde head so hard that he nearly knocked his glasses off.
“You’re not going anywhere. You’re mine, remember? ”
Rose shook in his arms, but she nodded against him—and that nod meant everything to Keys. Her silent acknowledgement of his claim on her.
“So it’s like that, is it?”
Keys turned slightly, looking over his shoulder at Ghost’s stern face.
Gray-blue eyes met dark green, and for the first time in his life, Keys understood the weight of choosing to be a man.
Maybe it was clichéd, and at twenty-six it was a bit pathetic, but he’d never had to worry about being The Man.
He’d always been the kid-brother, the youngster, the one people relied on but did not count on.
He wasn’t the stereotypical manly man, the alpha male that women swooned over, the warrior who came out victorious in battle.
He wasn’t like his brothers, confident, courageous, and seemingly having their lives put together.
Yet right here, right now, Keys straightened his spine and squared his shoulders. He didn’t care what came next, what sacrifices had to be made. It didn’t matter the consequences of his actions. He stared Ghost right in the eyes and said clearly, “Yes, it is.”
Ghost tipped his chin up slightly, studying Keys intensely. Painful seconds ticked by, but Keys did not dare blink or look away from his president, the man who had brought him into the club when he’d been a scared nineteen year old.
Finally, Ghost nodded once. “Be at the clubhouse first thing in the morning, and be prepared to answer every question asked of you.” His eyes shifted down to where Rose was peeking out from around Keys’ left arm.
“It’s good to finally meet you, MV, and I apologize for frightening you.
I don’t know what you’re running from or why you can’t tell your club, but Keys has claimed you.
That makes you as much Via Daemonia as you are Non Cras, and we protect our own. ”
Keys felt the heat of Rose’s gasp at Ghost’s correct assumption of who she was. He might not know her name or her relation to Poison, but he was smart enough to piece together who Keys would go to such lengths to protect.
Shifting his gaze back to Keys, Ghost gave him a pointed look that told him not to be late, and then headed off down the hall with Scar trailing silently behind him.
* * *
Ghost’s footsteps had barely disappeared down the hall before Rose was on the move.
Instinct had her running. She’d been running her whole life, long before the Justice Department faked her death.
Every mistake she’d ever made, she’d run from the consequences.
And now, it wasn’t just her that was going to suffer for her choices.
Keys. The man who, besides her son, was the most important person in her world.
How could she have done this to him? She’d been so selfish, blind.
What had she planned on happening? She and Oscar remain in this building like his dirty secrets for the rest of their days?
Sure, she’d talked about coming out of the shadows, but had she actually meant it?
The shadows were where she was the most comfortable, protected.
The idea had been intoxicating, even she could admit that. But the follow through? Rose couldn’t be certain that she’d actually have stepped into the light beside Keys.
She just needed air. Space. Somewhere where she could process the enormity of what had just happened and what was coming tomorrow and the look on Ghost’s face and the way Keys had said “you’re mine” like it was the simplest truth in the world. Running was her instinct, but to where? To what?
And what would she say to Oscar when he asked where Keys was and why they were no longer with him?
She barely made it three steps into the hallway before Keys’ hand closed around her wrist. “Rose.”
She couldn’t look at him and his sweet face and his beautiful eyes and his nerdy shirt… Somehow she found her voice, though it sounded like she’d swallowed a fistful of sand. “I should check on Oscar.”
“Oscar is fine. You’ve had eyes on him all night. He’s sound asleep with his little butt in the air like he’s building a mountain for Baxter to climb on in Dreamland.”
Tears welled in her eyes. Why did he have to sound so strong and confident when her world felt like it was imploding? “Keys…”
“Turn around, Rose. Will you look at me?”
But she couldn’t. Coward, she silently called herself.
What if there wasn’t love in his gray-blue eyes but accusation?
Anger? He’d promised to protect her, and he was honorable enough to follow through on that vow, but what if he hadn’t thought it all the way through?
What if he was just now realizing that being with her might cost him his club?
She wasn’t worth that.
His grip on her wrist constricted, his thumb resting over her pulse point in a way that sent shivers up her spine. “Please, Rose.”
Chin shaking, tears streaming down her cheeks, Rose slowly turned around. He was right there, close enough that she would have to tilt her head up to look at him—if she had the nerve.
“I’m sorry.” The words seemed so empty, so inconsequential, but they were the only words she had to express how terrible she felt for having put him in this precarious situation. “I didn’t mean to make you have to choose.”
Keys lifted his free hand to her chin, but it only made her turn her face further away from him. “How could you think for a moment that I wouldn’t choose you?”
Rose opened her mouth to answer, and a hiccup escaped her. “I didn’t. I don’t. That’s the whole problem, Keys. I know you’ll choose me. I came here and I turned your whole life upside down, and now Ghost is going to punish you for that choice.”
“Rose.” He stepped forward, walking her back until her shoulders met the hallway wall, and she let him because her feet had apparently stopped taking instructions from the part of her brain that was trying to be reasonable.
He crowded her, one hand still on her wrist and the other on her chin.
“You don’t need to look at me if you don’t wish to,” his face was so close to hers that his breath heated the stream of tears on her cheek, “but you do need to listen to me.”
She shivered, closing her eyes against the velvet of his voice.