Page 18 of Sins of the Hidden

Survival was instinct. But living? That was never meant for something like me.

Redemption. Brotherhood. Humanity in scraps they thought they still had.

I never had anything to lose until her.

One shallow inhale, and the chaos in my head hushed. Her stillness was the only leash I'd ever willingly worn, my rage dying before it crested whenever she was near. The silence she brought was addictive—a drug that worked when nothing else could.

She claimed a truth she didn't yet grasp, a darkness beyond her nightmares.

A man not ruled by emotion was one not to be fucked with. But she made me feel things I could only process as control. The urges that rotted into need, the kind I could only understand as compulsion. The need to take every trembling gasp, to own every smile—it was an obsession that made my usual bloodlust feel like foreplay.

Faith's challenge at the gym flashed through my mind. The way Tyrant and Knight had to drag her back, their fear poisoned the air. They knew what I was capable of. If someone deserved death, I didn't discriminate. Man, woman—they all bled the same. But Faith's death would have been just another savage end. Anyone threatening Oakley would learn pain could be endless.

Sitting in church, brothers were waiting for the first excuse to break. The lights buzzed overhead. Then her scent cut through everything else—a faint mix of jasmine and fear. She stood quietly at the edge of my vision, her presence I didn't deserve.

Grim cut in. "We need to make this quick."

Tyrant's smirk vanished. "Ever since Sarge and Joslyn found those blueprints in the trap house, he's been spiraling."

They’d been fucking around at Joslyn’s house when they came across random blueprints her sister’s gang had planted there. The Flock or whatever the fuck their name was.

I could sense Oakley's presence through the walls like a phantom limb—the kind that ached worst in storms. Even her quietest sigh twisted the darkness seething within me, a thousand serpents crawling toward her heat. My thumb traced grooves worn into the handle, synced to the whisper of her breath—steady, mesmerizing.

"Prez looked like he knew what they were. He's hiding something from us," Husk said, his words floating past like meaningless moths drawn to dying light.

Sarge's palms met the table with enough force to make lesser men flinch. Wood splintered beneath his rage, a sound like breaking bones that should have fed the beast gnawing beneath my bones. But his anger was predictable, boring—nothing like the delicate spectrum of Oakley's reactions that I filed like scents I'd never forget, each one stored away where no one else could touch them.

"No shit." The words barely registered through my constant awareness of her. The gentle tapping of her nails against polished wood. The stutter in her throat when voices rose. Each tiny detail fed the obsession. "Douglas knew Dagger and Hollow. No one else should know who they are but us."

Dagger had been dead for years. Hollow missing just as long. Death came quickly in our world—a snapped neck, a severed artery, one wrong glance at the wrong man. More things in this world wanted to kill you than keep you alive. I learned that lesson young, wrote it in scars and broken bones.

"What do you want us to do?" Knight asked from his seat, following Tyrant's lead like a shadow afraid of its own ghost. "Start a mutiny? We can all take him." His eyes searched the room for agreement, finding none. The anticipation hummed beneath my grip, hungry for something that never satisfied me the way tracking Oakley's movements did. Even the promise of bloodshed felt empty compared to documenting each tiny gasp, each shift of apprehension.

"He's the man who fuckin' saved us," Grim reminded them, threat coiling beneath his words like a viper in summer grass. "Show some fuckin' respect. None of us would be alive if it weren't for him."

Prez saved us from the grave—or so they believed. He thought himself a god, manipulating his fallen angels, each of us sworn to protect and die at his word. But I was never an angel. I was the demon he kept leashed, used, and abused as a weapon, simply by pointing at targets whispering lullabies to the grave. The others didn't see it that way. They never saw anything clearly.

The club had always done shady shit, killing and laundering money without hesitation. I couldn't understand their outrage. Their loyalty didn't mean shit to me. As long as it didn't affect Oakley, I wouldn't intervene. Her safety was the only thing I gave a fuck about—the only commandment worth following.

"Yeah?" Tyrant challenged, "He did. But you can't deny he's got somethin' hidden from us. Look past the fact that he's your best friend and father-in-law for a sec."

"My relationship with Nyla has nothing to do with it," Grim defended too quickly, "If Knight pulled this bullshit you'd be torn too."

"Yeah," Tyrant agreed, "But Knight didn't do this. We're not talking about what-if situations. This club pulled all of us out of a dark place. I'll do whatever it fuckin' takes to save it."

His voice hit that note—the one that used to mean torment was coming to me. I inhaled through my nose, steady. That kid was gone. No more fists. No more needles. No more Mother with her sweet voice hiding cruel hands.

No morethem.

I'd never be forced into the night again, because the darkness answers to me now. The only light I needed reflected from jade green eyes and quivering smiles. The way her lower lip shook when she was trying to be brave. How her pulse fluttered beneath tempting skin when I stepped too close.

The argument between brothers blended into white noise until the church doors exploded inward. Prez filled the doorway, wearing that smug look I'd seen too many times, long hair skimming his collar. Every flicker of his expression got weighed against the gentleness I'd memorized in Oakley's face. "Well, well. What do we have here? Y'all havin' a meeting without your President? That’s disrespectful, dontcha think?"

They tensed, but I reclined, watching impassively. Only the invisible tether pulling me back kept me from leaving stains they'd never scrub out.

"We wouldn't be if you weren't actin' like such a prick lately," Knight gritted out.

Prez chuckled, leaning against the doorframe, unbothered. "And what did I do to deserve this verbal lashing?"

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