Page 42 of Massacre
“August,” Valhalla calmly said, trying to soothe the raging man. “You need to let him finish.”
Bane looked at Val, and his eyes widened. “You fucking knew! You knew and still let him claim her! Goddamn it, Meredith! You knew why my family left. Why my dad wanted nothing to do with them, and you still handed my daughter over to one!”
“It wasn’t like that. It isn’t like that,” the woman quickly said.
“Then explain it to me, because that’s exactly what it looks like!”
“You could have killed me,” I vaguely heard Romeo say.
Putting my shirt back on, I smirked. “But I didn’t.”
“Why?”
Romeo’s question hung in the air, charged and brittle. For a long moment, silence pressed in around us, thick as velvet, every eye locked on me as if my answer might unravel the very seams of our uneasy alliance. I glanced at Amber, at the confusion written across her face, the hope she tried to hide behind tight lips. The Brotherhood crest on my chest still burned like a confession, raw and impossible to ignore.
“I didn’t kill you, Romeo,” I said, my voice steady but weighted with history, “because loyalty isn’t a chain to drag someone down. It’s a choice, every damn time.”
“I fucked your wife!”
“Yeah, I’m going to ignore you just said that, and I suggest you erase that memory from your mind before I change mine.”
“Hold up, brother,” Viper said, stepping forward. “I’ve known you from the start. Joined shortly after you and Player. Hell, we went nomad with Ghost and the others for five fucking years. The Golden Skulls don’t use Sleepers. In fact, every fucking club we visited doesn’t believe in them, because they’re considered laws unto themselves. They can’t be controlled.”
“The Irish Mob uses them,” Blade said, throwing his two cents in. “I heard my dad mention them before. He was scared of them. Thought for sure that Sal would send one to infiltrate our family and kill us all. He told me we would never know until it was too late.”
“They are real.” Bane glared at me and Reaper. “George had a file on one of them. Motherfucker blackmailed him until—” He stopped himself and pointed his finger at Reaper, before sneering, “That motherfucker shoved his blade into his heart and killed him.”
“Rowen is a sleeper,” Dante muttered, looking at Sypher. “Sin uses him to his advantage all the time. Rowen hates it, but won’t say anything because Sin has something on him to keep him in line.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Sypher asked.
Dante shrugged. “You already deal with enough shit. I didn’t want to add more to your plate.”
Listening as the brothers from both clubs talked amongst themselves, I saw Reaper glaring at me, waiting for me to finish. However, when I hung my head, it was Amber who gently lifted my head and frowned. “There’s more, isn’t there?”
“Yeah, baby. There’s a lot more.”
“And it has something to do with me, doesn’t it?”
I slowly nodded.
“Finish it, Massacre. The sooner everyone knows, the faster we can come up with a plan to save your ass.”
I took a shaky breath, feeling the weight of every eye in the room pressing down on me. My hands curled into fists, knuckles white as I tried to steady my voice. “Amber, a sleeper is after me because of something I did.”
“What did you do?”
Reaper cleared his throat, the steel in his voice unmistakable. “Tell them why I sent you here.”
I straightened. The burden of my secret finally slipping from my shoulders. “Reaper sent me in to scout the Death Dogs. He wanted to know the truth. Three days ago, I entered their clubhouse for a beer and saw the President of the Silver Shadows, Steele, walk in and greet one of the Death Dogs. He was there for a meeting with Skinner. To make matters worse, when I left, three of the Death Dogs followed me,” I said as my eyes scanned the room to find Val’s before I added, “But they weren’t the only one. Thanks to a particularsliceof pie, I was able to walk away unscathed. She also gave me some vital information.”
Val narrowed her eyes and stormed out of the room with her phone to her ear as I continued, “That’s when I learned that my time in the Bratva was coming back to bite me in the ass. A man name Yuri Nikitin wants me dead.”
“Why?” Reggie asked.
“Because I killed his brother, Yasha, and took Savoy Noelle.”
“The woman you told us about the other day?” Reggie asked, looking at Reaper. “Dwayne said she was Heretic’s daughter. Who is Heretic?”
