Page 14 of Banshee
Her hands twisted in her lap as Diesel whined. He watched her for signs of stress and scooted closer.
“Before I left, I hadn’t spoken to them for months.”
“Are you still married?”
She nodded. I tilted my head from side to side, letting my neck crack to relieve some of the tension. It wasn’t working. If she were still married, that meant she was running.
“He put his hands on you?”
She didn’t answer, not even silently. She pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around her legs. It was all the answer I needed.
“Tell me what he did, baby girl.”
“Banshee, please. He doesn’t know where I am. I’m safe here.”
“It doesn’t work that way, and you know it.”
She pushed her hands against the ground and jumped up, glaring at me. “I know how it fucking works. I won’t start a war over that son of a bitch. He doesn’t want me, and I don’t want him.”
“Irene,” I started.
“Don’t! Don’t call me that. My name is Aspen. Irene died. She’s gone.”
I got to my feet and grabbed her arm as she tried to leave. The way her body stiffened beneath my hand told me everything.
“He put his hands on you,” I growled, and Diesel growled beside me, baring his teeth. My fingers loosened around her arm, but I didn’t let her go. Not yet. I stared into her green eyes. I never should have walked away. “This is my fault.”
“Oh, fuck you, Banshee.”
She wrenched her arm out of my grasp and stalked off. I admired her ass as she moved toward the clubhouse, adjusting my dick as it thickened. She wasn’t a kid anymore, that was for sure, but there were still fifteen years between us.
I’d never seen her angry like that. After that first time at the clubhouse, when she’d sashayed out the front door full of sugar and sass, and climbed in her car, ignoring Zeus, every time I saw her, she was subdued.
Quiet and submissive.
I wanted to know what had happened that had pulled the life from her eyes, the fire from her blood. You didn’t put two people like Kronos and Rhea together and get a docile child. Not if Zeus was any indication.
No, the Cooper children were tough. They had to be, growing up in a one-percenter club. That kind of environment didn’t treat weak people well. Then again, maybe that was why Diana disappeared. Maybe she ran. Maybe she wasn’t cut out to be like her mother.
Or maybe she just didn’t want to be.
Aspen was tougher than she thought. I didn’t know what Pepper had subjected her to, but I knew what she’d endured here. The fact that she was still standing, still willing to tell me to fuck off, meant that she was strong.
Despite what she thought, it was my fault. I should have taken her. I should have made her mine. She deserved to be worshipped like the goddess she was.
She reminded me of my sister. Kaylah was stronger than she thought. I didn’t help her either. I didn’t find out what my father was doing to her until after she ran away.
I went through her room searching for a hint. Anything to tell me where she’d gone. It wasn’t until I found her diaries that I learned what a sick son of a bitch my father was.
He’d been raping her for three years. From the time she was thirteen years old. And she never told me.
I knew Aspen hadn’t told Kronos about whatever Pepper had done. The guy might be an asshole, but he loved his children. She could have told him, and he would have helped her. He would have started a war.
The Silver Shadows would have backed him up. It wasn’t like when Diana disappeared. The Gods of Mayhem had allies now. Allies that would have had their back.
It didn’t take a genius to figure out he had abused her. The question was, how much? Physical was a given. I would bet my bike on that being the reason she ran. With physical abuse came emotional abuse. You didn’t have one without the other.
Then there was sexual abuse. Some men, especially bikers, believed women were their property. And to some extent that was true. If I’d taken Aspen when she was offered to me, she would have been mine. She would have worn my patch, telling the world she was my property.
