Page 65 of Banshee
“What happened?”
I closed my eyes against the burn of tears that threatened to fall. How did I tell her that the man who raised us, the man who loved her beyond reason, didn’t love me the same way? That I was a throwaway on his quest to find her.
“Why don’t you go first?” I said while leaning against the dresser. I motioned for her to sit on the bed. When she patted the spot beside her, I hesitated.
When we were younger, we used to sit on the bed in my room, and I would tell her everything. How my day at school went, who I was friends with, what my dreams were. There was nothing I didn’t share with my big sister.
When I didn’t move from my spot, Diana sighed and began her story. She told me everything. Starting with her dorm roommate, who introduced her to a guy named Barney, who ran a place called the Gentlemen’s Club, to meeting Bane, who she called August.
I found that interesting. I never called Banshee Elijah, unless we were in bed. I guess because I’d met him and fallen in love with him as Banshee, that was who he’d always be.
She told me about George Stone and his pursuit of August. She even told me about Valhalla. Only, she called her Meredith. When I heard what Valhalla had done, how she’d been the one to lock her away, tears fell down my cheeks.
It didn’t make sense to me how the same person could be a savior and a villain. Valhalla had rescued me years after locking away my sister. Had she known who I was? Was she laughing the entire time, knowing she was rescuing me while enslaving my sister?
She told me about the men who saved her. Shame, a member of the Soulless Sinners, and Crispin Sinclair.
He was another person who didn’t make sense. He’d walked into this club and forced Pippen to go with him, while threatening Grace’s life, yet he’d risked his own life for Diana.
Because everyone loved Diana.
Everyone wanted her.
“That’s everything,” she said, ending her story with how she had come to be here. In Diamond Creek, Nebraska. In the Silver Shadows’ clubhouse.
Mimic and Kytten.
Her children.
My nephew and niece.
“Would you share your story with me?” she asked.
I’d been quiet while she talked, listening while trying to come up with a way to tell her everything.
“You won’t be happy when you hear my story.” She tilted her head to the side and bit her lip. “After you disappeared, things changed.”
“I’m sorry.”
I didn’t accept her apology; it wasn’t hers to give, and she didn’t yet know what she was apologizing for.
“Why didn’t you come home?” I asked. “When you left Bane, why didn’t you come home?”
Diana dropped her hands to her lap and took a deep breath. “Because I knew I wouldn’t be safe. My children wouldn’t be safe. And the club wouldn’t be safe. Daddy would have gone off half-cocked and probably gotten himself, Zeus, and the others killed.”
I barked out a caustic laugh. I guess I wasn’t so different from my big sister after all.
“Yeah, well, he did that anyway. He and Zeus spent weeks tearing through New York looking for you.”
“I heard,” she whispered.
I told Diana about what life was like after she left. How I was sheltered and locked away in my own way. I knew it wasn’t comparable to what she’d gone through, but it was my experience. For a young girl who was barely a teenager, it was traumatic losing a sister, losing a father.
“He was there, but he wasn’t,” I explained. “He tried until he didn’t.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that when I graduated college, he decided that he would choose a husband for me. Someone he trusted.”
