Page 107 of Queen of Anarchy (Dirty Broken Savages 2)

39

River

HavingHannah in my arms is enough to make my eyes burn and my chest ache. It’s been so long, and she’s different now, but she feels the same. She even smells the same somehow, and if it wasn’t for the fact that we’re older and just got done yelling at each other, it almost feels like we’ve never been apart at all.

“It wasn’t supposed to be your job to protect me,” she murmurs, letting out a shuddering breath. “You needed protecting too. Webothneeded someone to protect us. We were both just kids, River. None of that should’ve happened. And none of it was your fault.”

I swallow hard past the lump in my throat and tighten my grip on my sister, keeping her as close as I can. This is the first time I’ve been able to hug her since I realized she’s still alive. Holding her like this unlocks all the pain and grief that I’ve held in my heart for all these years.

All the time I’ve missed her. All the times I’ve wished I could ask her for advice or have her tell me off for being reckless. I kept her picture to remind me of why I was on this mission, why it mattered, but all I really wanted was to have her back.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper, my voice heavy with emotion. “I’m so sorry. I wish I could have been there with you. I wish you didn’t have to go through all of that alone.”

“I do too. I wish I could have been with you. I wished it every day.”

She squeezes me tightly and then steps back, slowly ending the hug. The anger from before has faded, and now it’s just the two of us. Both more alike than either of us would probably admit, headstrong and stubborn, but always oriented around each other.

I can’t stop myself from staring at her, devouring her with my gaze like I’m trying to make up for all the lost time when we were apart. My sister is here in front of me, tired and a little worn down, but alive.

She looks me over, and I wonder what I look like to her now. Silver hair, scars, tattoos. I’m not the same girl who was taken and held captive with her years ago, just like she’s not the same girl who I could have sworn died in that shitty house where they kept us.

We’ve both grown up and changed, molded by what happened to us.

“So…” Hannah takes another cleansing breath, smoothing her hair back and twisting the strands around her fingers in a familiar gesture. For a moment, she looks so much like her old self that it makes my heart ache. “What have you been doing all this time? Definitely not staying out of trouble, I know that much.”

I huff a half laugh, not sure how much to tell her. While she’s been forced into playing house with Julian Maduro, I’ve been doing pretty much the exact opposite. I’ve had to do a lot of things to get to where I am, to mark every name off that list I kept. It’s not something I’d tell just anyone.

But Hannah isn’t just anyone, and pretty much everything I’ve done since the day I was released from that house was done in her name. In the name of getting revenge for what I thought they did to her. What theydiddo to her, even if she survived it.

“I’ve been… busy,” I answer slowly. “I spent the first year or so after they let me go in a daze. I didn’t have a purpose, and I didn’t know what to do or how to feel. You were gone. At least, I thought you were. I was keeping myself numb, I guess. So I wouldn’t have to feel the pain of how badly I’d failed you.”

“River, you didn’t—”

“I know.” I cut her off. “I know you didn’t die, and I know you’ll say it wouldn’t have been my fault if you had, but… that’s how I felt. I felt like I had let you down or made things worse, or…” I shake my head and swallow hard. “I didn’t know where to go from there. Whenever I thought about it, I just got so sad. And then pissed off. Eventually, I let that angry feeling take over, and it got me out of the numbness. Gave me something to do with my life that felt like it mattered.”

“What do you mean?” she asks.

“I killed them, Hannah,” I say in a quiet voice. “Every single one of the men who kept us trapped and put their hands on us. They’re all dead.”

Hannah’s eyebrows shoot up toward her hairline. She blinks at me as she processes my words, and then a pleased, vicious smile spreads across her face. “Even Lorenzo?”

I nod. “Even him. I didn’t really know what I was doing back then, so it was… messy. But I took him down first.”

She tugs at her bottom lip, her gaze going out of focus as if she’s lost in some memory. “Holy shit. I knew he died, but I had no idea you were the one who had killed him. Julian and Natalie thought it was a hit from a rival gang or something. He had a lot of enemies.”

Well, that answers the question of whether anyone suspected me in his death. I make a mental note to tell the guys about that.

“He deserved it,” I say, an edge to my voice. “Whether it was me or someone else. But I’m glad it was me.”

“I’m glad it was you too.” Hannah nods decisively. “Hediddeserve it. They all did for what they did to us.” She gets that faraway look in her eyes again as she adds, “I wish I could have seen it. I wish I could have been there.”

More of the tension bleeds out of me just from hearing her say that. I didn’t think she was going to condemn me or anything for getting my revenge—ourrevenge—on those fuckers, but it’s nice to hear all the same. It’s clear that she’s stayed with Julian all this time because of Cody, not because she’s developed some kind of sick feelings for him. She might be trapped in an impossible situation, but her spirit isn’t broken. Which means there’s still hope.

“I wish you could have been there too,” I tell her. “I wish they could have looked up and seen the two of us in their last shitty moments. So they’d know who was responsible for it. That they were paying for their sins in their own blood.”

Those words settle in the air around us as silence falls in the kitchen for a moment. Then my sister smiles at me, reaching out to tug on a lock of my silver hair. “I like this.”

“Thanks.” I chuckle. “It feels likeme.”

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