Page 37 of Brake's Intent

“About two hours, maybe,” he answers and peeks out one eye. “Charlotte liked to play and took her time.”

I nod though anger threatens to take hold again. Clearing my throat, I ask, “The other times they did this to you, how did you hide it from everyone?”

Sighing, Brake turns his head so that his cheek is against the pillow, and he looks directly into my eyes. “I don’t like my birthday. I hated it so even when they couldn’t touch me, I always stayed distant or disappeared altogether for a week or so. I gave myself enough time to heal before returning.”

“Is that what you were going to do this time?”

“No, I wouldn’t have had it in me,” he whispers and closes his eyes.

“It seems we both have a thing about birthdays,” I note.

“Yeah,” he rasps, and we fall into a comfortable silence.

A few minutes later, Faye returns with her arms full. Her eyes go straight to Brake, and she gives him a small smile, saying, “Tyres told me to tell you y’all are having church tomorrow morning and that you’re a dick.”

“Yeah, well, he’s a dick too,” Brake grunts.

Faye works her magic, and once the bandages are in place, she hands Brake a pill, telling him to take it. He looked like he wanted to protest, but with one look at Faye’s face, he kept his mouth shut.

Soon he falls asleep, and not long after, Faye joins him, and finally, I do the same.

CHAPTERTWENTY-TWO

BRAKE

“Let’s get this over with,” Chains slams the gavel down and glances around the table. I watch him as his eyes stop on me. “Yesterday was fucked.”

“You can say that again,” Breaker remarks, leaning back in his chair.

“You should have told us all this shit a long time ago,” Chains continues, ignoring Breaker. “However, last night, after thinking on it, I get why you did what you did, and I damn well appreciate it. But still, you shouldn’t have dealt with that shit alone.”

“We could have put a stop to it,” Ryder adds angrily. “I ended up doing something last night I never thought I’d do, and that’s asking Brielle to put her computer skills to work and work alongside Fuse.”

“You find anything that Law’s men didn’t already have?” Tyres mutters and holds up the file in which he’s talking about.

“Oh, you can say that I have that.” Ryder nods to Fuse, who opens a folder in front of him and slides it our way. “Seems my sister’s mother’s side of the family was fucked up more than I thought.” He shakes his head and points at the folder. “Perrin Tremblay is one serious psychopath. With Brielle’s help, Fuse was able to trace the phones that Pitch Black and the others got off them last night.”

“Yeah, and next time someone comes at this club, I swear, I’m just gonna give ‘em straight over to Bart and let his ass eat ‘em,” Pitch Black grunts. “Lynch, Speed, and I spent all night out there cuttin’ and grindin’. Damn gator is out there having a meal fit for Thanksgiving.”

“Thanks for the imagery,” Shock mutters.

“How about we stay on topic,” Chains grunt. “Fuse, what did you and Brielle find?”

“Perrin Tremblay is fucked up like Ryder said. Married a woman named Claire Dumas. But the interesting part of this is that he’d had his eyes on another woman and intended to marry her. However, Ryder’s dad married her first.”

“So, all this bullshit is because of a vendetta?” Breaker asks, cocking a brow.

“That’s what it seems like, but it’s not all of it,” Fuse says and nods to Ryder. “I’ll let you tell the next part ‘cause it fuckin’ gave me nightmares last night.”

“Same with Brielle,” Ryder mutters and glances around at all of us. “A deal was struck between my mother and Perrin. She promised to give him a son if he would leave my ol’ man alone. In the end, she ended up dying because of this, and I’ll admit, I wonder if Reno knew any of this. The next thing that happened was Perrin forced our dad to marry his sister, Blanche.”

I zone out and stare at the open folder as he goes on. But I don’t need to hear the rest of it. I know what happened afterward. My mother and her sister came along. The two of them grew up. One had Breaker, the other had us, though not before fuckin’ her uncle and having Charlotte.

Charlotte loved telling the story every year. She reminded me why my mother sold me off and let others hurt me. All because the deal was struck for a firstborn son in each family. Victoria had a boy first. Chains had twins, one of them being a boy. Breaker had a boy. Tyres had Wren, but first was Ike though none of us knew until Rissa came back.

Then more kids came along, and Charlotte wanted to demand more torment because she wanted what they all had and she couldn’t. I know this because she told me Perrin forced her to have her tubes tied, or whatever they call it, to keep it from happening. He did this in order to fuck her himself. I don’t know how the old bastard could do it, but I guess a man in his seventies can still get it up.

“What happened to Perrin’s wife, Claire?” Speed asks, pulling me out of my thoughts.

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