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All of them.
All of his men had turned their backs on him, had been plotting his demise.
Then all of them had taken a part in his murder.
And then my beating.
No fucking wonder I'd had so much damage.
I felt an odd calmness settling over me as I looked at the knife, twirling it in my hand, imagining my uncle's blood all over the blade, my own blood mingled with it.
"Give it up, Rye," Wayne said, rolling his eyes. "You ain't never spilled blood beyond a busted nose in your life. You aren't going to use that on me."
He was right about one thing and wrong about the other.
It was true I'd never stabbed or shot anyone before. I had never needed anything more than my fists.
But I'd also never needed to avenge the death of the only decent man I'd ever known.
So I was, abso-fucking-lutely going to use the son of a bitch's knife on him.
Then I did, pulling back and stabbing the blade into his heart like he had done to my uncle, then pulling it out and slicing it down his cheek like he had done to me. And then I sat there, watching as he choked on his own blood, watching his chest hitch in the same unnatural way my uncle's had for a long couple of minutes before he died.
Hell, his body was almost exactly in the same spot Seth's had been when he'd died.
I got up, washed my hands, tucked the pocketknife into a bag along with whatever shit I could, including a huge supply of cash Seth kept to pay his suppliers then stored it in my uncle's piece of shit, only half restored Chevy Chevelle.
But I didn't leave. Not yet. Oh, no.
Because Wayne wasn't the only man who needed to pay.
They all did.
That night, briefly, I stopped being me.
All the grief, the love, the betrayal, it swirled together until it became a bigger part of me than I was anymore.
That night I took off on foot and I exacted revenge.
For my uncle.
For myself.
For the dead sense of loyalty inside me.
The second man got the same treatment as Wayne. The third got stabbed ten times as the rage started to surface. The next was missing the things he had used to betray my uncle with when I was done with him: his tongue, his hands, his balls. He'd died before I even got to the part where I was removing his body parts like a medical school cadaver. By the last man, I was pretty sure all that was left was a bloody pile of meat, nothing recognizable as even human anymore.
Done, dripping blood and reeking of death and sweat, I climbed in my uncle's car and I got the fuck out of the town I knew would only let me be the monster I had become that night instead of the man I knew I was underneath it all.
I got out of Detroit with a scar on my face and some dark marks on my soul that wouldn't let me sleep at night, images of my uncle taking his last breaths as he tried to warn me of the snakes in our grass and images of my hand shoving a knife into the heart of a man who had been family to me and watching him choke on his own blood, eyes popping out of sockets, tongues slicing off, insides becoming outsides, and death becoming nothing but sport were memories always sticking to the inside of my eyelids when I tried to close them. But I figured that was a fair penance to pay.
The Chevelle died on me in some shitty part of town in Jersey.
I figured it was fate, got a crummy apartment over a liquor store with the money I had, and started working at an auto body shop. That was how I met Cash. We hit it off. He brought me around the club. Reign gave me a nod when I showed interest in being a prospect. From there, it was all history. I had a new family. I had men who were loyal to death and beyond.
The day I got patched-in was the day I went to the tattoo shop and got my back piece started- the snake and the obnoxious, ostentatious gilded pocketknife stabbed through his head. As soon as I could, I got the quote as well, forever marking myself, reminding myself that there was nothing in life more important than loyalty.
Snakes and snitches get it where they slither.
So when Reign gave me an assignment, I did what I was fucking told, no questions, no hesitations, no lip.
It wasn't an option to not do it.
There was no choice.I didn't tell Maze that though.
"It's just how it is, honey," I said instead.
"I don't think I need to tell you how screwed up that is," she said, her voice still soft. "To not have a mind of your own. That's so messed up."
