“You’re planning on a trade,” he concluded.
Yes. That was how he’d help get her back.
He looked at me for a long moment with… I didn’t know what that was. Not blame or anger or menace. Something else entirely different with the same warmness I felt when he kissed me, and it set me spiraling with guilt. “Don’t let them drag you down with them. You still have a soul. Don’t let them taint it. There’s no going back from there.”
My eyes burned with unshed tears. I turned my back to him. I couldn’t let him see any softness in me. Any weakness. However, I wanted to burst into tears. I wanted to beg him to forgive me. What I did was wrong. Ugly. Like what they did to Annie.
“Thank you so much for your fucking concern with my soul. How caring of you! Did you do the same for Annie, too?”
“Cameron—”
“Shut the fuck up.” I had to silence him. There was no room for remorse or guilt. The good in me had to be smothered by the darkness I needed to bear to deal with those monsters.
Dusty might have had nothing to do with Annie’s abduction. He might not have been a Night Skull anymore. But once a Night Skull always a Night Skull. I had to tell myself that to justify what I’d done. What I was about to do.
I had no choice but to go with my plan even if I was going to hell for it. He was my leverage. My only hope to get Annie back.
His life for hers.
CHAPTER 12
Dusty
Cameron left me in the dark. To the cold. To the pain numbing my body on the outside and eating my soul on the inside.
Yes, I did have one. A soul. Burdened by the crimes of Roar. A motherfucking load I carried wherever I went.
As time passed in this shit hole, my body wasn’t the only thing breaking. I was unable to move, but my mind was racing. I had no choice but to come face to face with the truth I never wished to accept.
Annie.
Fifteen. Brunette like her sister. Taken last year. By my own father. Cameron probably knew all that. What she didn’t know was that her sister was taken as a welcome back home gift.
For me.
I cringed at the memory, but it wouldn’t quit playing in my head. A horror movie on repeat. I’d returned from Europe after a couple of months visiting the spreading Night Skulls’ chapters across the continent.
I returned to Rosewood, the massive estate where the Night Skulls lived and did business—my home for the first eighteen years of my life—with a different mind. The decision to ignore everything that bothered me, pretend it didn’t exist, wasn’t difficult anymore.
They threw me an over the top welcome home party full of all kinds of sinful pleasures. I was dazzled. Hypnotized. High on power. Dad was right. I was meant to live a certain life. The time had come for me to accept it. The life of royalty. The whole world was under my feet.
He’d almost won me over. Almost.
I’d never forget the triumphant smile on his face after the party when he brought a little girl to my room. One special gift saved for last for me to unwrap.
She was shaking, her brown eyes big with fear. One look at them and everything changed.
Her feet barely moved toward me. Roar grabbed her by the hand and pulled her to my bed. Then he bragged about how he snatched her in the middle of the day, thinking she would be the best gift to give me.
Just because he could. And he thought I’d enjoy it as much as he did.
“You like brunettes more than blondes, right? She’s a virgin, too. I checked her myself.” He’d cracked a laugh as tears had streamed down her face. “C’mon. Stop whining, bitch.” He’d smacked her with the back of his hand, sending her tumbling on her back.
“Dad!” The only word I’d managed to say.
Another laugh, more like a snort. “Whatever. Enjoy your night.” He’d staggered out of the room, and I’d hurled until my stomach hurt.
The sound of her sobbing and the pleading look in her eyes wouldn’t be erased from my memory until the day I died.
