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I don’t like that there’s a stranger in our home. Our sanctuary. Our fortress.
I don’t like that there’s awomanhere.
Other gangs do that. Fuck around with women in a variety of sadistic ways. Take the ones that matter to their enemies as prisoners. Punish betrayal by using their bodies. Enact retribution by defiling them, destroying them, degrading them.
But we don’t. Maddoc has never sanctioned that sort of thing for the Reapers, and I like it that way.
I have no qualms about hurting others for our own gain. I don’t crave it either. I simply do what’s most expedient. But I can also admire that there’s a certain beauty to the infliction of pain when it’s done well.
But regardless, the less association we have with women, the better. The past proves that.
Mine, certainly.
Maddoc’s, most definitely.
Although I suppose I can see how Dante has yet to learn that lesson.
I roll my shoulders, then my neck, trying to loosen the muscles. I’m tempted to jump back up to the bar and force my body to obey me. There was a time I would have, even if it incapacitated me afterward.
Instead, I close my eyes and take control of my breath. My heart rate. Force relaxation into each muscle group in my body, one by one. I retreat into stillness as I remind myself that there’s a time to demand compliance, but there’s also a time to forge an alternate path.
Watching Maddoc build the Reapers up from nothing taught me that.
Being trusted as his second—moving in here with him and Dante five years ago, just after Maddoc began formalizing the loose association of criminals whose loyalty he’d earned into our current organization—is the single stable touchstone in my life. The only one I need.
I open my eyes, finally under control again, and start methodically tidying up the equipment I’ve been using. Re-aligning the floor mats. Adjusting the weight plates in their rack until each is turned to face the proper direction. Blocking out the fact that there’s still something out of place.
Intrusive.
Riley.
I press my lips together tightly, then force them to relax again. Maddoc’s made a decision, and if I didn’t trust his decisions, I wouldn’t be here.
In the beginning, he poured everything he had into keeping control of the Reapers. Dante and I helped him maintain the power he’d built up through any means necessary, and it forged the three of us into an unbreakable unit.
The three of us.
Only us.
No one else has ever been brought to the house on an open-ended basis like this. Maddoc and Dante have both had women over for their own pleasure, of course, and we have a space here in the basement for those times it’s been necessary to bring people in for interrogations or beatings.
Occasionally, Maddoc will even allow someone to visit this house for a business deal.
But no one else has ever lived with us. He’s never moved anyone else in.
Why now?
Why her?
He should know better. Women can’t be trusted. Of course,no oneshould be trusted until they’ve proven themselves, and in twenty-six years, the only two people I’ve ever come across who are worthy of trust are the two I call my brothers. But Maddoc should’ve learned his lesson about falling for a woman’s lies the last time he got entangled with one.
Sienna Morgan.
She’s the only bad decision I’ve ever seen him make, and when she broke his trust, it ended badly for all of us.
I don’t want to see that happen again… but the cracks are already there.
Dante didn’t just fuck this girl. He was affected by her. I can tell.
