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“Big difference. What happened to Bodie was tragic. Tragic and unfair and so far out of her control.” Archie's chin wobbled as she turned her head to look at Jasper. “Our story isn't as forgiving. It starts with a traumatic childhood and evil people, and culminates in blood, pain, and murder.”
“It's not finished yet, kitten.” Jasper cuddled her, the savage glint of vengeance in his eyes. Yet for all the hostility in his expression, his hands were quiet and gentle on his submissive, providing no insight into what they were truly capable of achieving.
Connie worried for them both. Anarchy had already proved she would kill to protect the man she loved, and Jasper was beyond skilled in the art of death. Even though his parents had pulled a bait and switch to escape meeting justice, no one rested easily knowing Dominic and Rita were unleashed. Atticus had sucked Jasper and Archie into the bosom of his security company, and Connie was aware that Anarchy now had access to a shitload of information that could be put to use tracking the loathsome assholes who'd tortured Jasper as a boy.
It wouldn't take much to have her friends tumbling into hell with a single misstep.
“No, it's not. I'll find them,” Archie told him earnestly. “When I do, we'll make them pay for everything they did to you. I'm being cryptic, I'm sorry, Thane. Let me start back at the beginning when I walked up to the bar at Avalon as my Master here came out of the walkway. My heart fell out of my chest and left a bloody smear on the floor as it skidded to a halt at Jasper's feet.”
“Been there,” Thane muttered, squeezing Connie's thigh.
“When Bodie was hospitalized after the attack, I spent so much time with Jasper in the waiting room. I'd made up my mind I was in love with him, and I wasn't backing down. For the next nine months, I became his shadow. Did my best to be someone I wasn't and turned myself into the perfect submissive just so I could be near him.” She smiled ruefully. “Backfired, totally. Jasper got it in his head he'd be noble and cut me loose, which of course destroyed me.”
“I got you a Daddy Dom to play with,” her Master reminded her. “Not that it helped.”
“I didn't want Atticus—no offense, Sir,” she told the smug giant. “All I wanted was to show Jasper I could handle his sadism. That we'd be perfect together if he stopped seeing me as sweetness and light, something he could damage, and believed I could be everything. Long story short, Jasper left. I went home and decomposed into my couch for a while until Connie and Atticus dragged me out. Jasper came home and claimed me.”
“Wise man.”
“Around the same time, Bodie hadn't been feeling well. She ended up in hospital, and found out she was pregnant. That the pregnancy might not be viable to full-term, and she was all damaged internally. It was at the same time that Jasper's parents got back in touch after like twenty years.” She rolled her beautiful brown eyes in disgust.
“This is probably where I should fill you in on said parental figures, Thane. They are narcissistic scientists, child abusers with no conscience. Murderers.” Jasper's tone was dead, colder than ice. He meant every word he said. “Anything you can think of that can be done to a human being, to a child, they did. Dominic impregnated women, then took the babies so his bitch wife could train them, drug them, test them in her lab. We were kept in isolation, no bonds were allowed to form. Life came down to drugs, training, and pain. We were used to rape and kill.”
“That's enough, Sir.” Anarchy nuzzled against his throat in comfort. “We'll find them, I promise.”
“We will. I started getting phone calls from my father. I'd run away from that hellhole when I was still wet behind the ears, trying to build a life I could be proud of. Dominic used Archie against me—my father wanted me to go home and be his stud dog to produce the next generation of children to be fucked up beyond repair in that mansion. He’d have taken her, raped her, bred her, and made me watch. There was no way I was doing anything for him.”
Connie gauged Thane's reaction to the slow unfolding of the tale. His body was still, his muscles fairly relaxed. He was drinking in every word without judgement, so it seemed, until she met his eyes. The amber burned, the dark specks she found so fascinating melted away into the liquid fire. He wasn't as unaffected as she first thought, he was just utterly calm under pressure.
God help them all if they found his trigger button.
*
If he was honest, this wasn't what he'd been anticipating. If it wasn't for the look in Jasper's eyes and the way his sub comforted him, Thane might have believed it was a dark and depraved joke, but the more farfetched and ludicrous the story became, the more he was leaning toward taking the sadist at his word.
When he met Connie's eyes for a brief moment, she confirmed it all.
Trying to imagine what he would do if someone threatened to kidnap and rape Connie wasn't pretty. By nature, he wasn't a violent man. His training had encouraged him to embrace his more primal instincts, sure. He wouldn’t deny it. Killing on a regular basis had hardened parts of him, skewing the way he looked at the world, but blood didn’t drive him.
That would change if a gun was pointed in Connie's direction. Oh yeah, all bets would be off. His rifle might be in storage, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have other weapons concealed around the house. He’d never had a woman to love or lose until Connie, but the idea of her dying struck red on the emotional upheaval scale.
Connie was worth dying for.
“They didn't take you?” he asked Archie, pleased his demeanor was controlled.
Her little hand clutched the front of Jasper's shirt. “No. There was an ambush one night when we left Avalon. Atticus was helping us figure things out, working on a plan of action, but everything went to hell. Jasper's father sent two homegrown assassins after us, and had one of my colleagues at work on his payroll. They killed one of Atticus's men and tossed him into the road in front of Jasper's truck.”
Jesus wept. What kind of family did Jasper come from, the fucking mafia?
“I got out of the truck after we hit the body, dragged Archie into the driver's seat and told her to go.” Jasper shot her a baleful glance. “Someone was in shock and sat there like a fucking deer in the headlights. Eventually, she took off, leaving me with my half-brothers. I did damage to both, but I ended up flat on my back, paralyzed from spinal shock.”
Anarchy picked up the thread now, and she didn't look well. She was pale, swallowing nervously. Even the reassurances of her lover weren't enough to soothe the nerves riled by rehashing events. “I did as I was told and drove away. We'd been trying to call Atticus, but Jasper’s half-brothers had caused carnage at Jasper's house and my apartment, using their associate to break in and set the alarms off. Atticus's teams were stretched thin, but I got through to him and he told me to go back to Avalon. So I turned the truck around and headed back to the club, but…” Archie trailed off, and for a moment, he thought she might be sick. “When I got back to where I'd left Jasper, he was down. On the ground, not moving. His brother was standing over him with a knife.”
A sense of dread sank his stomach like a lead balloon. Did he really want to know what came next? If she said the words he thought she would, he would be an accessory after the fact. But when he studied Connie's face and saw the pride in her eyes shining for her friend, he realized he needed to know. He needed to be able to share the weight Connie was being crushed under.
“You killed him.” Thane said gently when no one seemed willing to admit it.
The warm brown eyes he associated with Archie were as hard as onyx when she met his without flinching. The nerves, the sickness…all gone, buried beneath a mountain of protective female. She bared her teeth. “I put my foot on the gas and ran that fucker over. I killed him before he could hurt Jasper any more. I'd do it again.”
