a dirty yellow tea dress with faded tiny red printed flowers scattered all over it.
“You came here as a child? I don’t understand. Where are we?”
Come on, Reign, keep him talking, distract him. Do anything but be his fucking victim.
“Oh, we are still in the city of sin, but here the sinners either pay or find their redemption. God only forgives the worthy. That’s why I’m here to help Him continue His work. I too lost my way once, but God granted me redemption and spared my life. I am now simply His vessel for testing others,” he explains, moving toward me until he is standing on the altar, looking down at me.
“Garrett, you have to let me go. I need to go to the hospital.” I try to plead with him, but he shakes his head and speaks like he is talking to an errant child.
“It’s all part of your purification. Be strong and you’ll pull through, then you can take your rightful place at my side as my wife in the Garden of Eden.” He smiles, dropping to his knees beside me and leaning down to kiss me.
I shake my head without thought, which has anger washing over his face a moment before his fist smashes into my stomach, painfully forcing the air from my lungs.
“The only reason you’re being so defiant is that you prostituted yourself out and now feel sullied and unworthy. You are right in your thinking, Reign. Biker whores are only good for two things, fucking and sucking. Is that what you want, Raindrop? To be a biker whore that gets passed around on every dick until you’re too old and they toss you out on your hooker heels where you start selling yourself on the streets?”
“No, Garrett, that’s not it—” He cuts me off, too far gone in his rant to even hear me.
“This is all your fault, you know. Everything was fine until you came along and started to unravel things. We could have been happy, but now I have to take time away, so I can wash the taint from your soul.”
I don’t bother trying to tell him he was the one to come along or that I’ll take my tarnished soul over his absence of one.
He seethes. “And now you dragged me back to this place, back to Carnage when I finally made a life for myself.” My mind is stuck on the word Carnage.
“What do you know about Carnage?”
He smirks at me then, and there is something about that look that’s familiar, but not because I’ve seen it on him. Because I’ve seen it on someone else.
“Oh, my god!”
“I always knew you were a smart cookie. Shame you had to go and spoil yourself, and with my son, of all people. It doesn’t matter now. You’re mine and he can’t have you. None of them can.”
Chapter Forty-Five
Saint
We end up meeting Reign’s brothers back at the clubhouse after the cops made it perfectly clear we weren’t welcome at the station anymore. It didn’t matter that all this happened because of their colossal fuck up.
As the gates swing open, I get the first glimpse of Reign’s brothers since her kidnapping and can see the toll it has taken on them. They walk right up to us, not intimidated in the least, but then they aren’t exactly small guys.
“Welcome to Carnage,” Priest says to Owen. “Sorry it’s not under better circumstances. Follow me.” He turns, expecting them to follow. They do, with Bates and me behind them. Now isn’t the time for a pissing contest.
We take them into the room usually reserved for church. It’s gotta be the first time a cop has ever been invited over the threshold, but that just goes to show how vital Reign is not only to us but the club.
Tate introduces himself to the club members sitting around the table, waiting for everyone to arrive. “I’m Tate. This is Owen. We’re the oldest and youngest of Reign’s brothers.” Tate stands against the far wall with a scowl on his face as Owen takes an empty seat that Erza offers to him.
Priest briefly introduces everyone to the brothers, then goes over everything we have figured out so far. Owen looks white as a ghost when we get to the part about the blood-soaked sheets, but Tate, well, Tate looks about ready to destroy this room and everyone in it.
“Now, tell us what you know.”
Surprisingly, it’s Owen that speaks up.
“Going all the way back to the beginning, everything