Page 54 of I am Dressed in Sin (Death by Daybreak MC 2)
I cock a brow.
“I knew you were old, but not that old,” I quip, and Beast actually … well, his shoulders shudder slightly. Is he laughing? He turns on some grainy old music. “And wow, you’re a romantic, too? On top of everything? Is there anything you don’t do?”
“Right now, Gidge?” he asks, throwing a look over his shoulder. “You.”
Ouch.
Beast comes over to the bed, and I swear, there’s a seismic shift in that room. The tension between us is hot and sticky, these long threads that threaten to tangle me up. When he sits down next to me, the mattress dents and I end up sort of tumbling into him.
He lets out a violent exhale and swipes his hand down his face.
This self-imposed celibacy isn’t easy on him either, much as he’d like to pretend otherwise.
“Gaz isn’t a threat by himself,” he admits, and I realize that the music and the closed doors and the proximity to me on the bed are all distractions to keep anyone from listening in on us. I mean, I knew that, but it’s still disappointing. “But he’s got a following. He is Cat’s son, after all.”
“And I’m his daughter,” I say, in a tone that brooks no argument.
Me versus Gaz.
Probably about as exciting as the club versus the mafia.
“Mm.” Beast pauses again, his eyes focused on the ceiling and not on me. It’s impossible to ignore the shape of his shoulders beneath his leather cut, the strength in his arms, the snippets of heated memory where he’s rutting between my thighs. I exhale and shove some of my dark hair away from my face. “We gotta be wary, Gidge. Crown spins a good story, but if anyone looks too close, there are parts that don’t add up.”
“We can’t be at war within the club and still fight the mafia,” I muse, and Beast gives a slow, easy nod. Wrapping my fingers around the neck of the bottle, I lift it to my lips, contemplating the questions that I want to ask. How much do I really want to know?
The truth?
Fucking everything.
I turn to Beast.
“Cat came for me,” I say, trying the words out and seeing how they fit. He beats my dog. He burns my clothes. He let my sisters die. I don’t understand. “Why?”
Beast doesn’t smile this time, just watches me from those expressive eyes of his. The song on the gramophone ends, but it continues to make a whirring sound to help fill the silence.
“Cat is your father, sugar,” he tells me carefully. There’s violence coiled inside of this man, just waiting to be unleashed. By … me? I take yet another drink, my head spinning and buzzing with alcohol. “Crown is wrong about the world.” He pauses here and shakes his head. “It ain’t black and white. Your father is as gray as they come.”
I look back down at the rug, imagining Queenie’s surety as she pushed me into the pantry and locked the door. She had faith in me. She sacrificed herself to keep me alive. Because if she’d gone into the pantry, those men would’ve looked for her. They were there for her, and she knew it as surely as she knew all things. The way she always knew there was no boogeyman beneath my bed or in my closet. No, the boogeymen were downstairs, smoking cigarettes and drinking beer. At the clubhouse fucking groupies or digging holes behind Gram’s place. They were out in the night, powerful men making powerful deals and not caring who they hurt in the process.
Innocent souls like Queenie, like Posey.
“Kian never raped Queenie.” It’s the first time I’ve said it aloud to anyone. It feels right to say it. My sister carved her name into that baseboard because she was at the Artefact, at a party—with Kian. She was hooking up with him because she loved him. Nobody in her position would take the risk if she didn’t. Kian and Queenie could not have been anymore wrong for one another and yet, they were willing to risk and eventually give their lives for a chance at being together.
“He did not,” Beast growls, like the admission hurts him somehow.
“You killed him.” It’s a guess, but it’s probably true, isn’t it? Because who else but Beast would be there to help with the torture and murder of a rival’s heir?
“I did.” His voice is hollow and dark, devoid of that sweet honeyed Southern drawl.
It’s disturbing to hear him admit it. I glance over, not for the first time realizing how truly fucked-up this situation is. Beast is dangerous as hell. He’s a stranger. He’s sixteen years older than I am. He kills people when Cat tells him to—even if he knows they’re innocent. Well, okay, so I doubt that Kian Wolfe was ever innocent in the most basic sense of the word. “He was ruthless.” That’s what Grey told me.
