Why had she thought he cared? He only cared about her answers. Someone sobbed. It sounded like Lena, but maybe it was her own voice. She was hurting so bad she couldn't focus. What had Absinthe asked her? She just had to get it over with. Even if they killed her, it would be better than this.
"What did you ask me?"
"Are you still working for the owners of the Ghost Club? Did they send you here to get information on us? On Czar?"
That voice sliced into her brain one more time and her stomach heaved. She vomited all over her lap, all over Reaper. His cut. His disgusting colors that meant so much more to him than any woman ever could.
Someone pressed a cold cloth to her mouth. To her face. They were a blur, and she didn't care who it was. As soon as she could speak, she answered. "No. Of course not. I ran from them. They're trying to kill me."
There was silence. "She's telling the truth," Absinthe said. "No one could lie through that. She's not working for them."
"I'm getting her out of there," Reaper said.
"Finish it," Czar said. "We've gone this far. We have to know."
"Why do they want you dead?" Absinthe asked.
She felt hands working on the bonds on her ankles. She was too far removed from them all to know who it was. "I found construction plans on the floor of the wine cellar, for tunnels below the club, and I was crouched down on the floor looking at them because they were so cool. Two men came in to get wine and they were laughing, talking about scoring big, taking some big shot's wife and how they had him by the balls. I didn't think they saw me, but then one came back as I was heading up to the bar. I got out of there. By the time I decided to leave for good and went back to my apartment, I found my roommate dead. They'd done horrible things to her. I knew they thought she was me, so I ran."
Her stomach lurched again. Her eyes felt like they were bleeding. Tears tracked down her face. "I thought I'd found a family. I thought I had a man. God, how could I have been so stupid? You aren't decent people, any of you. You're no better than they are."
"She's done." Reaper lifted her into his arms, cradling her against his chest.
She tried to push him away. "Get off me. God, you want the truth? How about how I was real and you were fake? You fucked me and left, you bastard, but then it wasn't real to you, not ever." She swung at him. Connected. There wasn't much room and she was weak, so it didn't do more than bounce off his chest. He didn't even flinch. He ignored her struggles and started out of the room.
"I'm sorry, Reaper, I tried to be as gentle as I could," Absinthe said. "It's hard controlling it when someone holds out. She was holding out to protect herself, not because she was spying on us." He sounded ravaged. Destroyed.
Anya felt destroyed. She wanted to push Reaper away, but she didn't have the strength. She couldn't even see, just blurred images. She was covered in vomit, but thankfully, so was he. She hoped his colors were ruined. She hated the sight of them.
Reaper carried her up the stairs and into the bathroom. "I'm just going to clean you up, Anya," he said.
She couldn't stand so he set her on the bathroom floor. Immediately he tugged off his jacket and shirt, tossing them into the corner. Her shirt followed. His boots and jeans were gone, then her shoes and jeans. She didn't even protest. She barely was aware of what he was doing and she didn't care. Her head pounded out of control. She kept her eyes closed, because it was disorienting to open them with her vision so blurred.
Water hit her, hot and cleansing, pouring over her as Reaper leaned her against the wall of the shower. Her legs wouldn't hold her and she started to slide down the wall. Hands reached out and caught her. The water kept pouring over her body, washing the scent of vomit from her skin. She pushed at the hands, wanting to turn around. Wanting him off her skin.
"Get him off me," she whispered, desperate to have Reaper removed. "I don't want any part of him touching me." She wrapped her arms around herself and once more tried to collapse.
Reaper caught her in his arms and stepped out of the stall. Savage was there, wrapping a towel around him while Lena wrapped a towel around Anya. Reaper didn't miss a step, even with the towels draped over them; he stalked down the hall to the bedroom. All the kindness in the world wasn't going to fix this, and he couldn't blame her. She was right in her assessment of him--of the club. They protected their own. She hadn't been included in that, not even by him.
Anya didn't burrow close against his chest. She didn't turn her face into him. She turned away from him. She didn't fight him, she lay passive and broken in his arms. Her words echoed in his head. It was the only thing he'd heard after the interrogation. The only thing. Get him off me. I don't want any part of him touching me.
She would leave and he would lose the only woman capable of saving him. Of living with a damaged, broken man. He didn't know anything other than the club. His sole purpose had been protecting the club members. He had done what he always did and in doing so, had watched them torture an innocent woman. It wasn't like there would be permanent damage. She would have a migraine, possibly for a couple of days, but then she would be fine. Fine without him.
"Reaper? Get these down her." Steele thrust four round pills into his hand. He was their acknowledged doctor. He knew more about healing the human body than most doctors. He'd been given specialized training once it was recognized he had a rare gift for healing. He'd been taken every day to do his studies with four of the most brilliant surgeons in the country. He devoured books at an astonishing speed and retained what he read. He had become a doctor at the age of sixteen and apprenticed under the four men, each sending for him daily and returning him back to the school in the evenings.
Reaper accepted the pills and put them on the bedside table. He finished drying Anya off while Lana pulled the privacy screens to ensure the room stayed dark even in the morning. He sat on the bed, stretching his legs out, his back to the headboard and then pulled her to him so she was forced into a half-sitting position, her body between his legs.
"You have to take these." He pushed the pills against her lips.
She shoved at his hand. "Don't want anything from you. Just go away."
"That's not going to happen. Take the pills. They'll help." He kept her prisoner in his arms, caging her against his chest.
She took the path of least resistance and tossed back the pills, following them with the water from the bottle he forced to her lips. He let her slide down into the bed, but positioned her head on his lap, his hand stroking her dark cloud of hair. It was falling out of the roped crown she had chosen to wear to work. He pushed his fingers into the thick mass, finding pins and pulling them loose to ease the weave, hoping to help with the headache.
"I know you're upset with me, Anya, and you have every right to be. I should have just asked the questions myself."
She remained silent, eyes closed, but he knew by her breathing she wasn't asleep. Her face was pinched with pain, and she rocked her body back and forth as if that could ease the torment of the headache.
"Would you have told me the truth if I'd just asked?" It was important for him to know if they could have avoided Absinthe questioning her, using his gift against her. Absinthe wouldn't have used that razor technique had she answered him and told him her name. He would have just gently pushed as he normally did when the club needed something.
Anya didn't answer Reaper immediately. Her lashes fluttered and eventually she gave a little shake of her head, her fist knotting in the sheets and pulling the hem against her mouth.
"The owners of the Ghost Club are targeting the families of club presidents. They spy on the club members to get dirt on them. They use gambling debts against them."
"Don't talk to me."
"Anya, they take the wife or daughter. If they aren't paid, they kill the women by cutting them up into little pieces. I imagine that was done to your roommate."
She winced, but pulled the sheet over her eyes. "I don't want to hear this."
"That night I came back
and wanted you fired, I'd rescued a woman and her daughter. The hit squad was already there, and I interfered. Took a knife to do it. Now, they have another woman. She just finished chemo. They have to be stopped."
"And you thought I was helping them. That's what all of you thought of me. That I'd help these horrible people cut up women. Please go away. I'll be out of here in the morning." Her voice was muffled and it sounded as if she was crying again. He felt her breath on his thighs. He felt the wet of her tears and it gutted him. He deserved the pain, she didn't.
"I'm not going anywhere, Anya. Get that through your head and don't bother putting energy into fighting me on it." He massaged her scalp slowly, gently, wishing it helped ease the pain slicing through her head.
He let the silence stretch out, hoping she'd fall asleep. She didn't. He didn't. He stared at the wall, his fingers moving in her hair. He might have needed that touch more than she did, he only knew he couldn't stop. He needed her to make it through the night. Through another day. She'd said they were as bad as those targeting innocent women. Were they? He was. He knew he was--he'd shaped himself into a cold-blooded killer so the others could have life. Maybe someday live free.
"When we were children in Russia, we were taken from our homes, our parents murdered because they opposed a man by the name of Sorbacov. He was smooth and charming with his wife and children in public, but in private, he had certain proclivities. His appetite ran to really young boys. Torture and even snuff films. He liked to see girls tortured. He enjoyed watching them killed during sex. He surrounded himself, in one of the four schools he started, with like-minded men and women. Sick bastards that enjoyed inflicting pain."
He fell silent again, staring at the wall, seeing nothing but Anya's face as she sat in that chair beside Absinthe. So pale. Chin up. Defiant. Alone. His heart had stuttered. Melted. His stomach had cramped and he'd wanted to vomit right along with her. He'd let her go through that alone. He should have held her in his arms. He should have sat with her, his hand on her, connecting them. He should have done something to make her understand that truth was necessary to them, because they couldn't afford a spy in their camp. It wouldn't be tolerated. More, they didn't know any other way than what they'd grown up with.
"I was four years old when I was taken there. Savage was two. We had two older sisters. We came from a family of privilege and to see our parents murdered in front of us, and then to be taken to a place with thick walls, few windows and a dungeon of sorts in the basement, was terrifying. There were nearly three hundred children brought into the school over the years. To be accurate, two hundred and eighty-seven children. Eighteen survived."
Her hand moved on his thigh. A small brush of her fingers, but she was listening to him. He didn't know why he was telling her, and he'd never repeat his story in the light of day. Demons ruled him, demons he'd found inside of himself and deliberately cultivated. He'd fed that darkness, needing it, without knowing, when he was so young, what the consequences would be.
Reaper picked up her fist, opening the fingers so he could press a kiss into her palm. "You wondered why we don't think about nudity. They didn't let us wear clothes. We didn't have a bathroom. Often we had to watch when they hurt others. They taught us control of our bodies by forcing us to have sex with older men and women and then with younger ones. If we failed in our control, we were savagely beaten. If our partner failed to arouse us, they were savagely beaten."
He pressed her fingers to his mouth, his teeth scraping gently against the pads. "My sisters were brutally murdered trying to stop Sorbacov and his friends from taking Savage and me up to the rooms where they film the torture and rape of children. They left their bodies on the dungeon floor for two days. We were returned bloody and traumatized. You can imagine what it was like to have our sisters lying dead on top of everything else. If Czar hadn't stepped in, we both would have lost our sanity."
He wasn't altogether certain he hadn't lost his sanity that day. He remembered the pain and humiliation. He remembered rage and guilt because he couldn't stop them from hurting his younger brother, and he'd been only four. He also knew that was the first time he became aware of the darkness in him, a place he could go to be able to do whatever was necessary to stop men like Sorbacov.
"I don't know why I'm telling you this. I've never told anyone else. It isn't so you'll understand what we did in order to protect ourselves, it's more the need to have you know me. I wanted you fired to protect you. I've never had a normal erection. Not one I didn't order up to get a job done. I've never been all over a woman the way I was with you. Out of my mind. Needing to be inside you more than I needed air. It's always been a planned, run-by-the-numbers seduction. When we were given our freedom, a few years ago, I didn't want to bother ordering my body to want someone. Not even for release."
He paused to look down at her. Her eyes were open, the long lashes fluttering. He felt the kiss of them brushing against his thigh. Her gaze searched his face as if studying him to see if he lied. He pushed the fall of dark hair from behind her ear, his fingers gentle when that particular characteristic wasn't a part of him.
"I saw you working in the bar. I heard your laughter. I couldn't take my eyes off you. So fucking beautiful, Anya. Not just your body, but something else. I tried saving you. I wanted you gone when I realized I couldn't stay away from you. When I realized my cock was so hungry for you it wouldn't stop raging no matter how much I commanded it to. I wanted you. I never wanted anything for myself until I saw you."
He broke off. He couldn't tell her the rest. How he loved the club. How that was his life, the best part of him. The only good part of him. Now, he didn't want to look at his colors, the colors he'd taken such pride in. He didn't want to look at his brothers and sisters. Everything he loved, every person he loved, had lost him the one person he cared for. He needed. He'd been willing to try to change enough to have a relationship with her. He'd believed he would be better because of her. He'd convinced himself he'd find a way to grow, that she would stick around and be patient enough to let him make mistakes.
"In the end, though, it wasn't their fuckup, it was mine," he murmured aloud. His club hadn't forced him to do anything. He'd chosen to stand with them. He could have chosen to stand with her. He should have. But there was Czar. He'd been Czar's shadow, his sword, since that first kill when he'd been five years old. He didn't know how to be any different. Czar's sword was who he was. "You're right, Anya. I should have stood for you. I knew that light in you was real, but they needed to know it and somehow, at the time, it was important that they saw you the way I do."
He stroked her hair, willing her to go to sleep. His fingers still tangled with hers, because he wasn't willing to let her go. He only had until she was on her feet to try to find something to make her want to stay. His brain wouldn't shut down. He didn't talk. He didn't share. Now, it was like a floodgate had opened, and he wanted to share who he was. He was desperate for her to see inside, to look past all the layers of darkness and find that part of him she'd touched. The part that needed her to save him. He wanted her to see something good in him, because he couldn't find it and it would be lost if she wasn't there to bring it out.
The door was open and Lana stood in the doorway, knocking softly to grab his attention. "Is she asleep?"
He shook his head. "Drifting. The pills are starting to kick in."
She came in and sank down on the bed, dropping one hand on the blanket, finding Anya's ankle beneath it, as if she wanted that connection as well. "I like her, Reaper. I like her a lot. When you brought her to my room, I was so upset. I thought she was like the other women and I didn't want any of them in my private room. And then I could see she meant something to you so I really looked at her, the way I did at Blythe, and I realized she was someone very special."
Reaper nodded. "Gotta agree with that, Lana."
"I should have stood up more, fought harder for her. I said something, but I didn't push it. I wanted to because I knew the momen
t I took the time to know her, she was incapable of betraying us like that. Now, I feel like I betrayed both of you. You fought for her, but you needed someone to back you and I didn't do it. I'm really, really sorry."
Reaper sighed. "In the end, Lana, it's about Czar and Blythe. The Ghosts are targeting the wives and daughters of the presidents of the clubs. That means they would go after Blythe. Above all, we have to protect them. As much as I hated it and hated everyone because they were insistent, I knew it had to be done. I should have at least asked her myself first."
"She wouldn't have told you, she was too scared." Lana sighed and rubbed Anya's ankle through the blanket. "I hate us sometimes, Reaper. I hate that we can't ever be anything but what Sorbacov made us."
He nodded. "I know what you mean."
"They taught us two things, Reaper. How to have sex every way possible and how to kill every way possible. They left out relationships. They left out love. They left out all the things everyone else knows about. Blythe wouldn't have let us make the decision to interrogate Anya that way. She would have stopped us."
Reaper shook his head. "Czar wouldn't have allowed her to know or weigh in." He looked past Lana to see Czar's wide shoulders framed in the doorway. His gut clenched. A surge of rage boiled deep. He suppressed it, threading his fingers through Anya's fingers, reminding himself she didn't need raised voices and anger.
Lana glanced over her shoulder and saw their president. "I'm staying close tonight and tomorrow. Just in case she needs me. Let me know if you think of anything I can do." She stood and touched Anya gently. "Those things she said about you weren't true, Reaper."
He didn't reply, he just watched her go. He wasn't the only one hurting over what had happened, and somehow that helped.
Czar came all the way in to stand beside the bed.
Reaper shook his head. "You're not my favorite person right now, Czar," he said honestly. "Go home to your woman and leave me with mine."
"Reaper, you know Absinthe was as gentle as possible under the circumstances. If she hadn't fought him so hard . . ."