Good Girl by Sam Hall

Chapter 41

I was always going to end up here.

After a heated argument in the car when we parked, I’d gotten out and walked towards the old wreck. They could see me clearly enough, as we’d driven up an old dirt path. And there he was, perched up on the roof of the car, dressed in dishevelled formal wear. Marcus looked down when I approached, smiling that catlike smile, then stood up, a towering figure, casting me in shadow. As he always had, I realised. I stared up at him, then started when he jumped down beside me.

“You must have questions.” This was delivered quietly, circumspectly, though there was a ghost of a smile on his lips. “I’ll answer them, Cyn, any damn question you want.” His voice came out part sigh, his movements restless, and for the first time, I saw an uncomfortable Marcus. He took small steps, circling me, his hands thrust into his pants, eyes flicking up to me and back down at the ground. “Anything at all that I have to give is yours now.” He looked up and over my shoulder. “All of you.”

There was something terribly final about this. Somehow, he’d managed to escape being charged with Benson’s death and Juniper’s shooting, yet it was now that he looked like a prisoner in the dock. He stopped finally, standing in front of me.

“Cyn?”

“You’re scared,” I said.

His breath came out in a rush, a fluttering laugh escaping his lips, and impulsively, he reached out and took my hand. I found myself grabbing it, squeezing it.

“Fuck, I thought you’d ask me anything but that. I had all these answers…” His smile spread, then faded again. “I always love it, when something I don’t expect happens.”

“Because most of the time, you do, don’t you?” I asked warily. “You see everything, saw what everyone would do. All of it.”

“Usually.” He shrugged. “People think they’re so fucking mysterious, but the same patterns of greed and hatred and prejudice play out over and over and over. It’s not that hard, once you work it out, to anticipate what people do.”

I snorted, then stared at him.

“How many hours of watching, waiting, and observing does it take?”

“Not as many as it used to. I have software now, algorithms that help make the process easier.”

“And back then?”

I didn’t specify and I didn’t need to, because he knew. Marcus always knew.

“Just me. We were little fish in a much smaller pond. I could devote my attention to individuals more then.”

“Like me.”

I said the word with my heart in my throat, knowing the answer but needing to hear it, and he sensed that immediately. Of course he did. He took a step forward, stared at me like I was the beginning and end of the world, and then reached out. I stood there, quivering, so much of what had happened to me remaining unprocessed, but it couldn’t be, not until this. When his fingers trailed featherlight down my face, I moved with them, into them, my hand going to his wrist and gripping it tight, like he’d disappear in a second.

And maybe he knew that.

He came in slowly, wrapping his big body around me, pulling me close when I didn’t resist, a long breath escaping him, and mine came with it.

It was omega bullshit, but I had to admit, I hadn’t felt safer than I did just then. My other mates were perfect, and I was dead sure they would protect me under any circumstance, but… Marcus had killed for me, but not just that, he’d had this long, convoluted plan that entailed this. I heard the crunch of the guys’ feet as they approached, unable to stay away for long, and we leaned against the car, together.

“From the start,” Rhys said in a low growl. “Don’t leave anything out, Marcus. That’s a dealbreaker, going forward.” The others agreed in deep rumbles, and Marcus nodded. He took a deep breath and told us the story.

“I don’t knowhow I learned to read people, how to push their buttons and get them to do what I wanted, I just always could. I either fit right in or couldn’t at all. Getting bored with things always going my way, I started setting myself challenges, like wagging classes without being caught, bumming a smoke from a staff member without them realising I was a kid. Seducing a teacher. I was…floating in this shitty fucking world where everyone was blind, unable to see what I could, and as a result, I could just run rings around them. Until I met you guys.

“I’d get caught sometimes, deliberately. Part of me just wanted to see if there was someone, anyone who could put limits on me, who could stop me. They’d try, but I’d weasel my way out of it every time. I’d find key bits of information, hack their computers and find secret files. Everyone has this…whole other layer of shit it would be bad for others to find out, and I’d identify it and present it when the hammer was about to fall, skating on out from under consequences.

“But that was kinda exhausting. The world just seemed so flimsy, with all these edifices and institutions people relied on, and I could make them fall without much effort. It’s why I let them send me to the alpha anger management camp. Maybe someone could help, could stop me, could provide fucking meaning in my life, because where I was headed scared me. My mum was useless, fuck knows where Dad was. I was smarter than anyone else I knew.” Bren snorted at that. “And I didn’t know what the fuck to do about that. Until I saw your pack.

“I always scoped out new blood when they came to camp. I need to know who the players are and what their power base is. I’d been collecting dossiers on the camp organisation and key figures, checked out new alphas when they arrived, worked out who were the ringleaders, the bullies, the insecure ones. But Rhys…” Marcus’ brows creased when he looked at our mate, a look of pure yearning transforming his face in ways I’d never seen. “Brendan was completely under his spell, Orion following not long afterwards, and I couldn’t work out why. He didn’t coerce or bash you. If anything, he protected you as much as he could. I assumed there was some shitty reason for that as well, but the longer I watched and waited, the more I saw.”

He frowned, his brows creasing, his gaze unending.

“You were good, like all the bullshit stories I’d been fed. There was this massive heart beating inside a body made for pounding people into the ground, and instead…” Marcus shook his head. “You did, administering smackdowns when you needed to, but not beyond that, not for the sheer pleasure of it, and that restraint freaked people out. So few of us had that in the camp. You defended what was yours, postured enough to make sure no one fucked with you or yours… That.” A sharp nod of Marcus’ head. “That smashed into me so damn hard, it took my breath away. You surprised me, Rhys, and that’s always been my catnip. I seek novelty with everything I have, anything that takes me out of my fucking head and lets me feel. I knew then I had to get closer, if only to understand.”

Rhys shuffled at this, seeming to find it difficult to meet people’s eyes, but when he did, I saw exactly what Marcus saw. Orion might have been the prince, but Rhys? I could imagine him as a knight of old, clad in armour and ready to run off and save a fair maiden at a moment’s notice.

“The closer I got, the more you pulled me in, letting me see the fragile relationships you were building in a place designed to be hell. Like flowers growing through the cracks of concrete, you created this place of love.” Marcus’ eyes dropped away, his mouth pursing, his hands moving restlessly. “Such a fucking cliché, I kicked my own arse over it, but it didn’t matter. You gave me a taste for something I’ve never been able to get past, and I never want to. I dunno where I’d be if I hadn’t met the lot of you. Probably working for someone like Benson, orchestrating his sadistic little extracurriculars and making sure he didn’t get hurt.”

His fingers traced a crack in the car’s paint.

“But I had something different now. Everything I could do, think, achieve, it all shifted to focus on that one thing. I had to protect the three of you, and then when I joined you, I had to protect us with everything I had. You won’t like my high-handed bullshit, will resent all the games I’ve been playing, but you don’t know.”

Marcus’ eyes darted from one to the other of us.

“What you discovered about your dad? That’s just scratching the surface. There are so many predators out there, wanting to take a bite, but no one was going to bite what was mine. I steered us past danger and around dodgy fuckers who wanted to use us, building our capital, making shit safe. No one and nobody was going to take us down, but that was just the external threats.”

Marcus reached for me, tugging me close and then burying his nose in my hair.

“That scent, when Rhys caught a whiff of it, when he went searching, it made me realise that we had vulnerabilities within as well. Initially, I wanted to sideline Cyn, keep her from the pack, keep all omegas from the pack, but as I dug deeper, looking at studies of what made successful poly relationships, particularly with alphas, one thing came up over and over—we needed an omega. But the finding of one tended to be an…imprecise process. Reactions like Rhys’, based on just a scent, a chance encounter, were so common in fiction as well as real people’s stories, so I set out to find the girl, the omega that turned my mate’s head.”

“And you found me,” I said, wrapped up in him, trying to get my head around all this and failing. He’d known that too, which was why he hadn’t told us before. His mindset, his brain, it was so fucking alien, it was like he wasn’t human. We were mated to a strange fae creature from the forest, and I didn’t know how I felt about that.

“I found you, scoped out your mother and her situation, saw how fragile you were. Academies eat girls like you alive. You’d have been pushed, pressured, coerced into the arms of some fuck, when I knew you were ours, but being just another figure in your life, making you choose us, would’ve been just as bad. So I spoke to Miranda, saw the breadth of her ideas and how they could change people’s lives, especially yours. I got her the money we had squirrelled away, and some more I got from less legitimate means, and we built a company together. She just couldn’t let anyone know my role. I…I didn’t want to be another powerful fuck, pressuring you into something.”

“Would she have gotten it off the ground without you?” I asked, afraid of the answer.

“Who was going to invest in a beta driven start-up? One that flies completely in the face of alpha interests? Small companies do, ones that follow alpha directives, but something like this, that would transform the energy industry?”

Something that would fuck with Ratcliffe Industries.

My eyes slid to Orion, seeing the moment he saw the same thing as me.

“You wanted to bring Dad down. You always intended for his business to fail.”

“The first time I really saw Cyn was at the Omega Ball when she was eighteen. Your father led her into a room, using his alpha command, with the intent to rape her. Omega breaking, I found out he called it later. I was hovering around, trying to collect evidence against him, and… I was going to step forward, before things got too far, but…” Marcus shook his head slowly. “I hesitated because I needed evidence of intent, was too slow to act. I stood there, staring, unable to believe what I was seeing.”

His eyes dropped down to his hands, watching them clench and loosen. “He was going to stop, right. He wouldn’t actually do this. You were the daughter of someone significant. I’d protected you from the predations of someone like this. It was bad, real bad, I could hear your whimpers of pain, but if I got the evidence, if I nailed the bastard, it’d be OK, right? I’d be able to put him away forever. For us.”

He shook his head slowly. “I thought I knew.” He looked up at me. “Men always think they understand sexual assault, but then I saw what it did to you afterwards.”

He turned to me, placed his hands on my shoulders.

“I’m so fucking sorry, Cyn. I should’ve come out of the shadows earlier. I should have kidney punched the fuck, indulged in a little Balmain folk dancing, kicking him in the ribs, crushing him, but I didn’t. I was just about to reveal myself, the sounds and what he was doing too fucking much, and then George came blundering in.”

Marcus withdrew his hands, like he couldn’t bear to touch me any longer, like he didn’t have the right, but he packed that away all too quickly, continuing on.

“Before I wanted him to back off, leave our pack alone, but after that night, my focus changed. Orion, your father is what I would have become without you, but he had a helluva lot less brains and a metric fuck ton of privilege and sadistic impulses. I know there’s something wrong with me, that to the rest of the population, there’s some kind of glitch in my brain that sets me apart, but them?” Marcus’ eyes narrowed, those hazel depths becoming diamond hard. “Unfettered power and the means to do whatever they want with it. Society backs their plays, they can command those weaker than them if they disagree, they have money to cover everything up and no fucking compassion at all to temper them.”

“Them?” Orion asked.

“When you bit me, took me as yours, I couldn’t leave that alone, O. I saw your father beginning to flex his muscles, thinking he could separate what was an unbreakable bond, just because he wanted to. He was going to take you from us. Break us.”

Every time the mask dropped, we saw a whole other side of Marcus, one I wasn’t sure we’d ever seen. Had anyone? There was a fervency there that started to edge towards scary, but then his eyes fixed on Orion, stilling, going molten with a love and need I recognised absolutely, because I felt exactly the same. Orion’s hand shot out, clasping Marcus and gripping him tight.

“We were a bunch of kids terrified by this fucking idiot, someone I could run circles around, but people listened to him. He was going to break us, which would break all of us. What would Rhys become if you were stolen away? What would Bren?” Marcus’ voice grew quieter. “What would I become? You were ours. We were building something.” He shook his head, and as I watched his shoulders hunch over, I slid an arm around him, holding him tight. “You were mine, and no one was going to take you away from me. No one. I’m not fucking stupid. I know that’s not the way love’s supposed to be, but that’s the way it is for me.”

“Oh, I dunno,” Bren drawled. “Seems pretty bog standard alpha bullshit, doesn’t it? Bossy, controlling, dominant, competitive.” He looked at all four of us. “All us alphas have been like that at times. Like, I get you’re the chosen one and shit, Marcus, but fuck… I dunno if I woulda said no to your master plan, knowing what I know now.”

“So why didn’t you tell us?” Rhys asked. “I knew you were hiding shit, that things just kept miraculously falling into place, but… Didn’t you think we’d understand? We were one hundred percent in on this as well.”

“I didn’t want it touching you.” Marcus’ fingers twitched. “What I’ve seen, what I had to do… I looked into the rapes and the assaults after Cyn was attacked at eighteen. There’s so fucking many. They keep records of them like trophies of war and share the videos online. You would have wanted to blow it all open as soon as you knew.” He looked up, meeting Rhys’ eyes head-on. “You couldn’t sit on that poison, when I knew we had to. Wouldn’t see the need to amass the gigs and gigs of data, of evidence. To store it in encrypted sites, to protect it and set up protocols for it to be released so widely, not even the alpha elite could squash it. It would have broken you, and I couldn’t let that happen.”

He let me go, straightening up, a man facing down the execution squad.

“I collected data, recorded video, stored testimony, evidence, phone logs and voice messages and GPS data and private chat room logs. I amassed a massive bank of the filthiest, most degrading fucked-up shit, and I sat on it until we were ready. You’re better than me.” He made a point to look each man in the face. “Because what I did is going be the making or breaking of me. I couldn’t let them have this hold over us, that someone else with the right fucking bloodline would choose to take us out just because they could. I also couldn’t let this shit continue. If I gave the evidence of Cyn’s assault to the police, if I manipulated shit so it went to trial, if he were jailed, that wouldn’t solve the problem. There’s too many other fucking Bensons ready to step forward and take his place…”

His voice trailed away, becoming quieter, more introspective.

“I’ve disseminated much of what I know, so the arrests will start soon. Some will make it to trial, some won’t, but enough will, I’ve ensured that. I had to do what no one else would dare—to make a decisive, well thought out strategic hit against every one of those fucks and make sure at the very least that they’re too scared to pull that shit again, but preferably locked up in a cell with a man called Bubba. And right when they think they can pull on their old boys and girls’ networks, get the judge in their pocket to sweep away the evidence…” His smile was slow and toothy. “I’ll take that from them too.”

“Jesus fuck, you’re an evil genius…” Bren said, little more than a whisper.

And so his smile faltered, a strange humility falling over him as he stared down at his hands, moving a simple gold band around from finger to finger.

“That’s the bit I don’t know,” Marcus said, then straightened up. “Am I your evil genius, or do I disappear without a trace? Initially, that’s why I was such a prick to Cyn, wanting to keep her at a distance, as I knew what I had to do, knowing that if you had her, it wouldn’t hurt so much when I left. But I failed at that, just as I failed her that night.” He shook his head. “All my money and assets have been put in the pack’s name. You don’t need me anymore. You’re safe, the club and everything else is yours. You could spend the rest of your life just wrapped up in each other’s arms, and there’s no one to gainsay you. I did what I had to do and it turned out just as I said and I’m not fucking sorry.”

It wasRhys who broke the silence, peals of rich, warm laughter filling the forest, filling the world, that was how it felt. I got it, sort of. Could Rhys have laughed like that with the knowledge that Marcus hinted at? That was an unanswerable question because he’d left us with no choice.

“You were always a fucking imperious bastard and never more so than when you’re giving us an ultimatum. Keep you as you are or leave you to disappear into the shadows to be, what? Some kinda Batman clone?” Rhys asked.

“Batman was an amateur,” Marcus muttered.

“How about this, you little prick? You don’t make any more decisions for us. I get you’re Megamind or whatever, but you’ll use your powers for good and inform us what is ticking over in that fucking brain of yours and let us make decisions ourselves. You’ve cherry-picked the evidence. How the hell are you going to explain separating Cyn and me not long after I took her as my mate, huh?”

“There’s reasons—” Marcus started to say, but Rhys shot him down.

“Fuck your reasons. Fuck your plans, your fucking bullshit. Fuck all of it. You say you love me, that you wanted to protect me? Well, that damn near killed me. I’m still pissing blood some mornings. I won’t ever go through that, not for any reason in the world. You all reckon I’m the heart of the outfit, well let me tell you what mine tells me. I can’t and won’t be separated from my mates again. Ever. I don’t give a fuck if the world’s gonna explode if we don’t take a few days away from each other. No. Nuh-uh. Not gonna play. I don’t have lofty aims or dreams to save the fucking world. I’ve always, always just wanted you. Every single one of you.”

Quiet settled over the group, and only the sound of trees creaking broke that.

“Which means I vote you stay, you piece of shit, but you are gonna spend a whole lotta time on your knees, begging for our forgiveness. So did you predict that, Boy Wonder?”

“I…”

Watching Marcus struggle to find words was stupidly satisfying, a conspiratorial smile going up around the rest of the group.

“Like fuck, Marcus,” Brendan added. “You think you’re so bad, that only you can cope with shit? You have no fucking idea the crap I’ve done to keep us safe.” His hand strayed to the gun in his pocket. “If a sting was the way forward, I deserved a chance to be in on that. I’m a fuck load better shot than you, and I would have just about come, emptying a bullet into Benson’s skull. Apologies, Orion.”

“No, don’t bother with that. The more I’m finding out…” O shook his head. “I’m glad the Ratcliffe name is dying. Fuck that for a legacy, fuck all of it, but I’d be a hypocrite if I criticised someone with a twisted white knight complex.” He looked over at Marcus, his eyes unable to look away from him, and I could see why. “Thank you. I’m guessing you weren’t prepared for that. Everything they say is true, but fuck. I felt like I was drowning and the whole world I grew up in was dragging me down with it, but it wasn’t just me that was going.”

Orion’s gaze flicked to me, and I knew he saw me and Ari standing there.

“Every day, I woke up aching, for Bren, for Cyn, for Rhys, and even you, Marcus. I thought I was going to lose you, all of you, but I was prepared to make that sacrifice and I would again, every time. Nothing in this fucking world has made sense but this—us.”

We all saw the tears forming in Orion’s eyes and I moved to hold him, but Rhys wrapped an arm around his shoulders and pulled him close, kissing the top of his head.

“Everything I know about the world I grew up in says what you say is true. It’s only displays of power, establishing yourself as a viable threat, that gets through to them, and you’ve done it. We’ve done it. But you’ll never pull this shit again. Ever. I didn’t realise what I was doing to the pack when I was pulling my self-sacrifice bullshit, but I had nothing on you.”

“So what do we do with that power then?” Bren asked.

Marcus’ smile, when it returned, was a familiar feline one.

“I’ve got some ideas.”

Finally,the vote came to me. Everyone’s attention shifted at once, leaving me in the spotlight, but I could take it, take them, I knew that now.

“You’re the deciding vote, Cyn,” Rhys prompted. “It’s your choice ultimately. You’ve had to deal with the most from Marcus. Whatever you decide, we’ll stand by.”

“No pressure,” I said with a snort, but we all grew serious.

Marcus might have avoided a court appearance, but he faced down a jury of his peers and I was the last one.

“I get why you did it,” I said. “I hate it, but I can see the logic. Everything Rhys and Bren said is true—decisions made without the pack alienate it. You’re so fucking smart, get your head around that. If you pull this shit again and don’t let us face an external enemy together, you’ll lose every single one of us. You’ve burned through the goodwill of every single one of us. You’ve burned…” I remembered my pain as I hunkered down in my room, Rhys’ when we discovered him battered and bruised. “You’ve burned us. We’ll live with those scars every day, no matter the outcome, and you deemed them necessary without our consent.”

It felt like this was the first time he’d really faced the consequences of what he’d done. Everyone else he manipulated or twisted to get past, but he couldn’t with us, not without killing the thing he loved, which gave me confidence.

“I don’t know where I fit in here. I still don’t understand why you’d go to so much effort to bring me into the fold. Why not Jean or one of the million other omegas?”

“I’ll tell you—” Marcus stopped himself, smiled, and then shook his head. “Nothing would give me greater pleasure than one day, telling the story of how you came to us. That’s all I want, love—the chance to talk it all out and then move forward into the future.”

“You’re on shaky ground, you have to know that. On some level, you’ve abused us, just as surely as Benson did.” I watched him flinch and held myself back, not going to him, not yet. “But for my own peace of mind, I have to think you can be better than this, because I love you, Marcus.” That was when my voice broke, my heart swelled, and I took a step towards him, while he surged forward to close that gap. He held me tight, rocking my body against his as the tears came. “I love all of you, and I’ll only be hurting myself by holding out on you.”

We had a long way to go. This wasn’t the next phase in a stable relationship, just the first step, but as each guy peeled off the car, clustering around me, I let out a soul deep sigh as every one of them held me close. No matter how or why we’d gotten here, deep in my heart, I felt this was where I was supposed to be.