Dark Destiny by Avelyn Paige
StoneFace
“Her death was just one terrible moment amongst so many wonderful ones.”
Delilah’s voice floats through my head like a whisper. Over and over again, I’ve been hearing her say these words.
But she doesn’t know the details. She doesn’t know that Chad Elscher and his girlfriend had lured my sister to the house where she would meet her end. Delilah didn’t know they brought her there to beat the shit out of her.
She didn’t know that once they started beating her, they couldn’t stop. They beat her until she was unconscious, and then they got scared. Scared of being caught for her murder, even though she wasn’t fucking dead.
So they’d come up with a plan. They’d burned her body, but because she was still alive, she came to, screaming and struggling, trying to put out the flames engulfing her body, but it was Elscher who’d caved her head in with a baseball bat.
It was Elscher who had used that bat to break up her charred bones, gathered as much as he could up, and threw them in the river. It was Elscher who thought he’d gotten away with it, until his girlfriend couldn’t take the guilt any longer and turned herself in.
Delilah didn’t know that even though I was miles away on my first deployment, I felt Reba die—I felt a piece of me die. I’d felt the pain all over my body, though not nearly as intense as my sister did, and then I felt our connection snap.
When I’d made that phone call to the police to do a welfare check on Reba, they had thought I was nuts, dismissing my tethered twin connection as silliness. But Reba was missing, and it didn’t take long for them to realize that our connection had been anything but silly. It had been our fucking lifeline.
How could I just let that shit go? How the fuck am I supposed to go on with my life knowing Elscher got out on parole? How am I supposed to stop punishing myself for not being there when Reba had needed me the most?
It had been our eighteenth birthday when I’d joined with the Marines. Momma had still been alive, though she was rarely home. Our momma had loved us, but she had also loved to gamble. When she wasn’t working, she was at the casino, leaving us to spend most of our childhood on our own.
Reba had been the one who encouraged me to join.
“Go, Rhett. It’s the only way either of us are gonna get out of this shit hole town. You go, see the world. I’ll follow along behind you the first chance I get.”
And I did. I’d made a quick trip home when Momma died, but even then, Reba had told me to go back. And when I’d deployed, she had sounded so excited on the phone.
“I’m so proud of you. Do you know that? I brag to all my friends that my brother is a tough guy Marine, off saving lives.”
I remember chuckling at that. “I haven’t saved a damn soul, ya nut job.”
“But you will,” she said. “But be safe, okay? Take care of you.”
And that had been Reba in a nutshell. Upbeat. Positive. Always seeing the silver lining on every single gloomy looking rain cloud.
Delilah had been right about the way Reba would feel about my life choices. She was the only person I knew that could get a hit in on me without me expecting it. “Twin thing,” she used to say, laughing at the stunned expression on my face.
She’d kick my ass if she knew what I was planning. She’d really kick it if she knew how I’d spent the past eighteen years, holding people at a distance, and not allowing myself to feel any other emotion other than anger.
“Her death was just one terrible moment amongst so many wonderful ones.”
So many wonderful ones.
But how do I let that son of a bitch just walk away?
He’s still an evil man who’ll hurt someone else. He will abso-fucking-lutely re-offend. How do I just step back and let that happen?
Delilah’s laughter rings in my ears, and I allow my thoughts to drift to the couple of kisses we’d shared. Fuck me. What is this woman doing to me?
I think about Judge and the rest of the Black Hoods. About the way they’ve stood by me, even though they don’t know what the fuck is going on. About the ass kicking Judge will give me once I get out of here, simply for thinking I could walk away from them.
I think about Delilah and what it would be like to touch her whenever I wanted. To hold her and kiss her, and make love to her without being beaten to hell by a bunch of guards.
I even think about tiny Penny, and how nice it would be to have a home where she could curl up in my bed or sun herself on my front porch, living out the rest of her days being treated like the princess she is.
Is Chad Elscher really worth losing all of that?
Henry Tucker’s terrified eyes flash to the forefront of my memories.
I’m no choir boy. I’ve killed before, more than once. And if anyone deserved to die, it was that motherfucker. But even so, being the one to deal him that fate feels like a black stain on my already fractured soul.
That stain will never wash away.
What kind of damage would killing Elscher do to what’s left of my soul? And how do I just erase eighteen years of revenge plotting?
Like a slideshow on speed, the faces of Delilah, Penny, Judge, GP, and everyone else in my MC family play over and over in my mind.
If I end him, I lose them. I lost Reba to him already, and it’s fucked up my entire life. If I lost my new family, what would the cost to me be this time?
“Guard,” I call out, rushing over to the bars. “I need to call my lawyer.”