Page 4 of Lesson In Forgiveness

Muttering to herself, she scowled at her reflection in the rearview mirror. She swiped the wig off her head, throwing it into the backseat. The eyelashes were next; she’d have to wait to change back into her usual clothes.

The sooner she got rid of everything Irish out of her system, the better.

*

Clamping her hand over Anarchy’s mouth, Tabitha swiftly straddled her hips and grabbed the wildly flailing hands trying to reach for Jasper. “Do you know what I do to people who fuck with me, naughty girl? Do you have any fucking idea how much I want to hurt you right now?”

Three a.m. was an unsociable hour, but she preferred to strike in the dark. Days spent locked in a lightless prison, fighting the men Dominic sent in with night vision goggles, had honed her appreciation for the light while giving her an advantage for working in utter darkness.

Her brother’s security was, quite frankly, disgustingly lacking. To say both he and Anarchy worked for a security firm, Tabitha thought their inattention to their home system was a crime. She’d cracked it in under three minutes with ease.

After an hour of driving around the city, struggling with her demons, she’d finally decided she was calm enough to tackle the root of her issues. She’d kept her temper under wraps, simply because letting it loose meant speeding through the streets, drawing attention she really didn’t need.

But now, with that root squirming helplessly beneath her, her temper flared like the ass end of a rocket. It would be so easy to suffocate her friend. Snap her neck, strangle her, do all manner of nasty things to end Anarchy’s life.

Do it. She’s nothing to you, a pawn in a wicked game. Kill her and bring Jasper home. Kill her, and all your pain will go away. Not Dominic’s voice this time. There was only one other voice in her head, and it belonged to the woman she hated most. Didn’t I teach you how to kill the rabbit? It’s just that simple. She’s not your first; won’t be your last.

That was true. The number of dead on her soul was too many to count; it would only grow as time went on. The nature of the beast, and all that—her tutors hadn’t just created the monster inside her, they’d fed it with torture and praise, nurtured it until it consumed the innocent girl she’d been for a short few years, and given it free rein to be exactly what they intended.

A muffled voice against her palm broke her out of distorted thoughts.

“I am so fucking angry with you,” Tabitha hissed.

“Nowhere near to how angry I’m going to be if you don’t get off my wife, Tabitha.” Cold, clear, and alert, Jasper’s tone indicated he was deadly serious. “Your problem is with me, little sister. Not her.”

The lamp flashed on, blinding her for thirty long and vulnerable seconds. Her twisted emotions almost made her lose her focus and lunge for him, but her logical brain clicked back into place before she did more than tense.

There would be blood shed if she attacked him. On both sides; she wasn’t arrogant enough to believe that a life away from the one Dominic wanted for him had tamed him. Being a family man—a husband, a father—only made him more lethal.

No, her safest position was exactly here.

They both knew she could harm Anarchy before he moved, and because he was a slave to the emotion called love, he wasn’t about to risk his wife.

“My problem is with all of you! Ring, ring, ring,” she snapped. “Missed messages, missed phone calls. Blacklisting me from flying was a bad decision,” she growled, returning her attention to Anarchy. “Don’t ever do that again.”

“It wasn’t personal, Tabitha.”

“It’s personal to me,” she fired back. “I ended up in a goddamn cattle crush, flying coach. Coach, Jasper.” Her arms trembled, the itch intensifying. “I don’t like being touched. I don’t like people.” She released Anarchy’s mouth to drag her nails down her arms. “I can’t get them out from under my skin.”

“Stay still, Archie.” Jasper murmured, sitting up slowly. “Tabitha, they’re not under your skin. It’s Dominic, you know that. It’s part of the conditioning he put us through. Tolerating touch long enough to get the job done, no more. He numbed our emotions until they were dead so we couldn’t feel remorse or sympathy.”

Her lip curled with disdain. How the hell did he know what it felt like to be her? He’d escaped from the hellhole where they’d been raised. Not unscathed, but nowhere as damaged as the rest of them.

As far as she was aware, neither he nor their brothers had spent their twelfth birthday being taught how to use sex as a weapon. They hadn’t been held down and forced to use their training to extricate themselves from the situation.

They hadn’t failed repeatedly and faced the consequences of that failure.

No, Jasper had no idea what it felt like to be her.

If he had any inkling of how insane Dominic’s actions had driven her, Jasper would kill her here and now.

Maybe she’d welcome it.

“The man you’ve been hired to murder is a friend,” Anarchy said quietly. “He’s a good man, Tabitha. I promise, he’s done nothing wrong to warrant being targeted except be born to the wrong father. You understand that, right? Being punished for the sins of the father?”

“Be quiet.”

As usual, the little blonde didn’t listen. “He’s newlywed. He has a husband, and they have a Little. Callie’s been abused all her life, Tabitha. Her father beat her bloody with a belt every Sunday, driven by the hand of God, and then she trusted a Dom who betrayed her in the worst way. She doesn’t deserve to lose her Daddy, does she? She’s finally found happiness.”

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