Page 11 of Scar

The kid was beyond smart. It was crazy how fast his brain worked. He ran a security business but wanted to do more than cyber work. But it was hard to be taken seriously in the security world when you looked young enough to still be living at home with your parents.

Scar had mixed feelings about the messages on the secure message board. Like Keys, Scar didn’t do well in social situations. He tended to draw attention because of his looks as well as his silence, and that attention wasn’t always a good thing. People thought they could get him to talk or shout if they snuck up on him. When Scar had worked as the bouncer atDemon on the Rocks, the club’s bar in town, drunks would finally have the courage to come up to him and try to get a reaction out of him.

It was rarely the reaction they wanted or had thought up. Ghost and Ranger used to keep an empty closet to put the people Scar had rendered unconscious in until they woke or sobered up.

Scar’s eyes fell on the kid’s pleas for Scar to not be dead.

He wasn’t sure why he was surprised they’d had a funeral for him. It made the most sense. Hell,hethought he’d been dead when he hit the water. It was completely reasonable that Pirate had too. He’d witnessed not only Scar’s fall but also where he’d been shot.

Scar touched his chest. He hadn’t even seen himself bare yet to know what additional scars had been added to him.

Reading about José’s reaction to his supposed death twisted something inside Scar. He couldn’t return to the VDMC. Not like José wanted. Keys’ last message said that the VDMCcould have beenScar’s family.

He didn’t understand that they alreadywere.

Scar might not have been social, might not have joined in on the festivities, but he’d found a calm with the motorcycle club that had been lost to him for many years. If Scarcouldbe happy, it had been those seven years with the VDMC.

But the moment he’d seen José and Abby… Everything had changed. For all the secrets Scar kept from José, he thought he knew everything about his brother. When they’d met at eighteen, there’d been an immediate comradeship. Hell, Scar had been at the bar with José when the man had finally lost his virginity to a barrack bunny. He’d known about José growing up in Mount Grove, about his mom’s cancer and his dad abandoning the family, and about his little brother, Carlos. They’d shared their desires for military careers, and even when those paths had taken them in two different directions, they’d still been there for each other.

Scar had thought he’d known it all.

And then Abigail Knight had returned to Mount Grove.

Abby and José had met in kindergarten. The way José told it, he’d fallen in love with her when he was only six years old. They’d had plans of going to college and getting married someday, but as a teenager, Abby’s parents had taken her away from Mount Grove. Unknown to José, they’d joined a religious cult with extremely twisted views on how women should be treated.

Sixteen years later, Abby finally escaped and reunited with José.

Scar wasn’t pissed that José had kept Abby a secret from him. He understood that the heartache of Abby’s absence in his life was too much for José and there was no getting over that for him. Scar didn’t blame José for wanting to keep his memories of Abby to himself.

But he could see what the knowledge of where Abby had been and what she’d endured during her sixteen years of captivity was doing to José. The guilt that he hadn’t known on a spiritual level that Abby was in trouble and needed him was driving José crazy.

He wanted revenge and would do anything to get it.

Scar knew the price of revenge in a way José never would. José wanted to unleash a bloody vengeance upon the cult that had taken his Abby from him, but he hadn’t considered what that vengeance would cost him in the end. It would change him on such a visceral level that Scar knew from experience that it might cost José his future with Abby.

And the two of them had been separated long enough.

So Scar had done it for him. He’d taken the choice out of José’s hands and delivered the vengeance José longed for without having to pay the price of his soul. Scar didn’t need to worry about his soul being tainted because there was no color darker than black.

There was onlymoreblackness. More void. More emptiness.

But Scar hadn’t realized that there would still be a price, even if it wasn’t his soul. It had cost him hisfamily.

Right now his family was headed toDisney World, completely oblivious to the guillotine hanging over their heads.

Well, fuck that. Scar was not going to taketheirhappiness away from them too. He’d take down Primis and Alpha on his own. His familywouldbe safe. They would live on and never know that Scar had come out of that river.

It might seem cruel, to let them continue thinking he was dead. But Scar’s world was about to become very, very dark. His family deserved to continue living in the light, to have that happiness that was denied to Scar.

Exiting out of the chat, Scar went into his secure files. He had enough on Primis to stall Alpha. It wouldn’t be enough to stop him, but Scar just needed to buy some time. José and the others would be headed toDisneyin the morning. That at least gave him a week to figure some things out.

As he searched through his files on Alpha, looking for the most incriminating ones, he spotted a note he’d made when he’d first learned Alpha’s identity.

Henry Meacham had a daughter, Tallulah.

A plan started to form in Scar’s head. Alpha had threatened to go afterhisfamily, so Scar would go after Alpha’s.

An eye for an eye. Then when he saw his chance, Scar wouldactuallytake Alpha’s eye before he ended him entirely.

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