Page 15 of The Villain

Chapter Four

Dare

Darius—I miss you. I miss Mom. I wish I could tell you I was settled, but I haven’t even really unpacked. I’m sure my roommate thinks I’m either a vampire or just plain crazy since I spend every spare minute in the art lab and come back covered in paint. I wish I could tell you I was excited, but all I can think is that I shouldn’t have left Mom. Not that she would’ve let me stay, but she’s not doing well, and…I wish you were here. I wish we were eating grilled cheese and finger painting and I wish I could hear you tell me one more time that it’s all going to be okay.—Always, Athena

Nice to meet you.

Athena had no idea who I was. I almost couldn’t wrap my head around it, but it had been almost two decades. A lifetime, really, considering everything I’ve been through since then.

Even if she could see me, I no longer looked like the eighteen-year-old boy who’d kissed her one last time on that very lawn. Injury and trauma made it so my voice no longer sounded like that boy either—the boy who’d promised we’d be together in the end. For all our sakes, it was better she didn’t recognize me because anything she recognized would be nothing more than a fossil of someone I used to be.Someone I no longer was.

“She needs rest, Dare. I’m serious. Don’t push her too hard,” Rorik said as soon as the elevator doors shut.

The Sherwood Garage compound had two personas: what was seen and what was unseen.

What was seen—what was public—was the motorcycle garage where we took on all kinds of high-end projects. It was the massive garage bay, expensive and rare motorcycles stationed throughout the pristine floors in preparation for various work. It was the club room with its TV, bar, and pool table. Ty’s office filled with computers and monitors, and last, the kitchen.

What was unseen was everything hidden beyond the garage space in the woods—the connected cabins tucked into the thick forest where we lived. There were six of them. One for each of us, plus an additional guest cabin for any friends in need of shelter.

That sixth one was where Athena should be right now. Instead, I’d set her up in mine.Another indication I should let Rorik check out my head for injury or temporary insanity.

“That was exactly what I told her.” I huffed and punched the button for the main level.

This elevator was what connected the seen and unseen, descending from the back of the garage to an underground tunnel that branched out to the individual cabins.

“I know.” His stare didn’t flinch.

“Don’t look at me like that.”

“I’m not looking at you.” But he saw me, and that was the fucking problem.

Rorik saw the way I looked at her. He saw the way I went to her, the way I held her hand, and the way I promised I would fix this.I was only doing the right thing,I wanted to argue, but he wouldn’t be blindedby the symptoms of duty, not when he saw the disease underneath. The disease of guilt and the disease of desire.

The guilt I could take, but the desire…my jaw locked tighter. I’d get over it—I had to. My desire was what had cost Ryan his life—what had almost cost all of us our lives. There was a reason I’d sworn off women since his death; I wasn’t going to let myself make that same mistake again.

“You didn’t tell her who you were.”

“No, I didn’t.” I held my breath, releasing it a second later when the elevator door opened. I managed a mumbled thanks and a promise to update him on Athena’s condition tomorrow before stalking away from him and toward Ty’s office.

I already had to answer to my brother, I didn’t have the energy to answer to Rorik, too.

I opened the door to the smaller room, prepared to find Harm and Ty inside working. Instead, I came face to face with my adopted sister.

“What are you doing here?”

Robyn DuBois was the fifth and final member of our motorcycle club. She hadn’t been Special Forces, and shewasn’t exactly a big fan of motorcycles, but there were none of us who fought for justice—who fought for the weak and wounded and betrayed—like she did. The work we did was dangerous, but the way Rob hunted criminals bordered on reckless.

“Good to see you, too, Dare.” Rob smiled and rose from her chair to greet me.

Clothed in all black, her swash of bright red hair cut through the darkness like fiery vengeance through the shadows. Sometimes, that rich red was the only thing that gave away the true depths of the fury at what had been done to her parents—to her.

“I heard you got a letter,” she said as she hugged me.

So that was why—Remington.

Lately, the notorious traitor had involved himself in our club’s business, targeting some of the criminals we were after. It was strange—like we were missing some bigger picture. But Rob seemed to be the most unsettled by it. Sure, he was a criminal—the kind we hunted who’d escaped justice for far too long—but for Rob, it felt like more than that. And there were times, like now, where it felt like the two of them were planets in the same orbit, rotating around the same sun, but in a path of collision.

“What else did you hear?”

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