Page 32 of True Bastard
“You went to lunch with my mother and sister?”
She nodded. “Morpheus said I could.”
“Where is the fucking piece of paper?”
“On your dresser,” she quickly admitted. I snatched the crumpled paper from the dresser, my knuckles white as I unfolded it. The crude black letters stared back at me, a brutal accusation.Firestride is Joshua Michael. The words were a brand, searing themselves into my soul. I’d buried that name, that life, so deep that I’d almost convinced myself it was dead and gone. But here it was, resurrected by a slip of her tongue, a betrayal I couldn’t comprehend. My gaze snapped back to Kyllian, her terror a mirror of my own buried fear. I saw the desperation, the frantic attempt to backtrack, to appease. I’d wanted to break her, to shatter her defiance, but this... this was something far more devastating.
I threw the paper onto the floor, my rage a tangible thing consuming all the air in the room. “You think this is a game, Kitten?” My voice was a low growl, laced with a venom that had nothing to do with Jessup anymore. It was about Joshua, about the man I’d tried so hard to outrun. I saw the fear in her eyes, the dawning horror as she realized she’d stumbled into something far deeper and more dangerous than she could have imagined. I wanted her to be my collateral, my plaything. Now, I wasn’tso sure. The revelation had cracked something open within me, something I’d long kept locked away.
I watched her—the trembling in her limbs, the fight that still flickered, however faintly, in her bruised eyes. I’d wanted to break her, to make her obey. But now, the tables had turned, and the realization hit me with the force of a physical blow. I hadn’t broken her; she had, in her own way, broken me. I’d wanted to collect a debt from Jessup, but it seemed I’d stumbled upon a far more ancient, far more devastating one.
And the price of that debt, I knew with a chilling certainty, was myself.
The room detonated behind me, a violent punctuation mark to my uncontained rage. Each stair tread groaned a protest under my descent, a soundtrack to the fire raging in my gut. I wasn’t just going downstairs; I was hunting, a predator on the scent of the one who held the key to the abyss I’d sealed within myself, the one who knew the weight of the buried truth.
Downstairs, the air was thick with the cloying sweetness of cheap liquor and the raw musk of bodies entwined. Laughter, sharp and brittle, scraped at my raw nerves. They caroused, a tableau of decadent oblivion, as if the very ground beneath them hadn’t cracked and bled. Not a single head turned, their glazed eyes fixed on their own fleeting pleasures, as my own scanned the smoky haze, my gaze locking onto the grotesque tableau. There, bathed in the lurid glow of a dying fire, was the Bastard, his flesh a mirror of my own blood, his cock buried deep in the unsuspecting Lollie.
A guttural roar clawed its way from my chest. My hand, a blur of raw fury, slammed down on his shoulder, the impact jarring him like a struck bell. I spun him around, the world a dizzying kaleidoscope of startled faces, before unleashing the hurricane I’d been holding captive. My fist connected with hisjaw with the force of a sledgehammer, the sickening crunch of bone echoing the splintering of something inside me.
Morpheus recoiled. “What the ever-loving FUCK?!” he roared, rubbing his jaw.
“You told her!”
“Told her what?” he growled, getting in my face.
Seething, spittle flew from my lips as I whispered, “My name.”
His eyes, now wide with dawning horror, scanned the faces of his brothers, their expressions a mixture of shock and grim understanding. Morpheus, his own face a mask of cold fury, nodded to Cerberus and Inferno. Two hulking figures, their movements efficient and brutal, descended on me, their grips like iron bands. I didn’t resist. The rage that had consumed me moments before was already beginning to recede, replaced by a chilling clarity. Kyllian had stumbled upon a truth I had meticulously buried, a truth that threatened to unravel everything I had built.
Morpheus’ office was a stark contrast to the chaos of the common room. The air was thick with the smell of stale cigar smoke and a unnerving quiet that amplified the tension. He stood by the window, his back to me, the moon casting long shadows that stretched across the room like grasping fingers. “How?” he asked, his voice a low rumble that promised pain.
“Someone left a note in my room. When she got back from lunch with my mother and sister, she found it.”
“That means a brother knows,” Cerberus spoke up.
“But why now?” Inferno asked. “It’s been years.”
Morpheus’ silence was a heavy blanket, suffocating and absolute. He turned; his eyes, usually burning with a primal fire, now held a chillingly detached calm. “A brother knows,” he stated, the words a death knell to my fragile hope. The implications were immediate and devastating. Someone withinthe Brotherhood had betrayed me, had leaked the secret I’d guarded for years, a secret that now threatened to consume me. The rage that had fueled my descent into the common room, the primal need for retribution against the one who had spoken my name, was overshadowed by a cold, gnawing dread.
“This betrayal cuts deeper than any blade,” Morpheus continued, his voice a low growl that vibrated with barely controlled fury. “Whoever it is, they’ve declared war not just on you, Firestride, but on the entire Brotherhood. We deal with traitors swiftly, and we deal with them permanently.” His gaze swept over Cerberus and Inferno, then settled back on me, a flicker of something I couldn’t quite decipher—pity, or maybe regret—before hardening into a grim resolve. “You brought this upon yourself. You played with fire, and now the flames are licking at your own back. Find out who it was. Find them before they do more damage. And know this, Firestride. If you fail, the consequences will be severe, not just for you, but also for her.”
The weight of his words settled on me, a crushing burden. I was caught in a web of my own making, a prisoner of secrets I thought long buried. Kyllian, my defiant kitten, the unexpected complication, had inadvertently unearthed a truth that now threatened to tear the Brotherhood apart. And as I stood there, the echoes of my rage fading into a hollow dread, I knew that the hunt for this traitor would be more brutal, more unforgiving, than any hunt for Jessup Winston.
This was a war on the inside, and the enemy was one of our own.
“And, Firestride.” Morpheus sighed. “Make her understand. Make sure she understands what’s at stake and what we do to those who talk.”
I found her huddled in the corner of my room, my comforter wrapped around her tightly. She never took her eyes off me. Quietly closing the door, I walked over and sat on the edge of my bed, my back toward her, and sighed. “I need to tell you something. Something about myself that when you hear it, will make you run screaming from this room and clubhouse. Know that what I’m about to say isn’t because I ever wanted you to learn the truth. I’m telling you because you know my real name and therefore need to understand why I’m going to ask you to never repeat it again.”
The silence in the room was deafening, and when I looked over my shoulder at her, she said nothing, her eyes remaining glued to me, almost as if she were holding her breath, terrified of what I was about to tell her.
I hesitated, as the weight of my confession pressed against my chest like a vise. The words clawed at my throat, desperate to break free but held back by terror—terror of what she would think, of what this would mean for us. She watched me silently, her face pale but determined, refusing to flinch away from whatever truth I was about to unveil.
My voice, a raw rasp, broke the suffocating silence. “My birth name, my real name, is Joshua Isaiah Michael. I was born on December 3, 1989, in Cheyenne, Wyoming, during one of the worst blizzards the state had ever seen. My mother, Helen Michael, was only sixteen when her father traded her to my father to clear his debts. For months, my father raped and beat my mother until she escaped him and disappeared. Eventually, she gave birth to me, and she did her best to give me a life away from crime, the clubs, even the underworld. But no matterwhere we went, my father always found us. He made our lives a living hell. My mother tried to fight him as best she could, but he was stronger, and his brutality was swift. She never stood a chance. I had just turned twenty-one when my father found us for the last time. That day, he would have killed my mother and me if I hadn’t stopped him. On the day I killed my father, I not only sealed my fate to the Brotherhood, but I also sealed Morpheus’ fate.”
“I don’t understand. How?”
“Because when I killed my father, Morpheus assumed control of the Brotherhood.”
