As it stands, I loathe cheaters. We’re only as strong as the bond of loyalty we have with those we consider family. If a man honors it, he’s invincible. If he severs it, he’s nothing but waste.
My father was a two-timing bastard, breaking my mother’s heart. So was the other asshole she loved. Countless lives ruined because they couldn’t fucking commit.
Ashes and lies.
So, while remorse wouldn’t stop me from doing what needs to be done, the lack of it sure makes this easier.
Raising my Ed Brown Kobra Carry .45 ACP, which is fucking gorgeous—it’s their signature edition, sleek and adorned with a beautiful, engraved scroll—I aim it at him, extending the only response needed before I fire. “This is business. Rules are fucking rules.”
MERCY
La Lune Noire has a pulse. It lives. And breathes. And rules apart from its owners.
The walls have secrets. The doors have codes. Even the air is infused with a time warp of ghosts and spirits and apparitions of a distant period.
It’s more than an escape. It’s an identity that burrows into your marrow, a mask that hides the lesions the outside world inflicted. No matter how disfiguring they were.
“So fucking desperate to get back there? To a place I’m not even invited? And you have the audacity to think you’ll take my son with you? Try it, and you’ll never see your baby again.”
Dalton didn’t get the appeal, and yet he did. If there was one thing in this world that threatened him more than anything else, it was the exclusivity he was banned from. And the fact that I wasn’t.
I should have used that to turn the tables on him, but my emotions went haywire during and after the pregnancy, and his psychological foothold was vanquishing. Not that I realized it. Neither of us was in love, but we didn’t pretend to be. For thefive months we were living together before Remy was born, he was a decent partner, and I thought he’d be a good father. Plus, the idea of co-parenting, which he’d initially suggested, was unthinkable. I didn’t want to part with my baby for days at a time, so I made it work.
And it did, except … he was so jealous of Ryker, insisting that I couldn’t be friends with him because Ryker wanted more. That wasn’t who Ryker and I were, and yet everything Dalton said had a thread of truth to it. It’s not like my mother had had close male friendships apart from my father. She would have wanted me to honor my relationship. And I tried, until …
“You’ve got no one other than me. The only person you thought you had was a liar. A friend would’ve been honest. He wasn’t a friend. He wanted to fuck you, and you loved that. Somewhere in that stupid head of yours, I bet you think you could have a future with him. You think he’d want you now that you’re used, after having another man’s child? Your father was one of his members. Did he ever tell you that? He knew who your father really was, what he did, why your mother died. And he hid it from you. He’s a fucking criminal! But he’s on a pedestal, and you treat me like I’m trash.”
Everything escalated from there. It was the most volatile he’d ever been and the first time I was reckless enough to push back with every bit of fight I had in me. A disastrous combination. Usually, I’d pacify him if he seemed grumpy about my friendship. I was respectful of our situationship. But that night, I told him I planned to visit La Lune Noire, that it was nonnegotiable. I was a few months postpartum, terribly depressed over the weird relationship I’d found myself in, and desperate to see Ryker and all the Noires. Since I had lost my parents and wasn’t close with my extended relatives, the Noires were the only family I had.
Dalton was enraged, which I’d expected—to a degree. While he’d been manipulative and inflexible about Ryker, he’d never been so verbally abusive to me. But some part of me knew it was inside him. What I hadn’t anticipated was for him to spew crazy stories about my parents and Ryker. When I defended them, every morsel of anger for me that Dalton must have been stifling came flying out, until he couldn’t stop. Bits and pieces of what he had claimed made sense, which confused everything.
But the web of deceit he had suggested and the murderous glint in his eyes convinced me to send the text that saved my life. It was so short that I managed to do it while I checked on the baby. The first blow came when I left the nursery, blood spattering from my mouth onto a professional picture of the three of us, taken five days postpartum.
I dug my nails into him, kicked and bit and battled.
Three things repeated in my mind.
Keep him distracted so he doesn’t take it out on the baby.
Why didn’t I leave sooner?
I’m sorry, Ryker. Please save my boy.
Waking up to the aftermath was eerily quiet. Beeps and whooshes from monitors and IV pumps. Footfalls on linoleum. Hushed conversations.
The first coherent thoughts I remember after knowing Remy was safe were about the place that felt like home—the person that felt like home—which riddled me with guilt.
I craved the La Lune Noire chaos and ran to silence.
For the years after, I nestled in the quietude, the stillness, the cold mornings, bundled up with my little guy.
The pandemonium in my own brain took center stage. Paralyzing me. I played that night over and over in my mind, trying to collect pieces that slipped away as swiftly as they arrived.
Fragments of that cryptic phone call Dalton had made while I was dying at his feet. Snippets of what he had alleged my father had done. Shards of what he’d painted my relationship with Ryker to be.
Silence is deafening.
Last night with Ryker was the most whole I’d felt since that awful day. Afterward, I slept in Remy’s bed, like I often do. Having him close always subdues the nightmares, but it was more. As I drifted off, the intrusive thoughts didn’t take hold. I didn’t berate myself for harboring the very feelings that Dalton had wanted to beat out of me. I simply basked in the taste of family my parents would have wished for me, even if they hadn’t been who I thought they were.
