Sin & Suffer (Pure Corruption MC #2)

My heart punctured with daggers.

Please, let him be okay.

He’s okay. He has to be.

And if he was okay, I had no doubt he would come for me.

He might already be on his way.

I just had to stay hopeful and strong and bide my time until Kill, the president of Pure Corruption, cutthroat killer, and hardass protector, came for me.

It would be a bloodbath.

Pressing my forehead on the door, I knocked as loud as my knuckles would let me. “Someone let me out of here!”

Silence.

“Are you awake, Buttercup?”

My eyes snapped open, staring directly into the soulless gaze of Rubix Killian. I winced at the pain in my bladder and the weakness of hunger.

He smirked, leaning against the door frame. “Did you still need the toilet or did the past hour push you to the breaking point?”

Sitting upright, I gritted my teeth. “If you’re asking if I disgraced myself, then you’ll be unhappy to know I haven’t.” Standing, I hissed, “Let me use the bathroom.”

He chuckled. “Still so high and mighty. Always giving demands as if I have to obey.” Pushing off the door frame, he came forward in creaking leather and smoke. “You’re not the princess around here anymore, Cleo.”

Cocking my chin, I didn’t back down. This was a man I’d been raised with as an uncle. The vice president of Dagger Rose and best friend to my father. My temper banded around me until I throbbed with the urge to make him pay. “We trusted you. I loved you. How could you be so cruel?”

He grinned. “Who’s to say I’m cruel? Your father didn’t see the potential of what our brotherhood could be. He was weak … and there ain’t no room for weakness in our Club.”

“There’s no room for liars or murderers, either.”

Rubix lost the gloating glint in his eye, replacing it with rage. “Tell that to my fucking son.”

I shot forward and slapped him.

We both gasped at the same time.

My brain transmitted the message to cause bodily harm without being filtered by rationality. My palm stung from connecting with his scruffy five-o’clock shadow.

His green eyes narrowed as he grabbed my wrist, jerking me painfully close. “You shouldn’t have done that, Buttercup.”

My stomach turned inside out with revulsion.

My nickname. It was blasphemy on his tongue.

My hands curled. “Don’t ever call me Buttercup. You lost that right years ago.”

“I can call you whatever the fuck I like.”

Asshole.

“Why did you frame your son? What did he possibly do to deserve his own father betraying him?”

Rubix turned from rage to savagery. “Don’t talk about that motherfucker in my presence.” Dragging me forward, he carted me from my prison and threw me into the bathroom two doors down—exactly as I remembered it.

“You have three minutes.”

He slammed the door.

I had no doubt he meant I had precisely three minutes. He’d always been a Nazi when it came to time. Tardiness was as much an affront to him as disobeying a command or spilling brotherhood secrets.

Turning to stare at the bathroom, I pursed my lips. The grout between the tiles was blackened, the shower curtain covered in grime, and the toilet filthy. The air was rank with mildew and smelly drains.

Who lived here? Was it just Rubix and his second son, or had he patched in more members and shared his home? I remembered the layout of the compound from when Arthur and I would explore from fence to fence. The piece of land had approximately twenty homes all dotted in an ever-widening circle. But the Clubhouse and my parents’ home had been the crown right in the center.

Quickly relieving my bladder, I splashed my face with cold water and drank as fast as possible straight from the tap.

The door wrenched open before I had time to dry my face. Not that I’d touch his towels—probably covered in E. coli.

Rubix narrowed his eyes, his gaze trailing down my nightshirt-encased body. He smirked as he took in my scars—the scars he put there. “Pity the burns make you ugly, isn’t it?” He licked his lips, looking at my left side. The ink that ran from my collarbone to my little toe was an intricate mural of blues, reds, and greens. “If it were me, I would’ve covered up the scars with the tattoo. Hide your awful disfigurement.” His forehead furrowed. “Why didn’t you?”

Because I’m not ashamed of wearing my scars or from finding strength in them.

Yanking a few squares of toilet paper free from the holder, I dried my face and threw the wadded tissue in his direction. “Curious or just trying to figure out how I survived you?”

He ducked my missile, green eyes darkening. “Neither. Just making conversation.”

I snorted. “Everything you say is loaded with ulterior motives, never just conversation. Always has been.” My mind skipped back to snide comments over the years as I grew up in his shadow.

“You really shouldn’t draw that way. It’s not very good.”

“Your father sure doesn’t care about your welfare if he lets you walk around wearing that.”

“Jesus, Cleo, could your voice be any higher and annoying?”

Most of them had been said in jest, with a cheek-pinch or a licorice allsorts being given, but the desired effect never failed.

His words were the only way he could hurt me back then.

Now he could hurt me any damn way he wanted.

My father was dead. The men loyal to him most likely dead, too, or joined with Rubix under fear of torture.