Deep Redemption (Hades Hangmen 4)

My throat started closing up. This was all sounding fucking real. The Klan, Rider’s twin… the fucking end of days.

Same kinda crazy that we usually deal with.

“You met this Jägermeister prick?” Viking asked Rider as Tanner ducked out of the barn to go and check this dick was telling the truth.

“No.” Rider’s eyes left Viking and found Ky. “Phebe told me.”

Ky’s eyebrows pulled down at the mention of that name. He opened his mouth to speak, but AK stepped forward first and asked, “Lilah’s sister?”

“Yeah,” Rider replied. “She helped me escape, getting us information from Judah’s inner circle. She’s fucking drowning in that commune. And Judah has given her up as his consort and gifted her to this Meister . . . and the bastard is killing her day by day, I could see it. Beating her, raping her and God knows what else. She ain’t the same person she was. She’s fading.”

AK’s expression turned ice cold, his arms crossing over his chest.

“And Bella?” I signed. “How the fuck did you get your hands on her if you were locked up, never seeing no one? How the hell did you just so happen to stumble across my bitch’s dead sister?”

Rider slumped at the mention of Bella, losing all his fucking newfound balls. “She was brought into the cell next to mine. Her commune was the last to arrive in New Zion. Judah had no idea another Cursed Sister lived among us. I had no fucking idea either. When I spoke to her through the wall separating our cells, she said her name was Harmony. The people caring for her changed her appearance—dyed her hair blonde, gave her dark-brown contacts, gave her a new name.”

Rider ran his hand down his face. “There’s a group of people in New Zion who want to bring the commune down, ruin the place once and for all. Their lives have been ruined by my uncle, too many people’s have. These people were the ones caring for Harm—Bella.” The fucker looked me right in the eyes. “I fell for her when she looked completely different to how she looks now. I had no idea she was Mae’s sister. She was—she still is—Harmony to me. I didn’t want her because she was Mae’s sister. I wanted her because I fucking fell for her. This hasn’t got shit to do with Mae. I don’t think of Mae anymore. And that’s the fucking truth.”

I rolled my eyes. I didn’t believe one ounce of that shit.

“It was Harmony’s people who helped me get out. It was down to a man called Brother Stephen.” Rider hesitated. Then he sighed in defeat and said, “Harmony doesn’t know this, and I haven’t told her because he didn’t want me to, but . . . ” he trailed off.

“But what?” Ky asked through gritted teeth. His tolerance for this little show-and-tell was waning.

Rider looked at me, then Flame. “He’s their father.” The temperature in the room seemed to fucking drop by thirty fucking degrees. “Mae, Bella and Maddie . . . Brother Stephen is their biological father.”

I felt my eyes grow fucking huge.

“They don’t know their parents,” I signed, my heart firing like a fucking cannon in my chest.

“You’re right; it isn’t our people’s way to know their children,” Rider said. “But Brother Stephen wanted to raise his girls from the minute they were born. He fought for them, to see them, but had to be content to watch them from a distance. But when my uncle branded them Curseds, he tried to take them from the commune. He knew what happened to Curseds. He couldn’t bear that happening to his children. So he tried to take them. He almost had them out, but he was stopped by the disciple guards. They almost killed him with the punishments they made him suffer, then, when he wouldn’t repent, they banished him to the defectors’ commune.”

“Defectors’ commune?” Ky made his way back to my side. Where he fucking should be. “What the fuck is the defectors’ commune?”

“Where they sent all those who didn’t stick to the commune rules. Those who tried to get their families out. Those who tried to put a stop to the Lord’s Sharings and celestial awakenings. I didn’t even know it existed until Harmony and her keepers were brought to my cells. They found out who I was and told me everything. Including how my uncle was a convicted pedophile before creating the faith and, along with his equally sick friends, started a sex ring. They used religion as a front.”

“So,” Ky said, laughing. “Your whole fuckin’ life, everythin’ you did—turned on us, took the girls, ended up in a cell—was all for a crock of shit? All for Uncle David’s kiddie-loving dick?” Ky laughed louder, right in Rider’s face. The brothers all joined in. But I didn’t. I watched Rider. I watched for his reaction. I’d always been able to sniff out deception. And I was fucking shocked at what I saw—the fake prophet slumping further down, feeling every one of the laughs coming his way. Shamed that the purpose for his entire fucking existence was so his wrinkled dick of an uncle could rape kids.