Crux Untamed (Hades Hangmen 6)

I nodded. “She was pretty too.” I smiled, remembering her telling me children’s stories from her home. A country she would never see again. “She grew up in Louisiana, and the family became the most important family there. Mamma was only three when she moved. She was a Cajun reall

y, but my grandmother always spoke to her in Swedish so she would never forget where she was from. My grandfather is a businessman, successful too. And now he had a wife and a beautiful blond-haired, blue-eyed stepdaughter to match.” Sia’s eyes were huge; she must have heard the bitterness in my tone. “I don’t not like your coloring, Sia. Color doesn’t mean shit to me.”

“Okay,” she said softly. I needed to feel her lips. I needed her to know that I meant what I said. So I pressed my lips against hers and kissed her. She sighed against my mouth. When I moved back, I spoke again.

“When my mamma was eighteen, she took a trip to New Orleans. She went into a jazz bar . . .” My chest tightened. “And there she met Dominic Durand.”

“Your papa.”

I nodded. “My papa was a jazz musician.” Tears pricked at my eyes when I thought back to our old house, practically falling down and riddled with problems. But I didn’t see that as a kid. I just saw it as my fucking home. My haven where no one said shit to me about my skin or who my parents were. A place where I laughed, and listened to my papa play his music as me and my mamma danced along.

I trudged up the path to my house, aching, my back still sore from what those pricks had done to me last week. They’d clipped me with one of their trucks. Then left me on the side of the road until I could pick myself up and go home. It’d taken me days to shake off the majority of the pain. I was pissed. I was so fucking pissed at the world and everyone in it that I practically pulsed with hatred. Then, when I turned the corner toward my house, I stopped dead. My parents sat on the rickety old porch swing, hand in hand. My mamma’s head was on my papa’s shoulder as they looked out at the marshes that lay in the distance. They were talking, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying. It didn’t matter. Because my mamma smiled so big at my papa that I knew whatever it was, it made her happy. Made him happy.

“Coon-lover,” those guys had called my mamma. “Coon slut. Spook bitch.” I clenched my jaw. “Half-breed. Fucking mongrel,” they’d spat at me as they knocked me to the ground.

“They fell in love.” I tried not to fucking crumble at the thought of them on that porch swing. When they were happy . . . unlike the last time I’d seen them. “My mamma would go to New Orleans to see my papa, but my grandfather stopped her from going so much when it was time for her to marry someone else. Someone he’d chosen.” I laughed bitterly. “He had no idea she was running off to meet a black man.”

“He picked someone white for her to marry,” Sia filled in.

I nodded. Then I smiled. “My papa, as pigheaded as he is”—I cleared my throat—“was—found out, after a frantic call from my mamma. He left everything and came to get her. Came to that hick town and walked right up to their door and demanded to see her.” I laughed, imagining that day. “My grandfather nearly had a heart attack. But my mamma saw him . . .” I smiled, remembering all the nights by the fire that they’d told me this story. When I was sick, it would make me feel better. When I was sad, it would cheer me up. Now? It just fucking destroyed me, knowing it was the beginning of the end for them. All because they loved each other.

“They ran away.” I lifted a strand of Sia’s hair and ran it between my fingers. “They eloped and got married. Mamma was only eighteen. My papa was twenty.”

“They did it.” A huge smile pulled on her mouth. “They ignored everyone else and did it.”

I nodded. “We stayed in the bayou—we couldn’t afford to move much farther away.” I sighed. “In hindsight, I think the real reason was that my mamma just couldn’t bring herself to move too far away from her mamma. I think she always hoped that, one day, they’d find her and accept her—us—back into the family. And of course, my papa would have done anything for her, even though, really, we should have moved to New Orleans for his music.” I had to smile a little at that. “My papa got work where he could. He looked after us. Even though we were dirt poor, we made it work. I loved my life. Money meant fuck all to us.” A ball of lead formed in my stomach. “When I was sixteen, word got to my mamma that her mother had had a stroke.” I remembered my mamma’s face that day, and the phone slipping from her hand.

“Then we go back,” my papa said as my mamma cried in his arms.

So we did.

Sia pressed a kiss on my cheek, and I knew she understood that this was where the story no longer spoke of love conquering all. “I’d been having seizures since I was eleven. Just started one day, and never went away. I knew it played heavily on my mamma’s heart, my diagnosis of epilepsy, and she wanted the support of her mother. But when we went back, my grandfather wouldn’t let my mamma see her own mother.” I shook my head and gritted my teeth. “The town was rich, and we weren’t. My papa tried to get a job, but no one would hire him. My grandfather had made that fucking clear. So he had to travel miles every week just to play in dive bars and places that weren’t worth a single note of his talent.”

I breathed, focusing on calming down some. “Our house was a joke, but it was ours. All the way out of town, but close enough that we had to use the town for things like food. Mamma homeschooled me. But there was a group of kids, kids of the richest, most fascist bastards that ever lived . . .”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Cowboy shift and grip Sia tighter. He met my eyes, and I could see the fucking pain and regret staring back at me. Sia was breathing fast, and I knew she could tell this was where Cowboy made an appearance.

“Rodeo riders.” I pictured Jase, Stan, Davide, and Pierre in my mind. “Those fuckers had it in for me since the moment we moved to town. ‘Half-breed,’ ‘mongrel,’ and whatever else they could dig up would be thrown my way whenever they saw me.” I felt a hand on my thigh and knew without looking that it was Cowboy. I heard the edge in my voice. Felt the searing-hot blood surging through my veins. I knew he was trying to stop me from losing my shit and working myself up into a seizure.

But I didn’t fucking care.

“They would regularly find me walking to my home from town—”

Sia looked at Cowboy. “Were you there too?”

“Yeah.” Cowboy met her eyes. “Almost all the time.”

“You . . .” She swallowed, then managed to ask, “You called him those names?”

“Sometimes,” he rasped, and I saw the shock on Sia’s face.

“Not as much as the rest,” I said, coming to his defense. And it was true. He hadn’t.

“But I did.” Cowboy ducked his head. “It ain’t an excuse, I know it, but I knew no better. I’d been told my entire life that white was the only color of worth. I’d never been around people of color. My parents . . .” He blew out a quick breath. “I know now they aren’t good people. Not evil. But ignorant and only care about their own, and money. They weren’t the best parents, but they were all I had. I listened to them. Trusted them.” He lifted his head, apology in his stare that I’d seen a million times. “I believed their bullshit. Made friends with their friends’ kids who had the same values. I didn’t realize until later that what I was doing was wrong.” He sighed. “I’d always just gone with the flow. But with Jase and the others, it was way out in the fucking wrong direction.”

Cowboy stopped speaking, so I picked up where I’d left off. “I got a part-time job at a farm out of town, and every night those fuckers taunted me for four miles as I walked home, shouting at me from their fancy-ass trucks. And every night I would have a seizure. They never knew, of course.

“Then one night . . .” I squeezed my eyes shut. “One night . . .”

“It all changed,” Cowboy jumped in. “They went too far.”

And just like that, I was back there . . .

My breath came hard as I ran. Ran through the woods. I could see the headlights chasing me as I tried to get away. But it was no use: there were two trucks, closing in from the side. I ran and ran until I could barely feel my legs. I burst through the trees and found myself at a deserted barn.

I searched around me, trying to find a way out, but I

couldn’t. The trucks came to a stop, and those pricks piled out. I backed away until I couldn’t do anything but stand my ground. Jase came first. “Well, well, lookie what we have here, boys. We just caught us a half-breed coon.”

They were all there. All but Aubin Breaux. My heart hammered in my chest, my legs fucking shaking, but they’d never see it. I would never give these assholes the pleasure.

Davide and Stan ran at me, grabbing my arms. I fought to get away, scrambled, kicking my feet, but they held me tight. Jase walked right up to me, his Stetson sitting on his head like always. Then, smiling, he struck out with his fist and slammed it across my face. My head snapped to the side, and blood pooled in my mouth. I rolled my head back to Jase, who was staring at me, eyes lit. He crossed his arms. “Huh.” He leaned in to study my face. “They bleed red. Who fucking knew?”

Davide and Stan laughed and waited for what their ringleader would do next. Jase’s face became engulfed with hatred, and he said, “Tie him up.”

Pierre, who had been waiting by a truck, took a rope and went to stand by a dying tree. Davide and Stan dragged me to the tree. I fought them again, but it was useless. Jase took the rope from Pierre. He stared at the rope, then at me. “My papa told me about the good old days. Lynchings. You heard of them?”

I felt the blood drain from my face. I knew the fucker must have seen my fear, because he came in closer. And he smiled. He tossed the rope back to Pierre. “Tie him to the tree.”

Davide and Stan slammed my chest against the thin tree and held out my arms. Jase kicked my legs, and I crashed to my knees. The bark of the tree scratched against my face, slicing open my lip. Someone tied my hands so they wrapped around the tree.

I lost focus as I stared into the woods, feeling someone rip open my shirt, baring my back. I heard more than I could see. I heard the sound of metal clanking near the trucks. I heard a whooshing sound that I couldn’t make out . . . then I heard their footsteps coming back toward me. I saw black boots first. Then my head was tilted up by someone behind me. Jase was before me . . . and in his arms was a branding iron. The kind used to brand cattle. I started to pull against the rope when I saw the end was burning orange.