The room was deadly silent, and one by one every brother looked my way. “Styx—” Tank went to speak, but I shook my head at my best friend. I had to do this. I’d seen the looks I’d gotten from the brothers over these past few weeks. They suspected me. Not so much my own chapter, but the others. Every time there was an attack, I was asked how they would’ve known where we’d be. How many would’ve been there. Everything. Tank never got those looks. He’d paid his dues. Wasn’t coated in Nazi tattoos anymore, unlike me. As involved as Tank was, he hadn’t been born for the sole purpose of being the Ku Klux Klan’s heir. Raised to only champion the white race. In the Ayers household, the air we breathed was Klan and Klan alone.
I wanted to just cut tail and fucking leave all this shit behind, but I wasn’t gonna back down. All this? It was my fault. I’d created this. I had to fucking end it. Least I could do right now was try to save these men.
And I wouldn’t let them see me weak. I’d never fucking do that.
“It’s called the invisible empire,” I said, and could almost smell the lingering smell of smoke from a burning cross beside me. Could feel the air charged with the cause, the need for the race war to start. Like my old brotherhood had once looked to me, dressed in green robes and standing before the fiery cross, these brothers were looking at me too. But none like I was a fucking messiah. More like a suspect.
“Invisible because we exist where no one sees. No one knows who we are. We assimilate into society. We exist among you.”
“Y’all have flags outside your houses and giant swastikas tattooed on your skin.” Some of the brothers smirked. “Hardly invisible,” Smiler said.
“And they’re the ones you need to worry about the least.” I leaned on the table. My knuckles cracked from all the tension on my body. “As I’ve said before to my chapter, the rednecks and the skinheads who fight for fun and protest outside of town halls aren’t the ones you need to fear. They’re the show ponies, the distraction. They’re the waving hand, making you look one way while the real soldiers, the true army of the invisible empire, tear you down with the other.”
“I don’t fear none of you cunts,” Crow, the New Orleans president, said. The fucker was smiling, rolling the dice he always held in his hand.
“You should.”
Crow smirked. In fact, all the others did. It made my blood boil. The Klan—me, my brother, my father, my uncle—had worked all our fucking lives to make people think the way they did about us. To make us look a joke. But in secret we’d built the empire of thinking men. Of men and women who would allow the skinhead jokes to smash down your front door, while we, the true brotherhood, would sneak in through the window.
“We?” I followed the sound of the question to Hush. Cowboy had his hand on his friend’s shoulder. “You keep saying we.”
I did? My heart fucking pounded. I hadn’t meant to say we. I didn’t think of myself as Klan anymore. Not at all.
“Them,” I rasped, feeling my stomach drop. “I meant them.”
Hush never moved his eyes from me. And I knew why. Bastards, shitty assfeeder members of the Klan, took out his folks. And he’d seen them die. Watched them burn. “Them,” I said again, all the fight draining from my body. “They are an organized unit . . .” I trailed off, stopping myself from telling them how they were so well trained. But what was the fucking point? Most of these brothers still thought me a Nazi anyway. Saw me as the White Prince no matter how much I tried to escape it.
“I taught them,” I said and felt Tank tense beside me. He loved this club. But he’d also kept a shit-ton back from them because of me. Never even told them who I was until some of my old brotherhood had taken Ky’s old lady back to the cult we used to work with. I knew he hadn’t wanted me to tell all these Hangmen that it was me who had crafted them into the men they were now. The fighters. And that it was Beau who had taken control where I’d left off and made them unstoppable. “I trained them up, along with some other ex-forces members. I made them who they are now.”
“Tanner. Think it’s best if you step outta church right now.” I looked at Ky. He wasn’t speaking for Styx. He was speaking for himself. Styx was just staring at me.
“Come on, Tann. Let’s go.”
Tank led me out to the hallway. His hand stayed on my shoulder until we got to my room and I slumped to the bed. My head dropped, and I stared at the wooden floor. There were years of marks on the grains, showing just how long this club had been around. How many brothers had passed through these doors? How many men with fucked-up pasts? Needing the outlaw life, too messed up to be normal.
“I don’t know how to do it,” I finally said. My voice sounded like a boom of thunder in the quiet room. I lifted my head to see Tank standing still. He ran his hand over his shaved head. I caught the shank scar. Remembered waiting for him outside of the prison when he got out. When he walked away from the Klan. I’d been so fucking angry at him. Turning on Landry in prison for some kid he’d roomed with who Landry planned to kill. I was so fucking mad that he was walking away from what we’d been building. Couldn’t understand how he’d lost faith in us—the motherfucking Ku Klux Klan.
His home. Our home.
“I don’t know how to put that life behind me once and for all . . . it always finds a way to catch me. No matter how fucking hard I try.”
Tank sighed, his shoulders dropping. I knew how to read my best friend by now. He was feeling sorry for me. I didn’t want his damn pity. I just needed to know how to move the fuck on. To be free. “It’s all I know. I was born, then crafted into the perfect White Prince. Beaten if I dared speak to someone outside of the white race. You know me, Tank. I was all in. Was made to not even entertain any other way of thinking.”
“I know.”
“I don’t believe the rhetoric now. I don’t.” Mi amor, forget what you’ve always been told and just feel . . . Adelita’s husky voice cut through my brain, and the dead feeling that had resided in my chest immediately warmed the fuck up. Just thinking about her dark eyes, her long dark hair . . . her voice, her hands on my chest when I needed her most . . . “I fucking don’t believe it.”
“You’re a Hangman now. Patched in.”
I nodded. “It’s so fucking hard.” I ran my hand over my stubbled chin. I squeezed my eyes shut. “And I’m at fucking war with my brother . . . and with the family the bitch I want more than anything works for. The bitch I fucking love . . . but haven’t seen in two years.” I sighed, feeling my damn throat clog. “Don’t even know if she still wants me.” I laughed to disguise the massive lump in my throat. “Why would she? She’s perfect, smart, funny. She’s everything. I’m the Klan heir. Or so she probably still thinks. I’m the fucking dirt on her feet. She’s better off without me.”
Tank came forward and kissed my fucking head. “Tann. I know you don’t think any of the Klan shit is true anymore—”
“The other brothers think I do,” I interrupted. “Maybe not our chapter. But you have to see how the others look at me.”
“Fuck ’em.” He sat beside me. “When I came here, it took me a while to get in with them. They didn’t trust me either. They’ll see in time.”
I turned to face Tank. “I don’t think I could kill him . . . if it came to it.”
“Beau?”
I nodded. “He’s the one leading the Klan now. He’s the one who’s coming at us.” I sucked in a breath. “Fuck, Tank. He’s the one who needs to be killed to really fuck up the Klan.”
Tank put his hand on my head in support, but didn’t say shit. What could he say? He knew it was true. My brother had to die. Tank got to his feet. “I need to get back to church.” He eyed me weirdly. “You gonna be okay? You want to stay with me and Beauty for a few days? Get away from this place?”
“Nah. Gonna contact my Klan mole and find out what the fuck is going on.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah. Thanks.” Tank left the room, and I went to my computer station at the corner of the room. I log
ged in to my email and sent a message to Wade.
What the fuck happened today?
I only had to wait a few minutes before he replied.
Been away, inner-circle shit. Just got back. Didn’t know they were planning anything. New Dragon took the lead. Ex-Marine. Knows his shit. I’m here for a while now unless your old man calls me away. I’ll keep my ear to the ground and give you a heads-up on anything new going down. I fucked up. Won’t happen again.
I stared at the email and wondered for the millionth time if I was being played. But Wade’s intel had come through too often for me to doubt him.
Finally, I wrote: Make sure it doesn’t.