Page 600 of The Tempted
I had to make her hate me.
Take that beautiful love she had for me and turn it into ugly.
I’ll never forgive myself for what I did to her, no matter how much I try to tell myself I had no choice, my angel didn’t deserve to believe she was worthless in my eyes.
She wished for me to live.
She wished for me to smile.
And she wished to be the one who made me smile.
She got her three wishes.
My only wish for her is to know she is everything good left in the world.
She’s beauty, and she’s hope.
She’s strength, and she’s passion.
She’s the light you look for when you’re stuck in the darkness.
She’s just…she’s an angel.
She was my angel.
And now she’s free.
I bent my head, pressed my finger against my left nostril and sucked up the line of coke through the right one.
“Fuck, I didn’t know anyone was in here,” I heard the new guy Stryker mumble. I had been too consumed by my thoughts to hear the door open He stared at the residue on the counter as I straightened up and glanced at him through the mirror.
“I’ll be out in a minute,” I growled, glaring at him through the glass.
Wolf had done his job, found four lost souls willing to join the mayhem, and Stryker was one of them. He was twenty-eight years old, drifting from one charter to the next, looking for his place within the club and thought he’d find it here in Brooklyn. We had just voted these guys in—watched as they cut through the stitching of the patch declaring them each a nomad, replacing it with one that declared them a brother of Brooklyn.
Now, it was time to introduce them to the fucked up shit they signed up for. It was time to introduce them to Sun Wu and the Red Dragons to give them a taste of blood. Rocco Spinelli gave us the heads up on a shipment Wu was receiving down at the docks. Jack was ready to strike—it was time to send a message back to the Chinese motherfucker who shot up Pops.
Saddle up, boys because we’re going to intercept their shipment.
“All right, but man, I gotta take a piss and we need to get our asses in gear,” Stryker argued, crossing his arms as he diverted his eyes from the coke back to my face.
“I don’t share,” I ground out.
“Not my thing,” he retorted. “Didn’t know it was yours,” he added as I bent down to rip another line but with his eyes drilling a hole into my back I couldn’t fucking do it. I grabbed the towel and put it under the water before I soaked up the remaining coke and turned back to him.
“There’s a lot you don’t know kid,” I said, twisting the towel in my hands as I stared at him. “You stick around long enough, you’ll uncover all our secrets and collect a few of your own.”
“We all got secrets man,” he replied. “Some of us hide them better than others, but every one of the Satan’s Knights has a tale to tell or we wouldn’t be brothers,” he added before he glanced down at my bare chest. “Nice tattoo,” he commented.
I looked down at the new ink that covered the left side of my chest.
“You play?” he questioned.
“Play?”
“The notes, man, you play an instrument?”
“No,” I answered, shaking my head as my hand covered the music notes that marked my chest. “Bathroom’s all yours,” I ground out before stepping around him and leaving him behind.
