My words pierced her.  I saw the evidence on her face, and in the way her breathing changed.  Fuck, why do these women fall at his fucking feet?

Her hand went to her chest, and she grabbed at her singlet in an anxious manner.  “I’ve suspected it for a while now.  Thank you for confirming it.”

“Why do you stay with him?”

Her eyes widened.  “I love him,” she whispered.

My anger flared, and I didn’t try to hide it.  “How the fuck can you love a man who hits you, has cheated on you for years, and who lies to you repeatedly?”

The nervousness slid off her face and she put on the mask I assumed she used when defending her choice of Marcus.  “My relationship with Marcus is not one I expect anyone to understand, let alone you.”

“You talk a good game, Sharon, but you don’t fool me.  You need to remember one thing: we’re both intimate with the evil of Marcus Cole.  If anyone can understand your relationship with him, it’s me.”

“No one can - ”

The headache I’d managed to rid myself of crashed its way back into my skull, and the anger that talking about my father caused collided with the pain in my head.  I finally lost my shit.  “I fucking can!” I thundered.  My skin heated with crazed madness and my heart thumped in my chest.  “You think you’re the only one who ever wanted to be loved by Marcus?  You think you’re the only one who craved his presence in their life?  Fuck!  I fucking get it.  But he will never love us or anyone the way we want, the way we fucking deserve, because Marcus Cole exists to please only one person.  Him-fucking-self.”

She stood staring at me with wild eyes, and I watched as the mask tumbled off her face.

We faced each other, two broken and scarred people, fucked up by the same man, and I felt a shift inside me.

Something had cracked.

A realisation.

I’d uttered the truth when I said Marcus would never love us.

A truth I’d never wanted to admit out loud.

I’d buried that truth so fucking deep in my soul and refused to believe it.

There was no more hiding from it now.

“I love him, and I can’t stop,” she whispered.  “I know it makes no sense, but I’ve always loved him, even through all the shit.”

I stared at her and waited for more.

“In the beginning, he wasn’t like he is now, not this bad.  Then we had Scott, and, at the same time, shit went down at the club.  It was a blood bath as they battled a war with Black Deeds and shed members with no loyalty.  Marcus changed through all of that, hardened, and became more violent.  He also began seeing your mother around that time, and I suspect he took most of his anger out on her because he was leaving me alone back then.  My father was still around and kept an eye on him.”

“So you knew he was cheating on you?”

“He always had, but I didn’t care.  I grew up around the club and knew it was just part of the lifestyle.”

I stared at her.  Stunned a woman would accept that for herself.  “Were there other women besides my mother?”

“From what I could work out, one or two, but not really.  As his duties at the club increased, he didn’t really have the time.”

I took a breath and asked the one question I’d always wanted to know the answer to.  “Did Marcus abuse your kids?”

“No!”

“Why not?  He never hesitated to take to me with his fists if he was in the mood.”  I didn’t believe her.

“Blue helped me.  After Dad died, he stepped up and looked out for us.  Marcus only began hitting me after Blue left.”

Fuck.

Blue.

“Who is Blue?”

“My brother.”

Fuck, under our noses all this fucking time.

“Why did he leave?”

“It was after his girlfriend died of a drug overdose.  Something happened between him and Marcus.  Blue knew something, I don’t know what, but it was enough to force Marcus to get the club out of drugs.  Blue always hated they were into that.”

“Blue blackmailed him?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know where he is now?”

“No, he never tells me.”

He knows Marcus would kill him if he found him.

“How often do you hear from him?”

She shrugged.  “Every couple of months.”

“Does Blue know Marcus has pulled Storm back into drugs?”

“I haven’t spoken to him for a while now, so unless he’s heard it from someone else, I don’t think so.”

We need to get that information to him somehow.

I stared at her.  I struggled to understand what made a woman still want her husband even after she knew all this shit about him. I could grasp her falling for him when she was younger, but how could she still love what he’d become?  “Don’t you think it’s time you started putting yourself first, Sharon?”

She swallowed hard and that anxious look returned to her eyes.  “I don’t remember how.”  It was barely a whisper, but it fucking hit me in the chest.

It was like a piece of the puzzle fell into place for me.

My mother doesn’t remember how, either.

“The first step is to get him out of your life.”

The look on her face told me she had no idea how to do that.