“Brother Matthew Pearce has chosen to come back to the fold,” Tucker Gardner announced to the assembled group. “However, Brother Matthew betrayed this group months ago, leading to the arrest and persecution of members of our brotherhood. For that reason, we must discuss and vote on Brother Matthew’s return to the group.”

A low murmur moved around the room, men I had known all my life staring at me as they discussed my fate. I was sitting in a folding chair on a low altar, just to the left of a podium where Tucker ruled over the meeting like some sort of politician. Several other men were on the altar with us, but my father and Todd Lawson were nowhere to be found.

I doubted, however, that their influence wasn’t almost palpable in this room.

“Six months ago, Brother Matthew was captured and interrogated by Stone Security after an attack on their offices, forced to tell Jack Stone where our brothers had made their headquarters. Stone used that information to trap our leader, Brother Gerald Smythe, into admitting to his complicity in the death of a local man, Harry Cravits. At this moment, Smythe and a dozen of our brothers are in jail awaiting trial for that crime. A true travesty if there ever was one.”

More murmurs filled the room.

“Not only did Brother Gerald go to jail, but his relationship with the local sheriff was also revealed, and that man also sits in jail awaiting trial on corruption charges. While we can do little about these upcoming trials, we can still protect our people here in Ellaville and encourage outsiders to leave the area and leave us to the quiet, virtuous life we wish to live!”

A cheer sounded in the small basement room, echoing off the walls. I couldn’t help but look around and imagine the ordeal Patrick Shaughnessy underwent in this same room. Two men had died in here, yet the Guardians seemed unfazed by that reality.

Tucker turned and looked at me. “Brother Matthew, we have to believe that your choice to tell Stone about the compound where Smythe and his men were taken down was an innocent mistake, a product of coercion. After all, we are all aware that Stone had control over your sister at the time and has since brainwashed her into marrying him. Can we assume that it was in fear for your sister that you made this mistake?”

It wasn’t. I’d turned on the Guardians because of Tyler’s actions the night of Harry Cravits’s death. But I didn’t suppose that was the truth they wanted to hear at this moment.

“Yes.”

“Do you regret your choices?”

“I do.”

Tucker turned back to the crowd. “The Scriptures tell us that forgiveness is divine. That a man who can forgive his enemies is a man who will rise to paradise when his time on this earth is done. I believe that it is within us to find forgiveness for Brother Matthew and welcome him back to the fold in order to show him the righteous path.”

A few people in the crowd nodded and murmured with approval. But I could see disagreement on many faces, dark clouds that clearly spoke to another thought altogether.

“He didn’t just give Smythe over,” someone called out. “He worked for Stone!”

“Yes,” Tucker said, lowering his head as he took a long look at me. “That is true.”

“We can’t trust him!” someone else said.

Tucker crossed his arms over his chest and faced me. “Did you work for Stone?”

I’d known this was coming. I’d practiced a script for this moment, studying myself in the mirror on my bedroom door so that I could be sure to get the beaten, downtrodden look just right.

“I had no choice! Stone would have sent me to jail, too!”

“Why would he have done that?”

“I was in the car with Tyler Sanders the night Harry Cravits died!”

Another murmur. Some in the crowd hadn’t been a part of the Guardians then, and many others were simply unaware. I could see that this bit of information had changed the expression on many of their faces.

“He threatened you?”

“Yes! He said the only way he could trust that I wasn’t lying to them, that I wasn’t going to go back to you and give away his secrets, was if I worked for him. He said it was either that, or I could rot in jail beside Sanders!”

“You chose yourself over the Guardians?”

“I chose to stay out of jail so that I could come back to you the moment Stone felt secure in his fight against you.”

The murmurs were becoming so much background noise. I knew now that the person I had to convince was Tucker, but he’d already made up his mind. He’d made it up before coming into this room, and I understood why.

He wanted information on Jack and Stone Security. He believed I could give him that information. What he didn’t know was that this was exactly what Jack had hoped for. He was playing right into our hands, not the other way around.

“I believe,” Tucker said slowly, waiting a heartbeat for the crowd to settle. “I believe that with a little penance, Brother Matthew is ready to come back into the fold.”

There was a little cheer that came from the crowd. But I could also see that many in that room still weren’t convinced. But it didn’t matter, because Tucker was.

“The Bible tells us an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. And, because Brother Matthew gave our numbers a beating when he gave away the secret of our compound, he should receive a beating in return.”

I stiffened slightly. I’d expected some sort of retribution, but I wasn’t sure I liked the way this was going.

Tucker gestured to the two men standing behind me on the altar. Before I could move, they had me by the arms and were jerking me out of my chair. They dragged me across the room to a cross that was secured to the floor with heavy bolts, a cross I had assumed when entering the room was simply a decoration, but quickly realizing was much more than that. Shackles hung from the back side of the short arms of the T, hidden in the shadows of this part of the room. One of the men held me while the other pulled the shackles down. I tried to jerk free, but the guy was a lot stronger than he looked, a man I didn’t recognize and was sure wasn’t a member of our church.

What the hell?

The other guy snatched up my wrist, nearly breaking it when I tried to twist away. He snapped one end of the shackles around my wrist, then moved to the other side and secured my second wrist. I tugged at the restraints, testing them. It was clear I wasn’t going anywhere.

“Brothers!” Tucker called from the altar. “Form a line. We, as a family, will mete out Brother Matthew’s punishment.”

They did, eager like a group of music fans waiting in line for tickets from their favorite band. The first blows landed on my ribs, painful but not blindingly so. But then came the blows to my face, my jaw. My nose broke at some point, my eyes swelled. I felt a rib break at some point. My wrists ached from the shackles, the weight of my body pulling down on them when the blows caused my knees to grow weak. But I stayed conscious, looked each man in the eye when it was his turn. I could see anger in some eyes, hatred in others. Friends of Tyler’s or Smythe’s, a few former sheriff’s deputies who’d chosen the Guardians over their careers. I saw regret in other eyes, sorrow even. But that didn’t lessen the power of their blows.

By the time it was over, I could barely see out of my left eye. My ears were ringing, and my jaw ached something dreadful. Breathing was an ordeal. I wanted to lie down and sleep for a few years.

“Sorry about this,” Tucker said, unlocking the shackles and stepping back as I fell to the floor in a broken heap. “Go home and clean up. We’ll need you here on Friday for the regular meeting. We have some plans that we’ll need your assistance with.”

“Yes, sir,” I mumbled through my swollen jaw.

“Good little soldier.” Tucker laughed as he walked away.

The room was silent. Dark. I closed my eyes and must have passed out, because the shadows cast by the moonlight coming through the high windows had changed by the time I opened them again. I hurt so much that just moving my pinky sent shivers of pain up and down my spine. It took me a few minutes to steel myself for the attempt to stand.

Shit!

I struggled, feeling like an old man with a body riddled with arthritis. Everything hurt. Putting my hand on the floor for leverage hurt. Rolling onto my knees hurt. Straightening my back hurt. Moving my head hurt. There was nothing that didn’t hurt.

I don’t know how I managed to get out to my car, but somehow I navigated the narrow hallway and the stairs that led to the back door. There was some relief in taking the pressure off my muscles by sitting. But not much.

I needed ice. I needed aspirin. Hell, I needed an IV full of morphine!

I sat in the car for a while, the engine idling. I closed my eyes and thought of Whit. I saw her walking into that bar earlier, saw that pretty white dress flowing over her hips, saw the light in her eyes when she saw me. I wanted her to always look at me that way, with that level of excitement on her gorgeous face. I wanted to wake in the mornings and see that face curled up on a pillow next to mine. I wanted to come home after a long day and see that face filled with expectation, that light in her beautiful eyes.

Whit Ellington. It had always been her.

Why did she have to come home now? Why couldn’t she have come home a month from now, a year? Why did she have to come when things were so complicated?

I must have fallen asleep again. When I next opened my eyes, Crispin Sullivan was there, lifting me out of the car like I weighed nothing.

“Take his car to his parents’ house,” he said to someone I couldn’t see.

“You can’t be here,” I mumbled, my words broken and nearly incomprehensible because of my swollen jaw.

“We can’t let you sit here and die, brother.” Crispin laid me in the back seat of his car, smacking my knee lightly. “We’re just going to fix you up and send you back in. Nothing to worry about.”

I sighed, relief washing through me. I was gone again before the car began its journey to wherever we were going. I think I slept longer that time because when I next opened my eyes, I was no longer in the car, and Ruth was sitting beside me.

“Hey,” she said softly, worry burning in her eyes. “I was beginning to wonder if you were going to wake up.”

“Where?”

I tried to sit up, but pain rushed through me, forcing me back down before her hand on my chest did much of anything.

“You’re at Alli and Crispin’s place. It was the safest place to bring you.”

“Safe?”

She laid a rag on the side of my face, a cold rag that burned before relief washed through me. “Try to sit still,” she said softly. “You took quite a beating.”

I closed my eyes, the memory of each of those men—some men I’d grown up with, some men I’d gone to church with since I was a small child—standing in line to hit me, some more than once, filtered through my mind.

I shivered.

“Are you cold?” Ruth drew a blanket up against my throat. “You were hot before. You kept kicking it off.”

I opened my eyes again. “How long?”

“How long have you been here?” She sat back a little, thinking. “Two days?”

I pushed the rag away from my face, struggling once again to sit up. The pain was bad, but bearable. She touched my chest, tried to push me back down, but I resisted.

“They expect me at a meeting tonight. I have to go.”

“No. You have to rest.”

“Ruth…” I took her wrist, my mind suddenly clear even if my words weren’t coming out as clearly as I would have liked. “I have to do this. It’s important.”

Anger suddenly flashed in her eyes. “Why? Because Jack told you it was? Because he thought it was okay to send you back into the wolves’ den just because he needs answers that he can’t get any other way?”

“It’s not just about Jack.” I squeezed her wrist lightly. “This is about me, too.”

“Look what they did to you, Matthew! Are you really going back in there so that they can do it again?”

“They won’t.”

“How do you know that? How do you know they won’t try to kill you the way they did Patrick?” Her eyebrows rose. “Didn’t think I knew about that, did you? Just because Jack tries to keep me in the dark doesn’t mean I don’t know what’s happening around here.”

“It’s dangerous,” I admitted. “But it has to be done.”

“Why? Why does it have to be done?”

“Because those men are warping our beliefs! They’re turning the Scripture we’ve been studying since we were children, the words of God we’ve believed all our lives, into something dark and corrupted. And they’re turning this community into a war zone.”

“Those are Jack’s words!”

“Maybe. But he’s right. What kind of city will this be for you and your baby if we don’t do something? You have to think about the future, Ruth. You have to think about your family.”

“You’re my family.”

“And that’s why you have to let me do this.” I touched her cheek with the back of my fingers, caressing her jaw with all the affection I had always felt for my sister. “I love you. And I know you’re worried. But this is about me. This is about me finding what I believe in, what I want from the rest of my life. This is about my future as much as yours.”

“If this is because you feel guilty—”

“It is,” I admitted. “I do feel guilty. I was in the car when that man was killed. I should have stopped it before Tyler even got behind the wheel, and I didn’t. That’s on me. But that’s not all this is about.”

“I just don’t want Jack to force you into something because you feel like you owe him something.”

“This isn’t about Jack, Ruth. This is about me.”

She was quiet for a long moment, sitting back in that uncomfortable chair, her growing baby bump more visible today than it had ever been before. I reached toward it, brushing my fingertips over it.

“Let me do this.”

She slowly nodded. “But please, Matthew, promise me you’ll be careful.”

“Exceedingly so.”

She smiled, but there was still worry in her eyes as she studied my swollen face. “Your nose is broken, but Crispin pulled it back into place. He thinks you broke a couple of ribs, too.”

“I’ll be all right.”

She half nodded, but then she began shaking her head. “Stubborn man. Always were.”

I struggled to my feet, holding my side as I moved. I dropped a painful kiss on the top of her head.

“Thank you.”

I thought about her a while later as I stood under the hot spray of the shower, the water working out knots in muscles that weren’t bruised, just sore from days in bed; thought about the angst that had always existed between us that seemed to be easing now that we were both adults. I’d been angry with her for choosing Jack because it had felt like she was turning her back on everything I believed in. But then, after Harry died, after I saw the fire in her when she attacked me for being in that car, I stopped seeing the world in black and white and began to appreciate the colors, the varying shades, the shadows and the brightness of the sunlight. She helped me see things differently, and I think that helped me find a way to understand her choices even if I still didn’t quite agree with them.

Maybe stopping the Guardians, proving that there was more to their actions than what church members believed, would help heal some things for me and help my father see both my and Ruth’s choices a little more clearly.

I could hope, anyway. I was giving up everything for this.