Atonement: A Superhero Reverse Harem Romance (The PTB Alliance Book 1) Read online

  Atonement

  The PTB Alliance Book 1

  Katelyn Beckett

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of characters to actual persons, living, dead, undead, masked, or unmasked, events, places, or names is coincidental. No part of this book may be reproduced or transferred in any form or by any means without the written permission of the author. Upload and/or distribution of this book without permission of the author is illegal and punishable by law.

  Text © 2020 Katelyn Beckett

  Cover by

  Enchanted Ink Studio

  For Julie, who has listened to every wild tidbit while this book has been in production.

  For Hannah, who is the purest and most willing person I’ve ever known.

  And for Badj. You made me pick up a comic book again all those years ago. This is all your fault
  Chapter 1

  My first murder was an accident. I didn’t realize that her medications were so sensitive, that she couldn’t take a little Nyquil with the rest of her pharmaceutical cocktail. Everything was via prescription only. We were the good guys; pure and clean cut. No one knew she was as sick as she was. No one except me.

  They called it a homicide of mercy, an act of the heart. My lawyer pleaded that I couldn’t stand to see her suffer anymore. I told them that I wasn’t a pharmacist; I was a superhero. For the first time in Yarborough history, one of our caped crusaders stood before an audience and revealed her secret identity.

  Had it not been for the chains keeping me attached to my chair, I would have been laughed out of the courtroom. And if I’d been one of the people listening to my statement, I’d have reacted the same way. The tiny wisp of a woman sitting there, telling the world that I was Strikeout, was absolute madness.

  How could someone who weighed 130 pounds soaking wet have punched a Kipa in the face, sent it sprawling, and dragged it back to the villains who unleashed the thing? Or how could I have defeated the Butcher in a fair fight?

  Wrinkling my nose, I remembered the smirks and smiles. A blonde woman had whispered something to her counterpart and the two had collapsed in a fit of giggles. The humor faded when the defense brought forth evidence that showed the world I wasn’t lying. Fingerprints from crime scenes, DNA from past battles that wrecked who knew how many millions of dollars in collateral damage.

  Saving the world was a messy business but until I killed her, the PTB Alliance had kept my identity a closely-guarded secret. And I’d agreed to the reveal in court. Of course I had. I wanted to die, to be thrown in the dirt right along with her. Beside her, if it could be arranged, though I doubted her remaining family would allow it.

  Nishelle had been the world to me, and a hero to the world at large. While the PTB and I had agreed to keep her identity under wraps, it didn’t take a genius to track down the crying mother in the courtroom; especially when the news kept flashing her mother’s name across the screen.

  That was five years ago. In a place where supervillains were out on the street before the trial could get started, I supposed I got off with the heaviest sentence they could leverage at me.

  “They let scum like you out on probation at half sentence?” asked an officer as he slid open my door.

  “They let scum like you lay on your ass in your squad car while people like me kill ourselves to save citizens,” I muttered. The cop in question had offered to bring me fast food more than once if I just got down on my knees and praised his- well, you get the picture.

  “What was that?”

  I lifted my chin and looked him in the eye. As I opened my mouth, my lawyer smacked a folder over it and wrapped an arm around my shoulder. Marie Higgins, one of my few visitors throughout the past several years, was largely unchanged. Still a box-colored auburn foxette with dark brown eyes and a smile that’d give you cavities, she won more than she lost. Marie had been with the Alliance for far longer than I had.

  “Are you hassling my client?” Marie asked, her voice threatening the officer with all sorts of litigation.

  “I’m asking what my prisoner said, Miss.”

  “As of 4:30 this morning, she is no longer your prisoner. It is nearly noon and I have come to collect her. You have no legal nor justified reason to continue- ”

  “Yeah, yeah, lawyer speak. Here.” The officer shoved his key into my manacles. “Get out of here with her. Fuck off.”

  “Thank you for your time,” Marie beamed, batting her eyes at him.

  Then she grabbed me by the wrist and towed me toward the reception counter to retrieve my few belongings. I stumbled along after her, amazed as door after door slid open when so many had been closed in my face.

  “Name?” asked the matron stationed behind the caged window.

  “Cassandra Clark.”

  “Released at 4:30 this morning, here you go. Exit’s to your left.”

  Exit. The word dropped a pound of lead in my gut. I’d found myself wondering what I would do when I got out. I supposed anyone would. But with the moment upon me? I grabbed my brown paper sack, slipped into the bathroom, and changed.

  Shucking my prison orange was the most wonderful feeling. I pulled on an old Bonk ‘n Smack cartoon nostalgia t-shirt and a pair of jeans that were just a hair too loose. The same clothes I’d been taken into custody wearing, Nishelle and I had intended to head out grocery shopping that morning and I hadn’t realized before I-

  “Cassie, are you coming?”

  Marie’s voice pulled me out of my nightmares before they got too carried away with themselves. With the rubber band included, I got my hair into a tail and tried to ignore the gray hair or two visible in the chipped mirror. Those certainly hadn’t been there five years ago.

  “We’ll stop by the Hideout on the way in to report,” Marie told me as we walked toward her car.

  Lawyering must have paid more than the Alliance ever paid me. Marie was only a few years older than me and I had never even sat in a Maserati. She opened the door and I slid in feeling grimy and outclassed.

  “I don’t know if I’m ready for the Hideout yet,” I said.

  “Lamar asked that I bring you straight there. He wants to spoil you. After all, he spent a year in jail for loitering, remember?” Marie turned the car on, shot it into gear, and sent us out of the parking lot.

  Scribe, I thought. He can’t bother to come visit me, but he puts in orders the second I’m out? Typical.

  It wasn’t fair and I knew it. Scribe spent most of his off-hours trying to keep the Yarborough chapter of the PTB Alliance together and making sure that all the little ends met. If he wasn’t pretending to be a waiter at the Hideout and he wasn’t at PTB? He was probably spending a few hours trying to teach his toddler to read.

  No, not a toddler anymore. Emma would be at least 7 now. 8? I leaned back in the seat and rubbed my forehead. How many birthdays had I missed? How many weddings and graduations? How many anniversaries?

  God, I’d never even been to Nishelle’s grave. I looked out the window and watched the world go by. When you’re in prison, no one bothers to tell you the GameStop on 5th and Main closed down or that Uncle Joe’s Taco Stand was clearly bought out by Taco Bell.

  The Hideout was the perfect place for civilians, supers, and the occasional villain to grab a quick bite to eat before they got back to their typical hum-drum existence. Yet even those hallowed halls showed some amount of wear and tear, too. The O in the open sign no longer glowed and the windows still advertised a special for three days ago.

  I stepped out of the car and straight into a puddle. My old sneakers soaked up the water faster than a cracker in soup. I sighed, hopped on one foot onto the sidewalk, and tore off my shoe to dump the water out. Marie ignored my antics and held the door open for me. I wasn’t ready for it, but I fixed my shoe and went in anyway.

  Some pop song blared candy kisses in my ear as the bell rang behind us, Marie right after me. Something about the silver lining in a cloud and how bright the sun would shine again. I wished I had a hoodie that I could hide in because, as I walked toward an empty booth, heads swiveled to stare at me.

  I sank into the seat and pulled the menu up to cover my face. Breakfast, served all day, was new. How long had it been since I had eggs with yolks in them, not just runny yellow patties? And pancakes? Ones from the griddle, not the freezer, sounded like some kind of heaven-sent miracle.

  “Took you long enough to get her here, Marie,” growled a deep baritone.

  My eyes shot up to see a man I’d known so well, more a stranger now than ever. His long dreadlocks were gone, replaced by a bald head and no-nonsense brows. I dared to sit properly upright and cleared my throat. At Scribe’s appearance, everyone else had mysteriously gone back to their own business. All supers, then. All the better.

  “Pancakes?” I asked.

  “Pancakes,” he repeated, voice flat.

  “Are we pretending or not?”

  “Isabella’s waiting for you at the building,” Scribe grumbled. “I don’t have time to discuss your rank and long-term status right now, girl, but we’ll talk soon. I just wanted to take a look at you. See how it treated you.”

  “And get me pancakes?” I asked, hopeful.

  A smile flickered across his gruff features. “And get you pancakes.”

  Scribe left and Marie whipped out her phone. The police had taken mine
when I’d been arrested but it was probably still in a locker somewhere in evidence. Note to self, get something shiny with a solid case that can take a punch. If Scribe was willing to talk to me, I’d be back on the street in no time.

  But why would Melody be waiting for me?

  “Marie? What’s Izzy been up to the past few years?”

  Her eyes popped over the top rim of her phone. “She’s a district leader now, just under Scribe. I think he took her in after you and… the trial.”

  The name brought with it an immediate mental image of her. It sparked a voice I’d never hear again, but one I’d know anywhere. Purple cape flapping in the breeze, dark blue flames on her boots. The hottest flames bring the coolest colors, the darkest hues more dangerous than the oranges, yellows, and reds most people recognized. Nishelle designed it all herself, way back when we were kids.

  Pancakes appeared in front of me, ringed with links of sausage and plated with four medium eggs. Suddenly, I wasn’t hungry but Scribe was already gone. I picked up a fork, poked an egg, and watched the yolk ooze across its sisters.

  “Can you handle talking about her?”

  “Not here,” I said. “I just want to know about Melody and what to expect when we get home.”

  “Maybe I shouldn’t try to explain it,” Marie sighed. “It’s complicated. I’m very proud of what she’s accomplished and I’m not one to question Scribe. No one is. But sometimes there’s a little bit of a chip on her shoulder and you’re just itching to knock it off.”

  “Well, she’s always been a little cocky.” I watched the yolk overtake an innocent sausage link.

  “There’s cocky and then there’s a huge self-assured thing that she does. And with her being one of the only women that high in the PTB?”

  “She’s one of the only ones left, as far as I know,” I interjected. No one was going to suggest Scribe was some sexist. The man had saved most of us off the streets and treated us all the same.

  “She is,” Marie confirmed. “But you know. Still. You’ll see what I mean. There’s a sense of grandeur that’s just all wrong.”

  Grandeur. Complaining about grandeur to a masked superhero, to someone who worried about whether or not they’d have their suit out of cleaning before it was go-time again, was a little over the top. I grabbed the maple syrup and slathered it on.

  ~*~

  Fed and ready to face whatever the Alliance intended to throw at me, I headed back to the Maserati. The way it moved through traffic was some sort of dream come true. Everyone got out of our way. It wasn’t magic, but it certainly seemed to be for someone who had, at one point, been driving a 1998 Ford Taurus.

  Yarborough had changed more than I had while I was in the pen. We had seven different zip codes but when I’d gone in, we’d only had five. Traffic merged and writhed around us, skyscrapers reached for the clouds, but home stood taller than all of them.

  Glittering windows, golden archways, and three silver letters that stood out to tell the world who we were, the PTB Alliance building soared into the stratosphere. Every member could find a place to hide from your average evil-doer and somewhere to rest, relax, and heal. Though a few hits had been attempted, we’d always managed to swat them away. Even if there were nukes headed toward the building, someone like Creed could be counted on to catch them and send them somewhere else.

  You know, like back where they came from.

  As the car approached, I found myself drumming my fingers on the arm rest. If Melody, Isabella’s superhero nickname, had changed then who else was different? Would I be welcome among my own kind? Scribe had been willing to be a normal person around me, but there were others that had been much closer to Nishelle than me, or those who had been third party entirely.

  We stopped on the curb and I felt the door lock pop open. I glanced at Marie out of the corner of my eye as a security guard came up to the window. With her busy, I slipped out the door and snuck toward the building. It didn’t matter if I’d be loved or not. I needed to go home, finally, and remember what normal was.

  “Ma’am, you need to be scanned in.”

  I bolted.

  Though I’d never been the fastest runner of the group, or even my age range, I could keep up with most. Still jumpy from prison, I flew up the stairs and went head first into the solid steel doors that had certainly not opened for me. And down I went.

  I awoke to the scent of smelling salts and something that reminded me faintly of motor oil. Coughing, I sat up and looked around. It took the world a moment to right itself, but my gaze landed on a man in his early 30s. Blond-haired and blue-eyed, he was the picture of every 1945 Boy Scout. That was, except for the glasses. Square-rimmed and solid, they were the most standard-issue set I’d ever seen.

  And he was so much leaner than he had been. The last time I’d seen him, his cheeks had been bright, red apples. Hollowed out, with a lean nose, Edwin was a strict and frowning creature.

  “Well, there she is,” Edwin said. “Maybe open the doors next time instead of letting her knock herself out.”

  “I didn’t know she could do that,” Marie answered. “I thought she had all that super strong stuff happening?”

  “When she’s full of adrenaline. I assume the distance between the car and the door wasn’t enough for her to build up anything.”

  I rubbed my forehead, wincing when I found the bump. “That’s close enough. But I wasn’t trying to punch somebody. I was just trying to get away.”

  “You’ve been away plenty long.” Edwin pocketed his smelling salts. “Let’s get you comfortable.”

  He offered his hand to me and I reached out to take it with no hesitation. The technical guys in the movies are always these little weak and ferrety things, but they never seem to consider just how heavy machinery is. Those tight, strong muscles bunched in his bicep and I was on my feet in a breathless second.

  “Come on,” Edwin said, throwing his arm around my shoulder. “Picoret.”

  The doors dinged and slid open as they always had. How had I forgotten there was a password? The entire staff knew it, but being out of the loop as I was, of course I hadn’t. Or had there always been one? I couldn’t remember. And the fact that I couldn’t remember bothered me more than anything else.

  “Escorting a visitor,” Edwin called to the secretary. She startled when she saw me.

  He didn’t so much as slow down. Still in the curl of his arm, I took a closer look at my long-time genius comrade. The way he held himself, the way he walked; everything spoke of a man who had come into his own. It wasn’t as if he was a gibbering idiot when I had left, but he’d taken care of things. He’d grown into himself. It made me feel that much more disconnected from the rest of my fellows.

  “I’m glad you’re out.”

  “What? You miss making gloves that much?” I flinched when I said it, sounding much sharper than I meant to.

  “I missed you. And, I suppose, putting explosives in gloves with enough armor to protect you but explode someone’s face is sort of cool.”