Absolution

By Severine Wolfe

Brion Robertson was considered smart by those who know him. They will also be the first to tell you what an asshole he is, but them reminisce on the small moments his kindness and love shone through. Granted, in the past years, those moment had been nearly non-existent. When he disappears for years, absence does not make the heart grow fonder for anyone, not even his beloved sister.
Until, when he can barely move, and can’t even speak, someone walks through the door, quite literally, and everything changes. Being forgiven is easy. Paying for your sins is a lot harder.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Severine Wolfe
• Release date: Feb 15, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005222598

Severine Wolfe

Severine Wolfe is a pen name. It's also a name I've used across the gaming world for nearly 20 years. I answer to, "Hey, Sev!" just as easily as my birth name.I am married and have four grown children and three grandchildren. I love to read and I read everything from treatises on philosophy to theories on the speed of light to the most bawdy of bodice rippers. My interests are varied but reading, knitting and gardening are my top three. Extreme knitting, not for the faint of heart.I've had stories running around my head for years and I'm just now letting them out to put themselves on the virtual page. I hope you enjoy the characters as much as I have over the years. You can contact me at [e-mail].

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ABSOLUTION

Urban Paladins Book 8

Severine Wolfe

Book Title Copyright © 2022 by Severine Wolfe. All Rights Reserved.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review. 

Cover designed by Melody Simmons https://bookcoverscre8tive.com/ 

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. 

Severine Wolfe

Visit my website at www.Sevwolfe.com 

Printed in the United States of America 

First Printing: February 2022

ISBN- 9781005222598

Wherein we find why Brion has been an asshole and the fallout to being an asshole to people you love and who love you back.

When you’re at your lowest and you realize you’ve hurt those you’ve professed to love the most, things change and your thinking change… if you’re smart.

Brion Robertson was considered smart by those who knew him. They will also be the first to tell you what an asshole he is, but them reminisce on the small moments his kindness and love shone through. Granted, in the past years, those moment had been nearly non-existent. When he disappears for years, absence does not make their hearts grow fonder for anyone, not even his beloved sister.

Until, when he can barely move, and can’t even speak, someone walks through the door, quite literally, and everything changes. Being forgiven is easy. Paying for your sins is a lot harder.

ONE

When I’d left the cabin I’d been sitting in for six months, I was sure I’d make a beeline back home to Texas, to Houston. I didn’t.

In my life, there were many things I was going to do, or should have done. But I just didn’t.

I still hadn’t checked the Paladin forums, not wanting to telegraph to anyone about where I was or what I was doing. In point of fact, there still wasn’t another Paladin I was wanting to talk to unless it was my sister. Maybe Gabriel, but he still wouldn’t get me.

It really didn’t matter since I’d left my phone back in my house in Houston.

When you have fucked over everyone in your life as spectacularly as I have, and then begun to become the thing they spent their lives hunting down, well, there was a very uncomfortable "I’m sorry" that was not going to just be readily accepted.

I’ve never been good at the whole mea culpa stuff anyway.

And it mattered that I didn’t want to say it, didn’t feel I needed to at the very core of me. I knew I needed to do it, but I was fighting the actual act of contrition with everything in me.

I pulled over to a No-Tell Motel somewhere in Arizona to get some shut eye. I was doing that jelly-neck wobble after driving for… let’s just say hours because at this point, I had no idea, and I was in serious danger of causing an accident if only there was any traffic whatsoever on this godforsaken state highway.

I got a room and didn’t even look at the shower as I took a much-needed piss. I fell on the bed, not even bothering to get undressed.

Fighting yourself takes a lot of energy.

*****

I woke up groggy as hell. All I wanted to do was get more sleep. I got up, grabbed my toiletries bag, and brushed my teeth and took a shower, thankful for clean water. I hadn’t expected much in the place I’d chosen to stay. I’d lucked out. As I got dressed in the last of my clean clothes, I realized I’d need to find a laundromat and clean my laundry, too.

I avoided looking in the mirror. I’d stopped doing that shortly after I’d begun my aimless wandering. Who cared what a dude looked like at a truck stop? My hair was shaggy as hell, and I’d grown an unkempt beard. I looked like those Duck Dynasty guys. I didn’t care.

My entire life, before, had revolved in me looking sharp, clean, and smart. I had hand tailored suits, leather shoes from Italy, ties from designers that cost the moon. There wasn’t a night I could not get as many chicks on my dick as I wanted. And, yes, I had indulged in that until after law school. Then time was the problem.

Before I left, I wasn’t even really seeking it out, regardless of free time. I’d come to just hate women, sex, the whole thing. Most of all, I hated myself for the way I used them, but still, I hated them for making it so damned easy to use them like tissue.

I fueled up and asked about a diner or a laundromat in the small town just a little further down the road. They had both, so I dumped my laundry into the two working washers available and walked across the road to the local diner. I ordered and didn’t even bother flirting. Why? I didn’t want to get laid, and I probably looked like a street bum reject, or the Unabomber.

The washers were done by the time I’d choked down whatever I had ordered. I sat and watched the one, huge dryer I had put them into.

I had seen that my brother-in-law, Martin, had looked dead inside when my sister had left him early on in their relationship. I liked Martin and I had been mad at her for leaving him and making herself so sad. Then when we’d returned, I’d hated him for taking her away from me. When they’d built their house and I’d stayed in the city to get to my college classes easier, I’d felt completely abandoned.

I felt just as dead inside now as the picture I’d seen of Martin when he came home.

I feel like I used to be someone, but I then recognized it for the bullshit I was feeding myself. I’d been a passing, enjoyable few minutes to any woman I met that wasn’t part of the Paladin group. We were not thick on the ground, although the current generation seemed to be making up for lost time, trying to repopulate us in a single baby boom.

I had been an associate in a large law firm trying to get a partnership. I worked in criminal law, appeals to be exact. I was damned good at researching my precedents. I’d walked away from that, too. I’d walked away from the cars, the money, even my newly purchased home. I hadn’t even let Allie know so my home wouldn’t be foreclosed on. I simply didn’t give a shit. I had ridden my bike to my personal, private storage locker and gotten my alternate ID papers, money and cards and the truck I’d bought years ago and stuck there for… just in case.

My just in case had been the complete collapse of my identity, my sense of self.

Tristan had taken me off the active-duty roster, told me to talk to the newly minted shrink before I could go back to fulfilling my call. My call… what a laugh. I killed lying, thieving gypsies who called themselves Travelers, Pikeys, whatever you wanted as long as they could con you out of insurance and construction money.

I was kept busy in a city like Houston prone to tropical weather, tornados, and flooding. Iain and I were always busy, there was no season for us. Houston was open season for those grifters.

Let Iain handle it. I was done with that shit. Wading through filth to kill the even dirtier filth trying to bilk anyone who had money. Maybe Park or Stepka would come to help him out.

If Stepka could pull his dick out of his wife long enough to do anything. They had five kids, for fuck’s sake. I wondered if Allie and Martin were still squirting kids out into the world. Even Ceilidh stopped at three.

I cringed at my own thoughts. God, what kind of fucker couldn’t even be happy for new life? No matter how much I hated what my own mind threw at me, I couldn’t stop it. I would try, but it was always there ready to pop out of my mouth.

Staring at my laundry circling around the industrial dryer I thought to what had precipitated my mad dash from Texas. I’d helped get rid of Mandy Reynolds’ rapist. Her second one. The first one was offed by Gabriel.

See? Shit like this! I couldn’t even work up sympathy for a woman who had been raped… twice… once by her own uncle.

I had not heard Gabriel’s intel that he’d gathered on Mandy as we flew the jet up to Oklahoma to take care of the entitled asshole who was going to get away with it. So, when Nelek was spouting off about a rapist magnet… Jesus, there it goes again… a rape victim who had miraculously double majored in economics and finance, I’d popped off… just like I do in my own head.

God dammit!

My niece, Nikole had had enough, and she let me have it at the family dinner. She and Nelek had left immediately after and then Nelek had begun whispering to Martin and Tristan about me needing to see a shrink and taking some time off. Right… just after hurricane season ended and the Travelers were still going strong bilking people in their home repairs.

I’d confronted Nelek when Tristan pulled me for any further hunting, until I talked to their head shrinker, and she knew I was good to keep on. Some Paladins lost their shit. Maybe I was one.

I rubbed my hand over my face, closing my eyes. Maybe I really was one of the Paladins who lost their shit because they’d just done and seen too much.

Personally, I couldn’t figure out how Gabriel and Ceilidh kept doing it, answering their call. They dealt with sex trafficking. That was some of the sickest shit I’d ever seen. They swam in those waters daily catching the low lifes who traded in human misery, and it did not affect them as my call for cheats and organized crime affected me.

Hell, even Shijo, one of the Japanese Paladins had tapped out on fighting the Yakuza in Japan after he literally died when he got caught. Nelek brought him back in a huge miracle.

So, how come I could see the merit in that and yet still hate everything about us? My brain was broken.

I don’t know how it got that way, but it was broken.

My sword had not been called to my hand since before I’d left Houston. I hoped I never called it again.

I was so lost in my own head I jumped when the alarm for the dryer went off. I collected my clothes in the basket they had, found a table, and rolled everything up and stuck it back in my bags. You could carry much more that way and there was no shifting. I walked out to my truck and tossed the bags to the passenger side and got in.

Shit, I really needed to find my way home.

*****

I finally did manage to find I-10 and head East, towards Texas. I was still in no hurry, but there was also nothing I wanted to see in the places I drove through. I’d been all over the damned world and seen magnificent sights. Nothing looked interesting. Nothing even looked entertaining. It all just looked drab and boring.

I did stop and stay in San Antonio, checking into my favorite Riverwalk hotel. I found a barber and she clipped my hair and scraped the scruff off my face. Evidently, it was a Friday, and she was looking for some action. I could not have been less interested if I was Platinum Gay.

I went through the Riverwalk Mall and bought some new jeans and button-down shirts and some new, clean running shoes. Clothes I was comfortable in. After that I went to Dick’s for dinner and then up to my hotel room to sleep, alone. As I preferred.

The thought that I should call Allie and tell her I was coming home crossed my mind, but I ignored it. She’d be surprised. The Prodigal Returns. She ate up that Bible crap since she’d converted to Catholicism.

Nah, I’d walk into the house, and they’d make me happy by being so happy I was home.

That’s the way I’d worked it out in my head.

Life rarely plays out how you see it in your head.

*****

I rolled up to Martin and Allie’s house and tried to get in, but my door code didn’t work. Weird, the code for the gate had worked.

They must be over at Ceilidh’s. I headed that way and once again, no one was home. Even my gate code didn’t work.

I began to get worried about my family. Maybe they were having something at Tristan and Vanessa’s. They were not too far away, so I got back in my truck and headed that way.

When I drove up to their mini-mansion, there was valet parking only. I dropped off my less than latest model pickup and walked up to the house. Someone let me in and told me everyone was out in the yard for the reception.

Reception?

Well, it’s not like I’d been home to get any mail.

I walked out onto the terraced patio that Vanessa had put in when they’d moved there, and there was a huge tent out back. What the fuck? Had Gabriel already put his nuts in a vice for some regular tail?

I saw the man in question walk out of the tent, drink in hand as he led a little girl by the hand back into the house.

What the hell! Was that Kate? She’d gotten so big!

They walked right past me without even a glance.

I looked back out at the tent and walked over to it, suddenly hesitant to go inside. An Asian dude stumbled out laughing and saw me.

Go on in, man, he giggled. They’re about to cut the cake.

I walked in and looked around and it was most of the Paladins I knew and a lot of people I didn’t. I just stared as Park cut a piece of the wedding cake and fed it to… was that Mandy?

How had Park married Mandy?

Mandy knew about us?

Then I saw Nelek shoot up from a table and give chase to a little brown boy in a baby tux, with the softest, cutest curls I’d ever seen. I recognized Nikole coming from the snacks table to intercept him. Nelek picked up the little boy and acted like he was eating his belly which got the biggest, happiest baby laughs you could ever hear. Then Nikole looked over and saw me. She dropped the plate of snacks she’d gotten, and she gasped, staring at me in horror.

Nelek looked over at me and frowned, holding his son close to him, and pulling Nikole into his side.

A scream I recognized and then my big sister, Allie, plowed into me like a freight train.

Oh my God, she kept crying and repeating as she looked at me, touched my face and hugged me so tightly.

God, I’d missed this.

Then, I was tugged away, and Martin and Tristan were dragging me outside the tent, over to Gabriel’s old garage.

Once we were out of view Martin punched me dead in the face.

Don’t expect me to heal that you motherfucker, he raged and then stood up as I slid down the back wall of the building.

Do you have ANY idea what you’ve put your sister through? He kicked my foot to make sure I was paying attention. She cries and worries. She tries to hide it, but we all know. You’re in the wind for, what, two years and then you gate crash Park and Mandy’s wedding acting like we should all be happy to see you?

What the fuck is wrong with you, Tristan demanded. You went off grid, none of us knew where you were, and I was actively hunting you as a Ganelon.

He’s got the taint back on him, Martin said, and I jumped. I did?

How? I asked, looking up at both of them.

Because you’re a spoiled little fucker who thinks he’s owed everything and he should get everything he wants, Martin looked at me like I actually was a Ganelon. His hand reached out and I began to feel better, less like my brain was imploding.

He finished doing whatever it was he and Nelek did, and I felt better, less like an asshole.

You don’t get anywhere near the children, Tristan helped me up then poked a finger in my chest. Once Park and Mandy are off to their honeymoon, you can explain to everyone how you broke our hearts. I hope your story is good because Nikole is ready to part you and your balls, just to make sure you don’t breed.

Damn, my niece had gotten blood thirsty.

I saw Nelek come around the building. He stopped and just stared at me.

Where have you been? Did you know Allie keeps crying every time we have a family celebration? Did you know that Kate’s totally forgotten who you are? My own son, Kasjan has no idea who you are. Michael doesn’t know you. You hurt every single one of us and you don’t give a shit because you’re the great Brion Robertson, who can do no wrong. His voice was getting loud. You stay away from Nikole and our son. Hate such as yours belongs nowhere near them. Then he turned and stomped away towards the tent.

Nice to know I was missed, I quipped and felt Martin’s fist in my face again.

Go clean up and find yourself something to eat inside the house but you go nowhere near the tent. Mandy wants you dead and would hire a hit man if Martin wouldn’t ash her for it, Tristan said as he left me just inside the patio doors. You’re an ungrateful shit, so don’t expect anyone to be happy to see you.

I watched him as he straightened himself then calmly walked back to the tent, grabbing Vanessa on the way out and practically making out with her right there on their lawn. She looked back into the house but turned and followed her husband inside the tent.

I found some hors d’oeuvres inside the kitchen and helped myself to Tristan’s excellent bar. I sat in his office and watched the tent where all of my friends and family were celebrating the marriage of a man I had grown up learning