Her only child is being tortured in front of her face and she's not just doing nothing, she's actively ignoring it. And as in-character as that is for her, it almost hurts worse than the burns and the choking hand around my neck.
Almost.
Bill is screaming at me, his face purple with rage and his hand growing tighter and tighter around my neck. Spots dance across my eyes, my vision bending a little in the corners as the air begins to leave my brain. I'm reeling, reaching my hand out and clawing towards my mother; clawing for anything.
Like the kitchen knife lying on the counter above my head.
"Oh, what," Bill sneers at me, his eyes crazy and his whiskey breath hot on my face; "You gonna stab me, you little slu-"
The only thing I can remember after that is my mother screaming "how could you" over and over again. I'm still choking later, still lying on the floor with my arm on fire, my breath still ragged, and Bill's blood pooling around me, when Sheriff Evans comes in and swears softly before pulling me up and leading me out of the trailer.
I have no idea what happens when you stab someone, but I know it's usually not good. And I know I should be scared, but in that moment, when they push my head down and guide me into the back of the police car with the neighbors watching and my mother screaming obscenities at me…
I’m really just numb. Because anything is better than that.
Out of the frying pan, and into the fire, as they say.
*****
P R E S E N T
The main offices of Archer Holdings in midtown are quiet this hour of the night. Roger, the head of security just gives me a cursory smile and nod as I swipe in with my key-pass.
I really hope he doesn't get in trouble for this. I mean, it's not like he knows what I'm doing, but still.
Logan's office is locked of course, but I could remember the key combo in a coma for the time I've spent here working late or just helping him out.
I know the rest of them all understand, but they don't; not really. They've all lost, I wouldn't ever say anything against that, but the Archer family has each other. They're still a family.
Me? I've just got Logan. Of course that doesn't mean they all don't want him back; I get it. But I have to do this. Bryce can do his thing, but I'm not stalling and I'm not fucking around back here worrying myself to death and wondering what I could have done.
Because there's no "could have" here; there's only "do."
The wall-safe in Logan's office sits behind a large framed picture of one of his hospitals in Guatemala; all smiling kids faces with my brother and Quinn grinning arm-in-arm behind them all. I feel the anger rise in me again, thinking of them putting the bag over his head and dragging him away from me. No one deserves something like that, but least of all a man like Logan who just gives so much to the world.
They're going to pay.
I know they all see me as Logan's kid sister. They see me as the financial analyst, the office worker, the pencil-pusher, and the book-nerd. They don't see the other side of me; the dark side. Which is good, because I've gone to huge lengths to keep that side and that past hidden from everyone.
Well, everyone except Bryce. Him, I showed it all to.
My brother is predictable, and even if I've never had to go into this safe without him here, I already know the password is his birthday before it even ends up working.
C'mon, bro.
The spare corporate credit card will come in handy, but the hundred-thousand in cash will work pretty well too. It's not- well, ok, it is theft, but I hope it's one they'll forgive me for.
I'm dialing the company's transportation department from his private line and scheduling the flight before I can stop and let my brain catch up with the wild plan I've already decided I'm going to go through with. I've got ten minutes before the car picks me up downstairs, and I run into my own office and grab some spare clothes I keep there.
Three years later and I'm still keeping spare clothes and packed bags ready to go all over the damn place. I briefly wonder if the small bag I kept at Bryce's place is still there or if he's ditched it by now.
Shirtless, I catch my reflection in the mirror of the private bathroom off my office. My eyes follow the delicate tendrils of ink that curve down the whole of my right arm. The sleeve that covers and hides the cigarette scars; the sleeve I've carefully and deliberately added to over the years since that night when Logan came for me.
They're all going to be mad, but they'll understand; they must. I have to do this.
I think of Bryce's face; he's not just being bossy, he's just still watching out for me, and that might hurt worse. There was feeling there once, but - no. There wasn't a chance there, only room to get hurt or hurt each other. No good comes of two broken people deciding the other is the fix. They just shatter more off the broken edges of each other until there's nothing left but a bigger mess than they started with.
I close my eyes for a moment, pushing the thoughts away. I can dwell on that another time, but I've got so much else to think about right now.
I walk back to look around my brother's office once more, my face growing grimmer by the second until I focus on the picture of him and Quinn, smiling and happy.
I'm coming for you, Logan; I swear.
P A S T
"So, you got the cash?”
I roll my eyes at Matombo; "Have I ever not, buddy?”
He grins slowly, his teeth yellowed and his dark lips cracked from smoking the stuff. Fuck that. Give me a nice bump or a hit through a vein; I'm not smoking any of this crap.
This shit is poison, you know?
"I'm just fuckin with you, pal." He cackles out the rattling laugh of a junkie and steps aside to let me into the hovel of a home. It's the shittiest, most run-down hovel in the shittiest, most run-down slum in Kinshasa, which happens to be in - you got it - the shittiest, most run-down city in all of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
You know what, let's just call it the worst fucking place on Earth, and I'm here to shoot poison up my veins.
"You gotta try this, friend.”
Buddy, pal friend; all rules of the game with junkies like us. No one uses real names, because real names make the fact that you're selling to and injecting each other with slow death a bit harder to stomach. I call him buddy, he calls me pal, and when one of us inevitably flatlines, it'll just be easier. You can say, "oh, yeah, that buddy was a real pal," and just move on. It dehumanizes it, which makes sense because doing heroin is just about the quickest way to shed your humanity I can think of.
The real fucked up irony here is that we use names like “friend” to describe people we barely know or give a shit about, who’ll be ghosts before we even know it.
I'm buzzed from the half-pint of vodka and the Percocets I popped on the walk over, and I blink to try and focus on the bag of grey powder in Matombo’s hand; “I think you got sold shitty coke, man." I frown, eyeing the sketchy looking powder. It's not heroin, that's for sure.
He grins; "It's a mix, my friend; special blend."
I make a face; "Fuck that, it looks fucking disgusting."
"It's devil-powder."
"Huh?"
He grins again, those cracked, yellowed teeth gleaming in the candlelight of the apartment hovel; “Coke and gunpowder.“
Fuck. That.
"I'm good, man."
"Try some."
"Seriously, I'm good. Lemme just get that H and get goin-"
The nickel-plated gun in his hand also gleams in the low light, albeit a little differently than his teeth; "Don't be rude, friend. I invite you into my home, I offer you some refreshments-" He nods at the gunpowder-coke; "You really going to disrespect me like that?”
Gee, where are my manners?
"Fuck it, let's do this.” And really, at that point, it's not even because of the gun. At that point, it’s because the demon inside is roaring at me for a hit of something, and I honestly want it.
*****
I'm out of my Godd
amn mind later, yelling like a fucking rabid dog as I run through the dark slum streets of Kinshasa, banging on walls, tearing at my own clothes and looking like a fucking maniac. My blood is on fire, my brain chugging along like a freight train without brakes. I think I fight someone on the way back to the Blackriver barracks - someone crazier than me obviously to want to fight a guy that looks like me - but I'm not totally sure later.
All I know is that in those moments, when I can block out the rest of me and bury everything else about myself deep inside and cover it with substances and poison, I find peace. It's a broken, shattered, tainted peace, streaked with blood, drugs, and the last remnants of my humanity and spirit, but fuck it, I can sleep.
Besides, who needs their humanity when they're going to be dead soon anyways?
*****
P R E S E N T
The ding of the seatbelt bell rouses me from sleep, and the memory of my slow self-induced death march back in Africa. The taste of that night is still bitter on my tongue, and I blink and rub my eyes as I sit up.
That was a long time ago.
The stewardess on the Archer Holdings jet comes around and gently offers me a drink when she sees I've woken. I shake my head.
You'd think they'd have stopped even offering booze on these fucking planes, between me and and Hudson.
Sobriety is- well, sobering. We all had our demons back then, and we all swung at them differently. Logan literally hit them, Hudson drank them away.
I found heroin.
Heroin takes a little piece of you every single time. It whittles you down, takes away your soul, your heart, and your love of anything else but more heroin. It does this until there's nothing left but you and it. You're its prisoner, and it owns you.
And I fucking hate feeling owned.
It's William that fixed me and got me clean. And Logan, of course. I mean, shit, the guy was also trying to get Hudson clean, but when we got back to the States for the first time in years, he and the Old Man both helped me while I sweat out the poison in my veins. They held me down while I shook with the need for more; answered with support when I cried out at the demons clawing at my skin and tearing my eyes out. Withdrawal sickness is some real shit. It's the closest to actual hell I've ever been, and I've come pretty close.
Of course, none of this is to say a drink doesn't sound amazing right now.
Booze I could probably do, because that was never really my problem. But I just don't; not anymore. After you clear heroin and get the controls to your life back in your own hands, you pretty much never want to let something else drive ever again.
No, I traded vices, and for a while there, I had a great one; a perfect vice, a secret, exquisite vice.
Peyton.
As broken as I was, as shattered as I felt, and as lost in the void as me. Two broken pieces fit if you make them.
Or not, I guess.
It wasn't perfect, but it worked; and it worked amazingly. I hated the sneaking around, and the lying to Logan's face about what I’d gotten up to the night before, or who I'd been with, but she was worth it. Until she lit out like a bat out of hell, that is. No word, no discussion; not even a fucking argument. Just a "no more" and it was done; end of story.
And then she was gone.
I almost want to laugh at the current situation of Peyton disappearing; this is becoming a habit. And just like a habit, here I am chasing after her again like a fucking idiot. Guess I've still got a touch of those aforementioned addiction problems.
I'll find her though, I just need to find her before she gets herself hurt, or killed.
I tighten my seatbelt and rub my eyes again as I feel the plan start to descend into Turkey; Fuck, who needs a drink.
P A S T
It’s cold in the cell, and my teeth chatter as I hug my knees to my chest. They’ve cleaned me a little, but I’m still shaking as I look down at the red stains on my hands and under my nails; Bill’s blood.
Bill, who’s dead.
Bill who I killed.
I know I wasn’t supposed to hear the whispered conversation of the other deputies from over at the intake desk at the station. But I did, and now it’s burning a hole in my gut.
“Remember old Bill Martins?”
“No shit! From over on McDermott street?”
“Yeah, he was seein her Mama.”
“How bad?”
“Dead.”
“Holy shit…”
I killed a man, his blood is staining my hands, and I have no idea what that means for me now. And that looming unknown has me shivering more than any cold chill ever could make me.
There’s the clanging of the door down the hallway, and I bite my lip and curl-up tighter into a ball on the bench inside the cell; This is it. They’re coming to tell me he’s dead and that I’m going to die now too. This is small-town Texas, and it doesn’t matter what horrible shit Bill did to us; people knew him.
Even, purposeful footsteps move down the hallways, and I close my eyes and push my face into my knees.
The steps stop in front of the bars of my cell; “Peyton?” A man’s voice says quietly.
I nod but say nothing; Just get it over with, just tell me.
The man says nothing though, and slowly I open my eyes. I see his shoes first; dark black and fancy looking; nothing like a deputy’s boots. I slowly follow the shoes up to trim, tailored-looking pants, up to a matching jacket, unbuttoned, and a crisp white linen shirt open at the neck. I look up sharply into the man’s face, and I’m suddenly frozen. His face is kind but focused, strong and chiseled, and yet there’s a soft look in his eyes.
…His strangely familiar looking eyes.
There are dark lines of tattoo ink showing through the open neck of his shirt, and the contrast of the man in the expensive looking suit with the chest tattoos has me puzzled.
He smiles at me then, a grin somehow both dark and brooding, as well as disarming at the same time; “You are Peyton Rivers, right?”
I nod slowly.
He grins; “So, it seems you’re my half-sister.”
The floor just sort of drops out then; strangely familiar looking eyes. The dizziness starts to take me then as he roars at someone down the hall to open the door. And then he’s got me, holding me upright and wrapping those arms around me; “I got you, kid; I got you,” He’s saying quietly; “And I’m getting you out of here.”
I’m looking down at my feet to avoid the stares of the deputies and the sheriffs and the other people in the station as we move through it, but he leans close to my ear; “Head up, kid. You didn’t do anything wrong, so show ‘em all that you’re made of something stronger than them.”
I’m still floating, still sleepwalking through this waking daydream turn of events when we step outside, and it’s then that I look up and see him, standing next to a black car.
Holy shit.
He’s all dark eyes and dark brooding silence, with tattoos running the length of the arms folded over his strong-looking chest. And as soon as our eyes meet, I know I’m more lost than I’ve ever been.
Roar (Military Bad Boy Billionaire Romance) (Soldiers of Fortune Book 4) Page 4
