After waiting another moment, I turned back to her, hot iron in hand, and walked back over to her. Her eyes were glued to it and filled with fear that she tried desperately to hide. But I could smell it. I knew she’d do whatever I told her to once she saw what the punishment was.
I grabbed her hand and pulled it up towards the iron. “You feel the heat, yes?”
She nodded, lifting her chin bravely.
“Good,” I said, letting her hand fall. “It’s important you realize I’m not bluffing.”
She stared at me silently. She has spunk, I have to give her that.
“Alright, last chance,” I said. “Put the dress on.”
She stayed still, unmoving, sitting quietly. “No,” she whispered.
“Fine,” I said, towering over her as I quickly and firmly pressed the iron to her naked back. She screamed, crying out and scrambling away, but not before I’d burned a big red imprint of the iron onto her back.
“That’s going to hurt,” I said. “But it’s all your fault.”
She looked at me like I was crazy, like I’d finally dealt the ultimate betrayal.
I shrugged, shaking my head with deep disappointment. It was the only right thing to do.
“You left me no choice, Frannie.”
She cried in the corner, pissed and hurt, all at the same time. I understood. I’d once been in her shoes. But I’d learned. And she would, too. I just knew it.
It would just take some time.
She’d get there.
“Now, sweet, sweet Frannie, will you please put the dress on?”
“Fine!” She spat the word at me, grabbing the dress and standing up and pulling it on over her head. My eyes lit up as I saw her with it on, it’s long skirt hiding the chain and all of Frannie’s freshly burnt skin along with it.
“It fits perfectly,” I said, breathlessly, as I gazed at her with wonderment. “Now for the makeup!”
“No, please,” she protested. The iron was still in my hand and I held it up as a warning.
“Honey, you don’t want this on your face, do you?”
“No,” she said, her eyes full of fear, as she sat down on the bed.
“Good girl,” I said. I put the iron down and went over to my mother’s antique vanity that was sitting in the corner. All of her makeup and perfumes filled the drawers and the smell of Mother hit me as soon as I opened one of them. I pulled out her favorite shade of lipstick — candy apple red — and walked back over to Frannie. Tears of pain streamed down her face as I pulled her chin up to look at her.
“Oh, stop your crying, Frannie,” I said, as I smeared the red lipstick across her quivering lips.
She sniffed, doing her best to quiet her sobs.
“You’re such a pretty girl, Frannie,” I whispered as I filled in her lips until they were big and bright and candy apple red, just like Mother’s always were. “So very, very pretty…”
I stood back and studied her, reaching down to smooth her tousled hair.
“That’s very nice,” I said, drinking her in. “You look positively divine!”
She sighed heavily, sadness and pain dripping off of her. “No!” I insisted. “This isn’t time for tears, Frannie!”
I pulled her back to her feet in front of me, wrapping my arm around her waist and pulling her close to me. I palmed one of her hands and began spinning her around the room, an ecstatic joy filling my heart as much as the music filled the air.
“Sunny, yesterday, oh, my life was filled with rain,” I spun her around, pressing my cheek to hers and holding her as close I could. Her body was stiff in my arms, but I moved her around the room easily. “Sunny, you smiled at me and really eased the pain…”
I sang, but paused, pulling away from her cheek and smiling at her. “Smile for me, Frannie.”
She stared blankly at me, her face fixed in a permanent distant stare. I reached up behind her head, my fingers tangling in her hair, gripping it tightly. I pulled down slowly, my gaze holding hers as I pulled her head backwards. My lips pressed into hers, roughly, aggressively, smearing her lipstick.
“I said, smile for me,” I growled.
She swallowed hard and a faint smile fell on her lips. I loosened my grip, relaxing and smiling back at her.
“Ah, yes, that’s better, love,” I whispered, kissing her again, gentler this time.
I pressed my cheek back to hers and sang in her ear again along with the spinning record upstairs.
“Now the dark days are done, and the bright days are here, my sunny one shines so sincere, Sunny, one so true, I love you…”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
SAGE
“Three o’clock again, right?” I asked Maddy, as I pulled up to her school to drop her off. The sprawling campus was crawling with other teenagers, the prerequisite backpack perched on each of their backs. I remembered the hell of Astoria High and almost felt guilty dropping Maddy off here again.
“Yep,” she said. “Thanks for the ride.”
“Of course,” I replied. “Hang in there. Spring break is right around the corner.”
“Yeah,” she nodded. “Can’t wait. See you this afternoon.”
I’d made a point to pick her up every day she let me since I’d been back. Sometimes, she refused, but I was always available. I’d made myself as available as she needed, no matter what.
I wondered if this is what it felt like to live my mother’s life. But just taking care of Maddy wasn’t all there was to her life, as the contents of her journal had shown, as recited by Corinne this morning before breakfast. Not only had she been an active mother, she’d also managed to navigate a successful career at the law firm she worked at. Luckily, the journal hadn’t gone into too much detail about the few dates she’d gone on, just a few comments about how disappointed she’d been in everyone she’d gone out with.
Which just made me sad.
I was still thankful Corinne had taken the hit and done the heavy lifting on the details, though. I still hadn’t read it. Corinne relayed that it was mostly talk about some of the cases she’d worked on and her frustrations and worries about her relationship with Maddy. Corinne said she’d mentioned going to a therapist a few times to talk about that, which wasn’t surprising or worrying at all.
Everything was normal.
And then, poof! — just like that — she disappeared.
I was more annoyed at the journal than anything. I was hoping for answers.
Maybe there just weren’t any.
Sadness washed over me as I drove home. I felt like a boat lost at sea. This life felt so foreign to me, and with every day that passed, my old life felt farther and farther away.
When I turned into the driveway and saw the Gods had already arrived, a little surge of hope peeked out of the dark clouds of my pessimistic heart.
Maybe they’d find something.
Maybe they’d find her.
Maybe they were the only hope we had.
I parked and walked towards the door, waving at Finn and Sunshine playing in his yard. He waved back and the dog dropped the ball from his mouth and barked at me. I couldn’t help but smile. He did it every time they were out there when I pulled up and it felt good to have a little bit of well, sunshine, in the stormy sea I was navigating.
Chaos hit me as soon as I opened the door. They’d spread out again, turning Mom’s living room into their work room. Riot peered into his laptop, waving at me. Ryder and Slade stood in the kitchen over the dripping coffee pot, deep in conversation. But I was only half aware of all of that, because my eyes went directly to Colt and stayed there.
I’d done my damnedest to push him to the back of my mind, where I’d deemed he was best left to rest. Of course, thoughts of him broke to the surface more than I liked to admit, but I’d never let myself focus on them for too long. But being in the same room with him again, it was like every cell in my body burst into flames when I looked at him.
And I didn’t know what he was feeling, but his eye
s were filled with the deepest, most sincerest concern that anyone had ever looked at me with. I took a quick look over myself to make sure I was decent and that I hadn’t in fact, combusted. He looked so worried, even I wasn’t sure I warranted that amount of concern.
But then, Ryder and Slade turned towards me. And Riot and Blade stopped what they were doing and walked over. And they surrounded me as Colt gently guided me to the couch and my heart dropped like a stone in a river.
Because I knew.
“She’s dead, isn’t she?” I murmured.
“What!” Colt shouted, sitting next to me. “No, Sage, no. We don’t know that. I’m sorry if we scared you. But we do have a lot of information and it’s best if you’re sitting down.”
“Oh,” I said, slowly releasing the breath I was holding. “Okay…”
I sunk into the couch, swallowing hard and readying myself for whatever bad news they had. I was glad Maddy wasn’t there. Because I wanted to hear this myself first. Whatever it was…
“Wait, where’s Corinne?” I said.
“Right here!” She bounded out of the bathroom, rushing over to sit down on the other side of me.
“Okay,” Riot began, his voice low and steady. I watched his lips, not wanting to miss a word. “So, we’ve checked your Mom’s financial records, her phone records, her car’s GPS, and we’ve checked in with the cops.”
“And?” Corinne asked, lifting a brow.
“Well, basically, we’ve got nothing, but in this case, nothing can be good.”
“Can you spell it out for me?” I asked.
“Sure,” Riot nodded. “There’s been no activity on her bank and credit accounts.”
“I already knew that.”
“Okay, and her cell pings in the downtown Astoria area at nine fifteen a.m. on the morning she went missing and that’s the last time before it’s turned off manually.”
“I didn’t know that,” I said, my head spinning, wondering if the cops had this information.
“The GPS on her car was turned off that morning.”
“What?” I asked. “Why?”
“Again, it was turned off manually.”
“How do you know these things?”
“We have resources,” Riot said, shrugging.
“But if that’s true, the cops would have told me. They told me we had to wait six weeks for the cell phone records alone.”
“Well, that’s the other thing, Sage,” Ryder said, speaking up from the corner.
“What is?”
“The cops,” he nodded. “There’s something weird going on there.”
“They’ve been pretty rude and dismissive, that’s for sure,” I agreed.
“Well, it’s more than that,” he said. “Nobody ever filed a missing person’s report at all. Seems like nobody is looking for her or working the case.”
“You’re kidding! They gave me a number for the report.”
He shook his head. “Maybe so, but officially? No paperwork has been filed. We’ve got some friends in the records department and normal protocol hasn’t been followed at all. We’re trying to figure out exactly why.”
I nodded, completely confused. “Why would they not file the paperwork?” I asked, looking at Colt. “This doesn’t make any sense.”
“It’s fishy, that’s for sure,” he agreed. “But we’re going to get to the bottom of it.”
I nodded, my eyes filling with tears. “All this time has gone by, and nobody’s been looking for her?” Panic rose in my throat.
“That’s not true,” Riot said. “You’ve been looking. We’ve been looking. And we’re not finished, Sage. Hang in there. We need a little more time.”
“Thanks,” I said, shaking my head. “This is a lot to take in.”
“It is,” Riot said. “But I just need you to trust us.”
“I will, I do,” I said, my voice completely lacking in the confidence that I so desperately wanted to feel.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
FINN
It was hard for me to believe that Sage just let those bikers crawl freely over her mother’s property. I’d seen the bald one peeing on a tree out back the other day and I was appalled at his lack of manners.
Some people were just taught better, I suppose.
Just like I was taught better than to be eavesdropping but sometimes, my curiosity got the better of me, and I just needed information more than I needed to have impeccable etiquette. This was one of those times.
I stood at the back of Frannie’s house, just outside of the kitchen window, which was slightly cracked — just enough for me to hear the conversation going on inside.
I needed to know what they’d found out. Thankfully, because I’d snuck in and opened this window myself yesterday when nobody was home, I could hear every word.
So clearly, in fact, that I was standing there in shock when I heard one of them clearly say that the police had not ever actually filed a missing person’s report for Frannie. I shook my head, making sure I’d heard him correctly.
How could that be?
I was so surprised that I didn’t hear the footsteps behind me. He was on me before I knew he was there.
His hand snaked into the back of my collar and the waistband of my pants, lifting me easily away from the window as if I was a child, and spinning me around to face him before he placed me back on the ground.
“What are you doing, buddy?” he snarled, towering over me with a menacing, toothless growl. He was bald and covered in tattoos of monsters which seemed to jump off his rippling muscles. Fear ripped through me and I began trembling violently.
“I - I - I - I —,” I stuttered.
“You what, buddy?” he demanded.
“I was looking for my dog,” I said, the words pouring out of me.
“That so?” he said, cocking his head to the side while he raised a brow.
“Y-yeah,” I muttered, suddenly realizing he wasn’t touching me. There was nothing to keep me here. Fight or flight, and I was free to run away faster than a bullet. “Sorry,” I muttered, stepping around him and run-walking like an eighties- era Jazzerciser. I expected him to follow me and do god-knows-what to me, but sighed with gratitude as I made it unharmed through my front door.
I locked the three different deadbolts and sank to the floor, my heart pounding as sweat dripped down the back of my neck.
Sunshine bounded over from her bed, liking my face with worry.
“I’m okay,” I mumbled. “I think…”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
MAC
I hung up my phone after deleting the voice mail I’d received earlier. A different guy this time, some guy named Riot, was sniffing around, proving that I needed to take some sort of action to nip this problem in the bud.
If you didn’t act on something like this, it festered.
It infected your life, in irreparable ways.
I’m a strong, powerful man. I can’t afford problems that fester.
That’s how I got here. By taking care of problems. I had this.
Stepping into the kitchen, the smell of pot roast hit me. “Holy shit, babe!” I exclaimed, wrapping my arms around my wife’s waist from behind.
“It’s almost ready,” she said, spinning around to kiss me.
“Where are the kids?” I asked.
“Playing at the neighbor’s,” she said.
“Is that so?” I asked, my brow lifting, along with the swelling in my jeans.
“It is so,” she said, kissing me again with a smile.
“So we’re all alone?”
“Just you and me, Mac,” she whispered, reaching down and grabbing a handful of the package between my legs.
“That’s just the way I like it,” I said, groaning at her touch, letting all my worries melt away as I followed her to our bedroom.
Soon, I’d be promoted. Hell, I already run this fucking town. Nothing gets past me — and soon, nothing will be approved without my stamp on it. I’ve worked hard a
s hell to get here, and nothing is going to get in my way.
Not Frannie.
Not some nosy fucking dude with a stupid name.
Nobody.
There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to protect my life.
I’m just hoping I don’t have to get violent to prove it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
SAGE
“Well, that was a lot to take in.”
“It sure as hell was,” I said to Corinne. We were sitting on Mom’s bed, away from all the Gods who were still bustling around the living room. They were all so big, not only in size, but their presence as well. To say that being in the room with all of them was intimidating was an understatement.
I needed to get away. I needed to breathe.
But for some reason Slade had decided to post up outside for the most part, so walking out to get some fresh air wasn’t private either. I signaled to Corinne to follow me into Mom’s room and we shut the door, both of us trying to make sense of everything.
“Why wouldn’t the cops report her missing?” I asked her, my voice still full of bewilderment. Bewilderment that was slowly turning to anger.
“Something isn’t right, the Gods are right.”
“I just needed to get away and think, Corinne,” I said. “They’re a lot to take together.”
“I bet they are,” she snickered, then stopped herself, shooting me an apologetic look. “Sorry, I’m a perpetual twelve-year-old.”
“You’re a perpetual twenty-year-old horny woman.”
“Hey, I’m much older than that.”
“With the horniness levels of a college student.”
“And I hope that never changes,” she protested. “Did you know Blade and Colt are the only single ones?”
“You asked?”
“Yep. And both of them seem totally delicious. Looks like you snagged a good apple, Sage.”
I shook my head. “I haven’t snagged anything. In fact, I’m distancing myself, if you hadn’t noticed.”
“Well, that’s stupid, but whatever. You do you. Did you not tell them about the journal?”
“No,” I shook my head. “I was going to, but as soon as I came home, they bombarded me with all that information and I don’t know…”
CHASING SUNSHINE: GODS OF CHAOS MC (BOOK THIRTEEN) Page 10
