"That's the thing, though, Chris," Aunt Lo said, voice losing its edge, getting softer, shaking her head at her daughter. "We wouldn't have made you choose."
"Yes," Chris corrected, voice softer too, "you would have. You know you would have."
"That's where you were last night," my mother's voice broke into the silence following Chris's words, no one able to contradict her convincingly. "That is why you have a black eye," she added, eyes moving to mine.
"That makeup was a waste of money," I told Vance, shaking my head.
To that, my mother snorted. "Oh, honey. You know what town this is, right? I've seen more black eyes covered with tattoo concealer than you could count over the years. You could have told me," she insisted, then looked at my father, "and you should have told me."
"Mom..."
"No. Don't Mom me in that condescending 'you wouldn't understand' way, Ferr. Because, in case you don't know this story—and that was my bad for not being more open about it—I was a girl in a basement with men threatening to rape me, beating me, slicing open my back, burning a brand into my skin. I was that girl. If there is anyone here aside from you and Chris and your Aunt Janie who understands this reality, it is me. So you don't get to pull that childish 'you don't understand' crap with me. I understand. I get it. So I am going to repeat myself—you could have told me."
Sometimes, my mom was just, well, Mom. It was hard at times to remember that she was more than bedtime stories and late-night chats and baking parties and great dinners.
She was the daughter of a drug dealer and a trafficker. She was the wife of an outlaw biker. She was best friends with killers and enforcers. She'd been through a war with the club. She'd seen her father gunned down right in front of her eyes.
She'd known hell on earth.
Forgetting that, thinking of her only as a mom instead of a person, was a disservice to her.
"I'm sorry," I told her, meaning it, actually feeling tears flood my eyes with the words, making me close them tight, fight them away.
"Good," she told me, voice firm before she wrapped her arms around me, squeezing me tight. "Your father would like to claim all your badassness as coming from him, but I think we both know it is me in there," she added, clearly trying to lighten the mood, trying to defuse a tense situation.
"Definitely you. And Dad. And everyone here," I added, pulling away, knowing I owed my life to every single person in that room who had spent time with me, trained me, educated me, taught me about life. It was their voices in my head in low times. It was them pushing me on when my body and mind and soul were screaming for it all to end.
"And?" Aunt Lo asked, eyes keen, arms crossing over her chest.
"And?" I repeated.
"And who else? Clearly, you've been training. Who with?" she asked, making me wonder if she wanted to know if it was someone she knew, someone she had likely reached out to when I had gone missing to tell them I was out on my own, to call her if they saw me.
"34691." There was no reason not to tell them. They'd already tried to get him. They learned their lesson. He had nothing to fear from them. "Holden."
"Holden Stryker?" she asked, mouth gaping a bit. "But... what... how... no, why?" she decided.
"Why what? Why did I go to him?"
"No, I know why you went to him. He's one of the scariest bastards I've ever come across. Why did he help you?"
"Honestly, I don't know. But he did. He gave me a room. And food. Horrible, horrible, healthy food..." I added, giving Vance a smile. "He then whipped my ass every single day of my life for eight years."
"Until he didn't," my father guessed.
"Until he didn't," I agreed.
"So, what now?" Chris asked, pinning me with cool eyes.
"What do you mean?"
"You come back here. You make amends. You jump into bed with Vance." Oh, sweet Jesus. I could feel all the gazes shifting in his direction. I almost felt bad for the shit he was about to get. But I couldn't help but be a little pleased that I had so many people who would even want to give the guy I was seeing shit. "Now what? You're done?"
"I went on the job last night, Chris," I told her, eyes getting small, confused. She had to have seen the news. Aunt Lo had a group of new guys at Hailstorm whose job it was to comb the news from all states, finding anything that might be useful to them. That was how she'd found me in the first place.
"What? Your last hoorah. You finally got the baby dealers, so now you're retired?"
"I never said I was retiring. I just... look, I don't know what is going to happen from here on out," I admitted. Things were getting blurrier by the moment. "But I can't see myself wasting all those years of pain and missing my family by deciding right here and now that I'm done. I won't be able to sleep at night knowing there is a trafficker close by that I could take down and don't. I just... I don't know. I think we need to sit down and figure out a way to make the job work alongside a life. You have a life. I think it is only fair that I have one too. While still removing some evil from the world."
Deflated, she nodded a bit tightly.
"I'll work on it," she told me, giving her mother a shrug, then taking back off.
"She's gonna be a good boss, babe," Uncle Cash told Aunt Lo, pulling her to his side, kissing her temple.
"She deliberately went behind my back."
"Well..."
"Well?" Aunt Lo asked, shooting a hard look at her husband.
"It's not like she disobeyed you. She found a loophole. That's the kind of shit bosses do, don't you think?"
I could tell she was torn. On the one hand, she was still the boss; she didn't tolerate insubordination or backhandedness. On the other, though, she had to have been proud that in just eight years, she had taken a very broken girl and turned her into a very strong woman.
Aunt Lo was good at that.
It had to have given her a warm feeling in her chest to learn that Chris didn't just want to head a criminal empire, but that she wanted to find a way to do good with it as well.
"I'm glad to hear that you are going to try to strike a balance," my mom cut in, giving me a squeeze to the wrist. "I think I might know why," she added, glancing over toward Vance.
"Mom... no," I insisted, a little bit insulted that she thought I would let a man change such fundamental parts of my life.
"Oh, but I think a lot yes," she told me, shrugging. "There's no shame in that, baby. These Henchmen, they have a way of getting in and taking root, don't they?"
With that, her eyes twinkling—likely remembering all the times I had fawned over Vance as a girl, had decided he was my one and only, and thinking fate was a truly wonderful thing if, even after all this shit, we still found our way back to each other—she went over, grabbing my father's arm, and dragging him along with her down the hall to their room.
"I don't envy him that ear lashing he's about to get," Uncle Cash said, grimacing as he led Aunt Lo outside to talk.
"So," my Uncle Adler said, walking over as Vance moved in at my side. "How's the pride feel knowin' she could kick yer arse?" he asked, slapping a hand on Vance's shoulder so hard he made him slam into me.
"Says the man who got beat up by a skip three weeks back," his woman, Lou, told us, chuckling as she moved up next to him.
"The woman was four-hundred-pounds."
"She was on an electric scooter," Lou added, pressing her lips together to try to keep from smiling. "She beat him with her cane. Then ran over his arm when he was down. It was fucking hilarious."
This.
This was what I had been missing for so long without even realizing.
A part of me had been convinced that I had become cold because of the life I had led. I was starting to see now, though, that this wasn't the case.
No.
I had turned cold because I was deprived of the warmth of my family, of this town I loved so much, of these connections, these stories, this bottomless source of love and support.
No one was looking at
me as though I was some kind of monster.
No one was condemning me for the life I had led.
They were just accepting it as part of me.
And that was the beautiful thing about this place, this town, this club.
They didn't judge you for your past, for all the ugly things you thought were so unlovable. They just welcomed you in with open arms, compared scars with you, let you know that we'd all been broken and lost along our way at some point, that it didn't make us hard to love. It just gave us some really good fucking stories.
"I don't think we have formally met," Lou said, offering me her hand.
From the stories I'd heard, she and Uncle Adler had met right around the time I had been taken.
"I think we are going to get along really well," I told her. "Can you tell me some other times Uncle Adler has made an idiot of himself?" I asked, giving him a sugar-sweet smile as he clutched his chest as if I'd wounded him.
"After all the hours I spent teaching yer ungrateful arse to fight..." he said, shaking his head.
I spent the rest of the night mostly regaling my uncles with my own personal war stories, never before feeling quite so much like I belonged as I did then, hearing them compare mine with theirs, praising me when I told them how I'd gotten out of a dicey situation, watching their eyes get warm when I reminded them that I had learned certain important moves from them.
"Here, Ace," Vance said some time later after most people had headed home. Save for my parents who still hadn't come out of their room and West who was passed out on the couch. "Saved you some of this," he told me, holding out a napkin folded over something rectangular. "That's the biggest slice I could snag. Everyone was like starving fucking animals around that shit," he added, shaking his head as I unwrapped the banana bread slice.
"Thank you."
"Ace?"
"Yeah?"
"They don't fucking care," he told me, making my gaze find his. "They know what you've been up to. And they don't fucking care. You see the crazy amount of love you have here now, right?"
Even just mentioning it made that warm feeling fill me up once more.
"I do."
"Good. Now go get your ass on your bike."
"On my bike?"
"We're going back to the apartment. Can't fuck you with your parents right down the hall now that they know."
"Oh, my virgin ears!" West declared, putting his hands over them, making a chuckle move through Vance.
"Virgin, huh? Then all those girls who have spent the night here..."
"They were my tutors," he told us, smirking.
"Oh yeah? What are they teaching you?"
"Don't ask him that," I hissed, shaking my head at the wicked look West had on his face.
"Still haven't mastered that, man?" Vance asked, tsking.
"Hey, what can I say, I like the practice. Though now that you stole my fucking wingman, I will probably be out of commission for a while. Thank fuck I am heading to the new compound this summer."
"Wait... what?" I asked Vance as West disappeared. "The new compound? This place has been in the family for ages."
"New compound. For the new chapter," Vance told me. "In Florida," he added, clearly thinking this would have come up before now. "That was why your parents caught their cruise out of Florida instead of here. Your father wanted to check shit out. West is going to head down there to set shit up. Bit of an info dump on you, huh?" he asked when I couldn't seem to make any single thought stick.
"But... who? Why..."
"Think that is a story for another day, Ace. Let's go home."
"Oh, God," I grumbled.
"What?"
"Don't call that place home," I insisted, face screwing up.
"Fine. Let's go to our clandestine fuck pad."
"That's better," I agreed, smiling.
And fuck we did.
On every surface.
Until the sun damn near came up.
"Hey," Vance said, slapping my ass, making me grumble.
"I'm not moving," I declared, body composed entirely of Jell-O.
"Can I play something for you?" he asked, making my head turn to find him holding a guitar that had been stashed in the back of the closet.
"You wrote something?" I asked, pushing up, too interested to care about the objections of my tired body.
"Wrote you something," he clarified.
And just like that, every single girlhood dream I had of Vance came true.
I got his attention.
His touch.
His affection.
And now he had written a song for me.
He had called it The Rise.
Hearing it, well, it filled me up completely, went deep into all my hidden, dark corners, chased out any lingering cold, replacing it with a warmth I had never known before.
Falling in love with Vance the first time had been amazing.
But falling in love with him this time?
It was fucking perfect.
Fourteen
Ferryn - Present Day
"You're leaving?" I asked, hearing an embarrassing hitch of desperation in my voice, a neediness that I didn't like hearing there. Even if he was the only one there to bear witness to it.
Love was love.
But neediness was neediness.
And I would be damned if I was needy.
I could absolutely do this on my own.
That said, I just figured he would be going in with me, would be by my side.
This was, after all, his sister.
"Think you two need some time to catch up. I'll be back later. I'll bring donuts," he added, giving me a quick kiss to the temple before ringing the doorbell then taking off.
Leaving me there alone.
"I don't know how many times I have to tell you that you don't need to ring the bell," Iggy's voice called through the door as she reached for the knob, opening it. "You have a key..." she trailed off, mouth falling open, eyes seemingly confused by my presence, like she was sure she was seeing things. "Ferryn?"
"Hey, Iggs," I said, giving her what felt like a really wobbly smile.
"Oh, my God. Wh.. when..." she trailed off, having trouble putting words together.
"Uncle Vance!" a little voice shrieked, bare feet slapping on the hardwood floor behind Iggy. Then, "Oh." The disappointed sound of a child not getting what they clearly wanted.
Child.
Uncle Vance.
"What... when..." It was my turn to not be able to make my thoughts and tongue work in unison.
Iggy put her hand down on the top of the sandy-blond hair of what seemed to be a five or six-year-old girl with brilliant blue eyes that her mother and uncle shared.
"This is Olive. Ollie. We call her Ollie. Ollie, this is..."
"The girl from the pictures," Ollie declared with confidence.
"Yep. The girl from the pictures. Ferryn. Your aunt..."
"Not really," Ollie objected, rolling her eyes.
"No, not really. Not by blood. But still. You call her Aunt Ferryn."
"Where have you been?" Ollie asked, and I couldn't help but wonder where she got her bluntness from. Iggy had never been so sure of herself, so bold. But maybe that was the point. She was trying to foster things in her daughter that she hadn't always possessed.
Her daughter.
God.
"I, ah, I've been learning things."
"Like in school?"
"Sort of."
"Boring," Ollie decided, making a surprised laugh burst out of me as she turned and walked away.
"I have a feeling it was not boring," Iggy declared, opening the door wider. "Come on in."
Iggy's house was the exact polar opposite of the household she herself had grown up in. I always felt uncomfortable walking in her front door where her parents insisted I take off my shoes, where the soft surfaces were always covered, where there was never so much as a speck of dust on any surface, where there were bare walls and not a single knick-knack unles
s religious memorabilia counted. Everything had been painted in an oppressively drab off-white color, the windows heavily draped.
Iggy's house, though, was a mishmash of unapologetically bright colors.
Red bathroom.
Bright yellow living room.
Periwinkle blue kitchen, where she led me to a small round table with a chalkboard top, little childish pictures of one-legged birds and three-eyed monsters donning the top.
There was art everywhere; huge canvases butting up against one another, photographs on the mantle three deep. Toys positively littered the living room floor. Sneakers were forgotten in the hall.
Not dirty.
Just lived in.
Comfortable.
After years of living in a show house, I imagined Iggy felt like she could really breathe here.
"You're a mom," I declared when she carried the stainless steel coffee carafe over to the table, two mismatched mugs dangling from her fingers.
"I'm a mom," she agreed, nodding.
"She's... five?"
"Six," Iggy corrected, going back for the sugar and cream before sitting down.
"You were..."
"Eighteen when I got pregnant. Nineteen when I had her."
"Your parents..." I started, then suddenly recalled how Vance had said things had finally blown up. I guess now I knew why.
"Oh, yes. As you can imagine, they were just thrilled by the news of their unwed teenaged daughter who was supposed to be a virgin until marriage and then only have sex for means of procreation getting knocked up."
"I mean, to be fair, they would have lost their minds if they knew you ate meat on Fridays during Lent."
"That's true," she agreed, nodding.
"What did they do? Demand you get married?"
To that, her lips turned up. It wasn't a smile, but more like a bitter sneer. "They wanted me to 'take care of it,'" she said, using air quotes.
The Rise of Ferryn Page 20
