by Kay Maree
X called Hadley and Angel to come and help her dress. Both the women protested about Lyric going with Steve, X, Blaine and a guy she hadn’t met, Gannon, but their complaints fell on deaf ears. Doc said that she would be alright to travel, most of her bruising was now nothing but a greenish yellow hue on her face and apart from the cuts that still had stitches she was physically alright. Lyric still got tired easily from seven months of rarely being fed, and only having limited amounts of water as well as being chained to a wall. It was going to take a long time for her to rebuild the muscle mass that she lost due to her imprisonment, but she knew with time she would heal and get better.
As Lyric stepped outside of the club house she blinked at the bright sunlight. It had been seven months since she saw the sun. When she was younger, she would spend her summer holidays outside all day, her tan was natural, and her hair would brighten to an even lighter blonde. Now, she was pale, and the bright daylight hurt her eyes. The sun warming her skin felt like it was going to burn her, she didn’t enjoy the outdoors and freedom that it once brought her. It felt like everything before Gable was now diminished and the bright colors that surrounded her were now dulled, by her pain and what she had been through for the last seven months.
When X led her by her arm out to a black SUV, there was a tall greying man standing by the driver’s side. He gave her a warm smile, that reminded her of her dad. She felt an instant pang of sadness at the memory of everything she lost, what felt like forever ago.
“Hello Lyric, we haven’t met yet, my name is Gannon. I’m the VP of the Kingsmen,” he said with another smile.
She returned his smile, “hello, nice to meet you,” she said.
Gannon nodded his head briefly, “I wish it were just under better circumstances,” he replied as he climbed behind the wheel of the car.
She couldn’t agree more. Everyone at the club had treated her with respect and kindness, she didn’t know if this was how they acted around everyone or whether she was getting special treatment. Something told her that this was out of the ordinary, these men weren’t usually so loving and kind to complete strangers. X assisted her into the car, and they started off down the road towards the only home she had ever known and the auto shop that her father had inherited from his father and her brothers were supposed to inherit from him. She assumed it was hers now, not that she knew the first thing about cars. Her father was misogynistic, girls were supposed to be cooks and cleaners, they were meant to raise the children, it was the man’s job to go out and earn the money.
Lyric sighed at the thought. She was in school, finishing her last year of high school. She had secretly sent off college applications in hopes that her grades would be good enough to allow her entrance to somewhere decent. She had dreams of being far enough away that she felt the thrill of freedom and independence but close enough that she could still come home. She had dreams of being a teacher, giving the same love to students that many of her teachers had shown her. Now though, all that seemed to be lost and forgotten. She never had the opportunity to graduate from high school, any college applications that were accepted would be long lost now. She sighed and watched the world go by, suddenly sitting up straight as she recognized the streets that they drove down and the town they drove through.
Lyric turned to X with a frown. “What town is this?” she asked.
“Peachton,” X replied.
Lyric shook her head, “how far from you is Gable’s club house or whatever it was that I was kept in?”
“Just on the other side of the town,” Gannon told her looking in the rear vision mirror, making eye contact with Lyric.
Lyric ground her teeth together feeling anger rise in her. She had been kept in her town, not ten minutes from her home, for the last seven months. No one was looking for her, because her family was dead, but that didn’t explain the cops. They had to have known that she was missing.
“Was anyone looking for me?” she asked, her eyes filling with angry tears.
X sighed and reached out taking her hand in his, “the cops should have been looking for you, but the investigator in charge of the case, is in the pocket of Gable, so he would have swept it all under the rug, with some excuse of a drug deal gone bad.”
Lyric growled and her shoulders tensed. She wanted Gable dead, she wanted revenge not just for her treatment, but for Pitt’s, for her brothers, for her father. She couldn’t explain what her dad had done to be on Gable’s radar, but he never deserved to die. Her brothers didn’t deserve early death and she sure as hell had nothing to do with any of whatever Gable had going on.
“Did you ever see Gable before he took you, Lyric?” Blaine asked from the front passenger seat.
Lyric chewed on her bottom lip, trying to think whether there was ever a time that maybe he had been at the shop, she remembers there being bikers at the shop regularly, but she never took much notice of them. It was an auto shop; it was expected that there would be people she didn’t know there during the day. Lyric shook her head and sighed.
“There were bikers there regularly, but I don’t ever remember Gable. I never took much notice of the people at the shop, mainly because my dad didn’t want me to have anything to do with the business. I’m starting to wonder if that had anything to do with the fact that dad and Gable were in business together or whatever they were doing,” she said with a sigh.
She needed to find answers, there had to be something that could tell her what it was her father was up to. And if the cops hadn’t found the safe, maybe that would be where the answers laid.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
X
X watched Lyric’s face as they pulled up to the auto shop. Her eyes were welled with tears and he could almost see her panic wafting off her in waves. His heart was shattering for her. He had spent so many years, after Bree was killed, walling himself off, vowing to never let anyone other than his brothers in again, and here this girl was shattering through the walls like she was swinging a wrecking ball. Every time he looked at her, she took his breath away. He wanted to wrap her up in his arms and never let her go, never let her see the horrible evils that this world consisted of.
He had watched her face break when she came to the realization that she had been held only minutes from her home, that Gable wasn’t some far away bike club, but was just around the corner. He saw the moment she started to question everything she knew about her father and her brothers. X wanted to save her from that pain and the realization that maybe her father and brothers weren’t the innocent men she thought they were. Lyric took a deep shuddering breath as Steve opened the back door to assist her out of the car.
X wanted to growl and snatch her out of Steve’s arms, but he had to reign himself in, now wasn’t the time to throw dominance around. She needed them to protect her, she leaned on all of them to get her through what she was about to do, and that was to unlock potential answers to who her family really was. With another sigh she started to walk towards the door of the shop, she stopped and leaned down beside the door and lifted the corner of a board from the wall, reaching in she pulled out a key.
Lyric unlocked the door and with another sigh, entered the building with them all following behind her. When he and Blaine had come, they weren’t able to get into the shop, and never thought to ask if there was a spare key to the place. X looked around after his eyes adjusted to the darkness of the shop, the place was exactly as it was left, tools, scattered on a bench, a car up on a hoist, the smell of grease in the air. Lyric stopped in the center of the shop and looked around with her hands on her hips, before she turned to Steve.
“Did the police even come in here? This looks like, dad and my brothers just left for the day,” she said before pointing at the car that was up on the hoists, “that is my dad’s car.”
Steve turned to look at X with a frown on his face, “I think we need to get the car down, it might hold some evidence that could be useful, was this the car he took out of town when they
went on trips?” he asked looking back at Lyric.
Lyric shook her head, “no, they always took the mustang, if it’s still here it will be in the garage at the back of the block,” she said pointing towards where X had noticed a garage that seemed to be locked up when he was there last.
“Did they use the mustang any other time?” Steve asked.
Lyric shrugged her slender shoulders, “sometimes, but not often, it was the car that dad said they only pulled out for long hauls because it drove better.”
“It seems like an odd car to pick up car parts in,” Gannon said quietly.
Lyric looked over her shoulder and shrugged, “I guess you’re right, I never second guessed them before, but there had to be a reason they were killed,” she said without any emotion in her voice.
X was worried that she was beginning to shut down. He didn’t know that this was a good idea and needed to wrap it up, he made eye contact with Blaine who seemed to understand his look.
“Lyric, if you show us where the safe is and open it up, then we will get you back to the club house so you can rest,” Blaine said.
Lyric shrugged her shoulders, before nodding again. Her eyes when she looked over at Blaine, looked dead, the shadows were dark, and her face was pale. X moved forward and took her in his arms, “come on sweetheart, you can do this,” he said quietly into her hair.
Lyric let out a little sob and shook her head, “I don’t know that I can, X, I don’t think I’m strong enough to know the answers, I don’t think I can take the heart break that my dad and brothers were working with Gable,” she sobbed.
X took her arms in his hands and held her back, bending slightly to look down in her eyes, “you can, and you will. We are all going to be right beside you, we aren’t going anywhere, you have a home with us, you have a family in us. Is it ideal? No, of course in an ideal world your dad and brothers would still be alive, but you were strong enough to fight against Gable for seven months, you can push through this little bit,” he said firmly.
Lyric looked up at him with sad eyes. A look that just about brought him to his knees. This beautiful broken girl was lost. He knew that feeling, he felt the same way when Bree was killed, he felt the same way when his dad died. But like he had the guys to help prop him up, Lyric too, had them, she had him. And he wasn’t going to let her go. She seemed to be able to understand the resolute look that he gave her and nodded her head, sucking in a deep breath, before slowly exhaling, raising her shoulders up and turning to head in the direction of what X assumed was the safe.
She led them further into the shop, into what seemed like an office, on one wall was a high shelf filled with auto parts in boxes. Lyric pushed on the shelf, moving it to the side, when it moved out of the way, there was a door. X looked over at Blaine, who frowned, Steve caught X’s eyes. They all had the same questions, why would a simple mechanic need a secret door? Lyric flipped the light switch, but the power had been turned off.
“Here, use this, sweetheart,” Gannon said reaching out and handing her his phone with the torch light lit up.
Lyric gave him a small smile and pointed the light toward the stairs, before turning to look over her shoulder, “be careful these steps aren’t exactly stable, I wasn’t allowed down here often, but when I did the stairs were always a bit scary to walk on.”
X realized that she was trying to stall them walking down there. “Lyric?” he said drawing her attention to him, “if you want, we can go down there, just write the safe number down, you don’t have to do this.”
Lyric sighed and dropped her head down on her shoulders, before looking back at them. No one moved, waiting to hear what she would do. Lyric shook her head and turned back towards the steps, “I’m just frightened, what if everything you say, and Gable said is true? What if my dad was a bad man?” she asked, her bottom lip trembled, and her chin wobbled as her eyes welled with tears.
X reached out and took her into his arms, pulling her into his chest and kissing the top of her head. “You might find that everything that has been said is true, and if that is the case, it will hurt, it will fucking hurt so bad, but we are all here. Lyric I’m here, I’m not going anywhere, you’ve opened up a hole in the wall that I built around my heart, and I’m not going to let you walk the journey on your own anymore.”
Lyric sniffed and looked up at him, her big blue eyes filled with tears, but the shadows that he had seen in them since she had woken, seemed to be dissipating. She gave him a small smile and nodded her head.
“I can do this,” she whispered.
X bent his head down and kissed her on the corner of her mouth, “you can do this,” he said, giving her waist a small squeeze.
Lyric took a deep breath and turned back towards the door that led to the basement and started down the steps. They followed her down, no one said a word. When they got into the basement and saw that it was a giant room with a concrete floor, there was small windows that let a little bit of light in. X looked around, there was a chair that was in the center of the room, one wall was covered in an array of tools, that X recognized. These weren’t here to be used on cars or building, these were tools that were used for torture. He knew that if he looked closely, he would find stains of blood on the blades.
Steve was looking over at the wall with a frown on his face, he groaned and shook his head. They all knew what this meant. Lyric’s father was into some shit that he kept secret from her, and X would bet that he was working a lot more with Gable than they thought. Lyric was at the safe. She swung the door open and then gasped, before spinning around. X went towards the safe and looked over her shoulder, before groaning.
“Fuck,” he spat.
The safe was filled with not only bags of drugs and weapons of all sorts, but in a glass jar, was a head. A fucking head. Nausea washed over X as he pulled Lyric away so she couldn’t see. His swearing caught Blaine, Gannon and Steve’s attention and they filled the doorway to the safe.
“Fucking hell,” Steve said, turning away from the safe and shuddering.
His face was paled in the beam of sunlight that filled the room. Blaine and Gannon shared a look with each other, and X. Lyric had her head buried in his chest, her whole body was trembling. When she looked up at X her eyes were filled with tears, she shook her head.
“Why?” she cried.
“I don’t know sweetheart, I know that this is a hard question to answer, but do you know who that was?” X asked, as he ran his hands up and down her back.
Lyric nodded her head and a sob fell from her lips, “my mum,” she cried, as she clasped his shirt in her fists.
“What the fuck?” X growled.
Lyric shook her head, “he said she had cancer, she was supposed to have died of cancer, why, why the fuck would he do that? What sick piece of shit does that?” she said hysterically, her voice rising as her panic started to take over.
X held her tight against his chest and turned to lead her up the stairs, she didn’t need to be in the room. Her fucking mother’s head was in a safe, in a fucking glass jar. What the fuck kind of man does that? X’s head was spinning. How did this girl not know what he was doing? She sobbed the whole way up the stairs, her whole body was shaking.
“X, who was my father?” she said just above a whisper.
X just shook his head; he didn’t know how to answer her. He didn’t know who the man was and how the hell any man could do that. He just hoped that Steve would be able to investigate it further and get some answers for Lyric.
When they got out into the yard, Lyric’s sobs had turned into sniffles, her face was tear stained and red. “I thought I would be more upset, but I don’t know, I think maybe I knew that he wasn’t the man I thought he was,” she said quietly.
“Why do you say that?” X asked.
Lyric shrugged her shoulder, “I can’t say for sure, but I feel like I had a gut feeling, like I already knew I was going to find something horrible in that safe. That the
answers that I was going to get weren’t going to be good. I mean, everything sort of just points to it didn’t it? The bikers that were always here, the weeklong trips in the mustang, me not being allowed to go down to the basement, the secrets, and when I came into a room, how my brothers and dad would stop talking. I was just too stupid to see it, I just accepted everything they told me.”
Lyric’s sobs started again, X continued to hold her and soothe her, rubbing his hands up and down her back. He didn’t know whether it wasn’t hitting her yet, or she was truly just numb to everything. He had expected her to react far worse, especially seeing her fucking mothers head in a jar. X couldn’t get past that, who the fuck does that? Steve came out of the building and towards X, he was wearing a frown and X knew that he was going to investigate everything further.
“Lyric?” Steve called, drawing Lyric’s attention to him, “I’m going to get a team here to start investigating everything, but when your mum died, you said, that you believed she died of cancer? Where was she buried?”
Lyric looked up at him and then off in the distance, “we had a funeral for her, here, it was only my dad, brothers and I, we were the only family she had. Dad and my brothers dug a big hole and made a coffin for her.”
“Can you show me where? I don’t mean to be crass, but we might have to remove her body in order to investigate further whether she had cancer or if she was murdered,” Steve said.
Lyric’s head snapped to him and her eyes widened like it hadn’t occurred to her that there was a possibility that she had been murdered. X could see that Steve was regretting what he said, but how could he have made it better? How do you nicely tell someone that their father might have murdered their fucking mother? Lyric sighed and nodded her head, before she started walking towards the back of the property.
“My grandfather and grandmother are buried back here too,” she said quietly.
