Newton only seemed to grow more nervous. She twisted her hands together and tried to put on a compassionate smile, but her lips trembled, making her look like she was being possessed. “Half an hour after being transferred into her new room, Leslie got confused and started screaming at her new roommate. By the time the nurses and orderlies got there, her roommate had her pinned to the floor, choking her.”
“Fuck,” Colt muttered quietly.
My stomach tensed, and I held my breath as I waited for Newton to continue. A thousand questions ran through my mind that I needed answers to, but I couldn’t voice a single one. The dreadful premonition I’d gotten when I first woke up—had that really only been ten minutes ago?—returned, and I felt powerless to stop the avalanche of pain I knew was going to drop on my head when the administrator opened her mouth again.
“The patient was finally pulled off Leslie, but she wasn’t breathing. CPR was performed but…” She swallowed thickly. “I’m so sorry, Miss Murdock.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Colt jumped to his feet. His hands slapped down on the desk inches from Newton’s, making her squeak in surprise and fear. “You transferred her mother to a ward you knew she would react badly to, then were surprised when things got violent? Why wasn’t someone watching Leslie Murdock? Why didn’t you do your fucking job and protect her? And this is the way you tell her daughter? So emotionlessly you might as well have been a damn robot?”
“I-I…I…” Newton shut up abruptly as Colt leaned forward, pushing his face menacingly closer.
“Did you not question the fact that Samson was doing this out of spite and would want something like this to happen?” he seethed. “Do you even fucking care past stuffing your greedy pockets with the money he slips you to comply with his commands?”
I tried to suck in a deep breath, but my lungs were only rewarded with a tiny shot of oxygen. “Where is she?” I asked in a voice that was pathetically weak. “I want to see her.”
“O-of course.” Newton stood, seeming all too happy to be able to move away from the pissed-off biker in front of her. “She’s in the…the…” Her mouth snapped shut, but she didn’t need to finish the sentence for me to know my mother was in the morgue.
--
The room Newton took us to was cold and smelled sterile. My oxygen-deprived brain didn’t understand why it had to be sterile.
I focused on that question as Newton led the way to the gurney where a tiny figure was covered with a plain, white sheet.
The occupants of this room were dead, so why did it have to be germ-free? It wasn’t like they were at risk of catching something.
I felt Colt’s hand on the small of my back as we moved closer, closer, closer to the gurney. The antiseptic smell was starting to turn my stomach. My knees felt oddly weak, but just when I thought I was going to fall, Colt’s arm wrapped around my waist, and he took on almost my full weight as he half carried me to where my mother was sleeping.
Yes, she’s sleeping, I tried to reassure myself. She always did like for her room to be cooler so she could snuggle under the covers. I remembered climbing into bed beside her when I was five, cold and afraid after a bad dream, and we would snuggle under her mountain of thick covers. Mom would tell me some made-up fairy tale about some stupid ballerina who turned out to be a princess. She made it sound so perfect that I’d begged for ballet lessons.
Lessons she’d, in turn, begged Calvin to pay for.
My eyes slammed shut, and I tried to block him out of my head. Calvin didn’t exist. He didn’t deserve to exist.
Colt stopped, and I slowly lifted my lashes just in time to see Newton pull the sheet down over Mom’s face. Vomit threatened to rise into my throat, but I silently pleaded with it to stay where it belonged. I felt light-headed as I took in the bruises on my mother’s once-beautiful face. Now, it was distorted with the cuts on her cheeks from fingernails. Her left eye was swollen with a vivid bruise glowing around it. But it was the fingerprint-shaped bruises on her neck that caught and held my attention.
They were huge, not from a small person at all. Almost as if they were caused by…a man’s hands.
“Who the fuck did you put her in a room with?” Colt snarled at Newton, giving voice to one of my own questions.
“Senator Samson was very specific when he requested the change,” Newton began nervously.
“Lady, shut the fuck up,” Colt commanded, fed up. “You should probably find yourself a lawyer, because I’m getting ours started on a wrongful death suit against you and this facility.” The sound of her gulp echoed in the room. “Get the hell out so we can have a private moment with Kelli’s mother.”
I didn’t hear her leave, didn’t watch her go. My eyes were still glued to the handprints on Mom’s neck. She was so tiny, and those hands must have been massive. Whoever did this could have so easily broken her neck. Was that what killed her? Or did they strangle her? Could this have triggered a heart attack or stroke?
I didn’t know. I had no answers. Just my mom’s lifeless body torn apart by the person Calvin forced her into a room with. He knew this would happen, I knew he did. This was my punishment for turning against him.
For picking Colt over him.
A small gasp left me, surprising me with the tortured sound. I felt strong hands gently grasp my arms from behind as my shoulders began to shake uncontrollably. Tears fell from my eyes, blinding me as I tried to trace the outline of the bruises on Mom’s delicate neck. Calvin took away the most important person in my life because I turned against him. He hurt me the only way he knew how, with the one person I would have done anything to protect.
The one person who should have always picked me, but hadn’t.
The one person I loved more than life itself, but who hadn’t loved me back the same way.
My heart shattered at the loss of everything that had ever made sense, at the same time I hated her for never once choosing me over Calvin.
Chapter 17
Colt
In all the time I’d known Kelli, I’d never once seen her get emotional. Never seen her eyes glaze with tears or her chin so much as tremble. She was so shut up within herself, I was almost certain she was a sociopath at one point.
Now, as I held her so she wouldn’t fall, the sounds tearing from her made me realize she was anything but. She was just better at hiding her feelings than most people. Right then and there, she couldn’t hide them or hold them in any longer. The loss of her mother was tearing her apart, and those sounds coming from her were the worst kind of torture.
I wanted to hold her tight and tell her everything was going to be okay. The first, I was doing and would continue to do for the rest of her life. But the latter wasn’t something anyone could give her. Everything wasn’t okay. She’d just lost her mother, the only person she’d ever loved. A woman I wasn’t sure I liked or respected as a mother, but she was all Kelli had.
And her bastard of a father had taken that mother away from her.
He must have known something like this could happen. He probably had a shit-eating grin on his face right now, rubbing his hands together that he’d gotten the upper hand over his daughter. She’d turned her back on him, and now she was left broken.
Fuck! I wanted to kill him. Wanted to tear him apart piece by piece and lay each limb I tore from his body at Kelli’s feet. I wanted to carve her name into his chest so he and the world would know why I did it. I wanted to destroy everything he held dear and watch him fall to his knees in front of his child, begging for her mercy because only she could absolve him of his sins. Only Kelli could tell me when to stop…
The sounds coming from her only got worse, her shoulders heaving as she sobbed harder and harder. I turned her away from the sight of her mother’s body, tucking her head against my chest as I rocked her against me. I felt powerless, and that feeling wasn’t something I was used to. I needed to take control of this situation, for no other reason than to ensure Kelli w
as okay.
Lifting her into my arms, I kissed her forehead and carried her out of the small morgue. Newton was waiting on the other side of the door, biting her lip nervously as she waited with a husky male nurse and two orderlies who looked almost as anxious as the administrator did. Was she expecting me to cause her physical harm? Most likely, but I had more important things to worry about than her sorry ass.
“Our lawyer will be in touch,” I told her coldly as I walked past the small group, with Kelli still sobbing uncontrollably in my arms.
Out in the parking lot, I placed Kelli in the front seat and secured her seat belt before getting in the driver’s side. I couldn’t drive us back to Creswell Springs with her in this condition. It was too long of a drive for me not to go fucking crazy, unable to console her like I needed to.
I found a decent hotel not far from the nursing home and got us a room. The receptionist kept giving Kelli concerned looks which turned to compassion when I quietly told her Kelli had just lost her mother. That got the woman moving a little faster, and within minutes, I was carrying my girl into our room.
There was a king-sized bed in the middle of the room and a medium-sized television on a cheap TV stand. I laid Kelli down on top of the covers and kissed her cheek as I stepped back. Her sobbing had mercifully stopped, but she was still openly crying, and those damned hiccup sounds coming from her were twisting my insides.
She closed her eyes as she turned onto her side, her back to me. Drawing her knees toward her chest, she wept silently.
Pulling out my phone, I went into the small bathroom and closed the door as I hit Jet’s contact information. After two rings, he answered. “Yeah?” he half growled in my ear.
“The senator is very much aware of what happened to Bubbles last night,” I told him, keeping my voice low so Kelli wouldn’t hear me. “He’s already been working on his revenge.”
“Fuck,” Jet groaned. “What’d he do?”
“Had Kell’s mom moved to a different ward in the nursing home. This one, apparently, with the mentally unstable. She was strangled to death by another patient.” My free hand fisted at the memory of those huge, finger-sized bruises on Leslie Murdock’s delicate throat. She and her daughter looked so much alike that it wouldn’t have taken much to imagine Kelli lying there, cold and motionless in death.
“Hell. Kelli okay? You need anything?”
“I think I got this under control. Just watch Raven and Flick closer. I don’t know how he found out so fast, but I think it’s pretty obvious he knows something. Not sure he will come after Rave and Flick, but he’s already getting back at Kelli.”
Jet exhaled harshly. “Yeah, okay. I’ll let Bash know. We’ll keep them safe. You take care of her. Let me know if you need anything.”
“Yeah. When you see Quinn, tell her I’ll call her later. Kelli needs me right now.”
“I’ll let her know. Stay safe, brother. Call if you need us.”
After hanging up, I wet a washcloth and went back out to check on Kelli. Her eyes were closed, but I could tell by her breathing she wasn’t asleep. Sitting on the edge of the bed, I touched the warm, damp cloth to her face, washing away the tears that were still lingering on her cheeks and lashes.
Her eyes snapped open at the first touch of the cloth, but she didn’t pull away. A frown puckered her brow as she watched me wash her face. When I was done, I tossed the cloth aside and moved to take off her shoes and jeans, making her as comfortable as possible so she could rest a little easier.
When I had her down to her shirt and panties, I tucked her under the covers and lay down beside her on top of the duvet. She moved like her life depended on it, throwing herself against me. One arm went over my stomach, squeezing me closer as she pressed her face into my shoulder.
Cupping the back of her head, I held her against me, trying to absorb her pain but powerless to do so. “I’m so sorry, baby,” I whispered as I kissed the top of her head.
“W-Why am I so upset?” she cried. “She s-s-sucked as a mom most of the time. S-so why does this feel like it-it’s k-killing me?”
“Because she was your mom, babe. Good relationship or bad, she was still the one who gave birth to you. You grew inside her. That’s a bond that doesn’t fade.” Lifting her chin with my free hand, I met her damp eyes. “It hurt like hell when I lost my mom, but I was just a kid so I didn’t understand what it meant when she died. Not until later. But it still stings when I think about her.”
“I have no one now,” she whispered, fresh tears flooding down her cheeks. “I’m all alone.”
My heart burst with pain for her, but I only shook my head at her words. “No, babe. You’re not alone. You’ve got Quinn and Raven and Flick and everyone else in my family. Because you’re mine. My family is your family. You’ve got me, and I’m not going anywhere.”
Her breath hitched and she rested her head back on my shoulder, but she was tense now, as if she didn’t trust what I’d just told her. Holding her close so she couldn’t escape, I turned us so that she was on her back and I was leaning over her. I pushed back a few damp locks of hair that were stuck to her face and traced my thumb over her jaw.
“Kell, baby, I love you. I’m not going anywhere, ever. You can push me away and act like you don’t care now, but it’s not going to work. You’re mine, and I’m not letting you go.” Her lashes started to lower, blocking me out, but I tipped her chin back up, forcing her gaze to stay locked with mine. “I know I hurt you, and I’m not going to make excuses for what I did. It was wrong, and I’m so fucking sorry.”
“I really don’t want to talk about this right now.”
I could hear how fast her heart was beating, and because I knew she was hurting, I didn’t argue with her. It was out there now, though. Those three words I’d said plenty of times to the people who mattered to me. But this was the first time I’d ever told a woman I was in love with her. The woman who was an intricate part of my soul now. I hadn’t put up much of a fight when I started falling in love with her, but when I thought she’d betrayed me, I told myself I was mistaken. I couldn’t love her.
But even then, I knew I was wrong. I loved Kelli more than anything or anyone. She was mine, and I was fucking hers. Nothing and no one could change that.
Rolling onto my back again, I tucked her close. Kissing the top of her head, I closed my eyes and breathed in the smell of her shampoo. “Sleep, Kell.”
“Don’t…leave me, Colt,” she whispered.
I kissed the top of her head. “Never, babe.”
Chapter 18
Quinn
Sometimes, doing nothing was more exhausting than doing a million different things in a single day. That was exactly how I was feeling today. Cabin fever was starting to set in, and if I had to stay behind the compound walls another hour, I was going to murder someone.
Preferably, my baby’s daddy, but any one of my three sisters would make me all too happy.
There was a reason why we hadn’t shared a house in the last few years. One, they were lazy bitches who mooched off everyone and spread their legs for anyone with a cock. Two, they were spiteful cows who hated me for actually wanting to make my life better. For the last week, Whitney had been keeping her distance, something I was more than happy to reciprocate. But Heather and Amanda seemed to be there every time I turned around. It only made me wonder if Whitney was putting them up to annoying the hell out of me because she was in deep crap with the MC.
And if I had to trip over either of them again, I was going to grab them by their hair and throw them out of my way.
“All right, sweetheart, I’m off to the diner,” Aggie informed me as she grabbed her to-go cup of coffee and her purse off the kitchen counter. “I’ll be back later tonight.”
“Wait!” I called as I pushed away from the sink where I’d been trying to distract myself by hand-washing the last of the dishes. “Let me come with you, Ag. You know you need the extra help.”
Immediately, I could see that she wanted me to come with her. I was her best waitress; she needed me just as much as I needed to get out of this place for a few hours. But I could also see the argument already forming on her lips. “Raider will kill me if I let you come with me.”
“Fuck Raider!” I growled, pissed. He put his foot down repeatedly about me staying here where it was safe and I could rest. I was pregnant, not sick. Meanwhile, he was off taking care of MC business for Bash, leaving me alone more often than not. Which would have been fine if I actually had something to do while he was away doing whatever. “He’s off doing God knows what, and I’m stuck here going stir-crazy. I need to work, Ag. I need to get out of here and talk to people who aren’t the same sixty people I’ve seen every single hour for the last few weeks.”
“I don’t know…” she mumbled hesitantly, no doubt trying to think of an excuse not to let me tag along.
Little John came through the kitchen door, dressed for work. He gave me a kind smile, and I latched on to it. “If Little John is there, I’ll have protection if anything happens. Not that it will. Even the cops hang out at the diner for lunch. No one will touch the place.”
“If Bash says you can come, then fine,” Aggie finally relented. “Lord knows I could use all the help I can get today.”
I nearly groaned but nodded in accession. “Give me five minutes,” I called over my shoulder as I practically sprinted through the clubhouse in search of Bash.
Seeing the door to his office open upstairs, I flew up the stairs and knocked before sticking my head in. He had a dark expression on his face, and I nearly hesitated. His head lifted when he saw me in the doorway, his brows rising skyward.
“What’s up, Quinn?” he asked in a tired voice.
“Aggie needs some extra help at the diner. I’m going to head out with her. Let Raider know, okay?”
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