“This is ridiculous. The girl’s seen that Rosalind is fine. Take her and get out, Bull, and if she starts screaming again have her sedated,” Iron growled, having hit the end of his patience with the situation it seemed.
“Tob––” Roz started to say but a glare from Iron made her correct herself. “Iron––it’s okay if she stays. She’s just a kid and she has been through a lot in the past month.”
“I didn’t ask what you thought, Rosalind. I’m losing what little bit of patience I have and this isn’t helping. You owe me some answers and I don’t think either of us wants an audience for this conversation.” Iron stood, his shadow falling over her and Laci where they stood. His face was hardened into a mask of darkness and she wasn’t sure if she should push it. He was not the same man he had been when she knew him better than she knew herself. This man was scary and he didn’t seem to have any softness inside him anymore, which meant she was going to have to talk Laci into going with the other man and hope like hell he didn’t hurt her.
“Laci, hon, go with, ummm––” Roz paused, having forgotten the man’s name. Her eyes landed on the man who’d entered with Laci trying to jog her memory.
“Bull,” he grunted, his eyes narrowing on her.
“Right, Bull. Laci, go with him, it’s going to be okay. I think he’s telling the truth and they would have hurt you by now if they were going to.” Roz wasn’t sure that was true but she said it with a confidence she didn’t feel, hoping she didn’t regret it.
“But what about you? Are you safe?” Laci asked, glancing fearfully at Iron, who looked even grimmer than he had a moment ago if that was even possible. Roz swallowed hard. Yeah, she wasn’t sure about that either anymore but she managed a slightly weary smile.
“Of course, To––Iron and I have known each other a long time,” Roz told her, correcting herself this time without a glare from Iron. Laci watched her carefully, her look contemplative as if she were calculating Roz’s truthfulness.
“Are you sure?” she finally whispered to her, making Roz glance over her shoulder at Iron who was still standing menacingly behind Laci, his arms crossed and a dark scowl on his face.
Meeting his eyes with hers, she calmly replied, “I’m sure, Iron won’t hurt me.” She hoped to see some glimmer of the man he used to be but all she saw was the dark depths of his eyes as he stared at her.
“Okay,” Laci finally agreed, turning to move towards the door, hesitating when she saw Iron blocking her path looking grim. He stepped back and with one last glance at Roz, Laci began walking towards the door.
“Laci,” Roz called after her when she had almost reached the door, waiting until the girl turned back to her before she said, “Don’t cause trouble. I don’t think they were kidding about sedating you.” Laci nodded, her face going even paler than it was only moments before. She hugged herself as if she was trying to reassure herself that she was okay as she followed Bull out the door headed back to wherever they were keeping the other women.
“Was frightening her really necessary, Iron?” Roz demanded, looking at him with a dark glare after the door shut behind Bull.
“Apparently it was, Rosalind. Don’t push me. You no longer know what I am capable of,” Iron growled, his arms still crossed and his gaze steady and hard. He even took a threatening step towards her. “I want an answer. Why was I told you were dead?”
Roz sat down on the edge of the bed. She stared at the floor for a long moment, unsure where to begin with this story and unsure with his current attitude if she even wanted to tell him about what had happened to make her fake her own death. Only she knew that the man he used to be deserved an answer even if the scowling one who stood threateningly nearby was the one who would hear it.
“It’s not an easy story for me to tell, Iron,” Roz finally said after a long pause in which she stared at the floor, feeling his eyes boring into her from where he stood menacingly nearby.
“At the moment I don’t really care if it’s easy for you, Rosalind. I fucking mourned you and you’re not even dead.” Iron’s voice was glacial and he was speaking through his teeth if the tightness of his words was any indication. Roz winced, finally looking at him, seeing the tight lines around his mouth and the way his fists clenched at his sides. Every line of his body was tense almost as if it was taking everything inside him not to hit her. Roz felt a slight shiver of apprehension slide down her spine.
“Mother remarried about eight months after you left. As you are well aware, after my father died she never really recovered and she just didn’t care anymore. She married Hank because we needed help with money and he was another income in the house––” Roz began, only to hear a growl from Iron before he grunted.
“Look, I didn’t ask for a history on your life, Rosalind. I just want to know why I was told you were dead, damn it.” His face was reddened and his jaw was clamped so tight she could actually hear his teeth grinding.
“I am telling you, it’s just a long story,” Roz said, feeling anger stir inside her. She understood he must have been hurt by her death but she couldn’t understand why he was acting like he had never cared for her at all when she knew that wasn’t true.
“Isn’t there a short version?”
“No, Iron, there isn’t and if you would stop being a dick for a single minute, I will explain what drove me to fake my own death,” Roz growled, her nails digging into her palms where she pressed them hard against the bed to stop herself from slapping him across his arrogant face. He wasn’t completely innocent either, he’d played a part in this tragedy too.
“Fine,” he grunted, dropping back into the chair he was sitting in when she had first awoken, a look of complete disdain on his hardened face.
“Now as I was saying, mother remarried and as we both know, she wasn’t the same woman she was when my father was alive––” Roz began a second time, only to growl in frustration when he again interrupted.
“You’ve already told me that, Rosalind, get to the point.” Iron leaned forward, his body tense and his anger evident. Roz didn’t really care in that moment. She wanted to tell him to fuck off and walk out but she didn’t know what his reaction would be. She didn’t think he had changed so much that he would hurt her but she wasn’t sure, and that meant she wasn’t going to push her luck.
“I’m trying, please stop interrupting me,” Roz complained through her clenched teeth, her hands curling into fists which she pressed into the bed to keep from hitting him. “She married him because she didn’t really care about anything anymore except me and we were struggling with you gone. Neither of us realized he had a drinking problem and that he became violent when he drank.”
“Violent?” Iron asked sharply, leaning forward aggressively, his eyes boring into her.
“Yes, not at first but about three months after they first got together he began to hit her. At first she tried to cover for him but I knew he was hitting her. He didn’t hit me, only her. He broke her arm in three places one time, and she was becoming increasingly withdrawn. It was about a year after you left that he hit me for the first time. I fought back and got away. After my mother refused to come with me, I got a hotel room and stayed there a few nights. But I had to go back because she needed me, so after three days I did. He said he was getting help and for a while things weren’t so bad but then he started up again. It didn’t take long before he was at it again, beating her almost daily––”
“Why the hell didn’t you tell me, Rosalind?” Iron burst out, his outrage evident in his tone and the way he was on his feet pacing back and forth suddenly.
“You were off trying to start a better life for us and I didn’t have a way to contact you as you well know. When you called, you were so hyped about the club you were with that you barely asked anything about how we were doing and I didn’t want you to feel obligated to come back. I never wanted to be a burden for you, Iron,” Roz said, her face twisted into a cross between regret and pain.
“Roz, you were never a
burden,” Iron said, and for the first time she could see that her Toby wasn’t completely gone in the slight softening of his green eyes. Only they quickly turned back to the cold hard orbs that had been resting on her since she awoke.
“When you called the second time, I was already planning to leave with mother. I was going to just pack us both up and force her to come with me just to get away from him, but when you called you told me it would be soon so I didn’t leave. I wanted so badly to be with you that I decided to wait a little longer.”
Roz’s voice broke on those last words as pain and guilt filled her heart. Pain because her mother had died and guilt because Margarita’s death was a result of the choice she had made to remain in Cartersville to wait on him. If she had packed them up and left, then her mother might still be alive and she wouldn’t have faked her own death and Toby would never have stopped looking for her.
Her life might have turned out differently if she hadn’t made that choice to remain and she might not have spent the last fourteen years searching for a love that appeared to be lost to her now anyway. Her chest burned as the thought passed through her mind because she had loved him so deeply that even now the echoes of that love pained her.
“Rosalind, you should have told me! You knew I would have come to get you and your mother if you had and I can’t believe you didn’t trust me.” Iron’s voice was hard and gruff and she could hear an undertone of hurt in the words.
It hurt him that she hadn’t told him about her new stepfather but at the time she had been so young and so convinced that if he was going to come back to her it had to be because he loved her, not because she was in trouble. That conviction had lasted right up until she was sitting in a cold morgue with her mother’s lifeless body beside her wearing the ripped shirt and bruises her stepfather had given her. He had nearly beaten her to death that night; it was the only reason she had the chance to fake her death and run.
Roz winced as she turned away from his anger to look out the window on the other side of the room, watching the branches swaying in the breeze for a moment before she spoke again.
“It doesn’t matter now. I didn’t think I had a choice the night Doctor Cutler offered to say I had died and give me a sedative that would make it appear true when he showed the body to Hank.” Roz would have continued but he interrupted her.
“Fuck, Rosalind. Just fuck, that’s insane.”
“It was insane, Iron. I had ten minutes to decide what to do with my whole life. Ten minutes was all the time I was given and I didn’t know what to do. My mother was thrown down the stairs breaking her neck. She died right in front of me and I had nearly been beaten to death. My face was so swollen I could only see out of my right eye. Three of my ribs were broken, my jaw was out of place, and my nose was bleeding profusely. I was twenty years old and I had never been on my own but I didn’t have to think too long about the offer. I wanted to wait, Iron, but if I had, he likely would have actually killed me.” Roz glanced back at him to see that his face had paled and his hands were holding the arms of the chair so tightly that she was surprised it wasn’t breaking.
“He beat you?” Iron asked, his voice filled with a fury so evident that she could only nod in response.
“He did. I looked for you for four years but no one knew who you were or if they did they wouldn’t tell me. I guess because I was looking for Toby and you were Iron by then.”
Roz wrapped her arms around her waist trying to hold her anger over the loss of a connection that had once been so bright it glowed. She wanted that back but looking at Iron she wasn’t sure it would ever happen for them. They weren’t the same people anymore. She wasn’t an idealistic young girl who loved him and he wasn’t a vibrant young man who’d promised to return for her. Their lives had taken them on paths that led them away from each other and she didn’t know if they would ever be able to reconnect.
Squeezing herself tighter, she turned to face the window again, wishing for a different future for them but knowing too much time had passed. She heard the scrape of the chair behind her and turned to see Iron walking out the door without even a goodbye. She felt tears sting her eyes as she faced the window again. Letting the flood of emotions overtake her, she cried.
Chapter 5
Iron had never felt fury the way he felt it when she confessed that Hank, her stepfather, had beat her. Unable to handle it, he felt the plastic arm of the chair break when he squeezed it. He tried hard to unclench his hands but couldn’t seem to manage it. His blood pounded through him making him see nothing except a red haze and a ringing started in his ears.
He still heard her softly confess that she had searched for him after she faked her death and he knew that she was right about why she couldn’t find him. If anyone from the club she questioned had realized who she was talking about, they wouldn’t have told her where he was because she used the wrong name. If he had told her his handle, she likely would have found him, he realized grimly. This knowledge didn’t quiet the rage that built up inside him over what had happened to her.
After he calmed enough to let the chair go, he stood and walked out of Roz’s hospital room. He knew he should say something to her but he wasn’t able to find the words. His rage wasn’t only directed at the man who’d hurt her.
He walked down the hall barely looking at anyone who might be loitering there because he was on a mission. His jaw clenched and he ground his teeth together, his blood boiling. He was going to kill that son of a bitch who’d hit Roz and fuck if it would change the fact that he wasn’t sure if he could forgive her but nobody who hurt her would live.
Iron climbed on his bike heading over to the clubhouse. He took the stairs two at a time and headed to his room on the far end of the landing. He didn’t speak to anyone as he stomped towards his room.
“Hey, Iron, what’s up, man? You look like you’re about to blow a gasket,” Rebel said when Iron walked past him, but Iron wasn’t in the mood for idle conversation. He was on a mission and right now nothing was going to stop him from killing Hank for hurting Roz.
“Not now,” he grunted, walking to the door of his room and shoving it open. He slammed it shut behind him with a finality that spoke volumes, he was sure, but at the moment his only thoughts were to kill the bastard who’d killed Roz’s mother and in a way Roz herself.
He knew that what happened to her had happened fourteen years ago but he wasn’t going to let it stand. He had promised years ago to protect her and that protection didn’t end because he was angry with her for not trusting him.
Fuck, that burned him. He felt it like a scalding knife in his gut.
She should have trusted him to protect her; that was his job. She was his woman, almost his old lady, and finding out that she had faked her death rather than tell him she was in trouble felt like a betrayal. Jerking open the cabinet that he kept his gear in, he pulled out two Glocks before opening the drawer that held his knives, lifting one out. He tested the blade’s sharpness while staring into the drawer at the serrated-edge military knife. After sheathing the one he was holding, he pulled out the serrated one too placing it on his belt with the first one.
Iron shut the drawer before stepping over to the closet and grabbing the small bag just inside on the floor. He heard a knock on the door and he sighed. Rebel must have finally decided to ask him about his attitude. He jerked it open expecting Rebel but it was Pansy and Animal standing in the doorway.
“I hear something is up with you. Lance called and said you stormed out of the clinic with a grim look on your face and Rebel tells us you were furious when you walked in and barely even stopped to speak to him. So what’s up? Is it the woman?” Animal asked, looking at him questioningly.
“I got shit to do. Going on a little ride,” Iron told them, his nostrils flaring, unwilling to give more of an explanation than that. Although they were his brothers, he didn’t know if he could talk about this to anyone yet; it was too raw. Iron bared his teeth in a silent growl of anger before he
turned grabbing the bag off the bed.
“Huh, well I’m in the mood for a ride,” Pansy said, speaking for the first time.
“Yep, ‘bout time we had something to do. Things were getting a little boring,” Animal added, a grim look on his face.
Iron realized then that they were already fully loaded and had come here with the intention of helping him with whatever he needed to do. Iron felt his chest squeeze a little. Damn, it was good to have family willing to always have his back no matter the situation. Only he couldn’t let them take any heat for his need to get revenge on the man who’d in essence taken Roz from him.
“This isn’t something I need help with. You two should stay here,” Iron told them as he moved away from the bed, his hand clenched on the bag he carried as he walked towards the two men intending to brush them aside and head out the door to load up his bike.
“Yeah, that isn’t happening. Besides, we’re under orders from the boss man,” Animal muttered, grinning at him.
“Reaper sent you?” Iron asked, a little surprised to learn that Reaper had any idea something was up.
“Yeah that’s who Lance called. We just happened to be with him when he got the call. You know how this works, we’re family, you need us, we’re here for you,” Pansy grunted.
Iron felt gratitude fill him because he should have known that he wouldn’t have to explain this to them in order for them to help him. They were as Pansy had just pointed out, his family. His chest tight and anger still coursing through him, he nodded once, hoping they knew that he was grateful that they were here for him when he needed them.
“Let’s ride,” Iron said and they followed him out to the bikes and within minutes they were headed to Cartersville.
Melted Iron (Blue Bandits MC Book 3) Page 5
