by Addison Jane
I pulled it shut and clicked the lock over before settling on one of the little cot beds inside the tiny space. Op leaned back against the door, and Wrench sat opposite me, holding out the file. Anxiously, I pulled it from his grip and untucked the envelope part at the top to open it.
“You want me to explain what’s in there?” Wrench questioned.
I pulled out the first piece of paper, and all I saw was numbers and letters and some kind of signature that looked like the scribble of a doctor. “Uh…” I laughed, reaching for another piece. “Yeah, that’d be great.”
Wrench was the go-to man for any kind of mystery.
If you were hiding something, he’d find it.
“So I had a look into your girl’s mom,” he started, leaning forward and bracing his elbows on his knees. “Perfectly healthy, fit, never smoked, barely a drinker, three births, not a single complication. And get this, not even a broken bone.”
“But even the healthiest person can get cancer, can’t they?” Op cut in, folding his arms across his chest. “It doesn’t discriminate.”
“Right,” Wrench agreed. “Her healthy lifestyle definitely kept her alive for a lot longer, but I’m ninety-nine percent sure it was never cancer she was fighting. It was something else.”
He knew his shit.
I had no doubts in my mind that Wrench had been through every single piece of information he’d found, and the conclusion he’d come to was correct. “I think my gut was pretty fucking sure I was right,” I told him, continuing to pull paper after paper from the folder. “But I’m still fucking shocked.”
“Honestly, so was I,” he admitted, reaching for one paper in particular and pulling it from the pile I was making. “Mostly because it wasn’t even fucking hard to find. Her doctor was done for malpractice one year after she died. The medical notes he had taken during her ‘treatment’ just described the symptoms, and no tests were ever run, no oncology reports, and no blood results that pointed to anything other than a general sickness.”
He held up one paper in particular and I narrowed my eyes trying to read it.
“It’s a list of days she was in the hospital having chemo.”
“There’s nothing on there.”
“Exactly!” He laughed. “Sure, there are some circumstances where they can do it at home, but no one can do every treatment at home. These things have to be monitored.”
A growl rumbled in my throat, and I grabbed a handful of the papers and shoved them back inside the folder. “Okay, so what the fuck happened? Casen said she tried to leave, and then she suddenly got sick.”
“My best guess? Arsenic.”
“Fuck,” Optimus cursed, leaning his head back against the door. “Bastard killed her?”
Wrench sighed, handing me back the last paper. “Very slowly, and very painfully.”
I got to my feet, slamming the folder down and feeling my heart begin to race. “Jesus Christ,” I hissed, lifting my cap off my head and turning it backward. “He tortured her. He made her think she was sick. Used her for ratings. And then when it got to election time… he killed her off for sympathy votes.”
I felt fucking ill.
Trenton Clarke had problems.
And honestly, I was starting to see this insane resemblance between him and Jester. Jester just didn’t bother to hide his fucking crazy, at least he owned his. I just wasn’t sure if that made Trenton more or less fucked-up.
Either way, I needed him to stay the fuck away from Lake.
Or better yet, remove him as a threat altogether.
“We’ve got your back, whatever you wanna do to protect your girl,” Optimus announced, practically reading my mind. “I heard you’re throwing words like ‘mine’ around.”
I rolled my eyes back with a laugh. “Yeah, not even sure how it fucking happened, honestly. She shows up, tells me to keep my nose out of her damn business, and I’m all in.”
“Sounds familiar.” He chuckled.
The Brothers by Blood weren’t known for holding back when it came to claiming women. If you asked anyone with an old lady, they’d tell you they knew almost the moment they met that there was something special about their woman.
They were different.
They were something you’d never encountered before, and they understood you in a way you never imagined anyone could. They didn’t take your bullshit, but at the same time, they respected it and the club you loved.
I knew that was the case with Laken.
And yeah, it’d only been a few weeks, but we didn’t second-guess that shit. Claiming our women was the way we told the world we wanted to take time and see where the hell those feelings could lead, and having to see them with someone else in the meantime just wasn’t in the fucking cards.
“Your man, Jester,” Wrench quickly moved on, sitting back again. “He’s a little bit harder.”
“Of course, he is,” I groaned.
“Yeah, elusive little bastard,” he agreed, scrunching up his nose. “I’ll get him, though. I think I’ve got a lead, so I’ll keep you updated.”
I leaned over, patting him on the shoulder, my body starting to itch and my legs jumping as we sat in the little room. I needed to get out, go for a run, workout, or fucking something. “Man, I gotta get out of this little space,” I urged, getting to my feet.
When we got back out into the hall, Laken and Chelsea were chatting outside Meyah’s room.
My girl looked up first and smiled as we walked toward them. “Hey, thought you guys had gone missing or something,” she joked, sliding her arm around my waist. I pulled her close, enjoying the way she fit so perfectly into my side.
“You two are cute,” Chelsea gushed, elbowing Optimus in the side when he just leaned against the wall beside her. “Why don’t you touch me every time I walk into a room?”
“You want me to touch you every time you walk into a room?” He smirked.
Chelsea sighed, shaking her head as she walked away. “I should have known you’d go there.”
“Hey, I’m all in if you are,” he called, shoving off the wall and jogging down the hall to catch up with her.
“Go,” Laken urged, stepping back.
My brow pinched together. “What?”
“You’re bouncing on your toes.” She laughed, waving me off as though she’d already decided what I needed, and she was on the money. “Go run. I’ll hang around here until you’re done. Go get some food or something.”
“I’ll come with you,” Wrench agreed, grabbing the green folder from my hand and hitting me with a knowing look. “I’ll keep this until you get back.”
Shit! I hadn’t even thought of what Laken might see, or how she might react if she knew the truth.
It would devastate her.
She knew her father was an asshole, but a murderer?
That could be the tipping point.
“All right,” I agreed with a nod and heavy breath. “I’ll see you guys in a little less than an hour.”
“You can run for an hour?” Wrench called after me, but all I could do was laugh as I turned the corridor and headed for the exit.
LAKEN
“This is where you were for those few months?”
I spun around, my hand going to my heart. “Holy crap, Kennedy.”
She dropped a thick newspaper on the hotel counter, and my eyes drifted down to the large picture on the front page. Me. It was me, in a hospital gown. The picture was taken for my ID when I was on the ward.
I reached out, my fingers tracing my face, the dark circles under my bloodshot eyes and the pieces of hair sticking up all over the place. My nose was hideously dark, probably a bright shade of red, but you couldn’t tell because well, black and white newspaper.
And in bold writing over the top…
TRENTON CLARKE SPEAKS OUT ABOUT
DAUGHTER’S SUICIDE ATTEMPT
My fingers curled, scrunching the paper in my hand as I shook my head. “It’s not what it looks lik—”
I didn’t know if I could look at her. I felt sick like if I even tried to speak at that moment, I would just vomit everywhere. I cleared my throat and forced myself to look up, she deserved that fucking much at least. Tears were dripping down her face, and she was looking at me like I was this complete stranger she had never met.
I tried to clear my throat and speak normally, but it was clogged with emotion. “Why, what?”
She swiped at the tears with the back of her hand as she took a deep, shaky breath in through her nose and out through her mouth. Kind of like she was in labor. Like she was fighting through some godawful pain.
She probably was.
“I love you,” Kennedy whispered, wrapping her arms around her waist. “Why didn’t you tell me? How did I not know that was what you were going through? How did I not see how much pain you were in?” She kept shaking her head and frowning like this puzzle pieces just didn’t fit.
Probably because she was right.
They didn’t make any damn sense.
“Because I was so damn good at pretending to be something I’m not,” I rasped, slowly releasing the crumbled piece of paper in my hand. “I should be. I’ve been faking a smile since I was like three years old.”
I don’t know why I was surprised that my darling father had somehow managed to get this information—that picture—and plaster it all over the front of L.A.’s biggest newspaper. It would only be a couple of hours before the tabloids, television stations, and the rest of the world picked it up and ran with it without knowing exactly what the hell they were talking about.
In my mind, I was trying to convince myself I wasn’t that person anymore.
I was stronger.
I had more to focus on and more to fight for.
And yet, I was still exactly that girl in the photograph.
I was still struggling day by day to deal with my past and the choices I had made. I was having nightmares that were memories on repeat over and over again. I’d spent years determined to rescue the people I loved and to make sure they got the future they deserved. But when it came to standing up for myself and what I deserved, I really struggled.
Because in my mind, I was still unsure if I deserved anything.
“When you were gone, and Brook was safe, I was on my own,” I finally admitted, forcing myself to swallow past the lump in my throat. “I had no one. I couldn’t go back home because this is exactly what my dad would have done, made a spectacle out of my pain. I had no idea where you were or how to find you. And I had no one else.”
Her shoulders sagged. “I just left you there.”
I started to laugh, rushing around the counter and collecting her in my arms. I squeezed her tight and rubbed my hand over her back. This was familiar, strangely comforting.
“I need you to hear this. I never wanted to take my life,” I told her, placing my hands on her shoulders and pulling back so I could see her face. “It was never my intention. I was just trying to make the pain stop, and I made a mistake.”
She frowned, reaching up to wipe at the tears. “Tell me.”
I took Kennedy’s hand, trudging over to the sofa and pulling us both down onto the comfortable cushions. My stomach was twisting. It was something I’d never voiced out loud before, not even in those awful sessions I had while I was on the ward.
I let them assume what they wanted to.
To think I was crazy.
It was just easier that way than to admit maybe they were right.
Maybe I did need help.
“I ended up hiding out in a cheap motel in St. George, hoping Crow and his buddies wouldn’t find me,” I explained, my foot bouncing and jiggling as I forced myself to relive a part of my life I’d attempted to block from my memory forever. “I was sitting in that place alone for at least a week. I didn’t know what to do, where I was going to go. I didn’t have anything else to focus on, to block out the feelings I’d spent so long numbing with Red Riot and their violence, stripping at the club, and tending the bar.”
I had nothing to distract me, no assholes trying to break me down, no friends to lift me up. But I did have time to hate myself, to despise the choices I’d made and the person I’d been. I could have walked away from my father years ago, got a damn job, worked for my own money and stood on my own two feet.
Instead, I was a selfish fucking brat. I needed friends, I needed people around me trying to make up for the love I’d lost with my mom, and that I was never going to find in the eyes of my father.
I needed to party and to be with friends.
And I needed money to party.
Money that I got from my father.
“I started popping pills so I could sleep. I knew if I took enough, I would blackout, and I wouldn’t dream.” I was finding it hard to breathe, my scars starting to ache as I fought to slow each breath and collect my thoughts. “I took a bunch and went to sleep. When I woke up, I thought it must have been hours, so I took some more… I just wanted to numb everything. But then I started to feel weird.”
Kennedy tightened her grip on my hand, pursing her lips together and shaking her head.
“It had only been about fifteen minutes since I’d taken the first few pills. I was already taking twice the recommended dose, and I’d just doubled that.” I clenched my teeth as my stomach swirled. I remembered trying to make it to the bathroom, trying to stick my fingers down my throat to puke, but nothing would come up because I hadn’t eaten. “I made it to the phone and thankfully, when you pick it up, it rings straight through to reception because I never would have been able to push anything. I just cried ‘help me’ over and over. And then I woke up in the psych ward.”
Both of us were sobbing at this point.
I couldn’t stop the wave of tears streaming down my cheeks as I thought about just how close I was to not being here.
I died once, and instead of using that as something to drive myself forward to fight to live, I let the guilt and the shame consume me. I let the pain rule my life and drag me to a whole new version of hell that I could have never imagined before.
But maybe that was what I needed.
I’d hit rock bottom.
I was right there, sitting in the depths of hell, feeling fucking sorry for myself.
Maybe I needed to be there, with nowhere left to fall, before I finally realized I was wasting a life.
A life that all those other kids didn’t get the option to have.
“And now?” she asked, sitting a little taller and scooting a little closer. “What about now?”
“Now, I fight.” I told her… no ifs, ands, or buts. “I don’t think I’ll ever escape that part of me that feels so responsible for those people. It was a choice I made to do what I did. But I know it wasn’t me who put my finger on the trigger. And I know there is so much more in this life I need to do, that I can’t leave it just yet.”
I made a mistake that day.
I was out of my head.
I was lost in my own pain.
But my focus now was different—it was on school, and Myth, and Kennedy, Brook, and the club. My mind still played games with me, but my heart was stronger now, and it had far too much to fight for.
“No more secrets,” Kennedy insisted, grabbing my shoulders and yanking my body toward her into a tight, almost suffocating bear hug. “From now on, if you’re feeling down, talk to me. We’ll go for a walk, we’ll eat some junk food, I’ll get Myth to make love to you...”
The giggles came hard and fast.
But that was just the way it was with Kennedy. Our relationship was weird and outside the box. It was instant forgiveness and understanding. It was fierce love and Dad jokes.
And it was perfect.
MYTH
The dull hum of my phone vibrating on the night
stand had me pulling away from Laken’s naked body a little earlier than I would have liked.
I hit answer, not wanting it to wake her, but checking the time before I pressed it to my ear.
Four in the morning.
“Yeah,” I muttered softly, lifting my tired body and sitting at the edge of the bed.
“I’ve got a location on Jester’s little hidey-hole,” Wrench answered, the sound of keys tapping furiously in the background sounding so damn loud in the dead quiet of our bedroom. “It’s about thirty minutes out of town. Industrial area. Old run-down place. I’m ready when you are.”
“Give Shotgun a ring, I’ll be downstairs in ten minutes.”
“Done.”
I hung up, preparing to get out of bed and grab a two-second shower just to wake my senses when I felt the bed jostle and a warm naked chest press softly against my back. Her lips brushed up and over my neck, a tired sigh falling from her mouth. It was so sweet, so fucking sexy, I almost turned around and swept her up in my arms.
Another few minutes wouldn’t hurt, right?
Wrong.
I needed this done. And finished.
I could fuck my woman all I wanted when it was over, without worrying about everyone around me and who might be next on this fucking psycho’s hit list. “I gotta go,” I told her reluctantly, catching her mouth with mine and pressing her backward. She fell back onto the bed, and I made a quick escape, getting to my feet and flicking on the lamp beside the bed before taking a step back.
Laken sighed again, this time it wasn’t sweet or sexy, it was frustrated. “Damn you and your never-ending stamina,” she cursed, rolling to the side and tucking the sheet around her. She looked up at me with heavy eyelids, and I knew she wasn’t quite all the way awake.
I chuckled, leaning down one last time and pressing a kiss to her temple. “Don’t sass me, woman,” I warned in a soft growl. “I’ll give you everything you need when I get back in a couple of hours.”
