Page 62 of Broken Warrior
“I was almost five when it started. My mom would drop me off at the garage when my dad was away—she never wanted kids and only got pregnant to keep my dad happy. So whenever he was gone on a run, I’d either go to Jackal’s house, or if Trudy was busy, she’d leave me with my grandfather.”God, I feel sick. “He’d… when we were alone…”
“Fin, you don’t have to…”
“I do though. I have to be honest about what I went through, honest about what happened and the ways it affected me as I got older. I have to talk about it with you because you saved my life, Tate, and not only do you need to know why you were put in that situation, but you need to know how all of this could—“
“Affect our relationship moving forward.” She nods. “I understand that completely.”
“I know you do, probably more than I want to accept.”
Tate gives me a soft smile as a tear slides down her cheek, but she shakes her head. “Only to a degree. My abuse like that didn’t start until I turned eighteen.”
Which pisses me off but is also a huge fucking relief, to be honest. I don’t want anyone to know what it was like for me, not in any way, but my need to kill Gino Valetti would multiply if that bastard put his hands on herthatway when she was a little girl in addition to how he did throughout her entire time with him. Getting kidnapped and sold to the mob, then abused in multiple ways for years as an adult is bad enough.
“So, they never…”
She shakes her head again. “I wasn’t treated well, but he didn’t start hitting me until I was eighteen, which was the same time everything else started.”
I’m going to kill that son of a bitch.
Rip him to pieces with my bare fucking hands.
“Did your grandfather ever…”
“No.” I sigh. “He would make me touch him, sit in his lap, sick shit like that, and as I got older he’d… touch me, but he never did that. When I went through puberty it got more intense, more frequent under the bullshit of teaching me to be a man at the shop, but I was almost six foot at twelve years old, and that’s when he started doing things to make sure I kept my mouth shut.”
“The scars on your chest.”
I nod. “What’s really fucked up is the fact that he didn’t have to do that. He didn’t have to hurt me to keep me quiet. I was terrified of him, ever since I was little, and my size never made any difference to me because I still saw him as that horrible monster. And honestly, it didn’t matter anyway because I did try to tell someone.”
Tate scoots a little closer, then reaches out and takes my hand, lacing our fingers tightly. “Your mom?”
“Yeah.” I drop my eyes to our hands, watching the way her thumb gently moves back and forth over mine. “She didn’t believe me. I was nine and I was scared, but I finally felt brave enough to say something.”
“What happened?” Judging by the look on Tate’s beautiful face, she already knows, but this incredible woman is allowing me to unload my secrets because she knows how important it is for me to do that. And if she’s not completely horrified afterward, I’ll make sure Tate can do the same. I’ll even keep my thoughts of killing Gino to myself while she does.
“Ma flipped her shit. She got mad at me, called me a liar, and accused me of saying it to steal my dad away from her.”
“Jesus…”
“I know.” I chuckle, but it’s not funny. “Then my mother made me swear never to say anything like that again.”
“But you did.”
I nod. “Just after my thirteenth birthday. I’m not sure why I waited so long, and something in the back of my mind said that my grandfather was going to be done with me around that time anyway, but… My dad had been on a run with the club, and like always, he closed down MACs and we went to have our traditional root beer floats at the bar. He knew something was off, knew something had happened, but Dad was waiting for me to tell him. Until he poked me in the chest—just horsing around for fun—and noticed me wince.” I tighten my hold on Tate’s hand and start tracing her slender fingers with my own. “He pulled my collar down and saw all of the burns, and when he asked what the hell happened, I just lost it. I started bawling and told him everything, told him every last detail of what my grandfather had been doing to me, and instead of getting mad or anything else I expected, my dad took me in his arms, hugged me and cried with me.”
“Fin,” Tate whispers. “Baby, I’m so sorry.”
“He took me home after that, confronted my mom, and the next day when I got up for school, Dad and Uncle Gus were sitting at our kitchen table smoking cigarettes and staring out the window in total silence. Both of them had busted hands and blood on their clothes, and the next time I saw my grandfather I knew why. I didn’t go to the garage alone after that, but I still had to go because of the club and shit, but my dad put a complete stop to any interaction with Gramps and that was that.”
“They didn’t do anything else? Didn’t go to the police or anything?”
I shrug. “Club business, and despite everything, he was their dad. Everything and nothing changed, and we moved on like none of it happened.” Then I grin over the moment everything changed. “Until I walked in on my grandfather with Breaker’s son, doing the same shit to him that he used to do to me. Then Hamish was no more.”
“Breaker?”
“He was Sergeant at Arms when my dad was president of the club. He’s still around, you’ll meet him someday.”
Tate scoots until our thighs touch. “What happened to his son?”
