The difference between Elaina and me was I was fighting for my vengeance. For my soul. I was using my dead father’s bones as weapons after tearing them free from his rotting flesh. I was half-unconscious, bleeding out and drugged up. I was angry and desperate and willing to risk death than recapture. Death over living with such pain.
She was nothing.
With a snarl, I slammed both of us through the window, using her like a shield to stop most of the glass from hitting me. And sure, the glass cut me open even more than I already was, but I didn’t feel it. I didn’t care about it. I barely even noticed anything other than Yumi scrambling out behind me a moment later, eyes wild with bloodshed and pride, presumably in herself.
Elaina noticed our fall. She cried and coughed and tried to fight through her pain. She crawled over the glass on the ground, whimpering as she felt each tiny stab into her worthless skin.
“Stop fighting.”I snapped.“You took everything from me. You can’t possibly think you’re going to get away with it, so stop fucking fighting.”My words sounded funny… sluggish.
Slow. Pained.
The world was blurry at the edges and I could have sworn I tasted metal on my tongue alongside the ash. At some point Yumi grabbed my arm, steadying me, and it was only then I realized I felt faint. But again, I didn’t care.
I was busy.
Elaina looked at me as I stood above her on the random driveway outside a mansion I didn’t know, like a God watching her minion.
“I didn’t kill your men!”she snarled.“They escaped – they survived. John’s the one who killed Malone – he’s the one who did all this with his sister! I did nothing to you!”
I wasn’t dumb enough to believe her or care about John’s sister, even if I didn’t understand what she was on about, but felt like I should. Elaina was talking shit; she was trying to worm her way out of things… so instead of listening I slammed the bone into her stomach, watching how she screamed and cried out in the dark night of a place she thought she was safe in.
A place she had been a monster, never expecting that her little toy beasts would get free.
I watched as she raised her hands in front of her, missing fingers amusing even in my current state.
I watched her as she used those filthy hands to plead for her life.
“You touched Misha with those hands.”I stared at Elaina as I dragged the hunting knife from Yumi’s offered grip. The girl presumably didn’t speak a lick of Spanish, but she could tell what I was doing still.“You touched Beau, and Darius and God knows how many other people. You fucking hurt Lincoln – you hurt what’s mine and that will never do. Never, ever, ever.”
“Please.”She begged me.“Please – I didn’t want to do any of this. I just did what I had to do to survive.”
Elaina was playing victim, and the truth was, she was one. She had been a victim of her family, of her husband, of her life. She had been dealt a shit hand from the minute she was born. But she hadthrivedin it. She had taken things from others – my mama, my sanity, my men. She had willingly and without mercy raped a fourteen-year-old boy until she got her twisted littleMontana baby that she could use for whatever fucking leverage she had asked for.
I may have been forgetting my damn name almost, but I remembered how Elaina had laughed on that video when Malone was killed.
She had fuckinglaughedand even if I pretended for a moment she had not committed all her other sins – that she had not forgone all forms of consent and done what she had done to those I loved and those whose names I would never know - that one alone would never slide.
I refused to let Malone be laughed at when he was another person I loved who had been taken from me – when he had sacrificed himself forhisboys;myboys.
Malone had saved me from the darkness, and he had been my rock for over a decade. His death would not go unpunished and all those who had a hand in it would beg me for death by the time I was finished with them.
“What did you get for having me? What did you ask for in return for handing me over to my daddy?”I had been curious about Elaina’s motives the moment I found out about my parentage and seeing as I didn’t have long left to find answers, it seemed fitting I try.“You tell me what I want to know and maybe we can… talk.”
She didn’t answer me at first. She just whimpered and tried to move again. It wasn’t until I pointed my knife to her throat did she open her lips, tears streaming down her face and blood pooling beneath her body.
“When I worked in a Vice King whorehouse, I had a daughter with John before I had you. Then when you were young, I had a son with him.”She panted the words like they were a secret she had long been keeping, even from her God.“Silver and Steel.”
“Those are stupid fucking names.”The words slipped out before I could register what she actually said, and it took me a moment as I shook my head, trying to work through what I needed to know.“Why does that matter?”
“Because John told me Silver died when she was little – he she was killed in a gang attack.”Elaina spat.“But he had sold her off, and then kept trying to breed me like a fucking horse because his dumb bitch wife struggled to get pregnant and he was desperate for a son.”
Her words rubbed me the wrong way, but I was far too dizzy to say anything about her attitude and disrespect to a woman who struggled having a baby.
“And what has that got to do with me?”It didn’t seem relevant yet.
“I didn’t want another child of mine to be sold or turned into a replica of their father. But the only way out from John was through the Montana’s, so I needed leverage that Ford could never resist.”She hissed.“I made you and used you as a happy little future piece of leverage for when I got pregnant again. Then when I had Steel, I called in the favor Ford owed me to get him to safety.”
Should I have felt anything other than apathy at her explanation? I had no idea.
