“I’ll miss you,” I told Aunt Rita while she cleaned my face with stinging antiseptic because I would, so much it momentarily robbed me of breath.
She was a constant in my life with Rooster, the only one to ever kiss my forehead or tuck me in sometimes as a child and the only person to offer me solace when I’d returned as an adult. It felt wrong to leave her behind, but then, she’d never left herself.
“I’ll miss you, but every time I think of you, I’ll imagine you with this smile,” she said, touching the edge of the tremulous expression on my mouth. “Now, I’ll go gather some of your things so you’re ready. Try to wrap your hand with the rest of the gauze so you don’t damage it worse.”
“There’s a phone and mum’s ring in the lining of the mattress,” I said. “That’s all I really need.”
“I’ll grab what I can,” she promised before squeezing my hand again, dropping it and leaving the room.
I locked it behind her, sucked in a breath, and fell to the edge of the tub because my knees were suddenly weak. I’d been so overwhelmed that I hadn’t thought to worry if Aaron and his friends had made it out of that fight relatively unscathed.
And if he had, I didn’t even know where helivedbecause I’d never dared to visit it.
So I’d head for the clubhouse, but it was a good forty minutes by car to Entrance and my Mazda was back at the bar. If I was lucky, I could hitchhike, but it wasn’t exactly safe on the side of the Sea to Sky Highway’s winding, mountainous roads at night especially when the Raiders could notice me gone and come after me.
I could call Aaron to come meet me if he was well enough to do so, but I had to get a head start while I could get away. Besides, something told me if he knew what Hazard had done,Aaron would drive up to the house without fear and light it up, guns blazing.
I wasn’t opposed in theory, but there was no way he could take out a house of twenty armed men by himself.
I waited for what had to be half an hour, but Aunt Rita didn’t return.
Finally, unease turning my gut sour, I opened the door and headed into the hall. It was eerily quiet in the big, ramshackle house when usually voices were raised in laughter or conversation over the sound of music and the television downstairs. It was such an old house that it creaked and groaned as people stepped through it, but only the pop of warped wood under my feet could be heard.
When I rounded the corner to my room, Macho was there, leaning against my door with a cruel smile.
“Little Auntie had to make herself useful downstairs,” he said with a mocking pout. “She seemed to think you needed shit from your room. Of course, you don’t need three changes’a clothes to get ready for bed, do ya, Faith?”
Slowly, scalp prickling with dread, I shook my head.
“That’s what I thought. Now, you’re gonna spend the rest’a the night in your room, and I’m gonna drink my beer right outside the door. Fancy’a bit’a quiet anyway after those fuckers nearly killed us,” he said with a saccharine-sweet smile that looked just as wrong on his ugly, mean face as a scowl did on Aaron’s.
He lashed forward to yank me by the arm so I stumbled into his foul-smelling body, but at least he didn’t grope me or anything.
This he explained by saying, “Fuckin’ ugly mark the VP gave ya.”
Fury burned through me, but I kept quiet as he pushed me into the room because I knew I could access my phone to text Aaron.
That was until Macho grinned widely at me, showing a blackened eyetooth. “Don’t be lookin’ for this.” He raised my burner phone in one hand to give it a little shake. “I think Hazard’ll be real interested to see what you have on your secret phone when he gets back.”
Fuck, my world was falling apart around my ears all in the span of a single night.
“Please, Macho, it’s nothing,” I tried, stepping forward with a sweet smile because I’d been able to sway some of the men to go easy or keep things quiet before.
He laughed loudly. “Yeah, maybe that cute shit would work before he cut you up, but I got no desire to use an ugly bitch like you. And thanks for this.” My mother’s sapphire ring winked in the light where it was pushed down over the fat tip of his pink finger. “This’ll bring me a nice little payload.”
I lunged for it before I could help myself, but Macho only slammed the door shut on me, and the sound of a key turning in the ancient lock told me he’d found the key to the bedroom.
“Fuck,” I breathed out on a sob, hitting my good hand against the door as Macho laughed to himself on the other side. “Fuck, fuck.”
I let myself wallow for a few minutes before I hauled in a deep breath that burned my lungs and then let it out in a gushing stream.
“Okay,” I told myself softly, turning away to pull a scarf from my closet to fashion a makeshift sling for my arm. “You can figure this out.”
If Hazard came home and saw the text messages on that phone, he would quite literally kill me. If Rooster was here, it might have been different. Even though he was cruel, I didn’tthink my own father wanted me dead, but Hazard was another story entirely. So much more had happened to him overseas than just losing his leg, and he’d returned home with a lost sense of pride and anger that flared like a supernova, taking out everything in its path.
After eight years of separation, the knowledge of my secret rival biker boyfriend would send him so far over the edge, I knew there wouldn’t be much left of me to find if he got his hands on me.
So Ihadto get out of there.
