by Avelyn Paige
We reach the end of the cellblock, and she shoves me to the left down a hallway. The shackles at my wrists clink and clang with every step. A second shove leads me into a room with mirrors on all the walls. An interview room. Just great.
The table in the room has one of the two chairs occupied. The occupant is not the lawyer that I had hoped to see, but that of my father. His eyes twinkle with delight in seeing me this way. The product of his handiwork on display for his entertainment pleasure.
“Sit,” the officer orders. I comply, and she connects my shackles to metal hoops bolted to the table. Why this would make more sense for a more violent criminal, it doesn’t for me. Drug charges are a dime a dozen, especially in this part of the country, where meth production runs rampant in the quiet country suburbs. Most first offenders were issued commuted sentences of community service and a hefty fine, so for me to be treated like this tells me that there’s something more to this. And that something more is sitting right across from me.
The officer finishes the task of shackling me and steps out of the room, closing it behind her. For the first time since Willie’s, I am alone with my father and completely at his mercy. I have nowhere to run and hide from him.
“I tried to tell you girl, but you didn’t listen,” he starts, clasping his hands in front of him on the table. “Just like your mother.”
“I am nothing like my mother,” I sneer back at him. His face remains unchanged from the pure look of delight, since I entered the room. He’s enjoying watching me squirm.
“My mother was nothing more than a mindless whore who’s biggest mistake was fucking you.” I argue.
“No, your mother’s biggest mistake was opening her slut mouth, and ruining my life. I was happy until she brought you into the world. No matter how much I offered to pay her, she wouldn’t give up her fight to name me. You were born out of pure need for greed. You were her meal ticket, when her tap from me ran dry.”
I growl, and pull against my bonds. There bite into my wrists take me back to the Tribe dungeon, and my stomach churns at the thought. The cusp of my anxiety begins to build and my throat attempts to seize when my lungs restrict my airway.
Force it down, Ricca. You can’t go back there right now. This isn’t them. This is your father trying to punish you in a different manner. Fight. Do not let him win.
“My mother was a monster, but you ruined your own life. You slept with her. You got her pregnant, and when it was time to own up and take responsibility, you didn’t,” I berate with my eyes glued to his. He could try to tear me down, to keep me imprisoned here, but he would never break my spirit. That is something that he would never have over me. His words were only an instrument to cut me down even more. Brutal realities of a life that I had already lived. A life he had nothing to do with, until he decided that the breath coming out of my chest, that he helped create, was disposable in his pursuit.
“My mother may have been a monster, but you are the bigger one. You let your own daughter be raped, starved, and tortured for those financial gains. You set on your throne of righteousness and let it happen. Punish me all you want, but over my dead body will I let Asher live that kind of life.”
“Oh, Erica,” he explains. “That’s where you are already wrong. I’ve already won. Look around. You’re in jail, and I still have him. There’s nothing you can do to change that fact.”
“Never underestimate me, father. I may be in here,” I declare, motioning to the room around me. My restraints jingle with the flicks of my wrists. “But you will never win. Asher will never be yours.”
I push up from the chair, and get as close as I can to him. He leans back to avoid contact, and I laugh in his face.
“I may be out of the game, but there are other players still left in it.”
“Look at you,” he smiles. “So much piss and vinegar. Posturing yourself when you can’t even leave this room without someone unhooking you, from the restraints that bind you. You’re helpless here. Just like your brother. You’ve both fallen into my web, and neither of you will escape.”
His smug demeanor beams more, and I want to rip these chains off the table, and strangle him with them. The officer raps on the door, and steps inside. My father leans back into his chair, knowing that his chance is over for now.
The officer removes my additional shackles, and starts moving me toward the door. I stop, and pivot back towards him.
“Even if I have to sell my soul to the devil himself, I will never let you win.”
The officer jerks me back, and the cracked smile on my father’s face fades out of my view.
“Officer Mentone,” a male voice calls out from down the hallway. “Azzo has another visitor. Take her down to room four. Give her ten more minutes, and then take her out.”
Another visitor? Could this actually be the lawyer I so desperately need right now?
Shuffling down the hall, the other room’s door is wide open. A gasp slips from my lips as I find Ratchet sitting at the table. As soon as I step near the door, he’s up and out of his seat, charging towards me.
“Shit your ass down, sir.” The officer with me orders. “You can’t touch the prisoner.”
Ratchet bites back the response I know is on his lips, but he does as she demands with wavering. The officer repeats the same motion as before, and steps out with a warning of our limited time together.
I outstretch my hand toward him, and he grabs it quickly.
“I didn’t do it, Jude. The drugs weren’t mine,” I blurt out. Tears begin to stream down my face.
His hand squeezes mine, and the damn of my tears breaks.
“I know, Siren,” he reassures me. “I would have noticed if you’d started again, and cocaine was never your thing. What I don’t understand is why this happened? Who would have it out for you to the point of planting drugs in your truck?”
I waver on revealing the truth to him. If I am going to escape this, all of the cards need to be on the table. No more lies. No more secrets. He was my last chance, and I need to let him in completely.
“I lied to you about something, Jude. Asher isn’t being fostered by some random person. He’s in the care of my father,” I confess. He remains silent almost knowing there’s more to this. With the likelihood of the room being watched, I have to closely guard my words. I don’t want Ratchet or I implicated further, should this go the way I suspect it will. With my father’s blood being spilled by Ratchet. It will be a justified killing if there ever was one.
“The night before the court case, he came to me at Willie’s and told me to drop the case to get Asher. He didn’t tell me why he wanted him, but he threatened me that if I didn’t that he would take matters into his own hands.”
Ratchet’s eyes flash with anger, and his entire body tenses with the truth of my betrayal exposed. In this moment, he could see my soul, and only he could decide what to do with it.
“Say something, please,” I beg him.
“You lied to me, Siren. Something we promised each other never to do again and yet, you did. Why?”
My heart sinks as his face falls into a deepened frown. He’s angry with me and rightfully so, but this isn’t the way I envisioned this going.
“I’m sorry, Jude. I wanted to protect you from all of this. I thought my father’s threats were empty ones and yet again, he’s proven me wrong.”
He huffs at the thought of me protecting him. The look on his face is clear as day, as he processes the words about to leave his lips.
“My job is to protect you,” he growls. “Not yours. Not anyone. Mine. You had no right to hide this from me. I thought we were in this together.”
“We are, but it’s not that simple,” I try to spit out, before the officer returns.
“Time’s up.”
She releases me from the table, and Ratchet stands as she drags me from the room.
“Just know that I love you,” are the last words he speaks to me, before I am taken back to
my cell. Those were words laced with a promise that I knew would have dire consequences. My lies may have driven us a part, and lost Asher forever. Just like everything else, this is my fault, and there’s nothing I can do to take it back.
She fucking lied to me after all the promises that we made to each other. The lies were supposed to end yet, here I am in seething in fucking anger that she broke that promise. They say a leopard can’t change its spots, and neither can my wife apparently. The betrayal of her in trusting me, hurt like a knife straight to the heart.
I waited like a fool for hours in that waiting room of the jail only to be turned away, until the morning. The pain that I felt about abandoning her there nearly killed me, but it is nothing compared to what I feel now.
Why didn’t she tell me about her father having Asher right off the bat? Was I so unworthy of knowing the full truth?
The veins in my arms bulge as blind rage courses through them. So much of this could have been avoided had she told me the truth. Without the knowledge of her father’s existence or threats, I couldn’t protect her. The semblance of a life that we had built here has been shattered in the moment she admitted to knowing about this being a possibility. I have no doubt her arrest and our home being torn up like the aftermath of a tornado, were all connected.
I wasn’t stupid enough to say what I really felt in that room for fear, that it could be used against her in court. Any admission on my part of threating her father in any way could make her an accessory to the evil thoughts running through my head. The beast inside of me was readying for a fight, and it would have it.
After leaving the jail, I went straight back to the trailer. The makeshift repairs that I attempted on short notice to secure it were haphazard at best. I tried to clean up the mess as much as I could, but nothing was spared. Without a bed to sleep in, I was forced to sleep on the uncomfortable floor. My body ached from the lack of support, but that ache fueled.
Just as I pull into the driveway, two familiar faces stand on the threshold of the trailer. Raze and Slider, my brothers in arms, had answered my call for help.
Parking my bike near the rental car that occupied the driveway, I cut the engine, and slide off. Raze meets me, before I even make it off the porch with a look of deep concern in his eyes. He knows there’s more to what I told him on the phone last night, and his weathered look in return, tells me that he has gone without sleep to fly here. Flying meant one thing. That he was ill prepared in terms of hardware, should this go badly.
“Prez,” I greet him, extending my hand toward him. He takes my hand in his, gripping it tightly. “Thanks for coming on such short notice. I really appreciate the help.”
“That’s what brothers are for, Ratchet. Let’s step inside, and talk business out of the public eye.”
I nod, and unlock the simple padlock I used in haste on the door. The lock clicks open, and we head inside.
“I like what you did with the place, Ratch,” Slider utters. “It’s so you.”
Both men’s eyes scan the room, and take inventory of the damage done by the deputies who raided the place. Even with a quick clean up, it looks more like it did when I first got here.
“It was a welcome to the neighborhood gift from the county mounties,” I answer with a shrug of my shoulders. “They do roll out the welcome wagon here.”
“You could say that,” Raze adds.
His usual booming and demanding nature is different, and his eyes sweep from the room to me. While this would usually be his lead and his club, the fight here is mine. I am the leader, and he and Slider are my support. The leadership change feels odd after so many years.
“Tell me what you know so far,” Raze inquires, and I tell them of the recent developments. As the story unfolds, neither of them says a word, until I finish.
“So what’s the plan?” Slider interjects. “Do we have any solid evidence of her father’s involvement other than some back alley threats and her word against his.”
“I don’t, but I’m hoping that V can find out something on it. On my way back from seeing her, I called him with the new information she fed me.”
“So all we have now is to wait and see if we can prove her innocence and his guilt,” Raze surmises.
“Unfortunately, yes. I may have been a bit premature in calling you both in. This is going to have to be a wait and see kind of chess game.”
“Is she worth all this trouble?” Slider asks. “No piece of ass should bring this much trouble on you or the club.”
I roar with rage. And start for him. Raze steps between us, cutting me off from my target.
“She is not a piece of ass, Slider. She is my fucking wife. It may not seem like it to you, but when you make a fucking commitment like that, it comes with the good and the fucking bullshit.”
“Jesus, dude.” Slider back peddles. “I was only asking.”
“You don’t have the fucking right to ask something like that, until you can fully understand what it means.”
Raze just watches the back and forth pissing match between Slider and I, before he finally backs down from me. This is the worst time for him to find his balls. One more fucking word out of him, and he’d end up like one of those army men from Game of Thrones. Unmanned and Unmatched.
“What can we do while we wait?” Slider asks, steering the conversation back to where it should be.
My thoughts race to how I can prepare for what’s ahead. There are so many different angles, that one wrong move before we know anything, could cook us. The waiting game is our only ally.
“I don’t, but I do have something you can do in the meantime, Slider. With Ricca’s brother being the common factor in this all, I need eyes on him. Do you think you could handle that?”
Slider looks to Raze who nods in return, then back to me.
“I may be young, but I doubt I could pass for an elementary school student,” he jokes, trying to lighten the mood.
“I didn’t mean infiltrate the school as a student, dumbass. I want you to watch him. Think you can handle that?”
“Yeah, Yeah. I got it.”
“He will be getting out of school soon. There are signs on the main drag through town. Just follow them to the school, and stay out of sight.”
“Yes, boss,” he chides me, before stepping out the door and on his way to his task. With Slider watching Asher, I could have an early alert system, should her dad try to run.
With Slider gone, it’s just Raze and I left to twiddle our thumbs.
“How are you managing this, brother?” He asks me.
“Is this your version of a man to man talk, Prez? Because you really need to work on your intro a bit more before you have this with one of Darcy’s boys.”
“Shut up, asshole,” he fires back. “I know this can’t be fucking easy for you. She took off, and you followed her into this mess.”
“That I did,” I acknowledge. “I thought this would be a simple dash and grab, but nothing is easy with her. Just when I think I have her figured out, she changes her damn mind or lies to me. There’s never common ground with her. I spend every single day second guessing myself on if I made the right decision.”
Raze slaps his hand on my shoulder, while I pour my heart out to him. Of all the people who would understand, it’s him. His first wife was a cunt who knew more about betrayal than how to be a wife and mother to his two kids. Because of her, his best friend is dead. Yet, his death brought something else into his life… Darcy and her kids. I was against the union at first, but seeing them together made more sense, after I realized how much they needed to lean on each other. It helped that Jagger posthumously consented to the match. Call him crazy, but Jagger was the kind of guy that would sacrifice everything to keep her safe. And that’s exactly what he did. He saved her and through it, he gave her a second chance at happiness with his brother in arms. Strange as it might be on the outside looking it, it worked. Raze was happier than I had ever seen him,
and the addition of her kids made his new house the home it was truly meant to be.
“Women will never be a simple fix, brother. They are like the rarest of cars, the parts are either hard to find or non-existent. No matter how many flaws you find, you just have to live with them as they are. The chinks and dings in them, gives them character and doesn’t take away from their value.”
His wise words sink in. As much as I want to condemn Ricca for her lies, I can longer fault her for them. When you spend your life trying to keep yourself safe from the world, you learn to survive on your own and in your own way. What she saw as protecting me was actually hindering my ability to help, but it was also shielding herself from the onslaught we’re currently facing now. With her father in the equation, we would have always ended up in the exact same position as we are now. I just had to find a way of putting the pieces back together again. For her. For Asher. And for myself.
Raze’s phone rings in his pocket, and he retrieves it. He answers it with muffled tones, before pulling it away from his head, and flicking it on speakerphone.
“Hello Sunshine,” Voodoo’s voice rings from the phone. “Miss me yet?”
“I miss you like a damn toothache,” I fire back at him. He chuckles in response. “What have you found?”
“You were right about one thing. Her father is a fucking douche canoe.”
“He had his daughter thrown in jail. Tell me something I don’t already know.”
Raze hands me the phone, before searching the room for something to write one. He shuffles around some of the debris and finds a discarded paper towel and one of Ricca’s make-up pens. Not a notepad and paper, but desperate times call for desperate measures.
“Her daddy dearest is about to be in some pretty hot water,” he starts. “Finding out his contact information wasn’t the hard part. I did a little digging in his financial and court records, and you’re not going to believe what I have on him.”
“Seriously? This suspense thing again? Just spit it out.” I order him. Raze shakes his head at V’s theatrics, and waits to take down notes.