by Bella Jewel
“I don’t have a home, sir,” I whisper, just like I was told to if I was ever questioned. “Mommy and I live on the street, but I went for a walk, and now I can’t find the street.”
“What a shame,” he says, staring at me, his eyes moving up and down my body. “Is it just you and your mother, then?”
“Yes, sir,” I stammer.
“And is she looking for you?”
“Yes, sir. She will be.”
“Did you tell her where you went for a walk?”
I don’t like how he’s asking me these kinds of questions. Father said if they ask too many questions to leave, because they’re onto me, or worse, they want to take me for their own. I didn’t understand what that meant. Do they want a child of their own, so they’d steal me? Is that what he meant when he said that? Or did he mean they want to hurt me and do bad things to me?
“I just wanted to look at a map,” I try, changing the subject. “To find my way home.”
“And I’ll show you a map, as soon as you tell me more about your situation.”
“But ...”
He steps forward, so close I can smell him. He smells like those awful things father smokes. I don’t know what they’re called, but I don’t like them. I clench my eyes shut, scared, so scared I can’t move.
“You’re going to do as you’re told, are we clear?”
His hand is around my arm now, and I want him to go away. I want him to move. To let me go.
“I n-n-n-n-need to use the bathroom, please.”
“Soon,” he says, and his fingers stroke down my hair.
I’m scared.
This doesn’t feel right.
“Why don’t you come over here and tell me more about yourself?”
He doesn’t give me a choice. He lifts my tiny frame up and carries me over to the sofa where he places me down on his lap. My stomach turns, and I keep my eyes clenched shut. He pats my leg, for far too long, and I know that this is a bad man and that I need to get out of here, but I don’t know how.
“This is a pretty dress, for a homeless girl,” he says, taking the material of my dress into his hands and curling it up. I try to cross my legs; I don’t like him looking at my skin.
“Please don’t hurt me,” I whisper, eyes still clenched.
“Oh,” he says, and I don’t like that his breath is touching my ear. “I won’t hurt you.”
I don’t really know what happens next, well, I do, but I close my eyes and go to a different place, the place Mommy taught me to go to when I was a little girl, a really little girl, and I was scared. It’s the place I still go to when I’m scared. Or when Father is being cruel.
I go there.
Even though I’m shaking and crying.
And I don’t like the monster holding me.
I go there.
Until the door bursts open and voices fill the room. There is yelling and cursing, and women dressed in pretty dresses. One of them has pretty hair, like Mommy used to, and she’s waving her hands around screaming so loudly her face is bright red. I don’t know what she’s saying, but she steps forward and pulls me off the monster’s lap, putting me by her side. She pulls out her phone and starts dialing something. The man stands, and he’s really angry. He pulls out a gun.
I run.
I run so fast.
Tears run down my cheeks. I can’t hear properly; my ears feel like they have lots of bees in them. I’m scared. And my dress is ripped. And I want my mommy.
But I keep running.
I run out of the big house and past all the people who look shocked to see me.
And I just keep on running.
I don’t know where I’m running to.
But I keep going, because I know as soon as I get home, Father is going to be so angry at me.
He’s going to be so angry because I failed. Because I let that bad man hurt me, and I didn’t get what he wanted.
He told me this job was the most important.
The biggest one yet.
And I’ve failed him.
I know what’s going to happen when I get home.
So, for now, I just run.
-12-
THEN – KODA
Fake I.D.
Fake passports.
Fake everything.
It’s going to be the only way I can get Braxton out of this. He’s in too deep. He’ll never even be given the chance to try and pay off what he’s stolen, let alone fix the mess he’s made. There is just no way he’ll get away with it, and we’re only two people, not capable of taking on something of that size. Which means the only way out is to wipe everything clean and start again.
Hell, I’ll even consider faking his death if it means I can get him out safely.
Whatever I can find, I’ll try it.
I don’t have long.
I know people, thank fuck, and they have put me onto someone who can get me everything I need for the right price. New identities. We’ll start again. Somewhere else. Somewhere fuckin’ safe. I’ll get my brother out of this mess, and I’ll get him clean.
My boots splash into a puddle, jerking me from my thoughts. I glance around, pulling the hoodie further down over my head. This is a bad side of town, dangerous, but that’s what you’re dealing with when you step into this world. Danger. Always fucking danger. But for Braxton, I’ll risk it. I can’t be seen or recognized. If I am, it’ll be my life mistakenly taken.
I walk down the dark alleys, dripping with water from the rain that fell a few hours ago. The pipes make a swishing sound as the water runs through them, but that’s the only sound that can be heard. Everything else is dead silent. Nobody is around. The streets are quiet. Eerily so. I don’t like it, at fucking all. I glance at the address I was given once more and then walk up to an old, broken-down door. It has been put back together with a few slabs of timber that have been nailed on very, very well.
I lean in and yell, “Hello?”
Takes a few minutes and a dark man appears. He’s tall, with skin so dark he blends with the night. His eyes are piercing against his skin. He’s big, fucking big. A good six feet three and solid muscle.
“I’m looking for Jarod.”
He narrows his eyes. “Name?”
“Dakoda.”
He studies me, squinting. “Yeah. OK. Come around the back. Make it quick.”
I thumb the gun in my jeans that I shoved in before I left home and move around to the back of the building where a solid door opens and Jarod appears again, his domineering presence a lot stronger now. I wouldn’t fuck with him unless I had a lot of fucking weapons to back me up. He’d snap a man even my size in a millisecond.
He looks at me, for a long, long time.
“This some sort of fuckin’ joke?”
I pull my hoodie off and he takes a step back.
“You’ve got some fuckin’ balls comin’ out here,” he growls, pulling out his phone.
“I’m not Braxton.”
He grunts. “My eyes see what my eyes see, and you’re Braxton.”
I reach for my hoodie and he pulls out a gun quickly, so fucking quickly I pause and hold his eyes. “Got I.D. in my pocket. Goin’ to show you. I’m his twin brother. But I’m here on his behalf. You don’t want me to move, I won’t. You can get it out yourself.”
The big man’s eyes narrow. “Don’t fuckin’ move.”
He reaches for my hoodie pocket and jerks out the papers in there. I made sure to bring it all, in case questions were being asked. Birth certificate, all my photo identification. Everything. He studies it all, flicking through the pages, looking at the pictures, and then thrusting them back at me. “Twin brother. Hate to say it, but you’re fuckin’ in as much danger as he is, walkin’ around lookin’ like him.”
“Fully aware of that,” I mutter. “But I gotta get him safe. He fucked up, but he’s my brother. Family. Blood. Can you help me, or not?”
He stares at me, jaw tight, eyes intense. “Do the same for my brother, and f
rankly, I stay out of other people’s business. Just know, your brother has a lot of people after him.”
“Yeah,” I mutter.
“Big hits against his name.”
I jerk back. “What?”
“You didn’t know?”
I clench my jaw. “Please fuckin’ explain.”
“Man he fucked over. He don’t do his own dirty work. He puts hits out. Big ones. Lots of money. Enough to get the attention of desperate people out there, junkies, people who need money. All they gotta do is put a bullet in your brother’s head and bring him to him, and they’re walkin’ away with big cash. Two mil, last time I checked.”
Fuck.
Me.
Two. Million. Dollars.
That’s big. Fucking massive.
“Fuck,” I hiss, running my hands through my hair. “How fast can you work? Startin’ to think he’s not safe, even where he currently is.”
“Tell you somethin’, your brother ain’t safe anywhere in this state, hell, possibly this country.”
Fuck.
Dammit, Braxton.
“Can you help me?”
“You got cash. I’ll help.”
I pull out the right amount of cash, handing it to him. He counts it, one bill at a time. Then he takes all the paperwork he needs to give us a new identity.
“Give me two weeks.”
“I don’t have that fuckin’ long,” I bark, clenching my fists.
“Shit like this, shit that’s goin’ to pass through not only government agencies, but airports, borders, means I gotta fuckin’ do it right. It ain’t easy. It’s risky. Two weeks or nothing.”
Fuck.
“OK,” I growl. I don’t have a fucking choice. “Two weeks.”
“Come back here, two weeks exactly. I’ll have what you need.”
I nod, studying him once more. If he fucks me over, if he runs with my money, I won’t have time to do this again. He knows it. I know it. Both Braxton and I will be dead. The heat is fucking rising, and we’re starting to crumble under its pressure.
“Not goin’ to do a runner on you,” Jarod says, voice gruff. “You got enough problems, if you get away with this alive, I’ll be very fuckin’ surprised.”
Him and me both.
Yeah.
Him and me both.
~*~*~*~
NOW – KODA
One sip.
Then another.
Three quarters of a bottle of bourbon and my arm is still fucking hurting. I stare over at Charlie, who is sitting with Scarlett and Amalie, drinking and laughing. She looks so fucking beautiful, and my dick twitches just imagining how god damned much better she’d look beneath me. The things I’d do to put that girl beneath me.
But I can’t.
Because I’m too close to finally fucking finding the man who stole my brother’s life and took my soul with him.
“When are we goin’ to ask her if she knows anyone we can use?” I mutter, looking over to Malakai.
“When she’s less fuckin’ traumatized. Big night, big day, let her breathe.”
“We got two men who have given us fuck-all, except they knew about the hit and found her number. Not goin’ to be hard for others to find her. Anyone can be found with the right person lookin’. Even the well-hidden ones. Trust me on that. We gotta move soon, or we’re goin’ to end up with a very dead girl and a fuck load of danger for the club.”
Malakai’s eyes flash with rage. “I fuckin’ know that, Dakoda. But I also know that girl needs five fuckin’ minutes to process. First light, I’ll talk to her, ask the question, get the ball rollin’. You need to back down. She had your back tonight, ‘bout time you started havin’ hers.”
“Not my fuckin’ job to have her back,” I seethe.
“Anyone tell you you’re bein’ a fuckin’ dick lately?” Maverick asks, glaring at me. “Know you’re not usually like this, Koda. Whatever it is that this case is stirrin’ up, you need to lock it down before shit starts gettin’ out of hand. That girl has done a fuckin’ lot for us. We’re not goin’ to risk her life without first makin’ sure we’ve got all our bases covered.”
I grit my teeth, but I know they’re right. I know it, but I fucking hate it. I don’t want to see Charlie end up in danger, fuck, I’m not that much of an asshole, but I also don’t want to see that piece of shit that she has as a father walk once again without suffering slowly for what he’s done to other people. Monsters like that deserve to die in the most painful way.
And I’m going to make sure that happens.
One way or another.
“You got something against her father we don’t know about?” Malakai asks me.
Hate lying to him, more than anyone in the world. If it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t be where I am now. I wouldn’t have the club. I wouldn’t have family. I wouldn’t have been able to pick myself up off the ground and recover after I lost Braxton. For that, I’ll be forever grateful to him for giving me a chance.
And I know when he finds out, he’ll lose his shit.
But if I tell him, if he knows how close this is to me, he’ll put me back. He’ll make sure I have no involvement, with Charlie or otherwise. Protecting Charlie was my opening, and they knew I was the perfect man for the job. What they didn’t know, however, is that I wanted to do it for a reason. My reasons, regardless, don’t mean I’d let anything happen to that girl.
She doesn’t deserve the life she lived.
She certainly doesn’t deserve to have to call that pig her father.
“No,” I say, holding Malakai’s eyes. “But this one touches home for me, understand? Men like that are the reason my brother is dead.”
Not him exactly. I’ll never say him exactly.
“And because of that, it means more to me than it does to you, to see him taken down. Not to mention—” I glance at Charlie, whose eyes flicker over to mine, and she gives me a small smile before turning back to Scarlett “—he used a child to do his dirty work, and in the process, he ruined her life.”
I glance back at Malakai, and he’s staring at me, compassion in his eyes. Don’t talk about Braxton, never have, probably never will. It’s a subject that’s very fucking sore for me. But Malakai knows I lost him, and he knows it forever changed me.
“Understand, brother,” he says, voice firm. “Understand. Just keep your head about you.”
I nod. “Yeah, I will.”
When I have Benjamin Masters’ head in my hands, I’ll have my head about me. I’ll sleep easy, knowing my brother didn’t die for nothing. I’ll make sure, with his blood still dripping from my fingers, that he never hurts another human being.
“Got the look in your eyes again,” Mason says, and I jerk, looking over to him, scowling. “That look that is so fuckin’ empty it’s scary. I thought I could look in the mirror and see pure emptiness, but you, you’ve got emptiness and a bitter hate that runs so deep your bones are filled with it.”
His words hit me right in the gut, but I don’t say anything, I just nod.
“Be careful with that,” he mutters, voice gruff. “Eat you alive.”
Too late for that.
Far too fucking late.
It already has.
-13-
THEN – CHARLIE
“I’m sorry, Father,” I stammer, pressing my back against the wall. “But he hurt me, and he touched—”
“I don’t give a fuck if he cut your fucking hands off, you ran out of there, causing a scene, making people ask questions. You little fucking bitch. You stupid, stupid child. I told you how important this was. Now you’ll never be allowed back in his house. He’ll fuckin’ know it’s you. So now I can’t get what I need.”
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I tried ...”
“Tried?” he bellows, taking my tiny shoulders in his big hands and launching me off the ground, slamming me into the wall so hard the breath is knocked out of me. Tears stream down my face because it hurts so much. “You fucking tried? You did
n’t try. I told you, no matter what, that you never fucking run. You do your job. I told you, and you didn’t listen, you stupid little—”
He lifts me off the wall and slams me back again so hard my head bounces off the wall and I bite my lip, making blood pour down my chin.
“Bitch,” he roars.
He drops me to my feet and his big hand swings back. I close my eyes, waiting for it, because I know it’s coming. I knew when I ran that it was coming, that he’d be so angry at me. That he would make me pay for running out. The slap comes hard, so hard my little body goes flying across the room and I land on the floor with a thump, rolling to my side and curling into a ball.
It’s the only way.
His boots hit my ribs, once, then twice, and he bellows in rage.
I made a big mistake.
I released the monster.
“You waste of fucking air, I wish you were never fucking born, you complete and utter disappointment.”
I clench my eyes shut, my body shaking. It hurts everywhere.
Everywhere it hurts.
I wish Mommy was here.
I wish she never met him.
I wish she found a nice dad for me.
“Waste. Of. Fucking. Air.”
The door slams, and I make my first sound. I have learned not to scream. Any noise, any at all, and he’ll get so angry he’ll fight harder. It’s better to be quiet, to let him say what he wants to say, to let him hurt me as much as he needs to, and then cry after. When he’s gone. When I’m alone and he can’t hear me.
I tremble, and a tiny sound comes from my throat. There is blood in my mouth, and I don’t like how it tastes. It makes me feel yucky, and I don’t like the pain that always comes after it. I can’t eat, and Rebecca has to make me milkshakes when my dad isn’t around, so that I don’t get too skinny. That’s what she told me, anyway. She said I’m already too skinny, and if I don’t eat, it’ll get worse.
I don’t care.
The door creaks, and I know it’s Rebecca. She gets bolder every time. She knows that my father will sit in his office fuming for a while, so she has a little bit of time to come and see if I’m okay. This is the worst he’s hurt me, the absolute worst, and I feel like my body isn’t going to move from the ground. Maybe I’ll die on the ground, just like Mommy did. Maybe we’ll be the same. That’s okay with me.