Broken Road

by Char Marie Adles

  He clenched his hands and slowly released them for what seemed the millionth time on top of the file he had taken to the desktop after reading it and storming around until he sat down in the chair with a heavy thud.

  He wasn’t furious, no he was more than merely pissed, and he was raging. It wasn’t about the young girl whose life had been spelled out to him in cold facts on the black and white surface of the paper, but rather the damning man who the report called her ‘first father’.

  The was a burning hate deep in his gut that he wished he could use to kill the son of a bitch, but since he was already dead it settled into a cold rage that would fuel him for days till he did something violent to get it out of his system. There was also the icy chill of a hopeless ache in his heart knowing what she had gone through and no one had been there to help her.

  Suddenly every one of her actions made sense, the fright, the fight, the fire in her eyes, the loneliness and so much more. It was all because of how she had grown up. He knew himself there were many ways to take things in life as you see them through the eyes of a child for he had faced a few himself, yet somehow he did more the just understand how she had taken it. Hell, the man who was suppose to protect her and care for her damn near killed her more then 40 time in the course of less then the first eleven years of her life!

  Nostrils flared angrily he took several deep breaths and unclenched his hands once more.

  It had taken him little over six hours to read the files on her and he knew by looking at the clock it was way too early in the morning to start anything.

  There was a faint knock on the door and Winthrop rushed to open it. Willing it to be Devil. When he saw that Royal was the one who darkened his door, his sighed and just sat back down drained.

  “May I come in?”

  Winthrop grunted and nodded to a chair on the other side of the desk. Royal sat in the chair and resettled the sleeping baby in his arms.

  “What do you want?” His tone was plain almost expressionless, but for the little sarcastic mimic.

  Royal stared at the younger man with hard eyes. “I wish to talk to you about Devil. Have you finished the file work?” he asked nodding to the files on the desk.

  “Yes,” Winthrop grated.

  “Then you have read how her life has been. I can imagine how you feel, but I never felt that way. That was how before that kid, no one get under my skin.” He eyed Winthrop, “She was the only one who ever had you know? I used to be nothing more then a killer, but she changed things and it hasn’t been the same since.”

  Winthrop glared at the older man and dared a snort. “No doubt. Where the devil walks, fire follows, and so does change.”

  A faint smile crossed Royal’s lips before his face hardened for the briefest moment. “She faced death as no woman or child ever should. I left out the report on her father’s death on purpose. That is one thing she will have to tell you herself. It is true, where she goes she will change it all.”

  Winthrop turned inward seeking to answer to his question of how she had changed him and found more then one way at how she had gotten to him. She had even made him care as no one ever had before, not even his baby brother who he had basically raised.

  “-she needs more then the normal woman would, but she’ll hide it from who ever is close to her.” Royal glared at him, “Are you listening boy?”

  Winthrop shook his head to clear it and voiced what was on his mind. “Can I ask a question of you?”

  Royal sat back and stared at him for a very long time before he nodded ever so slightly.

  He took a deep breath to clear his mind and stilled his shaking hands on his knees. “You of all people is the man she will trust with anything. She asked you to save her from being the next target and not me. I have only one question for you and do not laugh at me. Why not me?”

  Royal smiled ruefully. “You are what she fears most in this world now.” The answer was as simple as that, but he could tell the boy didn’t understand. He should help the poor boy, he nodded to himself. “You see she hates men and she trusts me because she doesn’t see me as a man. Every guy she can be around to her is not a man, but rather a friend. She sees you as a man as she did her father and so she is scared of you. But the fear of you is different then the fear of her father.”

  Brows drawing in a V he asked, “How so?”

  “She saw her father as a man who was going to kill her, end her. But you my boy is the guy who will change her. She doesn’t know change and so she cannot see ahead of her. Falling into the unknown is something humans don’t do for just any reason. At least with her father she knew what would happen, each and every time he broke her, every time he killed what trust there had been in her soul.” His dark eyes pierced into the other man’s. “He may not have raped her body, but he raped her soul with a darkness that stained it.”

  Royal stood and moved toward the door. “Inside of her is the child that man broke. She has done nothing but walked along the shattered glass on the broken road the man made for her.” He opened the door with one hand and slipped out, but looked back in. “This is her broken road, but you have yours as well. The question is what will come of two broken roads that meet at the fork in the middle.”

  The wood door shut with a silent click! that echoed in the blazing screams of silence that settled around Winthrop.

  What could he do?

  There was only one way to figure that out.

  He left his brother’s office with only a second glance back and ran for the stairs.

  Chapter Twenty

  Boom, boom, boom! It was the echoing gun shots of Devil memory came to haunt her yet again. Three shots, it was always those three damning shots.

  Oh and the blood too. Its glittering scarlet depths crawling across the floor in rivers away from the dying man on the floor. She had stared at it in growing horror, but with a frozen evil smile on her face.

  She had done it; she had finally won against the man who had been beating her mother and sister to death only moments ago. That thought brought her back to herself and she turned slowly to stare at where her mama laid huddled around baby Lilly. Devil looked at the bloody gun in her shaking hand and dropped it with a wordless cry. Dropping to her knees on the blood stained floor she crawled over to her mother.

  Her mother’s blue eyes rested upon her, yet seeing nothing. “What have you done!” she choked out, blood oozing from her lips. “Now they will come after all of us…your sisters…too…”

  As her hand went limp Devil cried out and clasped her mother’s hand between her bloody ones. Thinking quickly she ran over to her father and took the phone out of his pocket and dialed 911.

  It rang on forever till that calm voice asked, “911, what’s your emergency?”

  With quivering lips and a dry throat an eleven year old Devil covered in blood sobbed, “I killed my father and he killed mama and Lily!”

  …

  Winthrop opened the door, peering into the room. Devil was sitting curled up on the windowsill sleeping and muttering. It looked as if she were having a nightmare. He walked over silently to the windowsill and hesitated before gently shaking her awake. When her eyes opened the icy blue of them was mirrored by tears.

  “Winthrop?” she whispered.

  He nodded and smiled slightly. She was still half asleep.

  Devil let him pick her up and set her on the bed.

  Suddenly Devil darted away from him to the other side of the bed, wrapping her arms around her middle. “What do you think you’re doing in my room?”

  “Darlin’ this isn’t your room, it’s mine,” Winthrop drawled with a sly smile.

  “Don’t just touch me,” Devil whispered, shaken. After that dream, being touched by a man wasn’t what she wanted.

  He saw the flash of panic and fear in her eyes and lost his smile, his hand slowly lowering to his sides. He slowly took a step back and sat on the very edge of the bed that threatened to drop his if he should dare move an inch more.
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br />   “I won’t ever hurt you. I don’t hit women,” Winthrop told her softly.

  She relaxed a little. “You won’t?”

  He sighed and winced inwardly that he saw the relief in her eyes and body. “No, I won’t. No matter how much I may be tempted.”

  Devil glared at the man who was making fun of her weak spot. “Don’t you dare laugh at me. Don’t ruin what we have anymore than it already is,” she hissed at him.

  She expected him to get mad, glare back or come back with a sharp reply, but all she got was he slowly reaching out a hand to try and pry a hand from her knees. After a moment she caved in and let him have it. She was addicted to even his lightest touch.

  Damn the human brain and its need for affection. She was starved for it, had been for the last seven years.

  He looked silently at her hand, tracing the light scars that were nearly invisible over her palm. Circle around circle his thumb rubbed over the sensitive pulse in her wrist. He felt it kick up a notch.

  “I take it that you finished reading the report?” Devil asked softly.

  Winthrop nodded slowly. “I did.”

  She held her breath waiting for him to say something, to tell her she wasn’t worth anything; she was just stupid for letting her life break her, anything at all. But he didn’t say anything like any of her thoughts. Instead he simply looked up into her eyes and said, “I’m sorry.”

  It broke her, that sorry. She didn’t know what the sorry was meant to apologize for, but it hurt her heart. Her life had been a real pain in the ass and she was lucky she had gotten this far, but she was now afraid of what was to come.

  Tears burned in her eyes and she blinked them back as best as she could, but a few did get away for her check.

  “Why,” she croaked.

  His eyes softened in an away she had never seen on this hard man and she relaxed completely, scooting a bit closer to him. He went back to circling her pulse. He was getting nervous for he had never been expected to talk about himself or anything personal, nor had he ever wanted too; but this had to be done.

  “My life as a kid was never a kid’s dream with my parents yelling all the time and then my mother leaving, but it wasn’t the nightmare you had to live through. I would like to as I understand, but even reading your life on paper didn’t let me understand you. I want to understand you, so let me in. If only a little.”

  He wanted her to let him in? Didn’t he know she wouldn’t have let anyone into her body without giving over at least a little of her heart? Fine, she would let him in again, but this time he better not hurt her.

  She rocked forward a bit and bit her lip. “You want to be let in? You promise not to abandon me once you hear my tale? I wouldn’t be able to go on if you hated me. You and Lilla are the closet thing I have to a family now.”

  Slowly he nodded and braced himself for what was to come.

  Devil let out a shaky breath and whispered, “I killed my father.”

  Chapter Twenty One

  Shock. It was pure shock the shook him to his core and made him freeze. However it wasn’t shock by her words, but the shaky proudness which the tone she used to admit it.

  Devil look at her hands, studying them. “It wasn’t hard to do really. He was a monster and it would have happened to him sooner or later. Just before I shot him I had just come home for a six week hospital visit thanks to him and his boots. When I walked into the house there he was, standing over my mama and baby sister who laid on the ground, beating them to death. Blood was pooled around them both already and he was even using a knife this time. So I got the gun,” she said with a small shrug, leaning towards him. “Then I pulled the trigger three times.”

  Devil pressed her fingers to each spot as she told him where, “Boom, boom, boom. The bullets hit their mark. One in the gut that hit his spinal column, one in the left lung, and then in the heart, just barely missing the most important part. But I called 911 before he could die.”

  Winthrop shivered as she pressed her cold fingertips to his skin. He could see it, as if he had been there. A young girl, no a young Devil, holding a gun in shaking hands to the man she had wished dead for so long.

  Emotions conflicted in his eyes and she smiled sadly. It hurt to see them there, the doubt, the anger, but she hadn’t really given him a reason to trust her. Suddenly it felt as if a chill spread into the room and hugged her in its icy arms.

  She swallowed and continued. “I found out that night after waiting hours in a small room that my mother and baby sister, Lily, had died from their injuries, but my father would be save,” she gave a bitter laugh, “how ironic it was for he was now paralyzed and couldn’t run away from his problems anymore. That’s why we were moving all the time, all over the country, so he could hide like a coward.

  “He became scared that one of the people he was indebt to would come after him, so he did the only thing he could think of.” Devil’s hands stilled. “He killed himself. Hung from the side of his hospital bed with a sheet like a rag doll. He silts his wrists too, just to make sure. I was the one to find him, of course, he would have wanted it that way,” her voice cracked on the last word.

  “Oh Devil…” he said at a loss for words. He understood the feeling of finding someone dead for the first time, it was different then as if you had shot him and he died instantly. You didn’t have the calm control, no; it was even more sickening then that.

  Her eyes shot to his and burned. “Don’t pity me. Don’t you dare! He got what he deserved and may he burn in hell for killing a child and a weak woman who stood no chance against him.”

  Slowly inching his way to her, he slipped first one arm around her then the other in a tight hug.

  “He had no right to give you this much pain,” Winthrop said harshly against her hair. “I promise to take all I can from you, to save you from it.”

  Before Devil could say anything back there was a crash of shattering glass and she found herself smashed on the bed with Winthrop’s body thrown over hers. Her mouth quite suddenly went dry. She licked her cracked dry lips, but it didn’t help any.

  “What the hell!” Winthrop exploded, getting up and rushing over to the broken window.

  Devil rushed after him, not taking a moment to think, saw a man in a black cameo suit running away from the house, and flung through the broken window. She ran to the edge of the first story roof and did a flip over the edge at left her in a crouch ten feet below, then she raced off after the man. The jolt up her legs made her wince. The man noticed her as she stumbled for a second over a few dead branches and pulled something out of his pocket.

  He took aim and fired three shots at her. She ducked and barely missed one hitting her in the head or shoulder.

  “Holy shit!” Devil gasped and ran faster, ducking more bullets that came flying through the air, singing a whistling song. The guy was a sucky shot, but a few came a bit to close and left her sweating under the collar.

  Suddenly Devil remembered the pocket knife Grange had given her the night before and pulled it out. She stopped to aim it just right and let the knife fly, blade over hilt, just as Royal had thought her so long ago. She watched as the man jumped aside and it sank into his left thigh and he went down. When she got to the man he was trying to get up and crawl away, but she placed an experienced foot on the man’s neck.

  Devil clenched her hand taking in a deep breath for the briefest of moments to calm her nerves. The broken window and being shot at had scared her so bad she could have shitted bricks. Devil’s lungs expanded in relief and she turned eagle eyes to the man clawing at her foot.

  “Who,” she huffed, “sent you?”

  Thuds of heavy boots sounded from near the side of the house in which she had come from.

  The masked spit at her feet. “I vill nevr’ tell!”

  Devil’s eyes narrowed. His accent sounded almost…German. She pressed the tip of her foot harder into his neck. “Tell me or you die,” she invited.

  He grunted under the new st
ain, his face turning purple. His eyes grew wide and nervous as Devil pulled the knife from his leg and bent down to stick the point to his jugular. He swallowed very carefully, the knife’s blade slowly sliding across delicate white skin. He knew she would do it, he saw it in her eyes with a growing fear.

  “What do I get,” he croaked.

  “You life, maybe, if I’m feeling nice about it,” she drawled.

  The boots were getting closer. And voices raised up not the far behind her back. She had to be quick; she was desperate to save Lilla and herself.

  The knife bit into skin, blood welled.

  “Okay, okay,” the man wheezed, “they call him ‘Dutch’ that is all I know. I was only a paid help, they only told me what to do. They gave me no information. Please!”

  She removed her foot as two of Royal’s meaty men picked him up off the ground and she found herself crushed to a broad and well muscled chest.

  “You stupid girl!” Royal scolded her. “I taught you better then that!”

  Glaring fit to burn the world to cinders, Winthrop stepped toward her and through thinned lips he grated, “You should listen to Royal.”

  Paying no mind to the man behind him, Royal added, “You should have been faster and aimed above the waist with a knife. But your flip was very nice indeed.”

  Devil watched around Royal’s shoulder was Winthrop’s jaw dropped finding China, as he stared at Royal’s back in stupefied amazement. She couldn’t help but giggle.

  “What are you laughing about,” asked Royal in confusion.

  “Nothing,” she cleared her throat to say. She looked over to the men. “Tie that one up and throw him into the stall that needs mucking out.”

  A hand came to rest upon her shoulder. Blinking up at Winthrop she smiled a bit.

  “We need to finish our little talk,” he said firmly.

  Her shoulders slumped. She gave in with nothing more then a sigh and a nod. She looked to her dad. “Bring Lilla to me please.”