by Kay Maree
X held Lyric’s hand as they walked, behind the big garage, that must be the one that held the mustang was three head stones. Lyric led them until they stood in front of her mother’s. The head stone was a simple wooden cross with the name, Emily Louise McAvoy, etched into it.
“This is my mum, then that’s my grandfather and grandmother,” she said quietly, looking over at the other two head stones, that were also just simple crosses, one read James John McAvoy and the other Violet Grace McAvoy.
“So, these were your father’s parents?” Steve asked.
Lyric nodded her head. “Where were your mother’s parents?” Steve asked.
Lyric shrugged her shoulder and shook her head, “I don’t know, they never talked about them,” she said quietly, “I never asked.”
Lyric gave a humorless laugh before shaking her head, “I think I should have asked a lot more questions,” she said bitterly.
Steve reached out and gave her shoulder a small squeeze, “I’m sorry Lyric, but we will get to the bottom of it all, we will work out what was going on here,” he said to her.
Lyric looked up at him, her eyes, that had started to shine before they went into the basement were now dead again as she nodded her head at him. “I’m not sure that I want all the answers,” she replied.
“I will only tell you as much as you want,” Steve assured her.
Lyric nodded again and sighed. “Where do we go from here? I don’t even know where my dad and brothers’ bodies are. I don’t know what I do about this place, I don’t have any other family, so where am I supposed to go? What do I do?”
The panic that she had in her voice when they were in the basement was starting to bleed through. X took her in his arms again and looked down at her, making eye contact. “You have a place to go, you stay with me for as long as you need to, as for this place we will work out with a lawyer what needs to happen. Your dad and brother’s bodies we will find. You aren’t alone in this, you’ve got me, you’ve got all of us, and now you have Steve on your side, you aren’t alone.”
Lyric nodded and wrapped her arms around his waist, pulling herself tight against him. She breathed in and rested her head on his chest. X kissed the top of her head and held her tight.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Lyric
She was numb, everything inside her felt dead. Lyric knew she shouldn’t feel that way, she should be angry, grief stricken, vomiting, screaming, anything, but dead. Her mind was filled with questions that seemed to have no answers. What could she tell them? That she had been so caught up in herself that she hadn’t noticed what was going on right under her nose. Her father had her fucking mother’s head in a fucking glass jar. Who the fuck does that? What kind of man was he? And did her brothers know or were they just as unaware as she was?
Lyric searched through memories, anything, that would tell her that underneath everything she knew, she knew that her dad was nothing but scum. Instead she continued to come up blank. Other than the fact that there were bikers regularly at the shop, there was nothing that connected him to Gable. However, even if she had known, what could she have done about it? There was nothing she could do, she had no where she could run to, she was trapped, her father controlled her every move. Lyric always thought that was because he was overprotective, that he didn’t want her to make stupid choices, but now she wondered what the motive behind his every word and action was.
Her, X and Steve stood staring down at the grave that she thought held her mother, but did it really? Apparently, it didn’t hold her fucking head. Tears continued to stream down her cheeks, she didn’t know what to do or even how to do it anymore. X said that she was strong enough, but she wasn’t, she wasn’t strong, she was just good at pretending, over the last seven months she had become good at pretending, that was all.
“Lyric? Is the garage where the mustang was kept locked up?” Steve asked.
Lyric looked over her shoulder at the shed, and sighed, she wondered what horrors they would find in there, she nodded and started towards the garage. X slipped his hand into hers and held her as they walked. It felt good being so close to him, it felt like she could draw on his strength. Over the last seven months she had turned off any semblance of hormones that she could have possibly had, but whenever she looked at X, she couldn’t help the butterflies that floated around her belly. He was obscenely good looking, like grace the cover of a magazine good looking. When he held her eye contact, she got lost in his eyes, when he pressed her against him, she could feel every hard plain of his body. A body that she would like to explore further.
Lyric shook her head, now wasn’t the time to think about such things. X squeezed her hand and when she looked up at him, he was watching her with a small frown. If only he knew that she had been thinking of climbing him like a tree. Once they got to the doors of the garage, she reached into the pocket of the wall to find the key. Unlocking the door, she swung it open and entered, the garage was still the same, the only thing in the whole place was the mustang, under a large sheet. Lyric rolled up the big door to bring in light. When Steve tried the doors to the mustang, she realized it was locked. Lyric frowned.
“The keys would have been in the house, on his bedside table, it’s where dad kept them,” she said quietly.
X and Steve exchanged a look that she didn’t understand, before Steve suggested he would go and find the keys. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to go into the house, unlike the shop and the garage, the house held all her memories, it was where, other than school, she spent all her time, it’s where her mother’s things were. Lyric wasn’t sure she would be able to see those and not break. She preferred the numbing sensation that had taken over, and she wasn’t sure she was ready to deal with the pain that came with seeing and touching the memories of her life before Gable.
“How are you holding up?” X asked quietly as he took Lyric in his arms.
Lyric looked up at him, he had the darkest hair she had ever seen and eyes so dark they were almost black. She shrugged her slender shoulder and sighed. “I don’t know, I don’t know how I feel. I’m hurt, angry,” she said before shaking her head, “no, not angry, I feel red hot rage, I feel betrayed, I feel like everything my father told me was nothing but a lie.”
“Baby, look at me,” X said touching two fingers under her chin and lifting her face so he could look into her eyes, “you are right to feel everything you are feeling, and we will find the answers, and I assure you that you will have your revenge.”
“To who?” she asked.
X smirked and kissed her lips gently, just a small peck, but it sent a flutter of butterflies through her stomach, “to Gable.”
Lyric smiled up at him, she wanted that revenge. Her dad, well she had no words for whatever the hell that was, and she knew that Steve was planning on investigating and he would discover what was needed, but she wanted revenge against the man who had held her captive for seven months. The man who had beaten, starved and threatened to breed her. She wanted his body carved up and his head in her own jar. Its scared Lyric that she was so quick to think those thoughts, she had always abhorred violence, but after spending months at the hands of that man, and then to discover that her life had been a lie, violence seemed like the better option. To no longer be on the defense but to be the offense.
Movement at the door drew Lyric and X’s attention, and when she looked over, she saw Steve come back in holding up a set of keys with a pensive frown etched into his brow. He clicked the button on the remote and the car beeped, unlocking the doors. Steve opened the door of the driver’s side and popped the trunk. Lyric groaned at the sight that was there, nausea swept over her and vomit started to purge up her throat. Lyric ran from the garage, making it just outside the door before hot vomit was splashing down at her feet. She felt X’s hands pull her hair back off her neck and rub her back until she had nothing left to bring up, not that she had a lot to empty in the first place.
“What the fuck?”
Blaine shouted, he and Gannon had come into the garage just as Lyric ran from the room to vomit.
She couldn’t believe what she had seen. A humorless laugh bubbled from her body, until she was cackling like a woman gone mad, and maybe that was it, she had finally lost the plot. How the hell could she have felt so numb at seeing the head of her own mother in a jar, kept by her father, yet the bodies of naked rotting corpses was what tipped her over the edge. Lyric’s laughter soon turned into wracking sobs that shook her entire system. Her knees buckled underneath her and if it weren’t for X’s quick reflexes she would have collapsed into her vomit.
X held her tight against him, while she sobbed, asking God or any entity why? Why her? Why her family? What had she done so wrong that she should be subjected to this? It didn’t take long for exhaustion to take over her system and her mind to collapse into darkness as sleep took over in the safety of X’s arms. A man she had literally known for a day, a man that she trusted more than the family she had grown up with. A man that she believed when he said would keep her safe.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
X
This was fucked, this whole place was fucked, someone needed to take a match to it and light the fucker on fire. This poor beautiful girl, to find out that her father was, fucking whatever, X didn’t even have words to describe him, to see her mother’s head in a fucking jar. Who the fuck does that? He couldn’t believe what he had seen when Steve popped the trunk of the mustang. At least three dead bodies, from what he could tell they were female, but X couldn’t be sure, they were rotten, just beyond stinking, but unrecognizable. Obviously, they had been in the trunk when Lyric was taken, and her father and brothers killed. X just hoped they were already dead, the thought of them being alive and suffering until death finally took them, it caused nausea to well up and his eyes to water.
“Steve, we need fucking answers to this, I don’t know what kind of fucked up house of fucking horrors this is, but we need answers. Obviously, Gable is involved, he wouldn’t have taken Lyric and killed her family if he wasn’t,” X said.
Steve just nodded his head, his face was pale as he stared at the trunk of the car, like he was unable to grasp what the hell was going on. That made two of them.
“Yeah, yeah, I’ll, um, I’m going to call it in,” Steve answered with a shake of his head.
Blaine was on the phone to their prospects Arsen and Hale organizing for them to come and collect Lyric’s belongings from her room, while Gannon was inside the house searching for anything that might give them some answers that the cops missed the first time. X gently placed Lyric in the back of the SUV, she had fallen asleep in his arms after sobbing. This was too much for her, and they should never have brought her back here, but without her they wouldn’t have been able to get into the safe or known about the mustang. Once he had her lying on the backseat of the car, he went inside the house to join Gannon.
Gannon was currently searching through piles of paperwork that he had pulled out of a cabinet. “Any luck?” X asked.
Gannon looked up and pushed his glasses to the top of his head and nodded. He held out a piece of paper to X. He recognized the birth certificate when he looked down and noted that it was Lyric’s but there was something off about it. X looked up at Gannon and frowned.
“What am I looking at, something isn’t right,” he said.
Gannon nodded his head, “yeah, it’s a fake, a decent one, but there are just a few little things,” he said pointing out the differences.
“Are there anymore in there?” X asked.
Gannon held out the three son’s birth certificates, unlike Lyric’s, the brothers, certificates were all real. When Gannon handed over Lyric’s mothers certificate his mouth dropped open in surprise.
“What the fuck?” he said, his eyes widening in shock.
Gannon nodded and sighed, “she can’t have known,” he said.
X continued to look between Gannon and the certificates he held in his hand. Lyric’s mother was one of Gable’s sisters.
“But Gable would have known,” X replied.
“Yeah, yeah he would have,” Gannon said.
Steve came into the room and looked down at the certificates in Gannon’s hand, his eyes widened as he read the name, “fuck,” he spat, “this name, this woman, she ran, I thought she left town, do you remember Gannon?”
Gannon’s eyes widened suddenly, and he nodded, “I do. The rumor was she fled in the middle of the night to get away from Gable’s father, that’s what spread the rumors about them inbreeding and fucking each other.”
“Fuck,” X said running his hands up over his face, “this is too much, how the fuck can this be even real life?”
“Lyric said that Gable took her because her father had something of Gable’s, was it the drugs? The people in the trunk or the wife?” Gannon asked.
“I’ve got to assume it wasn’t the wife, she said that there were bikers here getting their parts regularly, and you guys didn’t use them, so it had to be Gable’s crew. Which makes me wonder if Gable helped her mother escape, the rumors said that there was no way that she could have escaped without help, but no one could work out who,” Steve explained.
“Then how the hell did she manage to stay hidden, what ten minutes away from her father, all this time?” X asked.
“Well that’s the question isn’t it? I’ve spoken to the chief, he is sending over a C.S.I unit to collect evidence, and the bodies. I won’t know more until they have done their investigation, but once I do, I will let you guys know,” Steve said.
“What about Lyric?” Gannon asked.
Steve nodded his head and sighed, “is she able to stay with you guys? She is over eighteen so C.P.S can’t do anything to help, and this place will be a crime scene for the next little bit so she wouldn’t be able to come back here, not that I think she would want to. She will have to give a statement as to what happened to her and where she has been, but I think she will be safer with you guys, than if we put her in police protection.”
“She’s staying with me,” X said, leaving no room for argument. He wasn’t going to allow her away from him. The minute that Gable realized that she was out there somewhere he would have been looking for her, once he realizes that she has spoken to the cops he is going to double his effort in finding her. Lyric’s only chance at being safe was by X’s side.
Nobody argued with X, they knew they weren’t going to win. She was his, from that moment on, it didn’t matter that he had only known her for three days, there was such a thing as love at first sight. Not that he was in love with Lyric, well not completely, she had managed to worm her way into his heart, but to say he was in love with her, that would take time. However, he cared enough about her that he wasn’t going to let her go, that he wasn’t going to leave her side and he wasn’t going to leave her at the mercy of fucking Gable, and this fucked up family any longer.
The more that X thought about everything Gable had planned for her, his own damned biological niece, filled X with rage. He wanted to carve Gable to pieces. He shouldn’t be surprised the rumor was that Gable’s sons were as a result of incest, X didn’t know if that was true, or whether people just said that because of Pitt. If Pitt hadn’t been born with down syndrome, then the rumors might not be so rife. But surely Gable knew that Lyric was his sister’s daughter, his niece. Then again, he never raped her, but why didn’t he rape her? What was the point of waiting?
There were so many questions, so many loose ends. They needed to get hold of one of Gable’s son’s, someone in the inner circle, they needed information to find out exactly what the hell Lyric’s father and brothers had going on and who the fuck Gable is in relation to her. X turned to Blaine and Gannon with a new sense of urgency.
“We need Pitt and Hawk; we need to talk to them. Pitt obviously cared for Lyric enough to bring her to us, maybe they can answer some of our questions,” X said looking between Blaine, Gannon and Steve.
; Steve frowned and shook his head, “do you think that Pitt would be able to answer the questions, I mean even despite his obvious disabilities, from all the rumors I’ve heard he was locked up tight there, he may know as little as Lyric does.”
X hummed, Steve was right, Lyric told him that Pitt had been locked up in the room with her, and that was how she had got to know him, but unlike Lyric, Pitt still had some sense of freedom, he was allowed out on occasion under the care of Hawk. Lyric had mentioned that she had got the opportunity to get to know Hawk as well. And he would have had to be the one that was driving the car, so the two brothers were their best shot.
“Pitt might not know a lot, but Hawk will know more. And you know that wherever Pitt goes, Hawk goes. Hawk was the one that was driving that car, I would bet my left nut on it. If we can get both to open up to us, even for the sake of Lyric, then we will be able to find the answers, and maybe a kink in the chain that will help us to fix all of our problems.”
“I hear what you’re saying X and I like the idea of cutting the head off the snake, but I think there is another head just waiting to take over. Gable has been priming his sons since the day they were born. It won’t matter if we take Gable out, we will have to take the entire family out, Pitt and Hawk included if we want to get rid of all of them,” Blaine said with a sigh.
“Maybe, but what if Pitt and Hawk defected? What if we were able to offer them freedom, a place of safety where Pitt wouldn’t be abused?” Gannon asked.
X’s eyes widened; he loved the idea. If Pitt and Hawk were given a place where they were protected from their father’s tyrannical rule, maybe then that would be enough to make the kink in the chain big enough for them to take Gable and the rest of them out. Not only for Bree’s death, but for Lyric’s abuse, for other countless girls like Lyric, for those people in the trunk, hell even for Pitt.