Rough Love

by Laura Morgan

  “Dad, I don’t know how to lead. Perhaps Nico should hold on to these?” I asked, my voice a harsh whisper. Dad looked up at me, giving me that hard Proctor stare that both he and my brothers had, the one that made you wish the ground would swallow you up so that you could escape it.

  “You are the one and only person I trust with my legacy, Dahlia. There is no one else in this world that I would entrust my life, my belongings, my wealth, or my estate to. As for being a good leader, you just do whatever it takes to look after these people and the rest will come easily. As long as they know who you are underneath that timid exterior they will trust you to lead them, and you’ll show them that person in time just as you have shown me and Tobin.” A tear fell from my eye, one treacherous drop of weakness that I had been trying so hard to hide the last few days and I hated showing him just how overwhelmed I was and how much I had clearly needed his encouraging words.

  “I love you, Daddy,” I said, wiping my cheek and reaching out for whatever was left in the duffle. “I’ll always do right by you and the club, I promise.”

  “I know you will and we’ll do right by you as well, just like always,” he replied, his expression much softer. He then handed me two guns from the bag. They looked like pistols and were surprisingly heavy when I took them into my palms. I wasn’t surprised to find weaponry in the club as I knew most of the guys packed some kind of protection, but was still stunned that he was expecting me to have some as well. After sliding them inside the safe with their ammo I nodded to my father and swung the door closed.

  “You choose the code now and only yourself and Tobin can know it. You must never leave the safe unlocked. Even if you’re alone in the house. This door,” he pointed to the office door behind him. “You lock it every time you leave. Security is incredibly important but we also need to make sure that no one gets their hands on that cash or those weapons.” I understood. There were children here as well as teenagers, and if they had the opportunity to fool around with a gun they would no doubt take it and could do something awful.

  “I’ll never leave it unsecured, Dad. I promise,” I told him, staring at the keypad as I wondered which code to use.

  “Good,” his voice chimed from over my shoulder. “This model also has a camera built into the keypad and will send you an email with the photograph of the person who unlocks it every time it is used. As long as all you’re getting are photos of you or Tobin, it’s all good. Oh, and don’t choose dates or names for the code—too easy to guess,” he said, leaving me alone then and I heard the door close behind him.

  I put my computer geekiness to good use and decided upon a code made from mixing Tobin’s name and mine. I added random numbers and was sure no one would ever just guess to take each letter from our names in turn to create my otherwise jumbled array to make the password. It might take a bit of working out the first few times I did it but I was sure that before long we would both have it sussed and after punching in the code three times to program it in, I was all set.

  Closing the painting behind me, I then grabbed my bag and pulled out Dita’s laptop. It looked no different to mine, except a small dent on the side that I would easily identify and so I didn’t worry about anybody else noticing the difference. I knew it didn’t really matter that I had begun going through her belongings, but a part of me liked having a secret. Mine and hers, something I could have without anyone interfering or looking over my shoulder. I looked forward to snooping on what the laptop beheld, so plugged in the charger and locked it away in the office behind me while I went to say my goodbyes to Dad and Tobin.

  I grabbed the keys and made for the door, locking it closed behind me before making my way back into the busy bar area. There, I caught Tobin’s pale blue eyes on me the second I entered but we were both too busy to make our way over towards one another. He was getting one of the younger mums sorted with her request for a downstairs room or at the least, a baby-gate for her toddler, and I could hear him asking one of the prospects to run down to the local shop to try and grab a gate before it closed. I quickly sped through the crowd and intercepted the young guy, Paddy, and eyed Tobin.

  “There are actually a few things we’ll need, like groceries and we could do with a new toaster. Why don’t we go down ourselves for a quick run and at least then we won’t have to do a food shop for a few days?” I asked him, keeping my face straight and my smile small so that they others hopefully wouldn’t realise that I was trying to get Tobin alone for as long as I could before he had to go.

  “Good plan, Dahl,” he replied, using that nickname that made me swoon. “Keys,” he ordered to Paddy, holding out his palm and the prospect immediately dropped the ones he was holding into his boss’s hand. My dad caught us on our way out the door and clapped a hand on Tobin’s shoulder.

  “One hour,” was all he said and we both nodded. We didn’t care that we were going shopping, something I now knew Tobin loathed, that one hour alone was a welcome treat.

  He drove us and we then zoomed up and down the aisles of the nearest supermarket, grabbing tins of easy cupboard essentials and fresh meats, veg, and fruit. It felt so easy with Tobin. Natural. I loved having him close while we did normal things like food shopping. It felt right debating with him over which type of pasta to buy. I was smitten and I knew it, but wasn’t prepared to put on the brakes or back away. Not after everything he’d taught me and shown me. Everything we had and I believed we could be.

  A full to the brim trolley and a few stair-gates later, we were heading home. The pair of us walked in the door less than an hour after we’d left and I saw my father check his watch with a grin.

  “Well on time,” I whispered into Tobin’s ear and then gave him a cheeky wink. “Looks like I’m having a good effect on you,” I added as we headed to the kitchen to unload the bags of shopping.

  “Damn, woman. You’re right. I’ve never been on time my entire life, but a couple of weeks of getting you under my skin has already changed me for the better,” he replied, watching me with intrigue. I decided not to shy away from his intense stare or the comments he’d made about me getting under his skin. I liked it that I was getting to him, because he’d gotten to me too.

  When it came to saying goodbye a few short hours later, I held back my tears and remained calm and strong in front of the other women. Tobin seemed to need it too and instead of getting all emotional, we simply kissed each other and I waved him goodbye as he and my father led the rest of the guys away.

  I wasn’t going to wilt under the pressure. I was going to be strong. A leader. I called upon that strength both Tobin and my dad had told me was inside of me and used it to keep my emotions in check. I reverted back to my introvert ways and forced my anxiety aside, resisting the urge to head inside and hide in my room. I would do that later, when I could recharge my batteries the only way I knew how—in peaceful, quiet solitude.

  Chapter Eight

  Late that night after almost everybody had gone to their rooms, I finally had the chance to sneak off back to the office. I’d said goodnight to the other women already, and didn’t want anyone encroaching on my blissfully quiet evening, so locked the door and took a good look around. I found I actually liked the small room, feeling as though it was some kind of inner sanctum. Depositing the cans of fizzy drink I’d grabbed on my way, I adjusted the seat to my preference and took a calming breath, going through my mental to-do list. First, I would check the main computer and perhaps do some work while I was at it. I’d recently enrolled in a web design course at the local university to keep me occupied during the quieter days and was glad I had. It gave me a solid reason to sneak away with my laptop or log into whatever computer was close by whenever things were quiet. It’d no doubt provide the perfect distraction from my loneliness while Tobin was away too.

  I then fired up the relatively new PC under the desk and watched as the monitor flickered to life. While it was loading up, I did the same with Dita’s now fully charged laptop. It felt odd going into h
er personal world, as though I was intruding, but I had to see what she’d been working on in those final days, or which emails she had been sending and to whom. I wanted to check her browsing history, read through her favourites, and then snoop at her photos. As if I might finally get to know her by immersing myself in her online world. Sitting there staring at her welcome screen, I realised that I didn’t really know my sister. I couldn’t have told you her favourite colour or go-to band. I couldn’t be sure of her reading preferences or if she had even been a reader at all, and as that dawned on me I felt wretched.

  I tried in vain with a couple of password attempts, going with the obvious names or dates of birth, and pushed the laptop aside in a huff after a few minutes. It was going to be harder than I’d thought so I focussed on the main computer that was booted up and ready in front of me instead. It had been restored to its original factory settings and was like new with just the basic software, but there was one added program on the desktop that caught my attention, one that captured camera footage. I opened it and found the widescreen flooded with different views of the large house, both upstairs and down. There were no cameras in the bedrooms but the hallways, outside, and bar area were all covered, and I shook my head even though I wasn’t surprised.

  “Cheeky bastard,” I mumbled, popping open my can of cola as I clicked through the backlog of files. As it turned out, the cameras were motion-activated, only recording when necessary. You could also log into the software from another computer and the cameras could be triggered to watch live whenever needed. I soon found exactly what I was looking for in the backlog, tracking down the files of Tobin and I together and very much alone in the vast house. We were hot. Our homemade porn didn’t faze me in the slightest and I was surprised by my lack of distaste. If anything, I enjoyed watching our shenanigans and was soon feeling a little flushed as I browsed them.

  I moved the files into a password-protected folder and used the same code I had decided on for the safe, figuring that only Tobin and I should be privy to this footage. Without knowing they were safely locked away, I would have to end up deleting them to save myself the infinite shame if my dad ever saw them.

  I then spent a little while setting up the PC to connect with my emails and favourite websites, figuring it was easier to use this than always booting up my laptop, and soon I was done and ready to give Dita’s computer another try.

  It took me ages, finally wracking my brains and going with one of her favourite songs she used to constantly blare from one of the pop bands Dad hated, and the screen suddenly came to life. A sob rose in my throat when I first saw Dita’s screensaver. It was her with some of her friends, smiling so brightly that she was utterly beautiful. Tobin was beside her, grinning widely and his hand was around her waist in the exact same way he had been doing with me the last few days. The protective grip that told others she was his. It had to have been taken during their earlier days, surely?

  Forcing myself to ignore the desktop, I connected the Wi-Fi and waited for Dita’s emails to load. Nothing of interest really. I then checked her social media sites but ignored the random messages on her timeline without answering. I couldn’t be bothered with explaining how it was I had come on her profile and so instead I snooped into her message inbox. Her friend Sonia had been complaining about her bitchy cousin, while another girl named Karen had been begging Dita to come and visit her in Venice, and her friend Terri had been having an argument with her over whether there was any place for onions in a salad. All normal, day-to-day stuff that randomly made me smile, and for a while I flicked through her photos and read back through her updates. There wasn’t a single status or photograph of me. No mention of her family or the club. On the surface, Dita was like any other woman clinging to her youth and moaning about the weather. I didn’t feel remotely closer to her.

  After over an hour of general snooping, I headed for my second can of fizzy pop and began checking out her documents, finding copies of many of the photos from her social pages. I almost shut down when I noticed a folder marked ‘X’.

  Inside were folders marked by the year, going back over the past two, which then expanded into the months. There were documents inside that were labelled simply by dates and there wasn’t one every day, but a fair few. When I clicked on the oldest one from the first folder, the word processor sprang to life in the taskbar. I lifted my head and looked around, checking for what, I wasn’t sure. It felt strange snooping further into Dita’s personal space, but I couldn’t stop myself. If this was what I thought it was, I knew I might finally find the closeness I was hoping for.

  A quick skim over the text showed me right away that I was spot-on. The documents I was looking at were Dita’s diary. Starting with simple, brief entries, she slowly began to get used to keeping a journal and was soon opening up properly, trusting herself to reveal her true feelings and offload into the pages of her imaginary diary.

  She wrote about the guy she was seeing, only ever calling him L, and how it was a big secret that she needed to hide from the club. Reading the events in her own words and scattered thoughts was mesmerising though, and I carried on and on, reading about this man who meant everything to her. The man I’d had no idea even existed. I continued on, seeing for myself as over the weeks and months that followed they had truly fallen in love without her wanting or needing anyone’s approval or backing. Unbeknownst to any of us at the club, she’d become her own woman with L to guide her, and I liked the Dita she portrayed on the page. I wish I’d known her…

  ***

  Tuesday 15th July 2014,

  Today, Dad came and gave me the sad news that Chuck had died. That man had been more of a father to me than my own dad and I literally crumbled under the weight of the terrible news. There was no warning and just like that, his life was over. Dad tried to comfort me, but I couldn’t believe it. Well, if you’d call a pat on the back as I sobbed my heart out comfort! I’ve seen him do it countless times with Dahlia. He wraps her in his arms and holds her so close that I am jealous of her every time he does it. I wish I had been born closer to her, or that I shared the same look that she has. She looks so much like mum did and having been their youngest baby I’m sure that has to be why he wraps her up in cotton wool the way he does. The reason why he dotes on her more than any of us.

  Who cares though. I’ve got L now and we’ve decided to run away together. I’m going to disappear in the middle of the night and leave no trace, and take nothing with me. Simply vanish and leave them no trail to follow. No crumbs to spot. We are just gonna split and never look back. God, I hope we do it. We’ve talked about it so much but it always felt like a fantasy. However, L is finally sure he can make it happen. He wants to go for it and I’m with him all the way.

  ***

  I thought back to the July two years earlier, remembering how Dita was hardly ever around, but I had been so wrapped up in finishing my degree that I hadn’t bothered to care for her reasons why. But now I thought about it, she hadn’t been as wild during that summer. She would be gone hours but come back clean and sober, when earlier that year she was always falling in high or drunk—or both. It had to have been L. She was going to him and spending her days happy, fulfilled, and full of hope. Readying herself for a better future in which they could be together.

  What had changed that? It had to be her relationship with Tobin because by my reckoning it was about to begin, but I couldn’t understand why she would walk away from L so easily. Not after what she’d said about them planning a life together. I knew I was about to find out, so I opened the next diary entry, readying myself to read her version of the events that followed. I found myself wondering if Tobin had pursued her with the same words he’d wooed me with, jealousy spearing in my gut at the sheer thought of it.

  ***

  Wednesday 23rd July 2014,

  Dad came to my room this morning and informed me that I have to be with Tobin. Don’t get me wrong, the guy is seriously hot but I can’t do it. My father will not d
ictate who I marry or hand me over like something he owns. This is not how life works these days no matter what he thinks. Garret Proctor does not run the world, nor does he run my life. Not now, not ever!

  I can’t marry someone else and forget about L either. We’re going to be together, no matter what I have to sacrifice to be with him. I screamed and shouted at my father until my lungs hurt. I told him that I hated him and would never let Tobin touch me. He revealed the truth about how Tobin was Chuck’s son and it was his wish for him to take his place in the club and be with me. I don’t care if Chuck wrote in his will that I’d get a million pounds if I married his bastard son, life just doesn’t work that way. I am not some prize to sweeten Dad’s deal with Tobin to entice him into taking the VP position. I’m sure he’ll take his father’s seat with or without me as part of the deal and I will never let Dad bully me into going there. Since L, I’ve been with no one else and neither has he. We are so incredibly in love, albeit star-crossed, and yet still so ready to leave everything behind and go follow our dreams. I want to leave sooner than later, I won’t let anything come between us this time.

  ***

  There was the fiery woman I’d been expecting. So she’d told him, setting our father straight, but then how could she have caved in the end? I had to know.