by Kat Cameron
“That is enough you two. Save the sappy shit for later. We got work to do and Crow you are not going to like what I have to tell you. So you need to sit down and shut up.” Crow pulled away at that. You could see in his eyes he was not at all happy about this. Unfortunate as it was, and I probably sounded cold saying this, but at the time, I didn’t care.
While I was talking to Riley earlier I noticed a coldness about her that was never there. Our father or her husband ruined her in ways that I was not sure could ever be fixed. She never told me anything but I could see the subtle differences in her. The way she would flinch even though she tried to make it unnoticeable was one of the biggest things I could see that was different about her. At one point I was talking to her and she kind of just ignored me but was staring straight at me or rather through me. Riley never did that before. It was killing me to see her this way and I needed to get rid of the cause of this change. I knew that it wouldn’t change what was already done but our father needed to pay. He took something from me that meant everything to me. He took the butterfly that my sister was and might as well have ripped her wings off. If he wasn’t this cold fucking person that just wanted to marry us off maybe we wouldn’t have ended up this way. At the same time I would make sure before I took his life, that I thanked him for everything because in the end he brought me Crow and the twins.
“Baby I need you to focus. If you are gonna do this then I need you here with us so we can get this right the first time. I can’t lose you and neither can the twins so just listen to what is gonna go down.” So I listened and the plan was for me to literally just walk right up to father's house and do what I had to do. I would find a way to get in contact with Crow once I had dear old dad taken care of. The guys would come through the back and Knuckles would put father's cameras on a loop but we wouldn’t get much time. He already lost two of his men. He would be scrambling to find new ones. Considering my father was head of a shitty operation this should be easy.
As we all agreed on a plan, I went out to finally get some food. I noticed that Malia and her guys moved to the couch and were watching something on the TV. It was around eight at night. She was sleeping but Ryder was sitting on one side of her, Asher was on the floor in between her legs, and Grayson was on the other side of her playing with her hands. It was weird to see but to know that she had three guys that loved her so much was an amazing thing.
“Why don’t you get some food in you and we can go hang out with the babies before you have to leave,” Garrison advised. That was answered by my stomach rumbling out its unhappy growl from being empty. He just smirked and led the way to the kitchen. I sat at the table and watched while he went about making me eggs, bacon, and potatoes. Yes, it was night time, no I didn’t give a fuck. He put the plate in front of me and started on some chocolate milk. A woman could get used to this.
“You trying to tell me I need to cook more for you, honey?” He chuckled. Damn it, I said that out loud. My mouth really needed to stop running on its own.
“Well, when I get back and everything is taken care of you can work on it,” I told him with a wink. He huffed and sat next to me while I ate.
We sat in the quiet and as I was finished my plate he said, “Please promise me you will be careful. I can’t lose you Stana. As unbelievable as all of this is because it has only been like a week and a half you have become mine and the kids world. If anything were to happen to you, fuck I don’t even want to think about a world that you aren’t in. If there is any reason you feel like you can’t take care of yourself I want you to run and never stop. If you can’t take care of your father because you feel like it would be too much, run. We will try again and help you from the outside in. I promise you baby but you need to promise me you will do this for me.” I had never seen a man cry before. The tears were just flowing freely from Garrison’s eyes. I couldn’t believe I got lucky with such an incredible man.
I wiped his tears and straddled his lap. “I promise Garrison. I love you.” He didn’t get a chance to say it back since I swept him up in a demanding kiss. I was trying to portray how much I loved him through this kiss and even though I didn’t want to think this way, I knew it could be our last. So I made sure I remembered everything about him to the way his stubble on his chin felt on my fingers to the way his kisses made me feel like I was the most important woman in the world. He held me like I was glass and he was afraid if he dropped me I would break. I gave him one, two, three more pecks on the lips before I pulled away.
“Thank you for my meal babe. I need to go say bye to Riley and everyone else.” With that I got up because if I didn’t I would turn into mush and lose this bout of strength I had to take on my father. I put my dishes in the sink and walked away from the only man that ever loved me. Finding Riley was easy since she didn’t really go anywhere besides back and forth between the living room and her room. She was sitting on one of the chairs staring off into space. Sighing, I went over to her and called her name a couple times before she turned to look at me. Dear fucking God what I saw there chilled me to the bone. This was not my Riley. She smiled at me but it was eerily calm.
“Riles, you okay?” I asked. All of a sudden she wasn’t smiling anymore but she walked over to me and grabbed my hand. Dragging me through the clubhouse my thoughts were spinning all over the place. Maybe she was way more fucked up than I thought. My blood simmered in my veins the closer we got to her room. My father would fucking pay dearly for stealing my sister away from me.
“You are leaving?” She asked when the door to her room was closed.
“Yeah, but I will be back. I just have to take care of some things.” I told her with the fakest smile I could muster. I didn’t want to freak her out anymore than she already was. “Riles, what was that back there? You never acted like that before. Are you alright?” I asked her even though I knew she wouldn’t tell me.
She kissed me on the cheek and told me that she loved me and to be safe. Staring at her back as she walked out, I was still standing there dumbfounded that the woman in the body was my sister. Bullet walked past the door as I was standing there and said, “Good luck with everything. Make sure to come back. Your sister will need you.”
Getting out of there I went to Carol’s room and found the twins. I was going to miss them the most. They brought me a kind of peace I never knew until I held them. I held each of them and traced their noses down their face. This was something my mother used to do when my sister and I were younger. She would do it until we fell asleep. Their little smiles they graced me with were everything to me. As I was walking out of the room I ran into Malia and her guys heading to bed.
“I heard you were leaving. You gonna make it back in one piece?” Malia asked me. How the fuck she knew what was going down I didn’t know.
So I just said, “You won’t have to worry about your mom anymore. Or the problems she brought to your doorstep. I am taking care of it. You should stay and get to know your Uncle Garrison while I am gone. He could use the distraction.” I gave her a hug and said my goodbyes to them as well. I found Bullet at the bar and took a shot with him. Even though I hadn’t known these guys long they had shown me what a family was supposed to be like.
“Keep my sister safe, Bullet. If I come back and anything has happened to her because of what I am doing you will live to regret it. I am trusting you with her and that doesn’t come lightly. You will be patched in soon I can already see it.” Giving him a peck on the cheek, I made my way to Snake. This one was gonna be hard because I felt like we already had this father-daughter connection.
I knocked on his door and he opened it immediately. “Stana. Come in. You almost ready to go?” I inhaled and released my breath.
“I need you to make sure that everyone I love is safe, Snake. If I don’t come back you need to make sure that they are all okay. Can you promise me that? Because I don’t know if I can do this without knowing they will all be okay. If any of this backfires for any reason, I don’t care what you have
to do they stay safe.” At this point, the tears were flowing. He looked at me but I didn’t see pity. I saw his belief in me that I could do this and be okay.
“Consider it done. Although you shouldn't even need to ask. Riley is part of the family now so she will be safe. Obviously, Crow is an automatic. Once when I was younger I had to take care of something that would have made the strongest of men weep. I was your age and I won’t tell you all the details but I could see a lot of my strength that I had back then in you now. You can do this Stana. Wipe those tears from your eyes, girl straighten those shoulders, and get your ass back to your family.” He coughed whether it was to cover up his own tears or not, I didn’t know but I would do what he said. I gave him a hug and walked outside to see Crow was already on his bike, waiting for me. We didn’t say anything as I got on behind him and he drove me to the point we agreed I would walk from.
When we got there I climbed off and the nerves were so strong that I thought I was going to throw up. My hands were shaking but I had to stop this shit before I walked up to the door. “Baby you can do this and I will be here for you for whatever you need when you get back. I love you and you are the strongest woman I have ever met.” He made me repeat it back to him and with one last demanding breathtaking kiss, he let me go.
On my way there I didn’t look back once. I didn’t actually have any thoughts except for my father’s blood splayed out through a room like red paint on the walls. Morbid as it may be but as soon as I thought about mine and my sister’s life that was the first thing that came to mind. Not too long later, I was at his front door with a few guards pointing their guns at me as father opened the door.
“Hey, daddy. I heard you were short a couple people and that you were interested in getting me back. Well, here I am.”
Chapter Fifteen
Stana
When I walked in the house I was immediately swarmed with guards that patted me down for weapons that they wouldn’t find. I came here without anything on me. I felt that it would help father trust me more easily if I didn’t have any. One of the guards was entirely too touchy for just a normal pat-down. Even I knew he was over the limit. I was pretty sure that father saw it too but he didn’t do a damn thing about it. Not that I expected him too. I guess it would keep surprising me at how low he could get.
After I was defined secure by the guards, father took me to his office. He did the cliche thing of getting a drink, two fingers of his favorite whiskey. He just stood there and stared at me for a while to see if I would fidget or get nervous. This was his tactic. He tried to unnerve people by staring at them. Little did he know it wouldn’t work on me. I was determined to finish him off and get back home as soon as possible. I knew it wouldn’t happen overnight but this needed to be done with. About thirty minutes later, he finally got down to asking me why I had a change of heart.
“Honestly dad having that man's blood coating me was such a rush, there is nothing I want more. I don’t want to be good anymore. I have had enough of that. I want that rush, that feeling of having someone's life in my hands. You can give that to me. No one else can do that. I guess I never really knew the meaning of happiness until that day that I killed that man that was going to most likely kill me.” I told him with a giddy feeling because I could see he was starting to believe it. There was a point that I thought he wouldn’t believe my change of heart so quickly but when his eyes gleamed with satisfaction in hearing that I wanted to kill, I knew I had him. So to really nail it into his head that this was what I wanted I went in for the kill.
“I know why you wanted me instead of Riley. She was too weak. She would never be able to handle this. That is why you want me instead of her. Now that you are down a couple of your immediate members give me a week to train and I will be just as good if not better. I am your daughter after all. Think of how much money you and I could make together.” Jesus fucking Christ, I was really selling this. It made me cringe to hear myself talk like this. Everything I was saying was true though only it was coming from a place of such deep hatred that I was starting to think I was turning into a twisted version of him. Hopefully, this didn’t fuck me up too bad.
Apparently, that was crossing the line though because the next thing I knew I was knocked out of my chair. Huh. The fucker just backhanded me. He never hit me before so that was new. He dragged me by my hair and put me back in the chair. “You think you are just going to walk in here and talk to me however the fuck you want and get away with it? I don’t think so you little bitch. Now you are gonna listen to me and shut your fucking mouth.” Laughing wasn’t the right answer either because he towered over me and instead of a backhand, I got the full fist this time. That was going to leave a mark. Spitting out the blood on his carpet I spat, “Get on with your lecture then. I am here aren’t I?” He went on to tell me the schedule in which I was to follow until he deemed me ready to go out and take care of his errands. Finally, after he was done I was dismissed.
As he sent me to my room, he told me to make sure I kept my door open all night. Uh, I think fucking not with that creepy fucking guard walking around the house. He would find out just how much I would not allow that no matter how loyal I was to him. Getting to my old room was like entering a time capsule. It felt like a completely different life but the same one all at the same time. Shutting my door and locking it, I also went an extra step taking the computer chair that was in the room and sticking that under the doorknob too. The room was a disgusting pink. There was a four-poster bed in the middle of the room. Along the sides, there were two nightstands that were pink as well. The bed set and curtains were zebra stripes along with pink on the edges. It was no wonder I wore so much black these days. Even the fucking carpet was a frilly pale pink. It honestly looked like someone threw up a shit ton of that pink stomach medicine. That shit made me gag.
I went into my closet to get some clothes but I found absolutely nothing. The closet was fucking empty. Going to the dresser the only thing that was in there were some sleep clothes, panties, my old bras that probably wouldn’t fit, and socks. That was fucking wonderful. I stomped my way to the en suite that was in my bedroom and took a nice hot shower.
Now that I was in here I was thinking about Garrison and I just now realized that most of our lovemaking took place in the shower. Fuck it hurt to even think about him because I missed him so much. I let a few tears fall and that was it. I would not allow anyone to see through the mask that I had on. If they did, lord knows what father would do to everyone that I gave a fuck about. That list was constantly growing these days. As I got out of the shower, I wiped down the mirror and gave myself the biggest pep talk there was. I needed to get through this with a clear head. Nothing else was acceptable. If I slipped for even one second our plan would go to shit. There was no other outcome except for me succeeding in this. After this, never again would I have blood on my hands. This would be it.
The week started off as shit. Father had me training, learning to throw knives of which I already knew somewhat, while also shining up my skills on the guns. Every single bone in my body was aching. He had me training with every guard because each of them knew different shit. I never once complained. I took it all in stride. The touchy guard was training me one day and learned the hard way that I knew what I was doing. He thought he was being sneaky with his little touches; a swipe of my breast here, an ass grab, and the last one being an inappropriate grab between my legs got him a nice throat punch. It was a shower after training and eating then sleep. This was how everything went until it didn’t.
It was a Thursday that everything changed for me. Father told me that he was leaving and only a couple guards were staying with me. He left and I was really wondering what other rooms I didn’t know about that were downstairs like the one I was in. When I was younger I remember hearing screams every once in a while but I would ask and he always switched the subject. I took the opportunity to go searching. So I knocked both guards out because they think I am just a girl that doesn’t
know a thing or two.
When I got downstairs, I immediately found the room I was in. It was the only door down here. There was a keypad there that I needed a code for, of course, to get in. Trying my birthday didn’t work. I tried my sister’s birthday next and that was a fail too. You know that saying third times the charm, well in this case, it was right. Trying my mother’s birthday worked and wouldn’t you know it that they had plastic lining the floors again. There was a chair in the middle of the floor again but thank everything holy that it was blissfully empty. Walking around the room, I tried to understand what made my father this way but I couldn’t come up with anything viable that would make sense.
I was leaving that room when I thought I heard what sounded like weeping but it stopped just as fast as it started so maybe I was hearing things. My foot hit the first step and there it was again. There was another room down here somewhere. There had to be. As I went along the walls, I tried pushing them in hoping to find a hand to hold to pull an imaginary door out. Nothing fucking worked. I was also pretty sure I didn’t have much time left to be looking. To add to that little problem, I was sure father had an alert system on his keypads or something of the sort. Turning around, heading towards the way I entered I heard it again but it was near the back wall. There was only one thing there and it was a digital clock right under the camera. What the fuck was I supposed to do with that? Knowing that father could probably see me, I figured I would just use the excuse I was getting to know the place that was going to be my home.
As I was trying to figure out if there was a certain button to press on the clock nothing was working. I got pissed off and ended up just punching the fucking thing. Right after that, I realized the keypad was behind it because the damn thing just fell off the wall. Huh. That was a lot easier. Some part of me prayed that my dad wouldn’t be so stupid as to use the same code for every door but as I punched in the same code of my mothers birthday, it seemed he was not as bright as I thought. The minute I hit the last key I couldn’t believe my fucking eyes. The wall to the left of me opened to a panel that was full of weapons. I went to pull one off when I noticed the red switch on the bottom of the wall. It kind of looked like one of those red detonator buttons to a bomb but I was determined to figure out where this weeping was coming from. When I hit the switch and that wall of weapons slid behind the other wall, I dropped to my knees.