I nod my head, not really knowing what to say to that. I don’t like what she did, but I don’t blame her for how she treated me. If our roles were reversed, I probably would have acted the same way.
Even worse if I’m being honest.
She continues. “I don’t want to have this distance between us. I want you to be a part of our family.”
She takes my hand in hers, encouraging me to look her in the eyes, the ones that are identical to her brothers. Identical to the twins that Max and Abel brought into this world.
“I’ve never had a family before.” I admit, hating how weak my words sound.
I know I shouldn’t feel guilty about that. I know it wasn’t my choice to be brought up the way I was. But I’ve been away from that cesspool for quite some time now and I still don’t know the first thing about living a normal life.
“I guess I just need to know that I’m not the only fucked up one here.”
“Pfft, not by a long shot.” Sonya scoffs in a self-deprecating manner. “We’re all twelve shades of fucked up, girlfriend. We’ve all been our own worst enemies and needed help fighting our own demons. But we’re a group of survivors and we help pick each other up when we fall down.”
Bree snaps her fingers, pointing in Sonya’s direction, nodding her head in agreement. “Exactly!”
“So, what happened to you guys?”
Is it inappropriate to ask that question? Probably. Do I care? Not at all. They know about what happened to me, it’s only fair that I know what happened to them, right?
“Damn, how much time do you have?” Sonya asks, taking a sip of the drink in her hand, rolling her eyes at herself. “Uh let’s see. I was a trust fund kid and got disowned by my family and completely cut off because I wouldn’t settle for being a trophy wife for some wealthy asshole that my parents picked out. I wanted to open my own business and was instead told to fall in line or leave. So I left.”
She shrugs like it’s no big deal but I can tell by the way her eyes shimmer with unshed tears that the memories still get to her. I can tell she’s refusing to give in to her emotions, something I understand all too well.
“I was homeless and damn near dying on the streets when Delaney found me and took me in. I sold my soul for a dollar at a time. I worked at a seedy strip club to pay for my tuition. I hated myself. I was disgusted with who I had to become in order to make my way. The memories of those days still fucking haunt me, but I pushed through and did what I needed to do. I got my degree, left town, and cut all ties with everyone who knew me and knew what I had done to succeed.
I find myself having to pull my jaw back in place, fascinated that the woman I had most pegged as ‘least likely to have anything in common with’ sold her soul to the same devil who owns mine.
You do what you have to do to survive.
And I respect the hell out of that.
“Many years later I met Talon. We fell in love and of course, later on, got married. It wasn’t the easiest happily ever after to get though. Come to find out Delaney was his twin sister, her real name was Elena. After I left town, she ending up killing herself. She struggled with a lot of mental health issues, but me leaving was the final breaking point for her. She just couldn’t take it anymore. It destroyed me inside when I found out. I lost it. I spiraled into a really dark depression. I signed over my company, took off without telling anyone, and tried to bury myself with penance. It’s been a journey, but each day I try to survive and be the person Delaney wanted me to be.”
I notice that she keeps calling her friend Delaney even after she said her real name was Elena. I know there’s a story there, but I know it’s not hers to give so I refrain from asking.
Kat envelops her in a hug as Sonya tries to wipe the tears from her eyes without any of us seeing. It’s easy to admit that I’m at a loss for words, knowing how quickly I wrongly judged all the women in front of me. Sonya carries her pain so well, never letting it show. Never letting it define her.
I envy that about her.
“Uh, you’ve heard a little of mine and Max’s story.” Bree says, taking Max’s hand in hers, calling on her strength to tell me what happened to them. “Her ex-boyfriend tried to kill her in the past, before she moved to Deacon Hill. He left her for dead on the side of the road. He went to jail for a long time. After she and Abel got together, Rob got released early.”
Max scoffs next to Bree, shaking her head. “Sorry, I’m still pissed about that.” She explains before encouraging Bree to continue.
Kat comes up on Max’s other side, and I can see the tight bond the two of them have without even having to ask.
“He abducted me to try and use me as a bargaining chip. He thought that Abel would give him Max so that he could get me back. That fucker didn’t realize who my brother was and clearly didn’t understand what he was willing to do for his family. It also didn’t help that at the time, the police had no leads. When Abel refused to play his game, Rob abducted Max too. He tied her to a chair and knocked her around quite a bit. He was planning on forcing her to have an abortion.”
I cringe at that part, hating what they must think of me right now.
“He tied me to a cement pillar and tortured me in front of Max, trying to make her pay for leaving him. He was sick and twisted, and there was no talking sense into him. He was one of those psychos that was all ‘if I can’t have you then no one can.’ Really fucked up dude.”
Max has tears slipping down her cheeks as she pulls Bree in closer, holding her as she goes on.
“He stabbed me, cut me, punched me, kicked me, you name it. He carved me up like Thanksgiving Day turkey. I honestly have no idea how he didn’t kill me. All of my tattoos are placed strategically to cover up my scars that he so generously left behind.”
Her words drip with sarcasm but I can tell it’s a defense mechanism to try and hide the pain that she’s reliving. Over the years, I myself, have become very intimate with bottling up my pain and hiding it from the world.
Her breathing is choppy as she tries to convince herself that she’s fine, but I know the look of a woman trying to hold her demons at bay. It’s clear as day across her face.
“Max said you saved her?” I ask, unsure what that meant.
“We saved each other.” Max clarifies.
“He was going to kill her.” Bree whispers, eyes glazed over, letting me see that she got sucked back into the past. “He was beating her so bad that I heard bones snap. She was bleeding, and she was pregnant, and… and I just knew that I had to do something. Anything. So I distracted him the only way I could while I was tied to a cement pillar.”
Bree begins getting choked up at the memory. The hand that isn’t tangled with Max’s comes to rest on her growing stomach. Max picks up where she left off, being strong where Bree falters.
“Uh, when Rob held us captive, he refused to let us say Abel’s name out loud. It triggered a crazy rage in him and we thought we could make it easier on ourselves by just going along with it. But when he was about to kill me, Bree just started screaming Abel’s name and baiting Rob as much as she could. She kept comparing them and telling Rob how much better of a man Abel was. How happy he made me and what a great life we were going to have together when we got away.
“With every word that she spoke, she fed into all of his insecurities until he blacked out in rage and attacked her to the point that I thought she was dead. I uh… I killed him.” She says, clearing her throat. “He had kicked my chair over so hard that it broke underneath me and I was able to get out of the ropes that tied me down. Bree distracted him by letting him damn near kill her so that I could sneak up on him and take him down. By the time I got to him, she was unconscious and I thought she was dead. I snapped. I used all of my Krav Maga training and took him down, literally bashing his brains in over and over again, even long after he had died. And I know it might make me a shitty person, but I’ve never lost an ounce of sleep over it. There’s still
the occasional nightmare after what all I’ve lived through at his hands, but I’ve never felt anything but peace since I killed him.”
She finishes her story while she and Bree cry in each other’s arms. The rest of the girls huddle together, feeling the heightened sense of emotions that have taken over the room.
Sonya’s voice breaks the silence, giving me a little more information.
“Kat’s boyfriend Jake, you met him in the den at Max’s house, he’s a big tech guy.” She explains. “Every day we got together at Abel’s house and worked hard to sift through all the information we could find. Some of it wasn’t exactly legal so mum’s the word.” She says, pretending to zip her lips. I nod my head in understanding, promising them that their secrets are safe with me. I’m taking enough of them to my grave, what’s one more?
“We worked day and night surviving on Redbull and each other. We worked tirelessly to get new leads, and then we made a plan to find them. The guys barely got there in time.”
I take in every word that they give me, truly hearing the implications behind their words. It’s obvious to me that I very seriously misjudged this group of women. I’m ashamed of how quickly I dismissed any pain and suffering they may have endured simply because it didn’t match my own. Granted, I didn’t know then what I know now. But either way, I was wrong.
Brody however was right. I do have a lot in common with them and I do want to find a way to make peace and find a place amongst them. I want to be a part of their family.
“So you see.” Karen says when everyone else is too emotional to speak. “We’re all our own special brand of fucked up.”
Everyone laughs.
Kat runs her fingers through Max’s hair as Max silently cries on her shoulder.
“We’re all survivors just trying to find our place in the world. But we surround ourselves with people who help us straighten our crowns rather than trying to convince us that we don’t deserve to wear one.”
Kat’s words hit me square in the chest, solidifying that I’m surrounded by the right people. That I can trust them and eventually grow to love them. I already respect the hell out of them, but now I feel like I could very well become a part of this family.
“Well I hope I’m a worthy addition to The Survivor Series.” I joke, trying to lighten the tension that’s coiled its way around my heart.
“We’re a pretty open group.” Sonya says, bringing a smile to my lips.
“You’ve heard our stories and now we know yours. That makes us family now.” Bree says, coming over to me and embracing me in a hug.
“Okay enough with the heavy, let’s dance this out and eat cheesecake.” Karen says, slapping her thighs.
“Dance it out?” I ask, thoroughly confused.
“Oh yes, it’s tradition!” Sonya exclaims.
Max laughs at the girl’s excitement and tilts her head in my direction, thankfully offering clarity.
“All situations that create extreme emotions call for a dance party. From mourning to celebration, we dance together in the middle of the floor. It sounds crazy when I explain it, but it’s damn near a religion in our group. It’s a necessity to life.”
“We even made the guys dance it out when the girls were missing. It’s very cathartic.” Karen says, hooking up her phone to the iHome on the side table.
“Will this be considered my initiation?” I joke.
“Once you dance, you’re in for life.” Bree says, pulling me to my feet.
Max swats her hands away and lectures her about taking it easy while she’s pregnant. Bree rolls her eyes and mumbles something under her breath. It’s adorable.
“You wanna pick the song?” Karen asks.
I nod, running over to where she stands, appreciating that she’s giving me the opportunity. I have to admit that I haven’t stayed up to date on a lot of music trends so it’ll be nice to make sure that I at least know the song we’ll be dancing to.
Small mercies.
In the search bar on Karen’s phone, I type in the first song that comes to mind when I think about a dance anthem. The guitar sounds come through the speakers and Max turns to me with a huge smile on her face. The song is so iconic, if you know what it is, it’s obvious in the first three seconds.
“You’re going to fit in so well, Remi. Welcome to the family!” She squeals.
Everyone starts singing and dancing, hopping all over the empty room. They each take turns balling their fists up, pretending it’s a microphone, and several times they reach it out to me, encouraging me to engage in their crazy antics that I’m all too happy to oblige in.
Brody was right.
We all deserve a family to call our own.
And these girls are mine now.
‘It’s no surprise to me I am my own worst enemy. ‘Cause every now and then, I kick the livin’ shit out of me.’
It’s the perfect song to pick after the comment Sonya said about all the girls being their own worst enemies at some point.
And let’s be honest, anyone who knows the words to a Lit song, is gonna be okay in my book.
We dance, eat cheesecake, dance some more, and spend several hours just getting to know each other. By the time Brody and the rest of the guys show up, I no longer feel like a judged outsider.
I feel like I’m home.
Chapter Seventeen
Remi
“Did they get there okay?” I ask Brody as he places a plate of enchiladas in front of me, scooting his chair as close to me as possible without us being in the same seat.
“Yeah. Abel and Dex dropped them off at the Air BnB and they’re already back on their way home.”
“I know I said not to tell me where they are, but will you at least tell me how far away they are?”
“Two and half hours, love. They’re safe, I promise.” He says, planting a kiss on my forehead before nudging me to eat my lunch.
I exhale a sigh of relief, glad that my new family is far enough away. It’s weird to think of how much you can grow to care about a group of people in such a short amount of time. It wasn’t that long ago that Bree pulled a gun on me, determined to pull the trigger. Yet somehow we ended up being closer than I ever thought I could become with a girl who wasn’t Liz.
Every morning when I wake up, I have a text message waiting from Bree, checking in on me. She’s always inviting me to hang out with her and the girls or sometimes to go have lunch together, just the two of us.
It hasn’t been easy, learning to let people in, but every day my walls come down a little more, allowing myself to care about them. Allowing them to care about me.
That’s the scariest part of this whole thing though. Letting these girls matter to me. Because that means they’re something my uncle could use against me. Innocent lives could be affected, could be in danger, just because I care about them.
Yesterday, I woke up to a phone call from Liz letting me know that my hometown and several surrounding cities were flooded with FBI warrant raids. By the time she called, fifty-three of the men that abused me in the basement of horrors were already arrested and sitting behind bars.
Hearing that number made my skin crawl. It made me want to take a shower in bleach, wanting to cleanse them from my skin. I read once somewhere that your skin cells regenerate and replace themselves every seven to ten years. And although I know that logically, the body I have today has never been touched by any of those men, it still doesn’t make me feel any less dirty.
It still doesn’t erase the stain they left on my soul.
Fifty-three men. Fifty-three monsters that violated me in ways that can never truly be put into words. Fifty-three of the most disgusting and deranged animals that shredded my body and soul with a fucking smile on their faces, eager to come back and do it all over again. The saddest part of it all is that’s not even all of them. There are still more arrests that need to be made, and even more who we weren’t able to pin down in the time frame we ha
d.
The minute my uncle found out, apparently, all hell broke loose. There was no denying at that point that I was coming after the men who hurt me. And my uncle knows that it’s just a matter of time before he’s next on the chopping block. It’s been a long time coming, but it’s the first real move I’ve ever made against them. Well, the first real move that they know of.
All this time, I’ve been running from them. None of them ever stopped to consider that I was biding my time, talking to the feds, and forcing them to one day have to run from me.
Surprise, motherfuckers!
What that also meant is that my uncle called on more of his contacts and very quickly learned that the paper trail we laid down was fake. So it’s only a matter of days at this point, if that, until he shows up in Deacon Hill, waging a war that I have no intention of letting him win.
I never wanted to allow my uncle the pleasure of life in prison. Oh no, that would be far too simple a price for him to pay. With all the crimes that he would without a doubt be charged with, he would just bide his time in prison until he faced a legal and judicial execution. However, there are three major reasons why that’s a problem for me.
Problem number one. Why should he get a bed, air conditioning, yard time, human contact, and three square meals a day when he deprived me of that for almost a decade?
Problem number two. Execution is not a quick process. He could sit in prison for years before he finally found out what it was like to be strapped down against his will, just like he did to me. He could go on living and breathing clean air before he ever truly got punished for the crimes he’s committed. Years before he had to answer for the pain he caused and the innocence he stole.
Problem number three. If anyone gets to kill him…
It’s gonna be me.
Knowing how important it was for me to be the one to end my uncle’s life, Liz made sure that his warrant was the last to get filed. Is it at all professional that my FBI handler is not only aware but encouraging and enabling me, to take a human life? Absolutely not. But as a beloved whistleblower once said ‘The law is no substitute for morality.’
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