I braced myself and stared down at my socks, unable to watch their faces and see whatever disgust or pity they might display when they heard what I was about to say.
“When I was little, Uncle Roark skinned my best friend alive in front of me. He was my cat, and Uncle Roark made me watch and listen as Shade mewled and died. Once, when I tripped and spilled a drink, he broke my left arm in two places. I’ve had more concussions than I can count, dislocated shoulders, broken bones, burns, contusions… procedures.” I sniffed back a tear and squeezed my middle just a little bit tighter as bile threatened to creep up my throat.
“The first person I ever killed was a little girl. She was scrawny and dirty, wearing clothes too small for her. I had never seen someone as young as I was in person, only ever on TV. For a second, I felt this happy bubble rising up in my chest, thinking that maybe I had been good enough and Uncle Roark had brought me a friend or a sister. We were told that Uncle Roark had a surprise for us and were taken down the hall from my room to a cell.
“The room was small, even to me. I don’t know how old I was, but I remembered that I had just lost my first tooth, so I couldn’t have been very old. I asked the little girl, who said her name was Riley, if she had lost a tooth yet, and she said she hadn’t. If she still had all her baby teeth, does that mean she was still a baby?” I raised my tear-filled eyes to Bones’, pleading with him to reassure me that she wasn’t a baby when I… “Was she a baby?”
Bones’s face looked sadder than sad. He shook his head and softly murmured, “No, Indi. She wasn’t a baby anymore. I lost my first tooth when I was seven.”
A breath I didn’t know I was holding whooshed out from between my lips as I nodded my head rapidly. “Good. That’s good… Not a baby.” I swiped the tears from my cheeks roughly. “Where was I… right! So…” My voice shook as I continued. “We were put in a room together. Small and empty except for a bed that had been bolted to the floor in the corner. Uncle Roark stood in the doorway and said that only one little girl could leave the room alive. He tossed a knife on the bed, closed the door, and left. That was it. He just… left.
“The first day, we cried. Begged someone to open the door… tried to figure out a way to escape. We fell asleep, tearstained and grubby, together under the bed. The second day, we tried again. No one ever came to give us food, water…nothing. We ran out of tears as the day wore on, and by the second night, I understood. Clutched in Riley’s tiny arms under the bed, I remembered Shade, and I remembered what happened to the things I cared about. My favorite toys always ended up broken; my favorite books had the pages ripped out. Uncle Roark was like Cookie Monster on that show Dave put on TV sometimes. Only instead of cookies, he liked to eat my sadness. He said nothing tasted as sweet as my tears.”
The room was utterly silent as I hugged my middle. “I knew what Iwantedto do. Even then. I wanted to take that knife and stab it into my teeny-tiny heart so I could die and finally be able to get away from Uncle Roark. I wanted it more than I’d wanted anything I could remember… to get away from him. But, if I did that, then I would abandon Riley, and I knew what he’d do to her. All the ways he’d make her hurt. I couldn’t do it, I just…” I had to stop and pinch my eyes closed. I wrestled the ghost of Riley back into her box in the crawlspace and slammed the door.
“On the third day, Uncle Roark opened the door. I was sleeping on the bed while Riley lay under it. He let me out and locked the door behind us without saying a word. He didn’t have to say anything. The smile on his face said it all. My routine went right back into effect. Except now I had a new chore. Every day, I was taken to the room so I could throw lime on her body. This went on daily for some time until eventually the room was sealed. Every so often I still had to go back and apply lime and an activated charcoal deodorant treatment on the door. As far as I know, Riley is still there.” The crawlspace in my mind was now eerily quiet.Maybe the phantoms felt better after the venom of Riley’s story was purged from my body? I idly wondered if that meant the story had new hosts in Duke and Bones. If anyone’s memory could be parasitic, it would be mine.
“Would you like to hear about the first time he raped me? Or does this adequately put things inproportionfor you?” I raised my bloodshot eyes to meet Duke’s cold ones and didn’t try to hide the agony lurking in the depths of my green ones. Duke’s face was ashen as he sat back in his chair. He looked like he did the first night I met him, like he was far away inside his mind, remembering something that made him sad. I could best describe Bones's expression as barely contained frigid fury. He usually came across as an intense but level-headed guy. The man sitting across from me was one wrong word away from exploding like Elsa in that ice movie. Something told me I didn’t want to be on the receiving end when Bones decided tolet it go.
I peeled my arms away from my middle and slowly offered my hand. Bones’s surprisingly warm, dry hand grasped my small, clammy one. “I’m here. He didn’t win. When I eventually found an opportunity to escape, I did. I’m not his broken pet. I’m not his brother’s tool to wield. I ran, and I’ll keep running forever if that’s what it takes.”
Duke finally seemed to find his voice again. “Indigo, maybe we can help you hide well enough that you don’t have to run anymore. We’ve had some experience helping people rebuild their lives after we bust a trafficking operation. We can help you with papers and set you up with a real job. Cricket already planned to offer you a job at Crow’s Landing. You could earn some money, figure out what you want to do with your life, and do it.”
Bones’s fingers gently squeezed mine. “Or, if you and Sheila really want to, you can go anywhere we have a chapter and be given the same opportunity. You have the right to go any time you want. No one will take your choices away.”
“Of course,” Duke added. “Whatever you want to do, you’ll do. I just want you to understand that if youwantedto, you could have a home here in Sagebrush, with or without Los Cuervos. You don’t have to run.”
Bob, why did they have to be such sweet, amazing assholes? Why? They were saying everything my secret, lonely heart wanted to hear, and the thought was as soul-warming as it was panic-inducing. I had grown to care for people here; for the first time in my life, I could see myself putting down roots. If I wasn’t a selfish bitch, I’d run away far and fast to protect them from the risk my presence caused. If I cared, I’d isolate and keep moving so the shadow of Uncle Roark never fell upon Los Cuervos territory. If I was stronger, if I was braver,if,if,if.
But I wasn’t. I was weak, and lonely, and I wanted to think the picture of a home Duke painted for me was possible. “If I stay, I don’t want any misunderstandings. I’m not killing for you, so don’t go looking to expand my résumé in that respect. You also need to understand he won’t ever stop looking for me, and if he finds me, he’ll destroy anyone in his way till he has me back.” I said “if I stay” in an effort not to look desperate because I already knew the decision had been made. I was staying, but a lady had to play hard to get sometimes, you know?
Chapter 17
Priest
My whole body was one giant ache. The throbbing of my head due to Bones’s hit only intensified as dehydration began to set in. Cricket had packed up his crap and left some time ago. I wasn’t sure how long it had been since he’d stomped up the stairs, but it couldn’t have been longer than a few hours. The sun didn’t peek its rays through the cracks around the confessional’s doors, so I knew it was night. The doors creaked as they were thrown open, and two sets of boots thumped down the wooden stairs.
Ratched and Tank strode over to my chair, grim-faced and silent, and began to remove my bonds. They each grabbed an arm, hauling my body up and toward the stairs. We emerged into the warm desert night air. We were a little removed from the city out here, so it was slightly cooler at night in the summer than in town. I took a deep breath and felt Ratchedplace a hand on the shoulder of the arm he was holding, giving it a squeeze. He didn’t need to warn me. I could tell the moment I saw the solemn look on his face that what came next wouldn’t be a barrel of laughs. Retribution was coming my way.
Tank and Ratched walked me to our garage. Rusty’s was the official Los Cuervos garage in Sagebrush city proper, but all our guys usually did their own work on their bikes here. As teenagers, Bones and I, later joined by Cricket, hung out here all the time. I snuck my first drink in this garage and threw up out the back door a few hours later, drunk and oblivious. We snuck girls in to make out in high school and taught Ellis and Lennon to change tires and oil when they started driving on their own. The night Ellis’s body was discovered, I raged in that garage, decimating the bike I was working on and smashing everything I could find in my grief and guilt. If the clubhouse represented the heart of the Los Cuervos compound, this garage would be its soul. For the first time in my twenty-eight years, dread bloomed like a moonflower in my belly as I approached the building.
The double garage bays were open, but a firepit filled with crackling flames blocked one bay. An iron rod had been speared into the heart of the blaze, and my sense of foreboding increased. When I took Indigo, I knew my actions would have repercussions. I wasn’t a child; I understood that my words and deeds had consequences. I was confident at the time that I would get all the information I needed to prove she was a threat to our family, and Duke and Bones would see that I had been right and forgive me for the sins I had to commit to get it. Obviously, it didn’t work out that way.
All the Crows were gathered in the garage, even Prospect, who hadn’t officially been patched in as a real Crow. When he’d proven himself to the club and earned our trust and respect, he’d be allowed to become a full member of our family. For now, he wasn’t allowed in church and was kept out of certain aspects of our business.
Apparently, Duke felt that he needed the largest audience possible for my public punishment because evenshewas here. My eyes scanned her body where she was standing between Cricket and Bones. She looked exhausted and slightly frayed at the edges, her usual bubbly brand of crazy muted. Physically, she seemed fine, so she must have easilybounced back from what happened. I knew hurting her was a necessary evil, but I hadn’t wanted tohurther, hurt her. I’d just valued my family’s safety over her well-being. Nothing personal, just business.
My brain told me this to justify my actions while my stomach tried to drop into my shoes. The feeling made me slightly nauseous, and I was uncomfortable with the fact that I couldn’t name the emotion. I knew I didn’t like it, though. Cricket tried to be stone-faced beside her, but the tightness around his eyes was enough to tell me he didn’t want to be there. I didn’t even need to look at Bones to feel the chill seeping off him, warning me that he was still livid. I swear that man could give you frostbite when he was pissed. I wish I could channel my fury enough to have the frosty control Bones seemed to exercise over his anger. My rage was fire, and unfortunately, it didn’t completely discriminate who it burned along the way.
Duke stood apart from the rest of the Crows, and Tank and Ratched delivered me to him. Releasing my arms, they took a few steps back until they were shoulder to shoulder with my other brothers. I stood with my feet shoulder-width apart and clasped my hands behind my back, looking straight into the eyes of my father. It wasn’t my father who looked back at me now; it was Duke, the prez of Los Cuervos Motorcycle Club.
“Priest, my VP and your brother-in-arms, has committed a crime against the club,” Duke’s voice boomed in the confines of the garage. I’d never heard him sound so angry and disappointed all at the same time. “I forbade him from interrogating Indigo for information about her past, but he went against my express orders.”
When my old man was pissed, he annunciated much more clearly than he usually did, pronouncing all the consonants in a word. I could always tell how much trouble I was in based on how his language changed when he was yelling at me as a kid. Forget to put oil in a dirt bike and lock the engine up? I got an ass whoopin’. Call my ma a bitch when I was a surly teenager? I got an ass whooping. Emphasis on theg.Tonight, those crisp-ending consonants… oh, Duke was seething.
Duke slowly walked a circle around me, but my eyes didn’t attempt to follow him. I stared straight ahead, waiting for him to continue because I knew there was more.
“My own VP made me break my word.” He entered my field of vision again, and his eyes were steely. “MY FUCKING WORD!” he screamed into my face. I flinched, not because he was loud but because I understood exactly why this element of the fallout from my impromptu abduction and torture would have been the biggest betrayal to Duke.
