“We’ll be here when you’re done,lisichka. Take your time.” I nodded at my cousin and slipped a pair of plastic booties over my ass-stomper boots. It wouldn’t be very nice to The Goldfinch custodial staff to track blood on their carpets upstairs. They worked hard enough as it was. The thick, metal door closed behind me as I entered Roark’s cell. For the longest time, he’d been my personal boogeyman, the monster who raised me in a basement and abused me for his pleasure. Now, he was the one being killed slowly, minute by minute, in the suffocating dark.
This was the first time I’d come down to see the Beast of Boston since the night I’d faced him in Savvie D’s. Mikhail and Riordan had been vicious, but I knew my tormentor well enough to see that he was still in there. He had suffered, but he hadn’t been broken.Yet.But hewould, before the end. “You’ve finally come to see me, niece.” His voice, brittle and quiet, still managed to carry around the room.
“You’re not my uncle. Soon, you won’t be anything,” I said with a slow shake of my head. Roark’s chuckle, the one that haunted my nightmares, whispered around the room. It didn’t shake me the way it once did, and that knowledge had me straightening my spine.
“I’ve been waiting to see when you’d be brave enough to face me, girl. It looks like you finally put yourbig-girl pantieson. Well,” he sneered, “let’s have it then.” This man, even chained to the floor by the neck like a rabid dog, still believed he controlled me. Apparently, putting a hole in his foot and beating the piss out of him wasn’t a clear enough declaration of my motherfucking independence.
I quirked a sassy eyebrow and didn’t deign to answer the derisive demand. “Or did you have your mother’s family lock me down here because you’re still too much of a coward to handle me yourself?” A smirk tugged at the corner of my lips, amused at his pathetic attempts to get under my skin. My smirk morphed into a giggle. My giggle into cackles, the sounds amplified in volume and insanity in such a small cell. I took a moment to wipe my eyes and admire Riordan’s minimalist design aesthetic in his wet room. It was such a stark contrast to the confessional, but both torturescapes had their merits. I couldn’t be seen playing favorites with the two sides of my unorthodox family. If I showed bias between the two criminal organizations, they would never let me referee their softball games, and I was dying to use the shiny new whistle I’d bought just for that purpose.
I turned back to where Roark knelt, straining silently against his chains, blood carving trails down his body in rusty hues from the last time he received some attention from my uncle and cousin. Hell, I heard even Cara had a turn to face her brother before I came to seal his fate. The man had killed countless in cold blood, including his own elder brother. He’d raped, trafficked, abused…acts of hatred and violence unnumbered could be laid at the feet of Roark Callahan.
Over the past two weeks, snuggling with Priest while he recovered or watching documentaries on the couch late at night with Ratched on the nights my ghosts kept me awake, I’d been processing what happened and where I wanted to go from here. I wasn’t a perfect person, and Bob knewI had a lot going on mentally…but I’d always known that no matter what I had to do in order to survive, I wasn’t a cruel person. I didn’t want to believe that someone, even Roark, could be completely irredeemable. I searched the eyes of the man who hurt me, marked me, and did his best to ruin me for any tiny shred of a soul. I told myself before I’d even parked Sheila in The Goldfinch’s private lot that if I saw even the smallest glimmer of humanity in Roark’s eyes, I’d be merciful. I’d kill him quick. Otherwise…
As I peered into his hazel eyes, an unhinged gleam making them look bright with madness, it was like looking into a void. There was nothing there. No light. No soul. No reason. Just madness and a hunger for cruelty that would never be satiated. ThankBob.Now I didn’t have to feel bad!
“It’s important to me,” I said with a small smile, breaking the silent stare off we’d been engaging in and finally speaking to Roark. “That you understand why I waited to see you before we wrap things up in here.” I leaned back against the wall and pulled the friendship bracelet I was making for Lennon to match the ones Sheila and I shared from my pocket(Sheila’s was tied to her rearview mirror, while mine was tied around my ankle). Fingers twisting and knotting the multicolored strings in my hand, I concentrated on the pattern. “To be honest, I was really busy, and I figured you weren’t going anywhere.” Shrugging, I went on. “No need to rush when I have a captive audience.
“It didn’t take any bravery at all for me to come into this room. Unlike you, I walked into this building a free woman, with a smile and a wave. Also unlike you, I’ll be leaving the same way.” Roark watched me, his face screwed up in a sneer as he tried to spit at me like a jerk llama. He missed, but still.Gross. “I came here today because I wanted you to know that I’m not afraid of you anymore. If you had found me six months earlier, I wouldn’t have been able to say that. I’d probably have spent the rest of my life running, never fully able to move on knowing you were out there somewhere, hunting. So that was like…poor timing on your part, I guess.” Roark looked at me in disbelief, like he couldn’t believe I’d been doing more than just sightseeing around the country for the past two and a half years, not fighting in the trenches for my mental health and living on the streets. “Don’t worry! I still hate you. I’m just not afraid of you anymore.”
A short, cruel laugh left Roark’s hunched form, and his broken rasp when he spoke was scathing. “You’ll never be rid of me, girl, no matter what you do. I’m a part of who you are. You carry my marks, insideandout. I live in your mind and own your soul. You can chain me up and kill me, but you can’t escape me. Never could.”
Once upon a time, I’d believed that was true. I suppose superficially, he wasn’t incorrect. He had branded me with physical reminders of his cruelty all over my body. He’d taken things from me, pieces of me, that I’d never get back. I wasn’t suddenly healed, literally washed clean of every reminder of his abuse.
But I was a little more healed today, sitting in this cell, than I was yesterday. And tomorrow, I’d be healed just a little bit more. Every day spent living the life I’d built, with the people I cared about, was a balm to the scars I carried in my heart. I shook my head, giving Roark my eyes and stilling my fingers. “No,” I said firmly, “you’re going to die here. Alone and no one will miss you. Eventually, no one will even remember your name.” Standing up straight, I tucked the bracelet back into my pocket. “But me? I’m going to leave here today and live my life. I’m going to have a pet raccoon named Jeremy, and he’ll go for joyrides with Sheila and me. Maybe one day I’ll even make an honest man out of Priest and become his ole lady. I’m not afraid of you anymore because I’m not alone anymore. I have friends and family who love and support me, a home, and the best goddamn best friends on the planet.”
Abuse spewed forth from Roark’s lips, his words making little to no sense as he raved. I stood and reached into my back pocket, ready to get this shit over with. “About fucking time,” he growled at the movement. “Do it or shut up, bitch. I’m tired of hearing about your pathetic life as a biker’s whore. Just shoot me already.”
My eyebrows rose up my forehead, and an amused smirk spread across my face. I held up my phone. “I’m not going to kill you.” The disappointed look on Roark’s face was priceless. I’d never seen him show any kind of vulnerability, and I snickered in satisfaction of finally getting a rise out of him. “Uncle Mikhail has waited areallylong time to get revenge for his sister. I’ve spent too much of my life dealing withyour bullshit, so I decided to just let Mikhail handle you from here on out. I have way too much to do, what with a softball league to organize and a Wicked Sisterhood to propagate. You aren’t worth my time.”
I sent a quick text up to Cricket and Lennon in our group chat so they knew it was almost time to head home. “You spent so long being the terrifying monster that hunted me in dark places, but now you’re just…this. Toothless.” I said as I put my phone back in my pocket. “I have better things to do than grant you the mercy of a quick death. I hope you receive the end that you deserve.” Roark struggled like a madman, yelling curses and filth at me, but I ignored his hissy fit entirely as I walked to the door and tugged it open. Menhatedit when you ignored their hissy fits. Flipping my hair over my shoulder, I turned back to deliver my parting line. “When you get to hell, make sure to tell Satan you were my bitch first.”
Two sets of comfortingly familiar green eyes met mine as I closed the door to Roark’s prison. “Did you do what you needed to do,dorogoya?” Mikhail asked.
Nodding, I smiled up at my uncle. “He’s all yours. Have fun. Get creative with it.” A sinister gleam flashed through my uncle’s eyes as my cousin let out a low chuckle.
“Oh, you don’t have to ask us twice,lisichka.” I had every faith in my new relatives. Now I finally knew where I’d gotten my murder purr from. Seemed it was a Petrov family trait.
Cricket and Lennon met us in the hallway outside the penthouse. Mikhail left us to say goodbye in favor of finding his wife. I picked up on a weird tension between my conscious and Sutton (orLitigation Spice—I was still workshopping everyone’s Wicked Sisterhood code name). There was something else too, a weird charge of excitement brewing between Lennon and Ivan. I’d need to activate the bestie phone tree again soon and figure out what my friends were up to. It’d been way too long since I had some of Misty’s pancakes.
Priest
The sutures in my gut and chest came out a few days ago, but the scars were still pink and stood out vividly on my skin. Between Ratched mother henning me and Indigo’s insistence I “rest,” I was about to go crazy. Bones had recovered our bikes from the Savage Delight parking lot and put mine in the compound garage, so while Indigo was at The Goldfinch, I figured I’d get started on repairing my baby. First, I stopped by the infirmary, which had been rearranged so Bear could convalesce at home instead of at a hospital where they’d ask too many questions. Rook had been spending a lot of time visiting with our brother when he wasn’t working with Clover and Ivan to dig up intel on the Consortium. After shooting the shit a bit with Bear, I headed down to the garage. I’d been avoiding seeing the mangled remains of my baby long enough. Bear’s bike was in much worse shape than mine, as it took the brunt of the SUV’s hit. Bones had taken that one directly to Rusty’s to salvage what he could, but my bike was waiting for me to put her back together.
The late October day was pleasantly cool as I made the journey from the clubhouse to the garage. My old man was already there, tools spread out neatly on a bench and a large drop cloth draped on the floor where parts to my bike lay. “’Bout time you got your lazy ass outta that bed and helped me,” Duke grunted as he worked on removing my front fender, which was bent all to hell. We worked in companionable silence. Duke’s gruff words belied by the concerned looks he gave me when he thought I wasn’t looking.
“Blaze said they’re about finished with the new build,” I said a little while later, breaking the serenity of our workflow in the garage. Dukewiped his grease-stained hands on a cloth he’d had tucked in the back pocket of his jeans and gestured toward the refrigerator in the corner. I pulled two frosty bottles of beer from the fridge and passed one to my old man, who grunted his thanks. “I know this one was meant to be a guesthouse for extended family when they visit, but I was thinkin’ maybe I could move into it instead. Get some space.”
Duke assessed me as my voice trailed off, his arctic eyes shrewd. “It don’t make sense for a single man to have an entire house to himself, you know that. If you want space, go rent an apartment in Sagebrush.” Taking a sip of his beer, Duke leaned against a tool bench and waited.
“I’m not a single man anymore,” I replied, in a tone that almost implied a challenge. Almost.
“So you wanna play house with Indigo, now?”
I chuckled, but there was no mirth in the sound. “I ain’t playing shit, Duke. I love Indigo, and I’m all in with her. We’ll take it as slow or as fast as we need to, but this is her home now.”
Duke nodded his head slowly and gave me a slap on the back. “You gonna make her your ole lady?”
I grabbed a pair of pliers from the cart next to the body of my bike. “That’s my long-term plan, but whatever happens between us is gonna be on her time. I’d marry her tomorrow if she’d let me, but she just found her place here. She’s trying to figure out what she wants out of life, and I want her to have the time and space to do that.”
