“Keep a close eye on my daughter and make sure nothing happens to her,” my father said as Spike kept coming up the stairs. “She tried to escape. She does not know what is good for her. I suggest you keep an eye on her as if your life depends on it, because it may very well. Do I make myself clear?”
“Yes, sir,” Spike said in an intensely gravelly voice.
Spike walked in, and my father left. Spike looked every bit the part of nasty convict—he had tears tattooed near his eyes, multiple neck tattoos, hair spiked and dyed red, and more chains on his clothing than a padlocked gate did. He had to have known that he looked like a stereotype; maybe that was, in fact, exactly what he was going for.
“Are you going to hurt me too?” I said.
Spike just glared at me. The look would have shut up just about anyone else, but I knew better. Only one person in this house would touch me without risking death, and that was, unfortunately, my father. Spike so much as laying a hand on me was probably grounds for a bullet through his skull.
But that didn’t mean he didn’t have permission to talk cruelly to me.
“Or are you going to just stand there looking all tough—”
“God, shut the fuck up,” he growled. “I’m here to protect you, not hurt you, and my job will be a lot easier if you simply keep your goddamn mouth shut.”
The vitriol of Spike’s words, at first, made me crawl back against my bed, fold my arms, and try to recover. But when enough time had passed, I tried to regain the calm and composure I’d had before my father had triggered me. I had kept my distance from the club members as much as I could for my own sanity, but maybe engaging them might somehow make a difference.
I didn’t have a lot of faith, but I also didn’t have a lot of options.
“Do you enjoy this kind of work, Spike?”
Spike looked at me with a single arched eyebrow but said nothing.
“I know you won’t say it because you value your own life, but it can’t be healthy or fun working for my father.”
The subtle release of tension—even though I couldn’t describe it, I sensed it—encouraged me.
“What was your life like before you joined the Fallen Saints, Spike?”
“Harsh and cold,” he said.
I waited for him to fill in the details. I shouldn’t have been so naïve as to think he would.
“What made you join the Saints?”
Spike looked out the door before turning back to me.
“The chance to feel free,” he said.
“And can you here?”
Spike bit his lip and sighed. He never answered, but his body language had said more than enough.
“You know what I want to feel?” I said. “I want to feel the same thing. I want to feel free. But I can’t do that with my father watching me like a hawk. He watches everyone like that. The only reason you feel free is because that’s relative to how it was before. But…”
“Don’t push your luck,” he growled, but the slight waver in his voice told me I was getting through.
Still, for a good minute, I just kept silent, watching him, trying to see what sort of an impact my words might have had. He wasn’t looking at me much; most of the time, he was peering out at the hallway, likely to see if my father was coming. And who could blame him? My father’s presence was almost always unannounced, unexpected, and unwelcome. That’s not to say it was never good, but it was rare.
I was still trying to seek an angle to get out of here. I had hoped softening up Spike would work, and maybe it would, but it was taking much longer than I had hoped. I took a breath.
“Listen, Spike, I—”
BOOM!
It sounded like a grenade had detonated.
It was probably a couple miles away, but I’d been around my father too long to not know what it was.
