This is going to be a damn long night.
CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN
CHANEY
I held the poor woman, Stella’s, hand and talked softly to her until I was ushered away by the paramedics, cops, and crime scene technicians. By the time I stepped back and blended into the crowd in order to give them room to work, I noticed the yard wasn’t only crawling with the responding emergency crews but with Nova’s entire motorcycle club as well as a few Feds.
The Kings are fiercely intimidating men, and each one of them wore a permanent scowl on their face like they’d patented the look—until Nova introduced me to them, then, their faces softened and mellowed and my heart stopped rapidly beating in my chest.
I’m not usually one who runs and cowers when spooked or confronted by daunting and threatening figures since my father all but beat that reaction out of me, but for a second there, I thought my feet were going to dash me away before my brain could catch up with the fleeing thought. Luckily, I stood my ground and kept my wits about me. You can’t show imposing people like them your fear, they eat that up and use it against you. Been there, done that, have mental, physical, and emotional scars to prove it.
I internally laughed when Marsten took over the scene and kicked the town’s officials off the property. The sheriff, whose name I didn’t get, threw an epic fit when he was ushered away by the men in suits. His voice sounds familiar to me, but I can’t place where I’ve heard it from so I kept that tidbit of information to myself.
Nova, however, noticed how my brows pinched and mistook it for my discomfort and wound his arm around my waist, dragging me to him. “You doing okay, Chaney?”
“I’m alright, Nova. Just a little sad right now. Do you think she’s going to make it?”
“I don’t know, Chaney. I just don’t know. She has some severe and extensive trauma and we don’t know how much of that is internal and how much is superficial,” he answers, sounding flustered. “She was repeatedly stabbed, raped, and fuck knows what else.”
“I always knew Father was a monster. He couldn’t hide that from us. He proved that to us plenty of times throughout our lives,” I mumble. “I didn’t realize how vast that was though. I guess I was blind to it. I had no clue he was hurting these women to the extent he was, he told us they were his friends who wanted him to do those things to them so that in the long run it’d make them stronger and desensitize them from pain inflicted on them and they could face the apocalyptic world.”
“Your father is sick, Chaney. The fact that he used his twisted mindset to convince y’all he was training his victims to survive is proof of that.”
“Nova, can I talk to you for a minute?” The agent, Marsten, asks from a distance. I appreciate the fact that all of these guys arekeeping themselves further back from me, it makes it easier to be surrounded by them all.
“Why don’t you head back into the house and check on Freyja?” Nova suggests. “We should try to keep this under wraps for the day so your sister doesn’t have to deal with this on top of all the other nightmares she’s had.”
He’s not wrong. There hasn’t been a night since we came to stay with him that my sister hasn’t woken up either screaming or gasping for air. I’m starting to wonder if she’ll ever adapt to our new way of life or if she’ll always need to be sheltered. Either way, it doesn’t matter because I’ll make sure she has whatever it is she needs.
“She should be waking up soon,” I say as I watch the sun breach the horizon.
“I’ll be in soon, I need to finish putting the gifts under the tree and I’ll start the coffee,” he tells me as he shifts me around and gives me a gentle shove toward the house.
In a trance-like state I amble indoors and head directly for our room. When I push the door open, Freyja is sitting up in the bed, her nose glued to the window with the blanket wrapped around her body and the only part of her you can make out is her eyes and nose.
“Hey,” I greet her, crawling into the bed beside her and winding my arms around her.
“What’s going on, Chaney? And before you begin talking and making things seem less dire than they are, I want to let you know I’ve been sitting here watching for hours, so don’t coddle me, alright?”
“I was going to tell you the truth, eventually,” I say, pacifying her. “But not today, Nova and I wanted to give you one good day before you had to deal with what happened early this morning.”
“I don’t know why this day matters, Chaney. It’s just another day in the grand scheme of things,” she reasons.
“Because we’ve never celebrated Christmas and Nova wanted us to have that,” I remark, knowing if I treat her like a child she’ll react like one. My sister gets aggravated whenever I try to protect her from things that I believe will upset her—like this. She’ll give us the silent treatment and stomp around the house for the rest of the day.
“May as well tell her the truth, Chaney. I know you and Nova want to keep her innocent in all of this, but what y’all aren’t considering is that this affects her just as much as it does you and him.” I twist my head toward the doorway as quick as a whip and see Riptide leaning against the door jamb. He looks toward my sister and introduces himself. “Name’s Riptide. I’m the president of Nova’s club and I came to check on you two and see if you need anything.”
“Nice to meet you,” my sister comments, her voice soft but friendly.
“Nice to meet you too, Freyja,” Riptide responds, shooting her a small grin. “I have y’all’s papers with me and dropped them off on the dining room table so you can sort through them and start getting the right documents so you can begin a new life.”
“We appreciate that, Riptide,” I state, meaning every word.
“Also, wanted to advise you that Nova sent us in to finish setting things up so I wanted to give you a heads up that my men will becoming and going down the hallway and I didn’t want either of you to freak when you see us walking back and forth.”
“We need to get up and get dressed anyway, so we’ll shut the door. Is it alright if we come out and begin making breakfast?” I ask Riptide, squeezing my sister closer to me because her body is slightly trembling. “Freyja has a recipe for homemade cinnamon rolls and we need to get that started sooner rather than later because it’s time consuming.”
