“Darla.” His voice was almost gentle. That was how you knew you were in real trouble.
I didn’t answer. I focused on the tangle of Christmas lights in the trash.
He walked to the window and peeled back the curtain, exposing my hiding spot to the world. Then he turned, and his gaze landed on the lump in my bra. It was subtle, but he noticed.
“Show me your hands.”
I did.
“Show me what you’re hiding.”
I thought about playing dumb. I thought about shoving the Maglite in his face and swinging, but I just handed it over, palms sweaty and raw. He weighed it in his hand, then set it on my desk. Next came the performance. He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose, like he was suffering for my sins.
“This disappoints me greatly, Darla.”
“You’re going to send me to some brainwash farm anyway. What’s the harm in a flashlight?”
He let out a slow breath, the kind they taught at anger management seminars. “You’re not being punished. You’re being helped. I’m only trying to protect you from yourself.”
I laughed, bitter and hollow. “By locking me up and taking away my Christmas lights?”
He ignored the jab, which meant it landed. He moved to the closet and rummaged for a second, then produced a hammer and a handful of thick wood slats from behind his back. He must have prepped them before coming up. The air went out of the room.
He didn’t yell. He didn’t even look at me. He walked to the window and started hammering the boards across the frame, methodical as a carpenter building a coffin. Each strike vibrated through the walls and into my teeth. He made sure I could still see out, but there was no way in hell I was getting through.
When he finished, he turned to me and dusted his hands. “Your choices have consequences. One day you’ll understand.” He tucked the Maglite into his jacket and left without another word.
The sound of the lock clicking behind him was louder than the hammer. I waited for the footsteps to fade, then threw my pillow at the barricaded window, screamed once, and curled up on the bed.
Outside, Sarge circled the house. He looked up, saw the boards, and kept walking. Business as usual.
I wanted to hate my father. But what I really hated was how good he was at this.
21
Axel
Nobody ever accused the Royal Bastards of being subtle. Friday night, and the clubhouse sounded like a NASCAR wreck in the middle of a tractor pull, smoke thick enough to hang coats on, the air vibrating with a hundred stupid bets, cackles, and the kind of laughter you hear in a place where violence is always two beers away.
I was wedged between Vin and Moab at a scarred-up oak table, the surface sticky with years of spilled whiskey and whatever DNA the regulars could scrape off the bottoms of their boots. The place reeked of malt, sweat, and chain grease. Red was behind the bar, slamming shots into glasses, giving the occasional handsy club brother a tongue-lashing so fierce you’d think her day job was field-dressing bears. We were keeping our heads down. That was the plan, anyway.
Vin looked like a busted transmission—idle but coiled. His eyes, those cold shark things, flickered every time the front doorcreaked. I just nursed a Black Tooth Grin and let the noise eat at my nerves. Every bone in my body said to run, but the bastard inside me wanted to see who came through that door.
When it slammed open, the whole room dropped a decibel. Detective Amelia Carter barreled in, trenching muddy footprints across the linoleum, rain still spitting off her leather jacket. She didn’t hesitate, didn’t flinch at the wall of bikers sizing her up. She locked eyes with Vin, then looked to me.
“Could you all stop circle-jerking for five seconds?” she barked, her voice like gravel in a cement mixer. “I need the adults.”
Vin gave her the smile he reserved for narcs and debt collectors. “I only see one, Carter, and she’s standing in a puddle.”
She snorted, yanked a chair backwards, and threw herself into it so hard the legs shrieked across the floor. Her eyes darted around the table, face set in the same expression I’d seen on cornered dogs and first-day COs—don’t fuck with me, I bite.
She dropped a manila folder on the table with a thunk. Beer bottles rattled. “You three get the Cliff’s Notes, the rest can fuck off.”
Vin jerked his chin at the hangers-on, and they scattered, grumbling. Heather lingered just long enough to shoot Carter a death glare before flipping a double bird and heading back behind the bar.
I waited. Nobody said a word. The only sound was the whirr of the busted neon over the pool table and the rain tap-dancing on the roof.
Carter snapped the folder open. A stack of 8x10 glossies, reports, printouts, all crammed in as if she’d been told to bury the evidence before it went cold. She fanned out the top sheet, turned it so we could all see.
