“Reenie,” Declan warned.
She turned a glare on her husband. “Shush you. You don’t get to talk. Take your pain-in-the-ass brother and leave.”
“What the fuck did I do?” King asked.
“Don’t get me started. Both of you, out.” Maureen shoved the two men out of the room, and I stared at her with my mouth hanging open. Finally, she got back into bed. She looked exhausted.
“Grace, come sit.” She patted the bed next to her, and as I moved closer, she scooted to the side and practically dragged me onto the bed until I was lying next to her.
It reminded me of how my mom used to snuggle with me when I was sick. And how I laid in bed with her in the last few weeks before she died.
“When I was thirty years old, I was grocery shopping one day. I’d just returned home and was bringing the bags inside. Colleen was at school, and Duane was working. I wasn’t paying attention to my surroundings and before I knew it, I was shoved inside the house, and I heard the door slam.”
My body stiffened. I tried to lift my head, but Maureen held me still. She had one hand on my head, petting my hair. The other was rubbing my arm that lay over her now flat belly.
“I was scared, but I always knew it was a possibility. I wasn’t the first Mob wife who had been attacked. Honestly, it wasn’t even the first time I’d been hit by someone who was pissed off at Duane, or Sal, or even Duncan.”
She took a deep breath, and I knew this was something hard for her to talk about. “You don’t have to tell me.”
“I do. Because you need to know you aren’t alone. And you need to know there is another side to this shit. He grabbed me by my hair and pulled me into the kitchen. The one place that was my haven. It was like he knew that room would do the most damage.
“He was a cop who somehow thought that raping me would make him a big man. That it would get one over on Duane. He was a dirty cop who had screwed over the family, so Duane had cut him loose. He was no longer on the payroll. I paid the price for his anger.”
I closed my eyes. That was what I was. A pawn in this fucked-up war that had nothing to do with me. Maureen told me everything. Everything she’d felt, everything she’d believed about herself and her husband. And how all of it was wrong.
She said she knew all the things I was saying to myself, but she didn’t tell me not to think them. She told me to let them out. To tell someone. That keeping them inside meant they would stay with me forever. I needed to unload on someone I trusted. Someone who might never understand why I felt the way I did but putting them out there would go a long way in taking away their power.
She held me in her arms until the nurse came in wheeling a clear plastic bassinet. I hadn’t even realized the baby wasn’t in the room. Maureen had steamrolled right over my feelings and emotions in the best way possible.
The way a mom would.
We hung around oohing and aahing over little Bennett, and watching King hold his nephew brought tears to my eyes. Happy tears rather than sad. Tears that made me want a future. Tears that told me maybe one day we’d be in this hospital holding our own little boy or girl.
Chapter Forty
Stocks
I sat in the corner of the main room watching the men. Many I had come to trust with my life.
My brothers.
When Blade had approached me about joining the club, I’d brushed him off. I knew who he was. Well, part of me did. The other part wasn’t very accepting of the deceit he’d been a part of. But Blade was persistent.
We’d grown up together right here in Diamond Creek until word spread that he and his parents died in a car accident when we were fifteen. I hadn’t believed it then. It was too neat, too convenient.
I knew who his father was. Well, not who he actually was. They’d kept that pretty well hidden. But I knew his father was fucking shady as hell. I knew because my father was too.
I was a quiet kid growing up. My classmates thought I was weird, and they treated me that way. All except Becca. Beck now. When Micah died, she wouldn’t let anyone call her that anymore. Said if she couldn’t hear him say it anymore, she didn’t want to hear it at all.
I’d always liked her. She wasn’t different from the other kids; she thought I was weird, too. But she never pretended I wasn’t. And she never let it stop her from being my friend.
I’d found a place here I didn’t think I’d ever find. A place I belonged. A place where I wasn’t judged. Well, okay, I was judged all the fucking time. But like Beck, my brothers didn’t letmy quirks, as my mother called them, stop them from including me in their lives.
I had a family.
One I would die for.
One I would kill for.
