PROLOGUE
Icer
Age Seven
“Why can’t Papa help, Mama?”I ask her as I sit on the edge of the bathtub, watching her put medicine on her face after she already attended to my wounds and washed the blood off my face where Dad split my eye open, directly across my brow.
“Because he’d never believe us, Leif,” Mom explains as she winces when the cloth touches her blackening eye.
“Why not?” I ask, confused. Papa is my hero, he’d save me, I know he would.
“Because your daddy is his only kid and he’d protect him at all costs, Leif. You can’t ever tell him what Daddy does, okay?”
I shake my head, and say, “I still don’t understand.”
She turns away from the mirror and crouches down in front of me. She lifts her hands and places them on my knees, giving me some hard truths. “Papa is part of a motorcycle club, they’re not always good guys, kiddo. Papa would blame us and make usleave with nothing more than the clothes on our back if we were to tell him. We’d have no place to go. Don’t you want to keep seeing all of your friends and Papa? If we leave, you’d never see them again.”
That declaration has me vowing to keep what happens at home a secret until the day I die. My friends are more than that to me, they’re my brothers. They see me, they make me feel important. I’m part of the pack. I can’t lose them. It’s then I realize, for the first time, that Papa loves Daddy more than me. He may be my hero, but he’s my daddy’s protector.
Age Eleven
Another loud crash has me jumping out of bed and crawling underneath it with my pillow clutched to my chest. Dad has a bum knee and can’t get down onto it and reach me, so this is my safe place, the one area I have where he can’t stretch out and touch me.
“Leif! Get your lazy ass out here!” Dad bellows.
“Uh uh,” I emphatically say with my head buried into my pillow while I shake it even though he can’t see me doing so—there’s no way I’m following his command and leaving my hidey-hole where I’ll end up becoming his punching bag.
Been there, done that, have the black eye to prove it.
“He’s sleeping, Novak,” my mother shakily reminds him. Her voice is quivering, laced with fear.
You don’t backtalk my dad, not if you want to leave the encounter unscathed. Mom’s become a hermit, a shell of her once vibrant and lively self, never leaving the house so shedoesn’t have to answer those pesky and intrusive questions others have when they notice her limping, nursing a split lip, or hiding her bruised eyes behind a pair of big-framed sunglasses that the old Hollywood starlets wore.
“No! No, please, Novak!” Mom cries just before something heavy hits the wall, shaking the entire house.
“Get your no-good ass up and clean this goddamn house! It’s a damn pigsty, I want it sparkling by the time I get back!” Dad issues as I hear the front door slam shut.
I sigh as my shoulders hunch in. The house is always clean before my dad goes on one of his drunken tirades. He’s the one who destroys all of my mother’s hard work. From the time she wakes up until the time she goes to bed she’s cooking, cleaning, and catering to his every whim.
I wish Dad was more like Papa.
Age Fourteen
I drop my homework onto my bed and come barreling out of my bedroom when I hear my mom scream out in pain. When I make it to the living room, Dad is guiding my mom through it with his hands clutched in her hair, the roots pulling away from her scalp.
“Stop!” I yell, my gut screaming at me to get the hell out of dodge and protect myself from what is surely to come. But I can’t. I won’t. My mother is a slip of a woman compared to my father’s immense size. “Dad. Stop. You’re going to hurt her.” I don’t say the word again, because I doubt he gives a single shit that he’s hospitalized her in the past. Secretly, I think he enjoys watchinghis wife and son suffer abuse at his hands. It makes him feel like a man even though to me, it makes him a coward—a bully.
“Who do you think you are, boy?” Dad asks as he shifts his attention from my mom to me. At least he releases her which has her scuttling away, finding a dark corner to hover in. “You think you’re big and bad, huh?”
I deflate because I know what’s coming next. Sure enough, the second he reaches me, his fist flies and I find myself dropped to the floor where I tuck myself into a ball, cradling my head with my hands to protect it to the best of my capability. He’s already given me one concussion, I don’t need another one. Paps is going to shit a brick when he sees me, he’s already warned me that if I get into ‘another’ fight, since that’s how dear ole Dad has convinced him where all of my abrasions and lacerations are coming from, he’d take my dirt bike away from me and that can’t happen, it’s my only escape from reality.
Rush, Gage, and Rafe find me in our hideout. I came here to escape from yet another assault from my dad. This time, it wasn’t me saving my mom since I’m still babying cracked ribs from the last time I did so, but instead, she pushed me in front of her, using me as a shield. It’s then that I lost any respect I had left for her. Who puts their kid in harm’s way to save themself? My mom may not be June Cleaver, but any self-respecting woman would take a blow intended for them instead of shoving their kid in front of them.
“What happened this time?” Rush asks as he sits down beside me, handing me a bottle of water and over-the-counter pain relievers.
“Same shit, different day,” I mumble as I shake out four pills and pop them into my mouth before guzzling the entire bottle of water.
“Do you know what set him off?” Gage asks as he shakes a first aid kit at me and opens it up, removing the iodine and wet wipes.
