“It’s going to be okay,” Marilyn reassured me.
I didn’t say anything to her because I didn’t believe her. It wasn’t going to be okay. But I had to do it anyway.
HADES
TWO WEEKS LATER
I killed Freya’s mother.
Right after I left her bed, I drove fourteen hours straight, watched her trailer for a few hours, chain smoked, then walked in and shot her in the head. I didn’t leave any evidence. Getting away with it was not something I was worried about.
I wasn’t worried about anything. I thought of nothing on the ride home. Someone with a soul might’ve been sick. Been overcome with guilt, disgust in themselves. No feelings plagued me except a sick longing for Freya. Had I killed her mother in order to make it impossible for me to go back to her? Freya was not one for vengeance. She had accepted me killing the ex, but I knew she would never forgive me for murdering her mother. I hadn’t done it for her. I’d done it for me. Because I was a selfish piece of shit who couldn’t stand the thought of someone who had a hand in Freya’s suffering to still draw breath on this Earth.
I’d killed her because that’s the kind of man I was. That’s the kind of monster I was.
Then I went back to the club, went back to the life I’d had before Freya. I fucking dared anyone to mention her name. Even Swiss, the fucker with a death wish, wasn’t brave enough. No one went to Fate for that same reason.
When I couldn’t sleep, I’d park my bike at the end of her road and just stare at the faint lights of her home. The one she’d given to me. I’d stare and smoke for hours until the night was chased away by the fucking sunlight.
I had done that every night for months until there were no lights. She was gone. That was what I was supposed to want, but it made me want to rip my own fucking heart out just so it wouldn’t have to beat anymore.
Luckily, club shit got busier. We’d been getting more shipments in as the Russians upped our supply. And with more shipments came more shit. Which was what I’d guessed the phone call was about when my cell rang. No one called or talked to me unless shit was going down.
“You better be calling because you’ve got the location on the assholes trying to move in on our shipment routes,” I spat as I answered my phone.
It was not a good thing for the club that things were so chaotic in the arms business right now. It was a fucking great thing for me, though. If I didn’t have people to hurt, things to do, people to kill, then I’d do something fucking stupid, like track down Freya and drag her back here.
“Yeah, I’ve got their location. Already gave it to Hansen an hour ago,” Wire said.
I clenched my fist. “If you gave it to Hansen a fucking hour ago, how am I not at that fucking location?” I gritted out the question that I should not have been asking Wire but asking my fucking president.
“Because I also told him something else that had him putting Swiss on that particular task,” Wire replied, surprising me with that information. Despite being thousands of miles away, the motherfucker knew everything. And I knew by the sound of his voice that he was about to tell me something that was going to really fucking piss me off.
“Don’t kill me.”
Yeah, it was really going to fucking piss me off, since he’d said that with absolute sincerity.
“What is it?” I demanded.
“No, first you have to promise that you’re not going to kill me,” Wire asserted.
I gritted my teeth and looked for something close by I could smash. There wasn’t a second of the day where I didn’t want to smash something. I was angry, furious, all the fucking time which was not something I had any experience in. Before her, I never got angry. Never got anything. Then she went and fucked it all up. Shouldn’t this shit have ended by now? Or at least dulled?
I had a feeling that it wouldn’t dull until I was dead. That was my sentence, for thinking I could have her, thinking I could hurt her without consequences.
“I’m ain’t promising shit,” I told Wire, tempted to drive down there just so I could wring his fucking neck. I’d liked him before, but now I didn’t like anyone. Most of all myself.
“Okay, well, then I’m hoping that the news itself will have your mind on other things rather than my untimely death,” he retorted.
I let out an audible breath into the phone.
“I’ve been checking in on Freya,” he said quickly, sensing he was not long for this Earth.