Things over the past few days had been a little insane, and I’d struggled to not lose my head. Emerald was really beginning to blossom and even starting to speak to a few of the men when they asked her how she was.
Eagle and I hadn’t really had a chance to discuss what we were going to do once all the crazy was over, given that Emerald couldn’t live at the clubhouse forever, and I needed to figure out how to pay for my school fees. Instead, he just demanded I keep studying and that it would all be perfectly fine. Which annoyed the damn hell out of me.
So that’s what I was doing when shit hit the fan.
“Skylar! You need to hurry down herenow!” Someone screamed from downstairs, making me leap off Eagle’s bed, the study books that had been in my lap sent soaring to the floor.
I flung the door open, not even bothering to look back and make sure I hadn’t broken anything when the force shook the wall, instead just hauling ass down the hallway and taking two stairs at a time.
Searching with my eyes for who called me so urgently, I found Wrench storming toward me with his laptop in his hands. His brow was creased between his eyes and his lips pursed tightly.
Rose and Levi were on the patio, frantically ushering Harlyn, Macy, and Jayla inside with Levi flicking the deadbolts when they were all secure.
“What’s happening?” Optimus asked, appearing from the hallway that led to his office and looking at Wrench in annoyance.
Wrench pointed to the screen of his laptop. It showed security footage of the entire street. It let us see who was coming up and down, and gave us a few extra seconds of warning if there was trouble approaching. Members of the club who obviously heard the commotion began to fill the room, looking at each other in confusion.
What I saw on that screen though, had me slipping on the wooden floors as I fought to get to the front door of the club.
“Dice! Grab her!”
Dice appeared out of nowhere, his arms folding around me and holding me gently, but securely to his chest.
“I need to go and get her!” I pleaded, twisting in his arms, tears welling in my eyes as he dragged me back to where Wrench and Op were both watching the computer screen. More of the brothers crowded around, all of them confused by what they were seeing.
There was a girl walking down the street. A little girl I knew, but that I hadn’t seen in six years since she was about five. The long dress that came to her ankles with sleeves down to her wrists in a pastel blue color the collar perfectly pressed, was a tell-tale sign that she wasn’t from around here, but I would have recognized her anywhere.
Her orange hair was bright and glistening in the sunlight, tied in a tight, thick braid down her back. Growing up, we’d all wondered how she’d ended up with such different features than the rest of us, especially given that neither our father nor her mother had even a tinge of red in their hair.
“Please,” I whispered, looking at Optimus, my heart aching. “I need to go get her.” Though I couldn’t hear any sound, I could see her body shaking as she sobbed, taking one anxious step after the other down the street. Her eyes darted around, and she trembled with fear, leaping out of her skin every time there was some kind of movement or the wind swept through a tree. She was petrified.
“What the fuck is she doing here?” Optimus cursed, turning to Blizzard. “Get all the boys armed and the girls upstairs with Chelsea.” The members all scattered quickly leaving me there with Wrench, Op, and Dice, who was still holding me somewhat captive.
Eagle had tried to give me some room to focus on my studying and gone into town with Skins and Jess to pick up food and supplies, just in case the clubhouse went on lockdown. The other three club girls had gone into X-Rated to work for the night because the bar staff had come down with a bug.
I needed him, I need him to convince them that we had to get her inside. Her feet were bare, and as I focused on the screen that tracked her, there was darkness around her eyes and her cheekbone. Bruising.
“Delilah?”
I turned around, hearing Emerald’s voice. She was staring at the screen, her eyes wide with shock. She opened her mouth a few times as if she was trying to get the words out, but they were falling flat on her tongue. She couldn’t drag herself from the screen, it was like watching a horror movie play out, knowing that soon, the monster was going to jump out at you.
Emerald’s gaze was clouded and confused. She couldn’t understand what was happening. “What is she doing?” she asked, looking to Optimus for an explanation as to why our little sister was here, alone, walking the street.
“You tell me,” he snorted. “Your sister here wants to run out there and rescue this little girl, not even bothering to ask how the fuck she got here, where the hell she came from, and what in God’s fucking name does she think she’s doing.” Optimus looked at me like I’d lost my mind, and maybe I had. He was right, there was no good explanation for why Delilah would be in Athens unless someone had brought her here. But it didn’t change the fact that my heart was breaking as I saw her wandering down the center of the street toward the compound, looking like she was walking toward her death.
The brothers moved swiftly around the clubhouse, setting themselves up with rifles and handguns, pulling pieces of wall away to reveal secret holes that they could fire from and still be protected.
“They’re using her to pull us outside,” Wrench said, shaking his head in disbelief. “A child, Op. A fucking child.”
Optimus gritted his teeth. “They have to be watching from somewhere. They’ll have someone with a lock on her in case one of us walks out.” He placed his palms flat on the table, staring at the computer screen like it was his worst enemy. “Leo, take Ham out the back and around, there’s only a handful of abandoned multi-story factories around here that they could be in, something empty, possibly high up with a view of the road.”
The two boys instantly ducked out through the kitchen to the back door of the clubhouse, their guns tucked tightly to their bodies and determination on their faces. That was one thing my father underestimated about these brothers, the people I called my family—they weren’t afraid to fight back.
“She is expendable,” Emerald announced abruptly, drawing horrified looks from club members left in the room around us. She seemed to be staring into nothing, her eyes glazed as she stared out the window. “They will kill her.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Blizzard yelled from his post beside the door, his face was red, the veins on his neck tight with the tension of his body. “She’s a kid, a fucking child!”
It was sick to think that they would stoop that low, and scary to think that my father would kill one of his own children in order to exact his revenge or to prove a point, but unfortunately, it honestly wasn’t all that surprising. This was who he was, this was the way he raised my brother and the other men who stood by him.