Not even a twinge.
I didn’t understand it. She was the mother of my daughter, the woman I was supposed to protect before all others, yet all I felt was resolve and an overwhelming need for vengeance, the desire to avenge, to kill, to bathe in the blood of those who dared cause her harm. I couldn’t explain it. I should be mourning her. Crying, yelling anything to show how much she meant to me. Yet I wasn’t. When Healer walked over to Caroline, I looked at Grimm, who had sat down again, his head in his hands. Everyone around me felt her death immensely.
Me, I needed to leave this place.
I couldn’t stand the smell, the grief around me anymore. It was all-encompassing. I was suffocating on it. I needed fresh air, the feel of my bike rumbling under me as I traveled down the highway.
I said nothing as I walked past my brothers, Caroline, Healer, the nurses, and doctors who went about their night trying to save those they could. I just walked right out of the hospital doors and never looked back. I got on my bike, started it up, and pulled out of the parking lot with no direction in mind.
I just drove.
As the night air washed over my face, I tried desperately to find some feeling, anything that would let me know what Mia meant to me. I knew she was mine to protect. I married her, for Christ’s sake! She was my wife. That should mean something, right?
Yet, it didn’t. I felt nothing.
What the fuck was wrong with me? Why couldn’t I feel anything? Was I the monster she called me last week when I forbade her from taking our daughter to the mall with her? I mean, it was just a simple shopping trip to the nearest town. I could have sent two of the brothers with her and let her take our daughter. Becca would have loved it. But I didn’t. I said no, and Mia, in all her fury, called me an evil monster. Maybe she was right. Perhaps I was something darker, more sinister. Maybe I didn’t deserve to feel anything because I wasn’t worth it. I did force Mia to marry me. She didn’t want to. Then I kept her at my house on Skull’s land. She was only allowed off the property with my permission and never with our daughter. Hell, I hadn’t even consummated the marriage because I refused to let her sleep in my bedroom.
I knew marrying Mia would be an adjustment, but I thought we’d fight it out like we always did before. But not this time. When I brought her home, I got nothing but the silent treatment. Then came sleeping in separate bedrooms. And not once would she allow herself to be in a room with me alone. There was always someone there, whether it was our daughter or my youngest brother, Shadow.
I figured that Mia would get her mad on and eventually forgive me for being an asshole. I knew I was, but like her, I was stubborn too and refused to relent. Now, she was gone, and all the doubts and second-guessing came creeping in. No matter what I thought about, I knew there was something I could have done better, said something nicer, been kinder to her. Instead, I was a fucking asshole, a monster who she hated right up until the end.
I love you, her whispered words filtered into my brain again. She said that, staring at me while that bastard held a gun to her head. She was dying right before my eyes, and she whispered those three words. Why? Did she really mean them? Had I missed something between us? Was my anger towards her overshadowing the truth before my eyes? Was she trying to tell me something? I couldn’t make heads or tails of it. If anything, her words confused me more.
Riding through the night, I had no destination in mind.
Just the ride.
I didn’t know where I was going, nor did I care. I had my bike, and that’s all I needed.
Two
Ghost
Five days later…
I was a dead man.
Not that I cared. Well, technically, I cared, but not at this moment. I had bigger things to worry about. Like where the fuck was I for the last five fucking days? Most importantly, where the fuck was my bike?
After hearing Mia died, I remembered leaving the hospital, then waking up this morning in a house I’d never been in, with a fucking cab driver waiting on me. I wasn’t in my regular clothes, my cut was missing, hell, even the shoes I was wearing weren’t my own. Not that I’d ever wear a pair of fucking dress loafers! My cell phone was gone, along with my wallet and my gun.
Nope, my mind was wiped clean. The whole ride back to the compound, I tried to think what had happened, but every time it felt as if someone was sticking a sharp poker into my brain. When my nose started bleeding, I stopped. I just wanted to get home. Then I could figure out what happened.
The cab pulled up to the gate of the compound. Billy, one of the prospects, leaned over the driver's side of the cab and said, “What do you want?”
“Let me in, Billy,” I muttered, holding my head.
“Don’t know you, man. Can’t do it.”
“Billy, I have a fucking headache the size of Texas. Open the fucking gates before I have the driver plow through them.”
“Ghost?” Billy questioned. “What the fuck, man. What are you wearing? Didn’t recognize you.”
“Gates. Now.”
Billy nodded and went to the small guard shack. In the next instant, the gates slid open. The cab started moving again. It came to a stop in front of the clubhouse, where several brothers, along with Reaper, were waiting.
“I don’t have my wallet,” I said to the cabbie.