A gentle squeeze on my arm jerked me out of yet another memory. I’d spent fifteen years without remembering, now I couldn’t stop.
Macy’s eyes were tinged with worry. “You okay? You kind of went away with the fairies.”
“Away with the fairies?” I repeated.
She nodded. “Yeah, you know, to a world other than this one.”
I gaped at her. This woman might’ve been a little nuts.
She let go of my arm to pick up a mug of what looked like tea. “It’s fine,” she said after sipping. “I’d totally go to worlds other than this if I could. Like Middle Earth. It’s a peaceful place now that Frodo destroyed the ring of power in Mt Doom.”
Okay, she was a lot nuts.
I liked her.
“Plus, I could use a little peace right now,” she said in a voice far less bright than the one moments ago. This was not a flawless transition. It was full of pain.
Without even thinking about it, I reached out and squeezed her hand.
Me.
I’d witnessed so much pain, sorrow, loss. So many times when I wanted to offer comfort. And I did. With words. But never with physical touch. That was crossing a barrier that I couldn’t move past. Because when I started doing things like that, I got too involved in the story. In the pain. I needed to be detached in order to survive.
So why was I now attaching myself to the Sons of Templar like a fucking barnacle when I knew I had to cut myself off in the end?
Maybe I had a morbid fascination with emotional bleeding. Emotional cutting.
Macy squeezed my hand without words, smiling sadly.
“Now, I need to hear everything about your career. The highs, the lows. And most importantly…”
I stiffened, waiting for the question about how I got here, why I wasn’t dead, why I was a prisoner in Liam’s room.
“What’s the deal with the red lipstick?” she finished.
I waited a beat. She was serious.
My body relaxed.
And I smiled.
For the first time since I could remember.
And I did tell her everything.
Even the deal with the red lipstick.
The next night at the bar was much the same as the first one. I was treated with very thinly veiled hostility. Apart from Claw’s ever-present smile. It seems the guy had a soft spot for tragic stories.
I wondered idly if he’d have that smile if he hadn’t heard my story. If he would’ve continued on squeezing the life out of me that night had Liam not stop him.
It paid not to wonder about such things.
Swiss seemed to have warmed to me again, in his own way. I guess I’d earned his respect after watching him torture a man without having a human reaction.
I guessed I had a little monster in me too.
The first night at the bar, I had been numbly going through the motions, getting used to being back in whatever passed for the real world around here when I’d spent a week thinking I might not ever leave the clubhouse.
But tonight, I had been able to slip back into the skin that had served me so well on the battlefield. I did my job, wearing more clothes than I had before, I was thankful not to have to keep up that persona.
My real job was watching. Looking for the story.
It wasn’t going to jump out at me in one fully recognized idea. It was pieces. I had to collect them up, see how to fit them together. And I already had enough for a half decent story. They were looking for retribution for the Christmas Day massacre, and they were doing so by lopping off fingers of men. Men connected to Miguel Fernandez, who I now knew was responsible for the killings, whose men had been killed and tortured in front of me, and who the club was currently at war with.
I’d done my research on him too.
Any worthwhile journalist knew who he was. Or more aptly, what he was. He wasn’t a man and a monster. He was purely a monster.
He trafficked humans for a living. And he made a good one. Living, that was. He had more politicians in his pocket than all the organized crime syndicates put together. He was little more than untouchable. Many honorable men and women had tried to bring him to justice. Some of my contemporaries included.
All of them had failed. Disappeared as if they hadn’t even existed. Nothing for their families. No closure. No knowledge of where their loved one was laid to rest in one of the most brutal ways possible. No, just nightmares of how horrible their last moments were. They died horribly and nastily in the pursuit of an honorable act.
Honorable people couldn’t bring him down.
It was becoming apparent that dishonorable people were trying.
The thought filled me with pure panic.
Because Fernandez was international. He had one of the largest mercenary armies in the world. More than a small country. He didn’t hesitate to kill his enemies in the most brutal ways possible. He intimated and controlled governments and here was a largely domestic—apart from a handful of small charters outside the US—motorcycle club trying to bring him down.