So instead, MacKenzie and I went to the Catholic church every week to light a candle and say a prayer for her. At least, we went most weekends.
We didn't go last weekend, the weekend everything happened. When MacKenzie said she wanted to kill herself.
Standing in front of the altar inside the church, I touched the match to the votive candle. All of the candles in a row, flames flickering in the dimly lit church, stood for someone. They represented people with lives, loved ones, histories. I think that’s what kept bringing me back. It was oddly comforting, knowing that. Other people had lost, and still survived.
Or some profound shit like that.
MacKenzie squeezed my hand and looked up at me. “Do you think mom’s in heaven?”
“I know she is,” I said. After all the things I had done, I hoped there was a place for April in heaven. I hoped my karma hadn't rubbed off on her.
MacKenzie squeezed tight against my leg. “Can we watch some movies of her again, before I leave?”
I swallowed the lump forming in my throat. “Sure, baby.”
MacKenzie was only four when April was murdered, her life snuffed out by Mad Dog’s lackeys. My fucking so-called brothers. She watched the videos of her mom, looked at photos, but I didn’t know how much of April she remembered.
Me, on the other hand? I couldn’t forget my wife. Sometimes I smelled her when I entered a room, memories triggered by a scent that reminded me of the shampoo she used or the perfume she wore. I saw her when I closed my eyes, and when I woke in the middle of the night, I still reached for her automatically. I didn’t know when that would change.
It had been over two and a half years, and only now was it beginning to feel like I wasn’t completely raw.
“This is mom and me at the zoo,” MacKenzie said. She slipped her finger across the touch screen on the tablet, scrolling through the photos. We’d been through our pictures and videos so many times I had their order memorized.
Even before all this shit that happened last weekend, the admission to the child psych hospital, I'd worried that it wasn't good for Mac, the way we kept April’s memory alive. I wondered if it was too close to keeping April herself alive, if it cast a shadow over MacKenzie, talking about her dead mother all the time. There was something morbid about it, a kid and her father so preoccupied with her mother's death.
The other part of me was terrified that unless I kept reminding MacKenzie of April, that April’s memory would fade away. That she would forget about her.
MacKenzie's shrink had said it was okay, had told me to talk about it with her as much as she wanted. Without the gruesome details, she stipulated. That was the shit I couldn't get out of my fucking head, the way April had been brutalized, so that was the shit I kept to myself, replaying the image of her in my mind over and over.
I kept the feelings to myself too, the guilt that washed over me like a tidal wave at times, so intense that I couldn't stand it. Guilt that I wasn't there when she was murdered; guilt that my association with the Inferno MC had been the cause of her death; and now, guilt that MacKenzie was so depressed.
The anger was almost worse than the guilt. Sometimes I felt it was eating away at me, at the core of who I was. I tried everything I could think to get rid of it. Shit, I fucking beat one of April's murderers to death with a sledgehammer after it happened. You'd think that would have done something to quell the tide of anger inside me.
I think it only made it worse.
I tried to hide it, to put on a happy front with MacKenzie, but I worried constantly that it was never enough, that she would sense the darkness in my soul, the shit that pumped through my veins. And, really, if I were honest with myself, I think she did. It had to be one of the reasons she wasn't doing well. She was spiraling downward since we'd moved to Las Vegas a year ago. We'd come back from Puerto Rico, where we were living with April's mother for a year after her murder. It took me that long to get my shit together, to face life again.
To face MacKenzie again.
I'd been there, physically present, but not really there, for her. I'd been just going through the motions of fatherhood, numb to everything. I was too wrapped up in my selfish shit, my grief over losing April, to really be there for MacKenzie. April's mother was a doting grandmother, and her family surrounded Mac with love, but fuck, if her own father was so wrapped up in his shit that he couldn't be there for her, what the hell chance did she have? No wonder she came back here and completely disintegrated once she was stuck with me.
We tried everything- grief counselor, child psychologist, psychiatrist. But Mac kept getting worse. She kept getting more and more depressed. Acting out at school. I thought it was an adjustment to the move- we'd never lived in Vegas, and kids took a while to adjust, right? It was last weekend that things reached a breaking point.
MacKenzie had told one of her teachers at school on Friday that she wanted to die so she could go to Heaven to be with her mother.
When the school called me, said they were calling her psychiatrist for an evaluation and told me why, I felt like my heart was being ripped out of my chest.
She spent the weekend in the hospital, in the child psych ward, under observation. That was when her doctors gently suggested we think about going back to Puerto Rico.
Or rather, the shrink suggested that Mac go back to Puerto Rico for a while.
Not that I join her.
Sure, they didn't come right out and say it, but what the hell else was that other than confirmation that I'm a shit father? MacKenzie was better off without me, better off with people who could be stable for her, who could show her more love than some fucking ex-biker ex-con. I tried, I really did. Wore myself to the bone trying to make up for being so out of touch after April died, so much that it tore me apart inside.
There was no way I was ever going to completely make it up to her.
I was just lost as a father.
I was no good, and I never would be.
“And that’s you and mom at the park,” I said, pointing to a photo of April sitting in the grass, holding MacKenzie in her lap, her arms wrapped around her. “You were barely walking then. I think you were a little over a year old. You loved having all that grass to play in.”
“And mom took me to the park a lot,” MacKenzie said, her voice questioning.
“All the time.” It was true. April had been a better parent than I could ever hope to be, from the very beginning. When Mac was born, she just seemed to know what to do immediately, without a second thought. Me? I was terrified, holding that little girl. I didn't have a clue what to do with her, when it came to changing diapers or feeding her. Hell, I was convinced I was going to break her, just by cradling her in my arms.
But she didn't break. She survived to be a tough little girl, full of sunshine and light.
Until April died, and everything changed.
I kept telling myself that Mac leaving for Puerto Rico wasn't a bad thing. It was a chance for her to be surrounded by people who loved her. It wasn't fair for Mac to have a father like me, one who was still paralyzed by grief, even now.
I kept telling myself I was making the hard choice by letting her go back, at least for a little while. It was selfish to keep her here, with her murderer father, the one who couldn't make her feel better. I felt powerless, trying to snap her out of the depression. But this part, I had control over. I was making a sacrifice so she could thrive.
I kept reminding myself of that. If I repeated it enough, maybe I would eventually believe it.
I put my arm around MacKenzie’s shoulder, squeezed her tight against my side. “Your mother loved you so much. You were the light of her life.”
“Do you think she watches us now, from Heaven?” MacKenzie pulled away from me, continued to swipe her finger across the screen, her attention on the photos.
“Your mom is looking down on us every day,” I said. “And probably raising all kinds of hell up there.”
“I wish she was here,” she s
aid.
I kissed the top of her head, suddenly filled with an overwhelming feeling of regret that the last couple of years had passed in a blur of grief and rage. I hadn’t done a good enough job with my daughter. And now we’d skipped ahead years, and she was already growing up. “I miss her too.”
Every day.
The Congressman poured himself a scotch from the bar in the suite of the hotel. I watched the amber liquid half-fill the glass, and breathed a sigh of relief. He had already had too many drinks. It meant he would be close to passing out.
He was a slovenly, arrogant man, but I didn’t mind him too much. He wasn’t cruel or angry, and when he drank, he passed out. Some men would get weird or hit you when they drank.
Like Aston, the man who owned me.
You had to be careful of men with unlimited amounts of money and power. I’d learned that a long time ago. I was reminded of it every day.
“Now there, my little Oriental tiger lily,” he said. I rolled my eyes at the slur. The drawl in his voice only got thicker the more he drank, the alcohol somehow intensifying his accent.
I forced a smile, turned on my flirtatious mode. “Yes, Congressman.”
“Come here and sit on daddy’s lap.” It angered me when men talked that way. He patted his leg, and I perched on the side, letting the split in my dress open high up on the thigh. He ran his thick hands up my leg. I should have felt revulsion at the thought of him touching me, letting his hands wander all over my body like he owned me. But he did own me, didn’t he? I belonged to Aston. I was Aston’s to do with what he wished, and tonight, he wished for me to be with the Congressman, a reward for the Congressman’s loyalty to him.
I had no choice anymore. My choices were taken away a long time ago. At twenty-three years old, I had lived enough horror for several lifetimes, and my life was already over.
I only had one reason for living. And that reason was on the other side of the world, his young life hanging in the balance.
I leaned over, my lips close to the Congressman’s ear. “Why don’t I go slip into something more comfortable?”
“Oh, now, darlin’,” he said. “You look plenty good to me.” He slipped his fingers under the fabric of my dress and between my legs.
I caught his hand, covered his fingers with mine. “Don’t you want to see what I brought with me? I have something especially naughty for you.”
“Do you?” he asked. He raised his glass to his lips, his hand still between my legs.
“I do,” I said. My hand over his, I moved his fingers against my skin, to touch my bare pussy. “Feel that?" I asked. "I'm wet for you already."
He would be too drunk to notice that I wasn't.
He groaned. "Meia, you are making me crazy.”
"Now, why don't you go get nice and comfortable in bed," I purred, taking his glass from his hand. "I'll refill you and you can relax while I go do myself up for you."
As arrogant and domineering as he was, he was also easily manipulated and highly suggestible. I stood, and he followed my lead, letting me cater to him, refill his drink. It was part of the fantasy. He liked the idea of a Thai woman catering to him, had no real interest in the fact that I wasn't Thai. Asians were Asians to men like him.
I played into his fantasy.
Each night like this got me closer to my goals.
Saving him. The person all of this was for.
And killing Aston, the man responsible for Lily’s suicide. My captor.
I took my time in the bathroom, lotioning and perfuming and slapping on enough makeup that I resembled the whore he thought I was. Piling my long dark hair up on top of my head, I gave myself a quick once-over in the mirror and looked at my watch, making sure I was giving him enough time to pass out.
I was terrified the first time Aston told me what else he required of me. As if being subjected to his torture wasn’t enough, I would be pimped out to select men he’d chosen, friends he owed special favors, or politicians he wanted to ensure were under his thumb.
Now, though? It no longer struck fear into my heart. I had accepted my fate. All of this was what I had to do.
I wasn’t kept chained up or restrained in any way, although I was sure Aston was having me watched. Occasionally I’d see men behind me, tailing me when I went to the store. Or I’d see a SUV with tinted windows sitting outside my apartment. The apartment Aston had purchased.
I was at his beck and call. When he summoned me, had me picked up by one of his men, I came.
When he ordered me to sleep with one of his clients, I did.
I did whatever he asked, the man who had struck fear into my heart when I was at the finishing school in Bangkok. He was eighteen back then, an adult, and I was a child. Not so much older than me, though, not an old man like many of the others.
But more dangerous. He was the son of the man in charge of everything, the man who owned us. His father trafficked us, sold us to men who wanted child brides.
But before that was everything else, all of the horror that happened at the finishing school. And Aston had been there for all of it, had grown up steeped in it.
It made him worse. It made him a monster, even back then.
He had only grown more so with time, determined to outdo his father in every respect.
Back then, he had been obsessed with my sister and I.
I thought I had escaped his grasp, when I was sold and sent to Las Vegas, given to an old man who made me his bride. But when the old man died, Aston came calling.
I thought I could hide, thought I could get away, that the money the old man had left me would be enough. I’d held out hope. Until Aston took away everything, crushed the small bit of hope I had left, and made me his own.
It was a cruel twist of fate, that the only thing I had to live for anymore was the one thing that kept me tied to Aston. It was the thing that ensured I would do whatever Aston asked, for as long as he asked.
You see, my son’s life was in Aston’s hands.
“I’m okay, daddy,” MacKenzie said, yanking away from me. “Stop!” She wiped her cheek, as if she could brush off my kiss, and looked around. “I’m a big girl.”
Shit, she knew how to get me right in the heart.
“Ok, remember that grandma is going to be there when you get off the plane,” I said. “The flight attendant will take you to meet her. You have to stay with her, okay?”
“Dad, I know,” she said, her voice already like that of a teenager, exasperated. It was like she’d aged ten years overnight. Christ, I was going to stand here, getting choked up if I wasn’t careful.
When she gave me a hug and walked off to board the plane like she wasn’t even the least bit scared, like she wasn't the least bit sorry to leave me, I felt gutted inside.
I wondered if I would ever not feel broken.
I hoped this would save her. I hoped that this act of desperation, sending my child back to Puerto Rico to stay with her grandmother, would be enough to bring the light back to her eyes.
I hoped it wouldn't destroy me.
I inhaled deeply as I drove up to the Inferno Motorcycle clubhouse. The prospect at the guardhouse eyed me skeptically.
“Blaze is expecting me,” I said.
The prospect nodded, his eyes never leaving me. “Stay put. Don’t move.”
I put my head back against the headrest, and waited while he called Blaze to verify my claim.
Then he waved me forward. “Go ahead, sir.”
Fucking prospects.
I was irritated by having my identity verified, although I don't know what the hell else I expected. Did I think the prospect would recognize me or something? I was an outsider now.
I looked at the building, bikes lined up in the parking lot outside, the same as they always had been, back when I belonged here. Two brothers stood out front, bearded and scruffy, wearing jeans and leathers, smoking and shooting the shit. I had a pang of...jealousy? No, not jealousy. I didn’t want to be a part of this place anymo
re. Nostalgia, maybe. For what had been before.