Reaper waited until his brother was forced away from the hole. “Good try, Ink. I’m not going to make it that easy for you. I begged you too many times to put me out of my misery. I’m giving you the same compassion you gave me.” Reaper motioned to something out of sight, and then Ink heard a motor start.
“You know what’s funny as fuck?” Reaper asked him.
Ink glared up at him, refusing to talk.
“This vault is a hell of a lot better than the shithole I was forced to live in.”
Ink started yelling again when he saw the top being lowered down, the two pieces of the vault meeting with a metal sound.
“Don’t leave me in here … please ….” Ink started begging as the top began sliding down, enclosing him within. “Motherfuckers!”
* * *
Reaper stood, watching the backhoe drop the chain onto the top of the vault, completely enclosing Ink within.
He didn’t spare Viper a glance when he returned to his side as they watched mounds of dirt being dropped onto the vault.
“How did you stand it?” Viper said hoarsely.
Reaper gave him the cold hard truth. “At first, I thought I could escape. When that kept failing, I thought The Last Riders would rescue me. When that didn’t happen, I prayed to God to help me. He didn’t; He let me wallow in that filth. You want to know how I survived what they put me through?” Reaper’s lips curled up in a facsimile of a smile. “I didn’t.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
“That color looks good on you.”
“Thank you. I like yours, too,” Ginny complimented the woman sitting next to her on the couch.
Inspecting her toes, she ran the tip of her fingernail along the side of her big toe, wiping a speck of polish away.
“I’m not crazy about the one I picked. I prefer the plum I borrowed off you last week.” Gianna held her foot out to show her the full effect of the new red polish that she purchased. “Which one do you like better?”
“Both look good on you. Plum looks classier”—Ginny tilted her head, glancing at Gianna’s toes—“but the red looks sexy. Do you want to be the stylish banker, or would you rather be a come-and-get-me red?”
“Is there an in-between?”
“Of course.” Ginny leaned toward the coffee table to grab a bottle, handing it to her. “Hello, Pink.”
Gianna lifted her eyes from the bottle. “Of course,” she said, breaking into laughter. Setting the polish on her lap, she reached for the fingernail polish remover and cotton balls to start removing the red from her toes. “How come, when you moved in here last month, you only had a couple of backpacks and a makeup case of fingernail polish? You have more polish than you have clothes.”
“I have my priorities,” Ginny joked, seeing that Gianna was studying her seriously. She switched feet and started polishing the nails on her other foot. “On the bus, you’re only given a small compartment for your things. I got carsick when I tried to read; polishing my nails and watching movies on my iPad made the drive go by faster.”
“Did you like touring with Mouth2Mouth?”
“I did.” Surprisingly, she had. It had given her time to heal from losing her home, and it opened new horizons. Screwing the top back on the bottle, she rested her hand on her knee as she opened up to her new roommate. “I loved living in Kentucky; it will always be my home.” Ginny unconsciously rubbed the palm of her hand. “If I hadn’t lost my home, I don’t think I would have, and then I would have missed out on seeing and doing things I never imagined myself doing.” Did it make up for leaving Kentucky? No, but she had gained experiences that she would look back on when she grew older and would be able say she had been there or done that.
Traveling with Mouth2Mouth had also taught her that life was a trade-off. She had to pick and choose which items to carry with her in the backpacks, and only the most important or useful ones made it inside. It was a lesson she learned the hard way on her first tour when she had only packed clothes for the warmer climates. She had frozen her butt off during the air-conditioned bus rides and when they were out at night. She ditched half her summer clothes by the fourth day. She had also learned not to accept everyone at face value. Traveling with the roadies, she’d witnessed all the hook-ups and broken hearts that went along with being in such close confines on the bus.
Living with Lisa had given her a backbone, but she had been broken when she had lost her home. Then, leaving Kentucky had broken her heart, but it had also strengthened her. Touring was like a fingernail file, shaping her until she was stronger and able to withstand more pressure. And if she did break, she just grew more resilient. In Kentucky, she always had someone to count on in a moment’s notice. Hammer, Will, and, deep down, she knew if she called the entire clan of the Colemans, Trudy, and all her friends like Willa and Pastor Dean—any of them would have answered her call. By leaving, if anything happened, it was just her, and that was the way she wanted it to stay until she found a way to return to Kentucky without endangering Trudy. Losing her home had shown her that she had been living in a fool’s paradise.