I knew the stupid ones too. Tons of them.
I was also one of them.
Cricket was an animal and not even one worth trying to tame or trying to ride. He was something small, shifty and feral, a raccoon out in the daytime that’s starvin’ and crazed.
For the millionth time in the last four years, I wondered how I ever could’ve been taken in by him?
And for the millionth time, the same answer came to me.
There a small part of my self-esteem that was corrupted, sunk through with a rot so deep that all the confidence on top of it was startlingly precarious. And that rot stemmed directly from my bitch of a mother.
I’d been loved by men all my life, I trusted them to take care of me, even more than that, to treasure me.
It was a woman who had taught me to hate myself, that I had nothing to offer and nothing to gain from life because I was nothing myself. Not even worthy of my mother’s love.
So, I’d made a mistake. I’d chosen to trust the male gender implicitly and I’d shunned that putrid corner of my soul where self-doubt and loathing hung out like high school slackers. And in ignoring them, I’d allowed them to vandalize my entire soul with their anarchy until I’d become exactly what my mother wanted me to be.
Nothing.
Cressida had done her research, frantically trying to find answers in her precious literature that could explain where they, the family, went wrong in raising me. I could have told her it wasn’t her or them, least of all my father. Sometimes all it takes is one bad egg, and all that.
She hit on the statistic on the Canadian Women’s Foundation and Child Help website though.
Children of abuse are twice as likely to be abusers or victims of abuse in their adulthood. They are almost nine times as likely to engage in criminal behaviour as well, which made me laugh. King was a prospect for my father’s outlaw motorcycle club, and I’d had a rap sheet since I was thirteen.
It didn’t make me feel better to know that there was science behind my pathetic actions, but it helped my family so I stayed quiet while they hunted down information to feed the gaping maw of despair in their guts.
The monster in the pit of my belly stayed starved.
“Sorry ’bout Cricket,” Reaper interrupted my ill-timed daze to say. “Good kid.”
I could feel Wrath’s sharp eyes digging into my chest like the point of a blade so I was careful not to make a disgusted face at those words. Cricket was not a kid, he’d died at twenty-four, and he was in no way, shape or form good.
Instead, I let tears fill my eyes to the brim but not over. It wouldn’t do to overact, and they would expect me to be tough twice over, as an old lady and, more, as a Garro.
“Can’t believe it,” I whispered, looking from Reaper to Grease to Wrath and back again so they could all catch a look at my drowning blue eyes. “Tell me you know who did that to him. Tell me you’ll get ’em.”
Grease stepped forward, his pockmarked face further textured by a nasty grin. “Oh, we’ll get ’em. Got solid intel that it was them fuckin’ Red Dragons.”
I whistled gently and rocked back on my heels, genuinely surprised that the cops had thought to pin it on the Asian organized crime syndicate based primarily in downtown Vancouver. It was a ballsy move, way beyond moving a pawn on the board, they had placed their Queen in jeopardy on the off chance of taking down two gangs for the price of one.
“Does this mean war?” I asked.
Reaper stroked his long goatee and shot a sideways glance at Grease. “Not convinced it was them chinks. Was thinking maybe it might be a rival MC.”
I frowned. “Anonymous MC sticks to Langley, I didn’t know you had beef with them.”
“We don’t.”
I blinked at Reaper, my mind whirring until click.
“You think it was The fuckin’ Fallen?” I demanded, taking a step forward so I was in Reaper’s ugly face.
He shrugged. “Was a while back now but I’m sure you remember your Uncle Crux there murdered three’a my brothers in cold blood.”
I remembered. I was a girl so I could never be a true member of The Fallen but I was their Princess, and though I was sheltered from the outside world’s atrocities growing up, I knew all too well the mayhem of MC life. My great uncle Crux had been, to put it fuckin’ mildly, a psychopath. He killed indiscriminately just because he had a thirst for blood and violence the way an alcoholic does for booze.
He’d even killed members of his own fuckin’ chapter.
So, my dad killed him and took his chrome and iron throne.