Tortured Soul (12 page)

All conversation disappeared as plates full of bacon, sausage, eggs and hash browns were placed before us. It was like eating a slice of heaven, dunked in grease and fried to a crisp.

“Emily has tried to make contact with Jonas,” Dillon said after a short silence that was broken only by me, moaning at how much I had missed Benny’s breakfast. The bacon and egg that sat stabbed on my fork became frozen halfway to my mouth. “Larz took her to the library a few weeks ago. She wanted to use a computer there. We thought it was unusual because Rebecca and Charlie have a computer at home that she can use. Larz called me and I got Sam down there as soon as they left. She had gone into an email account that looked as though it had never been used. There were five contacts, three bogus, two legit.”

I waited for Dillon to go on. When his silence aggravated me to the point of possible violence, I turned to face him. “Was contact made?” I demanded.

Dillon shook his head. “She sent emails to all five contacts saying the same thing: I want to come home.”

I carefully placed the fork down before I did something rash, like stab someone. “She’s been in therapy, four months of intensive fucking therapy! I thought there was no danger of her wanting to go back,” I said through gritted teeth.

“I highly doubt she intends to go back to Jonas to pick up where she left off, Braiden. From what Larz tells me Em is angry, beyond angry, and she wants his blood. From what I understand, she is pretty damn pissed at you for leaving her, but she’s even more pissed at you for attempting to take what she feels is her justice.”

I shook my head. “She’s going after Jonas on her own.” The thought rocked me, like I literally fucking swayed in my chair.

“I’d bet my last dollar on it. Perhaps you need to speak to her, allow her a glimpse of what’s happening to find Jonas. It might placate her enough to let this go, and if not,” Dillon shrugged, “maybe she needs this.”

I balked at his line of thought. Dillon was the last person in the world I would except to support the idea of an innocent girl committing murder. “You think she should be the one to kill Jonas?” I growled low.

“No. You and I both know what it’s like to take a life. Regardless of how monstrous the victim is, it’s still a life. Emily shouldn’t have that burden on her hands. But maybe she needs to be there, see it end.”

My stomach revolted at the thought of Em killing someone and was equally nauseated at the thought of her witnessing me kill Jonas. The man wasn’t going to die pretty, and Em didn’t need to see that; she didn’t need to see me like that. I couldn’t allow her to maintain this course she was on. She needed to concentrate on getting better. It would be a cold day in hell before I let Em within a hundred feet of Jonas Levier. She might hate me for it, but it was worth it to keep her safe.

EMILY

Eli sat beside me, his body leaning into the curves as his NASCAR car took the corner. I found it amusing how engrossed not only his mind would become in his Xbox games, but also his body. To say I was happy to join him in his gaming cloud was an understatement. Gaming let me escape from my thoughts. All of my concentration would be engrossed in the game and nothing else, and it was safe. Some things weren’t safe. I had tried watching TV and movies, but I’d see something or someone that would cause me to slip into a flashback. I tried reading, but again, some stories unwillingly took me too close to things that frightened me. I tried painting and drawing, but my lack of ability made the entire exercise nothing more than irritating. When I met Eli, he could barely drag his eyes away from the screen long enough to say hello. He asked me if I wanted to play, and I thought,
what do I have to lose?
Gaming took concentration and it allowed me a few hours of quiet contentment.

“Why are pirates called pirates?” Eli asked out of the blue.

This was his latest thing—telling jokes. It was his attempt to get me to smile. Apparently I had forgotten how, and it had subsequently become Eli’s job to remind me.

“No idea,” I murmured.

“Because they Arrrrrrrr,” he said, with rolling emphasis on the ‘r’. A smile tried to tug at my lips, and for a moment I thought he had won on the first lame joke. My muscles still weren’t accustomed to smiling, so it felt foreign and unusual.

Eli sighed. “How do you repair a broken tomato?”

“No idea,” I said again.

“Tomato paste.”

Larz snickered from his chair at the kitchen table. Larz, my shadow. I guess he was my bodyguard, but at some point, he had also become my friend. He loved Eli’s childish jokes which encouraged Eli all the more. I guess after a few weeks of enduring the endless supply of puns, I was beginning to enjoy them a little, too.

“Okay,” Eli grumbled loudly. He paused the game and swung around to face me, his face as serious as a seven-year-old’s face could be. “What happened to the blind skunk? He fell in love with a fart.” He didn’t even give me a chance to speak. “Why did Tigger stick his head in the toilet? Cause he was looking for Pooh. You wanna know what’s really brave?” I nodded. “Farting when you have diarrhea.”

“Eli,” Larz chuckled, trying hard to chastise Eli over the flatulence and feces jokes, but failing miserably.

I shook my head but one corner of my mouth had rebelled against my sullen reign. Eli smiled, and his little dimples made me want to sigh. He really was adorable with his big brown doe eyes, curly brown hair, and smooth skin. And he was smart, too smart.

“Who told you that one?” Larz asked.

“Dillon,” Eli said, no hesitation in giving up his source.

“Your mom is going to skin him alive when she hears what he’s been telling you,” said Larz, the ever responsible father figure.

“Nu-huh. She doesn’t know, and I’m not going to tell her.”

“What makes you think Em and I won’t tell her?”

Eli rolled his eyes. “Cause Em doesn’t talk, and you like to drive Braiden’s car too much. If you snitch, Mom will get angry with Dillon, and when Dillon finds out you snitched, he won’t let you drive Braiden’s car anymore.”

Wow, he had really thought that through.

“Speaking of Mom...” The lock on the door rattled and soon after pushed open. I had no idea how Larz knew she was about to enter. I swear the guy could hear a fly buzzing a room away.

“MOM!” Eli shouted. He jumped off the couch and ran into his mom’s waiting arms.

The unfolding scene sent a pang of yearning straight to my heart. The love between a mother and child was something I would never get to experience. Seeing Eli and his mom together made that realization all the more real. I abruptly stood and grabbed my coat off the back of the couch. Sensing my unease, Larz stood, too.

“You two want to stay for dinner?” Annie asked, Eli’s arms still wrapped securely around her waist.

She was a beautiful woman. She had recently turned thirty, however, she looked much younger. Her skin was soft with barely a wrinkle, and there was a splattering of freckles across her nose. Her eyes were a honey gold, and her shoulder length hair was a dark chocolate brown. She had that girl girl-next-door beauty that men were drawn to. I wasn’t jealous of her looks though. I was jealous of what she had with Eli.

“No, Rebecca and Charlie are double dating with Jax and Ella tonight. I promised Rebecca we would drop by Bouquets before they went out. She wanted to see Em for something.”

It was the first I had heard about this, but I didn’t stomp my feet and throw a hissy fit for being the last to be informed. Oh, I wanted to, but I hadn’t earned the right. I could barely keep my shit together long enough to appear normal. I needed a great deal of help in the organizational department of my life. I was grateful for Larz and B, who seemed to keep things flowing in an almost flawless fashion.

After we said our quick goodbyes, I slid into the passenger seat of Larz’s Jeep. It was snowing outside. It was November and the holidays were quickly approaching. This would be my first real Christmas in ten years. I say first, because the ones that I had spent with Jonas were best forgotten.

“You think you will marry again and have more kids, Larz?” I found myself asking.

“Nope,” he said frankly.

“Why not?” Well, wasn’t I just in a chatty mood.

Larz raised a brow obviously curious about my conversational skills today. I rarely uttered more than I had to.

“It’s just unlikely. Plus I’m already forty-five, and these days they put you out to pasture at forty.” I could almost see the cogs turning in his brain. “What about you? You think about marriage? Family?”

I had no intention of delving into the whole explanation of why I was barren. “Do you honestly think there is a man alive that is capable of dealing with the fucked up life that is mine?” I asked vacantly.

“Your life won’t always be fucked up, Em, and you are young. There is plenty of time for you to have all that.”

I snorted, unladylike and rude. Jonas would be horrified and the thought almost made me smile. “I assure you, Larz, I won’t live a long life.”

He blanched and gave me a hard stare. “Why on earth would you say that?”

I shrugged. “Jonas had me whipped and raped, then he gifted me to his drug addicted, woman beating son, and that was just for biting one of his VIP clients on the dick. I’ve spent hours, if not weeks talking to the FBI, they are methodically destroying his empire because of me. Do you honestly think that he will allow me to get away with destroying his dirty kingdom?”

Larz’s hands gripped the steering wheel so tight his knuckles turned white. I sighed. I didn’t mean to upset him. He didn’t deserve me unloading that kind of shit on him.

“Finished with the pity party?” Larz murmured. It was my turn to blanch. “You were handed a rough deal, Em, more than a rough deal. Words can’t express how shitty your deal was. No human being should ever have to endure what you went through. But you’re here, you’re alive. You are strong, a hell of a lot stronger than Jonas Levier. And when you finally come to accept that, you’ll realize he has no hold on you anymore. You can be whoever you want to be, and if that is a wife and a mother, then more power to you.” He gave me a quick glance before turning his ever watchful gaze back out the windshield. “I may not have known you your whole life, Em, but you are like a daughter to me. I wasn’t there for my girls. I chose my career over fatherhood, and I’ve paid for that mistake. But I am not leaving you. You have my protection and friendship, always. I will forever be honest with you, honey, and trust me when I say, the only person who has the power to truly defeat Jonas is you. Whether he dies or not, you are responsible for how far that son-of-a-bitch can reach you. You can allow him to direct and rule every decision you make from here on out, or you can lay those demons to rest and take charge of your life.”

I swallowed the harsh truth Larz had just dished out. “I want to kill him,” I finally breathed, my fists clenched. It wasn’t a rhetorical statement. It was the pure, God’s honest truth. I not only wanted to kill him, I needed to. I needed Jonas Levier powerless, for him to see me with all the power. I needed for him to see the strength that Larz saw in me. I needed this one thing, and then maybe my life could move forward.

“I get that, honey, but you might never get the chance. You can’t live the remainder of your life hungering for something that might never come.”

The silence that fell over us was not uncomfortable. I was used to Larz’s silence just as he was used to mine.

***

As we pushed through the doors of Mercy’s Angels, I immediately located Rebecca sitting with Charlie, Jax and Ella. They sat on one of the cozy lounges in front of Annie’s cafe, laughing loudly and easily. It reminded me of the TV sitcom,
Friends
, which as a teenager was without a doubt my favorite show ever. The couples sitting around chatting didn’t resemble any of the characters from that show though. Jaxon Carter was huge and intimidating, but his personality was a total contradiction. He was gentle and sweet, his smile genuine and warm. He sat with his girlfriend, Ella, drawn under the comforting warmth of his arm. Ella was the polar opposite of Jax as far as looks were concerned. Her hair was long, black and dead straight, her eyes were accented with a hint of what I thought was Asian ancestry, and her skin was soft and pale. She was tiny, like a little doll you wanted to slip in your pocket and keep safe. I knew Ella had a past that sometimes echoed in the depths of her dark eyes, and the faint scars on her arms told stories that I wasn’t entitled to know yet. I might never know, but I didn’t need to. Just seeing her scars made me empathetic towards her. Rebecca leaned forward and placed her hands on Ella’s small protruding belly. The action squeezed at my heart. Ella was four months pregnant and just beginning to show. Even if she wasn’t showing, the glow in her cheeks and pride in her man’s eyes was sign enough that this couple was headed for the adventure of a lifetime. Seeing Rebecca’s easy relationship with Ella sent a pang of jealousy straight into my heart. I wanted that ease with my sister, but I felt I wasn’t entitled to that either. I had left her alone in Claymont. I had brought the Levier men’s hate into our lives. I couldn’t help but think Rebecca must be disappointed in me.

Charlie turned his head a little and saw me standing there, staring at them. Larz had disappeared to a table in the corner where another of the Montgomery staff sat sipping coffee. Drew was a big son-of-a-bitch, his face scarred in a way that made him look menacing. I noticed the big warrior’s eyes settle on Lola, who was sitting at the Bouquets counter, her attention completely focused on a newspaper. Lola did that a lot. In fact, Rebecca mentioned it was a daily ritual for her. She spent hours poring over the paper as if searching for something special, which she never seemed to find. There was a story there, in the girl whose entire wardrobe was dipped in the color emo. Her gaze was always cautious, she looked over her shoulder often, and perused the paper with manic intent. I had a feeling Drew had picked up on her well hidden nerves, too. His eyes always lingered on the sullen girl as if trying to work out a curious puzzle. I glanced back at Charlie who gave me his token goofball smile before tapping Rebecca on the shoulder. My sister noticed me and jumped to her feet. Her smile was flawless. Her beauty was radiant. She took my hand and pulled me to a table and chairs on the far side of the cafe. At one time, such an innocent touch would send me into a panic attack. Not anymore though. I didn’t enjoy being touched, but I could handle something small like this. Rebecca slid into a chair, and I sat in the one opposite her.

“How was your day?” she began.

I shrugged. “It was okay. I hung out with Eli this afternoon.”

“Annie told me you and Larz were over there. He’s a good kid. I think she’s worried he might be a little jealous over Ella’s pregnancy though. He’s been the only kid on the block and gets all the attention. Baby Carter isn’t even here yet, and he’s already beginning to steal some of the limelight.” My sister was rambling. She only did this if she was nervous.

“What’s wrong?”

B sighed and glanced toward Larz and Drew. It was a comical sight; the two big powerful men sipping coffee in silence.

“Braiden is back,” she finally offered.

The air was sucked out of my lungs, and my heart flipped over and thumped loudly in my chest. A thousand different emotions bombarded me all at once, the most prominent being Jonas.

“They found him?” I managed to squeeze through my lips.

B shook her head. “They haven’t. Dillon says they need to stop pushing and wait for him to come out of his hole, wherever that is. When he does, they’ll make a move on him.”

I kept my hands still, years of practice hiding my emotions behind a wall of indifference held firmly in place. On the inside I was fuming. Braiden had left me to take out Jonas, to make my life safe. I needed him and he left me. And it was all for nothing. He hadn’t even been able to find Jonas. I could have told him he wouldn’t find him. Braiden alone wouldn’t have sent Jonas into hiding, but as soon as the FBI started asking questions a few months ago, Jonas would have vanished faster than a virgin on prom night. He had the money and power to do so. While his clubs were still paying the bills, his underground clubs that provided unwilling, young girls and women for men who liked to hurt and dominate, would have vanished along with the man himself.