Page 19 of These Deadly Vows

Taco and Stray don’t even try for him. They know better.

And after tonight, this bitch will learn her place too.

I don’t like to share, and I’m not about to start now.

The sound of the knife hitting the cement patio rings in my head. My father sits slumped back. Blood dried to his chin. All life drained from him.

I thought I’d want to scream. To cry. To punch my husband right in the face, but I’m clinging to that numbness. To feeling nothing at all. Because if I let in the pain, I’ll never escape it. I won’t survive the weight of what I just did.

Carved out my father’s heart for his enemy. If he were still breathing, he’d tell me he dug his own grave by the choices he made. A violent end for a violent man. This was the life he chose. Not me.

Ghost offers me no comfort. And like the night my mother died, thunder booms in the distance. I hope it’s a sign that they’ve found each other on the other side.

I smile at the thought. That somewhere in the universe they’re dancing again. I imagine them how I last saw them at one of their many parties. When I’d sneak out of bed and peer at them below. Peeking between the banister slats to witness him twirling her around the floor in one of her fancy dresses. She loved dressing up. Loved how he only had eyes for her.

I thought they were the fairytale.

I’d sit on their bed and watch her sit at the vanity to do her makeup. Making note of every product and every step. Down to how many dabs of perfume she wore and where she placed each one. Counting how many seconds she’d rub her inner wrists together. Precisely three seconds. No more, no less. She was beautiful, and I wanted nothing more than to be her.

To grow up and fall in love with a man who would love me that intensely.

That we’d only have eyes for each other like my parents.

Then the curtain was drawn back, and I learned that most of it was all lies built on the bones of men my father murdered.

Only when the rain pelts my skin, washing away the blood of my father along with my sins, do I turn my back on his lifeless body. I walk into the flames of Hell with my head held high.

I did what he wanted. Gave him an honorable death at the hands of the one person other than my mother he loved most in this world.

Me.

The daughter he never wanted because he was never granted the love of a son.

I was his burden and now I am his end.

In every end comes a new beginning.

Some would call this tragic, while others might say it’s poetry in motion.

That it’s life.

The way things are supposed to happen.

I don’t know what I believe.

All I can do is focus on taking my next few breaths without crumbling. Because if I think about anything else I may take a run and go at the balcony so I can find my mother in the next life.

So I can ask her if this is the life she wanted for me.

I already know the answer to that question.

No. Which is why I need to fight for one she would have wished for me.

The bikers. The members of Ghost’s club gaze at me with respect. Not that I care what they think of me.

Ghost owns me now.

My prints are on the bloody knife used to kill my father and likely Roberto.

---