Page 50 of Eden's Joker

Tyler stops kissing me and jerks away. I instinctively follow with my lips before I remember what’s actually happening. For the few moments while his lips were on mine, I clean forgot where I am and why I’m here. To die. At the hands of the man I thought I could love forever.

“You really don’t know who I am, do you, Ice?” Tyler asks.

“You’re a dead man. That’s all I need to know.”

Tyler laughs harshly. “Remember Satan’s Spawn MC?”

Ice’s face freezes for a moment.

“They’re all dead men too!”

“I know,” Tyler said. “My father was Seven, I’m sure you remember him. And I’m the kid in the backseat who had to watch you butcher him and my mother.”

My father’s breath hitches in his throat. I can tell he remembers that very clearly and I can tell it’s something he regrets.

“It’s my turn now,” Tyler says. “I’ll make you watch as I kill your precious daughter.”

“No!” Ice yells. I’ve never heard such desperation in his voice. “Take me. I’m the one you want. Eden had nothing to do with any of that.”

“She’s your spawn. She doesn’t get to live because she should never have been born.”

“She’s innocent!”

Tyler just laughs harshly again, but I can tell he’s faking it. I can kind of hear the pain underneath it all. The pain that led to me being here and my father begging for my life.

“Let her go and I’ll come to you,” Ice says.

Tyler shakes his head. “No deal. Your time will come.”

Then he ends the call and turns off the phone.

After all that, the silence in the room is heavy and thick, making it hard to breathe. He’s looking at the far wall, his eyes unfocused so I’m sure he’s not actually seeing it.

“I’m sorry that happened to you,” I hear myself say.

He snaps his head in my direction, his eyes blazing with that rageful, killing light again.

“And you actually mean that.”

“I do.” It wasn’t a question, but I answered it anyway. “No child should have to see a thing like that.”

He scoffs and stands up, the knife hanging loosely by his side.

“You won’t be saying these kinds of things once all this is done. And I promise that you won’t mean them,”he says and strides to the door. “Sweet dreams. Enjoy them while they last.”

And with that he plunges me back into darkness and locks me in this room. I don’t know what to believe anymore. My heart is telling me one thing about him, my head another and none of it is making any sense.

A part of me wishes he’d just go ahead and do all he’s threatened to do to me, so I could finally know. And I know no sane person would think that. But here I am. My body screaming for his touch, my heart aching for his loss and my brain not putting a stop to any of that as it should. I’m not just weird, I’m insane.

28

Joker

Between her inability to show even a hint of fear, having to relive the events that brought her here in the first place, and her apologizing for it, I lost all taste for her blood tonight. Or maybe it was all just because of the kiss. The way she leaned into me. The way she kissed me back. I never planned on that happening.

Sarge left when I arrived, but Scorpio is still on the porch, sitting in one of the rocking chairs, which creaks like a dying pig every time he moves. He’s nursing a bottle of bourbon and it probably won’t be the last tonight.

He takes a long look at my face as I approach.

---