Page 76 of Disturbed Lucidity

Holding the noose in my hands, I ran my fingers over the intricate knots, frowning as something about the design bothered me. “Logic, you’re the rope play expert here. Have you seen a knot like this before?”

Handing him the noose, he looked at it, inspecting the design intently. Frowning, he muttered, “It’s familiar. Old in design. Almost has a Chinese look to it. I can hit the books, but I’m gonna need time. There is something oddly familiar about this knot, but until I know where it originated from and what its actual purpose is, I won’t speculate.”

Sighing, I nodded. “See what you can find out about it. And for fuck’s sake, don’t let Ivy see that you have that thing. Once we know what that knot means, I want that thing destroyed. Got me?”

“Understood.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

Ivy

“I wrote something,” I muttered, looking about the room.

I hadn’t quite been myself since that fucking detective showed up and started asking shit I didn’t want to talk about. Now, I had Luc, Gunny, and Slash all on my ass about sitting down and talking shit out.

I didn’t want to talk anymore.

I was tired of talking.

I wanted to grab my backpack and just get the fuck out of there. Apparently, Slash knew that would be my first response, so he took my backpack and flat-out refused to give it back. According to him, he was tired of my running. He wanted me to stay and figure this shit out. That and he promised Gladys that he would watch over me.

She called me the other day.

She was happy that I was finally sitting down and talking with someone about all my issues. I didn’t have the heart to tell her I glazed over most of it. She sounded so happy on the phone. I didn’t want to put a damper on her happiness.

So, I lied.

Well, I didn’t really lie. I just didn’t tell her the whole truth.

I also no longer had my apartment.

While I’d been lost in my head, Luc and the others had cleared out my apartment and moved me into the clubhouse. I guess on some level, I eventually knew that would happen. I just thought I would have a say in the matter. Luc told me it was for my protection. I thought that was a bullshit excuse, but I didn’t have the energy to fight with him about it. The fact was, I had been protecting myself since I was fourteen years old. I was damn good at it, though everyone here seemed to forget that fact.

They seemed to have everything figured out.

Problem was, I already had the shit figured out.

Devlin Scott, my biological father, knew where I was, and he was coming for me. I fucking knew it, yet no one believed me.

For some reason, they weren’t worried. Of course they wouldn’t be. They weren’t the ones who truly knew him.

I did.

I knew exactly what he was capable of.

“I’d like to hear what you wrote. If you want to share?” Logic said.

Looking at him, I reached into my back pocket and pulled out a small sheet of paper.

I don’t know why I wrote it. Just that I had.

I couldn’t remember the last time I wrote anything. Hell, I didn’t learn to write until Gladys sat down and taught me. How strange was that? Teaching a sixteen-year-old girl to read and write for the first time? Poor woman must have thought I was the stupidest kid on the planet. Hell, maybe I was, but I learned, and once I got the hang of it, I couldn’t stop. Learning became a compulsion for me. I absorbed everything I could get my hands on, and before I knew it, I was reading and writing at college level.

Gladys had me tested at one of the community colleges when I was almost twenty-one, thinking I had learned enough to take a class or two, but I showed them. Every test, every exam, everything they put before me, I passed. One of the school psychologists theorized that the trauma I’d suffered somehow allowed my mind to absorb information at a high rate, thereby opening doors that were thought to be closed.

I thought the idiot was grasping at straws.

Gladys, well, she believed him and pushed me to learn as much as I could.

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