Page 18 of Protector

Now, I’d kill any motherfucker who got in my way.

“Jamie?” Lucy tried again.

I shook off my thoughts and nodded to her. “Go on. I’ll stay with her.”

The blue paint on the wall taunted me as I kicked off my boots, nagging me with the feeling that there was something I was missing.

After ensuring that Celia was still asleep, I walked around to the other side of the bed and knelt down, my knees crackling in protest.

I’d been twenty-two when we went up against the Serpents the first time, and twenty-six when we ambushed Los Dictadores.

Thirty-six might as well have been a hundred, with the miles I’d put on my body since then.

Instead of sitting with the club and coming up with a plan to end the men responsible before they made it out of the state, I was crawling around on the bloodstained carpet, searching for missing paint like a fucking idiot.

“Fuck me,” I groaned, before reaching up to switch on the bedside lamp. Shadows danced across the walls as I shifted onto my forearms, but besides a few cobwebs, nothing stuck out.

I spread my arms out at my sides and lowered my head until my chin was resting against the carpet while contemplating again why I’d felt indulging Celia’s hallucinations was necessary.

My shoulders ached from the position, and I stretched just as a flash of something under the nightstand caught my eye. Ice flooded my veins, and I froze, straining to get a better look, before shifting forward.

There was the missing paint, clear as day. It hadn’t been some drug-induced illusion after all.

I rocked back a few inches, and the wall appeared to be blue again. When I rolled my hips forward again, the bare spot came back into view, and everything suddenly clicked into place.

Angel refusing to look me in the eyes…

Lucy’s wariness…

“Oh, Jesus,” I whispered, mashing the back of my hand to my mouth to stifle the sob. Cold sweat ran down my back as images invaded my mind. I knew that I’d never feel a fraction of the physical pain they’d put her through, but emotionally, I’d been shoved into a garbage disposal.

It hadn’t been just a beating.

They’d taken something from her; something we’d never get back. It didn’t matter if I hunted every last one of them down, they’d scarred her from the inside out, and those marks would never fade.

How could we ever come back from this?

I bolted into the bathroom and fell to my knees in front of the toilet, unable to shake the images of her being violated.

I’d done that to her.

Just as much as them.

As my muscles spasmed in grief, my body purged what my mind never would. The darkness I’d tried to hide for years resurfaced, stronger than ever before.

Mikey.

Celia.

Katy.

Dakota.

How had I ever believed that I deserved them?

I was a killer; had been since the night I sent my old man to the Reaper. As much as I’d wanted a family, I’d always known that a depraved fuck like me would never get a happily-ever-after.

Helplessness sucked the air from my lungs with the realization that I’d never been a husband or a father.

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