Page 76 of Biker's Tribute: Property of Bear

I raise an eyebrow. Mallory has always been the crazier one between the two of us.

“I’m not.”

“You haven’t exactly tried very hard to get away from him.”

“Mallory!”

“You made it over here tonight. So no doubt, he screwed up but… I don’t think you would care unless you liked him.”

“Ethan is a total pig.”

“Who would do anything to protect you and has an insanely perfect body.”

“Life isn’t just about that.”

“He also moved you to a nicer part of Boston and he simps around you all the time like a lost puppy. You literally have a 6’5” bad boy wrapped around your finger. Most women can’t even get their vibrator to keep a charge. It’s so bad the robots have turned against us.”

Mallory’s complaint is suspiciously specific but… she has a point about Ethan moving for me and the way he looks at me. I’ve caught him giving me that lost puppy look a few times.

“Okay…”

“Do you love him?”

“Mallory!”

“What? It’s better than talking about my shitty ass family?”

Mallory sighs and then chews on her lower lip. I feel the weight of her secret and sense that her fear is totally genuine, even if I don’t know the depths of the story. It makes sense that we were drawn to each other. We both have our own reasons for seeking distance from our families.

“I’m sorry,” I muster up eventually. Because I’m still nursing my own surprise and unsure how you comfort her friend that her mob family apparently wants to murder people in her life – possibly her.

“The mob is extremely sexist,” Mallory says. “My father wanted to marry me off to some dickhead twice my age when I turned eighteen. My brothers inherited cars and office buildings and strip clubs… but I was nothing more than an object to be sold.”

She sips more wine. I’ll need some more too if I want to hold space for her without making this situation about the shock I still feel from finding out about my best friend’s family secret.

“You made it out though,” I offer her. “And if you did it once, you can do it again.”

“True,” she says. “But I… If my dad wants me back, there must be a reason for it, because I’ve been gone twenty years.”

And she says he killed her mother. Geez. I don’t know how anyone could forgive that.I put a hand on Mallory’s forearm. Tears well up again, but she tries to suppress them.

“I was so stupid to think I could ever get away. I grew up in that life. With a dad who missed Christmas dinner so he could go rip fingers off his enemies. They talked about life like it was cheap. All they cared about was money and power… I don’t want to face it, Amanda.”

“Do you know what they want with you? Is it something that… I don’t know, maybe something a lawyer could handle?”

It might sound slightly dumb, but mob families operate at least partly above the law. Even Ethan’s criminal friends must have their legitimate businesses, otherwise we wouldn’t have our apartment or the one we stayed at with Deb out in Brooklyn.

“I don’t know if they want me for revenge or for some other purpose. But the night before I left… my own father organized for my future husband to rape me. Ineverwant to see him again.”

“Then we’ll leave Boston. We can take the practice with us and…”

Mallory shudders and buries her face in her hands. “We can’t. We can’t. Because they know my name. They’ll always have this power to find me and hunt me down either through my job or my name. It’s too late.”

“What do you mean, Mallory?”

“I either go alone or I go back to them.”

I hear a loud thud from outside Mallory’s front door. I flinch, but she’s too drunk to notice the sound at first.

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