Page 47 of A Brother's Secret

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20

Amalia…

Something like nine or ten hours after the showdown, we pulled into some fucking town I’d never heard of, Ft. Royal, fucking Florida. I’d been pissed; but now, six weeks later, the place almost felt like it could be home except for one thing.

NoKyle.

Like I said, I’d been fucking pissed when we’d gotten here. Angry with Reaver, pissed off with this new set of biker assholes The Kraken, and ready to fucking punch something. That something had been Reaver at first, but that hadn’t quite worked out, then to add insult to injury, the Kraken Prez’s ol’ lady, Hope had steppedup.

She whooped my ass before I could snarl anything about her ol’man having a flaccid cock. I’d been on the ground quicker than lightning, in a joint lock that could have – and would have – busted my elbow if I’d moved and that’d cooled me off a bit. When they’d disarmed me and were sure I wasn’t going to try anything, they’d let meup.

I didn’t cry, but it was a near thing. I was just that angry.

They’d put me on a secure face time call with Kyle who looked like he was so full of hurt, fear, and regret, my anger had chilled the rest of the way, which just turned it back on itself and pissed me off a whole newway.

“Mad at me?”he’d asked, and I’d felt utterly defeated in the face of it. He knew. He’d always known. The only man, the only person on the planet who knew me better than I knew myself and he still had it… even after all thattime.

A blur of turquoise and white dropped onto the low rock wall next to me, blurting out, “Hey, whatcha thinkin’?” I startled and knocked off my sightless staring and looked over at Faith, the ol’ lady to The Kraken’sVP.

“About the night I gothere.”

She grinned and knocked her shoulder into mine and sighed, “And?”

“Still pissed,” I said wrinkling my nose impishly. It’d become a running joke now, but I still felt bitter and tumultuous over it. Mostly because I missed him. It wasn’t fair. We’d only just found each other again to be separated and I still didn’t know how to feel about the fact that he didn’t trust me enough to tell me the plan. “But he was right.” the little voice, ever-present in the back of my mind, whispered.

Of course, he was. Still, it didn’t mean I had to fucking likeit.

“I love you, baby, but I need to focus on thispart…”

I closed my eyes. We hadn’t been able to talk much since that night. Mostly when we did talk, it was via text messaging, again, through secure accounts and shit. The setup on my end had been provided courtesy of The Kraken’s technically inclined guru, Radar. I kind of had to admit at that point that these bikers weren’t assholes either.

“Sorry,” I muttered, realizing I’d gone back inside my own head and had completely missed whatever Faith had just said tome.

“It’s okay,” she murmured, always patient, alwayskind.

I sighed harshly and shook my head, “No, it’s reallynot…”

“It is!” she insisted, sweeping her long, blonde, beachy waves over one shoulder and pulling them through her hands. She smiled at me, “I have a hard enough time being away from Marlin when he goes on a fishing trip longer than a day without me, I couldn’t imagine six weeks away fromhim.”

I nodded, then shook my head again. “We only just found each other.” I sighed and apologized again, standing up. “Sorry, I’m really just not in the mood or the best company right now,” I toldher.

“Hey, no, I get it. I still have my bad days, too.” I could believe it, her turquoise eyes the color of the water around here, were always slightly haunted. Her sister Hope had filled me in some on that over one too many beers one night. While I couldn’t exactly relate, I could relate; if that made sense. While free, I’d still been in an extended captivity, and I knew what sexual assault felt like, even if I didn’t classify what’d happened to me as rape, it was… I mean… yeah. I tried to cover up my deep and dirty thoughts with some forced levity.

“One of these days I’m going to get you to ‘fess up and tell me, ‘Yeah, Mali, you’re totally being a whiny bitch!’”

She laughed, “Well, not today, I’m afraid.”

“I’m going to go for aswim.”

“Sure, dinner should be up in an hour or so, though.”

I nodded and trudged through the soft sand down to the shore. When I got there, I unknotted the sari wrap at my hip and let it flutter to the sand. Kicking out of my thongs, I walked barefoot the rest of the way into the water.

Swimming helped to both pass the time and keep me fit, and while I would have never swum in the Chesapeake back in Indigo City, that was mostly due to the combination of the water temperatures being too cold and the fear of pollution, being near a major metropolis.

Speaking of Indigo City, in a major twist of fate and fat irony, three weeks back it’d been plastered all over the news. The Boyle Irish crime family had all but fucking collapsed. Arrests were being made left and right and there was a mountain of state’s evidence against them. Everything from drug to human trafficking. I’d had to shake my head. Leave it to my dad to fucking hide us right under their damn noses… Of course, if you really wanted to hide something, you had to do it in plain sight.

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