Page 63 of Whips and Chains
One by one, you’ll all be departed.
She slipped through my trap, but only just barely.
Next time, I won’t be playing so fairly.
Next time we play, she won’t be so clever.
You’ll beg for her life.
I’ll end it forever.”
The silence that dragged out after I read the last line felt like it lasted forever. Until Violet choked out a laugh. She coughed, but the laughter didn’t stop. It turned hysterical while I watched her, just wanting to wrap her in my arms and hold her and tell her everything was okay.
Except she wouldn’t welcome my touch.
And absolutely nothing was okay.
She laughed until tears streamed down her face. “Well, that’s just great, isn’t it? Just fucking fabulous.”
She spun around in a circle, then tipped her head up to the sky. “Come get me then, you asshole! You’re always watching me, aren’t you? Stop playing these fucking games and just come get me if you want me that badly!”
None of us said anything
There was no comforting her. No reassuring words to say that weren’t out-and-out lies.
None of us were safe.
Especially not her.
Whip drove back to Saint View in silence. I knew tomorrow we would have to return. To find shops or houses that might have some video surveillance we could watch. Something that might give us some sort of ID on who was driving that van, though I was already certain the license plates would come up as stolen.
And we still had our target to hunt down.
But the night was rapidly turning into day. None of us had slept. Violet was bleeding, though she wouldn’t let anyone touchher to address the cut on her head. We dropped Nyah off at a shitty little house not far from Whip’s place, and all four of us left in the car watched like hawks as she crossed the patchy lawn and let herself inside with a key that was hidden in a planter box.
I let out a grunt of disapproval at her lack of security, which only pissed Violet off more.
“Her things are still at Psychos. She left everything there to come help me. Sorry she doesn’t have her keys on her.”
“Doesn’t change the fact, leaving a spare in the planter right next to her door is dangerous,” I muttered.
She glared at me. “Anyone ever tell you you’re as bad as a helicopter parent? Is there anything you don’t find dangerous?”
Yeah. Her, tucked up in my bed at the clubhouse, with the door locked and my brothers on patrol, behind the imposing metal gates and the new security surveillance system that had been installed once the guys all started settling down with women and babies.
That was where I wanted Violet. And until she was there, safe and sound, I was gonna fucking hover.
Whip cleared his throat. “I’ve got to take Levi and X back to Psychos to get their vehicles anyway. I’ll get her things and deliver them back to her in the morning.” He glanced at the time, that read nearly 4:00 a.m. “Well, later in the morning anyway.”
“Thank you,” she told him sincerely. Offering him a half-smile.
Seriously? All I got was scowls and blazing anger, and he got smiles?
I was being a grump and I knew it, but this wasn’t what I wanted. It wasn’t the life I’d dreamed of having with her. I was supposed to get a job, a house on a quiet street, in a decent neighborhood where kids rode their bikes after school.
It wasn’t going to be a fancy life, but it would be honest and sweet because she was next to me.
And somehow I seemed to have set the whole thing on fucking fire.
