Page 17 of Merciless

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MAVERICK

“Hi, you’ve reached Alana. I’m too busy to talk to you right now. Leave a message, and if you’re lucky, I might call you back.”

“ARGH,” I roar, barely controlling my need to launch my cell across the room. “Where the fuck are you?”

Concern for my wife rushes through my veins.

Sure, it’s not the first time she’s been late coming home. She’s nothing if not a loose cannon at the best of times. But it’s almost sunrise and she is not here.

My heart pounds as I pace back and forth through our living room.

Our home isn’t much. A cabin in the woods on the edge of Harrow Creek. I bought it not long after she came into my life to give her some peace, and most importantly, distance.

I've known Alana all my life. Our fathers have always been good friends, which meant that as kids, we spent time together. I preferred her to the others. To Reid Harris and his brothers, who arrogantly spent their time ensuring I was aware that in terms of Harrow Creek royalty, they’d always be above me.

I didn’t need the fucking reminder. I knew the pecking order. But I also knew whose orders I needed to follow, and it wasn’t theirs.

All my life, I’ve been looked down on by them, despite the fact I’m older than them and experienced everything first.

Everything about life as a Hawk.

I’m pretty sure I was born with a hawk inked onto my back. From as early as I can remember, it was all my father talked about. He was so proud to have had a son who could follow in his footsteps. And then when Reid arrived a few years later, Dad and Victor got this great idea in their heads that we could be the next generation of them. Working side by side to continue their twisted legacy.

Just one problem though. Neither of us can stand the other.

He’s an entitled, twisted douchebag. And fuck knows what he thinks of me. It ain’t good, whatever it is.We’ve spent all our lives butting heads and throwing punches and barbed insults at each other.

But Alana. The girl with the beautiful light blue eyes and a soft smile that can light up a room… I was enthralled with her from a very young age.

While I felt like I was stuck in the dark, having every single one of my puppet strings pulled by Dad and Victor, she was this free spirit who was yet to be tainted by the world.

If only I knew the truth…

But it just goes to show that you never know what’s going on behind closed doors. And as a child, and then a young adult, I had no fucking clue what Alana’s life was really like.

The night her father put the call out that she’d run away, I was in the middle of a job. But the fear of Victor’s wrath wasn’t enough to stop me from doing an about-turn and abandoning it. Fuck the stupid Hawk who decided to make use of the goods he was selling. If I was lucky, he’d OD on the shit. And if not, then he’d still be around tomorrow. Someone who’s stealing the product and getting away with it would be an idiot to give it up.

And thank fuck I did because no sooner had I driven back into Harrow Creek did I find a slim figure trying to escape.

I couldn’t believe my luck. I was terrified that her father, or worse, Victor, would have been the one to pick her up.

By the time I was an adult, the façade about her life had been more than shattered.

She wasn’t a girl who caught my attention more than she should, seeing as she was a kid and I was a man. She was a girl who was suffering.

I was also no longer naïve to the kinds of activities my father and his friends embarked on.

What they did. How they treated women, young women, turned my stomach. And I was determined to somehow do something about it. I had no idea how, but the second I saw her spot me and run, I knew it needed to start with her.

I didn’t know the depth of her secrets, her abuse, but I knew she needed me. And I had every intention, for once, to be the hero.

Even if she didn’t want me to be.

Lifting my cell again, I wake it up and hit call.

Maybe this time will be the time she answers.

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