CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Bocca
I had glided in and out of the shadows long enough to see that bad shit happened. And on more occasions than not, bad shit happened to good people. I’d seen it. Been around for the aftermath of it. As well as the cleanup of it. I’d hurt people. Tortured them. Left them for days chained up in the basement. I’d even killed people. I might not have done it with a smile on my face and a song in my heart like some people, but at the end of the day, I was still able to look in the mirror and like the man I saw there.
I was only able to do that because I knew that I was snuffing out the monsters that lurked in the darkness. That the souls I set free would no longer be able to harm people. I wouldn’t have said that I lived for it, but I definitely didn’t turn my back on an opportunity when it came around.
I had never really had demons that I needed to shake. Or things that kept my soul wrapped in an empty, pained darkness. I’d never had triggers for things in life that made me shut down or avoid certain situations.
I was as close to normal and untouched as one could be, in a way.
But that was different now. Because I had all of those things and maybe a few more. I had sleepless nights. I had screams that filled my head even when my eyes were open. I was haunted by the wild look of a girl whose life was taken even before they killed her right in front of me.
No amount of running would get me away from those things.
They were there, stuck in my head, sewn into my soul, tattooed onto my heart. Permanent. Scarring.
Though I hadn’t been the one to do those horrible things, I still felt that I was responsible for it all. All those girls that suffocated and burned in those tiny cages. All the girls that were probably getting snatched right off the street even as I took my next breath. The girl with the broken soul. It was on me. I’d gone in there to stop it and instead, I made it worse. There was nothing anyone could say or do that would convince me otherwise.
I had been putting on a brave face for a month now but it was starting to wear on me. The looks that my brothers constantly shot my way when they didn’t think I noticed weren’t helping either. Their women that tried so hard to be sweet and kind to me, ended up making me feel worse at the end of the day. I didn’t deserve their pity or their sympathy. I maybe didn’t even deserve their love. Did they really know what I’d done? How much of it that I was responsible for? I would bet they didn’t. Not only because it was club business and we didn’t share that shit, not even with our women, but because if they did know, I had a feeling they wouldn’t see me the same. They wouldn’t come around to try to cheer me up. They wouldn’t go out of their way to ask if I was okay. And I wouldn’t even blame them a single fucking bit.
I was a mess. For the first time in my life I was truly lost and without control. While I understood the technical terms and diagnosis for what I was going through, it did me no fucking good when I was the one that was in the thick of it. It was like standing in front of a train, only your feet were nailed to the tracks. I knew what was going on only I couldn’t do anything about it.
I didn’t know how to deal with it. There was nothing that I could do to change the situation, the outcome. And so I realized the only thing I could do was find acceptance. But how could one accept that they were responsible for such things? That they were the one that set the whole thing in motion?
The if onlys kept whispering themselves in my head whenever I was alone.
If only I hadn’t gone in there.
If only I had pushed for help from my brothers.
If only I hadn’t let them get the best of me.
That was it. They had gotten the best of me. They had stripped me down and used me like a cheap toy.
It hurt my pride, sure. But that wasn’t even it.
The more the days passed, the more I tried to climb out of my hole. And the more I tried to climb out, the more the darkness sucked me back under. It was a sickening, exhausting, vicious cycle, one that I knew I couldn’t stop fighting against. Because I knew better than anyone, the moment I did, I’d be lost forever. That was the thing, I didn’t want that outcome. Knowing that, I pushed even harder.
Focus on the good things.
See the light that surrounds you.
Control your own destiny…and all that shit.
Simple enough, right? It should have been, because I had a shit-ton of good things in my life. I did. And I knew that. Something I vowed never to take for granted and I didn’t think I ever had. I had a family to be there for the good times and watch my back for the bad. Not to get all soft, but I had love and support everywhere I turned. Even if it was hard right now and all I wanted to do was turn my back and hide because I didn’t think I was that decent man that they saw me as.
Maybe in life, the real struggle was accepting the good things you had around you. Accepting that it could be real. Accept that there was such a thing as unconditional love and that maybe the strength of that only could help carry me from my own personal hell.
As I tossed and turned each night, I tried my hardest to focus on that, on the good things that I had in my life, whether I felt that I deserved them right now or not.
Then there was Rosemarie. The balance to all the shit going on in my head. The beauty in the whole situation. It drove me even more crazy. Thoughts of her helped pull me out of the darkness more than not. I wondered half the time if I was just using her as a crutch. If I was holding her captive in the foreground of my mind to avoid all the other things circulating in my brain.
But that didn’t explain the smile that tugged at my lips at every image of her that popped up. Or the little skip in my heartbeat. Or the fact that I had a deep seeded need when it came to her.
The need to touch her.
The need to breathe in the air that was filled with her scent.
The need to hear her voice in my ear.
The need to get lost in those deep brown eyes.
Yeah, maybe I was a bit pathetic but I honestly hadn’t ever felt a pull like this before.
There was more. So much more. I wondered if this was maybe the end for me. The last stop on the train of…something? I wasn’t going to say love because I honestly hadn’t been able to process exactly what it was that I felt. And maybe I still didn’t really understand the concept of love on a romantic level. Mostly, I just didn’t understand the reason that I couldn’t shake her.
But where was I supposed to go from here?
It had been a month. Four whole weeks with not a word from me. That sure as fuck looked bad. I knew I was the one that held all the cards. I knew where she lived. I could have gone to her by now. I should have gone to her by now. Fuck, this really sucked.
I imagined her pissed at me. That seemed messed up but it was simply because I only wanted to see that she really did have feelings for me. If she didn’t, then why would she be pissed, right?
The ache in my chest became a sharp sting. One that I couldn’t ignore. One that I convinced myself was worse than the real injuries I’d sustained four weeks ago.
I punched the pillow with the back of my head like I could somehow make it more comfortable. It didn’t work and I shouldn’t have been surprised. For some reason, that only pissed me off more. I couldn’t get comfortable in my own bed. I hadn’t ever had that problem. And while I knew all that fucking shit was in my head, I couldn’t seem to sort through it and settle myself.
This was fucking ridiculous.
I was off my game and slipping even further down.
I could see that and yet, there wasn’t a damn thing I could do. I had tried, really fucking tried. At this point, I wasn’t beyond talking to someone. I had my doubts that it would work, even given my upbringing and all that had been probed into my brain. I saw enough of my father’s works and studies that it really all depended on the person, the one on the couch. It was really their ability to sort through the shit in their head and work it out. Psychologists were mostly there to help guide you. To hold your hand. Maybe every now and then, to throw a word in here and there to push you to that ah ha! moment.
The brain was a strange thing. Sometimes predictable, sometimes not. Its ability to take in things that we as humans weren’t even aware of, store it in a hidden pocket, and maybe bring it forth on a rainy day. Or when you forced it out, whichever.
There was a boiling point that we all had. A certain amount of shit that we could take before the mind just snapped. For some, it didn’t take much to get them to that point.
But I wasn’t really wanting to go into that.
Wait, what was I talking about.
Oh, yeah.
Rosemarie.
I had to do something. I could no longer stay away. I had to see this thing through. Who knew, it could end up in a shit show. I could go rushing to her and she could have forgotten me by now.
Huh?
Nah, I wouldn’t believe that for one second.
I was unforgettable!
Maybe it would end up being something more along the lines of oversensitive chemistry. We’d talk. And let me not even lie here, we’d bang, and then it would be out of our systems. That was the worst case scenario in my mind.
Best case? She’d look at me with those gorgeous eyes of hers and let me in. Into her home and into her heart. That was the outcome I was hoping for.
Okay, so I was going to do this.
I jumped out of bed like the damn mattress had caught on fire. I didn’t care about anything else, I had to go to her. And I wasn’t going to let anyone stop me.
As I stomped my way through the clubhouse to tell Cal that I needed a break, that I had shit that I had to take care of, I wondered how the hell I should go about it.
I didn’t have the first clue how to really woo a woman. I lived off of my charming face and smooth tongue. It always got me what I wanted. But it wouldn’t with her. My sweet yet tough, Rosemarie. I had to pull out all the stops.
But first, I had to figure out what they were.
And before that, I had to find a path to help me cope and deal with the darker side of things.
With one person in mind, I made my way to the front door of the clubhouse after talking to Cal. Seeing Tank talking to Seven in the lounge, I slowed my steps but didn’t stop.
“Your woman at home?” I called out to Tank. I had a good idea that she was but I wasn’t going to go over there without letting him know. I didn’t have anything to hide and it was about respect. You talk to another man’s woman, then you made damn sure he knew about it.
“Yeah,” he said his eyes looking at me like I was crazy.
Yep, he was definitely smart enough to know that none of us, not even me, would try anything with his woman. In fact, most of us tried to steer clear of her. She was a bit terrifying, but she wasn’t evil. Honestly, I still hadn’t figured her out all the way.
“Good. I’m headed that way,” I said with a wave.
“Tell her I’ll pick up Grass,” he called out like he could somehow see all the shit going on in my head. Or maybe he just assumed that if I had balls enough to go to his woman for something then it must be astronomical.
I was pulling up into their driveway mere minutes later.
Nadya opened the door, took one hard look at me, and did some sort of weird sigh thing through her nose. It was almost a mix of annoyance and I knew this was coming. Maybe. Possibly. Oh, hell, I couldn’t tell when it came to her.
“Make it quick,” she said barely stepping back to let me in. “I have to get Grass in twenty minutes.”
“Tank said he’d grab him,” I said with a wide, teasing smile. She didn’t have an out now.
And there was that weird sigh thing again. Though this time it was leaning more on the annoyance side. I shrugged it off, quite literally with a quick rise and drop of my shoulders, then flopped down on the couch.
There was no small talk. No beating around the bush. She didn’t offer me a drink and I didn’t ask how she was doing. That was one thing I could say that I liked about Nadya, no bullshit. That was why I was here. I needed to hear it straight. I didn’t need someone to try to coddle me, tell me that it wasn’t my fault and it will all be okay. I didn’t want pity comfort and hopeful visions of the future. What I did need was to be slapped in the face with the reality of my situation.
Oh, and I also was looking for advice on how to get the girl, if you will. Well, maybe Nadya wasn’t the best person to talk to on that front, but I was here and I was going to take advantage of this time.
“How do you deal with it?” I asked, losing my playful mask and getting straight to it.
While most of the contracts Nadya had taken were scum-of-the-earth-shit-bags, she still ended each job with a life on her hands. And for a while there, I don’t think she was even aware that she had been taking out bad guys. Which was something I didn’t even want to think about right now.
“What’s done is done. Move on,” she said with a shrug. She still hadn’t taken a seat and I honestly didn’t expect her to.
“So, forget it all? Like it never happened?”
“No,” she said and I could tell she was trying her best to keep calm. “Acknowledge what you did and why you did it. Then own up to it and move past it. If it helps, while you’re thinking about the why part of things, think about why it’s better that she’s dead.”
The fact that Nadya said she told me that she knew more about the situation than I expected. And by the slight hint of disgust in her tone, I figured that the she that she was referring to was The Butcher.
To that, I raised a brow and watched her sharply. She knew what she was saying, she calculated that shit right down to the last word before it even came out of her mouth. So it wasn’t some slip.
She gave me a shrug as a reply to the unspoken question.
None of it really surprised me.
“And the girls?” I figured I shouldn’t hold back, she probably knew about those too.
There, for just a quick snap, in her eyes was a sort of clouded sadness. A tinge of empathy…from this woman? Now, that surprised me. I knew she wasn’t completely cold-hearted, but letting that show was not something she did. Unless it was Tank or Grass, she pretty much walked around like a stone wall when it came to emotions.
“Can you change it?” she asked calmly.
“No,” I said and my gaze drifted to the floor.
“Did you start the fire?”
“No, but—”
“Did you trap those girls in that building?” Her tone came out a little more sharp as she tried to make her point.
“No,” I answered.
“Did you kill those girls?” Her eyes lasered in on me and I could feel them penetrating the surface. I dragged my eyes up to hers and gave her the answer that she wanted.
“No,” I said though it wasn’t the way I felt. But somehow, saying it out loud, hearing it spill from my lips, made me see it could be that way.
“Was there anything you could have done?”
“No,” I growled out and felt anger in my veins. She didn’t have to point out the faults in the plan. She didn’t have to point out the helplessness that I’d had in the situation.
“Did you rape her?” Though the question came out with very little bite, I didn’t miss the slight twitch in her eye.
“Fuck, no,” I just about yelled as I jumped up from the couch. Anger rolled off of me as my fists clenched at my sides. How could she even ask that? How the fuck could she think that? Never in my fucking life…
“Did you beat her?”
“No.” I was about to step up to her, not that I would actually hit her or anything. But the tone she was using was sure as hell throwing me off. It was on the verge of being accusatory and I couldn’t read her well enough to tell if she was doing it on purpose.
“Did you kill her?”
“No!” I roared, my chest heaved and my nose flared.
“No, you didn’t do any of it.” Her words came out slowly almost as if she wanted me to hear each one.
My limbs felt heavy for a blink as I replayed what she’d said to me. And like I had no control over my body, I fell back into the couch and sagged into the cushions with an odd feeling.
She was right.
I didn’t do any of those things. I wasn’t responsible even if I tried to put it on my shoulders.
“Stop wasting your anger on yourself and turn it to the people responsible. Use it. Hunt them down. Give them all justice.”
My eyes snapped up to look at her. A simple nod from her was all I got.
A long moment later, after my mind had gone through a rainbow of thoughts and emotions, I took in a deep breath.
“Now I need some woman advice,” I stated, flashing her one of my beautifully charming smiles. It only felt half forced, but I figured that was a start.