She hangs her head, as though she can’t bear the weight of my gaze as I stop short at the bed, afraid to touch her, afraid that if I do, I’ll cause her pain.
Wraith curses from behind me, but then the door shuts hard, and we’re left alone.
I gently reach out and even though my hand is shaking, I guide it to her chin and tilt her face up. “Ami, what happened?” I keep my voice gentle and even. Hiding my true emotions is second nature, in a home where someone was always waiting to exploit any weakness.
Her face is battered, purple welts formed over one cheekbone, an ugly yellow band of bruises around her throat. Her one eye is black, swollen shut. Dried blood cakes her lower lip, where it’s been split down the middle. When I drop my stunned gaze to her wrists, I find ugly welts there too, like someone held her down.
“What happened?” I repeat, when she stays ominously silent.
Her lower lip trembles and tears leak out of her good eye. She reaches up and brushes them away. I can’t help it. I sit down hard on the edge of the bed and reach out, folding my older sister into my arms. She comes willingly, collapsing against my chest. I cradle her ruined face as gently as I can.
“It’s alright,” I soothe her. “It’s going to be okay. These men, your husband, they’ll punish whoever did this. They’ll keep us safe. I promise.”
Ami rips herself away, shocking me. Her face screws up and when she laughs, it’s all wrong, broken and bitter. I’ve never heard my sister, so normally full of life, of happiness and schemes and wit, of real laughter, so hollow sounding.
“Who do you think did this to me?” she chokes. “It’s myhusbandthat I need protectingfrom.” She spits that word, husband, like it’s vile in her mouth, like she needs to cleanse herself of it.
“N-no,” I stammer, unable to comprehend it. I picture her husband, the dark haired, Gage. He’s a big man, but the softness in his eyes spoke of a gentle nature most people might not guess at. “I saw him last night,” I continue, shock making me stupid. “He was nearly passed out at the table.”
“Yes, well, he came to. It might come as a surprise to you, little sister, since I know you haven’t experienced much of the world, but when men drink, sometimes they turn into monsters who like to use their fists to make a point.”
I bite my tongue against the words that spring to it. I want to refute what she’s saying, but how can I? She has no reason to lie.
I’m still trying to find something, anything, to say, when the door creaks open off to the side and Steph steps into the room. Her eyes go wide when they land on us and, lips trembling, she rushes to us. I open my arms to her and Ami does the same and she steps into us, a triangle of women standing together, supporting each other, clinging to one another, because it’s our only hope of survival.
I think back to yesterday, when we clung to each other, a knotted mass adrift in a white cap swollen sea. It seems so long ago, it’s hard to believe that it’s only been half a day.
When Steph pulls away, I take a second to study her. Her windswept hair, her brightly flushed cheeks, her sparkling eyes, her lips—fuller and thicker than normal. A flush rides high on her pale skin. She looks like she’s glowing and I’m not naïve enough not to understand why, especially after I saw her and her new husband fawning over each other, flirting shyly, the night before.
I want to ask her a thousand questions burning inside of me, if she slept with him, if she enjoyed it, what it’s like, but I bite my tongue hard. Not just because Ami is sitting right there, used and abused monstrously by the very man who was supposed to protect her, but because my pride stops up my tongue, turning it thick and useless. I would never ask Steph those questions. She’s my sister. I love her, but we’ve never lived together. I’ve never asked another woman, not even my mother, anything so personal.
After Steph is filled in on what happened, in Ami’s clipped tones, she turns to me, horror written all over her beautiful features. I know that despite my effort to hide what I’m feeling, my own face probably looks the same.
“What’s going to happen now?” she asks, so softly that I have to strain to hear her.
My chest threatens to cave in and I can feel my pulse nearly ripping out of my skin. I wish I had some kind of assurance to give her, but I have none at all. “I don’t know.”
My words ring hollow in the room.
Chapter 11
Wraith
I’ve never seen my brothers so somber. Usually church is filled with sarcasm and jokes, ribbing at each other’s expense. It’s often rowdy and disorderly in an acceptable kind of way, since we’re all men and most of us so rough around the fucking edges it’s a miracle we don’t unravel.
I walk into the room where we hold our club meetings, a massive room with a huge oval table in the center, to find it as silent as death. Steel is already at his spot at the head of the table, Edge beside him. Both of them look like they’ve just sucked down a truck full of lemons.
All the chairs are taken, since I’m one of the last to arrive. Wing still isn’t here yet. I shift into a corner, using the wall to hold me up, because I can’t believe this shit. I don’t know Gage that well, but I do know he’d never do a thing like this. He’d never lay a hand on a woman. We have strict rules, as a club. Women and children are never to be harmed. When one brother wrongs another, violence may be used as a bloody solution to a problem, an apology pounded out with fists but never has any of the men in the room used violence against a woman.
The Riders aren’t like other clubs. We all love bikes. That’s what draws us together, but Steel and Edge created this club as a place for men who have nowhere else to go. Men who have been forsaken by the world. We’re redeemed when we become a member of The Riders, and no man in our club takes that shit lightly, or breaks a code that to us, is sacred.
We don’t have long to wait for the shitshow to get started.
Gage is ushered in, the big man, a few years younger than me, only twenty-five or twenty-six,sobbing. If you’ve never heard a grown man cry, let me tell you, it’s not a pretty thing. Those broken noises chill me straight down to my bones. They’re devoid of hope and filled up with so much burning shame, it makes me go hot all over. I want to cut off my own ears, just so I don’t have to hear it.
Before anyone can say a word, Gage raises his head and faces Steel, who we all know will make a final decision. He’s no judge or jury, and he sure as hell isn’t an executioner, but he will decide Gage’s fate.
“I didn’t do it. I… don’t remember anything. I was… we were at the hall one minute, the next, Snake took us home, since I had a lot to drink. I’m sorry, Prez. Didn’t mean for it to get out of control. I was just nervous. It’s not every fucking day a man gets married, and I didn’t even know her. I never would have… never would have hurt her. I came to and she was like that. I fuckin’ swear it on my life, Steel. I never laid a finger on her.”
