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“Okay, so I first met Kenzi when we were ten. She was hiding in my treehouse from her father with the boy who lived in the house between us. She was the prettiest girl I’d ever seen, even with the bruises that were covering her face.”
“So her dad used to beat her up?” Eli asks. “Shit, she’s only tiny now. I can only imagine how small she was back then.”
“Yeah, she was always a tiny little thing. He was a vicious bastard and had beat on her for as long as she could remember. She was always quiet, never spoke to anyone at school, or had any friends before us.” I sigh. “We found out it was because she didn’t want anyone to know what was happening.”
“Us?” Wyatt asks.
“Yeah, me and Xavier. He was the boy who lived in between us. He was the one who found her that first day and took her to the treehouse. We sat up there for hours just trying to cheer her up, and we all stuck together after that. We tried to make sure she was away from her father as much as possible and it worked, for the most part.”
“Okay,” Rafe says. “So you and this Xavier kid tried to protect her from her bastard of a father.” He glances at me through the rear view mirror. “So how does a girl like that go from being a quiet child-sized punching bag to one of the most feared killers in the criminal world?”
I look over to where he’s sitting in the driver’s seat and sigh, dropping my head into my hands.
“Everything was good for five years. We’d make sure she was always with one of us, walking her to and from school, and giving her a place to stay if he was still awake, drunk and high, right up until the week before I came here. Until the night I couldn’t meet her to walk her home from the library because my dad wanted to see me in his office to tell me we would be moving here.” I say this last part quietly, dropping my head into my hands.
“What happened that night, Clay?” Eli asks me. I look up at him and take a deep breath.
“Listen, you guys are my brothers, but what I’m about to tell you cannot be spoken about to anyone else. The rumour about her killing everyone that knows who she is, is true. Despite the fact I’m still here.” We pull up to the gates of WinterHill as I say this, and they all stay silent until we’re pulling up outside our building.
“Okay,” Rafe says as he cuts the engine. “Let’s take this upstairs. There’s beer up there, and I’ve got a feeling it's going to be needed.”
We make our way inside and up the stairs to the top floor, which houses only our rooms. None of us say a word until we’re all inside my room and the door is closed. Wyatt and Eli drop down on the sofa while Rafe goes to get some beers out of the fridge. He comes over and hands them out before taking a seat on the other sofa with me. I take a big gulp of my beer and then lean forward and place it on the table between us. I take a deep breath in before looking at each of my brothers, all three of them watching me, waiting for me to explain to them how I know the one person who could finally free us of our fathers.
I sigh heavily, wondering where to begin with that fateful night.
“Okay, so the night I couldn’t meet her, I’d sent her a text to let her know and she told me it was fine, that she could walk herself and would see me later. She was supposed to go and wait at Xave’s if her father was still up, but the next thing I knew, Xave was calling me. He was shouting down the phone that he couldn’t get hold of her, and she always answered her phone to us. She wouldn’t just ignore it.” I close my eyes, remembering the night that changed all of our lives. “I was so scared. I thought he had finally killed her and that it was all my fault for letting her down and not being there. I never raced home so fast in my life, praying she was alright.” I open my eyes and take another big mouthful of beer. “I ran through her front door and into the living room and there was blood everywhere. Fuck, the smell was overwhelming, but I had to go in to make sure it wasn’t hers. There were five dead bodies in that room. All men, including her father.”
“What happened, Clay? Where was she?” Wyatt asks, his eyes wide as he listens.
“Xave shouted that he’d found her in the bathroom. I raced back there and couldn’t believe what I was seeing.” I down the rest of my beer before I continue. “She was sitting in the shower hugging her knees and covered in blood, just staring up at us.”
“What the fuck happened?” Rafe asks.
“I don’t actually know.” I look at each of them and sigh, getting ready to tell them the most shameful part of my story. “After the shock of seeing her alive, I kind of freaked out. Her father would never use her name and used to call her Devil’s Whore, so I drew her a picture once so she could take the power back, renaming her the Queen of Hell. That same drawing was carved into the chests and faces of the men in the living room. I screamed at her, told her she was sick and that I never wanted to see her again.” I drop my head into my hands. “I watched her heart shatter in front of me and then I ran.”
“Shit, man, that’s pretty fucked up. Did you ever find out what happened that night?” Wyatt asks, tipping his bottle to his mouth to finish his beer.
“No. For the next week I hid in my house and then we came here. I was a fucking mess, I had never seen anything like that before and I couldn’t sleep because of the nightmares haunting me.” I lift my head and look over at him. “Do you remember what I was like when I first got here?”
“I do,” Eli says, speaking for the first time. “You were so angry all the time, not even the fight nights could give you any peace.”
I close my eyes remembering those first few months after I ran out of that house. The nightmares from not only that night but also every time I saw another news story about the Queen of Hell. Kenzi had been relentless, she had gone on a murder spree during the first three months and with each new story came new nightmares. Paired with the guilt I have felt since that day, for not being there when she needed me, and then spitting those words at her before running like a coward. I had a red hot rage coiling inside me that couldn’t be sated no matter how many men I beat to near death in the ring.
“Wait, so if you never found out what happened, how do you know that it wasn’t just a one-off and this girl is who she says she is?” Rafe asks.
“Because,” I tell him. “It’smypicture she carves into every kill she makes, just as she did that night.”
“Fuuuucccck!” Wyatt exclaims, his eyes wide. “This is fucked up, brother, we need something stronger than beer. Where’s the whisky?” He jumps up and grabs four glasses out of the cupboard.
“It’s under the sink,” I say, and he grabs it before coming back over and filling the glasses, handing one to each of us.
“So, if she kills everyone that knows what she looks like, how are you still alive?” He asks.
“I don’t know, man,” I say, shaking my head. “Maybe she could just never find me, or I just wasn’t high up on her priorities of people to kill.” But even as I say the words I know that is not the case. I’m pretty sure she could have found me any time she wanted, had she tried.
“I do,” Eli says with a small smirk. “She loves you.”
“No, there’s no way. I broke her heart and she turned into a psycho killer. There is no way she loves me.”
