AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“He apologised, and he meant it,” she added, but I just kept staring at her.
She knew, and so did I. If Dad knew, the man wouldn’t be breathing. The only reason West lived was because Dad thought of another way to make that man suffer worse than an early death.
“He crossed a line, Holly,” I said, and I wasn’t sure why I had to remind her of this. “He hit you.” Three words and they caused her to go stiff.
“Please, Kobra, I don’t want Dad to know, and I can’t handle you being locked up. So can you just pretend like you didn’t see anything?” She was pleading with me, and I was still staring at her because I didn’t want her copping the wrath in words that were meant to be physically felt by Trey.
“Kobra, please,” she added.
“Give me one reason why that”— I pointed at her body—“happened? And if he thinks he can hit you, and you won’t do shit, all while knowing your family’s connections—what does that say for all the other women?”
Tears swelled in her eyes. “He’s a good man.”
“He was no longer a man the moment he laid hands on a woman.” And if the bastard thought he wouldn’t be feeling the wrath of a Kincaid for touching our blood—he was sadly mistaken. Suddenly, her staying away, everything she was doing, was making sense. I knew about her fight with the old man. I knew then something was wrong, and so did he, which was why he came to me.
I was going to see her today. But her car was in the driveway this morning, which meant she’d come back to us. Dad was still pissed at me because shit was falling apart at the club. It always seemed that when we were losing control at the club, the family was also affected.
Creed was meant to be riding out and setting up the North Chapter before repatching at the Mother Chapter table.
I sighed, getting up. “You going back near him?” I asked the question I needed a solid answer to. She slowly shook her head.
“I’ll just be seeing him at work, that’s it.”
I saw the tint of yellow bruising on her collarbone, and then I looked her in the eyes.
“He won’t be there much longer, Holly.” There wasn’t much I could promise, but if there was one thing I could, it was that Trey wouldn’t be at that hospital much longer. I pulled the vest from the water and gave her one more look. “I’ll keep this between us.”
She scoffed. “And how are you going to explain to Dad when you are arrested?”
The corner of my lip twitched up, and I looked her in the eyes. “Fuck, Holly, who we don’t own, we buy. Kincaids control. We aren’t controlled.” While she didn’t know the finer details of our operation, she would have to know that we had judges, lawyers, and police officers, right up to commissioners, on the payroll.
I then winked at her before opening the door—the last thing I wanted was my little sister worried about me. Pausing before walking out, I looked back.
“Don’t let anyone else see those bruises.” I smiled at her and opened the door, leaving. I came here for my vest, and now I was leaving with another reason for there to be fresh blood on it before it dried.
* * *
No soul gota free ride from the haunting of past mistakes nor the reckoning that consumed us of the what-ifs and the possibilities that could have come if we had done differently.
It was my father, Hades, who ingrained that in me at a young age. A mistake was only a mistake if we learned from it. However, it could easily become a toxic habit. Hades believed that a bad decision was merely lack of knowledge. However, repeating those poor decisions when knowing better—was that a mistake or was that fucking behaviour?
Holly called, asking me if I could stop past Opal’s and collect her things. Apparently, Holly hadn’t been staying at Trey’s for the past week. Instead, she’d moved in with Opal. Holly revealed she’d planned to come home when her bruises had faded. Now, as I stood at Opal’s front door, I felt nothing but shame. The shame of what I had done and for the actions I took that day. I still didn’t know what was worse, that I loved once—or that, at the time, I didn’t even know it was love.
Bringing my fist to the closed door, I knew she mightn’t answer. But fuck it. My sister asked me to come, and so here I was. Even though facing the woman that I loved would be the pain I could hardly tolerate.
19
Opal
I was taught the right way to apply lipstick at the age of nine. I knew how to shape, fill, shadow, and contour my lips before I was fourteen. I got my first lip filler at sixteen. My mother believed your worth was determined by your reflection in the mirror.
It was ingrained in me at a young age that the lips were the gateway for men’s fantasies.
I was nineteen when I had my first shaping liposuction. Did I need it? Well, it depended on who you asked.
I was twenty when I started working in the family’s business. Elite Escorting. This meant I was the girl those billionaires fucked in the late hours of Friday night when they told their wives they were still working late. My mother was a Madam. She ran the most prestigious service that you wouldn’t even know it existed.
She prided herself on her girls being the image of perfection. We had to allure, seduce, and fill their every fantasy. She sold the forbidden fruit. The girls they wanted would do anything for their fix. It was our job to keep them hooked, tease, and mainly keep them coming back.
