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It was almost like a foreign accent, one everyone in The Valley had, including Grace.
I held my ground, feeling my brothers fall into line behind me. “I have no idea what the fuck you’re talking about.”
He stepped forward, his hands curling into fists. “Grace! What did you do? I know you still see her.”
I took my own step forward, meeting him head-on as he yelled at me, something I had never done before in my life. But he was about to learn that it had been a long fucking time since I had cowered from anyone. “Speak. English. Old man.”
His breathing was getting shallower and more erratic, his shoulders rising and falling faster and faster as the frustration took over. “Prophet Andrew moved her to a prayer house,” he hissed through his teeth. “No one will tell me why, just that she has sinned. Meeting with an apostate does not usually result in being removed and secluded from one’s children. There has to be something more.”
What the fuck are you doing, Grace?
Prayer houses were for defiant members of the community, and up until this point, my sister had been nothing but perfect and obedient. They were usually small houses where people would be held for days, forced to pray and repent, sometimes without food, until the prophet decided they were sufficiently rehabilitated.
“Why the hell would they send Grace to a prayer house?” I argued, shaking my head.
And why the hell was she trying to get to me first?
“Why exactly!” he snapped. “I know it was you. You have done something. You are the reason they have taken her away. Your darkness is like a disease… infectious and destructive. You are the only part of her life that is not perf—”
I couldn’t stop myself.
I swung.
My fist connected square with his jaw and sent him sprawling onto the concrete.
I fucking loved my sister. Would damn well die for her or kill for her if I had to. I was not about to let this motherfucker walk in and accuse me of being the reason she might be in trouble or pain when there was no way in hell he would do the same. “Get the fuck out, and don’t come back,” I ordered, shoving at his shoulder with my shitkicker and forcing him to roll onto his back.
I took a couple of steps back, falling into line with my brothers—a wall of strength and support, as I watched my father pull himself to his feet and stumble to his car.
He didn’t look back.
Because he didn’t actually care.
He didn’t come here to apologize for being a shitty dad or ask me for my help to find Grace.
He came to blame me.
To hurt me.
And while it had been a hell of a long time since I entertained this man’s opinion in any capacity, as I watched him pull away and speed off down the street, I couldn’t help but feel guilt begin to swell in my stomach.
Bishop stepped up beside me, and we continued to stare down the street well after the car had disappeared from sight.
I think we were both caught a little off guard, though Bishop would never let it show.
If that man was ever rattled, you’d never know it.
He’d never let you see.
Bishop and I may be alike, but where he knows all of what I went through within The Valley, there were still parts of his story that were blank for me. Parts that he wouldn’t tell me, and that I may never fucking know. The horrible kinds of story that differentiated between the men who lived their lives knowing death would one day come knocking.
And the men who had already met death and were no longer afraid to open the door and let him walk right in.
“What do you think?” he finally asked, his fists still clenched tightly at his side.
It had been a few days since Missy had shown up saying people had taken Grace. In my gut, I knew it was The Valley—the need to shut up anyone who spoke their mind was inherent to them. But I also knew that, with two babies growing inside her, she was too valuable to lose.
So, I’d decided to wait until Monday to see if Grace showed up for our regular meeting, fighting the urge to ride out to the damn Valley with guns blazing, making demands.
