Chapter 16
Indigo
“That’s a really nice story, President Duke…except for what happened to Maria. That part was sad. I’m just not sure why you’re telling me all this.” Duke slowly placed his hand on mine, his somber eyes offering understanding without a trace of pity.
“I’m sharing our family’s story with you because I’m thinkin’ that maybe you might understand it better than most. I’m hoping you might feel comfortable enough to share some of your own story with us. Who knows, maybe we could help each other?”
I licked my lips, suddenly feeling nervous. I glanced at Bones. “Who can hear us right now? Is this being recorded?”
Bones shook his head. “Cricket is playing a live feed for Priest, but it isn’t being recorded. We three can hear you, but no one else can.”
I bit my lip and considered once again if confiding in the Crows, even if only in part, was wise. My gut told me that Duke wouldn’t sell me out. Knowing that they were actively working to help people who needed help the most, people who had been hurt and used in some of the ways I had been hurt and used, reassured me that trusting them wasn’t the worst thing I could do. Maybe. It definitely couldn’t be worse than getting bangs, which was a universal cry for help that no one could ignore. I just needed one more reassurance.
“I’ll tell you some of my story, the parts that will probably matter to you anyway. I can’t tell you everything, but you’ll get the gist. I just need you to pinky promise me something first, President Duke.” Duke tilted his head, eyes slightly narrowed, and nodded in understanding. He waited patiently for me to elaborate. I made grabby hands toward his flask, which he handed over so I could take another shot of whiskey. “I…” I huffed out a breath and passed his flask back. “I need you to swear that after I tell you, you won’t try to use me as a bargaining chip against the family. I need to know I’m my own woman, no matter what. I’ve had every choice that ever mattered taken away from me by one tyrant. I absolutely refuse to live that life again.”
Seconds ticked by as Duke and Bones regarded me, and I stared into the blue depths of Duke’s eyes. Images of Priest’s tortured ones flashed through my mind, and I shoved them away. I wasn’t in the mood to unpack what had happened in the confessional yet. Silently, Duke put his elbow on the conference table and extended his pinky in my direction. I linked mine with his. “I swear,” Duke’s voice rumbled, “on the grave of my mother that Los Cuervos will not use you against your will.” Bones nodded at me in agreement and as a witness to this most solemn vow. Everyone knew you couldn’t break a pinky promise. I licked my lips nervously, praying to Bob that I wasn’t about to make a huge mistake.
“Long story short, I was raised to be two things: a tool for the Callahan family and Roark Callahan’s personal stress toy. Uncle Roark wants me back so he can continue to play his games.” I didn’t want to go into unnecessary details. Duke wasn’t looking for a sob story. Duke’s eyes widened, and Bones let out a low whistle. “I take it you’ve heard of the Callahans?”
Bones chuckled, and Duke replied dryly, “We may be on opposite ends of the country, but yeah, we’ve heard of the most powerful family in the Irish mob. Roark is known as the Beast of Boston, isn’t he? ”
I nodded and averted my eyes, but Duke and Bones kept staring at me like they were waiting for me to elaborate, which sounded about as fun as slamming my hand in Sheila’s door. So, I cleared my throat and said, “Um, I guess I’ll open the floor to questions.”
“You call him Uncle Roark, chica loca. Are you related to the Callahan family?” Bones asked.
“I don’t know who my parents are. My earliest memories are of being kept in the basement. I called him Uncle Roark because he told me to call him that, and I wasn’t really in a position to argue.” I shrugged. “As far as I’m aware, there’s no relation.”
“You said you were a tool for them. What does that mean, exactly?” Duke questioned.
“A tool,” I repeated with a shrug, “a weapon. A plaything.”
“What would you do as their weapon?”
“Well, I don’t know about you, but where I come from, weapons are used to inflict harm.”
“Right,” Duke argued, “a pistol is a weapon and so is a hydrogen bomb. I wouldn’t use a nuke on someone who owed me money, and I wouldn’t use a pistol to enforce peace on a global scale. Every weapon has a place and purpose, so how’s about you stop beating around the bush and just spit it out.”
I narrowed my eyes. “I killed for them. They took me where I needed to go, and let me do my thing. It was a game for Uncle Roark, but I was an asset for the family because I was good at my job and was expendable. If I died, no one would miss me or look for me. They also owned me, so it’s not like they had to pay me for my services. Other than Seamus Callahan, Uncle Roark, and the guards on Roark’s estate, I don’t think anyone else knew I existed.”
Duke sat back in his chair, stretching out his long legs and giving me an appraising look.
“Now, don’t take this the wrong way, darlin’, because I’ve seen you whoop some ass…but all this seems like it may be blown out of proportion.” I raised my sassy Scarlett O’Hara eyebrow at Duke. I opened my mouth to tell him where he could shove his proportion, but he held his hands up before I could and quickly explained. “Assassins ain’t hard to come by is all I’m sayin’. A family like the Callahans or, hell, an y mob family will have several fixers and mercs on the payroll. They can even go outside their organization if they want to clean house. You’re sayin’ they’re putting time, resources, and effort into hunting you when they could hire other killers and find some other poor soul to abuse. Why do they want you , specifically , so bad?”
I rolled my eyes. Fucking men. “Thank you, milord Duke, for mansplaining murder for hire within the mob to me. I guess there isn’t anything for me to worry about, after all. Gosh, what a load off my poor little shoulders.”
I guess my sass wasn’t as cute as it usually was when aimed in Duke’s direction because his eyes did that thing that Priest’s did when I annoyed him. They squinted a bit, and their eyebrows pulled toward each other, and the inner edges shifted downward toward the bridge of their noses.The family resemblance was strong, even if Priest wasn’t rockin’ Duke’s silvery locks. I’d gotten this glare from Priest numerous times, but it was the first time Duke’s used it in my direction. I heave a deep, dramatic sigh and throw my hands up.
“I don’t know, man! I can’t think of any specific reason Seamus would be hunting for me unless it was for his brother’s sake. Uncle Roark, on the other hand…”
“You took away one of his toys, and he wants it back?” Bones supplied.
I snorted a laugh. “If you’ve heard of the Beast of Boston, you know he doesn’t lack for playthings. I wasn’t just a toy. I was his most favorite toy ever. He manipulated and abused me for years…allowed others to hurt me. Seamus may only see me as a valuable, if ultimately replaceable, tool to use. Uncle Roark wants me back, bad. And I’m afraid of what he’ll do to get me. If he does get me…” I shuddered and didn’t even bother trying to hide it. I licked my lips, tasting traces of the whiskey there, and took a deep breath.
Ever since I woke up in the confessional, some of the ghosts that lived in the crawlspace of my mind had been rattling their chains and banging on the door to be let out. Those assholes really knew how to make a racket. The house in my mind, the one I used to hide in when reality got to be too much, shook on its foundation as what was buried below threatened to break free and shatter the funhouse mirror my jagged pieces now resembled. I worked too hard, for too long, to learn how to keep the darkness below my feet instead of consuming me. One conversation was all it took for the fuckers to start a metaphorical mosh pit and threaten to undo all of my Audrey Hepburn-like poise and stability. We couldn’t have that. I physically held myself together, wrapping my arms around my middle in case I failed and everything came exploding out of me. My phantoms were strong. Who knows, maybe they could actually do it.
I braced myself and stared down at my socks, unable to watch their faces and see whatever disgust or pity they might display when they heard what I was about to say.
“When I was little, Uncle Roark skinned my best friend alive in front of me. He was my cat, and Uncle Roark made me watch and listen as Shade mewled and died. Once, when I tripped and spilled a drink, he broke my left arm in two places. I’ve had more concussions than I can count, dislocated shoulders, broken bones, burns, contusions… procedures.” I sniffed back a tear and squeezed my middle just a little bit tighter as bile threatened to creep up my throat.
“The first person I ever killed was a little girl. She was scrawny and dirty, wearing clothes too small for her. I had never seen someone as young as I was in person, only ever on TV. For a second, I felt this happy bubble rising up in my chest, thinking that maybe I had been good enough and Uncle Roark had brought me a friend or a sister. We were told that Uncle Roark had a surprise for us and were taken down the hall from my room to a cell.
“The room was small, even to me. I don’t know how old I was, but I remembered that I had just lost my first tooth, so I couldn’t have been very old. I asked the little girl, who said her name was Riley, if she had lost a tooth yet, and she said she hadn’t. If she still had all her baby teeth, does that mean she was still a baby?” I raised my tear-filled eyes to Bones’, pleading with him to reassure me that she wasn’t a baby when I… “Was she a baby?”
Bones’s face looked sadder than sad. He shook his head and softly murmured, “No, Indi. She wasn’t a baby anymore. I lost my first tooth when I was seven.”
A breath I didn’t know I was holding whooshed out from between my lips as I nodded my head rapidly. “Good. That’s good… Not a baby.” I swiped the tears from my cheeks roughly. “Where was I… right! So…” My voice shook as I continued. “We were put in a room together. Small and empty except for a bed that had been bolted to the floor in the corner. Uncle Roark stood in the doorway and said that only one little girl could leave the room alive. He tossed a knife on the bed, closed the door, and left. That was it. He just… left.
“The first day, we cried. Begged someone to open the door… tried to figure out a way to escape. We fell asleep, tearstained and grubby, together under the bed. The second day, we tried again. No one ever came to give us food, water…nothing. We ran out of tears as the day wore on, and by the second night, I understood. Clutched in Riley’s tiny arms under the bed, I remembered Shade, and I remembered what happened to the things I cared about. My favorite toys always ended up broken; my favorite books had the pages ripped out. Uncle Roark was like Cookie Monster on that show Dave put on TV sometimes. Only instead of cookies, he liked to eat my sadness. He said nothing tasted as sweet as my tears.”
The room was utterly silent as I hugged my middle. “I knew what I wanted to do. Even then. I wanted to take that knife and stab it into my teeny-tiny heart so I could die and finally be able to get away from Uncle Roark. I wanted it more than I’d wanted anything I could remember… to get away from him. But, if I did that, then I would abandon Riley, and I knew what he’d do to her. All the ways he’d make her hurt. I couldn’t do it, I just…” I had to stop and pinch my eyes closed. I wrestled the ghost of Riley back into her box in the crawlspace and slammed the door.
“On the third day, Uncle Roark opened the door. I was sleeping on the bed while Riley lay under it. He let me out and locked the door behind us without saying a word. He didn’t have to say anything. The smile on his face said it all. My routine went right back into effect. Except now I had a new chore. Every day, I was taken to the room so I could throw lime on her body. This went on daily for some time until eventually the room was sealed. Every so often I still had to go back and apply lime and an activated charcoal deodorant treatment on the door. As far as I know, Riley is still there.” The crawlspace in my mind was now eerily quiet. Maybe the phantoms felt better after the venom of Riley’s story was purged from my body? I idly wondered if that meant the story had new hosts in Duke and Bones. If anyone’s memory could be parasitic, it would be mine.
“Would you like to hear about the first time he raped me? Or does this adequately put things in proportion for you?” I raised my bloodshot eyes to meet Duke’s cold ones and didn’t try to hide the agony lurking in the depths of my green ones. Duke’s face was ashen as he sat back in his chair. He looked like he did the first night I met him, like he was far away inside his mind, remembering something that made him sad. I could best describe Bones's expression as barely contained frigid fury. He usually came across as an intense but level-headed guy. The man sitting across from me was one wrong word away from exploding like Elsa in that ice movie. Something told me I didn’t want to be on the receiving end when Bones decided to let it go.
I peeled my arms away from my middle and slowly offered my hand. Bones’s surprisingly warm, dry hand grasped my small, clammy one. “I’m here. He didn’t win. When I eventually found an opportunity to escape, I did. I’m not his broken pet. I’m not his brother’s tool to wield. I ran, and I’ll keep running forever if that’s what it takes.”
Duke finally seemed to find his voice again. “Indigo, maybe we can help you hide well enough that you don’t have to run anymore. We’ve had some experience helping people rebuild their lives after we bust a trafficking operation. We can help you with papers and set you up with a real job. Cricket already planned to offer you a job at Crow’s Landing. You could earn some money, figure out what you want to do with your life, and do it.”
Bones’s fingers gently squeezed mine. “Or, if you and Sheila really want to, you can go anywhere we have a chapter and be given the same opportunity. You have the right to go any time you want. No one will take your choices away.”
“Of course,” Duke added. “Whatever you want to do, you’ll do. I just want you to understand that if you wanted to, you could have a home here in Sagebrush, with or without Los Cuervos. You don’t have to run.”
Bob, why did they have to be such sweet, amazing assholes? Why? They were saying everything my secret, lonely heart wanted to hear, and the thought was as soul-warming as it was panic-inducing. I had grown to care for people here; for the first time in my life, I could see myself putting down roots. If I wasn’t a selfish bitch, I’d run away far and fast to protect them from the risk my presence caused. If I cared, I’d isolate and keep moving so the shadow of Uncle Roark never fell upon Los Cuervos territory. If I was stronger, if I was braver, if , if , if .
But I wasn’t. I was weak, and lonely, and I wanted to think the picture of a home Duke painted for me was possible. “If I stay, I don’t want any misunderstandings. I’m not killing for you, so don’t go looking to expand my résumé in that respect. You also need to understand he won’t ever stop looking for me, and if he finds me, he’ll destroy anyone in his way till he has me back.” I said “if I stay” in an effort not to look desperate because I already knew the decision had been made. I was staying, but a lady had to play hard to get sometimes, you know?