Chapter 25 Anna
ANNA
The Next Night
BOOM!
CRASH!
BANG!
SSSSS!
“David! No! Let go of him! What are you do—!?”
I bolted upright in bed before I felt hands on me. Multiple pairs of hands. At first, I thought it was the guys. King. Dozer. It wasn’t the first time I’d been ripped out of my bed in the middle of the night for an emergency that kicked up.
“Kay, what’s—”
A very unfamiliar voice hit my ears. “Brutus Lancaster, you’re under arrest.”
That statement shot energy through my veins like I had just mainlined a mug of coffee.
“What!?”
“Anna! Stay calm!” my brother called out from somewhere in my house.
Which meant that the hands on me weren’t him.
Or any of Kay’s guys.
Because they wouldn’t dare touch me without him around.
Chaos. Everything around us erupted into chaos.
I heard windows shattering in the distance.
Windows that my brother and I painstakingly put into the sills of this home that weren’t standard sizes.
The cold, clammy pairs of hands ripped me out of bed, and I fought against them with every ounce of energy my tired, dicked-down body afforded me.
I still felt Bee’s essence dripping down my thighs as I cried out. “Brutuuuus!”
“Let go of her! I said, let her go!” he barked.
I didn’t really understand the nightmare that had descended, however, until I heard the other girls wailing up a storm.
“No! Ghost! What are you doing!? He hasn’t done anything wrong!”
“Don’t you put that gun at her! Put it down right the fuck now!”
“Rangeeeer!”
“No! King! Please! Don’t take him! King! KIIIIING! NOOOO!”
I’d never been frozen in all my life. Never.
Every time chaos kicked up, I knew exactly what to do.
I knew exactly where to be. I knew exactly what my role was.
But as smoke filled my home and doors slammed into the walls so hard that I heard the plaster giving way, I couldn’t shake the reality in front of me.
We were being arrested.
“Anna.”
My own name felt so far away as I tried tugging and yanking out of the grasp that held me firmly in place on my feet.
“Anna!”
“LET THEM GO!” I yelled at the top of my lungs.
“Char!” Kay yelled somewhere. “It’s all right! Anna! It’s going to be all right!”
“He saved me! They all did!” Char panicked at the top of her lungs. “What are you doing to them!?”
“Beeeee!” I shrieked.
“Anna-mine!” he barked.
The world slowly melted into my vision as my darkened room came into view. I heard the crunching of glass as someone’s grip that I didn’t recognize held my arms behind my back. I flicked my hair off my face long enough to see three men wrangled Brutus toward the door.
Locked in handcuffs.
“I’m going to sue the pants off every single one of you!” I yelled. “It’ll be your fucking paycheck that pays to fix my goddamn motherfucking house!”
“Everyone!” Cap called out across the house. “Don’t panic! Stay calm!”
“David! Don’t take him! Where are you taking him!?”
“I want to know the charges right this instant. Read them their fucking rights in front of us, now!” Jasmine demanded.
Jasmine.
Paralegal.
She’d know what the hell was going on.
“Anna,” Brutus said as they shoved him by me.
I whimpered as I lunged for him, but whoever had their grip on my wrists held me much too tight.
“Make them let go,” I whimpered as tears poured down my face. “Please.”
“Anna,” he muttered as he dropped a soft nuzzle against the top of my head.
“Take care of the girls. It’s going to be all right.
” I pulled back just enough to look at his face.
I don’t know what I was looking for. But whatever it was, I found something I couldn’t name.
Something that looked less like fear and more like a man carrying weight he’d already decided to carry.
I didn’t have time to think about what that meant before they pulled him away from me.
And that was all I got before they dragged him out of my room.
“YOU CAN’T DO THIS!” I screamed as I donkey-kicked into the air. “THEY DIDN’T FUCKING DO ANYTHING!”
I barely got my bearings straight before the grip fell away from my wrists. I saw a man whip out of my room with the letters ‘DOJ’ emblazoned in yellow on the backs of their jackets, and for the second time in my life, I froze.
The DOJ?
We helped the DOJ!
I heard Marla’s voice explode at a volume I’d never heard before. “THEY WERE HELPING YOU, YOU SORRY SACKS OF SHIT! AND WHEN I’M DONE WITH YOU, NO ONE WILL FUCKING KNOW WHAT THE DOJ IS!”
I stumbled out of my bedroom, my bare feet crunching down onto glass. It hurt, but I didn’t care. My feet were bleeding, but I didn’t care.
I begged like a bitch in heat with no regard for what it made me sound like. “Please, you’ve got the wrong guys. They didn’t do anything! They aren’t the ones doing this!”
“Anna,” Amanda said as she reached for me.
I leaned to the side, dodging her grip as I rushed after the men in DOJ jackets with bloodied feet. “I’m serious. We’ll sue the hell out of your department. Into oblivion, with all of you!”
“An-n-n-n-aaaaa,” Charise sobbed out.
It was the only sound that stopped me in my tracks.
I turned toward the sound of her heaping sobs, and I saw the bloodied footprints I’d left on my fucking carpet.
Just as quickly as they crashed into my home, they were gone, and I heard cars cranking up outside.
How we didn’t hear them roll up on us was beyond me.
And yet somehow I already knew that my brother had heard every single one of them.
That thought sat in the back of my brain like a splinter I didn’t have time to dig out yet.
“Char,” I said breathlessly as I stumbled toward the room I was sure she was in.
“Anna, you’re bleeding,” Jasmine said as she caught my wrist.
“I know,” I muttered as I slipped out of her grasp. “Char?”
I eased the door open and found her curled up in the corner, her watery eyes wide with a terror I knew I’d never erase from my head.
“W-w-w-w—what—what is—I don’t know—um…”
“Come here, I gotcha,” I whispered as the cars sputtered out of range, kicking up rocks and rumbling over twigs and leaves that only served to remind us of the chaos that had left us ruined. “I gotcha, beautiful.”
“I thought you guys said they were goooood,” Char wailed as I sat down beside her.
I drew her into my arms as Lizzy camped out in front of me with Doc’s bag. “Give me those feet.”
I didn’t argue. I just placed them in her lap as I pulled Charise as tightly into my embrace as I could.
“They are,” I whispered as I rocked her side to side, ignoring the searing pain in the soles of my feet. “My brother is the best man I know. Same with Brutus.”
“And Doc,” Lizzy said as bit down onto her tongue while she picked glass out of the bottoms of my feet. “He’s taught me a thing or two as well. I want to check all of you out. You, too, Char, so get ready.”
“O-o-o-kay,” Char choked out in between her tears.
“And Ghost,” Jasmine said as she sat on the other side of Char, drying her own tears.
“And Range,” Marla said as she sat with her back pressed to mine.
“And Wrecker,” Amanda said as she collapsed down onto the bed with a blanket wrapped around her.
“And Cap,” Ariel whispered as she stood in the hallway, staring down the length of it.
Where those asshats ripped them away from us in handcuffs.
“Same with my brother’s crew,” I said, trying to reassure Char with all my might. “I don’t know what screws the DOJ has that are loose. I don’t know what in the hell is going on, but you can trust us. All of us.”
“Including me,” Marla said. “I know what you’re going through, Char. I know what it’s like to be tortured by the people who had you in their grasp. We will make sure the DOJ pays for this. Because those men are good.”
“And when we’re done with them?” I said as I scooped Char even closer to me. “The DOJ will have to declare bankruptcy just to survive us.”
“You got that fuckin’ right,” Ariel said before she stormed into the room and hopped onto the bed with her sister.
And as all of us fell silent, save for Char’s sniffling and tears that she just couldn’t hold back, I vowed revenge on the entirety of the DOJ.
Because there was no way in hell they were getting away with this.
Not after what The Iron Battalion and The Devil’s Legion had done to help them.