4. Samara
CHAPTER FOUR
samara
Kids screaming in the yard was like white noise in my head as I paced the long driveway between the three houses. Their glee-filled laughter barely penetrated the buzz in my mind that had only tripled since the arrival of my parents and several other members of our family. Subconsciously, I kept them all in sight, but I left them to their own devices.
Not even when the two terror twins, Aidan and Ciaran, started making plans to test the theory of gravity did I feel the need to engage. Sometimes kids needed to learn certain things the hard way. Swinging as high as they could get and then jumping out seemed like a lot of fun, but maybe I should have cared a little more when they began discussing how to get onto the roof of the bigger house so they could jump off.
Their older brothers suggested something about pillowcases or bedsheets for parachutes, cackling like the maniacs they all were, which had me pausing for all of two seconds before I was back to my pacing.
Holding my phone in my hands, I kept monitoring the app that told me where Abi and Amala were. I’d only spoken to her a few minutes ago, but I felt restless. Knowing my mother was so close only made the buzzing in my head louder. It didn’t matter how old my precious niece was—I didn’t trust Anya Vitucci around her. Amala was not going to be put through the same education I’d had to withstand. Maybe my mother’s heart was in the right place when it came to shit like that, but she’d had to turn off a piece of her humanity every time she’d taught me something new.
Sometimes she’d forgotten to turn it back on when the lesson was over. I’d quickly learned how to shut off my mind at a young age. Block the pain. The exhaustion. Crying wasn’t an option. Tears wouldn’t save me. Fear was something that didn’t register for me on the same levels as other people. I wasn’t blaming all of my crazy on her, but she hadn’t exactly helped.
Amala and the new baby wouldn’t ever have to learn those mind-altering things. I was easing Amala into the skills she would eventually need. I was mentally ill, not stupid. Our family had too many enemies for me to ever believe Vaughn’s children wouldn’t be a target at some point in their lives. They would be prepared, just not in the extreme way I’d been forced to learn. Amala thought we were playing games, and I was able to sleep a little easier snuggled up with Elias knowing she was able to defend herself.
“Ah, crap! No, little dudes. We don’t jump off three-story buildings. Who the fu…fluff told you that was a good idea?” Jamie’s voice echoed around me.
Lifting my gaze from the two little dots on my phone screen, I watched him grab Ciaran before he could leap off the roof, wrestling the two boys away from their science experiment. At least someone with a moral compass was paying attention. I wasn’t all that sure how straight Jamie Carver’s pointed, though.
Many times, I’d seen the switch flip inside him, turning on his crazy and amping it up high. A few times, that crazy had even rivaled my own. But he and the two other rockers took good care of Hayat, so that had to count for something. If they protected her, kept her happy, then I didn’t give a single fuck if he was a little mentally unstable.
Not just anyone could fill the role of my second best friend. My fourth favorite person in the entire world. Hayat was special. But then again, she would have to be to earn Abi as a bestie.
Sparks and Ky appeared on the roof to help Jamie. All three of them were struggling to breathe by the time they got the boys safely back on the ground.
“The next time you two get a wild idea to learn about gravity, Google it instead of performing your own experiments,” Sparks told the kids. “And you two.”
He pointed at where the older set of identical twins was watching with mischievous, swirling brown eyes.
“Why did you encourage your brothers? You are both old enough to know better. Are you trying to get them killed?”
“Sometimes you have to let Ciaran learn things like that on his own,” the one I was guessing was Elijah said with a shrug. He tended to be the mouthier of the two, but I couldn’t tell them apart even when I tried hard. The only way I could differentiate between Aidan and Ciaran was because Ciaran was typically the one leading the charge into the disasters they created.
Ciaran also tended to be my favorite. I was glad Jamie had saved the kid. I might have missed him if the boys had succeeded in their latest bad idea.
Losing interest, I turned my attention back to my phone. Vaughn was over at Gian Fontana’s house. Those two weren’t friends, but they did work together, pooling their resources to take down as many sex trafficking rings as possible. Abi was so fucking proud of her husband for how many kids and women he had helped rescue over the years. I’d tagged along with Gian and a few of the Angel’s Halo brothers to assist in the extraction of some of the victims. But it was really my brother who handled the most important parts of finding and shutting down those sick motherfuckers.
Some of the victims were transferred to Sanctuary in Creswell Springs. Some were returned home. Others were flown back to whatever country they had been taken from. It was good work, but probably not enough to cleanse Vaughn’s or my own soul enough to earn us anything but a one-way ticket straight to hell.
Still watching the app that kept track of Abi and Amala, I paused when I saw the little heart rate index on Abi’s avatar suddenly spike. Without hesitating, I called her.
As soon as she answered, all the buzzing in my head went silent. Her breathing was choppy—half hiccup, half wounded cry.
“Sammy, I-I can’t… I can’t. I can’t… ”
The world around me narrowed to nothing but the sound of her voice. “You can’t what , Abs?”
“Hayat,” she sobbed. “I can’t find Hayat.”
Next level crazy unlocked.