Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
WRENLEY
I rritation choked me, and anger boiled through my veins. But it was the hurt and embarrassment that punched me hard enough that I had to press a hand to my twisting stomach. What had they seen? What did they know?
Earlier, when I arrived home after the supermarket and a lunch date with Saint and Gun, Raya was in the living room. I knew she’d been waiting for me. The sadness in her gaze had shot tension straight into my body. Saint and Gun, who had followed me home, took one look at my sister and told me they’d get the groceries in and put them away.
Raya stood. “Do you have something to tell me?”
Bile rose at the thought of what she’d found out. How she’d found out without me telling her.
My mind blanked in that moment.
“Wrenley?”
Hesitantly, I’d asked, “What do you mean?”
Then she’d told me.
They’d looked at my texts.
They’d hacked my phone.
My privacy.
I’d walked back out the front door to the car and driven to the compound. There was only one person who worked on computers for the Diamond MC, and I wanted a word with him. I wanted to know who he thought he was to look in my phone in the first place without asking my permission.
He had no right.
It was up to me to tell people.
It happened to me.
“Wren, calm down,” Raya tried as I stalked to the front door at their club. She must have gotten a lift with Saint and Gun, who now stood with her.
“Calm down? If I’d have said that to you after finding out—” Loud footsteps approached. Country stepped from the hall first, then Death, Quake, Torch, Blaze, and the man I wanted to see. “You,” I bit out as I pointed at Tech.
He thumbed his chest. “Me?”
“You have no right to hack my phone. No right to my information. My privacy. Why’d you do it? Who asked you? Or did you just do it on your own because I’m not Raya?—”
“Wrenley, no—” Tech tried.
I waved a hand in front of me. “What information did you get?” I shouted, voice almost wavering from anger and sorrow swirling inside me. “What did you tell them? How far did you go back?”
“Quake, clear the room,” I heard Country order, but I took no notice.
“Wren, come on, come here.” Raya went to wrap her arm around me, but I moved out of reach.
My bottom lip trembled. “Did you see it all? Did you see what happened? The texts he sent after it?” I’d kept them for evidence in a folder I thought I’d hidden well on my phone. I’d kept them in case I was ever strong enough to go to the authorities. He’d texted me foul things not long after he’d dropped me off, and he wasn’t the only one either. His friend Mitch had too. “The texts they all sent?”
Oh God . Had he seen everything?
My stomach lurched, and I swallowed hard.
Had he told my sister before I could?
Was that why she looked sad?
“Wrenley, how about we—” Death stepped toward me.
“No!” I cried, backing up. Tears welled. “I-I didn’t say anything because I couldn’t remember. I didn’t say anything because not long after that happened, I walked in on my dad killing my mom.”
“Wrenley, maybe we should go somewhere private?” Raya said softly.
I huffed, wiping at my tears.
Shaking my head, I looked to Tech. “Why did you do it? Why did you look?”
Movement near him caught my attention, and Torch stepped forward. “Tech was doin’ what I asked him to.”
A sharp pain punched me in the chest. I rubbed at the spot, throat thick. “You?”
He nodded.
More tears welled, and my bottom lip trembled. “Why? You didn’t like that I was around your dog? You didn’t like me around the club?” I shook my head at my stupid questions. I wasn’t thinking, only acting, rambling. “It was my privacy. My life. My secrets.”
“He hurt you,” Torch voiced in a rough yet quiet tone.
He hurt me.
He.
Tony.
They knew about him.
They knew .
“I told him to stay away, to leave you alone.”
I blinked at him. “You saw him?” I took a step back. “ You went there?” I yelled. “What did he say? What did he tell you? Is it everything that Tech already knows? It was my business! I was going to tell my sister in my time. I was going to get help. You had no right. You had no fucking right to look for or go see that man. Did he tell you? Did he laugh with his friends about drugging me, gang-raping me, and handcuffing me to the sink? Did they? Did…?”
The room went deathly silent.
The already-tense atmosphere suddenly turned volatile.
Raya sucked in a breath as Country roared, “Saint, Gun, get them the fuck out.”
I was tucked into a chest, and they moved me toward the door, but I looked back, not understanding what was going on. I didn’t understand the urgency or why things were changing.
I didn’t understand until I heard an animalistic sound fly from Torch, right before Blaze tackled him to the ground. Death landed on top of them, then Country, and yet Torch was still trying to get up, to get them off. The sounds he made were like nothing I’d heard before from a man.
The last thing I saw before the door shut after us was Quake and Tech joining the other shouting men to hold Torch down.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered before pressing my fingers against my mouth as my bottom lip quivered.
“Shh, it’s okay, sweetheart,” Raya said softly as she ran her fingers through my hair. I rested my head on her lap while we were on the couch.
Tears leaked. “I’m so sorry.”
“What for, Wrenny?” my sister asked, tucking some hair behind my ear. We were in our own living room with the help of Gun and Saint, who got us home. I’d broken down on the way back and didn’t register anything around me until now. I could hear the men in the kitchen talking softly.
My chest ached. My heart had shattered. The pieces were rattling around in my body.
Back at the compound, the combination of my anger and fear had caused me to act irrationally.
At the reminder, I shivered. “I-I shouldn’t have done that. I shouldn’t have said it like that in front of everyone. I just couldn’t stop.”
And then Torch had… he’d… lost it… because of what I’d said.
I covered my face and cried again.
Raya had told me that no one knew the full details of what happened. They’d only grazed the surface of what Tony was doing. They’d looked into it because of my recent reaction to a text.
Raya gently tapped my head. “You were justified in doing and saying whatever you wanted. You’re allowed to let it out, Wrenley. And keep letting the pain out. Tell me everything, my sweet sister. Tell me what happened, please, Wrenny. Let me help. Let me in.”
Whimpering, I shook my head. “Raya, no?—”
“Please. I can help carry this with you. I want to. Don’t do it on your own. Please, Wren. Please. Let me in. Don’t hold it back. Don’t hold it in.”
Moaning, I curled myself into a tighter ball and told her.
Everything.
“Oh, honey,” she said after I finished, her voice soft and clogged with emotions. “Why didn’t you say anything back then?”
I wiped at my face and drew in a shuddering breath. “I walked in on Dad the same day that I woke up in the bathroom. It was all too much.”
Closing my eyes, I dug my nails into my palms and pressed both fisted hands to my lips.
“You didn’t want to burden me with more,” she predicted. “We’re the same in many ways, Wrenley. I know that’s what you would’ve been thinking. I’d have done the same. But believe me when I tell you this, please . You are not, nor have you ever been, a burden. I’m always here for you.”
“I know,” I uttered. “At the time, I could only handle so much. Since I didn’t remember what they did, I pushed it down. The… the pain in my body didn’t want me to forget, but my mind kept replaying the scene from home over and over.”
“Shit, Wrenley, you went through so much. In a way, I guess your mind was protecting you from one ordeal by throwing a constant loop of the other at you.”
I shrugged. “Yeah.”
“They’re going to help.”
I knew who she meant.
“H-how? I don’t want them to get into trouble.”
“They won’t. The club is smart.”
Licking my dry lips, I asked softly, “Is it bad that I want them to deal with him?”
Raya huffed. “If it’s a mark against my moral code or something by thinking he should…. No, he deserves to be dealt with, so I’ll take that mark with my head held high. He’ll get what’s coming to him, Wrenley, and it’ll be justified.” Anger sharpened her tone. “How fucking dare he walk around this world thinking that what he and his friends did will go unpunished. If Leland and his brothers didn’t know about this, if you had told only me, then I would have done something myself to make them pay. It may not have been as good as whatever the men in our lives come up with, but they’d have suffered in some way.”
My sister.
I should have told her.
But there was no use wishing I could change the past; it got me nowhere. I’d just have to learn to live with the regret of not speaking up for the rest of my life.
Especially if Tony and his friends had harmed someone else.
“Raya?”
“Yes, honey?”
“I’m glad you’re my sister and that you’ve got Death.”
She leaned down and kissed my cheek. “So am I, Wrenny. We’ll get through this.”
“Yeah,” I whispered.
Maybe one day.
The image of Torch being taken to the ground swept into my mind. The sounds he’d made rang through me.
Why had he acted that way?
Why did he look crushed when I yelled at him?
But most of all, why did he seem so destroyed learning what happened to me?