Braxton #3
“Before you bleed out, Russ, I want you to know what a pathetic little man you are. Your boss was a bitch, and whenever I think of you, I’m going to laugh at what a bitch you are, too.
” I chuckle to myself. “Actually, I’m not going to think of you at all,” I say and position my blade under his ear, stabbing deep as I slowly run it along his neck to the other ear.
Russ’s body shakes as the life drains from him, then it stops, his head falling forward.
He’s dead.
I step back and shake out my arms, tilting my head from side to side to stretch the tense muscles in my neck.
“What are we going to do with the bodies? I hate to leave this here for you to clean up,” Linc says to Nik.
“I’ve got an incinerator. My men will come in here and spray everything down with bleach. It’ll be as though they were never here,” Nik replies.
It’s over.
My brothers are safe.
Vanessa is safe.
After the cleanup is finished and the bodies are being burned so that nothing is left but charred remains, I step outside onto Nik’s back patio and the quiet night greets me.
Now that Russ is dead, Vanessa can go anywhere, do anything, be whoever she should have been before her stepbrother took control of her life. There’s a peacefulness that comes with that. And also an unbelievable amount of sadness that she’s going to choose something other than me.
“Thought I’d find you out here,” Ozzy says, closing the back door behind him.
He comes to stand next to me and we both stare out over the pool and the darkness beyond.
“You going back to the doc’s?” Ozzy asks.
I shrug. “Maybe.”
Ozzy turns his body toward me. “What is going on? Are you worried that you can’t trust Vanessa? That even though you claimed her, she isn’t old-lady material or something?”
I shake my head. “No, of course not. I understand why she did what she did. Russ was a sadistic monster. More of one than I gave him credit for. He was willing to sell off his little sister, for chrissake. I completely get why she thought she didn’t have a choice.
And I believed her when she said that she was going to come clean when I got back from Michigan. It’s not that.”
“Then what is it?”
“I don’t…I don’t know if this life is for her.
If we had met again under different circumstances, and she wasn’t in the position she was in, would she have found out I was in an MC and run the other direction?
She grew up in a life surrounded by criminals.
Most women wouldn’t want to attach their lives and futures to one.
What if she had graduated high school, then college, to become a teacher or something?
There’s no way in hell she would have looked twice at me, knowing what my life entails and think, Yeah, I’ll take that one. ”
“She didn’t though, Braxton. That wasn’t the way her life turned out.
She knows what’s really out there. What nightmares go bump in the night.
So it doesn’t matter what she would have done if she had a completely different life.
Vanessa was shaped by the life she led. She accepts the good and the bad of it. ”
“But she shouldn’t have had to, and now she has a chance to live a different life, free from her stepbrother and the fucking Bratva.”
“Free from you?”
I exhale a long breath. “Maybe.”
Ozzy is quiet for a few moments as he considers his words.
“You know, I thought the same thing when I was eighteen. Granted, I was young and stupid and thought I was doing the right thing, but when Freya was shot in the clubhouse, I freaked out. I ended things with her because I didn’t want this world to touch her.
Only…it already had, and it shaped her differently than most other women.
But I thought I was doing the right thing when I pushed her away. ”
“Yeah, but that all worked out—it just took a little longer than you would have probably liked.”
“True,” Ozzy says with a smile. “I fucking love my woman to the very depths of my soul and would never live in a world without her. But I was prepared to, so she could live the life I thought she should have without consulting her on the matter. I guess what I’m trying to say is don’t be old and dumb.
Talk to Vanessa. Let her make her decisions on what her life is going to look like. ”
“I’m just…worried that she’ll try to stick it out, even if it’s not what she really wants now,” I admit.
“Sounds like you’re more afraid of opening up and talking to her. This is where the rubber meets the road, brother. You won’t know anything unless you open your heart to her and see where she takes it.”
“I don’t know where that will be. That’s what scares me.” Completely terrifies me, actually.
“Yeah, that’s the beauty and the bitch about love.
If she says so long, it hurts worse than anything in the world.
But if she doesn’t, if she takes you into her heart, there’s nothing in the world that could ever compare.
It’s fucking magic.” Ozzy turns toward the house and clasps me on the shoulder.
“But you have to get out of your own way first,” he finishes, then walks toward the patio doors and heads inside.
Well, fuck.