Chapter 31
CHAPTER
THIRTY-ONE
TROY
“I can’t believe it’s true,” Alisa whispers.
My heart clenches in misery as she pulls down her safety glasses and uses the bat hanging from the wall to break a collection of creepy glass dolls Easton picked up at a yard sale.
I think they look better scattered in pieces as she pulverized them with the business end of her weapon than in their original form, but that’s me.
We’re having our first session of Smash Club, and I can’t fucking breathe. The smell of sadness and anger are thick inside the shed, some of which is mine. Silas, Lyle, and East should be here, but they’re all stuck at various other responsibilities.
I can see why they hate being the ones to pick up the mantle to keep this city safe. It’s not fucking fair that everyone immediately looks to them to do the things no one else wants to do.
“I’m sorry, Little Fighter.”
“It’s not fair! He was supposed to love me!” Her scream has me rubbing over my heart as she slams the bat against the wall in raw rage.
I can’t tell her what her father does or doesn’t feel because the evidence that he sold her is damning. Alisa just got off the phone with her brother, Lars, and the news wasn’t good.
Crash.
The windows of Smash Club are storm proofed to keep someone from accidentally breaking them. She is currently beating the fuck out of them as if they owe her money. Thank fuck Silas built this with the intention to keep a feral gremlin with a fuck ton of trauma safe.
Alisa is wearing gloves, safety glasses, boots with her pajamas, with a snarl that could rival any alpha’s. Lars called us a half an hour ago while she and I were still waking up. Since my season is over, I get to spend my days with Alisa.
Part of the perks of this is snuggling her whenever she sleeps in, which is happening more often now that her nightmares are fewer.
Unfortunately, I think this is partly because she’s living them in her flashbacks. I know Alisa believes Silas is her sleep guardian, but if I believed that, I’d have already begged Silas to bite me too.
Alisa is stabbing pillows with her knife and pulling the stuffing out, her chest heaving with emotion as she simulates what I think we’d both like to do to her father.
“Alisa, what did he say?” She didn’t have the phone on speaker, which is fine, but it means I don’t have all the details of what happened.
“He… Lars said one of Dad’s men mysteriously decided to go into retirement recently. This isn’t something usually allowed. Men with too much time on their hands tend to tell tales they shouldn’t.”
I can hear her brother’s words coming from her mouth and it’s kind of disorienting. If she’d stayed longer with her family, I think she’d be a lot like Hollis. Alisa idolizes her, because she seems to think her brothers’ best friend is untouchable.
However, I think everyone is capable of losing their footing, and no one is completely protected. It’s simply a fact of life. Alisa is so fucking strong, and that’s the reason she’s able to scream and break shit when things go pear shaped instead of curling into a ball of despair.
In fact, anyone else may have given up while laying on the warehouse floor where we found her.
Something none of us have said out loud is how close we were to losing her that night. Doc still has haunted shadows in his eyes when he watches her for too long. He has a penchant for taking on patients who flirt with death and I wonder what this says about him.
“What kind of tales?” I ask.
I want to hug her, but she doesn’t want that. Alisa needs to scream and break shit. I don’t think I'm the best person to witness her anger, simply because I want to cry with her. Doesn’t she deserve someone stronger?
“Tales of remorse for all the fucked up shit they did as soldiers without a damn brain cell!”
I flinch as she sinks the knife into a life sized stuffed animal of Smokey the Bear, stabbing him over and over as she bites out her words. Poor Smokey. Easton’s penchant for picking up vintage stuffed animals is concerning.
“Danny’s worked for my father since I was a baby and always seemed to be around. Lars picked him up at a bar a few days after he found out Danny wasn’t working anymore for our family.
“He said our dad told Danny to change the rotation of guards on property the night I was kidnapped. It left a gap underneath my window, with everyone looking elsewhere while I was sleeping. Danny said my father told him to unlock my window that night and he didn’t ask questions. I don’t even know why I was sold.”
“Does it matter?” I rasp.
Alisa slams the knife down so hard on a shelf, I worry she’s going to cut herself.
“No. I should at least know why he thought my life meant so little. No amount would be enough for a good father.”
“You’re right.” There’s a bundle of hard pads in a corner and I pull them on. “Come hit me, baby.”
“I…don’t want to.” Her pout is endearing and tells me my girl is in there. She’s hurting, but she’s there.
“Show me what Easton’s been working with you on,” I reply. “I can take a punch, Alisa. It’s what I’m paid to do. Come hit me.”
My ability to watch her break has its limits.
She’s destroyed half the shed with her anger, and now I want to see how well she’s been paying attention to her lessons.
I know no amount of preparation will be perfect, but I want Alisa to be as safe and healthy as possible.
We’re working out at the pool, she’s sparring with East in our basement, and she’s shooting at a range twice a week with Lyle.
We all have our time with her, and Silas uses his to go for walks with Alisa to lower her cortisol levels by enjoying the beauty of Savannah.
A walk isn’t going to cut it today.
Alisa’s teeth sink into her bottom lip and I grin back at her.
“If this doesn’t work, we’ll find something else. You can break everything and then fuck me if it’ll help. Hit me, Little Fighter.”
She pulls off her glasses and gloves and then is flying at me with a scream.
Jesus, she’s a tiny, beautiful nightmare and she’s all mine.
Her fists hit my arms and chest, while her boots kick and stomp on my feet.
The pads cover my arms and chest, and she’s not tall enough to hit my face without climbing me like a tree or kicking me in the knot.
Thankfully, her anger isn’t personal.
I’m wearing tennis shoes to protect my feet from her stomping, but I still wince and thank all the gods that I didn’t pull on my slides instead when we left the house.
I have some self preservation.
“Again,” I growl.
She’s breathless by the time she’s done beating the hell out of me, and her tears have changed to something else entirely. The pads drop to the ground as I lift her by a handful of her ass, and she squeals as I gaze at her.
“I love you so much,” I breathe, kissing her soundly as her legs wrap around my waist. “I want to fuck you in the garden. Do you think I need to warn anyone?”
“Doc,” she giggles. Her emotions are mercurial as hell, but this I understand. The ability to go from angrier than a hornet to giddy is a mind fuck. It won’t fix what she found out, but I have the time off to plan a trip to Minnesota.
Her father isn’t going to live much longer if our pack has anything to do with it.
As I push open the door, I find Lyle, East, and Silas there instead.
“Hollis texted us and said we needed to get our asses home,” East grunts. “I found coverage for my shift and got the fuck out.”
“I gave my regrets to the meeting I was in,” Lyle says without hesitation. He was at a small gathering discussing campaign strategy since he’s formally announcing he’s running at the end of the summer.
Lyle wants to make sure that he has enough support to win against Mayor Aletto, and I think he’ll get it.
“I figured I’d handle it,” I wince.
Silas glances at the mini tornado of wreckage behind us and nods. “I mean, you did pretty well,” he murmurs. “None of us would have been able to concentrate. Donna Illaria was on my last damn nerve, and I finally told her my omega needed me and I had to cut out early.”
“We haven’t told many people we found our scent match because I don’t want Alisa to be forced to attend parties she has zero interest in,” Lyle adds. “Just because we’re social doesn’t mean she needs to be. Do you want to be inside or out to talk, Alisa?”
“Outside,” she says. “I was promised orgasms for beating Troy up.”
My chuckle has her grinning at me and I hold her tightly as I begin walking toward our swing.
“I had this idea that I was going to fuck the sad out of you,” I confess. “I don’t know the right thing to do when you’re feeling so much.”
“That’s because there isn’t one,” Easton grunts. “We each do things differently. That’s the beauty of a pack.”
Alisa curls up on our swing bed once I pull off her boots, and we all sit around her. There’s a large amount of restraint to keep from immediately trying to fix what’s broken as Alisa takes a deep breath and pulls out her phone.
“I don’t want to go through it,” she whispers. “I feel like I’ll forget something important.”
“You’re calling Lars?” Silas asks, rubbing her back as she nods, hitting the video chat button.
We all blink as Lars accepts the request, his face covered in blood.
“Sorry, I’m seeing if the piece of shit has anything else to tell me before I kill him. Want to see?”
The image flips to the back camera, where a large man with dirty blonde hair hangs from a hook in the ceiling. Instead of holding him up by rope, the meat hook pierces his back, slowly tearing into his tissue. He grits his teeth in pain, his skin covered in cigarette burns and knife wounds.
“Danny,” Alisa says. Though it’s soft, it still blares out through the Bluetooth speakers hooked to the phone. He must have been listening to music before she called.
“Who is that? Why does she know my name?” Danny yells.
“Alisa is all grown up now, you bastard,” Lars growls. “She survived you and the old man, and she’s going to watch you piss yourself before you die if it’ll help quiet the boogeymen in her mind.”