Chapter 30 Mehar
Mehar
Quest was out of the car before it stopped moving.
Rider pulled Mega from the backseat and shoved him face-first into the gravel and kept a gun on him while Quest walked to the door.
He didn’t knock. He kicked it open on the first try and the lock splintered out of the frame and the door swung inward and the smell hit us before the light did. Stale sweat, urine, and weed.
Serenity was on the bed. Wrists zip-tied to the metal headboard, clothes dirty, hair matted to her face.
She was thinner than the last time I’d seen her and her eyes were glassy and unfocused and when the light from the open door hit her face she flinched like she’d been living in the dark so long that daylight hurt.
“Ren.” Quest’s voice cracked on her name. He crossed the room and pulled a knife from his pocket and cut the zip ties and they fell away from her wrists and the skin underneath was raw and bloody from days of pulling against them.
She looked up at him and her face crumbled and she reached for him and he pulled her off the bed and held her against his chest and she sobbed into his shirt with the force of a woman who had been holding herself together for days on nothing but willpower and the belief that her brothers were coming.
I came in behind Quest and put my hand on her back and she turned and saw me and grabbed me and held on with both arms like I was the only solid thing in the room.
I held her tight and felt her body trembling against mine and smelled the drugs on her skin and the tears on her face and I wanted to kill Mega my damn self.
“I got you,” I whispered. “You’re safe. It’s over.”
She cried into my shoulder for a long time. I let her. Some things can’t be rushed and grief on the other side of survival is one of them. Quest stood behind us with his jaw locked and his fists opening and closing and I could see him calculating how long Mega had left to breathe.
He turned and walked back toward the door.
“Bring him in,” Quest said to Rider.
Rider dragged Mega through the doorway by the collar of his shirt and dropped him on the floor of the motel room.
Mega was still bleeding from the beating at Camille’s condo.
His nose was crooked, his eye was swollen shut, and his lips were moving in a mumble that sounded like praying but was probably just begging.
Quest pulled his gun and pointed it at Mega’s head and his finger was on the trigger and I could see in his eyes that this was happening right now.
“STOP!”
Serenity’s voice cut through the room. Quest froze. He looked back at his sister and I could see the confusion flash across his face before it hardened into frustration.
“This nigga put you through hell, Ren. He kidnapped you, tied you to a bed, forced drugs on you, and you want to save his life?”
“That’s your problem, Quest. You always underestimate me and make assumptions.
” She pulled away from me and wiped her face with the back of her hand.
Her eyes were still glassy but something underneath them had sharpened.
Something that had been forming in that motel room for days while she counted water stains and planned her next move. “Give me the gun.”
Quest looked at her for a long second. Then he flipped the gun around in his hand and held it out to her grip-first. She took it and the weight of it settled into her palm and she wrapped both hands around it and walked toward Mega on the floor.
She stood over him and pointed the barrel at his crotch.
Mega’s one good eye went wide. “Serenity, wait. Baby, please. We can talk about this.”
“I’m pregnant,” she said. Her voice was steady and cold and clear. “It’s yours.”
His face changed. Something moved behind the fear that might have been shock or confusion or even a flicker of something human. “What? You’re… Ren, if you’re pregnant, then we can work this out. I’ll change. I swear to God I’ll change. For our baby. For us.”
“Our child will never even know who you are.”
She pulled the trigger. The silencer turned the shot into a muffled pop and Mega screamed in a pitch that didn’t sound human and grabbed between his legs and blood poured through his fingers and he writhed on the motel floor howling and begging and calling her name.
“Serenity please! Please! I’ll be different. I’ll be a good father. Just stop. PLEASE.”
She watched him for a few seconds. Let him beg.
Let him feel what it was like to be powerless and in pain and asking someone to stop who had no intention of stopping.
Then she raised the gun to his head and pulled the trigger one more time and the begging stopped and the room went quiet and Mega’s body went still on the brown carpet of Room 6 at the Mountain View Inn.
Serenity stood there with the gun hanging at her side and stared down at the man who had beaten her, drugged her, assaulted her, and kidnapped her. Smoke curled from the silencer. Her hands were steady. Her face was dry.
I walked over to her and stood beside her and looked down at the body and then at her.
“It feels good, doesn’t it,” I said. It wasn’t a question.
I knew the answer because I’d shot Ahmad in our apartment and walked out feeling lighter than I had in years.
Because Serenity and I were the same in this.
Women who had been hurt by men until we decided to stop being hurt.
Women who pulled the trigger and didn’t apologize for it.
“More than you know,” she said.
I put my arm around her shoulders and she leaned into me and we stood there for a moment, two women over a dead man in a motel room in Berryville, Virginia, breathing the same air and carrying the same knowledge that some men only stop when you make them stop.
“Congratulations, by the way,” I said.
She looked at me and for the first time since we’d found her, something soft crossed her face. “Thank you.”
“How far along?”
“About eight weeks. Maybe nine. I found out while in rehab.” Her hand went to her stomach. “He forced me to snort coke, Mehar. Multiple times. I just hope the baby is okay. I hope I didn’t lose another one. And that they’re born healthy.”
“We’re going to get you to a doctor first thing. Whatever happens, you’re not alone.”
Quest came back inside. He looked at Mega’s body on the floor and then at his sister holding the gun at her side and he didn’t say a word about it. He just walked over to her and put his hand on her head and pulled her against his chest.
“You and this baby are going to have everything,” he said. “I promise you that. Whatever you need, whenever you need it. You got me.”
“I know,” she said. “There’s enough love in this family. This baby is going to be just fine.”
Quest called the cleanup crew. Gave them the address, the room number, and told them to make it disappear by morning. Then he handed me his car keys.
“Take her home in my car. Rider will go with you. I’ll wait here for the crew.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah. Get her out of this room. She’s been in it long enough.”
I helped Serenity to the car. She was unsteady on her feet and leaned against me the whole way.
Rider walked behind us, his good hand on his weapon, scanning the parking lot.
I got Serenity into the passenger seat and buckled her in and she leaned her head against the window and closed her eyes and put both hands on her stomach.
I got behind the wheel and adjusted Quest’s seat because his legs were a full foot longer than mine. Started the engine. Looked back at the motel room where Quest was standing in the doorway with his phone to his ear and a dead man at his feet.
I pulled out of the parking lot and headed north toward home.
Serenity was asleep before we hit the highway.
Her breathing was rough and shallow and her wrists were raw and her body was full of poison that somebody else put there.
But she was alive and she was free and she was carrying a baby that she was going to fight for with everything she had left.