15. Dax
DAX
Dear Diary,
I’ve seen those marks before. I just never thought I’d see them on someone I loved.
Nyah and Luca arrived at my shop looking like they’d seen a ghost.
I glanced up as the bell rang over the door, and the easy smile I’d had for the customer I’d been tattooing fell away the instant I saw their expressions.
The gun still vibrated in my hand. “What happened?”
Nyah said nothing, just burst into tears, her shoulders shaking, her long dark hair falling around her face in a curtain while she cried.
Luca didn’t move to comfort her. He stood like a statue beside her, staring at me.
I moved to Nyah’s side, pulling her into my arms and cradling her head to my chest. “Hey, shh. Whatever happened, it’s okay now. You’re safe.”
I kissed the top of her head, but my gaze was firmly locked on Luca’s. I didn’t get the vibe he’d hurt her, but rather something had happened and both were in shock. “What happened?” I murmured to him; eyes full of questions.
His throat bobbed. His gaze darted to my brothers, who’d both paused mid tattoo to stare at us. “Can we talk in private?”
A bad feeling grew in the pit of my stomach, but I nodded, and with my arm wrapped around Nyah, I led them to the little kitchen at the back of the shop. It had a door you could close off so it wasn’t visible to the store floor, and I shut it behind us.
Nyah sobbed harder once it was just the three of us, her arms gripping around me so tight I could barely breathe.
Horror washed over me. “The baby?”
She shook her head fast. “No. No, it’s fine. But, Dax, your mom…”
I blinked at her, wondering what on earth my mother could have done to have Luca walking around like a zombie and Nyah this upset. “What did she do?”
Nyah gazed up at me miserably, her cheeks tearstained and bottom lip trembling. She was so fucking beautiful it was impossible for me to not brush my lips over hers and reassure her, whatever it was, it was going to be okay.
“Just tell me. Whatever happened, we’ll get through it together.”
As long as she and the baby were alive and well, I could handle anything else.
But it was Luca who cleared his throat so she didn’t have to. “We found your mom dead outside the gates at the Slayers’ compound this morning.”
For a long moment, his words didn’t register.
For a slow second, the world still seemed like a good place.
In an instant, that shattered. Exploded into shrapnel that cut deep, spearing its way inside my skin and ripping apart everything I was.
I shook my head. “No. I just talked to her when we got back from Scotland. I told her everything. She had to know why she needed to lay low, and why she couldn’t go back to the Guerras’ ever. She said she wouldn’t…”
Luca’s mouth pulled into a straight line, and he scrubbed his hand over his face. “I don’t know that we can blame this one on my father.”
Rage and anger exploded inside me because it was a hell of a lot easier than hearing my mother had been murdered.
I didn’t want to think about the raw wound that felt like it had punctured my heart and lungs and every other vital organ.
If I did, I was scared I’d fall into a heap I’d never recover from.
“Of course it was your fucking father,” I seethed at him, taking out that anger on the wrong person.
But he was the only Guerra I had in my store at that minute so he would have to do.
“Who the hell else would want my mother dead?”
Nyah took a wobbly breath. “There were marks carved into her back,” she said softly.
I blanched at the details I was sure I didn’t want to know.
“Claw marks,” she added. “But not the kind a real animal would have made.”
I stared at her, remembering all too vividly another dead body I’d seen with claw marks carved into skin. “Lynx?” I barely got out, bile rising up in my throat. “No. He’s a good guy. He wouldn’t…”
And yet all three of us had seen him lose control. We’d all seen the way he’d sliced up a man like he was a butcher and the body beneath his blade a slaughtered pig. “Why?” I whispered.
Luca shook his head. “I don’t know. He was triggered. Maybe he didn’t know what he was doing…”
“Don’t fucking make excuses for him,” I snapped.
“I’m not,” he said. “Virginia…your mom, she meant something to me, Dax. Please don’t think I’m making light of this, because I’m not. But if Lynx did this, then something is seriously wrong.”
Nyah leaned against my chest. “He can’t have. I don’t believe it.”
Luca stared at her. “Then where is he?”
She sighed. “I don’t know.”
Telling my brothers what had happened was the hardest thing I’d ever done in my life. They argued with me for a good ten minutes, swearing that what I was telling them wasn’t true. And when they finally did believe me, they’d both left immediately to go find our father.
I was glad. I didn’t want him to be alone. And I didn’t want my brothers to have to identify her body.
I was the eldest. While the twins had always gotten to be free spirits who did as they pleased, I was the responsible one.
The Slayers’ van was parked outside my shop, and I got into it, sitting in the back with Nyah wrapped around me, the only warmth I could feel through the cold that seemed intent on seeping into my bones.
Luca drove us back to the compound, and I was grateful because I was sure I couldn’t have driven myself.
He eyed me nervously in the rearview mirror. “Are you sure you want to do this? You can wait until they’ve moved her body and cleaned her up.”
I shook my head. “I need to see what he’s done to her.”
Luca sighed and focused back on the road. We drew nearer to the Slayers’ compound, and Nyah squeezed my hand, reassuring me she was right there with me.
But all I felt was the cold seeping in, trying to ice over the warmth she tried to rub into me.
She was fighting a losing battle. I was there in body, but inside, I was drowning. The guilt washed over my head, each wave whispering I was to blame for this. That she had been fine, working at the Guerras’ place until I’d gotten involved in that world.
And now she was dead.
We bounced along the road until, in the distance, the Slayers’ gate loomed. A crowd of people stood outside it, most dressed in their black club jackets, though there were a few others, like Queenie and Amber, who stood among them in regular clothes.
Luca parked the van, and we all got out. I moved like I was a hundred years old. Every inch of my body felt stiff and broken, so much so I wasn’t even surprised when Luca put his arm around me, holding me up more than offering comfort.
“I got you.”
Between him and Nyah, we moved around the van until I faced the Slayers. They stood in a circle, shoulder to shoulder, all of their heads bowed.
War stepped forward and looked me in the eye. “We haven’t called the cops yet. We wanted you to be able to see her for yourself, if you wanted to. But we’ve all been here, since the moment Luca and Nyah found her. We form a circle of protection around our dead. I’m so fucking sorry, man.”
I nodded at him, but my gaze kept drifting past him, to the gap he’d left in the circle of people who shielded my mother’s body from the elements and animals and from sight. I wanted to thank them all for what they’d done, but I couldn’t find the words.
None of them seemed to need them. They stepped aside as Luca and Nyah and I approached.
I sank down into the dirt at my mother’s side and stared at her, taking in every cut and mark on her body, every scratch and claw-shaped carving in her skin.
There was no mistaking the calling card he’d left on her back.
I murmured one of the prayers I’d learned as a kid, the words not intelligible, and I’d forgotten a lot of them because it had been so long since I’d last stepped foot inside a church. But I muttered them all the same.
And then added a few extra vows of my own.
“I’ll end the man who did this to you. That I solemnly swear.”
Lynx could run, but he couldn’t hide forever.