Burned(Devil's Blaze MC 2)(61)

Damn it.





“Someone needs to kill Colin, slowly and painfully,” I growl, driving down the road.

“I’m pretty sure Skull’s already making plans,” Torch says and from the corner of my eye, I can see him staring at where he tossed the phone after hearing Skull go on for ten minutes.

“If he manages to do that, I might grow to like the asshole.”

My mind churning, I don’t know what to do. If Colin’s flunkies find me, could they possibly be closing in on Bethie and the baby, too? Shit.

“He’ll do it. It just might get real bloody. Step on the gas, sweetness. Levi and his assholes won’t be far behind and I’d rather not have a shootout with you here between us.”

Torch’s voice is stressed and I can hear his worry… for me. That feeling hits my stomach again. Damn him!

“They won’t come after us,” I say.

“Trust me, they will.”

“Not without stealing a car,” I point out. “Even then, they’d have to change some tires.”

“What are you talking about?”

I flip open the console between us and show him my Bowie Knife I keep there. “That’s why it took me so long to pick you up. I slashed the front tires on their bikes and then slashed the four cars in the parking lot. Even managed to get the two on the side that I assume belong to the waitress and cook.”

“Fuck me like a whore in church on Sunday!” he exclaims, then observes me. “I think I underestimated you, Katydid.”

“Most people do,” I admit without bitterness. It’s just a fact of life. Torch shakes his head and looks out the window, growing silent. “What are you thinking about?”

“That if Skull hadn’t killed your father,” he answers, “I’d like to be the one to gut the asshole.”

My hands freeze on the steering wheel. “Skull killed my father?”

“Yeah.”

“Shit.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I didn’t want to find something to like him for,” I grumble.

“Where’d you learn all this shit, Katie?”

I tense up at his question. I keep my vision on the road in front of us and tighten up my hands. “What do you mean?”

“Don’t play dumb, sweetness. We both know you’re smart as a tack.”

His words do a little more towards making my stomach feel weird and releasing that tight rein I have on letting Torch all the way in. It should scare me, but it’s starting to feel normal. I’m starting to wish my walls were down. I want to let Torch in. No one has ever thought of me as smart before, except maybe Bethie, but she loves me.

“My father… was like two different men,” I finally reveal. “When he and my mother were first together, he wanted to live a normal life. He tried to leave the family. Who knows? It might have worked out well.”

“Why didn’t it?”

“My mother was a money-grubbing whore, maybe? Can’t say for sure. I’m judging from the many sermons my father gave while making sure his daughter didn’t walk in her footsteps.”

“What do you mean?”

“When my father left the ‘family’ for her, things were fine until my mother discovered that without the family, she wouldn’t have summer homes in France, credit cards with no limits, no Mercedes, no maids or chauffeurs. In short, my mother hated everything about life in suburbia.”

Torch processes this. “She made your father go back in?”

“If only it were that simple,” I say with a sigh, wondering why some twisted part of me actually feels sorry for Redmond. I shouldn’t; he beat whatever fucks I gave out of me long ago. “She decided, since Redmond wouldn’t keep her in diamonds, furs, and private planes, she’d find someone who would.”

“His twin,” Torch says right on cue.

“Yep. Old Uncle Edmond was knee-deep and climbing the ranks in the family that Redmond had turned his back on. Isabel latched onto him and never looked back, even when my father told her he was taking the oldest daughter with him.”

“But, you’re twins…”

“Oh, see, but the family has a system,” I point out. “Redmond came out first, so he had the position first. Edmond only got to be head of the family because Redmond didn’t want it.”

“So, by keeping you, Redmond was pretty much securing the next generation?”

“In his mind, yeah. Until he realized that having me would be a liability. Then, I was better off dead.”

“And… that’s why he said you died?”

“Yep. I went from being a liability to being a secret weapon.”