Outlaw's Promise(67)

I inhaled but breathing was difficult, my rage at my own stupidity filling my chest. “I was just a kid. She seemed happy—in fact, she seemed happier every time they came around. It didn’t occur to me that grown-ups could make bad decisions. I didn’t realize they were indoctrinating her.”

I felt Annabelle’s chest swell as she drew in a slow, horrified breath.

“By the time we figure out something’s wrong, it’s too late. I tell my dad and he starts making his way home. But by now, things are getting really scary. I hadn’t noticed some things until then, like the way some of her friends who came to our house would look at us. Not nasty or angry but...like they were grading us. Assessing us like we were things.”

“Oh Jesus,” breathed Annabelle. I found her hand in the dark and squeezed it. I knew that she’d experienced that, too.#p#分页标题#e#

“My brothers had put it together before I did, Kian especially. He’d done some asking around and he’d heard things about these people. He figured out it was a cult. One where kids were—” I swallowed. “Where kids disappeared.”

Annabelle was silent but she gripped me even harder.

“We could all feel it sliding out of control. We tried to talk to my mom, to warn her, but she was too far gone: I think they’d been feeding her drugs, in those meetings. If we criticized her friends, she’d get mad. All the rumors we’d heard about the cult were wrong, she said, propaganda by its enemies. And then she tells us that one of my brothers, Bradan, is going on a ‘special trip’ with her friends. She gets him in the car. We’re all clawing at the handles, trying to get the doors open. Bradan’s screaming, hysterical. And she drives off.”

I drew in a shuddering breath. I could feel the most difficult part bearing down on me and I wanted to get it out while I still could. “Then my dad gets home. We try to explain what’s been going on. My mom gets back and he tries to talk her down but seeing him sends her over the edge. I guess the cult knew my dad would come between her and them, at some stage, so they’d filled her head with really evil shit. She’s convinced that he’s a monster, that he’s going to take her boys away from her, that only the cult can save us. She says she’s going to take the other three of us ‘to safety.’ Tells us to get in the car. When my dad tries to stop her, she grabs a knife—”

Annabelle’s whole body went stiff. I was just as rigid next to her, my mouth the only part of me moving. The darkness made it easier to talk but harder to stay distanced from the memories. I could see it all unfolding in front of my eyes. “There’s a struggle. My mom and dad are down on the floor. We’re all screaming. My dad has to get her to let go of the knife so he hits her head against the tiles….”

“And that’s how my dad killed my mom.”





42





Annabelle





I was glad it was pitch black. I don’t think I could have stood to see the pain in his eyes. I tried to imagine what it must have been like but I couldn’t even come remotely close. To lose one parent just as another turns into a killer...God! I clung to him for all I was worth.

He was trying to keep his voice neutral and detached: the only way he could get through it. “We couldn’t find Bradan. He’d just vanished. The police came and took my dad to jail. Turned out, the cult had friends in high places, people who didn’t want to see it investigated. They spun my mom’s death as a murder, painted my dad as a drunken Irishman who’d come home and beaten his wife to death. The authorities put me and my brothers into care.” He swallowed. “But….”

He took a breath. Another. Building up the courage to say it.

“I ran. I couldn’t stand the thought of living with some strange family so I ran. Right when my brothers needed me, I disappeared. When we’d lost our parents, when we all needed to lean on each other, I vanished.”

Suddenly, it all started to come together. Why he’d wound up in the MC. Why he was so insistent that he had to give but never take from them. He was still trying to repay the debt to his first family. “You were just a kid,” I told him. “You couldn’t be expected to hold everything together. You just would have gone into care too.”

I felt him shake his head. “I should have tried. Aedan tried. Got us to all get the shamrock tattoos, so we’d remember we were still a family. But the next morning, I ran.”#p#分页标题#e#

“I went to Chicago and lived on the streets. Got by by stealing. One of my brothers, Aedan, had taught me how to fight so I could look after myself when I had to. But I didn’t want to hurt anyone. I’d steal from parked cars, boost a TV from the back of a truck, anything but mug someone. I’d seen enough violence.”