Page 14 of Misguided
I’m afraid of losing the last strands connecting me to who I was before all of this.
“Carlos …?” I crinkle my eyes at the corners, scrutinizing our northern president, searching for a clue.
Hooch said he’d been taken care of, but if he avoided the truth about our family, was he bending the facts on this also?
“He’s gone.”
I huff a sharp breath, knocking King’s hands away. I know it’s unfair, unjust that I’m offloading on him, but that last revelation has me angrier than the news Carlos took my baby sister and daddy from me.
Somebody else closed my door. I didn’t get to finalize that chapter of my life, get closure and deal with the hurt at my losses the best way I know how: by channeling the frustration and anger into retribution, penance against the person who stole from me.
I’ve been robbed of my revenge.
“Tell me what you need,” King demands, pushing to his feet.
I shake my head and stare at the photo that hangs behind his desk of the founding members. “I don’t know.”
What would help? What could honestly lessen this … this shock of hearing my worst nightmares confirmed? I sat out there, in the middle of nowhere, and played this scenario over in my mind. But hearing it brought to life, hearing the words given strength by someone I admire so much? Fuck, it hurts.
“Sawyer did it, right?” I ask, shifting my gaze to the corner of King’s desk.
He leans against the front of it, legs crossed at the ankles. “Yeah. Who it always should have been.”
Good. The pain Carlos caused that man was unimaginable. I can’t think of anyone else I’d relinquish the satisfaction of returning the favor to, either.
“Can I go now?” I avoid King’s pity by focusing on making a pattern with my fingers as I lace and unlace them.
“Sure.” It’s there, in the single word, his regret, his sadness at having to be the one who dumped this on me.
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
He stops midway around his desk.
“For burdening you with this.” It should have been Hooch. My brother, my last remaining family member, should have been the one to sit me down with the news.
“Go get some rest, Mel,” he says quietly. “Make me a list of what you need, and I’ll get one of the girls to go out and pick it up for you.” He runs his finger across the timber top as he speaks. “I’m takin’ you didn’t have anything with you?”
Glimpses of the man jolt through my mind, the shock that registered on the agent’s face as he realized I’d delivered a fatal shot. “Nope. Didn’t really get time to think much about what to pack.”
“It gets better,” he offers futilely.
Yet, that’s not what I want to hear. I don’t want somebody to tell me how they moved past their own grief once, how the days will get brighter as time goes by.
I want somebody to justify my anger, the deep resentment that grows like a vine around my heart. I want somebody to be mad with me, to throw a fist to the wall and curse out every fucking deity there is who did nothing to help my family when they needed protection most.
King says nothing further when I drop the jacket and rise from the seat, leaving his office with more composure than I thought possible. People pass by me in a blur as I head for the stairs that lead up to the living quarters. Life echoes on repeat in my mind, the tense moments before I rode away to my seclusion.
A princess locked in her tower.
The final words I spoke to my father weren’t kind, the last thing I said to my sister pointless. What would I have said if I had known? I left in a hurry with the naïve assumption that Dana would be okay if I went. In my mind, I was the martyr; leaving everything I loved behind in order to free my family from some fucked up dispute with a man who never cared how it ended, as long as he won.
My foot falters as I crest the top step onto the landing; my toe catches the final riser making me stumble. A sob hiccups from my chest at the pathetic failure. So I tripped? It shouldn’t matter. I recovered. I stood strong and made it to the second floor. And yet, it irks me on a deeper level. I screwed up. I made a simple mistake that had the chance at turning a hell of a lot worse. What if I’d fallen down the stairs? What if I’d twisted my ankle trying to recover?
What if I’d never left? Beaten off the nomad sent to take me away from my family and refused to go?
What if?