Devil's Vengeance (Sydney Storm MC 3)

Mum stared at me blankly while Aaron smiled and said, “That’s fantastic. Who is she?”

“She’s the CEO of a superannuation company here in Australia. Her aunt’s friend has been receiving massages from me, and she heard about it that way. She wants to meet with me next week to talk about investing the kind of money that would mean I could run it full time.” And leave Rachel and her awfulness behind.

“Really?” Mum asked in the condescending manner she often used on me.

“Really, what?” I act

ually had no clue what she meant, other than perhaps she was questioning the truth in what I’d said.

Mum put down her cutlery and trained her disbelieving gaze on me. “I keep waiting for the day you come home and tell me some good news. And it never happens.”

Her words were like a punch to my gut. In one way, they hurt more than the physical punches I’d received at the hands of Mickey years ago. “What kind of news would you like to hear, Mum?” I was proud of myself for maintaining my cool even when my heart screamed at me to tell her how much she’d hurt me.

“Well, for one, I wish you would give up this silly idea to run a massage charity. I mean, really. Why can’t you just go back to university and finish the business degree you started? And two, you’re thirty, Hailee. Don’t you think it’s time you started to look for a good catholic man to settle down with?”

My eyes almost bugged out of my head.

Aaron cut in, though, before I could reply to her bullshit. “Jesus, Mum, when are you going to just let her be? She’s happy. Isn’t that all that matters?” His words came out harshly, and I was taken aback. I’d never once heard him talk to our mother that way. I was also secretly fucking impressed with him. He’d stood up for me often, but mostly he just preferred to keep the peace. This, for him, was going above and beyond.

Mum stared at him like she’d just been slapped. “I will not tolerate that kind of language in my house, Aaron.”

I shoved my chair back. I’d heard enough. “Oh for fuck's sake, Mum, you need to move into the twenty-first century. I’m not searching for a good catholic man just so I can improve my social standing by turning my spinster status around. I know you’re embarrassed that I’m thirty and not married, but I’m not. I’m actually quite happy being single. Although, I guess you know now from Aaron that I’m dating a biker. The good news, though, is that he’s catholic.”

She blanched.

“No, I hadn’t told her that,” Aaron murmured.

I shrugged. “Oh well, she had to find out sooner or later.”

Mum’s hand moved to her throat while she processed everything I’d said. “Tricia said you’d changed, but I didn’t want to believe it.”

“Oh God, not this again. When did she say that?” My ex-best friend refused to cut ties with my family, and it pissed me off.

“She came for morning tea this morning, and we discussed your desire—”

I held up my hand to stop her. “I’m not interested in what you two discussed. If you can’t see that she treated your daughter badly, then that makes me really sad. Most mothers would want the kind of friend who cheered their daughter on in everything she did in life. They wouldn’t want one like Tricia, who was jealous of my new success and new friends.” I picked up my bag. “Thank you for dinner, but I’m not hungry anymore.”

I didn’t wait for her response.

I fled my family home as fast as I could with no intention of going back anytime soon.

By the time I arrived on Devil’s doorstep half an hour later, tears streamed down my cheeks, and I was fairly certain it looked like an artist had painted messy black lines down those cheeks.

I’d cried all the way from Mum’s house to his. Long shuddering sobs. The worst thing was I had no tissues on me or in the car, so the only thing I’d been able to use was the white T-shirt I wore.

Devil’s concerned gaze travelled down my face to my shirt and back up to my eyes. “Fuck, darlin’, what happened?” He reached out and pulled me inside to his lounge room where he positioned me on his lap. His strong arms around me were exactly what I needed, but instead of soothing me, it only made me cry harder.

I buried my face in his neck and clung to him. He didn’t push me to speak but simply comforted me and waited until I was ready.

I cried for a long time. Decades’ worth of tears fell, and when I finally lifted my head to find his eyes, I felt like a weight had lifted. The heaviness that was my mother would never be lifted completely, but these tears had been a long time coming, and it felt good to shed them.

“Thank you,” I whispered, barely able to see him through my wet lashes.

“You want some tissues?”

I nodded. “Yeah.”

He shifted me onto the couch so he could stand and leave to go in search of the tissues. When he returned, he held the box out to me before sitting and pulling me back onto his lap.