The Fall of V (The Henchmen MC 13)

I exhaled hard. "Yeah," I agreed.

She'd killed someone.

And while I was glad she had the know-how to do it, had the guts to follow through in the moment when she felt she needed to, I hated that she had to.

I never thought all the training I had done with her over the years would be necessary in a real-life scenario.

Because we always made sure she was safe.

We were never going to let her get into situations where she might need to use those skills.

Except we'd failed her.

She'd needed to.

"Killing someone takes something from you," I reminded him, though he damn well knew this himself. "Especially that first time. And especially that young. She's probably just freaked, trying to process it. She's going to come back, Cash."

"She has to," he agreed, voice shattered.

Without having them ourselves, the kids of the club in general had become like kids to us as well. Especially so with Ferryn, the oldest, the first to come drooling and crying into our lives on weekends when we would take her so Reign and Summer could have some free time, time to just be two people, a couple.

The older she got, the more involved we seemed to get. Training and teaching her things.

I couldn't say how many times I had walked into the room to hear her talking to Cash about the music back in his day, and seeing the taken aback look on his face at realizing music he had listened to at her age was now considered classic.

I would come in from work to find the two of them eating pizza straight from the box while watching action movies on the couch.

And each time I saw them together, I got a little squeeze in my chest.

I couldn't fathom never seeing that again, never feeling that again.

She had to come back.

Not just for Reign and Summer whose worry I could only begin to understand, but for me and Cash, and Wolf and Janie, Malc, everyone whose life she had been a part of - and bettered for her presence alone.

The stairs behind me creaked as Chris came down, making Cash and I break apart.

"We both have things to handle," I said, watching as he smiled at my Hailstorm-voice. "We can be mushy and feel shit later."

"Yeah," he agreed, leaning in to kiss my forehead. "Keep your phone charged."

I nodded as he ran off, watching for a second before turning back into the house, finding Chris standing there, watching me with guarded, but curious, eyes.

"Is that your husband?"

"Cash? Yes. He's Ferryn's uncle," I added.

"Is Ferryn okay?"

This was a time when maybe others would sugar-coat it, or lie altogether.

But that had never really been my style.

Women - even severely traumatized women - were a hell of a lot stronger than anyone gave them credit for.

"We don't know," I told her, closing and locking the door behind me. "She just... ran away."

"She's okay," Chris said, conviction seeping into her voice, making her words firm, unyielding, inarguable. "She's strong," she added when I said nothing. "If she ran, she has a reason. And I think she can take care of herself."

She wasn't wrong.

Ferryn had a lot of life skills.

From surviving less than ideal situations to navigating modern life things like how to ride buses and trains by herself, you named it, someone had thought of teaching her.

Just in case.

There were always so many 'just in cases' in our lives.

And Ferryn, the oldest, the oldest girl, had gotten far more individualized attention than likely any other kid on the planet.

She would be okay, technically.

But would she be okay mentally?

Emotionally?

Where would she sleep at night when she was too young to rent a room?

I guess it was one of those things that time would tell.

"They never took her," Chris said, snapping me out of my swirling thoughts. "At least... not like me," she hedged, not there yet, not ready to say the words.

It felt wrong to feel relief, standing here with a girl just the same age, just the same amount of innocent, but there was no denying it. Whatever she had to face up for herself, that was not a part of it.

"They just took her up earlier today. And she came back a few hours later with her wrists torn up, some bruises, but not.... broken. If anything, she seemed almost, I don't know, triumphant. I didn't get it at the time. But as he was coming to take me, she had a key to unlock her shackle. She grabbed the toilet tank cover. And then she knocked him out. Freed me. And we ran."

I nodded at that, walking past her, holding out an arm in invitation as I went into the kitchen. "Tea? Coffee? Hot chocolate?"

"Tea," she told me, sounding surprised.

"That woman," I started as I poured water into the pot, as I found teabags, "she was Ferryn's grandmother." I chanced a look over, finding her watching me, eyes penetrating, but saying nothing. "She didn't know. V had been locked up for all of Ferryn's life because she had once tortured Ferryn's mom. It's a long story. If you want all those details sometime, I can give you them. But they're not important. But V wanted, well, we don't know what she wanted when she took Ferryn. To use her as leverage, maybe."