He nodded, tears in his eyes, and I wrapped my arms around him and held him as he sobbed his heart out. He sobbed and sobbed, fell asleep in my arms like a little boy. Willow arrived, and I left her to deal with him. Then I went home, showered, changed into PJ’s, and now I’m sitting here wondering if I can remember how to breathe.
I’m cracking, the anger inside of me is about to boil over, and I can’t stop it. I grab the wine bottle in front of me and throw it against the wall. There is no satisfaction upon seeing it break, so I grab the glass I was drinking from and do the same thing. That doesn’t help either, so I grab every fucking thing I can and smash it, and I scream and scream until I’m hoarse from it, and then I scream some more.
Why did this happen?
Why was my beautiful, innocent sister taken from me so cruelly?
I can’t breathe. Oh god, I can’t breathe!
Chapter Twenty-Three
Stryker
When I tried to call Coral to see where she was, there was no answer, which worried me. After everything this club has been through this past month, the last thing I want is anything happening to my wife. It would fuckin’ kill me.
I called Jacob, the prospect in charge of watching over Coral. He told me she’d walked to Hammer’s apartment, stayed there for about forty-five minutes before leaving and going home. Then he suddenly became panicked, banging on something, yelling Coral's name.
I screamed at him to tell me what the fuck was going on. He said something was wrong with Coral. He couldn’t get into the house, but she was screaming, and there was a lot of crashing. I panicked so fucking bad that I jumped on my bike, Tank, and Jett following me to make sure if anyone had gotten into my house and were attacking my wife, they’d be there to end them.
What I saw when I got home is something I won’t forget as long as I live. Jacob had booted the front door down but was standing in the hallway of the house with one hand on his head, the other covering his mouth. I couldn’t believe what I saw myself. My wife had smashed the house to pieces. There isn’t a piece of furniture left intact. The kitchen, destroyed. The living room, destroyed. Even the hallway is destroyed.
Pictures smashed. Drawers ripped open, glass of all kinds smashed, clothes strewn everywhere, papers, you name it, it’s probably laying around somewhere, broken or torn.
“Jesus,” Jett hisses.
“Stryker, I swear, I didn’t know what was happening. I thought someone had gotten past me and was in here killing her. I broke the door down to help her, but she screamed at me to stay away from her, then started screaming about hating someone, then she was mumbling.”
I don’t answer Jacob, the kids barely twenty-one, he’s a prospect, he broke into my house to help my wife. That’s all that was asked of him.
“It’s all right, Jacob, you did good.” Tank tells him.
Coral suddenly starts yelling to God and asking him why. She’s in severe pain. She’s kept it all locked inside for a month. Not once did she cry when she saw her sister die, not at the funeral, not after it. I don’t know what finally broke the damn, but I know she needs to purge her soul of this pain.
I rush over to her and grab her to me just as she was about to throw a paperweight right through the closed window. “Get off of me!” She screams while fighting me, thumping at my chest as I try to hold her. “Don’t touch me!” She screams louder and walks backward away from me.
“Coral, it’s me, baby. Everything’s okay.”
She shakes her head, tears streaming down her face. Her eyes are swollen and bloodshot, and her upper lip is swollen and red, her whole face is. Shit, she must have been crying for ages. “Everything is not okay! My sister is dead. Dead!” She screams the last word. “My parent’s blame me, blame Hammer. It wasn’t his fault!” She grits her teeth.
She’s never once blamed Hammer for what happened to Cindy, unlike her parents, but the man blames himself. He’s in purgatory right now. Won’t see anyone, won’t talk to anyone. Shepard told us to leave him alone and give him some space. Willow is the only one he can bear to have near him, so she’s the only one apart from Tank who makes sure he’s okay. Not that we want to leave the man all by himself, he needs us, but we’ve been given an order, and we need to follow it.
Besides, no offense to Hammer, but my wife is my priority, and she needs me more than ever right now.
“I know it wasn’t, Coral. We all know that.”
“Why didn’t she stay home like she was supposed to?” I don’t know how to answer that. All the women had been told not to go out alone. We were having problems with another club. We had to keep them safe. However, for some reason, Cindy went out alone and was taken.
No one will ever know why she left the house alone, especially when she’d promised never to do it. None of us will ever know what was going through her mind that day, but I know how much hurt has been caused by her death. We’ll never forget Cindy. She was a good person, and she’ll always be missed.
“I don’t know the answer to that, sweetheart.”
With her fingers in her hair, her eyes widen. She’s shaking her head, tears falling from her eyes, struggling to breathe through her emotions. I want to go to her, but she doesn’t want me to touch her right now. “It’s not fair.” She mumbles. “It’s not fair. Why h
er? Why my baby sister? She never hurt anybody in her life! It’s not fair!” She screams and falls to her knees, and this time, I drop to mine and grab her. She doesn’t fight me this time. There’s no fight left in her. She sags against me, sobbing her heart out, and I just hold her, rocking her gently.
There’s nothing worse in life than seeing your wife in pain like this. The fuckin’ agony inside of me for her is boiling over. I feel every ounce of her pain, and I’m crying along with her, and I don’t give a fuck who can see me like this. This woman is my life, and her pain is my pain.
She clutches at me, sobbing into my chest. “It’s okay, baby, I’ve got you. I’ve got you.” I kiss her head hard and hold her to me. I won’t let go. I’ll never let go.
I don’t know when the others left, but it's some time after I walked in and grabbed Coral that I realize we’re alone now. She's stopped crying, but she’s still making sobbing noises each time she breathes in. She’s fallen asleep against me, exhausted from trashing the house and crying so hard.
I kiss her head and force my aching body to move. I lift her into my arms and carry her to our bed. I lay her down and cover her with the blanket from the bottom of the bed. I watch her sleeping for a while, hoping she sleeps at least a few hours. I stroke her cheek and tell her how much I love her before leaving her to rest.
“I thought you two had gone,” I tell Tank and Jett when I walk into the kitchen to find them finishing up cleaning the mess Coral made. They didn’t have to clean my house. However, as I turn my head, I see they’ve cleaned the hallway too. Both places are spotless.
I chuckle inside. These two massive men have cleaned my house like a pair of women, and when I say cleaned, I mean cleaned.
“Thought we’d stick around and help. Coral really trashed the place.”
“I know.” I rub the back of my neck while nodding at Jett because he’s right, she did.