Danger (The Driven World)

“Is that what he told you?” he says, shifting in his seat a little. “Did he tell you what a little piece of shit he was?”

I smile, and don’t say a word as I let him keep talking.

“Did he tell you how many times I begged for him and his sister to keep their mouths shut while playing? How I used to get headaches when I got home from work and my bitch of a wife wouldn’t put out.”

I blink, trying to remember if I ever read about a sister.

He continues, “You think you know me. Dylan thinks he knows me? He has no clue. He has no idea what it was like being me. All the shit I did for my family, and they couldn’t even thank me.”

“What was your daughter's name?”

He huffs a little into the phone, like he wasn’t expecting to be cut off. Like he has so much more to say on the subject of how he thinks he was wronged in life. But, I no longer care to listen to a lunatic rant.

He breathes, and then whispers into the phone, “Isabella.”

Chapter 37

Danger

Muscle memory. It’s doing the same thing over and over until you can do the action with your eyes closed. It’s why we practice. It’s the reason we push our bodies to the limits to keep control within ourselves to carry out the action. I’ve spent many hours on the track, driving around and around to teach my body to learn the movements. To teach my body how to grip the wheel tighter on the turn. To loosen the grip on the straightaway.

There’s one thing I could never teach my body, and that’s how to deal with a past that tries to control me at every turn. It grips me in the middle of the night. It never loosens when I wish it away. It terrorizes me in the worst way, and there’s no way to come back from the suffocating reality of it all.

I blink my eyes, trying not to remember the way my sister screamed when my father came after us. How that woman’s cold dead eyes stared straight through me.

Twelve women.

My father had killed twelve women from the college he worked at.

My mother was his thirteenth kill, and the nail in his coffin to ensure he would never step foot outside of prison ever again. Forever cast down into the shadows of his very own tomb.

I’ve never visited him. When I woke up in a hospital bed, I worried for days about my mother. My sister. My everything.

At first, I thought Isabella was dead just like my mother.

No one would give me a straight answer. I was just left alone to deal with the heartache all on my own. I cried. I cried so hard I felt like I’d drown from my own tears. I felt vulnerable. I felt like it was all my fault. If I just didn’t go down into the basement that night, my mother would still be alive. The what if of it all blistering my mind every night as I tried to sleep. It wasn’t until I was placed in a foster care home, and sent to counseling did I truly understand what had happened that very night. What had been happening in our house for over a year.

My father was luring students home, while we slept. Miserable with his own failures, he took out his madness on others. And the things he did to them still make my stomach churn with acid. Still keeps me up at night in a cold sweat.

I’ve tried to wash away the memories of that fateful night. At first, I tried hard during counseling. I tried to behave with my foster parents. It wasn’t until the day I realized Isabella was still alive and in a different home that it all fell apart.

That my whole existence crashed and burned.

They wouldn’t let me see her.

And for all I knew she probably thought I was dead.

I left my foster home in search of her, staying in the basement of friends' homes.

Until I met Kav.

As the years passed, I accepted my fate. Threw myself into racing and adopted the name Danger and took Kav’s last name, Hudson. I didn’t want any part of my past any longer.

I didn’t want any connection to the man I once called father.

But the more and more I tried to push away the memories, the more and more I realized I needed to know what happened to Isabella.

So, I’ve been searching ever since, hoping the money I make from winning will help me further in my quest to find her.

I’ve been holed away in Kav’s basement for the past three days since leaving Monterey. I know no one can find me here. I should be with my team. I should be out there preparing for the race in a couple of days. I should be doing anything but sitting here feeling sorry for myself.