Roan (The Henchmen MC 17)

God, it hurt.

It hurt more than I had words to express.

It hurt more than any drug could ever numb.

I held it together until she left.

And then I shattered apart.

I started crying.

And I simply didn't stop.

Not all that day, or night, or the next morning, or the next afternoon when my parents finally showed up.

Finally, they drugged me into unconsciousness.

But I woke up, and the pain was right there again, all-consuming, crippling in its intensity, pulling my head under again and again.

Psychologists were called in to evaluate my mental state.

More drugs were prescribed.

I got slow and fuzzy, disconnected a bit from my own body, which stopped the tears.

At least outwardly.

They were still going on inside.

I had no idea a soul could cry until that day.

But my soul cried.

And it refused to stop.

As the days turned to weeks.

As the weeks turned into months as I slowly fought my body into recovery.

My parents had been there, as promised, putting their lives on hold. To take care of me, their splintered only child. But also because Uncle Armen's will had been well planned. In case of his death, his wife would get everything. Should she not live, it all went to my mom.

So they were in and out of the hospital as I was in and out of therapy to try to regain some strength in my arm and legs as they finally healed enough to hold my weight, running to meetings, trying to make sense of everything.

My parents, who had needed to watch sales just to do their weekly grocery shopping, found themselves suddenly quite wealthy.

I was aware of their shock, of their hesitant pleasure even as all I could seem to focus on was how many days had passed since I had seen him, how he hadn't tried to get in contact.

Surely, he would have heard of the explosion.

He had to have put the pieces together, known it was my uncles' home, that I had been inside.

But he didn't come back?

I had really meant that little to him?

I was out of the hospital for a month, still fighting for control of my weak hand, still trying to walk with my heavy boot all the way up my leg because, as the therapists informed me, it was going to be a long road to full recovery.

We had taken up temporary residence in a rental house just outside the main area of town.

I started refusing the psychiatric drugs, wanting my brain to work right, even if it brought back the crying.

And it did.

But this time, I made sure I only did it in private.

I had been to Ani's grave, left flowers.

I had seen the rubble of my uncle's house.

I had engaged in countless conversations with my parents.

But I never brought up Mikhail.

A part of me didn't want to share that, didn't want the weight of their disapproval weighing on the situation that was already so overwhelming for me.

I also, for reasons I genuinely did not understand, didn't tell them about my uncle. Didn't tell them about the file, about the fight, about him beating me, threatening to kill me.

He was gone.

It didn't seem important anymore.

Except, I should have told them.

I should have put up that flag.

I should have made them think about the situation, about why my uncle had gotten so angry, about what he might have been dealing in.

Because eight weeks out of the hospital, police showed up at my door with sad faces, telling me that my parents had been shot while sitting in their car at a red light.

Two men had walked up on either side and shot them dead.

The world had already cut me off at the knees.

And I hadn't been able to hold myself up as they broke the news to me, as they stacked more grief onto a body that could barely remember to eat and take its medicine as it was.

I didn't have much recollection of the following few days.

There were police and detectives and funeral directors and lawyers and bank officials.

I didn't hear much, retained even less.

It was a long, long time before I seemed capable of functioning again.

Only then finding that with my parents' deaths, and their will, the bank was now my responsibility.

I was nineteen years old.

Alone.

Traumatized beyond comprehension.

But I knew one thing.

That bank.

That bank killed my uncle, my aunt, the staff, nearly killed me.

That bank killed my parents.

And I was going to find out why.

Mission in hand, I got myself out of bed, into a shower, I took my medicine to clear my head, I nourished my body, and I got dressed.

I made my way into that bank.

I hadn't ever been an overly stubborn person. But there was a relentlessness to me in those following days as I tore through every file in my uncle's office, as I spoke to the lawyers, the employees, as I tried to figure out what about a bank - and a reputable one at that - could have caused the deaths of so many people.