Camden (The Henchmen MC 18)

"Don't bother. I think he's stupid or something," my father said, shrugging. "Come on. Let's take it to my room," he demanded. Then, when the woman kept looking at me, he bent low, shoulder wedging into the woman's waist, throwing her over his shoulder.

As they turned, I saw her skirt hiked up over her waist, her butt on full display, just a little sliver of bright pink material wedged between her butt cheeks.

In their room, there was laughing and rumbling followed by squeaking and moaning.

I learned quickly that if I wanted to sleep, I had to do it in the middle of the afternoon before he came home with one of his many rotating women.

I didn't mind the nights when the women came over. They always gave me smiles, told me I was cute, ruffled my hair. When they came out after all the loud noises were over, they would sometimes offer to make me something to eat or turn on the TV for me.

They were the only bit of warmth in an otherwise incredibly cold home.

I spoke no words to my father those first two weeks. And he spoke precious few to me. When he did, they were usually orders. Take out the trash. Wash the dishes. Don't leave the house.

Sometime in the third week, he remembered that kids needed to go to school, enrolled me, threw some school supplies from the dollar store at me, then told me to be up and on the bus at seven-thirty the next morning.

I stayed up all night because I was terrified of not waking up, of missing the bus, of not being able to get out of his house for the first time since stepping foot in it.

School was school.

Kids were kids.

And not only did I stutter, but I was the new kid.

I got my ass kicked on the short wait between leaving through the back door and getting onto my bus to get home.

"I better not get a fucking call from the goddamn principal," my father growled when he walked through the door hours later, no woman with him this time. I preferred the nights when the women came to visit. They kept him occupied. When it was just the two of us, he was telling me to do things, ranting about how he never wanted to be a father in the first place, that having a kid around was cramping his style, that the 'stupid whore of a mother' of mine should have stepped up, so he didn't have to.

"I-I d-d-d-didn't s-s-start it," I shrieked at him, so overcome with loss and fear and frustration and pain that I didn't even think twice about exposing him to something I somehow innately knew would be a problem.

"Oh, for fuck's sake," he sighed, raking his hand down his face. "You talk like a goddamn retard," he added, the word a biting one, one I had never heard from an adult, one my grandparents told me was akin to a curse word, that I was never, ever supposed to say. To hear it from him, the only person I had in the world, yeah, it cut deep, it ripped out my insides, it threw them on the floor, then stomped them.

"I n-n-never s-spoke a-again," I admitted.

From that day, my mouth closed and refused to open again. Not when my father raged at me. Not when teachers and school counselors and speech therapists pleaded with me.

Eventually, somewhere along the lines, they chalked up my muteness to trauma, likely jotted a note in my file that had everyone leaving me alone, just pushing me along through the grades.

It was when I was thirteen or fourteen that my father went from general douchebag to lowlife.

When he and a trio of his buddies got a 'great fucking idea.'

Tired of busting their asses doing construction and handyman gigs, they decided to 'diversify their portfolios.'

"I don't like the sound of that," Annie said, brows furrowing.

"I d-d-didn't e-either."

Because at that age, after having lived with my father for several years, I came to know that anytime he and his buddies got any ideas whilst drinking beer and playing cards, something stupid would inevitably follow.

Stupid it was, too.

My dear old dad decided to start cooking meth.

It wasn't as hard back in those days, back before they slapped regulations on the sale of pseudoephedrine. He and his buddies could walk into any box store or pharmacy and load up on a shitton of cold medicine.

Even as a dumb teen, the idea that people actually wanted to put acetone and ammonia and acids in their system was completely asinine to me. But people did.

And a career was born.

Our home became the kitchen, being the most secluded of all of them. Furniture was piled in a corner - including my couch-bed - and all the supplies were brought in, taking over the whole place.