Shane (Mallick Brothers 1)

“I don’t give a flying fuck what all the fairy tales say, what families always say. Love is not unconditional. And it never should be. Everyone should know that there is only so much they can get away with before you wash your hands of their shit. No one gets a free pass just because they have the same blood in their veins. When you wouldn’t tolerate a stranger doing something, you shouldn’t tolerate a family member doing it. Would it be okay if a passerby on the street saw you getting you pulled around by your fucking hair and didn’t try to step in? Fuck no. So why was it okay to you that your father and brother did it?”

“It’s… diff…”

“It’s not different,” he cut me off. “It’s no different. If anything, it’s a lot fucking worse. They raised you. They loved you. And they stood by and let you get abused. I don’t give a flying fuck what threat they were under, they should have stepped in. You know how I feel about my family,” he said, and I did. Nothing mattered more to him. “If I found out tomorrow that Hunter was putting his hands on Fee, there isn’t a force in the world, not even family loyalty, that would stop me from putting an end to it. Nothing should have stopped them, Lea,” he said, shaking his head at me. “You shouldn’t have had to put up with it for…”

“Years,” I provided.

He closed his eyes for a second at that, exhaling hard, trying to stay calm. “Years before you finally got yourself out with no help from their pathetic asses.”

“He stabbed my brother,” I said, hearing the emotion there, not having been aware of it for days.

“I know you might hate me for saying this, but good.”

“Shane…”

“No, Lea. Just… no. I get that you have loyalty. I get that maybe you’re convinced they were so scared for their lives that they couldn’t help you. But, baby, you got away. Just you. Alone. They are two big, burly grown-ass men. They damn sure could have gotten you out. Sooner. And they could have gone with you to make sure you stayed protected. They didn’t. They chose not to. They chose to let you get abused. That isn’t love. And what you feel toward them, it shouldn’t be love either. Or guilt. Or obligation.”

“He raped, tortured, and killed a girl I barely knew…” I went on.

To that, he winced. Then he nodded.

“If you were in a room with your ex and you had a loaded gun…” he started, feeling me out.

“I’d shoot off his dick then unload the rest of the clip into his head and hollow heart,” I answered honestly.

Again, he nodded.

“You can’t have this shit keep happening,” he said, motioning toward the laptop again. “The guilt will eat you alive.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, knowing it was true. Honestly, eventually, it might have been bad enough to drag me back.

“Alright,” he said, voice a little far off. “Then this stops.” With that, he squeezed my knee again and moved to get off the bed.

“Shane… what is that supposed to mean?”

He looked over his shoulder at me, eyes more intense than I had ever seen them.

“It means this fucking stops.”

That night, I went to bed with him.

I woke up alone.

And I knew, I finally knew what he meant.

He was going to take care of Ross.

Fuck.FIFTEENShaneI grabbed my laptop to throw some receipts into Quickbooks. It was something I did all the time, that I thought nothing of. When I opened it and saw open windows on the browser, I almost clicked them closed without seeing what they were. But the word “obituary” caught my eye. Knowing I hadn’t looked at anything close to an obituary, my curiosity got piqued and I looked at it. It was a town in California which, I figured, was where Lea was from originally. Then when I moved over and found the note and the video… yeah, let’s say shit got serious. I brought up the browser history and checked out the Kill Club site she had been on, finding all the gory, awful details of the woman’s murder.

It didn’t take much to put two and two together.

Especially because the genes in Lea’s family were strong. She was the female version of her brother who had been stabbed and her father who had been standing a few feet away. It was all there in the dark eyes, the dark hair, the height.

And all the men, yeah, they had cuts on. Biker cuts. With one-percent patches. That, paired with how she had her own helmet and Barney told me she cringed at the sound of bikes, it all made a picture come together. She had belonged to a biker. I knew enough about bikers, especially criminal bikers, to know that they didn’t let their old ladies run away. No matter what they put them through.