Empty Secrets (Back Down Devil MC #5.5)(7)

“How about a cup of tea?”

“I can do that.”

Lena helped Annie to the chair and got her comfortable. Another member of the family would be coming soon. They all traded shifts with the full-time nurses. Lena hadn’t gotten much about Annie over the time she knew the woman, but from what she heard from whispers was that Annie was very wealthy and the family were all around her, waiting for her to let go, so they could pounce. Her husband - Anthony - had been tragically killed in a car accident twenty years ago. Rumor was it had been a complete inside job.

That was definitely something about the family. They didn’t care. They lived to kill and killed to live. Another vicious cycle that Lena had been accustomed to seeing.

She carried the entire tray into the kitchen and slowly cleaned up the mess of coffee. From the corner of her eye she saw the large knife resting there.

I can do this. I can escape all this. Even if I…

Lena closed her eyes.

Fuck, she couldn’t fight her feelings on this. She was afraid of dying. And what normal person wasn’t, right? Sure, when time was up, it was up. A day, week, month, year, whatever. Some people lived beyond a hundred years, and some didn’t even make it out of the womb. That was the cruel sense of time. But with Victor, it was different. He controlled it all. If Lena messed this up, he wouldn’t just shoot her. He’d… hurt her. Bad. She’d suffer greatly.

But she couldn’t continue living like this.

Lena finished cleaning the tray, made tea, let it cool down, and then carried both back into the living room. She put it down next to the chair and Annie looked at her.

“What’s this for?” Annie asked.

“Your tea.”

“I didn’t ask for tea. Oh, I hate tea. Too bitter.”

“I’m sorry. I must have…” Lena grabbed the mug. “Can I get you anything?”

“I’m okay right now. Thank you for all you do for me. Taking such good care of me. Victor is lucky. I can hear wedding bells, Lena. Oh, you don’t know what it’s all like until you marry into it all. Such a sense of family. Protection.”

Lena nodded. “Yes. That sounds quite amazing.”

Annie didn’t respond.

Lena went back to the kitchen, completing the hundredth lap of the day. Kitchen to chair, chair to kitchen, rinse and repeat for hours on end.

This time was a little different. This time Lena took the knife and put it in her bag. Damn, it was sickening to think she was stealing an old woman’s knife to kill Victor with. But this was the life. The family. This was what Lena had been put through for years.

And now Victor had other women.

That was the line for her. That, and Victor had started using force to keep her under control. It started with placing his gun on a table. Then he wouldn’t speak. He’d sit there and act like the gun wasn’t even there. Then he started to point the gun at her. And finally, after a night of too much drinking, Victor pulled the trigger. But the gun had been unloaded. He did it for fun. For a laugh. Because he was an *.

Then came the other women. Lena knew about at least three. An elderly man in the family, a guy they called Uncle Tony, pulled Lena aside one night in a smoke filled room to explain to her that all men had needs that went beyond one woman. There was a woman to love. There was a woman to care for. There was a woman to show off. And there was a woman to f*ck. All of which had different purposes.

Lena had enough. And whatever came after enough was when she heard whispering that Victor was pissed at her for getting upset about his choice of women. Truth was, Lena didn’t know a thing about the other women Victor was f*cking, but she wasn’t going to share. That’s not how it went. Plus, she didn’t love Victor. She didn’t like him. She wanted out.

And she wanted to kill him. She wanted to stab Victor and flee. Run like hell and be gone because it was the only way to escape. She couldn’t break away from him. She had to get rid of him. Would that make everyone in the family want to retaliate against her? Yeah, it would.

Lena knew the stupidity and the risk of it all, but she couldn’t help herself. She wanted Victor to be stopped, at all costs. Because if she killed Victor… and they caught her, they would just kill her then. They wouldn’t torture her like Victor would have.

Or the way Victor was torturing her right now.

Annie had a cat clock on the wall in the dining room. Lena nursed a crappy cup of coffee and looked at the clock. The cat’s eyes and tail moved in opposite directions, the clicks of the seconds slowly moving time along. The last hour with Annie was the longest. Especially tonight, because Lena was told - not asked, but told or else she’d pay a f*cking price - to meet with Victor near an old warehouse in Frelen. Those were the scariest places for Lena to go to. That’s where they all did business. Not usually in Frelen because of a motorcycle club that ruled the town. But that didn’t mean the family didn’t have pull within the city. Victor had told Lena that the motorcycle club was nothing but punk losers. They went by the name Back Down Devil MC. They bullied everyone in Frelen and held tight to law enforcement and had no real power.

Lena could always see the look in Victor’s eyes when he spoke like that. He hinted that he wanted to gather up some guys and start a war. The word was horrifying to Lena because Victor was always very serious. Drunk, sober, whatever, he meant what he said.