I growled and Angel moved towards me. Mara stepped between the two of us.
“I am not going to tell you because she is safe for now and she doesn’t want you or anyone else to know where she is.”
I gasped, feeling a panic like I never felt before. She didn’t want me to find her. Because… Because I showed her she wasn’t safe here. Wasn’t safe with me.
But she was safe… she was hiding…
Mara continued, “She is safe… But if Razor finds her she won’t be and neither will the people who are helping her… And that is why I am back.”
She is safe.
I felt tears prick my eyes.
Angel still stood frozen in place, Ledger stepped up closer to Mara asking, “And how is you coming back going to help us find Razor?”
Mara took a deep breath, eyes still on her brother, “Because I am going to draw him out.”
The room was quiet until Angel finally found his voice, “And why would Razor come out of hiding for you?”
She didn’t blink or hesitate when she said, “Because I am pregnant.”
CHAPTER 24
BEX - BLACK HEART
This thing about repressed trauma is that it can come back at you at the absolutely worst moments. Like when you are lying in a ditch hiding, and the first wave of repressed memories comes crashing down on you. I wasn’t a woman, I was a little girl hiding in my closet trying my best to keep quiet so I wouldn’t upset my parents… So they wouldn’t do as they had threatened and sell me to my fathers friends. It didn’t matter though how quiet I was or how good I was. They did it anyway.
When my car started to sputter, I knew something was wrong, and with Razor’s words echoing in my mind I didn't stop to think. I ran.
I didn’t know who to trust, who I would rather find me out of all the possibilities and all the players out that night.
I had hoped my car would take me at least half way to my destination and that I could dump it somewhere neutral after I had time to set everything up to disappear.
But if I have learned anything in this life it is that it doesn't always go the way you want it to and I must have done something horrible in a past life or this life was working really hard to hammer home a lesson.
I hadn’t made it far on foot before I heard the roar of motorcycle engines, the sound deep and angry coming from behind me. Clutching my bags close I dove beneath a bush at the edge of a ditch and waited for the bikes to pass. I didn’t recognize any of them and wasn’t sure if that should be a relief or if I was somehow in worse danger.
I had suspected Razor was the one messing with the club and setting me up, but I couldn’t figure out why. From my knowledge Ididn’t have any attachment to him, although his parting words to me had my mind spinning with possibilities.
Did Razor know who I was? Did he know my past or just took a stab in the dark and fed Angel enough information to send him off spinning.
That was what let the first memory bubble up, the fear that Razor was somehow connected to my past and to…them.
That's the thing about deep dark repressed memories, things you would rather keep hidden even from yourself. It is a survival mechanism to keep them locked in. And the fear about releasing them, about sharing them with anyone is almost debilitating.
I hadn’t planned on going to her clinic, I didn’t want to draw any more attention to them. I was going to take a stash of cash that was always tucked in a hidden layer of my work bag and run to my one contact I had left from my past. I had heard that the man who had helped me escape all those years ago had died and even though his son was now the Chief of Police, his words about police corruption and never trusting anyone, even those who you feel like you instinctively should, had ingrained themselves deep within me. As a little girl finding out you couldn't trust anyone, not the police, not your friends… definitely not your parents. It changes something in you.
So if you can’t trust the people who are supposed to love you unconditionally and you can't trust the people the world tells you are meant to keep you safe… Who do you trust?
Which was why it had surprised me when I had met Clutch and it felt like the world had stopped spinning. It took everything in me to focus on the actual patient that day and not the man who’s penetrating dark eyes wouldn’t leave me the entire time I worked on his friend.
Clutch wore me down over time, hammering at my defences and at some point a thought echoed in my mind… If I can't trust the people who should be safe… maybe I could trust those who outwardly, to proper civilization, are not to be trusted, are to be feared and avoided.
His patch said Clutch, but he let me know him as Declan and something about his past… about how he spoke of found family, and loyalty… protection, soothed the inner child deep within me. I still had deep seated fears, that I didn’t know if I would ever escape… not when Ifelt like I always had to watch my back. I thought… I believed that I had maybe found what I had never had. A family, someone to love me, someone to love. And I did. I fought it, but I fell hard and fast. It was like Clutch had reached into my mind and promised me the few dreams I had ever allowed myself to have. The few dreams I had never said out loud until I met him.
He promised me his love, his loyalty and his protection. He promised me a family who would give me the same. He promised me i’d never be alone again, not with him.. Not when I was a part of the Dawnbreakers.
The club culture terrified me, hitting too close to home with parts of my past. But I wanted to believe Clutch, I wanted desperately what he had promised me. So I trusted him, I believed I had finally found someone who loved me for me and didn’t just see me as leverage or as something to be used. Club events were hard for me, the type of behaviour that was often exhibited, the treatment of women… even when it was common knowledge that those girls chose this life… from my experience I knew we don’t always choose the situations we are forced into. Still Clutch explained club culture, told me I was safe because I was his and no one would ever touch me.