“Si?” My voice is hoarse, the monster inside of me too close to the surface.
“There can be things that a woman endures. Things that are worse than or at least just as bad as rape,” he says, and any relief I felt earlier is gone in an instant. I’m left with a coldness that is deep and freezes me to the bone.
“What…” I clear my throat and try to breathe.
Before I can finish my question, Torch continues. “Whatever hell you blame Beth for putting you through, brother, believe me when I tell you that she paid for it over and over.”
“I don’t—”
“And her hell almost killed her, brother. It almost ended her. It was so bad that it caused the sweet innocent woman you fell in love with to take a man’s life. Think about that.”
I can’t say anything to him. I couldn’t if I wanted to. Mierda! Right now, I’m having trouble standing. It takes me a little bit to go over everything he’s told me. When I finally do speak, my voice is thick with emotion.
“She should have told me,” I growl, trying my best to hang on to my anger.
“Katie said Beth tried. She said Beth stood tall and faced the devil and told him to go straight to hell, even,” Torch says.
“Then why?” I growl, frustrated.
“Redmond played his trump card. He showed her a video of you in the scopes of a rifle, telling Beth your life was in her hands.”
Fucking Donahues and their stunts they pull. I’m so fucking tired of the way they have manipulated and ruined my life.
“It still doesn’t mean shit. She should have…”
“Maybe so,” Torch agrees, again interrupting me. Fucking asshole. I don’t want logic—not right now. “But the asshole also dragged Katie out, bound up, crying, gagged, and having been badly beaten. A sister she loved. A sister that, up until that point, Beth believed was dead and lost to her forever. I think that might just tip the scales a little, don’t you? Especially if you’ve lived the life that Beth has, sheltered and guarded from the world.”
I want to scream at him or beat the fuck out of him. I don’t want to talk or even work through my anger at Beth. I need it. I need the distance.
“I know what you’re trying to do here, but…” I growl, but the bastard is not quite finished yet. He blasts me, yet again.
“She was nineteen, Skull. Nineteen. Fuck, man. Think about that, will you?” I growl an unintelligible sound and rake my hands through my hair. “Nineteen, man.”
“Fine! She was right to make her choices. Doesn’t mean she shouldn’t have tried harder to see me when she had Gabby! She wasted two years! Two years that I can never have back, Torch.”
“I get it. I do. I can’t say I fully understand that, myself. Except if you get told you’re worthless and garbage to be thrown away often enough, you start to believe it.”
The fucker is pissing me off. He’s trying to clear Beth of any wrongdoing. He’s acting like I don’t have a right to be fucking pissed. That’s easy for him to say. He isn’t me. He hasn’t lived my life since Beth left. He wasn’t betrayed by the woman he loved.
“You weren’t robbed of two fucking years with your ni?a, left thinking you killed the woman you loved!”
Torch sighs and gets up. He slaps me hard on the shoulder.
“True, brother,” he agrees. “But if you aren’t careful, it won’t be Beth robbing you of more time with your daughter and the woman you love. It will be the bastard staring back at you in the mirror.”
Having delivered that nice little dagger, he walks around me. He goes out into the hall and closes the door. When he’s gone, I’m left… alone. Alone as I have been for years. I tear the clock down off the wall beside me and slam it into the wall across the room. It explodes on impact and shatters into a hundred pieces. That does nothing to make me feel better. Nothing.
Time to visit Pistol.
“What did you tell him, Katie?!” I yell when Sabre leaves the meeting and I can no longer hear. I don’t want Skull to know. I don’t… I can’t… “What did you tell him?!?”
“Beth, calm down. You didn’t do anything wrong. Maybe it will be good if Skull finally knows the fucking hell you lived through. Maybe that will help him understand!”
“No! I don’t want anyone to know! That’s mine! No one gets to know what I lived through! You had no right to tell Torch!”
“I had every right! He’s my man! This shit didn’t just happen to you. It happened to me too, and it happened for a hell of a lot longer! I get to share that with Torch. I need to share that with Torch. Sometimes, it gets to me so much that it fucking chokes me at night. I can’t keep it in any longer! It’s destroying me!” she cries and I close my eyes.