I’d heard my dad talking about it earlier.
It made sense.
If she’d tried, that was all that she could do.
It wasn’t her fault that her brother was nuts.
“My brother is in police custody.” She spoke so quietly that I could barely hear her. “He’s admitted to six murders.”
I felt my stomach tighten. “Seven? I thought there were two.”
She sighed. “There was even one more. Before. A kid at the foster home that I tried to convince the police about, but they didn’t believe me. They didn’t believe me about our parents, the foster parents, or my two friends, either.”
“Well,” I said. “May he rot in hell.”
She sighed. “That’s just it. I doubt he’ll rot in hell. My guess? He’ll get lucky and go to a psychiatric facility. He’ll be back one day.”
That didn’t mean good things.
Not at all.
CHAPTER 4
I’m not always an asshole. Sometimes I’m asleep.
-Bram to Dory
BRAM
Mimi had changed.
Since the incident where I’d almost died, she’d turned into someone that I didn’t want to know anymore, let alone be around almost twenty-four seven.
The more she pushed, the more that I pulled.
Which led us to now.
I’d thought about signing up for the military out of desperation to put some distance between Mimi and me. I only had a semester and a half until graduation, but I could use it to enter the military, but honestly, my degree could take me to any body of water around the world.
Just the threat of the military caused her to be even more scared.
“You can’t go!” she screeched. “You can’t leave!”
Mimi had been the love of my life since I was fourteen.
I’d always thought that we would be forever.
But she’d turned into this nervous mess. One that I didn’t even recognize.
I mean, I knew that she was scared.
But hell, she hadn’t been the one to be tortured and nearly killed. I had.
And I damn well would go to the sentencing if I wanted to.
“I’m going,” I told her, tone final.
I needed to go.
I needed to see where this went.
It’d been six months since the day I’d been rescued, and today was finally the day. The day we would all find out what Amon Wheeler had in store for him.
If my vote was to be counted, it would be the electric chair.
“You can’t be serious,” Mimi said. “You’re going to his sentencing? Why?”
“Because I want to know how it goes.” I barely refrained from adding ‘duh’ to the end of my explanation.
But Jesus. She was really not putting any effort into her thinking nowadays.
She was just ‘doom and gloom’ everywhere we went.
And it was getting exhausting.
I’d had to testify via webcam at the trial a week and a half ago to tell the jury my side of the story. And there Amon had sat, smug in the thought that he would get off easy.
By easy, I meant pleading of insanity and getting sentenced to a psychiatric facility he would never leave again.
“This is insane,” she said. “You can’t go.”
I pulled away from Mimi where she had my shirt in a death grip, then pulled away and hoped that by the time I got back, she got a few of her ducks in a row.
My guess? She wouldn’t.
And tomorrow, after this was all over, I would have to decide how to handle this. How to deal with her overprotectiveness that was bordering on suffocation.
I’d loved Mimi since I was fourteen. We’d been inseparable since. We graduated together. Started college together. We talked about me joining an MC with my brothers, and her becoming my old lady. We talked about our kids and our life together, where it would lead us.
But none of those possibilities were with how she was acting now. How every time I turned around, she was there, hovering, watching my every move.
It’d gotten to the point now that she stalked me. Wanted to know where I was going, who I would be with, and for how long.
Hell, I couldn’t even take a shit anymore without her standing outside the door asking me if I was okay.
“Fine,” she said. “If you’re going, I’m going.”
I looked at her with serious eyes and said, “No. You’re not. Because you can’t be around him and not want to claw his eyes out. I’m going. You can stay in the car and wait for me, or you can…”
That’s when we saw Amon’s sister, Dorcas, walking across the parking lot.
She looked haunted.
As in, she looked like she’d lost so much weight that I barely even recognized her.
“I fucking hate her.”
I looked over at Mimi with surprise. “Dorcas? Why?”
That completely surprised me.
Never in my life had I heard Mimi be mean… yet there she was.
“Dorcas Wheeler is the sister to Amon Wheeler.” She looked at me like I was dumb. “How could I not hate her for what her brother did to you?”
I felt a sick reminder of why we were here today and grimaced.
“Dorcas didn’t do anything,” I told her honestly. “She’s sweet and kind and saved my life. If it wasn’t for her, I’d be dead rotting away in Amon’s storm cellar.”
Mimi flinched. “I don’t have to like her just because she saved you. It’s her fault that you were even in that situation to begin with.”
Over the last few weeks, while Amon Wheeler had been in court, we’d found out a lot of stuff that he’d done, and why.
I closed my eyes, remembering the first day that I watched the court proceedings from the comfort of my brother, Haggard’s, living room couch.
All of my brothers, my dad, and my uncle were present. Mimi and my mom had gone out shopping—though the only reason Mimi had agreed to do that was because I’d promised to stay put—so it was just us guys watching.
• • •
“Why did you do it?” the prosecutor asked Amon.
Amon sat back in his chair and smiled. But again, one of those soulless smiles that creeped me the fuck out and reminded me of times best spent not thinking about.
“I’d knock that motherfucker out if I could,” Shine hissed. “Goddammit.”
Shine, the only one not there, was on speakerphone in the middle of the coffee table. He was in the military and wouldn’t be home for a while. That didn’t stop him from joining in on this weird sort of fucked up family fest we were having.
“Don’t worry, Meems has already claimed that right if we ever get to see him up close and personal.” Haggard laughed.
His wife was hissing about something or other in the other room that had nothing to do with the trial, and everything to do with us being in her house when she didn’t want us to be there.
We all ignored her, as we’d been doing for the last hour.
My eyes, though, moved from the psycho’s still form on the stand to the sister that was sitting in the back of the room, in the shadows, looking scared to death.
I wasn’t the only one that saw that psycho’s attention was on her, though.
“That creep is staring at that little girl like he wants to murder her,” my father said.