Broken Road (12 page)

    His brow furrowed this he hadn’t known. “They have found your sister? Well then where is she?”

   Devil gulped air, fighting against the tears sting her eyes. “T-they said she had been butchered like a cow-ww. Bones broken open and t-that they weren’t even sure it was her when they g-g-got there. She has been so ripped up they didn’t t-think s-she had been a human,” Devil said with a sob on the last word.

    Royal stood silent for a moment and asked the question he had been waiting for. “What did that have anything to do with you?”

    “That man,” Devil said shakily, pointing toward where Winthrop was now in the office, “is the brother of Wylde’s fiancé. He was murdered a month ago. Wylde had gotten in some trouble you see much like I had with you, but they wanted to kill her instead I think. I believe, no, I
know
that this is connected to my biological father. He left behind debt after he died. They’ve gotten everyone else who is connected to him and my family. There is only me and my daughter left.”

   It was a second to late she remembered what she had said and she smiled sheepishly at Royal and his floored look. His jaw slid south, his eyes widened so far that it looked as if they just might pop out of his head. Then she saw it, the fury in his eyes. The same fire he had given her.

   He took a step towards her and asked calmly, too calmly. “Is it that man’s child?”

   Devil held up a finger for him to pause and went up stairs to take a sleeping Lilla out of her crib. Staring at her tiny pink face, she knew she would do anything to keep this child safe. She was her daughter no after all. Devil came back down the stairs with the baby in her arms and stopped in front of her father.

   His awed face when he saw a little fist wave in the air told Devil he was just fine being a grandpa.

   Devil passed a very sleepy Lilla from her arms to Royal’s.

   He looked hopelessly at Devil. “I don’t know how to hold a child.”

   She laughed truly now and smiled gently. “Hold her the way that feels right to the both of you.”

   Royal shifted the squishy pink baby in his arms and smiled when he had her in the crook of his arm and she snuggled against him. He looked at his daughter proudly. “She is perfect. What’s her name?”

   Devil smoothed a hand over the soft, fine hair and stroked the baby’s cheek. “Lilla, after Lily, I guess.”

   Royal’s brow went up. “You guess? Whatever do you mean?”

   “She is my daughter now, but in truth her mother was Wylde. Wylde gave her to me about two months ago if truth is to be told and I adopted her. Her father you can guess is Wade, Winthrop’s brother.”

   It surprised her how easily that the man’s name should slide off her tongue when he had only just yelled it at her not to long ago.

   Mollified, Royal looked to the baby and smiled back at Devil. “You’ve done a fine job. You’ll make a good mother to this beautiful little girl, but I will not deny the fact she looks like you and that man.”

   Devil sat down again and waved him to the chair across from him. She smiled faintly as Lilla cooed at Royal and he squeaked. He gave her a startled look and laughed softly.

   “She likes me,” he said proudly.

   “It would seem so. I’m just glad that you’re here.” Devil wrung her hands together, “I’m not one to worry, I’m sure I might live if it was just me, but now there’s more then just me now. I will not have Lilla living the life I’ve been living, always on the run.”

   Royal leaned forward and took one of her hand in his, he noticed how cold her hands were and how they looked. “You will be safe, I promise. Me and the boys aren’t going anywhere until you two are safe.”

   Then tense left her shoulders and she slumped back in her chair.

   “So what is that man to you?” Royal asked suddenly.

   The question caught her off guard. She had forgotten in the heat of the moment just what her and Winthrop had been doing up stairs and blushed. Not only that she was just wearing one of his giant shirts with not much else on.

   “Well, err; he was letting us stay here until I found a place for us. But he doesn’t know who I really am. I forgot to mention that I was a country singer and a few other things,” she admitted with a blush.

   “Hmmm,” was his only reply.

   Devil sighed knowing full well that Royal knew everything that had happened and resigned to it.

    “Don’t judge me if you don’t know what’s behind it.”

   “I was doing no such thing.”

   Devil raised a brow. “I know you better then that. Anyway it’s been a long couple of days. I think I need a nap.”

    “You do that, I’ll look after Little Lil for now.” Royal settled back with the baby girl in his arms and relaxed like he never had before. It was a miracle, but he knew he would have to take care of the threats towards his family. In the eyes of the law he was now legal, but under it? It was a totally different matter.

   Devil walked out of the room and peered in one last time as Royal completely relaxed in the chair and started to hum one of her songs to the baby.

   So he did knew about that too, but it wasn’t as if it was a secret when her face was known all over the world. Two weeks, that’s all the time she had left and she hoped it was enough to put everything back together.

   Sighing she rubbed her aching temple and went upstairs to sleep.

He clenched his hands and slowly released them for what seemed the millionth time on top of the file he had taken to the desktop after reading it and storming around until he sat down in the chair with a heavy thud.

   He wasn’t furious, no he was more than merely pissed, and he was raging. It wasn’t about the young girl whose life had been spelled out to him in cold facts on the black and white surface of the paper, but rather the damning man who the report called her ‘first father’.

   The was a burning hate deep in his gut that he wished he could use to kill the son of a bitch, but since he was already dead it settled into a cold rage that would fuel him for days till he did something violent to get it out of his system. There was also the icy chill of a hopeless ache in his heart knowing what she had gone through and no one had been there to help her.

   Suddenly every one of her actions made sense, the fright, the fight, the fire in her eyes, the loneliness and so much more. It was all because of how she had grown up. He knew himself there were many ways to take thing
s
in life as you see them through the eyes of a child for he had faced a few himself, yet somehow he did more the just understand how she had taken it. Hell, the man who was suppose to protect her and care for her damn near killed her more then 40 time in the course of less then the first eleven years of her life!

    Nostrils flared angrily he took several deep breaths and unclenched his hands once more.

   It had taken him little over six hours to read the files on her and he knew by looking at the clock it was way too early in the morning to start anything.

   There was a faint knock on the door and Winthrop rushed to open it. Willing it to be Devil.  When he saw that Royal was the one who darkened his door, his sighed and just sat back down drained.

   “May I come in?”

   Winthrop grunted and nodded to a chair on the other side of the desk. Royal sat in the chair and resettled the sleeping baby in his arms.

    “What do you want?” His tone was plain almost expressionless, but for the little sarcastic mimic.

   Royal stared at the younger man with hard eyes. “I wish to talk to you about Devil. Have you finished the file work?” he asked nodding to the files on the desk.

   “Yes,” Winthrop grated.

   “Then you have read how her life has been. I can imagine how you feel, but I never felt that way. That was how before that kid, no one get under my skin.” He eyed Winthrop, “She was the only one who ever had you know? I used to be nothing more then a killer, but she changed things and it hasn’t been the same since.”

   Winthrop glared at the older man and dared a snort. “No doubt. Where the devil walks, fire follows, and so does change.”

   A faint smile crossed Royal’s lips before his face hardened for the briefest moment. “She faced death as no woman or child ever should. I left out the report on her father’s death on purpose. That is one thing she will have to tell you herself. It is true, where she goes she will change it all.”

    Winthrop turned inward seeking to answer to his question of how she had changed him and found more then one way at how she had gotten to him. She had even made him
care
as no one ever had before, not even his baby brother who he had basically raised.

    “-she needs more then the normal woman would, but she’ll hide it from who ever is close to her.” Royal glared at him, “Are you listening boy?”

   Winthrop shook his head to clear it and voiced what was on his mind. “Can I ask a question of you?”

   Royal sat back and stared at him for a very long time before he nodded ever so slightly.

   He took a deep breath to clear his mind and stilled his shaking hands on his knees. “You of all people is the man she will trust with anything. She asked you to save her from being the next target and not me. I have only one question for you and do not laugh at me. Why not me?”

   Royal smiled ruefully. “You are what she fears most in this world now.” The answer was as simple as that, but he could tell the boy didn’t understand. He should help the poor boy, he nodded to himself. “You see she hates men and she trusts me because she doesn’t see me as a
man.
Every guy she can be around to her is not a
man
, but rather a
friend
. She sees you as a
man
as she did her father and so she is scared of you. But the fear of you is different then the fear of her father.”

   Brows drawing in a V he asked, “How so?”

   “She saw her father as a man who was going to kill her, end her. But you my boy is the guy who will
change
her. She doesn’t know change and so she cannot see ahead of her. Falling into the unknown is something humans don’t do for just any reason. At least with her father she knew what would happen, each and every time he broke her, every time he killed what trust there had been in her soul.” His dark eyes pierced into the other man’s. “He may not have raped her body, but he raped her soul with a darkness that stained it.”

   Royal stood and moved toward the door. “Inside of her is the child that man broke. She has done nothing but walked along the shattered glass on the broken road the man made for her.” He opened the door with one hand and slipped out, but looked back in. “This is her broken road, but you have yours as well. The question is what will come of two broken roads that meet at the fork in the middle.”

   The wood door shut with a silent
click!
that echoed in the blazing screams of silence that settled around Winthrop.

   What could he do?

   There was only one way to figure that out.

   He left his brother’s office with only a second glance back and ran for the stairs.

Boom, boom, boom!
It was the echoing gun shots of Devil memory came to haunt her yet again. Three shots, it was always those three damning shots.

   Oh and the blood too. Its glittering scarlet depths crawling across the floor in rivers away from the dying man on the floor. She had stared at it in growing horror, but with a frozen evil smile on her face.

   She had done it; she had finally won against the man who had been beating her mother and sister to death only moments ago. That thought brought her back to herself and she turned slowly to stare at where her mama laid huddled around baby Lilly. Devil looked at the bloody gun in her shaking hand and dropped it with a wordless cry. Dropping to her knees on the blood stained floor she crawled over to her mother.

   Her mother’s blue eyes rested upon her, yet seeing nothing. “What have you done!” she choked out, blood oozing from her lips. “Now they will come after all of us…your sisters…too…”

   As her hand went limp Devil cried out and clasped her mother’s hand between her bloody ones. Thinking quickly she ran over to her father and took the phone out of his pocket and dialed 911.

   It rang on forever till that calm voice asked, “911, what’s your emergency?”

   With quivering lips and a dry throat an eleven year old Devil covered in blood sobbed, “I killed my father and he killed mama and Lily!”

…

Winthrop opened the door, peering into the room. Devil was sitting curled up on the windowsill sleeping and muttering. It looked as if she were having a nightmare. He walked over silently to the windowsill and hesitated before gently shaking her awake. When her eyes opened the icy blue of them was mirrored by tears.