Healing the Clan: Alaskan Tigers: Book Ten (8 page)

“Just send the files over, Turi.” She stepped away from the laptop and jogged toward the closet.

“Where you going?” David hollered after her, but she didn’t stop to answer.

“I’ll send the stuff to your email, David, and you can decide. I’m not getting involved in someone else’s mating crap. I’ve got enough of my own with Trey and Courtney.” Turi’s voice was the last thing she heard before she stepped through the door to David’s walk-in closet.

She had been in it a few times, when she’d added the contents of her suitcase to it, but she hadn’t really explored farther than the area where she kept her stuff. She scanned the area of what could have been a small guest bedroom, looking for a sign as to where the door went. Behind the back wall…was that the farthest from her on the left or straight back from the door? She wasn’t sure. Instead of moving clothes out of the way, she dropped to her knees in front of the wall closest to her and dragged her fingers along the drywall, looking for a seam. Mira had seen it, so it had to be there somewhere.

“What are you doing?” David’s voice held concern and uncertainty. “Did you lose something?”

“It’s got to be here somewhere.”

“What?”

“Here!” Excitement filled her for a moment before a flood of terror rushed through her. What was she going to find in there? She wasn’t sure she really wanted to step through but before she could talk herself out of it, she rose from the floor and began moving clothes.

“What’s there?”

“A door. Mira told me it would be there but…” With the clothes moved, she slid her fingers along the seam and tried to find the opening.

“Where does it go?” He stood in the doorway and watched her.

“It was supposed to be my prison.”

He took hold of her arm and pulled her back. “Absolutely not! This is irrational. You don’t know what could be in there.”

“I have to know. We have to know. You can’t leave it unexplored. What if he has someone else in there?”

“Ryder,” he hollered. “He’ll check it out, but I won’t have you step foot inside there until we know it’s safe.”

“What are you afraid we’ll find?” She knew what her nightmare could come up with. The biggest being finding her parents’ bodies in there. But that was unrealistic. Dead bodies would smell.

“It could be booby-trapped,” he explained reasonably as Ryder stepped in. “Ryder, there’s a doorway here we need to check out.”

“We?” she asked. “You’re going to back him up when you wouldn’t let me?”

“Just go back into the other room while we make sure it’s safe, and then you can see whatever you need to. Though I still think it’s pointless.” He slipped his sidearm from the holster and kept it pointed at the floor. “Once you’re done, I’m having it sealed up. Then I’m getting a team on our new building so I can burn this place to the ground.”

“What?”

“I moved up here because I wasn’t sure where the clan members stood. This way, if they came after me, I had a warning. This isn’t mine, and no matter the changes I make, this will always be Frank’s. Most of the clan members don’t want to come anywhere near this area, and I want to be accessible to our members. I’m having a new building built for us. We’ll have the top floor, with the deck that you love so much so we can still see the grounds, and Ryder and Reece will each have a place on the first floor. There will also be a dining hall, conference room, and workout area attached, but our areas will only be accessible with key codes for additional security. Additional buildings will be erected for the other members, and the rooms they are currently using will be turned into apartments with windows and multiple rooms. Unless someone wants to stay there, they will be used for guests.”

“How are you planning on getting all of this done with only a few men?”

“We’re borrowing different teams from other clans to begin the construction. We’re going to do our best to get this done quickly and with little disruption. But some of it will be completed first because of safety. We need to get things in order if we’re going to be a safe clan for members to come to when they are running from vindictive Alphas.”

She let herself get sidetracked for a moment. The future of the clan was turning brighter with each day…while she was discovering darker and darker secrets. Every time she thought she had moved past everything Frank had done to her, she was tossed right back into it. The trip back to Connecticut had started out to reunite her with family, but in the end, it had given her a mate and had taken away her family. A double-edged sword. While she thought she’d grieved for her family long ago, she had always kept hope they were alive.

If she was going to put things to rest, deal with what her fate could have been if Frank had caught her, and grieve for her family, she had to see what was up there. She glanced at the door and her pulse sped. “I have to see.”

“Fine, but after we do a sweep. Until then, I want you in the living room.” When she looked at him, he added, “I won’t disturb anything unless it will bring danger to you. If he has the place booby-trapped, we’ll need to deal with that before you can enter.”

“I don’t like that you’re doing this.”

“Me neither,” Ryder agreed. “I can get one of the others to go through it with me.”

“No.” David’s tone was final. “It’s my responsibility.”

Not wanting to delay things further, she stepped away from the hidden door and walked out of the closet. “Be safe, my love.”

“Always.”

D
avid wasn’t
sure what they’d find through the hidden doorway, but he and Ryder had their guns out and ready. The thought that someone might have been trapped in there at some point made him ill. He never even knew about the doorway, and if someone had been locked away in there when he killed Frank, they’d have starved to death before he had even known.

Ryder checked the frame of the doorway before he pushed it open. Nothing exploded. Always a good sign. David grabbed a flashlight from the shelf behind him and shined it into the space. Steps and darkness were all he could see. He always thought there was an attic area due to the way the building was shaped, but he never knew where the access was. He would have never expected it to be here.

“Ready?”

David nodded to the shelf. “Grab a light and let’s do this.” He steadied his grip on his gun and brought it up with the flashlight just below it. Something told him that a gun wouldn’t protect him from whatever horrors he found in the room. It wouldn’t defend against the nightmares of what could have been done to his mate, or what had been done to who knows who else.

“I don’t think we’ll need the guns but…” Ryder duplicating David’s position.

“It’s better to be safe.” He started to go toward the door, to lead the way, but Ryder cut him off. Instead of arguing against him doing his job, he just nodded.

Stepping through the narrow door, David couldn’t even cover him. With his gun pointed at the floor, he followed up the steps. Once they stepped out of the narrow staircase, he raised his gun and turned left as Ryder took right, scanning the open space for any sign of movement. His gun traveled over the space at the same speed as his gaze. For the moment, he looked past all the other items and just concerned himself with anything that could be a threat.

“Clear,” Ryder announced as they finished their sweep and met in the middle.

Nothing moved and no booby-traps were found, but the space was far from clear. Blood and the stench of fear still clung to the air, making it hard to breathe, and brought his tiger closer to the surface. The air alone had his tiger ready to fight or bolt. Too many bad things had happened here to ever make it a place of ease again. He’d destroy it, and the memories that went with it, after he discovered what the dark attic held.

Straight ahead was a thin mattress pressed against the wall. No doubt it had been the only place of comfort to those who’d been kept prison here. Now it lay abandoned near one of the two small windows that cast a faint glow of light over the space. The mattress was bare except for bloodstains that marred the fabric, a thin blanket and pillow balled up next to it on the floor. A silver chain caught his attention. The thick heavy chain was attached to a bolted loop in the floor and the other end held a thick metal collar. There was no doubt that whoever wore it wouldn’t have gone far because of the weight. “Chained to the floor so they couldn’t escape.”

“It’s soundproofed so no one would have heard them. Not even right below. But he could always watch her.” Ryder pointed toward the video cameras covering the space.

Pulling his attention away from the bed and the horrors it held, he scanned the area. The Saint Andrews Cross stood off to the right of the steps, the wrist and ankle restraints still in place. A little beyond it, a hardwood table with the same restraints and dried blood coated the wood, left little doubt that it had once held someone in the past. The chains and bloodstains screamed that someone had been tortured there. What had Frank managed to do up here?

The last piece of furniture caught David’s attention and sent a chill running down his spine. The small standing closet looked normal enough, but he knew the horrors that would be found if someone opened it. There was just enough room for someone to stand up inside of it, but all four walls had silver blades sticking through, and once the doors were shut, the blades would be buried within the prisoner. Silver was the one thing a shifter couldn’t heal from quickly, and the burning sensation it caused would drive someone insane if left there long enough. Just seeing it made him want to howl. He had seen it years before when Frank was building it and had done nothing out of fear it would be used on him or his family. People had suffered in it because of him. That was a guilt he’d have to carry within himself for the rest of his days.

“Fuck!”

David pulled himself from the guilt and memories as he turned to see Ryder glancing at a wall that had pinned pictures on it. “What’s that?”

“The torture board.” Ryder let out a string of curses. “Frank’s mate and…”

David shoved his gun back in the holster and moved forward. He didn’t have to look past the first picture to see why Ryder had stopped. Victoria’s mother was restrained on the wooden table, knives sticking out of her body. Other gashes that appeared to be long claw marks decorated her sides, and there was blood everywhere. The only reason he recognized her was from her eyes. She had the same deep green ones her daughter had, only these were haunted and clearly in pain. There was no doubt in his mind she died terrified the same thing would happen to her only child.

“David,” Victoria called from the bottom of the steps.

“Another minute.” He glanced at Ryder and then back to the pictures.

“If you take them down, she’ll know they’re missing. She’ll see the holes from the knives he used to…hang them.”

He knew the pause in Ryder’s comment was because he was going to say something else first. There was no doubt in David’s mind that the dried blood on the knives belonged to Victoria’s mother. It would have been another kick in the gut whenever Frank showed her the pictures. He’d have considered it a memento of his victory. To David it was another reason this place was that of nightmares. He didn’t want his mate to come up here and see the horrors that could have been the end of her life or picture the final days or minutes of her mother’s life. He wanted to protect his mate from this just as he protected her from Frank before she was his.

Before she was mine.
He tried to stop his thoughts from traveling down the road of the past. He didn’t want to think of what would have happened to them if they had known they were mates then. Frank wouldn’t have just killed them. The tortures he’d have put them through would have been worse than anything he had ever done. He would have seen their mating as the ultimate betrayal.

“What’s going on up there? Is it safe?”

“Just wait,” he snapped, needing a minute to think. There was no easy way to handle this and no magical solution to make it all better. If only Mira had told him about the hidden spot before, he could have…he stopped because he knew he couldn’t withhold this from his mate, even if he wanted to. She’d sense he was trying to hide something, and she’d only dig deep through their connection to find out what it was.

“There’s no reason to be rude.” Her voice drifted away as she moved from the door.

“Ryder, wait here. Don’t disturb anything. I need to prepare her.”

“You’re going to let her see this.” Ryder’s voice held a hint of surprise.

“I have no choice.” His stomach was tied in knots as he headed for the steps. With every step he took, the lump in his chest grew. She knew her parents were dead, but she didn’t know how. Now he knew, and he wished he didn’t. “Victoria,” he called to her when he didn’t see her inside the closet. No answer, but when he stepped out into the living quarters he found out why. She was on the balcony.

He stood there, watching her. Her shoulders sank in uncertainty. Fear washed through her like waves, each one getting worse. Whether she knew it or not, she was picking up on his anxiety. He needed to tell her to ease the anxiety building within her. As if she knew he was ready, she turned toward him, and he motioned for her to come inside. He didn’t want to do it outside, in case someone might overhear them.

“I can come up now?” Her annoyance coated each word, and he prayed that she’d hold on to that instead of the guilt he had no doubt would soon make itself known.

“We need to talk.”

Without taking her gaze off his, she slid the sliding glass door shut. “Nothing good ever starts with that phrase.”

He closed the distance between them and took her hands into his. “Come sit down.”

“What did you find?” She refused to move, and he thought about picking her up and carrying her to the sofa. “My parents…they’re not up there?” She shook her head. “No, they’re dead. He wouldn’t have written that horrible letter if it wasn’t true.”

“No, mate, they’re not there. There’s evidence—”

“He tortured them before killing them. I knew he would if he thought they knew where I was, but they didn’t. I left without telling anyone. They were tortured because of me.”

“He tortured people for sport.” He tried to reason with her.

She continued to shake her head. “Mom was brought into this clan because of her mating with Dad, and Frank let her be.”

“Because of her brother,” he gently reminded her as he wrapped his arm around her waist and led her toward the sofa. “Her brother was Alpha of the Iowa Tigers until he was challenged. Frank feared him and knew he wouldn’t win a challenge from him so he left your mother alone. When her brother was killed, the protection ended. There would have come a time that she did something to upset him, and she’d have suffered the same fate as others in the clan.”

“But this wasn’t because of something she did. It was my fault.”

He sat down on the sofa and pulled her onto his lap. “I don’t know what happened. They were gone when I got back from looking for you. I can only tell you that he’d have known they knew nothing of your whereabouts. As the Alpha, he could have smelled it on her; he’d have known if she was hiding something from him. This is not your fault.”

“To get back at me for running, for denying the mating he wanted to force on me, he took it out on my parents.” She started to rise off his lap, but his arms stayed locked around her waist. “I need to see…”

“In a minute.” He slipped his hand under her shirt, not in a sexual way but for the additional skin contact. Touching would help her stay in the moment and grieve and work through everything she was feeling while reminding her she wasn’t alone. If he let her slip from his embrace, she’d bottle everything up and later it would come back twice as hard.

“There’s more?”

“There’s no reason to go up there. Anything you see up there will only taint the memories you have. Let me deal with it and—”

“Taint my memories? Shit. Please tell me that bastard didn’t record what he did to her.”

He hadn’t seen any actual videos while he was upstairs, but Frank had watched whoever was upstairs through the motioning system. Knowing Frank, David wouldn’t have put it past him to pull something underhanded like that. Then, when he got Victoria back and locked her away up there, he’d have forced her to watch them. It would have been another way he could have controlled her.
Listen to me and do as I say, or the same thing will happen to you.

It made him sick to even think it, but Frank wasn’t above tactics like that if they worked. Whatever it took to keep the clan in line. It was one of the reasons he did public torture sessions. At least any children in the clan didn’t have to witness that. Children were one part of the clan he didn’t mess with, but once they turned eighteen, they were free game. It wasn’t that he was concerned with the parents’ reactions so much as he realized they were the future generations of the clan. He couldn’t keep his clan going if he killed off the children.

“David, answer me.” Panic rose a notch in her voice.

“There are no video recordings that I’ve found, but there are pictures. He’s pinned them to the wall with blood-coated knives.” He pulled her close to him as the first tears rolled down her cheeks. “They start with his first mate, and it seems to be a timeline, ending with…your mother.”

“What about my father? Are there some of what he did to him?”

“I believe Frank killed him immediately. Your father wasn’t one to go against Frank, but he would’ve seen him as a possible threat, especially once the torture on your mother began. The mating bond can force you to turn against your Alpha to protect your mate.”

“My decisions cost my dad his life and Mom was tortured, yet I got to live. That doesn’t seem fair.”

“Don’t think for even a moment that they’d have wanted you locked up there, suffering under Frank’s control.” He rubbed his hand along her back. “You need to remember that he was going to kill them once he had you. It isn’t your fault. Frank was a bastard and got off on the torture and blood of those weaker than him.”

She wrapped her arms around his neck, clinging to him as they sat there in silence for a few minutes. Finally, the tears subsided and she leaned back. “We’ve got to make this place full of happiness and laughter, a safe place where everyone can live again. Otherwise, they’ve all died in vain. I need to do this in my parent’s memory. No…
we
need to do this for both our families memories, and for everyone else who died here.”

He nodded in agreement. “For Shelly and Brad. For the mates who are left behind, like Heidi.” He held her tight, clinging to the moment while pushing off the future hills they’d have to climb. When he took over as Alpha, he was determined to turn this clan around, to bring it out of the darkness Frank had kept them in and into the light. There were many challenges the clan would have to overcome, more battles he’d have to lead them through, but with Victoria at his side, he had no doubt they’d overcome everything.

V
ictoria leaned
against the wall just outside of the closet, her heart thumping against her ribs in a fury that wouldn’t be ignored. She made it out of the attic without falling apart, but now that she was downstairs in the space that she had come to share with David, she couldn’t stop her world from crashing down around her. Seeing the unmanageable torture her mother had suffered displayed on the wall had been the final breaking point. If Frank had been alive, she’d have gone after him, even if it meant her own death.