Page 16 of Laila Manning (Shadeport Crew #3)

Ryker called me, interrupting my first moment of true fucking bliss in decades when I had Laila in my arms for the first time, and ordered me to report for duty. I tried getting out of it, which was not in my nature. But there was no way. It was all hands on deck.

And it had been three days since that phone call dragged me away from Laila and I hadn’t seen her since. I came home after long nights, and she was gone, and when she came home, I was off dealing with the fallout.

I wasn’t sure where she was going every day exactly, which annoyed me. Since she quit her job at the coffee shop, she’d been looking for another one, but I didn’t know if she'd gotten one.

I didn’t know anything .

And that fucking bothered me.

I thrived on knowing everything. All the time.

Yet Laila was a mystery to me.

Though that was changing slowly.

Each time I came back to my apartment to shower and catch an hour or two of sleep, there would be another journal entry wedged in my door.

Her attempt to communicate with me about her past, the only way that she was comfortable. And I ate it up like catnip, consuming every single word written in her elegant, flowy script like they were a window into her soul.

Into her very being.

I wanted it all. Every morsel she gave me and everything she hid from me. I needed it.

I took the paper, opened my door, and walked into my dark and empty apartment as I unfolded her secrets.

Dear Journal,

I dreamed about that night again. It’s been so long since the last time I was forced to relive that horrid evening in vivid detail, I thought perhaps I was finally past it. But apparently not.

It started just like it always does.

First, I hear the music and feel the bass thumping over my skin as I dance around the cheesy gymnasium with its paper streamers and sparkling confetti.

I remember the euphoria in my heart as my friends and I sang to the stupid boy band songs blaring and laughed our way through another tacky award given to someone for best dressed, or most transformed.

Puke.

My friends and I were the farthest things from popular, so we would never be on that stage, but we didn’t care. We weren’t there for that.

Prom.

The night of joy and a rite of passage every high schooler should take before they’re thrust out of the illusion of comfort and into the real world full of bills, responsibilities, and deadlines that were never reachable.

But that’s when the dream changes, every time. Gone is the music, and the flashing lights and laughter.

Gone is the high I was riding from joy and happiness, and in its place falls something heavy. Something dark.

I didn’t know when it was happening in real time, but that heaviness was a drug I’d never even heard of, let alone willingly allowed to fall into my cup of bland punch from the table by the wall. I realized too late what had happened. I realized it only when I woke up the next morning.

Broken.

Taken.

No longer Laila.

Just another girl in the room.

A boy who was three years too old even to be at a high school prom drugged me. Apparently, he did it at every dance. To some lucky girl who was so unsuspecting, she didn’t even think she was in danger until it was too late.

The dream always picks up as I stumble out of the side door of the gymnasium, seeking cool air to clear my jumbled head.

Stupid.

So, so, so stupid .

That was when he swooped in. I vaguely remember him helping me, offering to get me to a bench to sit down so the world would stop spinning.

But he didn’t do that.

He didn’t help me.

He hurt me.

First, when he shoved me into the trunk of his car, shutting off any of the cool air I was seeking and any prying eyes or ears that may have heard me cry for help.

And then again, when he dragged me into his disgusting camper by my hair because I was so far gone, I couldn’t even walk. But the pain didn’t stop there.

That was the night I lost my virginity.

Held down by the invisible bindings of the drug as he did horrific things to my innocent body.

As if drugging and raping someone weren’t bad enough, he wasn’t done there.

And that’s the worst part of the dream, because it ends there.

But when I wake up from that nightmare, I remember how he sold me to another guy like some unwanted object, ready for the taking.

And then another.

And then another until the men had no faces, and the days had no ticks of time.

And then I was sold to a new owner, and the process started all over again.

I wake up from the dream, every single time, shaking with anger and pain like I’m back in that dark and musty camper all over again. People came and went, for sex or drugs or his disgusting style of company, and no one saved me.

No one cared.

I was seventeen years old.

A child .

How could the world be so cruel so many times to the same person?

xo- L

My mind spins with the words from her latest entry.

Anger burns in my gut as I hear her voice reading the words like she spoke them to me firsthand.

“Zeke. Are you even listening?” Ryker asked, pausing the obsessive pacing that he’d been doing around his office for the last four days.

“Yes.” I kept staring out the window, fighting the urge to tell him to fuck off.

“He’s daydreaming like he has been for weeks now,” Jed added with that pissy tone he’d been addressing me with since Laila came to live in the barracks. It grated on the very last nerve I had left in my body, and I felt myself begin to unravel.

“One warning, Jed,” I growled, with my back still turned to him . “That’s all you fucking get, and it’s more than you deserve.”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” He snapped back, and I sensed him standing up from the couch.

“Enough.” Ryker barked in frustration.

But there was no stopping the freight train collision that had been impending for weeks now.

It had to happen.

There was no way around it anymore .

“It means you’ve stepped out of line for way too long, and I’m done giving forgiveness for it.”

“Forgiveness!” He roared, “You fucking prick!”

I turned as his fist swung, ducking to the side just in time to avoid it.

“Jed!” Ryker bellowed, but we ignored him.

“Learn your fucking place, kid!” I snapped, shoving him backward before delivering an undercut to his jaw. “You don’t run this shit!”

“My place is putting you in the ground for being an old pervert!” He recoiled and lunged at me. His giant fist slammed into my ribs, knocking the wind from my lungs, but I didn’t hesitate. Jed was mammoth, even against me, but my speed was unmatched in this fight against the giant.

“Get it off your chest now, because only one of us will have any teeth left when this is done with, and it won’t be you.” I swung wide, boxing his ear, and as he recoiled off of me, I hit him on the cheek.

“Stay away from Laila!” He yelled in my face, shoving me against the glass, and grabbing for my throat. “Stop thinking about her. Stop talking to her. Stop mind-fucking her every time she comes near your creepy old ass. She’s got enough problems without you hovering over her with your bullshit.”

“Jed!” Ryker yelled, pulling him off me as his hand squeezed my throat. But I didn’t need Ryker to interfere, because I had it. I jammed my knee up into his inner thigh and dislodged him, connecting again with the side of his face as anger like no other filled my body.

“You don’t know a fucking thing about her or me!” I screamed in his face, letting it out. “Don’t talk about her like you know what’s best for her.”

“I do know what’s best for her! She’s my sister!” He yelled back as Ryker pushed him backward, stepping between us .

“You don’t even fucking know her! Or what she’s been through!” I accused, even though I didn’t know that for a fact. I didn’t know if she told Carly the things she told me with her journal entries, but a part of me was sure she didn’t.

She kept it all bottled inside, except for me.

“Fuck you!” He screamed, lunging again, and I stood there, waiting for his body to crash into mine, willing to feel the pain for the truth.

For the claim over her.

“Enough!” Ryker yelled again, getting a hold of him at the last second and throwing him across the room with strength I hadn’t seen out of him in years.

Not since he took the throne. “That’s enough!

” He sneered at Jed before turning and pointing at me.

“From both of you.” He huffed. “Dammit, Zeke, I expect more from you!”

“That’s your problem, Ryker. Not mine.” With a shrug, I adjusted my jacket on my shoulders.

“I won’t have this punk stomping around and throwing his weight around like he has a fucking ounce of power over me.

I’ve earned my place!” Scoffing, I looked at my best friend.

“It’s time he learned where his is! And it’s not standing over his grown sister like he’s her boss. ”

“I’m just trying to protect her!” Jed challenged, “From men like you and Diesel who can’t seem to take the hint that she doesn’t want you!”

“That’s not true.” I shook my head. “Admit it, Jed, you don’t know the first thing about her.”

“She’s my sister! Of course I know her!” He sneered.

“You haven’t seen her in decades! And your relationship with her now is superficial at best!” I took a deep breath and stared him down. “I know her.” His face reddened as Ryker threw his finger at him to keep him quiet. “I know her. You don’t.”

“You touched her, didn’t you?” He alleged it angrily.

“You son of a bitch! I’ll fucking rip your head off your shoulders and lay it at her feet!

” He blasted through Ryker and ran for me.

I braced, taking the weight of his body as he slammed into me, and we both flew through the window out onto the catwalk above the nightclub in a flurry of glass shards and fists.

We both swung at each other, over and over, rolling across the glass, beating the shit out of each other until bouncers from below finally got to us and pulled us apart.