Page 21 of Misery (Raiders of Valhalla MC: New Blood #7)

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Elfe

The canvas doesn't judge.

It doesn't lie.

It just takes what I give it—every violent stroke, every bleeding color, every moment of rage I can't voice.

My hands shake as I drag the palette knife through thick black paint, creating ridges that look like claw marks.

Or maybe they're screams.

The kind that get trapped in your throat when everything falls apart.

Red follows, arterial bright, mixing with the black until it looks like old blood.

Like the blood on my mother's face.

Like the blood in my father's truck.

I'm on the floor of my room, canvas propped against the wall because I couldn't be bothered with an easel.

Couldn't be bothered with anything proper or structured.

This isn't about creating art.

It's about working through what’s going on in my mind.

About putting the poison somewhere outside my body before it kills me from the inside.

The painting is abstract but anyone looking would know what it is—chaos, fear, guilt.

The colors swirl and clash, creating forms that might be faces or might be demons.

There's a section that looks like eyes.

Watching. Always watching.

Too many eyes.

Oskar's. Thiago's.

Everyone who claimed to protect me while keeping their own secrets.

My phone sits silent on the dresser.

I've been waiting for news about my father for three hours.

Three hours of nothing.

Three hours of imagining him hurt, bleeding, dying.

Three hours of remembering the last words I said to him.

"I needed my father. Not the Road Captain. Just my dad. And you weren't there. You're never there when it actually matters."

The palette knife slips, gouging a line through wet paint that looks intentional but isn't.

Nothing's intentional anymore.

Everything's just a reaction to catastrophe.

I add yellow—bile, fear, cowardice.

My cowardice for not going after him myself.

For sitting here painting while he's God knows where.

The yellow bleeds into the red, creating orange that reminds me of fire.

The garage fire at their house. A distraction while Thiago took him.

Thiago.

I know his name now but it doesn't make him less terrifying.

It only makes him more real.

A man with a name who sat at my bar, who knew about my paintings, who's been watching me sleep.

The yellow becomes more urgent, violent slashes across the black.

"My little artist."

The words make my hand clench around the palette knife.

I stab at the canvas, leaving deep impressions in the heavy paper.

Each strike is something I can't do to him.

Each mark is an act of violence I'm not allowed to commit.

White next. Innocence lost. Purity destroyed.

The dove he left at the door.

Everything clean that's been contaminated by this life.

I mix it with the red—pink like diluted blood, like evidence being washed away, like trying to pretend everything's fine when it's not.

My hands are steadier now.

This is what painting does—takes the shaking and turns it into something purposeful.

The fear becomes texture.

The rage becomes composition.

It's not healing, but it's management. It's survival.

Green enters the painting—sickly, poisonous green.

Jealousy maybe. Or nausea.

The color of the thing growing between Oskar and me that might be love or might be lies.

I think about his hands on me. Inside me.

The way he made me feel safe when nothing else did.

But was any of it real?

How can I tell the difference when everything feels like deception?

The green spreads like infection across the canvas.

Purple follows—bruises, violence, the color of hands around a throat.

But also royalty, power.

The power Thiago thinks he has over me.

The power men take when they think they own you.

The power I'm trying to reclaim with every stroke.

My mother's scream echoes in my memory.

Not from today but from eight months ago when she came to the hospital.

When she saw me broken.

That sound lives in purple—the shocked grief of a parent seeing their child destroyed.

I'm crying now.

I didn't even realize it until a tear drops onto the painting, creating a small clear spot in the chaos.

I leave it.

Let it be part of the piece.

Salt and water and grief mixed with pigment and medium.

Blue enters last.

Sadness so deep it has its own gravity.

The color of Oskar's bike.

The color of the sky the day everything changed.

The color of my father's eyes when he's disappointed.

The blue spreads like water, like drowning, like being pulled under by weight you can't escape.

The painting is almost complete.

A mess of color and emotion that somehow perfectly captures this moment.

This feeling of being trapped between trauma and truth, between love and betrayal, between wanting to be saved and wanting to save myself.

I add one more element—a thin line of silver, barely visible unless you know to look for it.

Hope. Maybe. Or delusion.

The belief that somehow this ends without everyone destroyed.

My hands are covered in paint.

Under my nails, between my fingers, up my arms where I pushed my sleeves back.

I probably have it on my face too from pushing my hair back.

I look like I've been in a beautiful war.

A knock at my door. Soft. Hesitant.

"Elfe?" Helle's voice. "Mom needs you."

I stand, muscles protesting from sitting on the floor for so long.

The painting stays propped against the wall, still wet, still breathing with fresh trauma.

Later I'll probably destroy it.

Or maybe I'll keep it as evidence of this moment when everything was falling apart but I was still here, still creating, still fighting in the only way I know how.

The kitchen smells like whiskey and fear.

My mother sits at the table, a bandage wrapped around her head like a crown of gauze.

The blood's soaked through in spots, creating abstract patterns that remind me of my painting.

Helle's beside her, bottle of Jameson between them, two glasses already poured and a third waiting.

"How's your head?" I ask, sliding into the chair across from them.

"Hurts," Mom admits. She looks older than she did a week ago. The attack, the worry, the not knowing—it's aged her. "But I've had worse."

That's a lie. We all know it. But no one says a thing.

Helle pushes the third glass toward me. "Figured you could use this."

I take it, grateful.

The whiskey burns going down, cleaner than the paint fumes I've been breathing. "Any word?"

"Nothing," my mother says. "Runes called twenty minutes ago. They're still searching."

"He's alive," I say. Need to say. Need to believe. "Dad's too stubborn to die."

"Too stubborn for his own good," Mom agrees, but there's fondness in it. "Always has been."

We drink in silence for a moment.

Three women bound by blood and trauma, trying to find comfort in alcohol and our company.

"I'm sorry," I finally say. "For what I said. At the bar. I was cruel."

"You were honest," my mother corrects. "There's a difference."

"Still. The timing—"

"The timing was shit," Helle interrupts. "But that doesn't make what you said less true. The club does come first. Always has."

Mom flinches but doesn't deny it. "It's the life we chose."

"You chose," I correct. "We were born into it."

"And you could have left," she points out. "Both of you. Could have gone anywhere, been anything. But you stayed."

She's right. I hate that she's right.

We're all complicit in this life, even when we rage against it.

"Tell me what happened," I say. "At the house. Everything."

She pours herself another drink, downs it, pours again. "I was in the bedroom. Your father was in the garage, working on his bike. Normal morning. Then I heard the door. Thought it was him coming in to check on me."

She touches the bandage gently, winces. "But it wasn't. This man—young, maybe thirty. Handsome in that dangerous way. Dark hair, dark eyes. He smiled at me like we were old friends."

"Thiago," I whisper.

"That's what he said his name was. Said he grew up with Oskar and Emil. Said he'd come to check on us, make sure we were safe." She laughs bitterly. "I actually offered him coffee. That's when he hit me. Something heavy—I didn't see what. Went down hard."

"Mom—"

"I could hear your father shouting from the garage.

Fighting. But everything was fuzzy, distant.

The man—Thiago—he leaned down and said to tell Oskar he says hello.

Said he was taking something that didn't belong to him.

" Her voice cracks. "Then nothing. Woke up to smoke alarms and Oskar cutting my restraints. "

"He saved you," Helle points out.

"After his friend nearly killed me." The bitterness in her voice could etch glass.

"Thiago's not his friend," I defend automatically, then wonder why I'm defending Oskar at all. "Not anymore."

"But he was. They grew up together." Mom meets my eyes. "How well do you really know him, Elfe? How well do any of us know the men we let into our lives?"

Before I can answer, the dogs start barking.

All three of them at once, their voices echoing through the house.

Someone's here.

Aren appears in the doorway, hand on his weapon. "It's Oskar. He wants to talk to you."

My heart does something complicated—speeds up with anger, skips with need. "I don't want to see him."

"He says it's important. About your father."

That changes everything.

I stand, realize I'm still covered in paint, but I don't care. "Where?"

"Outside. By the bikes."

I follow Aren through the house, aware of my mother and sister watching.

Aware of how this looks—the woman running to the man who's been lying to her.

But if he has information about my father, I need to hear it.

Oskar's standing by his bike, looking like he's aged years in hours.

His clothes are dusty, there's blood on his knuckles, and his eyes are hollow with exhaustion and something else.

Guilt maybe, or grief for what's about to happen.

"Is he alive?" I ask without letting him say a word.

"Yes. We have proof of life from two hours ago."

Relief hits so hard my knees almost buckle. "Where is he?"