Page 31 of Nave (Henchmen MC: Next Generation #14)

Lolly

The pain dulled to a more tolerable level in the third week, and I figured there was no other good reason to put off the trip.

The sooner we deleted my existence from Ben’s life, the better. I didn’t know what kind of connections Ben had, if he had online friends who would notice his absence after a certain amount of time, who might start looking for him.

It was time to completely close the book on that chapter of my life.

I was surprised by how settled I felt as Nave, Junior, Edith, and I climbed into the car with the intention of heading back to my old prison.

But it was hard to be scared of anything with two giant, burly men with ‘bad news’ written across their foreheads.

The trip that had taken me five days—thanks to avoiding all the main roads where cameras might catch sight of me—only took about twenty hours of actual driving, a task that Junior and Nave shared while I stretched out with Edith in the back.

Before I was fully prepared for it, we were ambling down the long, winding road to the center of the woods.

Then there it was.

Familiar, yet suddenly very foreign.

I was not the same woman who had run from that place a few weeks before.

“You okay?” Nave asked, his hand sliding to my lower back as Edith let out a little huff, clearly not happy about being back to a place she had also moved on from.

I sucked in a steadying breath.

“Yeah,” I said, realizing it was true. “Yeah, I am.”

Junior came around the car with a laptop bag crossed over his chest and a small cooler in his hand.

They’d been filling that thing with ice each time we stopped at a gas station. But they had been acting so strangely about it that I decided it was maybe best not to ask.

Nave scooped up Edith, then we followed Junior up the steps.

He paused at the top landing, reaching into the cooler and pulling out…

“Is that…”

“We needed to be able to get inside,” Nave said, wincing.

“You have his finger. How do you have his finger?”

“Well, Dezi was smart enough to remove it,” Nave admitted as Junior handled the severed finger like it was something he did every day.

“The fingerprints still work?” I asked, shocked by how… not shocked I was.

“When you keep it frozen, it’s as good as fresh,” Junior said, pushing the finger into the reader.

I expected it to fail.

But there was a click.

The light went green.

We were in.

“Alright, glove up,” Junior said, tossing the finger back into the cooler, then handing out disposable gloves. I struggled to get it over my cast, but with a little wiggling and some help from Nave, I got it on.

Then we were all walking in.

“It’d be a nice place if it didn’t belong to such an evil fuck,” Junior declared, looking around.

He showed no sign of it, but I got the feeling he noticed every single camera around the space.

“Office?” Junior asked.

“Upstairs. The second room on the left.”

Without another word, he was off in that direction.

“You sure you’re okay?”

“It almost feels like this part of my life wasn’t real now,” I admitted. “I want to check out my old room.”

Nave followed me through the house, helping me pack up my old things. Not because I wanted them, but because we wanted to erase every bit of me from the house.

As Nave took all of those bags to the car, I moved back to the kitchen, going into the fridge to grab all the food, then taking it outside to toss around. Whatever the wildlife didn’t eat, the bugs would.

“What are you thinking?” Nave asked when all the obvious work was done.

“This is going to sound crazy. But I think I should clean this place one last time.”

“That’s not crazy,” he decided after a minute. “In this case, to make sure there isn’t a single trace of you around. I mean, the place seems clean.”

It was.

Even without me, standards could not slip. The whole place smelled like bleach and lemon. I didn’t see a speck of dust or dirt or a stray hair anywhere.

But I wanted to be sure.

I never wanted anything to trace me to Ben ever again.

This new life I was starting with Nave, with my baby, with all the new friends who already felt like family, it was pure and perfect and none of the ugliness of my past should ever be able to taint it.

I went slowly, methodically, room by room, starting with Ben’s space, even though I’d only ever been allowed inside to do cleaning. I wasn’t taking any chances.

It was a slow process with only one good hand, but I managed well enough with some adaptations.

I closed his bathroom, then his bedroom, before going into my old bathroom, then bedroom.

Junior eventually finished up the office, so I went through there, cleaning every surface, then pulling out each drawer to clean them and their contents.

Which was how I found the first envelope.

Full of cash.

Then the second one.

The third.

Fourth and fifth.

Not wanting to lose my momentum, I just shoved them in my cleaning kit and finished up.

Then it was the hallway, the kitchen (including every cabinet and the whole refrigerator) before cleaning my way through the main living space, which meant shooing the boys and Edith outside.

When I was finally done, I was sweaty and red-faced, my fingertips aching like they used to every single day when I’d been captive.

But this was for the last time.

“All set?” Nave asked as I stepped out into the fresh air, breathing deep to clear the chemicals from my lungs.

I glanced back at the house as Nave took the cleaning supplies from my hands—vacuum included.

“Yes. It’s done. And I got a surprise,” I admitted as I followed Nave down to where Junior was waiting, tiny Edith nestled in his giant arms.

“What’s that?” Nave asked, loading everything into the trunk of the car.

I reached into the cleaning caddy and drew out the envelopes.

Junior let out a whistle. “How much is there?”

“I haven’t counted yet. But I’m hoping maybe it’s enough to get some things for the baby. And maybe pay some of you guys for your services.”

“I’m getting paid,” Junior said. “And I’m not takin’ your money.”

Nave reached for one of the envelopes, fanning the money out, and I could see the calculations going through his head.

“About ten grand.”

Ten grand times five was… more money than I’d ever seen in my life.

“Guess we gotta take a trip to the bank when we get back to Navesink Bank too,” Nave said, passing all the envelopes to me.

We all made our way to our doors, and I stopped to stare at the glass house.

I saw myself inside, staring out, wondering if I could ever be free. I remembered seeing Nave for the first time—his all-seeing eyes, his concern, his promise. And, yes, finally, I thought about the day of the escape, of all the fear, adrenaline, and hope.

I knew then where I was going.

Navesink Bank.

Just like I was now.

Not just a pit stop toward a new life.

Now it was my new life.

Full of people who cared enough about me to kill for me, to bury bodies for me, to sit in a hospital emergency room all night and lie with me.

And, of course, I had all those things and more in Nave.

“We’re never going back there, girl,” I told Edith as I reached out to pet her hair. I pulled a small twig out of her curls and smiled to myself at finding it there, at not even knowing how long it had been there.

So much had changed in such a short period of time.

No more obsessively wiping, brushing, and washing her. No isolation and lack of vet care.

Sure, I knew that our future involved moving off the homestead and away from her new dog friends. But we could visit. I could get her a younger sibling.

I could do anything I wanted .

A smile tugged at my lips at that, knowing I’d only had a limited amount of freedom while Ben was still alive. But now, the sky was the limit.

I could get a real driver’s license. I could get a job, rent an apartment, enroll my baby in school when they were old enough. I could get a cell phone and a computer.

“What’s that look for?” Nave asked when we made it back to the clubhouse, leaving Junior to handle getting rid of everything in the trunk.

“I can do anything I want now,” I told him. “ We can do anything we want.”

“Speaking of that, you want to stretch those legs out after all that driving?”

“Sure. But why do I feel like you have some sort of ulterior motive?”

“I have something I want to show you.”

“Okay,” I agreed, tamping down the urge to ask him to tell me, to claim I didn’t like surprises.

That was only because, in my old life, any surprises that came my way were of the negative variety. I could trust Nave not to expose me to anything upsetting.

So I reached for Nave’s hand and slipped my fingers between his, then just went ahead and enjoyed a walk through my new town… without my disguises.

“I feel more at home here than I did my entire childhood with my parents or my first apartment,” I admitted, leaving out the glass house for obvious reasons.

“You have no idea how glad I am to hear that.”

There was something playful about his smile, about the light in his eyes. But he said nothing as we turned down a side street, then one more.

It was a street full of sweet ranch-style homes, some brick, others various shades of vinyl siding. A few had meticulously dark green front lawns; others gave in to the overly dry and relentless heat at the end of summer.

This was strange.

Did his parents live on this street?

Was he expecting me to meet them without any kind of advanced warning? At the very least, I wanted a chance to brush my hair that had been whipped around from the open car windows.

I was just about to say something before it was too late when Nave suddenly stopped walking in front of a white brick ranch with an overhanging front porch and a front flowerbed bursting with Black-Eyed Susans.

There was still a dumpster in the driveway, and I figured the interior had just been renovated.

“What’s this?” I asked, not letting myself believe the possibility that was whispering in the back of my mind.

“Home,” he told me, giving me a hopeful smile. “If you want it to be. No pressure.”

“Wait… you rented it?”

“I bought it. Well, almost. It’s a process. But I will be signing a mountain of paperwork in another two weeks.”

“You bought a house.”

“For us.”

“You bought a house for us.”

“We needed somewhere just for us. Private. With a shower I can actually fit inside.” A little laugh escaped me at that.

“It’s got three bedrooms and two baths. With room out back if we want to expand.

An unfinished basement that I could make Spike, Cain, Perish, and the twins turn into more living space if we need it.

The kitchen, floors, and bathrooms have all been redone.

It’s perfect as it is, but has room for growth. Oh, but we need a fence for Edith.”

“And maybe a doggy sibling for her.”

“She’s really turned into a social butterfly. Yeah, I think she needs a sibling. What kind were you thinking?”

It was really that easy for him. No list of rules, no trying to tell me I didn’t need another dog.

“I guess we can let her decide,” I said.

“Sounds like a plan. You just tell me when. I know some people who always seem to know where there are dogs in need of a home.” He paused, watching me, looking uncharacteristically unsure. “So, what do you think? Are you ready for this step, or do you want more time leaving things how they are?”

“Well, I’m not quite ready yet,” I said, watching his face fall for a split second. “But I think I will be in two weeks.”

His smile threatened to split his face.

“Yeah?”

“Definitely.”

“No doors that you can’t unlock. No cameras,” he assured me.

“Well, maybe a camera out front and out back. You know, for safety.”

“That I can do. I have a lot to protect now,” he said, pulling me into his arms and pressing a sweet kiss to my lips.