Page 18 of Risk (Mayhem Makers: MMM #3)

CHAPTER

SEVENTEEN

Risk

I watch as the light leaves her eyes and she sinks into her chair, becoming one with it.

“We don’t expect pretty, Kenna. No matter how ugly the beginning is, the ending will be spectacular because you have us again,” I assert, hoping to break her wall down around her heart further.

“Like Kodiak said, we have a lot to make amends for, but if you don’t give us that chance, things will never get better… for either of us.”

When she starts talking, her voice is monotone. “You’d think that losing my dad was the worst thing that could’ve happened to me, but it wasn’t. It was the day my mom started dating Marshall, then moved him in and shortly afterward, married him.”

“Marshall. That’s the man that took you, isn’t it?” Conan asks.

“Yes, eventually. I’ll get there,” Kenna promises. “You won’t understand every dirty detail of how he managed to capture me unless I tell you everything, which is what I was trying to do.”

“Don’t mind him, Kenna. Continue. We won’t interrupt you again,” Kodiak assures her. “Isn’t that right, Conan?”

“Yep,” my brother answers, none too happy about it. “My lips are sealed.”

“You’ll answer questions afterward, though, right?” I ask for clarification.

She nods her head before licking her lips. “Just… just don’t interrupt me or I won’t be able to get through everything.”

“Okay, sweetheart, we won’t,” Regulator swears. “If any of these knuckleheads forget, I’ll remind them. You just keep talking.”

When she clears her throat and tears swim in her eyes, I know we’re about to have our world rocked to the core.

“After Dad died, I had a hard time dealing. I started hanging out with the wrong crowd and ran away more often than not. I spent more time on the streets than I did in my mom’s house.

I don’t know if I was vying for attention, or if I was looking for something I couldn’t find with her.

Not that it matters because I made her life a living hell.

I was the worst daughter imaginable. She didn’t deserve that and I’m the reason she was looking for companionship.

Someone to share her struggles with. She needed someone to have her back because fuck knows I didn’t.

I was selfish and since I could only think of myself and my despair, I inadvertently sent her into the arms of the devil himself.

Marshall fucking Pierce. He came in like a wrecking ball and ruined my life.

I didn’t stop showing my ass just because my mom had a man in her life, if anything, I got worse.

I turned all of my hate and anger on her. ”

Kenna wraps her arms around herself, as if she’s trying to hold herself together and begins rocking side to side, mumbling unintelligible words that I have no hope of deciphering.

“Do you need a break, Kenna?” I ask her, massaging the back of her neck like I used to when things got too heavy for her. She always carries her stress there.

“No,” she adamantly says. “I want to get this over with.”

“Okay. Do you need something to drink? Some water maybe?” I offer.

“No. Not now, maybe later,” she answers, licking her dry lips. When she twists and looks at me, she becomes shy. “I’m gonna need a shower once I’m done. Can you make sure I get there, Risk?”

“Absofuckinglutely,” I tell her. “Even if that means we don’t get to ask any questions until you get cleaned up.”

“Thank you,” she whispers, lifting her knees up and wrapping herself around them.

“The only good thing I can say about that time is that I didn’t turn to drugs or alcohol like most teens in my situation do.

Instead, escaping my mom and Marshall became my addiction.

I didn’t know that every time he found me and brought me back, that his soothing, insightful words were his way of grooming me.

God, I should’ve known. He took my side and condemned my mom.

Every. Single. Time. Claiming she didn’t get me and that I was only a nuisance forced upon her.

Being her daughter meant she didn’t have any other legal options but to keep me, shelter me, and feed me.

I believed him. Didn’t think he had any reason to lie to me.

I bought into all of his explanations of why there was space between us because I knew I was the cause of it.

The loss of her love was an effect of how I treated her.

She no longer respected me and to be honest, I lost that for myself long before she ever did.

You can’t get that level of value from someone else if you don’t think you’re worth anything yourself.

He implored me that the next time I felt the urge to leave, to come to him and I did.

I assumed he’d take care of me, help me find what was missing.

He promised he’d take care of me, help me start fresh somewhere new where nobody knew me. ”

When she chokes and lowers her head, I squeeze her neck.

My silent way of supporting her and reminding her she’s not alone.

Never again. “You can do this,” I lean forward and whisper in her ear.

“Forget we’re here, get it off your chest, Vi-Kenna.

” I nearly slip and call her by the pet name I gave her when we first became official.

But I don’t want her to backslide and pull away from us so I correct it, even if doing so steals every ounce of breath from my lungs.

As she carries on, all of our faces become pinched with pain.

Pain for her and everything she survived.

“The first two weeks with him was unlike any freedom I’d ever felt before.

I walked on the beach, dug my toes in the sand and all of my troubles felt so far away that I could finally let go and be myself.

Or who I thought I was anyhow. Turns out, I was so very wrong.

On the last day of that two week adventure, I was homesick and wanted to go back to make sure my mom was doing alright.

I couldn’t stand the thought of her being by herself.

It’s like I woke up and realized how damn stingy and narcissistic I’d been.

That’s when the monster made his first appearance.

I’d never witnessed that side of him before so I was stunned speechless and immobile.

I couldn’t move no matter how hard I tried; it was as if my feet were stuck in quicksand.

My safe haven became my prison. From there, things escalated.

He stripped me down to my underwear and chained me to the floor.

I had a pot to piss in and a bucket of soapy water and a washcloth to bathe with.

Then he desensitized me by taking photos of me.

He forced me to pose for some but most, he wanted to be taken in real time.

He particularly enjoyed the ones I was crying and begging in.

They got him the big bucks. People are sick,” she spits.

“I’m taking it, things progressed from there,” Kodiak muses, balling up his fists.

“Yeah,” she mumbles. “Once I was conditioned, the video camera came out. I had my first showing when I was fifteen… I think. Time is blurry, and my head goes back and forth between what age I was when it all started. That part of my memory is broken beyond repair. Sometimes I’m fifteen, sometimes younger, sometimes older.

” She shrugs her shoulders. “I think it’s my mind’s way of protecting me. ”

“What age do you instinctively want to go with, Kenna?” I ask her, because usually what comes to the forefront of your mind is the truth.

“Fifteen,” she mutters. “I’m almost always fifteen.”

“Then let’s go with that,” I soothingly say. “What happened from there, Kenna?”

“I became a commodity,” she says, her voice muffled. “I was young and inexperienced, which is what the sickos were wanting. Days blended into weeks and the weeks blended into years until eventually, I found a way to escape.”

“That’s when you met me?” I confirm.

“Yeah, that’s when I met you. Remember how scared and angry I was when you found me? I hated men, all men, and you paid the repercussions for that,” she whimperingly giggles. “I was such a bitch to you, but you never gave up. You kept searching for me. Why did you do that?”

“Because there was something remarkable and special about you. Your light and zest for life called to my darkness. I knew you were born to be my salvation,” I acknowledge. “And you were, until I fucked everything up.”

“It was fake,” she adds.

“What was fake, Kenna?”

“My zest for life. I was living with the mentality of fake it until you make it,” she replies. When I look taken aback, she pats my hand and tells me, “I didn’t fake everything. Once you had me, you got the real me. Lucky you, huh?”

“I was the luckiest man in the world, Kenna. What happened between us was on me. You did nothing wrong. You were the best part of me.”

“I ruin everything I touch so it wasn’t a complete surprise that you went to another woman’s bed.

I had been expecting the other shoe to drop at some point.

I may have been mentally prepared for it, but emotionally, I couldn’t have imagined how hard it’d hit me.

I never really blamed you, not in the grand scheme of things anyhow.

I knew our time was limited but I’d decided to enjoy basking in our love for as long as I had it. ”

“Fuck, Kenna,” I whisper, hanging my head in shame. I created more damage than I thought. Her psyche was just starting to heal and I smashed it into smithereens. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to look at myself in the mirror again.