Page 121 of Stone: The Precursor

Onyx tied up the four men. The scent of their piss and fear is still coating my nose, but I couldn’t it enjoy it. I had little interest in torturing them the way I normally would. I was too worriedabout getting back to Camryn. I gave Onyx the signal and he quickly sliced all but one of their throats.

Scout and Olivia showed up moments later, his face filled with disgust and venom, hers with heartbreak. But she was steadfast as she moved toward the room where Riggs had both children huddled together on the bed. The two girls were alive, but glassy-eyed. The boy was in the worst condition, bleeding with shallow breaths.

Hadrian and his lackeys had been there. I could feel it. I interrogated the remaining man, pushing for answers.

“Why are there no shipments?”

“I don’t know.”

When I asked who the children were, he didn’t respond until Onyx spoke up, repeating my question.

“Ki timoun sa yo ye?” “Who are these children?”

“Timoun ki kouri lwen. Fanmi ti gason an te dwe nou lajan.”?*

Onyx snarled and yanked the bastard off his feet, pinning him to the wall, cursing at him in his native language. I’d learned a few words of Haitian Creole since meeting Onyx, but I couldn’t follow the rapid conversation. Onyx was deadly at that moment. Even more controlled in his killing than I am.

He dropped him and put his boot on the man’s neck, his face turning red under Onyx’s military boot.

“What did he say?”

“He says the boy is the son of a man in the neighborhood who owes the Mestizos money for drugs. The two girls are runaways.”

“Fuck.”

It was useless. He like his dead friends were just peons in a bigger system. I didn’t stop my friend when he wrapped his arms around the man’s neck and dragged him behind the house.A muffled scream came minutes before, and then there was just silence.

Olivia interrupted my thoughts.

“The girls will survive.They are severely dehydrated and will need to be hospitalized.”

“The boy?” I asked, already knowing the answer from the way her brown face paled.

“I don’t think he’s going to make it. He’s been hemorrhaging for a while.”

He was slowly dying, and they continued to rape him.

When she said that, Olivia broke down and cried, covering her face with her hands. Scout swung her into his arms, whispering in her ear, and walked out the door with her petite form cuddled against his chest.

Riggs followed behind them, his eyes shadowed as he held up an empty bottle of beer. The same distinctive beer I had only seen one man drink.

Hadrian.

We all knew what kind of man he was, but this was something else. This was beyond. I had no doubt he had raped those children, and it confirmed that he was in league with the Mestizos.

In silence, Cade and Linc each carried one of the two girls out to Olivia’s vehicle, where she was now sitting in the passenger seat while Scout was in the driver’s seat. Onyx followed with the little boy wrapped in bed sheets, in his arms. He looked asleep, and I could see the look on his face. My mind superimposed Angel’s face over his, and when Onyx held his small body close to his chest and looked at me, there was a moment when a silent message was sent between us. That little boy experienced what Angel went through. The coroner’s report confirmed the horrors his daughter, my niece, experienced.

Once the house was empty, and the children were on their way to Olivia’s mobile clinic, we impatiently sat through the emergency meeting Riggs set up with the remaining Lords. I stared across the sea of men and women, wondering what they were thinking as Riggs claimed temporary leadership of the club. Was there resentment? Relief?

I left with Onyx and drove back to the shop, the worry lodged in my chest multiplying, making me break the speed limit. When we pulled into the parking lot, I stared up at her dark window, sensing her, feeling her.

Following Onyx into the shop, both of us were drained from our search for Hadrian and the horrors we found in that house. There was nothing to say about what we had done to the men, leaving their dead bodies to rot in the backyard. I could see him battling his own demons, his eyes filled with the pain of losing the loves of his life.That house was very similar to what we walked into years ago, finding his wife and daughter.

When I walked to the door leading to the apartments upstairs, he looked at me, and for the first time, I saw envy in his eyes. I was going to the one woman I was starting to realize made me feel more at peace than I had in a long time, and Onyx was going home to the ghost of his. The echo of his bike down the street accompanied me up the stairs on my way to her.

I have never felt like this before. Yes, I worried about Ivory and Angel, but they belonged to Onyx first and foremost, and I trusted his care of them, but Camryn’s care and her safety are my responsibility. It has been that way from the moment I followed her on my bike after the pool party.

After Ivory and Angel’s deaths and before Camryn, my worry centered around one woman. My mother. And indirectly, I worried about the women and children who were being abused. Now Camryn takes precedence; the worry is more profound, more visceral.