She’d been going on since I caught her and dragged her out here, on and on about how people were going to avenge her. It was bullshit, and everyone knew it. They didn’t have any friends; they had people they got shit for. Ruby and Harrington were going to be missed because of their business, not mourned for their fucking personalities.
“Nico, I treated you pretty good. I didn’t hurt you as bad as I could, and I barely touched that little girl. I don’t understand why you don’t see that.”
I continued to dig my hole. There was nothing she could say that was going to stop me from what I was doing. She was going to die. Slowly and painfully.
Finally, it was deep enough.
I got out of the hole and picked up the dead Harrington Giles, his body stiff from rigor mortis.
“Ink, you good?” Devin called out from where the boys were sitting, waiting for me to finish. All of them patient as I did what I had to do for closure.
I pulled the sizeable clear box closer to the hole. I had thought I would spend my last moments in that clear box. It turns out, I wouldn’t, but she would.
I put the Harrington into the box, and then I walked over to Ruby.
“No, no. Please, I don’t want to suffocate to death.” She tried to crawl away, but I caught by her hair and dragged her back. I tossed her in the glass box and took a mental picture of the way she crumbled against the wall on top of her dead husband.
“Nico, this isn’t you. You don’t want to do this. This isn’t you.”
“This is exactly me, Ruby. You should know. I am what you created.”
Her face crumpled in tears right before she broke out into psychotic laughter. “Yes, yes, Nico, you are exactly what I created.” She laughed hard.
I closed the door. The laughter I wanted to erase from my mind silencing when the door closed. I pushed the large box into the grave and watched as her eyes rolled back a few times. She was suffocating. That wouldn’t do.
I pulled the gun out of the waist of my pants and shot four holes into the box air rushing in, and her voice filtering out.
“You are me, Nico. You live for the pain, don’t deny it.” She whimpered.
I looked at her laughing, her scarred and haunting face disappearing as I covered the box with dirt. She wouldn’t suffocate. She would starve in the dark with her rotting husband. The maggots and bugs, crawling into the box to eat her alive. It was a beautiful vision.
I completely covered her with dirt, but I could still hear her laughing, the crazy bitch.
I walked away with her laughter, still floating in the air behind me.
It was over; she was gone, and no one was coming for her. I could relax for the first time since I escaped. She was gone. Eventually, she would be at least.
Chapter 28
“Let’s get out of here. If I never see this place again, it’ll be too soon. I tried to walk toward the exit. The cars and bikes were at least three miles behind us.
“Wait, you got to see this,” Yang said as he walked back into the house.
We followed him into the now empty estate.
“I was checking the lower levels, but something seems off, are you familiar with this here?”
I passed by my old room and kept on walking, and there was a hallway I’d never seen before. I kept following the hall. It was the first time I’d been this way the whole time I’d been at this location. Then all of a sudden, it was a dead end. It didn’t make sense; the building continued above in this direction. Why would there be this sudden dead end?
“This shouldn’t be here. The bricks don’t even look the same.” Clean said as he looked at the walls to the side.”
“Trick door?” Mack asked.
“Yeah, for sure. Start pressing on shit and see if anything moves.” We all touched and pressed where we could, but it was Mack who got the door to slide open.
The path continued down a dark and cold walkway.
“Hello?” Wire called out. His voice echoed, but no one replied.
“If there is anyone in here, you need to say something, or we’re going to fucking leave, and you’ll starve to death down here.”
“Hello?” A small voice croaked. “I’m here.”
“Hey. Don’t fucking leave me.”
“I’m here.”
“Please help…”
I backed up in shock, my mouth hanging open as one person after another called out. How many were here? How long had they been here? What about the other locations?
For the first time since we took over this place, I looked for Roth. He was nowhere to be found, surprise, the fucking bastard.
“What the fuck are we going to do with all these people?” Jameson asked as he searched for a way to turn the lights on.
“Set them free. All of them.” I spoke clearly.
There were thirty-eight small rooms down the corridor; only fourteen of them had people left alive in them. Clean and Yang volunteered to take them back to the safe house and help them, by either getting them back to their families or setting them up in some sort of shelter.
The rest of us just wanted to get back to our families.
***
We made it back to the New Orleans clubhouse without a scratch on us. It was a complete victory. We even came back with two extra people; Red was determined to stay with us and find out what this MC life was about. It would be a lengthy vetting process, but I had a feeling he’d be a good prospect. The second person was unexpected. It wasn’t until we had pulled up to the New Orleans compound that Mack found her. Siren, bloodied and still shackled, had somehow managed to stow away in the trunk of his car. She rode for hours in the tight,
