This Is Me, Baby (War & Peace #5) Page 2

  Cold metal meets my temple and I freeze.

  And then light.

  Blinding fucking light.

  “Daddy!” Brie cries out from behind me. “Don’t hurt her!”

  Her?

  I glare down at a girl not much older than Brie. Her eyes are wild and her nearly black hair is messy. Her hand—which she is holding a gun with, pressed to me—trembles severely.

  “Luciana,” Brie says with a sob.

  The girl beneath me lets out a cry of relief at seeing my daughter. They must be friends. I snatch the gun from her grip and rise to my feet. She quickly jumps to hers. Her brown eyes are narrowed as she scrutinizes me.

  “This is my dad.” Brie runs over to the girl and they hug. When they pull apart, Luciana frowns at her.

  “Beh?” she seems to say in question and then taps her heart.

  Brie lets out a ragged sob and shakes her head. “H-He’s g-g-gone.”

  Luciana starts to cry too, and the two girls lock together in an embrace. Meanwhile, I stand there looking stupid. I don’t know what’s going on or how to fucking fix it.

  “Are you alone?” I demand with a growl.

  The girl looks over at me and nods.

  “Esteban…” Brie murmurs. “He’s not been by?”

  Terror flickers in Luciana’s eyes. She shakes her head. Why the fuck won’t she talk?

  “Daddy,” my daughter says. “We’re safe. He’s not here.”

  Hot anger surges through me. The fact that my daughter has more than one man to fear has my teeth grinding together to the point that I wonder if I’ll break them. I want to grab Brie by the shoulders and shake the answers out of her. Problem is, she’s so fragile, I’m afraid it would crush her.

  We need to get some sleep and gain our bearings.

  Then she can explain this entire fucked-up world she’s been living in.

  “I’ll grab our bags and lock up,” I say with a huff. “Luciana, can you make sure she eats something?”

  Luciana nods and breaks from their hug. When she starts past me, I snag her wrist. “What’s the matter? Cat got your tongue? Why won’t you talk?”

  She lifts her chin bravely and glares at me. Then, she opens her mouth. I gape at the little stump in her mouth. What the fuck?

  “Esteban.” The name is whispered from Brie behind me.

  This motherfucker is right at the top of my shit list. Jerking my head to Brie, I lift a brow in question. “Who’s this Esteban character?”

  Her eyes well with tears—I’m surprised she still has any left—and she drops her gaze to the floor. “He’s nobody.” She pushes past me and I hear her footsteps as she runs up the stairs.

  Luciana makes a sound of disagreement. I turn to look at her. Her lips are pressed into a firm line.

  “Esteban hurt you?” I demand.

  She narrows her eyes and nods.

  I grit my teeth and look up at the celling for a moment before meeting her gaze again. “And did he hurt my little girl?”

  Tears pool in her brown eyes, making them look like melted chocolate. Her bottom lip wobbles as she makes a motion of giving herself a shot into her forearm.

  “HE FUCKING DRUGGED HER?” I roar, my chest heaving with fury.

  The young woman flinches at my tone and nods wildly.

  “Is that all?” I’m seething mad.

  She swallows and shakes her head. My fears come to life when she mouths the word: rape.

  The wall beside me never saw it coming.

  I blast my fist through it. One. Two. Three times until the young woman grabs at my elbow. When I finally turn to look back at her, she’s blurry. So fucking blurry. I stiffen when she hugs my middle.

  A choked sound escapes me.

  Luciana pulls away and reaches a small hand up to my face. She swipes away wetness from my cheek before making a motion of holding a phone to her ear. I pull mine from my pocket and hand it to her.

  Her dark hair curtains around her face as she taps away with lightning speed. The heat keeps streaming down my cheeks. I can feel it dripping from my jaw.

  My Brie.

  My poor baby girl.

  She hands me back my phone, and I see she’s written a message on my notes app.

  Esteban is an evil man. He cut my tongue from my mouth when I was a little girl. He’s done terrible things to Brie. He forced heroin on her and raped her. Many times. Is Duvan really dead? Oscar texted me about what they saw.

  I lift my watery gaze to find her staring at me with such hope in her eyes. Hope that it was all a bad dream. Hope that I’ll somehow save her from this motherfucking Esteban, too.

  Clenching my jaw, I give her a slight shake of my head before storming off to comfort my daughter. Her broken wails behind me seep their way into my soul and crack it wide open.

  Esteban is going to fucking die.

  The asshole won’t die easily.

  I’m going to peel his skin from his sorry body and feed it to him until he chokes to death.

  And I’m going to make sure he feels every second of excruciating pain.

  Nobody touches my daughter.

  Fucking nobody.

  Several days later…

  “YOUR MOVE, DADDY.”

  Hannah’s blue eyes glitter with clarity. The meds seem to be working. I don’t notice the darkness overtaking her when she looks at her mother or when Toto acts out. She seems…normal.

  Of course, with Hannah, there is no normal.

  She can never be normal.

  My daughter will always teeter on a delicate line between here and…there.

  We absolutely can’t have her go there again.

  Out of all my children, Hannah’s always been my most worthy opponent on the chess board. She’s calculating and smart as a whip. That’s what makes her so dangerous. The girl isn’t just rash and impetuous. A lot of the time, she plans out her moves. Always thinking about the end game. She contemplates the other moves. The outcomes. The consequences.

  “You’re stuck,” she tells me smugly as she sits back in her chair, rubbing her swollen belly. In another few months, I’ll have a grandson.

  I arch an eyebrow at her and am met with a satisfied grin. She’s given me that smile ninety-seven times since she’s been here. I count them because I need to figure her out. It benefits my family if I can think several moves ahead of our most unpredictable piece. For her safety…and ours.

  “I’m not stuck,” I say with a grunt. I have three options to take out her queen within just a couple of moves. But something tells me she knows this and is setting me up so she can obliterate me when I go for the most obvious moves.

  She starts humming something sweet, but coming from my daughter, it sounds haunted and borderline fucking scary. Her blue eyes darken several shades as she looks past me out the window at the beach, the moonlight casting an eerie glow on her face. Baylee used to get the same look in her eye when she thought about Gabe. There’s no doubt in my mind, Hannah is thinking about him too. And whatever it is, I certainly don’t want to think about it.

  “When did you know you were different, Daddy? When did you realize you were sick?” she asks and reaches for her mug of tea on the end table. She sips it and looks at me over the steam.

  I scrub at my face and shrug. “I don’t know.”

  But that’s a lie. I remember the exact second I realized something was completely wrong with me. It wasn’t long after my high school girlfriend moved on because I was going insane. Dad was at his wits’ end with me. I’d become antisocial and refused to leave my room. But that isn’t when the realization occurred.

  It happened almost like a crack in a glacier.

  Small at first.

  Then it seemed to run from me. Zigzagging back and forth away from me at light speed.

  I’d desperately tried to hold the fissure together. Dug my fingernails into the black ice of my mind. Watched them rip from my fingers as the divide spread open. The crack became a valley, and I fell. So far
, I fell. Into the nothingness. Alone.

  That day, I attempted to calculate how many seconds I’d known my mother before she passed away. I’d obsessed over those last moments of her life. Grew confused on the calculations because I wasn’t exactly sure of the exact moment she’d left this world. I replayed the horrific scene of her blood and brain matter all over my parents’ bathroom over and over again. Sometimes the calculation would vary by a few hundred seconds. Other times just a few seconds.

  It maddened me.

  I needed to know.

  I’d had a burning desire to cut open my head and demand the memories to become clearer for me. To pull out the part of me that actually paid attention in that exact moment. It was then that I went into the bathroom and buzzed all of the hair off my head. Each strand fluttered into the bathroom sink until my flesh-covered skull was on display. The answers were all inside. I just needed to cut them out.

  I’d held a kitchen knife out before me and glared at it for hours. Actually, it was fourteen hundred and fourteen seconds to be exact. But who’s counting?

  I imagined seeing the blood run down my forehead. To see it dripping down over my eyelids, blinding me with red. The very idea of the horror show replaying again was enough to make me drop the knife with a clatter. I’d gagged and gagged and gagged until I expelled my lunch into the toilet. Then, I’d become fixated on the hair discarded in the sink.

  How many were there?

  Hundreds?

  Thousands?

  I found a pair of tweezers and a Ziplock bag. That afternoon, I stood in front of the sink counting my hairs. Each and every one of them. Dad worked late that night. When he’d come home, I was still counting. He’d taken one look at me and broken down. Sobbed and sobbed in the doorway as he regarded my crazed self.

  And I was crazed.

  It was the beginning of my confusion. My mental hurricane. My self-hate.

  I’d cracked. That afternoon, I cracked and it wasn’t until I met Baylee that I was able to bridge the divide. She healed me. Not only did she place bandages on the splits in my mind but she also showed me how to bring the two torn parts of me back together. With steady, sure hands, she stitched me until I was no longer ripped in two. One day at a time, she healed me.

  “Your move,” I tell Hannah as I slide my rook into place.

  She groans. “Ugh! Dad! How do you always know what I’m going to do?”

  I’m still smirking at her when the front door swings open and Ren stalks in. He slams the door, and I cringe hoping he didn’t wake the babies or Bay. Calder is out with friends. Not that the kid ever sleeps, anyway.

  Hannah frowns at me. “He’s still mad at me?” Her expression is crestfallen.

  I close my eyes and expel a deep breath. Being mad is the biggest understatement of the year. Ren hates Hannah for the path of destruction she left in her wake. I know this because he’s screamed it at me on more than one occasion since Gabe dropped her off on our doorstep to go find Heath.

  “He’s not mad,” I lie.

  She makes a humming sound but then leans forward to focus on her move.

  “I’ll be right back, Han. I’m going to go talk to your brother.” I stand and press a kiss to the top of her head before striding down the hallway after my boy.

  I hate that they once had such a close relationship, yet now he won’t even speak to her. Not that I can blame him. Hannah’s ruined so many lives with her choices. But what Ren and Bay don’t get is that Hannah can’t help it. She doesn’t operate like they do. Her mind doesn’t know the lines of right and wrong. Hell, even Gabe has some sense of right and wrong—otherwise he wouldn’t be so damn protective over Toto.

  But Hannah?

  She’s like me.

  Darker, though. Unpredictable. Certainly not reachable.

  Her mind isn’t a crevice that can be pushed back together.

  No…

  Her mind is a black hole.

  Empty. Crushing. Never ending madness.

  Anything that gets sucked up into her twisted vortex gets decimated. She ruins people. Lives. Hearts.

  Which is why I watch her every move. Just like in our chess games. It is absolutely imperative I learn everything I can about her darkness. Because if I understand it, then I can keep her away from it. Keep my once sweet baby girl in the light. Gabe, surprisingly, keeps her fairly level-headed. But he doesn’t understand her. He feeds her inner monster when she’s ravenous. He protects her from herself. And protects those he loves from her. But he simply doesn’t get her. Not like I do.

  One day, I’ll learn about her black hole.

  I will figure out her inner algorithms. Crack the code of her head. Cross all the Ts and dot all the Is. I’ll turn her black hole inside out. I’m so sure of it.

  By the time I push into Ren’s bedroom, he’s standing with his back to me, his shoulders tense. When I reach out and pat his back, he flinches. It’s then that I see the bandages sticking out of the neck of his shirt.

  “Did you add more to it?” I question.

  He turns to regard me. My sweet son—always the boy who did what he could to please Bay and I—is gone. After witnessing the bloodshed online recently, he’s been a little fucked up. His steely blue eyes are hardened. All the softness of my son is hidden from me. He clenches his jaw and glares. “I got it filled in.”

  I’m not one hundred percent on board with my oldest son getting a full back tattoo, but it seems to be therapeutic for him. It started not long after Brie officially moved on from him. Every couple of weeks, he’d get more added on. But after the massacre, he’s seemed almost obsessed with finishing it.

  “Can I see?” I question.

  He shakes his head. “Later. Why is she still here?”

  Ren. Straight to the point. Just like his mother.

  I let out a sigh of frustration. “We’re the only ones who can look after her properly until Gabe gets back. It’s not safe for her to be alone…” I trail off. We both know why.

  His eyes narrow and his nostrils flare. “I want access to my trust fund.”

  I gape at his sudden change of discussion. “Why?”

  “I’m moving the fuck out of here. The dorms are just temporary, and when I’m not there, I have to come back here. And I can’t stay here any longer. This isn’t home,” he seethes. “Not when that monster prances around as if nothing happened.” He rips at his hair and lets out a guttural growl. “Everything happened.”

  My heart races in my chest. Thump. Thump. Thump. I try to focus on my boy rather than the urge to count the loud beats. He needs me. He needs my focus.

  “I can give you your money,” I tell him, my voice hoarse. “But, Ren, I really wish you would reconsider—”

  “THERE IS NOTHING TO RECONSIDER!”

  His entire body quakes with rage. Both of his hands are fisted. My son is no longer a boy. He stands taller than me. Nineteen looks good on him. The past couple of months, he’s spent more time in our home gym than anywhere else, and his muscles have really filled out. He avoids Hannah at all costs. Lives in his headphones with his music blasting continuously to block out his family.

  It’s cutting my chest wide open.

  I want to fix my boy.

  But right now, I have to fix my daughter.

  Ren is smart. He’ll figure it out. The kid just needs his space.

  “I’ll write you a check in the morning. Whatever you need,” I assure him. My tone sounds resigned to the fact that Ren will only heal if he gets away from his sister, who was instrumental in his life being torn apart.

  “Thank you,” he manages. Barely. He turns and starts yanking clothes from his dresser and shoving them into a bag. I’m leaned against the wall watching him when the door squeaks open. When Hannah’s blonde head comes into view, I open my mouth to ask her to leave us be.

  But Ren sees her before I get a chance to.

  “Get out,” he snarls, his muscled arm quivering with rage as he points at the door behind her. “
Get the fuck out of my room and out of my goddamned life!”

  She tenses at his words and shoots me a sad look. “Ren—”

  He stalks over to her with lightning speed. I tense, preparing myself to yank him away if his temper flares any more. His finger points at her chest as he glares down at her. Their bodies are nearly touching. “I hate you, Han. Do you understand that in your fucked-up little head? Hate.”

  Tears well in her eyes. “You don’t mean that.”

  He scoffs, narrowing his gaze. “Every word. You ruined my life. You ruined Brie’s life.”

  She tenses at the mention of Brie. I know this look too. The look she regards Bay with on occasion. The one she flashes to Toto at times. I’m not at all comfortable with this look. It’s one that screams: I could make you disappear with a snap of my fingers.

  I fucking hate the look.

  “Okay, you two,” I grumble and grab Ren’s elbow. I drag him away from her and stand between them. “Han, go to bed. Ren, pack your stuff. We’ll talk about this later when tempers aren’t hot.”

  Tears roll down my daughter’s cheeks and she launches herself into my arms for a hug. I know those tears, though. They aren’t real. They aren’t genuine. They’re the ones she uses to get what she wants. Right now, she wants Ren to forgive her.

  Unfortunately, I don’t think Ren will ever forgive her.

  “We’ll talk soon, son,” I say to him, giving him a nod of my head.

  “Yep,” he grunts out before he goes back to packing.

  I usher Hannah out of his room and into hers. We don’t speak as I give her the pills that seem to be helping. Once she’s settled into bed, I kiss her goodnight and shut the door. Now that she’s not acting so crazy, I don’t have to lock her in the room at night.

  But Baylee and I lock ourselves in our room.

  With both Mason and Toto.

  You can never be too sure with Hannah.

  By the time I make it back to my bedroom, Ren’s already gone. I hear the thump of his bass as he peels away.