He has no fucking clue. None. And, how could he? He hasn’t been here.

“I don’t know what you expected to happen.” I give a slow shrug, shaking my head. “We feel like you know who we are, you say you do, but if that were true, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.” I level him with a hard look. “You may not have known what she became to us, I get none of your watchers could break it down for you in a way to make you understand, it’s some next level shit you have to witness up close to fully comprehend. Thing is, though, you’ve been up close, and you have seen, Dad. I know you have.

“You’ve studied, dissected really, our every fucking move with her. You’ve caught all of Captain’s subtle shifts toward her when he senses she needs to feel him. You see how Royce clings to her, how his anger and need for a real connection drives him where she’s concerned, helping him to open parts none of us thought we’d see. We don’t even need to talk about me. You’re just like I am, you know a possessive asshole when you see one.

“All the shit over the last few months, the way we grew as a unit. Stronger, bolder, fucking braver. She did this. She came in and reminded us without even speaking why we want this world. Why this town and lifestyle is important to us. We want what we were born for, Dad, what you groomed us for, the life you earned and promised to us, and we will have it.”

“We told you.” Cap steps forward. “She’s not just some girl, never was, and now we know she was never meant to be.” He confirms the answer to our dad’s initial question – Raven comes first.

“There’s a way around this,” I say what I’m one hundred fucking percent sure of. “And I’m bettin’ it’s a lot less messy than the route we’ll take.” I look to my brothers a moment before turning back to him. “Tell us what you know. If you don’t, we’ll find the answers ourselves, even if it means walking through you to do it.”

“And you think you’re ready to hear it, hm?” he edges, and Royce cuts me a quick glance. “What if it’s more than you can handle?”

“We can handle anything,” I answer.

He nods, his eyes dropping to the floor before slowly returning to ours.

“There is a way.” He speaks slow, a hint of resentment laced in his words. His features harden. “But I can promise you this, when I tell you, it will not serve as motivation. It will be a knowledge you wish you never asked for. The thought of it alone will haunt you at night, I swear it.”

The conviction in his voice has the three of us pausing, our eyes briefly meeting before resolve is all that’s left.

We’re ready.

“Raven stays with us,” Royce declares. “Now, tell us what we need to do to make sure this happens.”

Our dad pushes to his full height and leisurely walks around his desk. He lowers himself into the leather seat, casually leaning back.

His eyes hold a hardened glare, but his hands lift as if to say simple. His words that follow are anything but.

“Give them Zoey instead.”

I groan, rolling over and slowly peel my eyes open.

The sun has finally set and I blink to refocus.

Slapping my hand beside me, I find Victoria is gone and Maddoc has yet to make his way in.

The second I push up on my elbows, my head starts to pound, my stomach both growling and turning at the same time.

Alcohol and being drugged by a dumb bitch doesn’t mix.

I lick my dry lips, cringing at the bad taste in my mouth.

“Uh, fuck.”

I toss my blankets off and strip my bed bare – I was sweating like crazy. Thank God Maddoc’s not in here, I’m fucking disgusting.

Clammy and queasy, probably have puke in my hair.

Clothes in hand, I drag myself into the hall bathroom, locking the door behind me just in case Daddy Bray is still home and for some reason comes back this way.

Why was he in Maddoc’s room?

I sigh as the steaming water hits me, but my body is still so heavy, so I quickly wash my hair, leaving the conditioner in it, and plug the tub.

I’ve never taken a bath before, but this oversized one is calling my name right now.

The water on my feet is too hot when it’s pouring like it is, so I turn down the heat, grab some shampoo and pour it against the running water like you would in a bucket for a carwash. Instantly, the bubbles start forming.

A small grin takes over my lips as I watch it fill, and finally, I lower myself into the warm water.

I reach over, grab a towel from the rack and roll it up behind my head like a pillow.

After a few minutes, the tub is full, so I turn off the water and close my eyes.

Wow. This is the shit.

My muscles instantly start to calm, the tautness vomiting created finally soothing out.

It’s simple things like this people from my neighborhood will never experience. Not that this tub is any kind of simple, but still.

Bathtubs, in general, aren’t something you find in low-grade trailers. We were lucky to have running water, let alone a working water heater.

A few blocks from the trailer park, where the railroad tracks meet the highway, there’s a small truck stop with showers.

The city keeps the water running for the sinks and toilets and things, so a cold shower is free, but you can pay extra for heat. A lot of the people from the park go there to clean up and fill jugs for drinking. Wheeling it back is a pain in the fucking ass, but most have shopping carts or beat up strollers stashed behind their places for shit like that. Of course, cans or random shit found along the way that could potentially bring in money was priority over water.

I smile to myself at the thought of Gio making it out of there.

He was good to me, would hang out in the broken train carts until my mom’s louder clients would leave. I would never invite him in, though.

He may have only been older than me by a few years, but that didn’t stop her from trying to entice him.

I told her he was gay once when she wouldn’t let up, kept trying to convince me it was time for me to ‘grow up’ – she wanted me fucking my friend at eleven years old – but she said his sexual preference didn’t matter, that he was still a horny boy who would love the feel of his dick inside a “fresh vagina.” Sick bitch.

Wait...

I try and shake off the thought, but it’s useless and already growing deeper.

Ever since the day I started my period in fifth grade, my mother would push and push and push, constantly hounding me about being a prude.

She’d tell me to “get it over with already” talking about my virginity, said hanging on to it so tight would only cause me problems later.

She failed to see I wasn’t holding on to anything – I was simply a fucking kid who wanted no part of the things I hated her for.

I knew what she was doing, saw people fucking on movies and even on picnic tables or in backseats of cars in our lot.

Grown men would walk out of her room naked, not sparing me a glance – if I was lucky – as they’d come fish a beer or what the fuck ever from the mini-fridge, so I’d seen dick before, pussy, too, for that matter.

I was disgusted by it.

The sounds they’d make, the smells. The way they acted as if my mother was a fucking queen while their wives or husbands sat at home probably wondering where the fuck their partners were. Betrayal and disregard for any and everything around.