Page 19 of Fractured Souls

I can survive this. I have to. I need to find answers someday as to why this shit happens to me.

“What did you say, Harley? Who did you talk to?” Mother asks in a scarily calm voice that I've never heard before.

“No one.”

“DO NOT LIE TO ME”

SMACK.

SMACK.

SMACK.

SMACK.

Holy fuck, that hurts so bad. She hit the same spot on my thighs over and over. I can feel blood in my mouth from biting the inside of my cheeks so hard.Lock it down, Harley.

Mother backs off, and Father comes to stand in front of me. He has a knife in his hand and slowly brings it towards me and slices the front of my shirt open. I squeeze my eyes shut, terrified of what might come next. Father stares at my chest before running his knife across the top of each breast, pushing just enough to leave two small cuts. One above each breast. I bite my tongue to hold back a whimper.

Mother comes towards me with a belt and loops it around my neck, pulling it tight. “Tell me who you talked to, Harley.”

I shake my head and open my mouth to say no one, but before I can, she pulls on the belt and starts choking me. She keeps doing it over and over again, only letting up when my vision goes blurry. I know the skin on my neck has to be raw by now.

“Who? Give me a name, goddamn it!” She slaps me hard across the face, making my already bruised face ache even more.

I'm trying to hold it together and hope they get tired of it and stop, but I don't know how much longer I can. Everything aches, and my wrists are taking more and more of my weight. I know they are bleeding from the cuffs. I can feel the blood running down my arms.

Father stares at me for what feels like hours before he finally sighs, “Let’s leave her. She obviously needs time to think. The worthless bitch needs to remember her place here.”

Mother nods and walks up to me, whispering in my ear, “I do this because I loved your mother, and she'd be so disappointed in you. You spoke to someone. You betrayed your family. I can only imagine how disgusted she'd be with you.” She follows Father out, shutting off the light as she goes. Leaving me in the dark.

I can feel my walls crack. The longer her words repeat in my head, the more the walls break until…shatter. I can't hold it any longer, and a sob breaks out of me. I feel tears running down my face as I let out a hoarse scream that makes my already aching throat burn even more.

“Why?”

* * *

Grayson

We haven't seen Harley since Thursday. It's now Tuesday and today was the last day of school before we are off for Thanksgiving, and we don’t come back until next Tuesday.

I’ve been working closely with Nerds, the club's tech guru. He got his name from his love for tech and Nerds candy. The guy always has a bowl of Nerds in the tech room with him. He's a great guy in his late twenties who’s been around here since before Rage’s dad died. He's like a big brother to me and has been teaching me all things tech for a while. I'm definitely not as into as he is or as good as him, but I like to know how to do most everything, so he helps me out.

I sigh and run a hand down my face. Our president has been talking with Richard some just to feel him out, but Richard thinks something else is up. We have been watching his phone, and he has been texting his wife saying he thinks something is going on.

I've been trying to find more about Harley Wilson but keep coming up with nothing. There is nothing before the age of ten, and from ages ten to sixteen, it looks like she stayed at the mental hospital one town over, but whoever the idiot was that put this on here did a horrible job making it look real. We knew it was fake almost immediately. For one, there is no information from her stay at all. How would every other patient have a huge file and she has nothing? And secondly, they didn't give her a room, and she's not documented on anything in their system.

So that means we don't know where Harley was from ages zero to sixteen. She just randomly pops up. Nerds has been getting pissed he can't find anything on her and is staying up all hours trying to find something. Cade has been asking for jobs to stay busy so he doesn't go storm over there and get Harley like he wants to.

Technically, we can't work for the club yet, but since we are closer to some of the ranking officers, we are allowed to go along with a patched member for any legal jobs. So that means working at any of the legit businesses or helping with odd jobs that may come up.

Ryker is doing what he does best, being a psycho and constantly making jokes to mask his fear and anger. But I can see through it. He's my best friend. I can read him like no one else can. Ry is the funny, down to earth guy on the surface, but inside, he has a vicious streak and can be absolutely terrifying, but he doesn't let it out because he isn't good at controlling himself. So he puts on a front of being a jokester and the club psycho so no one sees that he feels everything and is scared.

But I see him. I always have, and I always will.

I'm sitting in the tech room with Cade's dog, Bear. He's a huge black great Dane with large, tall pointed ears. The dog is huge. He comes up to above my waist and I am 6’2. He doesn’t really like people, and for the most part he keeps to himself if he isn't with Cade, but today he has decided to hang out with me.

The tech room is about the size of an average bedroom; it's bigger than the other offices mostly because of how much stuff is in here. When you first come in, you see a large desk with four monitors on it. That is Nerds’s main desk, and he is the only one who really uses it. On the wall with the door are three TV screens that are hooked up to the security cameras around the property. Then in the center are two desks pushed together, and I am currently sitting at one of them. They each have two monitors on them. There is also a closet on the farthest wall, but Nerds is the only one who goes in it. He keeps all his tech gear in there and has it all organized the way he wants it, so we all stay out of it. The room is fairly dark; the most lighting coming from the LEDs along the baseboards and then the tiny bit of light shining from the blackout curtains over the window by Nerds’s desk. Sometimes I think we should call this room the Nerds Cave.

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