Page 25 of Healing Souls

I look over at Bri and open my mouth, but nothing comes out. Shame courses through me as Atlas’s earlier words play through my mind.

She wraps her arms around me and squeezes me tight. Tears threaten to fall, but I blink them away. I didn’t know I needed this small validation from her. “I love you so much, but that doesn’t mean things are okay. Let’s just listen and go from there, okay?” she whispers in my ear.

I nod and squeeze her back before we look at Gabriel, who appears sick to his stomach. He nods at Bri.

“Gabriel,” she says softly.

He clears his throat and begins his story.

Something I wasn’t at all prepared for.

Rage (Gabriel)

I can count on one hand the number of times I have felt genuine fear.

I don’t even need one full hand, just two fingers. Once when I was a kid and now. Right now, this second, I feel an insane amount of fear as I sit here facing them. Not even them, just her. My daughter.

That concept alone is a scary one, but it doesn’t fill me with fear. Not the way that sitting here preparing to tell them my story does. Harley may not believe me. She may decide that it doesn’t matter what the circumstances of my life were at the time.

I still did something horrible. To her mother. There is no taking that back or redeeming myself from those actions.

If she can’t find it in herself to move forward with me, if I have to live out my life knowing I have a kid out there that hates me… someone better pick up that gun on the table and shoot me because I can’t live like that.

I won’t. No fucking way.

Here goes nothing.

“I’ll start by saying my father was a horrible man. There’s no easy way to put it. He was vicious and awful. He had no redeeming qualities, and he proved that over and over again. My childhood wasn’t a good one. It wasn’t filled with happiness and love from my parents. It was like living my own personal hell.”

I watch as Harley’s eyes flash at that, understanding flickering through them. Rage simmers inside me at the recognition there.

She shouldn’t understand that.

I take a deep breath and continue on, pushing away the thoughts of wanting to hound her with questions and go hunt down the fuckers who dared to hurt my little girl.

“We don’t need to go into details of shit my father did. We’ll just leave it at he was an evil man, and his death was not something we mourned. As I got older, into my teen years, my father decided it was time for me to learn about all of his businesses and what he did. He wanted to mold me into a mini him. A mini Killer, to take over one day and continue on his work. But that plan went to shit pretty early on when he found out how much I was like my mother. I was someone who sought out love. And since I couldn’t get it from my parents, I tried to find it with girlfriends. Or better said,agirlfriend.”

I watch Harley’s reaction as I bring up the next part, wondering if this alone will make her never give me a chance. The thought makes my heart sink.

“I fell head over heels in love with Tammy in high school.”

Her eyes shut, and she takes a deep breath. I watch as Ryker keeps an eye on her and reaches over, taking her hand in his. She opens her eyes and glances down before looking at him, and he gives her a soft smile that seems to both confuse and calm her at the same time.

Brielle clears her throat. “We knew that part. That is something Lilian told me when she came to me. After leaving here.”

“Right. Well, I thought she felt the same way as me, but she didn’t. She had been sleeping around, and long story short, we ended things, and she was banned from any club property.”

I neglect mentioning that I killed the man she had been hooking up with, that my father stood by and let me torture and destroy him because I had a temper, and no one was around to stop me.

I don’t want Harley to think I’m more of a monster than she already does.

“After that, I steered clear of relationships. I was lost, a little broken, and my father became even more vindictive, trying to use that heartache against me. When that didn’t work, he took more drastic measures. I became a prospect when I turned eighteen, and you are already considered the club’s bitch as a prospect, but for me, it was even worse because my father was putting me through the ringer.” Which was putting it mildly.

Part of me wants to continue on about things my father did and the shit I had to deal with, but I know what they’re really waiting for. So I throw it all out there. The worst thing that can happen is what I’m already expecting. She walks away from me and wants nothing to do with me.

I let out a sigh, “There were five of us in total that were prospecting at the time. We were all about ten months in, and my father decided it was time to pit us against each other in any way he could. The other four guys were not good people. They all wanted to do the things the club was doing; they wanted things to stay how they were. So, when my father brought us into a room that had someone—”

“Don’t,” comes sternly from Brielle, shocking me out of my thoughts. I glance at her, realizing I was keeping my eyes trained down. “She doesn’t need the details. Just explain in general what happened.”

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