Page 3 of Psycho

Hell, just look at how both he and I had turned out.

She died—was killed—when I was twelve.

Still so fucking little and so fucking defenseless.

She was a doormat who did nothing but try to keep the peace, even when her husband got angry… even when he got violent.

And finally, after years of giving in to him, of not doing anything, of not taking us away the way she should have, the bastard finally made good on his promise and fucking killed her by a lake in front of Roman and me, when I was twelve and he was ten.

Shit had been rough a while after that; because while she didn’t do much against him, she had been his punching bag for the majority of my life up to that point. That wasn’t to say the bastard never put his hands on me and Roman, when I couldn’t protect him.

But after she died, all of that rage he had held onto inside of him was turned toward us.

I was seventeen when I killed for the very first time.

We could have run away and left the bastard alone, but after all the years of abuse, I was finally bigger than him, stronger than him. And he made sure to fill me up with enough rage to beat the life out of him.

Roman helped.

But I was the one who delivered the final blow to the head.

After that…

We ran.

We ran all the way to Sacramento and never looked back.

I blinked as the memory faded away, and reality penetrated.

I shut off the engine and hopped off my bike.

I looked around at my surroundings as I pumped the gas, taking a deep breath and trying to regain control.

For the longest time, it had been just Roman and me.

Then he decided to move to West Virginia for a few years.

I didn’t blame him for wanting to get away, to find himself as his own man apart from me. But that didn’t mean I fucking liked it.

Roman finally moved back home to Sacramento about seven years ago—back to me.

I wasn’t as alone as I had been, not anymore.

Not with the club brothers—not with Dominic Madden, my club’s president—but hell, a lot of the time, it still felt like it.

The pump clicked to let me know I was done, and I replaced it in the holder before making my way inside the nearly empty store.

The kid manning the register eyed me warily.

I ignored him.

He didn’t miss the King’s Men’s cut I was sporting. I headed to the back and grabbed a bottle of water when the bell on the door dinged once more, announcing that another person was walking in.

My skin prickled with awareness, and I stayed where I was, looking up at the convex mirror on the corner to see the back of a small girl standing by the register.

“Hey, Lainey. How are things going down at the Basement?” the kid asked the girl.

The Basement was a local boxing arena nearby.

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