Page 48 of Wicked Tricks

She was silent as she considered it, and the offer lingered in the air for a long time.

I didn’t push, I didn’t ask again.

“My dad was a bikie,” she offered quietly.

“A Redliner?” I asked, and she nodded.

So she was connected to them, just not in the way that we had thought.

“He was a truck driver, but eventually he stopped going to work so he could spend more time with the club. The Redliners were a new and small club when my father joined, so he worked his way up the ranks pretty quickly. Both him and mum were shot dead when I was six. They got caught in a fight between another club. I honestly don’t know much else about them. I was found a few days later roaming the streets by myself.”

I nodded, but didn’t move.

My heart dropped into my stomach as I tried to picture the ruthless woman I knew, as a helpless little girl on the dirty streets of Melbourne.

Even then, she had survived all by herself.

“I went through probably ten foster families before I was placed with Yasmin and Peter. I attached myself to Yasmin pretty quickly, and for a few years,” she trailed off, “for a few years I got that childhood experience, you know? Obviously, things were never perfect between them. But it was good. It was normal. But, Peter was a pretty angry guy, and a huge sleaze. He cheated on Yasmin constantly, and didn’t care to hide it. I would always hear them arguing about it from my bedroom when he would come home in the middle of the night. As I grew older, he noticed, I guess…”

She stopped herself from admitting too much.

“Anyway, they’re both dead now too.”

I didn’t know how to respond, or even if she wanted me to.

The weight of her confession hung thick in the air between us, and my mind reeled, trying to imagine the scenario. Studying her face, I attempted to picture her as a young girl - who was now probably the bravest woman that I had ever known.

I had thought it from the moment that I met her, from the way that she burst into the home of the city’s most powerful family without even a hint of fear.

Now I knew.

“Come here,” I said.

Sitting up, I pulled her against me and stroked her hair.

She laid awkwardly against my arm, refusing to allow herself to relax.

As the time and silence passed, I felt her body slowly go limp.

We both eventually fell asleep. The last thing I remembered was when I woke briefly, half-asleep, hearing her soft snore from under the cover. I smiled, and closed my eyes again.

When I woke up in the morning, she was gone.

And I had left all my clothes in the living room.

Bitch.

13

Chapter 13

Rome

Iwoke at the first peak of sunlight under his arm.

Instead of giving in to my instinct to escape - I stared at the ceiling for hours, not daring to move and risk waking him. I dreaded the interaction that was to follow what we had done. At around five a.m, he rolled over, and as soon as he resettled and his breathing deepened, I slipped out from under the covers.

“What the fuck, Rome?,” I whispered to myself, as I picked up my jeans from a few days ago off of the floor - dirty clothes would have to do. I wasn’t taking the risk of opening my noisy wardrobe and waking him up. I found a shirt that smelled clean enough and pulled it on, before slipping out of my room.

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