Page 39 of Lawless

There are a few bundles of cash, some guns, and knives. A grenade… interesting. And then what I’ve come for, a stash of cell phones. There’s one in a pink diamond-encrusted case, and another beneath it in a plain black one.

Bingo.

Ignoring all the others, I pull them out and check to see if they’ve got battery.

Alana’s is dead, but Mav’s has ten percent. Swiping the screen, I wait for it to ask me for a code, but to my surprise, it just unlocks. I can only assume I have Reid to thank for that.

I can’t imagine Mav would risk not having a passcode on here.

Without bothering to look at anything else, I open his camera roll.

The last few pictures are memes that I ignore in favor of one of a woman with blonde hair and killer curves.

Absently, I close the safe and put the bookcase back into place with a lot less care than I opened it with now that I’ve got access to my biggest addiction.

As I scroll up through his images, I quickly discover that I might not be the only one with an issue when it comes to his wife. I guess he’s just got the authority to be this obsessed, seeing as he put a ring on it.

Making my way back upstairs, I fall onto my bed, completely lost in images of my little dove over the past five years.

When I get a critical battery alert, I plug it in and keep going, desperate to find the very first ones of her when Mav took her in.

The change in her is gradual as time passes between images. Anyone else might not notice the way the color of her skin pales or the lightness in her eyes darkens. But I do. After only a handful of days really, I feel like I know her better than almost everyone else in my life.

Seeing her pain, the way she’d clearly been suffering at the hands of her father and the others, makes something blindingly hot explode within me.

Looking back now, it’s so obvious. Her beauty might be there, but any hint of happiness, of hope, has been snubbed out. Ruined. Totally fucking destroyed by how she’d been treated.

Pain lashes at my insides as I consider what her life had been like and the ants multiply with every second that passes.

I want to return to that time five years ago and be the one to save her.

Why didn’t we see it?

She was miserable and hurting. It should have been obvious.

I could have been the one to bring her back to life.

Maybe if you weren’t drowning yourself back then.

You couldn’t look after yourself, let alone anyone else.

Closing my eyes for a beat, I let my own pain rush through my system.

It’s almost unbearable. Painful knots of grief twist up my stomach, shooting down my limbs like electrical currents.

My mouth waters, and my skin itches, begging me to slice it open, desperate for the release.

With the first image Mav has of her on the screen, I rest against the headboard again and lift the bottle of vodka I snagged from downstairs to my lips.

My hand trembles so violently that it’s hard to successfully pour the liquid into my mouth.

But the second I do and the alcohol burns down my throat, I get just a taste of that relief I so desperately need.

I swallow shot after shot, and every time I lower my head, my eyes lock on sixteen-year-old Alana curled up under a blanket on a couch reading a book.

Her eyes are on Mav; she knows he’s taking the photo, but there isn’t a hint of a smile.

Her complexion is gray; the shadows under her eyes are dark and her lips are dry and cracked.

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