Dark Guardian (Black Hoods MC #3) - Avelyn Paige Page 0,33
be that way. I’d never thought about her past or her history, or what made her hide herself behind a pencil skirt and an old-school marm hairdo.
“If we talk to you, do you promise not to take us away from Mr. Judge?” Natalie asks, pulling her hand from her brother’s to stand beside me.
Grace turns to her, giving her a smile that melts me a little inside. “I promise, honey. I just want to know what’s going on, and to make sure you and your brother are safe.”
Natalie stares at her for a long moment, and then nods. Taking Grace’s hand, she leads her to the closest picnic table. Once they’re both seated, Kevin grumbles something under his breath before taking a seat across from them.
“What do you want to know?” Natalie asks, her enormous eyes filled with hope.
“Everything,” Grace replies, looking to Kevin. “Start from the beginning.”
Kevin’s shoulders slump in defeat, and his defiant attitude fades away. “The beginning sucks.”
Grace smiles sadly. “I’m sure it does. Why don’t you tell me about it?”
Kevin looks to me, and I nod, giving him permission to tell her.
Sighing, he digs his fingernail into a groove on the table, sliding it back and forth, making the groove a little deeper with each shallow pass. “Our momma wasn’t a very good one,” he tells her. “She drank a lot. She had men over all the time, and they would make us go in the bedroom so they could do drugs and stuff.”
“Did those men ever touch either of you?”
Kevin shakes his head. “No. A couple of them wanted to, but Momma threatened to hurt them if they tried.”
Grace nods, but says nothing.
“One day, when Nat was eight, and I was twelve, she said she had something to do. She told us she’d be back in an hour, but she never came back. We found out later that she died.”
Kevin’s knee bounces as he tells the story, and he doesn’t make eye contact with any of us. Instead, he stares off into the distance as he speaks.
“They didn’t even tell us how she died. My uncle just showed up one day and told us the police had been to see him. They told him Momma was dead, and that we had to go live with him now.”
“And how did you feel about that?” Grace asks.
Kevin’s jaw tightens. “Momma hated Uncle Randall. Said he was a pervert. We didn’t really know him at all.”
She turns her attention to Natalie. “And how did you feel while all of this was going on?”
Natalie shrugs. “I was just little. I mean, I was only eight years old. I just knew that Kevin would take care of me, so as long as we were together, I’d be okay.”
Blair looks at me from across the table. She knows as well as I do what went on at Uncle Randall’s house.
“So how was it living with your uncle?”
“He was a pervert,” Kevin bites out. “He kidnapped little girls and kept them in his basement. Gross smelling older men came over every night and gave him money to be alone with those girls. And then someone would come and get them to take them somewhere else, and he would kidnap a couple more.”
Grace swallows. “Did he…” She clears her throat. “Did he make you guys go into that basement?”
“He took Natalie down there every night, but he never sold her. We had a deal. I would bring him new girls whenever he needed them, and he wouldn’t let any of those men do anything but look at my sister.”
A tear slides down Grace’s cheek, but she doesn’t give any other indication of her own heartbreak. “That must have been incredibly scary.”
Natalie wraps her arms around herself as she trembles. In that moment, I wish I could bring Randall back from the dead so I could wring his fucking neck and kill him all over again, just for making my girl feel this way.
“That’s how we got to be with Gene,” Kevin continues. “He saved us and took us in. He bought us new clothes and gave us the nicest home we’ve ever had. Everything with him is amazing.” He eyeballs Grace. “Until you came along.”
A heart-wrenching sob rips through Natalie's throat. “Please, don’t take us away. I want to stay with Mr. Judge. He keeps us safe. We need him, and he needs us.”
Grace’s tear-stained face turns to me and our eyes meet. For the first time since she stormed into that bar