Shameless - Sybil Bartel Page 0,69
of sickness, he’d stopped outside one particular room that was buzzing with the mechanical sound of machines. Then he told me to go in and say goodbye to my birth mother.
Crying, I begged him not to make me, but he’d shoved me in anyway and said to take a good hard look. I’d barely spared the woman with tubes coming out of her arms and nose and throat a glance. I didn’t even touch her hand. The next day they’d pulled the plug on her.
I’d cried that night as I smoked pot and did lines of coke.
I didn’t even know where my birth mother was buried. I’d never asked Leo, and I never mentioned the incident to Fallon because I wasn’t sure if Leo had told her he’d taken me to see my birth mother, and I didn’t want to upset her.
“It’s not the hospital we’re going to visit, it’s the children inside it,” Fallon gently explained.
I knew what she meant, but I was already depressed, and I didn’t know if I could handle seeing those kids. Which I knew was selfish of me when I was standing in a twenty-million-dollar penthouse with nothing physically wrong.
Fallon simply stared at me.
Damn it. “Fine.” I crossed my arms against the suddenly cold air conditioning and sealed my fate. “What time?”
My stepmother smiled her real smile at me. “I’ll pick you up at ten.”
MY CELL PINGED WITH A text.
Pulling it out of my pocket, I glanced at the display and silently cursed.
Ronan: She’s home safe. Emotional state questionable.
Fucking bastard.
I didn’t reply. I hated him for both the text and the fact that he’d spent ten hours in a vehicle alone with her, but I didn’t have time to fixate on it because seconds later oversized tires crunched on the packed snow at the base of the driveway.
My breath showing in the cold, I tossed down my wrench and stood as my hand automatically went to my back. Palming my piece but not drawing, I eyed the late model extended cab truck as it pulled up to the cabin.
Glaring at the driver, I dropped my hand.
Harm killed the engine and shoved his door open. His gaze cutting a wide path from left to right in a maneuver I knew well, his boots hit the ground. “Figured you’d need help.” His hands went to his hips and the fingers on his right tapped for a piece that wasn’t there. “Power company show yet?”
“No.” He was the last fucker I wanted help from. Scratch that, Candle was. Harm was second. “I’ve got it under control.” I didn’t have it under control. The generator kept turning off, I hadn’t slept, and my cabin was a fucking mess of haphazardly nailed plywood, bloodstains and bitter regret.
Still not making eye contact, Harm’s gaze swept another path. “No lights on inside and I don’t hear the generator. You need help,” he said confidently.
The kind of help I needed, he couldn’t give. “You that hard up for something to do? Hauling off four bodies last night without comment wasn’t enough excitement for you?” Fucker was crazy.
“Nice piece of land you got,” he commented, ignoring my bullshit.
“I’m selling it.” It was useless to me now.
His eyes finally met mine. Distant and guarded, his gaze didn’t have the lethal edge the badass I knew downrange did, but he also wasn’t as checked out as I’d heard he was.
“Because it’s burned?” he asked knowingly.
“Yep.”
“Too bad.”
“It is what it is.” In a worse fucking mood than before he’d shown up, I picked up my wrench and squatted back down next to the generator. “What did you do with the bodies?”
“Wrong tools for that,” he said casually.
Throwing my best fuck you glare over my shoulder, I went back to what I was doing. Or not doing, which was getting this fucking piece of shit up and running so I could have a goddamn hot shower. “Fine, don’t tell me.” Christ, not only did I feel it, but now I even sounded like a pussy little bitch.
Metal clanked against metal behind me, then boots crunched across the snow. A second later his toolbox landed at my feet and he joined me in a squat. “Hadn’t seen Russian military outside deployment before the other night.” He fucked around in his toolbox.
“The beauty of what money can buy.” And what it couldn’t. The best snipers weren’t for sale.
“That little girl tied up in all of that?” Harm asked.
So Ronan hadn’t told him shit. Not surprising. “Not girl, woman,” I