And just like that, one night, one night that was supposed to be a celebration would forever change the course of so many people's lives.
I must have spent countless hours at their home, and tonight was the first time I walked through the door feeling anything but the happiness I usually felt. All that struck me as soon as my foot crossed the threshold of the door, the smell of blood and death punched my nostrils and made me heave.
I’d dealt with stiffs before, I’d seen the grisly aftermath of a corpse found unburied and left to rot, but nothing could have prepared me for experiencing it with her.
The hallway was as it should have been. Neat, tidy, clean, and the walls bore the faces of two people who I’d have given my life. A new picture had been hung just above the stair case, a beautiful black and white shot of Amy, cradling her tiny, barely-there bump, and Carter beaming with pride beside her. My fucking eyes welled up, the saltiness stung, and I was unease at having my emotion wetting my cheeks.
Murdoch men didn’t fucking cry even if their best friend had been murdered.
My feet carried me farther into the house, my ears pricked up upon hearing the quiet, solemn tones of the men already inside and dealing with the scene. Their voices were too soft for me to make out what was being said, but I could have taken a guess.
As I rounded the doorway, which led to the living room, a sight I’d never, ever forget greeted me, and the sob that choked me broke all kinds of Murdoch rules.
Fuck the Murdoch rules, I thought.
Four pairs of eyes flashed my way as they stood beneath the mutilated corpse of Amy Blackburn. If it hadn’t have been for the heels on her feet and the unique golden color of her hair, there would have been no way in Hades to know who it was.
Carter was right. They’d taken her face. Her gorgeous face hacked away at the sides, the skin on top had been peeled from her muscles, revealing pink flesh and the sockets of her eyes. Her arms were strung above her head, secured in place on the beams with a thick, unforgiving rope. I couldn’t fucking look, yet I couldn't look away, my morbid eyes hovering over the slight swell of her stomach.
A tension in my chest threatened to break each bone in its proximity, my nose flared, and all the blood my body contained rushed to my face as I burst into the room, roaring until my throat wanted to bleed.
“Fuck!” I bellowed, stumbling into the living room, my arms swung around me, knocking ornaments and pictures and fuck knows what else to the floor. The guys jumped out of the way, but none of them stopped me, knowing full well I’d knock them into next week if they tried.
I don’t know what I wanted to gain from lashing out; the human mind is a complicated thing. All I knew if I didn’t let it go, I’d die. I’d fucking die.
Sweat covered me as I continued to throw my hands around, ignoring all the pitiful eyes that were staring at me.
Unaware of anything but how I felt and preoccupied with thoughts of what I’d do to the person who did this, I didn’t see my footstep into Amy’s blood. My foot slipped from under me, leaving me a slump of rage in the stuff that kept us all alive.
The room was quieter than a fucking morgue as I looked at the red liquid pooling around my ass. My chest was uncontrollable, moving up and down far too quickly for my lungs to keep up with, I was acutely away of Amy’s body hanging above me, I couldn’t fucking look. Not this time.
“Jax…” came my father’s sullen voice.
My head snapped up, and my eyes focused on the man who stood in the doorway. “What the fuck is this?” I demanded. I demanded an impossible answer to, at that moment in time, an impossible question.
My father looked grim, his clean-shaven jaw ticked. “Jax, come with me, please.”
“Not ’til someone tells me who the fuck did this,” my voice was dark, shadowed by the truth of this world.
“The guys are working on it. Come on, come have a drink with your old man.”
I laughed. No. I fucking cackled. “A drink? A fucking drink won’t fix this.”
My father shook his head. “No, but neither will you sitting on the floor screaming for answers, my boy.”
My ass was sticky with Amy’s blood. I remember wondering how long it takes blood to dry. I remember staring at the men stood by the bay window, men I had grown up with, looking at the floor instead of at me. I remember getting to my feet, hands soaked in blood, and cursing the day Amy moved to our small town in New Mexico.
She had been destined for so much more.
My father’s outstretched arm greeted me at the door, pulling me into his side, and he walked us into the kitchen, closing the door with a gentle click behind him.
As I entered a room, which was full to the brim of happy memories, I could have sworn I saw Amy dancing around the island, drink in hand, howling along to the radio. I had to shake my head to rid my mind of ghosts. Ghosts I had never, ever wanted to see.
From no-where, as if my father had turned into Houdini, a bottle of scotch emerged on the counter, and he wasted no time in pouring us each a generous amount. The noise of glass on marble caught my attention, and I snatched the drink, downed it, and ordered him to pour another in a matter of seconds.
“Son, take my word for it when I say we’ll do everything we can.” I swirled the drink around the glass, listening but not quite hearing. No. This was nothing but a bad fucking dream. I’d wake up soon. “Jax, please. Say something.”
Looking up, I looked into eyes that comforted me a hundred thousand times as a child, and here they were. The same eyes. Unable to put a big enough band-aid on this wound. “Does Vladimir know?”
Father nodded, straightening the tie around his neck. “He’s on his way.”
“I don’t want them pricks sniffing around her, dad. It’s our men and no-one else.”
“Jaxon, you know I can’t keep this quiet. Please, my boy, let’s do this right way. You know I won’t rest until I know who done this and why.”
We were quiet for but a moment. Two generations of men, grieving over old Scotch, damning the Chrobak’s to hell for tempting my dad into the business.
Archibald wasn’t a bad guy. Hell, he was one of the best, but he, too, at one point was a young, impressionable man with a family stuck on his hip and not a dollar to his name.
“Carter won’t be the same after this. You should have seen him tonight; he was so fucking happy.” I paused to swallow away the massive ball of emotion wedged in my throat. “They’d been trying for years, did you know that?”
My father didn’t need it spelled out to him what I meant by that, and his face paled, his hand reaching for the scotch. He took several gulps, his dark eyes scrunching as it burned his throat before he spoke. “Why don’t you take him home, son? He doesn’t need to wait here for this to be over with, I’ll contact you."
I sighed, feeling the weight of the damn world settle over my entire being, crushing me with such force I could barely breathe.
The nights’ alcohol should have eased the nerves, confusion, anger, and grief, and yet all it did was ignite them all, scorching flames licked at my vision, my head was thumping. How did we go to celebrating new life to nothing but blood?
One thing was for certain: whoever the fuck was responsible would meet an untimely demise. I’d make fucking sure of it. Their end would be so goddamn brutal their soul would forever be trapped in a Hellish Limbo.