SOLID GROUND: GODS OF CHAOS MC (BOOK TWO) (19 page)

“Fuck yes I did,” I said, resisting the urge to spit in her face. 

She looked smaller than I remembered.  Frail, almost.  

I used to be so afraid of her,
I thought.  
Now, she looks like I could knock her over with one finger.

“You changed your hair.  It’s not your color, you should change it back,” she said, her hand reaching up to touch my hair.

I pushed her hand away before she made contact.

“I never abandoned you, Lacey.”

“Like hell you didn’t!” I said, my voice rising in anger.  “Are you fucking delusional?”

“No, baby.  I’ve been watching you the whole time, I was just staying out of the way.”

My skin crawled.

“What the fuck do you mean? You sold me to Monty,” I said, staring down at her.

“I didn’t sell you to Monty.  I just..well…
rented
…you to him.”

“I don’t understand.  Do you even know what Monty did to me?  He beat me.  He raped me.  Do you even care? He sold me to his fucking perverted friends, Mom.  He traded me for money, power, used me as a pawn in whatever fucked up deal he had going on at the time.”

“I know, baby,” she said, shaking her head in disappointment.  I was so confused.  

“What do you mean you know?”

“I mean, I saw, like I said.  I’ve been watching you.  Trust me, Monty didn’t make a move without consulting me first.  I had him by the balls, and oh - nevermind!” she said, waving her hand dismissively.  “We can talk about that later.  Look - come!  I have a present for you!”

She gestured to the bed, and I looked over at the clothes laid out on it.  A short, red satin dress was spread across the orange flowered bedspread, the colors clashing so violently it was hard to look at.  A pair of patent-leather red pumps sat to the right of the dress, with a set of black lace bra and panties laid out on the right.

“Do you like them?” she asked, her high-pitched, nasally voice raking across my brain. I walked over to the bed to get a closer look, looking for some clue of sanity in an undeniably insane situation.  “You need to be dressed up for this.”

“For this? For what? Seeing you?”  I turned back to her, my eyes meeting hers angrily.  “I hoped I’d never have to see you again.  How did you even find me?” I asked.

“I never lost you.  I knew you got arrested, so I waited at the police station to talk to Monty.  He never showed up, but you came out, and I followed you.  I already knew where you lived.  So, I just waited to see what would happen.  But Monty didn’t come out for a long time, and when I saw you being whisked away by a bunch of strangers, I knew something was up.  I followed you to where they turned off the road, and then I spent some time digging around the town. You’d be surprised what a washed up old lady can learn in a sleepy old town.  Especially one that only has one nearby bar.  People talk, baby.”

“Whatever. You’re fucking pathetic.”

“Oh, baby, I know you’re angry.  I know you don’t understand, but that’s okay.  You’ve always been a little stubborn, haven’t you?  I think you get that from me.”  She reached down, and picked up the dress from the bed.  She outstretched her arms, and held it in front of my body.  “I think it’ll just fit.  Your boobs have gotten bigger, haven’t they?  That’s good, though, you were always a little too flat-chested.  Men like a curvy woman, you know.”

I snatched the dress from her hands, and threw it on the ground.

“You’re fucking crazy, you know that?  What kind of person does what you did to me?  Not just the Monty shit, but all the shit before that, too?  The pageants, the commercials, the endless auditions!  I was just a kid!  You never let me be a kid at all!  Do you know how much shit I missed out on?  Everything!  Every fucking thing!  All because of you! Because of your fucked up dreams that you pushed onto me when you couldn’t reach them yourself.  And then, when I got old enough and strong enough to say no to you, you dealt me the strongest blow!  How could you sell me like that?”

“I didn’t fucking sell you!  I told you that - I —,”

“—you rented me?  What the fuck does even mean?” I screamed.  

“Look, you really think you want the truth? You think you’re old enough now that you can just escape and start over?  You’re nothing without me, Lacey!  Nothing, you understand?!”  she was in my face, as much as she could be as I towered over her.  

The two men were standing by the door, blocking any escape I might attempt, watching our fucked up scene play out in front of them, a look of shock on their faces.

“You want the truth, you little bitch?” she continued.  “I gave you to Monty because I knew he could make more money off your sorry ass than I could.  He had rich friends, I didn’t.  He lent you out to them, and he split the fee with me.  Sure, he thought he was buying you fair and square, but after the first time, I went back to him, and…renegotiated…our agreement.” She paused, her eyes peering into mine searchingly.  “I blackmailed him.  He gave me a cut of the profits, or I’d leak it to the press. He was about to run for Mayor, it was the last thing he could afford getting out about him, and he caved.  It was quite easy, actually.  I should have done it from the beginning, but it all worked out in the end.”

“Oh, did it?” I asked, sarcastically.  “For who? You?  Monty? You certainly weren’t concerned about me. Fuck you!”

“Oh, but, baby, don’t you see?  Everything I’ve ever done was for you!  I only wanted the best for you, that’s why I pushed you so hard.  I knew you could be successful with Monty, that’s why I sent you to live with him.  I wanted you to be comfortable and live a life of luxury…the life I never had.  I didn’t want to see you struggle the way you made me struggle.”

“Life of luxury? I made you struggle?! Are you out of your fucking mind?  You turned me into a whore, Mom!  A fucking whore!”

“Oh, baby, you are just looking at everything wrong.  There’s nothing wrong with a woman using her body to help her get through life.”

My blood ran cold, and my fists clenched at my sides, the words scraping from my throat like they were clawing their way through the depths of all the pain I had stuffed away.

“I wasn’t using my body, Mom.  I was forced.  I was raped!  They took it all from me, Mom.  You took it all from me.”

“No, baby, you took it from me!  Before I got pregnant with you, I was beautiful, I had a future.  But no, your loser father knocked me up and left me and what was I stuck with?  A crying baby, and a ruined body!  My future flew out the window when you were born.  You were my only hope, Lacey, don’t you see?  If I couldn’t succeed with you, then I couldn’t succeed.  And then what did you do?  You ungrateful little bitch, you just decide you can refuse to follow our dreams, just turn your back and decide you didn’t want to do it anymore? You couldn’t play by the rules, could you?”

“What rules, Mom?  The rules of you constantly high on coke and blowing the judges to fix the pageants?”

“I was just trying to help.  You threw it all away, Lacey.  So, no, I didn’t take anything from you - I did no such thing.  I helped you.  Just like I’m going to help you now, baby.”

“You aren’t doing a fucking thing to help me now, and you never have.”  My eyes trailed down to her throat, and the urge to wrap my fingers around it overwhelmed me.

“Oh, baby, yes I can!  Monty’s dead now!  Well, of course you know that, don’t you?  I must admit, baby, I was a little surprised to learn you killed him.  So violently, too!  But the bastard deserved it, didn’t he?  He was a bit of prick, wasn’t he?  Waste of good pair of shoes, though,”  she said, her voice slicing through me.  “Anyway, that’s all water under the bridge, isn’t it?  The thing is…Monty and I had an agreement. If anything ever happened to him, you belong to me again.”

I shook my head, the full realization of just how fucking crazy she really was finally dawning on me.

“You’re insane,” I whispered. “I’m free now.  Free from you.  Free from Monty…free from that fucking awful life that you condemned me to.”

“No, baby, no….you see, that’s not how this is going to work.  I gave birth to you, Lacey.  That counts.  That counts big time.  You can’t just walk away from me.  I own you. I'm your mother.  I’ve always owned you.  Not Monty.  Me,” she reached up to touch my face again, and I slapped her hand away harder this time.  

“Don’t fucking touch me!”  I screamed, stepping away from her, my voice high and panicked.

“Lacey!  You fucking listen to me, you little bitch!”

“Why should I?” I said, stepping back to her, leaning down, my face mere inches from hers.  “You’re a fucking pathetic mess.  I’m not afraid of you anymore.  I used to be, sure, but I’m bigger than you now.  I’m older, I’m smarter.  I don’t have to put up with your shit…with anyone’s shit.  You have no fucking hold on me anymore, Mom.”  I shook my head.  “Not Mom. Never Mom. I’m fucking out of here.”

I turned toward the door, the two goons staring at us, both of them looking even more shocked at the ugly mother-daughter reunion.

“Lacey, you aren’t going anywhere.  Not yet.” I heard the distinctive cocking of a gun, and I turned back to see her pointing it straight at me.  “Not till you put this dress on and then we are both going to present you with your new owner.”

Her words stopped me in my tracks.  I shook my head slowly, her intentions slowly sinking in.

“You were planning to sell me again?”  I whispered incredulously.

“Well, like I said, not sell - just…rent,” she winked playfully, the gun still pointed straight at me.  She was so fucking lost in her own world, so far away from any normal sense of reality, that it was almost laughable.  If it wasn’t my fucking life we were talking about, that is.  “I have a very wealthy man waiting at the Hilton that’s shown some interest.  But you have to look your best! Hey, remember when we put your hair up in a French braid for the Miss Teen Oregon pageant, and you had those little tendrils left hanging around your face?  That was so classy, we should do that again.”

She rambled on aimlessly, and the world began spinning around me.  

Was this really happening?
 I looked at the door, still blocked by her men, whoever they were.  
Bodyguards? Pimps?  Were they planning on taking a turn with me, too?

“No. I don’t think so,”  I replied, shaking my head as I turned my gaze on the bed.

“Lacey, you will do as I say, or else!”

“Or else what?  You’re going to shoot me?  You’d be destroying your meal ticket, if you did that, wouldn’t you?”  I asked, realizing she wouldn’t dare shoot me, as I picked up the pair of red stilettos off the bed, and turned back to her.

“You’ll do as I say, Lacey, or Ronnie and Eddie here will make you.”

“Don’t you understand, Mom?” I asked, closing the distance between us, the gun pressing against my chest, cold and hard. “Nobody makes me do anything any more.  I’m not your little girl anymore.”

I’m not sure what I was thinking, if I was thinking, if I was even capable of coherent thoughts at this point, but in a split second, my arm raised up, knocking the gun from her hand, and sinking the stiletto into her neck all in one smooth movement.  Her eyes widened in surprise, and dark ribbons of blood began spurting out of her neck as I sank it in a second time and pulled it out again.  

She fell to the ground, and I fell on top of her, my arm flailing, up and down, in and out, her neck and face slathered in thick, sticky, warm blood.  The shoe fell from my hands, the heel almost broken off, dangling from the shoe like a broken limb.  I picked up the other shoe from the ground where I had dropped it, and using all the force that my body would allow, stabbed it right into her eye.

“Stop fucking looking at me!” I screamed at her ugly dead eyes.  “I fucking hate you!  You ruined me!”  

The words bubbled from me as I continued stabbing her, over and over as she lay dead below me.

“Fuck this shit, I’m outta here, man,” one of the men at the door said.

“Yeah, I didn’t sign up for a fucking murder,” the other man snarled, turning to the door.  

I didn’t hear them.  

I was still screaming.  Still stabbing.