Staking Her Claim...: Book 1 in the Patricks' Brothers series (9 page)

For eleven years, I lived like that. Transient and free were a way of life for me before eventually deciding to settle down in the same place as, Thomas, now known as Glock, in Blackwater, Colorado. It wasn’t a choice I made lightly either. If anything, it was a choice I’d spent months thinking over before taking the steps to make it a reality.

When I called to tell Glock, I was heading his way he was just as excited as I was to finally be in the same place for more than a day or two. Over the years, we met up in cities or towns in between the two of us whenever we could manage it. It wasn’t the same as living close by and being able to see each other all the time, but we made it work because we didn’t have any other choice but to.

Within an hour and a half of calling him, he’d set me up with a job at the MC owned bar Rough Shod, and offered me the spare room at his place until I found somewhere I’d prefer to live.

To cut an even longer story short, I moved in with him and started working straight away. I met his brothers and their families. And I fell in love, or what I thought was love, with the wrong girl. Then I got myself kidnapped and ultimately saved by the woman who owns the other half of my soul. Yeah, fucked up right? But however it happened, regardless of the humiliation I felt reconnecting with Alysia that way, I wasn’t sorry it worked out the way it did. If anything, I was fucking ecstatic my stupidity brought her back into my life, period.

So now you know all about the first part of my life, I think it’s time I let you in on why everything between Alysia and I went to shit all those years ago. Bear in mind, this isn’t a sweet story. It’s not made of cotton candy, unicorns, and all things cute and cuddly.

It’s real. It’s gritty. It’s raw. But more than that it’s the stuff of living, breathing, waking nightmares. It’s also what I’ve worked so hard to protect Alysia since the moment I met her because no girl or now woman as beautiful and pure as her deserves to hear about the horrors of a world otherwise unknown to her.

Little did I know but would soon is that, Alysia had seen and been a party to more than her fair share of personal horrors, and would have understood better than anyone what it was like to live under a cloud of darkness and pain.

Before I start on about how unfair the foster care system is to kids, I should probably preface it by saying that not every family is horrible. In fact, some are great. Just not the ones I’d been placed with, which is why I’m a little biased about the entire system and how it’s run.

I told you about the Jensen’s, and I’m sure you picked up on the fact that they’re decent people who actually cared about their ward, but rest assured they are one of the rare few that did. And sadly, after what happened with me, they withdrew their willingness to foster another child on the off chance that they’d suffer the same fate again. Sad and a great loss for all those kids out there that need loving homes, but understandable nevertheless.

Unfortunately, my experience in the system isn’t an isolated case, nor is it uncommon for other kids to live through what I did. Sure, there are varying degrees of abuse that occurs at the hands of the monsters whose care we are placed in and no two kid’s experiences are the same, but it still boils down to the same thing in the end; we are more often than not united our pain.

A few of the stories I’ve heard from kids that have aged out of the system as I traveled were nothing if not heartbreaking. The depths of depravity some of the men and women charged with these children’s care is unfathomable to anyone who hadn’t been through something similar first-hand, but I had so I knew what they were left to deal with day in and day out.

I knew the darkness that lurked within. I was well acquainted with what lay just beneath the surface. I felt their agony at not being able to let people close for fear they’ll infect them with the poison that has permeated their souls. And I lived their despair at knowing they will never find someone that soothes the raging beast inside them. That’s what the monsters masquerading as parents did to us. They took away our chances of finding any peace. They stripped away our dignity. And they made us believe we are worthless.

These were some of the reasons that led to me decide it was best to keep Alysia at arm’s length and was ultimately why I pushed her away in the end. I believed every word that had been drummed into my head over and over again. Who wouldn’t? I mean, you’re told you’re useless, pathetic, scum often enough and you’ll start to believe. Or at least, I did.

But there was more to it than that. Much more.

I became adept at hiding bruises from beatings I didn’t deserve from a very young age. I honed the ability to come up with excuses for why I couldn’t sit down, stand up, or bend over without grimacing in agony at a moment's notice.

The last thing I wanted was to open up to people because I couldn’t bear to be judged more harshly than I already was by the people I was living with. I couldn’t afford to take the chance on making a friend who thought they were doing the right thing by speaking up, making it infinitely worse for me when I got home. That was something I just wouldn’t risk because I’d been on the receiving end of a beating the likes I’d never suffered before when a teacher talked to my foster father about bruises she’s noticed one day on the playground. And let’s just say; that wasn’t something I wanted to go through ever again if I could help it.

I learned to keep my thoughts and feeling to myself most of the time, but when you’re a young boy, angry at the world and raging about the unfairness of it all it was hard to keep that kind of fury in check one hundred percent of the time. Occasionally, that rage filtered over to kids at school that picked on me or called me names.

Not something that I’m proud to admit, that I used my fists early on to convey my dislike of their words and taunts, but nevertheless I did, and I own it. It took a few years, but in the end, I managed to control myself, for the most part, internalizing my anger and saving it for a time I could fight back against the people that truly deserved it.

Some of the families I was sent to live with weren’t as bad as others, especially when I was two years old until around the time I turned eight. Those families handed out mere love taps in comparison to the beatings I got later.

1
It never occurred to me one day I would end up praying silently to be sent back to one of those homes. But night after night I found myself doing so. I asked a God I was almost positive sure didn’t exist to return me to any of the nine homes I’d lived in before the final one I was dumped with at the age of twelve.

As a naïve kid, I didn’t know that what was happening to me was a picnic compared to what I could have suffered, and little did I know at the time, but shit was about to get a thousand times worse.

Like I said, by the age of twelve I’d been through nine foster families, not because I was a juvenile delinquent or anything, but simply because I was more trouble than the paycheck I equaled.

People were more than happy to get rid of a kid with a chip on his shoulder, and my chip was fucking huge. I’d been arrested twice for petty theft by eleven, but in my defense I was hungry not being fed even remotely enough at home, and a growing boy had to eat didn’t he?

Sure, I’d also been expelled from more schools than I’d like to admit, and I may or may not have done a five-month stretch in juvie for spray painting a government building, but a stretch in kiddie jail was a holiday in my eyes so all’s well that ends well.

When I was hauled before the judge who was sentencing me, I wasn’t apologetic in the slightest and I didn’t beg for a second chance. Fuck, I didn’t believe in second chances back then anyway. Frankly put, I wanted the old dude in the outdated robes to sentence me to the maximum. I couldn’t think of a better early birthday present than taking an all-expenses paid vacation to the land of orange and bars.

I’m not going to make excuses for the shit I did when I was a confused kid caught in a dangerous situation. I won’t try and convince you to feel sorry for me now by telling you what living in those homes did to my fragile psyche. Shit happens, I was a sick kid who lost his only chance at a real life. End of story.

No amount of explanation makes what I went through any less painful. And I don’t think I’d garner your respect if I tried it excuse all the fucked up stuff I did as an outlet for the storm I knew was brewing inside me every day. At the end of the day, I did everything they said I did. I stole. I broke and entered. I tagged buildings. And I lashed out at everyone and anyone I came into contact with who remotely pissed me off. All of which landed me the label of ‘troublemaker.’ The kid who didn’t respond well to authority figures. And they weren’t wrong, I didn’t. In fact, I went out of my way to ignore rules, discipline, and authority of any kind.

Six days after I turned twelve was the day my life changed, and not in a good way. That was the day I was placed with the final foster family I’d ever have, not that I knew that them. I can remember that day vividly because I’d thought it was a late birthday present, getting out of the shitty place I’d just spent the last nine and a half months that was. Unfortunately, I wish I’d had the gift of foresight so I could have wished for another stint in juvie instead of ending up with the Fitzsimmons.

The people I was placed with, Phillipe and Raquel Fitzsimmons, were apparently a professional couple who were highly respected members of the community in Lancaster, Texas. I had no idea where the hell that was living in, San Diego at the time, but after a couple of hours on a plane and being shuttled in and out of airports I’d soon find out it was a town just outside the Dallas city limits.

I didn’t much care where I lived as long as the house was clean, there was enough food to eat, and the people were decent. It’s not a lot to ask for, but more than I usually got.

The Fitzsimmons couldn’t have kids, or that’s the story they fed the department anyway. The truth of the matter was; the woman was vain enough to openly admit she wouldn’t allow a child to ‘destroy’ her body, and the man didn’t want to deal with the ‘interference’ to his lifestyle that having a pregnant wife and baby would cause.

Yeah, they were assholes of the highest order. And that’s not overstating it. Within days of being placed with them, they said as much, to my face. Not that I cared, it wasn’t like they were my real parents or anything so I shrugged it off and filed it away in case it was something I could use against them later. I was good at that. Stockpiling blackmail information that is.

From the outside looking in, I’d have to agree that their outward appearances made them look like the perfect couple. That’s what they were hoping to achieve after all. A façade reliable enough to hide the atrocities they committed behind closed doors.

Raquel was a stunning woman with long dark hair that was always meticulously styled, never a strand out of place. For all intents and purposes, she’d be described as slim, but with subtle curves in all the right places. A woman with satin soft skin, perfect porcelain in color. She dressed in all the latest fashions or so she claimed, and she spared no expense making sure she kept up with the Joneses. But the one feature of hers that still to this day haunts me the most are her eyes.

For the life of me, I will never in this lifetime forget her eyes. Dark, soulless orbs capable of witnessing unspeakable torture. Fuck, her eyes are the thing that still wake me from my daily nightmares.

Her eyes were so expressive that you could tell her mood and the depth her depravity would stoop to each day. What I never understood was how a woman so beautiful on the outside could be so rotten on the inside. How could a woman with such small, dainty hands inflict the kinds of horror she could in the blink of an eye? All questions that will remain forever unanswered, but that’s probably for the best seeing as the world is finally free of the cruelty she possessed.

Phillipe, her husband, wasn’t much better than his wife if anything he was worse. Much worse. As a photographer by trade, he was surrounded by beauty day in and day out.

His expectations stretched to include his wife too. And it wasn’t uncommon for him to slap her around a little if she didn’t meet his standard of perfection. Not that he’d ever tell her what that was, she was just expected to know. Their issues weren’t my problem, though, and, for the most part, I was glad when he took his anger out on her. That signaled I would be in the clear for a while.

How the world viewed, Phillipe was what he traded on. That and his name. A name he told me he’d spent years making a household brand. There were times I wanted to inform him that he couldn’t be all that successful seeing as though I’d never heard of him. But I thought better of it, ending up keeping it to myself. I won’t lie, it did make me laugh how full of himself Phillipe was. I’d never met a man with an ego the size of his.

Phillipe often lectured me, telling me that his business was perfection. The world of modeling didn’t tolerate anything less, and he was inclined to believe the same. It didn’t matter if I was sitting around watching TV or eating dinner at the kitchen counter I was relegated to, I was expected to be dressed in a button-down, collared shirt and dress slacks.

I fucking hated dressing like a yuppie hipster, but it was his house, his rules, or so he decreed on a daily basis. There were so many times I’d sized him up and wondered what it would take for me to knock his pompous ass out, but I never had the courage to make my daydreams a reality.

Phillipe wasn’t what I’d call a big man. He stood an inch over six-foot, was lean with defined muscles, and made good use of the home gym he set up in the basement every day. What he lacked in bulk he made up for in attitude. The man exuded power from every pore. His piercing blue eyes sparked with constant distrust and judgment, seemingly looking inside a person, dissecting them effortlessly.

But it was the cold, dead organ in his chest that caused me the most concern. His heart was as black as his soul. There was never a time that he hinted he cared about what happened to me, or later Thomas. It was like he didn’t have a conscience. There was not a single cell in his body that showed remorse about the things he did or the pain he readily inflicted.

Where Phillipe said, his name and his perfectly coiffed image was what he traded on for business reasons, what he relied on at home was altogether different. There it was fear he traded on like it was a currency unto itself. And when I say that I’d don’t mean he yelled, threatened or disciplined by taking away life’s little luxuries. No, the way he threw a healthy dose of fear around, weaving it into every conversation, every interaction was horrifying.

I need to clarify something before I go on.