Preg-Not

Part 4

Rae watched the men drag Snake's body away. She was drowning under a stream of fear, shock, and the vomit that surged up her throat.

The men drove off after hiding Snake's corpse in a corner. When the thunder was distant enough, she jumped away from the garbage bags and set her vomit free.

She thought she knew Maksim intimately. She thought the darkness of his gaze only crawled out while they were tumbling in bed. She was wrong, though, because the same darkness consumed him as he devoured another man's life. He took her with the same intensity he took Snake's life. It was wrong; unnatural. Love and hate shouldn't have such uncanny similarity.

She looked down. The once white tennis shoes were now creamy. Bits of vomit flicked off as she dashed from the scene. She ran blindly, knowing that the men from the motorcycle club would return to clean up their crime.

Snake's ghost followed her. He couldn't take her in life, so he would take her in death.

Mafia. Maksim is in the mafia. Is that why he hid a gun? Did he come home late at night because he takes out bodies?

Many times, she trailed curious fingers over his chest. Questions weighed the tip of her tongue, but something always kelp them jailed behind her teeth. She should have asked. She should have translated the words inked on Maksim's body.

She tripped and ripped her knees open on the concrete. The sight made her gag. There was too much blood.

Her blood, Snake's blood, father's blood.

"You got a DUI? I told you to stop hanging with those kids, Raelynn! They're gonna ruin your future."

She shook her head, fighting the memories. Tears flew off her cheeks, but were quickly replaced with fresh ones.

"Vandalism? You have to do better, honey."

She didn't listen, though. She was angry at the world for taking her mother, and there was nothing more dangerous than an anguished teenager with too much time in her hands. So she drank, and smoked, and stacked up her record. She wanted to show life that she was bigger than it.

Fool.

The memories of her bloody father made her gag again, but her stomach had nothing more to give. She pushed her knees away, unable to look at the crimson on her jeans. She didn't like the color red. It was a good thing their TV was broken, because she hated watching the news, too.

Mafias and gangs.

She couldn't go back to that life. They took her father, and nearly took her out, too.

She stood up on shaky legs and looked down the alley. Things had been hard for a long time. She was short on money and options, but she never felt hopeless because she had Maksim.

Now that his mask dropped, it felt like the flesh on her bones dropped, too. She was bleeding everywhere, welcoming infections and vultures. There was nowhere to go. She could only stand as maggots and predators plucked at her flesh and her blood pooled beneath her.

She was hopeless.

She walked far; flinching every time she heard a car pass by. When the night rolled in, she knew she had to go home. She couldn't run, because Maksim would chase her and find her somehow.

She stood up and walked home. It only took a few minutes of walking along the road for a motorcycle to show up. Her legs tensed, but she knew there was no sense in running.

"Raelynn?" a young guy asked. He couldn't be a day over eighteen.

Get out of the MC, she wanted to warn him. Get out before it's too late and you make the same mistakes I did.