Page 45 of Road to Absolution

Tucker hissed, “How can you compare—”

“If anyone hurt Bailey, I’d have split personalities, too.”

Tuck sneered, “Then feel my fucking pain.”

“Tucker, because of that pain, I’ll forgive you for being stupid. I shall remind you again, that’s my fucking wife we’re talking about. Hear me when I say, what she wants is what she’s going to get. I’m trapped in a bed for a little longer, but when I’m out, I will hunt you down if you break her heart. Giver lives. That’s it.” To be clear, I added, “Now, if he dares to come near Lilah, or back in this state, down he goes. And I don’t mean prison.”

With grit, John nodded. “At least we agree on something.”

Tucker was flabbergasted. “Not enough. I was there. I—” He tried to reel in the anger that was eating him alive, but finally spoke a revulsion. “He was washing the blood from the sheets when I got home.”

“Stop it!” Diesel stumbled back, lifting his hands as if trying to block Tuck’s gruesome words.

John had finally found his limit. He raced to a garbage can and vomited.

I stared at Tuck as his meaning set in.

With a rigid jaw, he evilly nodded. “She was a virgin. Her very first time was—” His nostrils strained as he tried to breathe. “He said she had her period.” He slapped his chest so hard, it boomed in the room. “I believed him and left. Left, Maverick. I. Left. I had vowed to my dying mother I would protect my Light but went for a fucking Big Mac. I never checked on her upstairs.”

John vomited again.

Diesel paced. “Jesus H. Christ.”

As if madness was creeping in, Tuck shrugged in dismay. “Was she crying out for me? He told me she was in the shower. Was she trying to rinse away the rape?” Tucker kept staring at me, his eyes twisted with hate and despair. “Can you feel me?”

Full of sympathy, Diesel approached from behind and set a hand on Tucker’s shoulder. His head hung… “I feel you, brother.”

I tried, “Tuck—”

Tucker’s lips were flat against his teeth as he vowed, “I need redemption. I need revenge or I will never forgive myself.”

Every time a new detail was revealed, it felt like the whole situation shifted. It resembled the sensation of quicksand. If you tried to make a move, you would only sink in further...

So complicated.

Am I making a mistake?

Do I listen to the angel’s song? Or the devil’s whisper?

“Mav,” Tuck implored, “my girls reached out for help after I left! They. Didn’t. Call. Me because I had already—” The tears in his eyes trembled like an ocean during an earthquake. His earthquake was of the heart. “—failed them.”

Diesel’s hand tightened and gently shook Tuck’s shoulder. I don’t think he could handle Tuck’s inner torture and was trying to rattle it free before it killed the young man he saw as a son.

John was far too deep in his own torture to help his boy. He stumbled away from the trashcan as if on a boat during a dangerous storm.

The resolve was up to me. So, I stepped into the ring… “You promised not to kill him. That doesn’t mean you can’t confront him—have your say.”

After a long breath, Tuck’s body crumbled forward, his hands landing at the foot of my bed. “Thank you.”

I asked Diesel, “Where is he?”

With worry blanketing his face, his hand fell from Tuck. “In lockdown.”

I didn’t give a shit. “Where?”

Facing another kind of pain, he took a step back. “I’m sorry… Lockdown comes with rules. I can’t.”

Tuck’s head slowly lifted. The look we all saw was… unnerving. “Tell me where he is, or…” Clearly not sure what he would do, he thought for a minute. Tuck knew this threat had to count. He suddenly looked at me with awareness, then back to Diesel to repeat words of mine. “I’ll move Viola away.”

“The fuck you say?” Diesel’s nostrils flared, but Tuck refused to take it back.

Trying to help out my buddy, I warned Diesel, “That crazy bitch will follow him. I know she will.”

Convinced I was right, Diesel threw his hands in the air. “Tuck! Only club members can know where! I-I… can’t break that rule.”

Tuck pushed off the bed and crossed his arms. Glaring at Diesel, he growled, “You’ve got a new Prospect if you tell me where Kenny is.”

From the couch he had just stumbled to and collapsed in, John uttered, “Holy shit.”

Diesel crossed his arms. “That’s playin’ dirty. You know I want you in my pack.”

Battle already won, Tuck conceded, “In your hands now. But I’ll only offer once.”

Silence…

“Fucker,” complained Diesel.

Looks like Tuck-the-Fuck was now a Redemption Ryder Prospect.