Broken Road

Chapter 19

Chapter Nineteen

He clenched his hands and slowly released them for what seemed the millionth time on top of the file he had taken to the desktop after reading it and storming around till he sat down in the chair with a heavy thud.

   He wasn’t furious, no he was more then merely pissed, and he was raging. It wasn’t about the young girl whose life had been spelled out to him in cold facts on the black and white surface of the paper, but rather the damning man who the report called her ‘first father’.

   The was a burn hate deep in his gut that he wished he could use tot kill the son of a bitch, but since he was already dead it settled into a cold rage that would fuel him for days till he did something violent to get it out of his system. There was also the icy chill of hopeless hurt in his heart knowing what she had gone through and no one had been there to help her.

   Suddenly every one of her actions made sense, the fright, the fight, the fire in her eyes, the loneliness and so much more. It was all because of how she had grown up. He knew himself there were many ways to take thing in life as you see them through the eyes of a child for he had faced a few himself, yet somehow he did more the just understand how she had taken it. Hell the man who was suppose to protect her and care for her damn near killed her more then 40 time in the course of less then the first eleven years of her life!

    His nostrils flared angrily as he took several deep breaths and unclenched his hands once more.

   It had taken him little over six hours to read the files on her and he knew by looking at the clock it was way too late in the morning to start anything.

   There was a faint knock on the door and Winthrop rushed to open it. When he saw the Crown Royal was the one who darkened his door his sighed and just sat back down drained.

   “May I come in?”

   Winthrop grunted and nodded to a chair on the other side of the desk. Royal sat in the chair and resettled the sleeping baby in his arms.

    “What do you want?” His tone was plain almost expressionless, but for the little sarcastic mimic.

   Royal stared at the younger man with hard eyes. “I wish to talk to you about Devil. Have you finished the file work?” he asked nodding to the files on the desk.

   “Yes,” Winthrop grated.

   “Then you have read how her life has been. I can imagine how you feel, but I never felt that way. That was how ever before the kid got under my skin.” He eyed Winthrop, “She was the only one who ever had you know? I used to be nothing more then a killer, but she changed thing and it hasn’t been the same since.”

   Winthrop glared at the older man and dared a snort. “No doubt. Where the devil walks, fire follows, and so does change.”

   A faint smile crossed Royal’s lips before his face hardened for the briefest moment. “She faced death as no woman or child ever should. I left out the report on her father’s death on purpose. That is one thing she will have to tell you herself. It is true, where she goes she will change it all.”

    Winthrop turned inward seeking to answer to his question of how she had changed him and found more then one way at how she had gotten to him. She had even made him care as no one ever had before, not even his baby brother who he basically raised.

    “-she needs more then the normal woman would, but she’ll hide it from who ever is close to her.” Royal glared at him, “Are you listening boy?”

   Winthrop shook his head to clear it and voiced what was on his mind. “Can I ask a question of you?”

   Royal sat back and stared at him for a very long time before he nodded ever so slightly.

   He took a deep breath to clear his mind and stilled his shaking hands on his knees. “You of all people in the one she will trust with anything. She asked you to save her from being the next target and not me. I have only one question for you and do not laugh at me. Why not me?”

   Royal smiled ruefully. “You are what she fears most in this world now.” The answer was as simple as that, but he could tell the boy didn’t understand. He should help the poor boy, he nodded to himself. “You see she hates men and she trust me because she doesn’t see me as a man. Every guy she can be around to her is not a man, but rather a friend. She sees you as a man as she did her father and so she is scared of you. But the fear of you is different then the fear of her father.”

   Brows drawing in a V he asked, “How so?”

   “She saw her father as a man who was going to kill her, end her. But you my boy is the guy who will change her. She doesn’t know change and so she cannot see ahead of her. Falling into the unknown is something human don’t do for just any reason. At least with her father she knew what would happen, each and every time he broke her, every time he killed what trust there had been in her soul.” His dark eyes pierced into the other man’s. “He may not have raped her body, but he raped her soul with a darkness that stained it.”

   Royal stood and moved toward the door. “Inside of her is the child that man broke. She has done nothing but walked along the shattered glass on the broken road the man made for her.” He opened the door with one hand and slipped out, but looked back in. “This is her broken road, but you have yours as well. The question is what will come of two broken roads that meet at the fork in the middle.”

   The wood door shut with a silent click! that echoed in the blazing screams of silence that settled around Winthrop.

   What could he do?

   There was only one way to figure that out.

   He left his brother’s office with only a second glance back and ran for the stairs.