Chapter Three

“AA.”

“Oh. Oh, yeah. So, I got myself sober, and I decided that to really reclaim my life, I needed to walk away from my family and the MC.”

“But you did that when you were eleven, right?”

“No.” Mirrie bit her lip, trying to think how to explain this to him. “When I was eleven, I ran away from my life. I – I escaped it by avoiding it. But what I really wanted to do was take it back by facing it.”

“Ah. I get it.”

“I’d come back to Denver after I finished high school, and I was working in an office. Just as a receptionist, nothing amazing, but still. I was earning my keep and I was making it work… with a monster hangover most mornings, but when I stopped drinking, I knew I could make a real go of my life. All I needed to do was cut off all my MC ties officially, once and for all.”

“So you were still in contact with your family then?”

“Sure. They’re my family, and no matter how bad it was with them, I saw them sometimes. Birthdays and things like that. And of course, I drank with the MC at their clubhouse. It was free booze, which was like a dream-come-true for me, and they’re assholes, no doubt about that, but I was welcome and I was safe there. Well, I was until I wanted to be totally free. Then welcome and safe were just about the last things that I was with them.”

“Tell me.”

The same two words he’d hissed mere minutes earlier, now asked in a gentle tone. A request, this time, not an order. And since he was asking like this, she told him. She took a shuddering breath, and got ready to be more honest with him than she’d ever been with anyone in her life.

“I took almost every penny I had saved, and I bought a whole new identity,” Mirrie said. “With my family connections, it wasn’t hard to find a guy who’d do it. He was expensive, but he was fast and the documents were excellent. So, that’s how I became Miranda Campbell… I had the birth certificate, driver’s license, and passport that said so.”

Mac nodded. “OK.”

“My plan was to tell my family first, then the MC. I was still considered property of theirs, in a way, and I wanted to figure out a way to leave the whole thing behind that was mutual. But… but it all went wrong.”

Mac waited, and when she stayed silent, he prompted her. “How?”

“I’m still not totally sure, but I suspect that the guy who did my new ID ratted me out for a price. I think he took my money, and then turned around and told my Dad and the club about what I’d done. Double payday for the dickhead, right?”

Mac caught his breath at the bitterness in her voice. “Yeah. I guess.”

“So when I showed up at the clubhouse to talk to Dad and Mom and Donovan, the club already knew,” Mirrie said. “They were – very angry.”

He gazed at her, sure that this had to be the understatement of the century. “That’s why they beat you up?”

“Not quite.” She turned her coffee cup around and around, and Mac saw that her hands were trembling. “They took my new documents away, and then they gave me a choice.”

“What kind of choice?”

“They…” Again, she faltered and again, Mac wondered if he was doing the wrong thing by pushing her to talk.

“Mirrie? Babe?”

She jumped at the achingly-familiar, sorely-missed endearment, and she saw that Shane looked equally stunned to have used it.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have… I have no right to call you that. Not anymore.”

“It’s alright,” she whispered, trying not to cry at the unexpected sweetness. “Anyway, Trigger MacGee had just been made President, and he was hell-bent on being taken seriously as a tough leader who wouldn’t accept any disrespect. He told me that if I wanted total freedom from him and the boys, then I had to earn it.”

“How?” Mac’s voice was gravel.

“I had two choices. I could either open my legs and take every one of them – except my Dad and brother, obviously, though they’d get to beat me afterwards for being such a slut – while the others watched. Or I could give everyone a chance to hit me. Each member got three punches, and they could hit me anywhere they wanted, as hard as they wanted. If I survived the beating, they’d drop me and my new ID's off at the hospital. And then I’d be free.”

Mac sat stock-still. “You… you had a choice between being gang-raped or beaten near-to-death?”

“Yes.”

“And you obviously went with door number two.”

“Yes.”

“And you survived.”

She looked at him. “Barely. But you know that, Shane. You know what they did to me.”

He thought about her smashed, destroyed body; about the months and months of recovery that she’d suffered through. “I know.”

“So… that was who hurt me,” she said quietly. “My own father, and my own brother, and a group of men who had known me from the time I was a newborn. That was how I ended up in the hospital that night. That was the price I paid to get out.”