Tainted Butterfly

  Copyrights© Terri Anne Browning 2017

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of Terri Anne Browning, except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976.

  Tainted Butterfly

  Tainted Knights Book 2

  Written & Published by Terri Anne Browning

  Edited by C&D Editing

  Formatted by ML Pahl of IndieVention Designs

  Cover by Sara Eirew

  Photo by Shauna Kruse Photography

  Model Nick Bennet

  Tainted Butterfly is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  No part of this book can be reproduced in any form by electronic or mechanical means, including storage or retrieval systems, without the express permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  All Rights Reserved © Terri Anne Browning 2017

  Table of Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty One

  Twenty Two

  Twenty Three

  Twenty Four

  Twenty Five

  Twenty Six

  Twenty Seven

  Twenty Eight

  Twenty Nine

  Epilogue

  Playlist

  ONE

  Gray

  Gray age 12

  Kassa age 7

  The sound of breaking glass echoed through the house. My heart stopped even before my mother cried out in pain and drowned out the sound of belt hitting flesh. Fear was like an acid churning in my stomach, but my mother needed me.

  I didn’t know why Dad was mad, but then again, he never needed a reason. Just breathing wrong near him could set him off. I had eaten a sandwich earlier and then gone straight to my room, hoping to avoid his wrath for at least one night this week. But my mother wasn’t as lucky, apparently.

  I climbed out of bed, grabbing the baseball bat I had left there after practice that afternoon. I knew that, sooner or later, I would need it.

  I was tired of letting my old man hurt me and my mom. Tired of being scared to so much as sneeze while in the same room with him. I couldn’t tell anyone though—not even my best friends, Sin and Kale. Although they probably guessed. Mom had made me promise not to say a word outside our house about what Dad did to us, but it was past time we stopped taking his crap.

  “No, Johnny. Stop! Please stop,” my mother begged as she cried.

  That wasn’t like her. She always cried but just took the beatings. Even when I was younger, I had always wondered why. Why would she let someone who was supposed to love her hurt her?

  Why would she let him hurt me?

  Part of me hated her for it, and I had even thought about running away. So many times, I had packed my backpack with everything I needed and started to climb out my window, but I could never bring myself to go through with it.

  Because Mom needed me. Even though she let him hit us, she loved me. And I loved her too.

  “You disrespectful cow! You can’t do anything right,” my father shouted at her in his usual slurred voice. He must have hit the whiskey as soon as he’d walked through the door tonight. Maybe even stopped at Joey’s, a bar he went to on Fridays near his work. He always came home smelling like beer and perfume that wasn’t my mother’s on Fridays.

  But today was Wednesday. But the day of the week had never really mattered to him anyway. Every day was booze-day to him.

  “I’m sorry, Johnny!” Mom sobbed as I got closer to the kitchen. “Please, just don’t hit me again. Ah!” she screamed, and I heard the kitchen table scraping across the floor and knew without having to look he had thrown her against it. “Johnny, you’ll wake Grayson.”

  “That ungrateful little bastard doesn’t deserve to sleep. I’ll deal with him when I’m done with you,” he snarled. “He isn’t even my son, you whore. Can’t stop spreading your legs for every man who looks at you.”

  My fingers tightened around the bat as I pushed the kitchen door open. The picture in front of me seemed to melt into the back of my mind. Mom on the floor, holding her stomach, her face bleeding. Blood was gushing from her nose, which was broken. Just like he had broken it two years ago. Her eye was already starting to swell, the same one that was only just starting to heal after the last time he had backhanded her. But I was used to seeing her like this, cowering from him as he lifted his belt over his head and hit her again.

  What stopped me, what scared me so badly that I froze up for a minute, was the gun in my father’s hand.

  “Who’s his father?” he roared. “Is it the same bastard who fucking put this baby in your stomach? Tell me!”

  “You’re the father, Johnny,” Mom sobbed. “You’re Grayson’s daddy, and this one’s too. He looks just like you.” Her shaking hands touched her belly. “I swear it, honey. I l-love you. O-only you.”

  “Lying whore!” he raged and slapped the belt across her legs and then her face.

  The welt that rose on Mom’s face was enough to unlock my muscles. “Stop!” I yelled at him, tightening my fingers around the bat and stepping farther into the kitchen so he could see me. “Leave my mom alone!”

  “Grayson,” Mom whispered, but I could still hear her. “Oh, God. Go to your room. Lock the door. Go!”

  “No,” I snapped at her, not taking my gaze off my dad long enough to look at her. He was still pointing the gun at her, but his bloodshot eyes were on me. “I’m through with letting him hurt us, Mom.”

  “What are you going to do, you sniveling little brat?” His smile was mocking, as if he were actually daring me to do something. “You gonna hit me? Come on, then, boy. Hit me one good time.” He laughed, and the sound froze my insides. “But you better make it count, because when I get done with you, I’m going to kill you and your whore mother.”

  “No!” Mom cried. “Grayson, don’t.”

  I didn’t understand her. Why wouldn’t she want me to protect her? It only made me madder.

  “Shut up, woman!” Dad bellowed, waving the gun at her. “I’ve had enough of you.”

  “Johnny,” she sobbed. “Please.”

  “Please,” he mimicked her in a high, nasally voice. “Did you beg like that when you had your lover between your legs? Did you cry for him to stop when he was putting another bastard in your belly?”

  “No, Johnny. No. I swear. There isn’t anyone else. Only you.”

  “Liar!” he roared, but his hands were shaking worse than my mother’s. “You only want my money. Not me. Never me.”

  “No, Johnny. It’s you. I love you.”

  “Stop…”

  The echoing of the sound of the gun going off filled the room, making me jump and my mother scream in fear and pain.

  “…lying!”

  I was so scared, that it took me a second to realize what had just happened. My gaze went to my mother, who was no longer crying. She was on her back, her hand still over her stomach, but blood was gushing out of her chest, pooling around her in a halo of dark red. Her eyes w
ere wide open, but they had a blankness to them, as if she saw nothing.

  As if she were dead.

  No, a voice in the back of my head whimpered.

  Rage quickly pushed that little, whiny voice down, and I turned my gaze back to the man who had just killed my mother. Dad just stood there, as if realizing he had actually shot her and couldn’t believe it. But then he quickly recovered and turned the gun on me. His hand was shaking so badly that he nearly dropped it.

  “You killed my mom,” I whispered. A feeling of loss pierced through my heart, and I had to blink back a mixture of tears and rage, my hands tightening so hard around the bat that my fingers hurt. “You killed my mom!” My voice was louder this time as the pain and the anger tried to consume me.

  I felt like the Hulk in one of those Marvel movies, unable to control what was going through me. My vision narrowed until all I could see was my father, who was saying something, but the blood rushing through my ears drowned his voice out.

  “You killed my mom!” I screamed and charged at him. “You killed her.”

  He stumbled backwards, surprised that I was standing up to him for the first time in my life, his hold on the gun tightening.

  The gun went off for the second time, then a third, but I wasn’t scared of the sound this time. His aim was off and the bullets hit something behind me just as the bat connected with his shoulder. He fell to the ground, his face a mask of fear and pain. That same look had been on my mother’s face, probably on my own for my entire life.

  Never again.

  I lifted the bat over my head and swung again. It hit his leg. The bat connected with so much force that my arms ached, but I welcomed the pain when my dad screamed in agony again. I swung it again, hitting him in the head. The bat cracked in my hands, a huge splinter breaking off and hitting the floor, but it had done its purpose. Dad fell back on the floor, blood oozing from the gash I had left on the side of his head.

  Only when he was lying unconscious on the floor did I drop the bat. I kicked him in the gut once, twice, a third time, but my rage was quickly evaporating. “You killed my mom,” I whispered one last time before forcing myself to turn away from him.

  Tears blinded me as I crossed to where my mom was lying lifelessly on the floor. I fell to my knees beside her and grabbed her hand, the one she was still protectively holding over her stomach.

  I didn’t move when the police broke the door down. I didn’t speak when they asked what had happened. I couldn’t breathe.

  My mom, the only person who had ever loved me, was gone.

  ***

  With a jerk, I shot upright in bed, wiping sweat and tears from my eyes. My heart was pounding against my ribs, the blood rushing through my ears so loudly that it was impossible to hear anything else for a few seconds. I shot my gaze around the room, realizing only after a few seconds that I wasn’t home, but in the new room my aunt had given me in her house.

  Slowly, the fear and rage and loss disappeared, leaving me almost shivering with the aftereffects, and I fell back against my pillows, knowing I wasn’t going to go back to sleep. Just as I hadn’t slept the night before or the one before that.

  The last few days had been long and difficult. The cops had shown up at my house not long after the second shot had gone off. The neighbors had called them for once. In no time, they had taken my mother’s body away and handcuffed my still unconscious father before loading him into the back of an ambulance to take to the hospital, and then had taken me down to the police station for questioning.

  I hadn’t talked. Not to the cops or anyone else. So they had called my aunt, the woman I hadn’t seen since I was five because my father had forbidden Mom from having contact with her. He had said that it was because she was jealous of his money, but even then, I had known the truth. He was scared of her. Of what she could do to him if she ever found out he was hurting us.

  As soon as she had walked through the door, Alicia St. Charles had taken charge and made everyone in the police station jump if she so much as looked at them wrong. She was some hot-shot assistant district attorney or something, and everyone had whispered that she was a ballbreaker.

  From there, things had happened pretty quickly. I was taken to the hospital to be looked over. I had the full works, even a few x-rays because I had blood on me. It was my mom’s blood, maybe even a little of my dad’s too, but I still hadn’t talked, so they didn’t know that. The x-rays only showed the few breaks I had gotten over the years, the ones my old man had inflicted.

  That only made Alicia angrier. I had to spend the night in the hospital for observation, but I figured that it was because they thought I was going to snap and start hurting people with bats again.

  “You’re safe now, Grayson,” Alicia promised me as she sat beside my hospital bed that night. “I promise you that your dad is going to go away for a very long time.”

  “Don’t tell anyone,” I finally whispered. “Mom wouldn’t have wanted anyone to know.”

  When her face tightened, she looked just like my mom, and my stomach hurt with how much I missed her. But Alicia gave me a small smile that was oddly reassuring.

  “Don’t worry about that, sweetheart. I’ll keep it as quiet as I can. And you don’t have to tell anyone unless you want to.”

  “Thanks,” I whispered and then clammed up again. I had no words.

  Now that the rage had calmed down and the fear was gone, another emotion swirled around inside me.

  Guilt. It was slowly killing me that I hadn’t saved my mom.

  But there was something else. Something I had no idea what to call. It was eating a hole in my stomach, and no matter what I did, it just wouldn’t go away. It scared me, but in a different way than how I had been scared of my dad. It made me scared of … me.

  The sound of a door opening had my head snapping in that direction. I sucked in a sharp breath when a little ghostlike figure tiptoed into my new bedroom. From the glow of the moon through the window, I saw long, blond hair and a beautiful little face. She was wearing a long, white nightgown and holding a stuffed bunny close with one arm while carrying a bowl of something in her other hand.

  Kassa.

  Alicia had adopted her and her brother, Jace. She was only seven, and her brother was eleven. I had seen him around school but had never talked to him since he was in a grade below me. They hadn’t been at my mother’s funeral that afternoon, but I was glad for that. I didn’t want anyone to know the truth about my mom and dad. Didn’t want them to think I could turn into a monster just like my old man—even though that was what I was afraid of.

  As soon as I set eyes on the little girl, she smiled so trustingly up at me. It felt like something inside me was being calmed. I didn’t understand it, but after the craziness of the past week, I kind of liked it. That fear I had of myself—it wasn’t there when she smiled at me like that.

  “Grayson?” Kassa’s soft voice called out to me as she slowly crossed to my bed. “Are you awake?”

  “I’m awake. What are you doing, little girl? You should be asleep.”

  She reached my bed and pushed the bowl into my hands before climbing in beside me without even asking. Her feet were ice cold when she pushed them under my covers and pressed them to my leg.

  “I’m hungry,” she whispered. “Let’s have a snack.” After taking the bowl back, she placed it between us and pulled out two strawberries. “My favorite,” she said with a sigh as she gave me one then bit into her own.

  I wasn’t hungry, but I ate the strawberry to make her happy. In the dim glow of the moonlight, she beamed at me then munched down on another piece of fruit.

  For the next few minutes, she quietly ate her snack beside me and offered me a piece every so often. All I could do was sit there and watch her, feeling slightly amused at how hungrily she ate her fruit. She reminded me of the caterpillar I had kept for a school project when I was in the third grade. The way it would eat everything given to it so it could prepare to make its cocoon. It
was cute.

  When her bowl was empty, she placed it on the nightstand. Then she scooted down on the bed and put her head on one of my pillows.

  “You can’t sleep here, little caterpillar.” I nudged her with my foot. “You have your own bed.”

  “Your bed is more comfy,” she said in her sweet voice.

  “Kassa—”

  “Are you sad?” she interrupted me as she wiggled around under the covers.

  “Yes,” I surprised myself by admitting.

  “You must miss your mom a lot.” She yawned and turned onto her side, facing me. “I don’t remember my mom. Jace says she loved to party more than she loved us. I don’t know what that means, but that’s okay, because I love him, and Alicia loves us.” She took my hand and tucked it under her cheek, closing her eyes. “I love you, too.”

  I wanted to ask her how. How could she love me? She had just met me. She didn’t know what I had done. That I had beaten a man unconscious because I’d been so mad that I couldn’t see. She was so sweet, so kind. I didn’t want to steal that from her.

  “Goodnight, Grayson.”

  “Gray,” I muttered and moved so that I was lying beside her, my hand still tucked under her cheek. I should have made her go back to her room, but I couldn’t make her.

  “Night, Gray.”

  “Goodnight, little caterpillar.” I closed my eyes.

  I slept through the night for the first time since my mom had died.

  TWO

  Kassa

  Gray age 14

  Kassa age 9

  I pulled the edge of the container on my lunch back and grimaced when I saw that Jace had packed me peanut butter and jelly again. I loved my brother, but when it was his turn to make our lunches, he got lazy, slapped a little peanut butter on with a huge glob of grape jelly and then smashed the bread together before tossing it into a storage container with whatever else was closest to him at the time.

  Today, along with the messy sandwich, was a small bag of plain chips, a cookie that had gotten crumbled by the apple he had tossed on top, and a small bottle of water.