“There’s not a lot to know about me.”
“You’re part of an MC, and that’s cool.”
“Not really. We’re a bunch of men who share a couple of interests.”
“Those interests brought you to my life.”
He sighed. “That’s true. I don’t have a family. I was found on a shop doorstep, thrown into foster care from a baby.”
“You weren’t adopted?”
“I was adopted, but it would seem that the people who wanted me, didn’t want my bad attitude. I was a kid that had issues.” Russ kept his gaze on hers. “I didn’t let foster care shape who I am now. I’m a fighter, and I can see you are as well.”
“Karen, too. She fought the system just like us.” She gave him a smile, and his gut tightened.
Did she have any idea how beautiful she looked?
“So, this is my and Karen’s home, or it’s mine, now, I guess.”
He looked around the living space, and noticed how clean it was. There was very little furniture. They had bean bags around a small table, and small patches of carpet made up the floor.
The floor that wasn’t carpeted had been painted, and looked nice. The walls were washed and painted, and he moved toward the windows to see they were also painted.
“Sorry about the lack of furniture. We wanted to save every cent we earned for a shop, or a small business.”
“A small business?”
“When we were taken, we had been to see a property that we thought could be the future for us.”
“Did you know what you were going to do?”
“No. We had ideas. We always had a lot of ideas, but we didn’t exactly know how we were going to implement them.”
“You can still do that now,” he said. He wanted her to have her dream.
Anna shook her head.
“The money that we had saved up for our venture I put into her funeral. Will you be coming to the funeral?”
“Yes. I wouldn’t miss it.” He spotted several pictures across the walls. They weren’t in picture frames, and they were printed on paper. “What’s this?”
“We had a cell phone that took pictures. The library a few blocks away printed them for a small fee.”
“You were always saving money.”
“Nothing wrong with that. We loved our little life. We were both happy.”
Russ looked at a picture of Anna on her own. In every other photograph Karen was there with Anna, or on her own. There was a single picture of Anna alone, and she was sitting on a wall. Her hair was shorter and fell around her body. The sun was setting behind her, and she looked blissfully happy.
The shot captured so much, just like the woman.
Anna was a mixture of innocence, pleasure, pain, knowledge that was beyond her years. She had paved a way of life for herself, and her friend.
The woman who was invading his entire world was a strong woman.
“Can I take some of the pictures with me?” she asked.
“Yes, you can take all of them.”
He watched as she started to take them down from the walls. The way she took care had a lump forming in his throat. In a week they were going to be putting her friend to rest, and she wasn’t ready. He knew that.
Russ went to the kitchen and checked inside the refrigerator. He wasn’t surprised to see processed cheese and spoiled milk waiting for them. Opening a cupboard, he found a stash of their noodles.
He’d not lived a day to day life for so long.
His billion dollar company guaranteed his luxurious lifestyle. In that moment he thought about Tina, the club whore at the club. Did she ever live like this?
Knowing Anna lived like this made him so damn angry, and yet when he thought about Tina, it didn’t bother him. He walked into her bedroom, and knew it was hers because there were pictures of Karen within the room. Not scary, threatening pictures, but ones to show Anna loved her as a sister.
Opening up drawers, he gathered her things together, finding a ratty old bag to place them in. Seconds passed, and Anna walked in, holding the crutches and the photos.
“Hey,” she said.
“I’ve got most of your things packed away in a bag.”
“Well, the apartment is paid two months in advance so it’ll give me time to find somewhere else.”
He didn’t have any intention of her coming back here, but he wasn’t about to tell her that. She was skittish as it was.
“We all set?”
“Yes. We are.”
Chapter Six
One week later
On the day of Karen’s funeral, Anna couldn’t stop shaking. She was so tired, as she hadn’t slept at all in the large bed that was hers for the next couple of weeks. Russ had told her that he didn’t want any arguments. The bed was hers, and she wouldn’t be leaving his apartment for a good couple of weeks.