The Princess of Chaos

by Candice M. Wright

  “But then she died,” Grim adds, walking over with the torch in his hand.

  “Fucking Wanda pushed things too far. I was so busy stepping up as president that I didn’t notice. By the time I realized Melly was dead, it was too late to do anything.”

  I look at Zero in confusion before taking in Grim, who seems just as lost.

  “What did Wanda have to do with Melly’s death? She shot herself,” I tell him something he already knows but when a grin spreads over his face I feel the hairs on my arms stand up on end.

  “Did she?” he asks.

  Grim turns the torch on and presses it against the heel of Rock’s foot, causing him to bellow in pain.

  “Always with the torch,” Zero mutters.

  I smile in spite of myself.

  “Nothing like the smell of crispy fried traitor to wake you up in the morning,” Gage quips from the other side of the room.

  “I’m not a fucking traitor. Everything I did was for this club,” Rock yells, delusional.

  The asshat probably even believes his own bullshit.

  “What happened to Melly?”

  “She killed Crogan. The penalty for that should have been death but she was pregnant and Wanda wanted that fucking kid. I never could tell that stupid woman no.”

  “Holy fuck. You were in love with Wanda,” Halo curses, coming to the same conclusion I just did. I turn and glare at the asshole. Silence from the peanut gallery would be nice.

  “It didn’t matter. She only had eyes for John. Even when he was out of the picture, she just couldn’t let that piece of shit go.” Something occurs to me while he speaks, something that’s blindingly obvious now that the facts are in.

  “Melly didn’t kill John,” I speak out, thinking back on his words about how Melly had shot Crogan and should die. He never mentioned John.

  “You told everyone she killed herself and used her as a patsy.”

  “Shit,” Gage spits, knowing, I’m betting, how much Orion and Diesel are going to be pissed.

  “He didn’t deserve her and he was running this club into the ground. I stepped up and made the hard choice.”

  “Oh, spare me. You wanted the keys to the kingdom, the crown, and the queen by your side but you found out the hard way that not all that glitters is gold.”

  He carries on talking, my words not penetrating his unstable brain at all. “Wanda kept Melly locked up in the basement of her house. When she went into labor, she took the kid and kept him for herself. Wanda lived to taunt Melly with him every chance she got until eventually, Melly went to sleep and didn’t wake up. I didn’t know she was dead until Wanda came ranting to me about what the fuck was she was going to do with the kid now. As you know, she eventually sent him away to school. Out of sight out of mind.”

  “You didn’t answer my question about who this land belongs to now,” I remind him as Grim switches the torch back on and presses it to the bottom of Rock’s other foot.

  His screams are like music to my ears. When he looks like he’s on the verge of passing out, I signal for Grim to stop.

  “Tell me,” I order.

  “Megan. It’s Megan’s land,” Rock gasps out in pain.

  “Fuck.” She spent two years on the street when all of this was hers. “Does she know?”

  “I didn’t think so. I watched her for two years sleeping in doorways and dumpster diving for food. I figured if she knew, she’d have claimed what was hers and have us all kicked out.”

  Zero walks up to him, pulls back his fist, and smashes it into Rock’s face.

  “You weren’t looking out for her, you were watching to see if she was going to make a move,” Zero spits at him.

  “I had to protect the club,” Rock yells. “She could have taken everything.”

  “She should have. We took everything from her,” Zero tells him with nothing but hatred in his tone. “Why did you give her the money, her inheritance? She didn’t know about it, after all.”

  “A lawyer showed up here the day of her birthday and said she could now access her trust fund. It had nothing to do with Melly’s death. It was old money left to her from her grandparents. I couldn’t access it,” he explains, letting us know he damn well tried. “I figured if I gave it to her she would move on and forget all about the compound. And she did until you guys came back,” he growls.

  “I assumed she didn’t know about this place being hers, but when she told Wanda John had left it to her, I knew Megan had played me. I tracked Wanda’s phone to your mother’s old cabin,” he regales me without remorse. “You were fucking around with your phone, so I stayed in the shadows until I heard gunshots. I figured Wanda had found out she had been tricked and killed Megan. I couldn’t let you hurt Wanda, Viper. You have to understand I loved her…” His voice trails off, his implications clear.

  “So you shot me?”

  “I wasn’t thinking. I just reacted. I carved ‘Carnage’ into your chest so that eyes would be off of us for a beat and we could make a run for it but it didn’t matter anyway.” He looks away as grief coats his features, only for it to quickly be replaced with hate.

  “Wanda didn’t fire the shots. Megan did. She killed the woman I love,” he screams. Good. I’m fucking thrilled.

  “So you hit her.” It’s a statement of fact. I squeeze my fists so hard my hands turn white.

  He shrugs, unremorseful. “I walked up behind her and smashed my gun into the back of her head. She obviously didn’t hear me shoot you or me coming up behind her.” He laughs.

  “The kid just stared at me before fainting or some shit. I tossed him over my shoulder and dragged Megan through the woods to Wanda’s place. It seemed fitting that it should all end there. I tossed her into the basement, grabbed some chloroform Wanda kept there when she wanted to mess with Melly, and placed Conner down there with her. I had nothing against the kid but I couldn’t leave any loose ends.”

  He lifts his head to look at me. “I guess you can see why.”

  I shake my head in revulsion at the man I was once proud of.

  “One thing bothers me though. Why step down as president?” Zero asks, running his fingers over the tools on the table.

  “I wanted to take Wanda and leave, and we were going to, but then you brought Megan here and Wanda just couldn’t let it go.” His head drops forward in defeat. “Just kill me, Viper, and get it over with.”

  “Tut, tut old man,” I tsk, walking toward him like a panther who has his prey in sight.

  “Did you really think it would be that easy? Oh, no, you won’t get an ounce of mercy from me.”

  I look to Grim and then to Zero, who has picked up a power drill and smile my first true smile of the day. “Do your worst but make sure he lives. I think we’ll keep him down here for a while so he knows exactly what it feels like to be trapped and in pain.”

  “You don’t want a shot?” Zero asks, walking over to Rock with the drill.

  “If I touch him, I’ll kill him. He doesn’t deserve the sweet release of death. I’ll give Doc a call and have him on standby. He can patch him up just enough to keep him alive.”

  Zero nods in understanding before pressing the drill against Rock’s kneecap.

  I walk up the steps to the soundtrack of ear-piercing screams and the unmistakable sound of shattering bones.

  When I walk back into the main room, there is a huge smile on my face. If the guys weren’t wary of me from watching the TV screen, my smile soon changes their minds. “Now, if Chaos is in your blood, come and stand beside me. If you can’t handle it, then get the fuck out of my club.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Megan

  I open my eyes, blink and open them again but it didn’t change anything. All I can see is darkness. I try to sit up but something is on me. There is something in my arm that pulls when I yank, before I can feel liquid running down my elbow.

  My brain dimly makes the connection that I’m lying in a bed but it doesn’t feel like mine. When I feel hands pu
shing me back down, I fight back even though my limbs are too heavy and my movements are sluggish at best.

  The hands are relentless though. As I feel skin against skin, someone grabs my arm, my brain flashing back to another place and time where there were hands on my skin, darkness, and pain.

  I do the only thing I can. I scream. I scream as loud as I can until a sharp prick on my arm makes me jump. Then everything starts to feel fuzzy. My movements stop because I don’t have the energy to move anymore.

  Maybe I should just go to sleep again. Maybe this is all just a nightmare that I need to wake up from.

  The next time I wake up my head is clearer. Unfortunately, that means I can feel the pain more acutely. I don’t think there is a part of my body that doesn’t hurt and that includes my hair.

  I open my eyes slowly this time and suck in a quick breath as my new reality sinks in.

  This isn’t some fluke, a sick joke, or even my mind playing tricks on me. I’m still trapped in the darkness. My breathing picks up and even as I recognize the start of a panic attack coming on, there is little I can do to prevent it.

  I jump when I feel hands on my face and try to pull away, but when I feel lips on my forehead I still.

  I know that smell.

  “Zero,” I sob out. He kisses my cheeks, my eyelids, my nose. Letting me know he’s here. It helps but it also hurts like hell too.

  “You should go,” I tell him as tears run down my face.

  He squeezes my hand but doesn’t let go. Probably his way of telling me he isn’t going anywhere.

  “I can’t be your Raven anymore. I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry but I can’t live the rest of my life in the dark. Please don’t ask me to.”

  I feel movement before he climbs onto the bed beside me and wraps his arms around my battered body so carefully it’s as if I were made of glass.

  “I love you. I love you all, but you have to let me go,” I cry him as his hand reaches down to take mine.

  Instead of holding it, he lays his hand over mine with his two middle fingers bent. I try to pull away, but he presses against my palm again, his hand in the same position. Thumb, index, and pinkie finger up and his middle two bent down.

  I gasp when I finally understand what he is trying to tell me and proceed to burst into body-wrecking sobs again—and they are body wrecking. Each twinge of movement feels like a dozen knives digging into my skin and flaying me wide open.

  I focus on his hand and on the message he learned so he could tell me.

  I don’t know if this is the extent of the sign language he knows but if he was ever going to learn anything this was a good way to start.

  He does it again, pushing the symbol he’s made against my palm.

  “I love you too,” I choke out.

  I feel him twist a strand of hair around his finger as I drift off again in his arms, my body beyond weak and tired.

  When I wake up again, he’s gone but there is a rough scarred hand holding mine. I don’t know if it’s one of my guys or someone else so I start to panic, especially when I feel the blanket being pulled away from me but when they lean down and place their face against mine, I can tell it’s Viper from his aftershave. I calm a little until I feel soft hands that don’t belong to him lifting my nightgown.

  “No, get off me. Stop touching me,” I scream, causing Viper to move back. “Nooo… no, Viper, don’t leave me. Make them stop touching me please, please,” I beg him.

  I don’t know what’s happening but the soft hands stop touching me. They get replaced with what I now know are Viper’s hands. I feel him drag something wet up my thighs and between my legs, making me flinch before my brain can catch on. He pauses for a moment before continuing but I can’t stop my tears as my humiliation burns brightly.

  He’s washing me. I’m guessing it was a nurse’s hands I could feel earlier when I freaked out and now Viper has taken over.

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry about our fight and everything I said before. I’m so sorry but, Viper, this was so much more than you signed up for.” I can’t speak anymore. Instead, I close my eyes and will myself to just die already. I don’t want this to be my life from now on.

  I won’t become their burden.

  I don’t speak as he finishes up. I don’t speak when he tucks the blankets over me. In fact, I don’t talk at all anymore, scared that if I open my mouth my wail of despair will escape. Instead, I settle for screaming in my mind until I feel something on the edge of my bed a moment before a pair of small hands are placed on each side of my face.

  “Conner,” I breathe out, my relief that he’s safe overriding everything else.

  “Are you okay?” I ask him. When he taps my shoulder once in yes, a sob erupts from me.

  He hugs me tightly, letting me breathe him in for a moment before I feel a large hand pulling us apart a little. I fight to hold on to him but I realize they aren’t taking him away just sitting him up.

  A large hand taps my shoulder. When I don’t say anything he does it again.

  “I don’t understand,” I tell him, frustrated until Conner taps my shoulder again.

  I gasp. “You want to know how Conner and I are communicating? Tap my shoulder for yes and tug my ear for no.

  One tap on my shoulder tells me I was correct.

  “Okay. Oh, god. I have a million things I need to say. Did you find who hurt us?”

  One tap.

  “Stupid yes no questions means you can’t tell me who,” I growl out, frustrated.

  “I can’t see, Viper. I’m so afraid. I don’t want to live alone in the darkness like my mother did.”

  One tug on my ear.

  “No? No, what? Crap. Hold on, let me think. Are you trying to tell me something? Jesus, I sound like I’m talking to a Ouija board.”

  One tap yes.

  “Is it to do with me not being able to see.”

  One tap.

  I open my mouth to ask him the only thing that matters and snap it shut again, scared beyond belief of what his answer will be, but I have to know.

  “Will I ever be able to see again?” I can feel the tremor in my voice.

  One tap.

  I freeze, sure I must have read that wrong.

  “I’ll see again?”

  One tap.

  “Oh, my god.” I bury my face in my hands and cry. I don’t know how long this will last and I can’t ask but the fact that it’s temporary gives me a flicker of hope.

  “Do you… do you promise? Swear it on my life?” I ask, feeling the tears drip from my chin.

  One tap. And it’s the best thing I’ve ever felt in my life.

  The road to recovery was a long one. There were times I just wanted to lie down and give up but my stubbornness had nothing on Grim’s, Viper’s, and Zero’s determination to get me well again.

  When days turned into weeks with only occasional flickers of light and shadows, I started to believe they had lied about my prognosis. Until one morning, months later, I woke up and right there in front of me was Grim’s sleeping face.

  My strangled gasp must have woken him because his eyes flicked over me before he pulled me close and tucked me beneath his chin.

  “Why do you have a black eye?” I ask him quietly, swallowing down a wave of emotion as I look up at his face.

  He answers me with his eyes closed out of habit I guess, making me wonder how many times he has spoken to me over the last endless amount of weeks before remembering I couldn’t hear or see his words.

  “Sparring with Zero yesterday. I was distracted thinking about your ass in those yoga pants,” he tells me before his eyes pop open and all sleep disappears from his face.

  “You can see me?” he questions.

  “I can see you,” I confirm with a sob before I find myself once more crushed against his chest.

  Hands-on my hips have me turning my head to look behind me. Viper’s dark eyes stare back at me like unfathomable pools of emotion. “I’m sorry, so fucking sorry. I’ve be
en waiting for you to look at me with those big blue eyes of yours so I could say that. I love you. I only set you free so you would, hopefully, chose to stay. Turns out I’m not great with words,” he says somewhat bashfully, making me laugh.

  The look on his face would bring me to my knees if I wasn’t sandwiched between the two of them in bed.

  “I overreacted. I’m sorry too,” I tell him, running my hand along the scruff of his jaw. “It’s so good to see you.” My eyes blur with unshed tears but this time the happy kind. “I have so much I want to ask you. I’ve missed so much.”

  He pushes me onto my back and climbs on top of me.

  “I’ll tell you anything you want to know but first I need to fuck you. I want your pretty little eyes on me the whole time okay?”

  My pussy spasms at his words.

  “Okay, Viper,” I whisper.

  He dips his head and sucks a nipple into his mouth, making me gasp with pleasure. The guys had stopped putting nightclothes on me as they inevitably ended up on the floor. I had missed a lot of things being trapped in the dark but sex wasn’t one of them.

  Once I was healed, all of them looked for any excuse to touch me. It was the only thing that kept me connected and fed my bond with them. They anchored me in place when I felt like crawling out of my skin and as the touching turned to more, I yearned for those moments when they brought me such exquisite pleasure that I swear for brief moments I saw stars in my darkness.

  I turn my head to Grim, who leans over and takes my lips in a hot kiss that speaks promises of the dirty things to come.

  At this point, I think they know my body better than I do myself.

  There had been an element of recklessness, a taboo almost, to making love with them when I didn’t know what they were going to do to me or when. It was like being permanently blindfolded while being seduced by three scorching hot guys who had become my whole world.

  Viper’s hand slides down between my folds finding me slick and needy. He smiles at me before lining up his hard cock and pushing inside. Grim dips his head to work on my breasts, one of his hands balancing him while he slides the other up and down his cock. I grip Grim’s hair with my hand, holding him in place as I gaze up at Viper and bite my lip.