by Leah Wilde
“I can walk myself, thank you,” I snapped. “Where the hell are we going anyway?”
“You’ll see,” he said as he led me through the bar to an unmarked door in the back. He produced a key from his jacket pocket and unlocked the door before opening it and standing aside to let me in.
Sure enough, Titus sat at a small desk next to a filing cabinet that reached the ceiling. The cramped little office looked like the kind of place where someone sat to cook the books after hours. There was another man just like the one outside standing in the corner. Was he cloning these people?
“Please, Rogue, have a seat,” Titus said, gesturing to the chair in front of him.
I already knew what this was about. There were only two things it could have been anyway, and chances were, it was about both of them. This was my formal welcoming back from prison and the rundown on attempting to date his little sister.
“Hey, Titus, old friend. How long has it been, man? Five years?” I asked, trying to break the ice with a little sarcasm.
“Should have been longer, but those pansies at the prison decided they would let you out on good behavior. You must have wanted out pretty badly to behave well. I didn’t think you had an ounce of good behavior in you,” he said.
“Well, then, you should know I used every bit of it I had behind bars. So if I were you right now, Titus, I’d be watching my ass,” I threatened him.
“You don’t threaten me, boy.” He laughed. “Which brings me to what else I wanted to talk to you about anyway. I hear you’re seeing my little sister.” His tone was threatening.
“Yeah, she’s a sweet girl, isn’t she?” I asked, unable to resist the opportunity to poke the bear.
“Stay the fuck away from her,” he said flatly.
“Whoa, hey, I didn’t know who she was when I saw her in the card shop, Titus. I didn’t find out she was your sister until after our first date,” I told him.
“You’re lying, Rogue. You don’t ever do anything by accident. I know you. Besides, what the hell were you doing in a card shop anyway if not to hook up with my little sister?” he asked.
“I was looking for a thank you card for the guys in the MC. They prepared a really nice welcome for me when I came back, so I thought they deserved something nice,” I taunted him.
“You’re so full of shit,” he said, shaking his head. He couldn’t help but laugh at my attempt to bullshit him.
“Hey, but seriously, she’s a good girl, man. You’re really lucky to have such a beautiful, trusting, naïve little sister who has no idea what her big brother is really up to,” I told him.
“And she’ll never find out what I’m up to. She’ll never know the things I’ve had to do to take care of her, Rogue. And if you go near her again, I’ll have your ass back in prison for violating your parole so fast your head will spin,” he threatened me.
“Understand, Titus, I’ve already been working on that sweet little virgin sister of yours. If you try anything, I’ll take her virginity and ruin her for every man after me. I will crush her and toss her aside like a broken little toy before you can do anything about it,” I told him, and it felt so good to talk about sleeping with his sister. I could feel myself growing hard just thinking about it, and the damage it would cause was just an added bonus.
“You keep your filthy hands off of her,” he growled from behind his desk.
“No, I don’t think I will. In fact, Titus, I think a piece of your sister is exactly what I deserve for the way you set me up five years ago with your little fake meeting at the pawn shop.” I looked into his eyes as I spoke. I honestly expected to see humor at the mention of how he’d screwed me over. I expected him to look pleased with himself, but he didn’t. He just looked angry.
“That’s old news, friend,” he said ironically. “There’s no need to bring that up, but rest assured, you touch her and what I’m going to do to you will be worse than what happened to your friend Mike.”
“After what I do to her, you won’t be able to touch me.” I coupled my threat with a smug little smile, knowing I was liable to set him off at any time.
Titus launched himself over his desk at me but before he could take a swing or anything, his security guard clone stuck an arm out to stop him.
“Sir, don’t,” the man in the suit said. “Not here.”
“Listen to your boy, Titus,” I told him, standing up from the chair and straightening my vest. “You don’t want to start something you can’t finish. Oh wait, you already have, but don’t worry, I’m almost finished with your little sister. It’s only a matter of time before she begs me to fuck her, and I’m going to give it to her every way I can imagine before I turn her loose and send her running back to her big brother crying that her big bad biker broke her poor little heart.”
Titus was seething with anger. If his security guard hadn’t been there, I would have been forced to hurt that poor man.
“I will end you,” Titus threatened as I stepped toward the door.
“You had your chance, Titus,” I told him. “Now it’s my turn, and you can’t stop me.”
I walked out of the room and left him in there, probably still fuming against the solid arm of his own man holding him back. He was so pathetic. If I hadn’t known any better, I would have thought he was going soft or something.
I stopped by the bar and called the bar tender over.
“What’s up, brother?” he asked, looking away while we talked. He worked for somebody. Innocent people didn’t act like that when they talked to me. He was dirty somehow, or he wanted to be.
“Hey, you know that old fire station a couple of blocks over?” I asked him.
“Yeah, the one The Hellions use as their headquarters, right?” he answered.
“That’s the one. Hold onto my card tonight. Let those ladies keep drinking on it. If they ask, tell them Rogue from The Hellions paid for their drinks. Got it?”
“Got it, boss,” he said.
“And tomorrow, or whenever you get a chance, drop the card by the clubhouse, man. Come in, and I can make sure you get tipped for tonight, alright?” I tapped the bar as I walked off.
“Have a good night, man,” he said, looking up at me for the first time.
I was going home unfulfilled and a little dissatisfied with myself for the way I talked to Titus about his sister. I was starting to feel really guilty about the way I was using her to get to him. As it was turning out, I didn’t even have to sleep with her to get under his skin. It was eating him alive already that we were even seeing each other.
On the ride home, I thought a lot about what was on the horizon for both the MC and my relationship with Violet. There seemed to be a couple of big next steps coming up. I was going to try to take Violet to the next level as soon as I could, as long as things with her brother didn’t get in the way first. And finishing things with Titus was the next step for the MC. We had to make a move, and soon, if we wanted to put an end to everything.
I knew I wanted to go to the next level with Violet no matter what, but I didn’t know if I wanted to carry through with the original plan anymore. I didn’t know if I wanted to throw her away after having sex with her.
I was starting to get attached to her. She seemed so eager to experience new things and expand her horizons that I sort of wanted to take her under my wing and let her explore herself under my guidance. In other words, I was starting to understand what so many other guys found attractive about these young, innocent types like her. There was something intoxicating about a girl who could be taught and trained.
I needed to decide before everything came to a head. If I was still going to break her heart, I needed to go ahead and do it to push Titus over the edge. He was primed to do something stupid and get himself killed. He just needed that last little push. If I wasn’t going to go through with it, I needed to figure out how we were going to handle Titus without damaging his little sister.
I drove around for hours thinking everything over, going over every possible outc
ome I could imagine, before winding up back at the old firehouse. I pulled the bike in through the bay door and closed it again behind me. I decided it would probably be best to stay at HQ for the night since there was so much going on. I’d call a meeting the following afternoon and see where we were on the whole Titus situation.
It was time to decide what my next move was going to be.
Chapter 8
Violet
I was surprised when I woke up in the morning to find a missed call and voicemail notification on my phone. I pulled my phone off the charger and swiped the screen to unlock it.
“You were so wrong, Titus,” I said to myself. I couldn’t help the smile spread across my face, but it faded as soon as I saw that the missed call was not from Rogue, as I had hoped.
It was from Titus, which meant that the voicemail was probably from him as well. I sighed and rolled my eyes as I put my phone back on my nightstand. I thought about deleting the voicemail message without listening to it, but it would have been just my luck that it would have actually been important for once.
I groaned as I got out of bed. He was the last person I wanted to hear from, especially since he was probably just rubbing it in that he was right about Rogue. I tried to keep my mind off of Rogue while I got myself together, but I couldn’t.
I had been trying to accept the fact that he only seemed to call me when he wanted or needed me, but it still stung every time I looked at my phone hoping to find a text, a call, or something from him. All I wanted was something to let me know he was thinking about me as much as I was thinking about him.
It was tough trying to make it through my mundane existence when there was someone so entrancing and amazing in my life, who never called me. I was torn between accepting the limited communication as proof that my brother was right and just shrugging it off because he had a reputation, an image, to uphold. I told myself it was the tough-guy image that kept him from calling me every time he thought about me. That same image was part of why I was so attracted to him in the first place, so I couldn’t be that mad when it kept him from being able to just dote on me.
I picked the phone back up a little while later. The light was still flashing, reminding me that my brother had called and had left me a message. I sighed as I tapped the voicemail icon to listen to what he had to say when he had called me at stupid o’clock in the morning.
“Violet, I know you think I’m just being an asshole about this, but Rogue is not who you think he is. I hope you’ve taken our conversation to heart, because if I catch him near you, there will be hell to pay, for both of you. You’re my little sister, and I love you. I am not going to sit back and watch you get mixed up with the wrong crowd. If you really want to get out and meet people, let me know. I’ll set something up with one of my guys so you can go to a nice club and meet some nice guys. He’ll make sure you don’t get messed with. Call me if you want me to set it up. Otherwise, stay away from the trash.”
He was right: I did know that he was just looking out for me, but I still wondered why he didn’t like Rogue so much. And I still believed he was wrong. No matter what, I knew that Rogue was going to pull through for me and prove Titus wrong.
I deleted the message and set the phone down. I had been letting Titus run my life for so long. At first, it had been because he was my older brother, and he was incredibly successful. Growing up, I had looked up to him. That admiration had eventually turned into letting him call the shots.
“I’m calling the shots,” I said with my eyes closed, trying to convince myself that I wasn’t going to let his strange notions about Rogue keep me from seeing him again. Of course, that was assuming Rogue wanted to see me. I had my doubts. He certainly was acting like someone who just wanted to get into my pants or to get close to me so he could use me against my brother.
Oh, my dear brother! I looked around the apartment he paid for and wondered how things had gotten to the point that I took dating advice from him. Dammit, I was an adult. I was no longer the little kid he had dropped off at our grandmother’s house all those years ago after our parents died in that mysterious accident. I had been ten years old at the time. I didn’t understand why I couldn’t have gone with my big brother to the big city.
He had insisted that I needed to stay with our grandmother so I could stay in school. Over the next few years, during the few times I saw him, he had always asked about my grades. Even then, he sort of became a father figure to me.
He bought me my first car. He helped me apply for colleges, and probably even helped me get accepted by certain ones. I always felt like it had been fate that I had been accepted by the university right by where he lived. I had jumped at the opportunity, of course, to go to school right up the street from my brother.
Then, our grandmother died, and after that, he’d helped sort out her belongings. When we came back after the funeral, he moved me out of the dorms into my own apartment. It was like he’d said, there was nowhere for me to go if I went back to that little hell hole town.
My big brother, looking out for me every step of the way.
And what did I major in while I was in college? Business. I was going to go into business just like my big brother. I had been trying to follow in his footsteps for so long I didn’t even know how to do things on my own. That included dating, apparently.
“Well, this time it’s going to be different,” I said to my empty apartment, trying to convince myself that I wasn’t going to let my brother continue to control my dating decisions. I wasn’t going to let him be right about Rogue, even if it turned out that he was. As I dressed for work and hurried out the door with no new messages on my phone, I knew I had to convince myself first.
As the day moved sluggishly by, I heard my brother’s words echoing in my head from the night before and from that voicemail he’d left early in the morning. Every time I checked my phone and didn’t find any messages or missed calls, his voice just got louder.
He’s bad news.
He’s no good for you.
He’s a one percenter.
He’s just using you.
I must have checked my phone a hundred times that afternoon at work, expecting a call or a text, just something to show me that Titus was wrong about Rogue. But there was never anything from him. Just when I thought things were starting to pick up and really move in the right direction, my brother had stepped in to try to ruin them. And to top it off, Rogue wasn’t helping by not reaching out to me.
Titus was also the only person I had to talk to about this sort of thing. There was no one else to call. I didn’t have any friends. I sure as hell couldn’t call my brother and bitch to him about how Rogue was acting like a jerk by not calling me. He would have been happy about it. He would have been glad that Rogue and I were done already. That was what he wanted, after all.
What about what I wanted? Didn’t that matter to either one of them?
“It’ll be alright, dear,” an elderly lady said from across the counter, like she’d been reading my thoughts.
“Oh, I’m sorry.” I stood back upright from leaning on the counter. I blushed because I had no idea how long I’d been standing there, completely zoned out, while this little old lady wanted to buy a greeting card. “Were you able to find what you were looking for?” I asked her.
“Oh, yes, you certainly have a swell selection of cards here,” she said in a feeble, creaking voice. She sounded like everyone’s grandmother, the lady who baked cookies for every occasion and would have even offered to feed someone who had just broken into her house if she thought they hadn’t eaten.
“I’m so sorry I zoned out. I guess I’ve got a lot on my mind,” I told her as I rang her up. I tried to laugh it off but it came out as a nervous, awkward sound.
“Oh, don’t worry about it, dear,” she said kindly. “I’m sure he’ll call or bring you flowers or something. If he’s worth that kind of worry, he’ll put your mind and heart at ease soon enough.”
Her advice shocked m
e. “How do you know I’m thinking about a boy?” I asked her.
“Because that’s the look everyone gets when they’re falling in love and they’re not sure if the other one feels the same way,” she said.
After she paid me and hobbled out of the store, I stood and stared at the door. That was the thing about working in retail that always got me. Sometimes a customer would come in and be my best friend for about five minutes, but then they were gone, often for good. We rarely had any repeat customers. It wasn’t like the gas station, where the same people would come in at pretty much the same time every day.
I checked my phone again, but instead of hearing my brother’s voice that time, I heard the cute old lady reminding me that he would come through. I had faith in Rogue, and I had no idea why. Maybe it was because I wanted him to be the guy I thought he was. I wanted him to prove Titus wrong.