Cash: The Black Cobras MC #2

by Rylan, Savannah

  * * *

  I’d fallen asleep at some point when I heard the key turning in the lock on the door. I was startled awake, squealing out in pain when I struggled to get my hands out of the binds. For a few moments there, I’d forgotten where I was and what was happening to me.

  Then I heard those dreaded footsteps. Boots crunching on a cold wet ground as a man descended down the stairs. I tried to crawl back and roll myself into a defensive ball in the corner of the bed. I was afraid of what could happen next. I was afraid for my baby.

  I could feel the presence of someone in the room with me now, even though he hadn’t spoken a word yet. I could hear the heavy breathing.

  A switch was turned on and suddenly, the dark dingy cellar was flooded with light. I saw the man standing there, just a few feet from me. I was breathing just as heavily as him, wheezing now with fear and panic.

  I recognized the man as one of the men in the truck who had brought me here. He was bald with a ginger beard and had a perpetual smirk on his face. At least he wasn’t one of the assholes who had assaulted me that night.

  But the way his eyes roamed over me now…didn’t put me at ease either. His gaze traveled down the front of my body, he watched the way my breasts were rising and falling under the skimpy material of my blouse. I could sense him undressing me with his eyes. He was watching me closely, like he was trying to memorize every inch and angle of my body.

  I wished I could get even further from him. I wished I could disappear. I was afraid that he knew about my baby.

  “Don’t worry sweetheart, I’m not here to hurt you,” he said in a deep grating voice. He reached up to stroke his beard, the way he might have stroked his cock. I looked away from him with disgust. I knew what he was thinking.

  “Here, I have something for you that you might like,” he continued, and I forced myself to look at him again. He was pulling out a candy bar from the pocket of his leather jacket. He held it up deviously. He must have been able to see the ravenous hunger and thirst in my eyes.

  I hadn’t eaten anything for hours…it may have been days. My stomach churned just looking at the candy in his hand. I could feel my mouth watering already.

  “Do you want this?” he asked. He was smiling like he was thoroughly enjoying this experience of torturing me. I couldn’t speak, my throat was dry. “I know you want this. You haven’t eaten in over twelve hours. You must be so tired and thirsty you poor thing.”

  I gulped, trying my best to not look desperate. But he was the one in complete control now.

  “I want to give this to you, just because I know how much you want it, but you will have to do something for me first, though. You know how it is. Give and you shall receive.” He let out a light chuckle at the end of that and I gritted my teeth.

  “What do you want?” I asked. My voice sounded hoarse; my throat felt sore from all the screaming.

  He was pulling out his cellphone from the other jacket pocket.

  “I want you to talk to your man, Cash. Tell him you’re alive. That’s it.”

  My man? I wasn’t going to refute him right now. He could think whatever he wanted. It didn’t matter to me. I just wanted to get out of here alive.

  I watched as he dialed a number. My heart was thudding rapidly in my chest. Could it be true? Was it possible that I would actually get to speak to Cash? Would he even want to speak to me?

  “If you say anything more. If you tell him anything about your location, you’re going to have to watch me eating this,” he declared and held up the candy bar. With his other hand, he held the phone out to my ear, stepping even closer to me now. My stomach churned as the phone rang on the other end.

  “Yeah?” It was Cash.

  I felt dizzy for a moment. I couldn’t believe this was happening…that I was speaking to him under these circumstances.

  “Cash…” I murmured his name.

  “Vivian! Fuck! How are you? Where are you?”

  I realized then as Cash’s voice filled the room. That he was on loudspeaker.

  “I’m fine. I’m alive,” I replied, choking on my own words as I tried to hold back my tears. The man with the ginger beard was standing over me and my eyes kept darting to the candy in his other hand.

  “Okay, good, have they done anything to you?” Cash asked and I looked into the man’s eyes.

  “No. Not yet,” I murmured.

  “I’m going to find a way to come get you, okay? Just hold strong. Just a little longer and this will all be over…”

  Before I could reply, the phone was snatched away from my ear and the call ended.

  “Good girl,” the man said and started to unwrap the candy bar. My mouth was embarrassingly salivating already. At the same time, I couldn’t get the thought out of my head that Cash had promised to come and rescue me. Why? Why would he still care? He had to know they were using me as bait. Why was he falling for it, knowingly?

  I couldn’t understand.

  27

  Cash

  The past twelve hours, since Vivian’s abduction—had been a jumble of chaos. Bender had managed to extract the bullet from my thigh and stitch me up, but I was still in pain and limping.

  The rest of the club was still trying to catch up with the situation. None of us knew where she was being held or what was being done to her. We still didn’t know what the Sons of Satan wanted.

  Our only respite right now came in the form of that phone call.

  I knew I had definitely spoken to Vivian. I would have recognized that voice anywhere. It was her and she was alive, and she claimed that she had not been hurt by her captors…yet.

  But we all knew that if they didn’t get what they wanted; they weren’t going to keep treating her as well.

  Communication with the Sons of Satan had been nil so far other than the phone call they had obviously forced Vivian to make. So, we had no way of knowing what they wanted from us.

  All we could do was send some of the prospects out in the field to dig up intel from our contacts. Sniff the ground. Try and find out as much as we could while we waited.

  Waiting was the only thing we could do now. We knew at some point, hopefully soon, somebody from the Sons of Satan was going to get in touch with us and lay out a deal. What was taking them so long?

  Tensions were running high in the clubhouse. The celebration and the low-key merriment that our club had been enjoying the past couple of weeks was on the back burner now. What I predicted and feared had come true. The Sons of Satan were going to wreak their revenge on us. They were already doing it, and it was all my fault. All my fucking fault!

  They’d been following me. I led them right to Vivian. They’d figured out pretty quickly and quite easily that she meant something to me. She wasn’t just some chick I happened to help out when she was in trouble. I actually fucking liked her! I’d led them straight to my liability.

  A phone was ringing somewhere in the clubhouse while I paced around the place aimlessly. Someone would have answered it…it was probably Bones because he came running out to us in the bar.

  “It’s one of the assholes from the Sons of Satan,” he declared, and everyone sat up. I was paying attention too.

  “Lynch wants to meet us. They’ve given me a location and a time.”

  Grimm clapped his hands loudly and rubbed them together.

  “Get the boys ready. Give my brother Rogue a call. We need to have as many men on our side as we can.”

  I was pretty sure we weren’t going to see Vivian today, but this was the least we could do right now. The only thing we could do.

  * * *

  We were going to meet Lynch and his men outside an abandoned warehouse, directions to which had been given in detail to Bones. This time the Sons of Satan weren’t taking any chances, not after the destruction we had caused to their working warehouse.

  Lynch was the new President of the Sons of Satan; someone we had never done any business with before—so none of us had experience in dealing with him.
We only knew him as Crow’s old VP that tried to convince Carli that Rogue was actually bad. The only thing we could do right now was expect the worst from him.

  We rode together to the secret location, prepared for anything and fully armed. If only Vivian knew the lengths me and the rest of my club were willing to go to rescue her, she would have felt more secure in that knowledge. Like Grimm declared, she was our responsibility now. She was only in this position because she was associated with us. We owed it to her to save her.

  Patch and the others might have been speaking to me, discussing some sort of plan but I wasn’t paying attention. Till we got there, the only thing my mind was focused on was seeing her again. Making sure she was safe.

  The Sons of Satan were all armed and lined up in front of the warehouse when we got there in the middle of the night. Headlights from their vans and trucks lined up behind them illuminated us when we got off our bikes and strode towards them.

  Instinctively, we had formed a straight line too when we faced up to them. Grimm was in the center, Rogue and I flanked him on either side. Lynch was standing in front of us now, surrounded by his men who were ready to shoot us down at any moment.

  “You got us where you want us, how may we be of service to you?” Grimm began the conversation that brought a smile to Lynch’s face.

  “You’ve always known exactly how to greet a man,” he directed that at Grimm who wasn’t smiling at him but wasn’t seething with rage the way I was either.

  “Let’s get on with business?” Grimm suggested and Lynch shrugged his shoulders, digging his hands deep into the pockets of his jeans.

  “Fine, be like that, no small talk then. It’s quite simple of course. We have something you want back, and you have something we want.”

  “And what the fuck is it you want this time?” Grimm growled, which only made Lynch’s smile grow wider.

  “A share of your business of course. You see, we are trying to expand and could really do with some investment from you.”

  As much as Lynch was mocking this conversation into making it sound friendly, nothing about this was humorous in any way. They wanted a part of our business and from what I could guess, it was going to be a big part of the business. Not something we could afford to give away to them without suffering a major loss.

  “What do you want exactly? You will have to be more specific than that,” Grimm continued, and Lynch rubbed his hands together like he was about to dig into a delicious meal.

  “Your Mexican contacts, of course.”

  I cursed under my breath, clenching my fists. The Mexican contacts we worked with were our biggest suppliers. If we were forced to give that business away to another club, we would be throwing away our biggest source of income. I didn’t know if our club would survive a blow that big.

  “That is not going to happen,” I spoke up in rage and the attention turned to me.

  “Are you sure you want to say something like that with that much confidence?” Lynch replied and he looked to the side at some of his men. “From the stories I have been hearing, you seem pretty invested in keeping this girl alive.”

  My fists were clenched on my sides. Hearing them talk about Vivian was making my blood boil but I wasn’t about to give in so easily.

  “Make us a reasonable offer we can keep, or we walk away,” I growled. That made Lynch laugh aloud a little.

  “This guy thinks he’s running the show here,” Lynch chuckled at some of the men on his side who laughed along with him. I glanced at Grimm who slowly shook his head, like he was silently trying to tell me to back down.

  “Give us the girl and we’ll start the conversations with our Mexican contacts,” Grimm called out. That caught their attention.

  “Give you the girl? You think I’m an idiot like your boy there?” Lynch said, his shoulders shaking with a fake laugh. He held up a hand and clicked his fingers. “Get her out here.”

  I froze when I heard those words. I didn’t think they were going to be foolish enough to actually bring her here. They had Vivian? Right here?

  There was some commotion in the ranks amongst them as the men started to arrange to bring Vivian out.

  Fuck!

  This could be our chance!

  I glanced at Patch on my other side. I knew he was thinking the same thing I was. This was the mistake the Sons of Satan were making. The mistake that could give us the advantage again.

  Against the harshness of the bright headlights of their trucks, two men were dragging a dainty body out. It was Vivian. I could tell easily. Her hands and feet were bound and there was a rag tied around her mouth. But her eyes were wide open in horror. She could see me. She could see I had come here to help her! I wanted to run to her right then and there and pull her into my arms. But that would be a rookie mistake.

  Lynch was glaring at me.

  The men were holding Vivian there in place, right beside him.

  “You see her? She’s fine. Not a bruise on her yet. Give us the contacts. You fuckers have two days to keep her alive.”

  He gave his men the signal and within minutes of bringing her out, they were dragging her back in towards their trucks again. I watched in boiling rage as they held her tight, as she struggled and screamed in their grasp.

  She obviously had no clue what was going on or what we had planned. She still didn’t trust that I would do everything to save her. For now, all I could do was watch them dragging her to the back of the van and throwing her in. But this was not going to be forever. I wanted her to know that.

  28

  Vivian

  Just a few minutes of ‘freedom’ and now I was back in the darkness of the back of the van again. Just a taste of freedom. And out there, when I saw Cash standing with his club, their weapons drawn and ready to fight…I thought maybe there was a chance. But before I could even figure out what was happening, these men were dragging me back to the van again. Within moments, all my hopes were shattered, and I knew there was no chance of me getting out.

  I was being used as a tradeoff between the two clubs. It wasn’t like I had a choice in the matter or any control over the situation. In fact, I had no idea what was going on or what I was being used for. That man said something about Mexican contacts, two days, something about keeping me alive…

  I’d been crying and in distress for so long now that I had no idea what was happening around me. I’d been fed very little over the course of time that I had been in captivity, I’d been given very little water too. It was obviously because they wanted to keep me weak.

  I was weak, and even though I barely had any energy, I still tried to kick and struggle as much as I could, when I could. But that was never going to be enough. I was never going to be a match in strength against the men who were holding me down with force.

  Once I was back in the van in the darkness again, I couldn’t stop crying. I’d seen Cash, I’d been so close to him. Maybe I should have screamed out that I was pregnant with his baby…maybe then he would have done more to save me.

  But what could he do?

  Why would he do anything?

  Why would he care?

  I was nothing more than a casual fling for him. I had done nothing more than complicate business for him and his partners.

  Were they even here for me? Why were they even trying to negotiate for me? Whatever they were going to do, they weren’t going to try too hard. I wasn’t important.

  The van was moving now, and I was alone in the back, crying my eyes out just like I’d been doing for several hours now. Not just for me but for the life growing inside me.

  I was the worst mother. I hadn’t been able to keep my baby safe. I wasn’t even able to give my baby a chance to survive.

  Even as I cried, I was losing hope. And just when I thought it was all over and I wasn’t going to make it through the next day, I heard a loud bang which could only be described as a big explosion.

  The van I was in screeched and swerved and I was being flung around in t
he back in every direction. More gunshots outside and I could feel the vehicle toppling now. More screeching, more shouting and gunfire and I couldn’t stop screaming. Something was going on out there and I had no idea what.

  I couldn’t even move my feet or hide myself in some corner. I was completely at the mercy of fate with all my limbs tied. I couldn’t even scream loud enough to make myself heard with the gag around my mouth. I thought I was going to die right there, tonight.

  The van seemed to be spinning now and then there was another loud bang, and everything shook. It felt like the vehicle must have hit something because now suddenly, everything had come to a standstill.

  I couldn’t stop crying. I had no idea if I was bleeding, hurt or injured. If I was even still alive. The only thing I knew was there was more gunfire outside, and everything was in chaos.

  Then, as suddenly as this whole thing had begun, the doors of the van were flung open. A blazing fire lit up my face and the inside of the van. Something was on fire in the distance, I could smell burning rubber in the air too.

  The man who was holding the doors of the van open was Cash. He was glaring inside, seemingly searching for me. I let out a muffled cry and he blinked and jumped into the van.

  “Vivian are you okay. Hey, I got you. I got you.”

  He came running to me and before anything else, he was quickly untying me. The ropes around my wrists and feet came off first and then the gag around my mouth. He was cradling me in his arms, and I clung to him. I couldn’t believe this was actually happening. That he had really come to save me! I couldn’t stop the tears from streaming.

  We hugged, like we had known each other all our lives. I could feel him stroking my hair gently.

  “I know you’re very scared right now, but I have to get you out of here, okay?” He started to gently peel me off him and he looked into my eyes with those dark shining eyes of his. “Okay?” he repeated, and I nodded. I would have agreed to anything he wanted me to do. Right now, I trusted him completely with my life.