by Bella J
I refused to let out a breath, praying whoever was on the outside of this car wasn’t the last person whose eyes I’d stare into before I died.
There was a loud thump as the lid was popped, and the flashlight burned my eyes.
“Let’s get the girl out of here.”
“Please—” I still tried to plead, to beg. But as I was lifted out, there was a hard jerk, the man falling to the ground, and I was about to fall as well when two arms grabbed me.
“Not so fast, fuckers,” a man snarled beside my face, pulling my back against his chest while cold steel pressed against my temple. It was a gun. The man was holding a gun against my head, and I started to sob uncontrollably.
“Please, God. Don’t do this. Please don’t do this.”
“Put the gun down, man.”
I managed to open my eyes, seeing a tall, well-built man standing across from us. But it was dark. I couldn’t see his face. Yet in that moment, something seemed familiar about him.
“Let the girl go.” The warning was there in his voice, low and menacing.
The man holding me pressed the muzzle deeper into my temple, and I whimpered, pinching my eyes closed. I didn’t want to die. Not like this.
“You have no fucking business here, man. This ain’t got nothing to do with you.” His spit coated my cheeks, his nasty breath filling my nostrils.
“That’s where you’re wrong, prospect. It has everything to do with us.”
“Fuck off!” he yelled over my shoulder. “I swear to fucking God, I will put a bullet in this pretty little head of hers. So back the fuck up.”
“Please,” I started to beg, but he only pressed the gun harder against my head.
“Shut up! Shut the fuck up, bitch!”
I cried. Like a little girl, I sobbed and felt the overwhelming urge to relieve myself. Coming face to face with death was horrifying—especially at the prospect of death taking you so violently and unexpectedly.
“Give me the girl!” the man in the darkness shouted, his voice breaking the eerie silence of night. “If you hurt her, I will feed you to the sharks, piece by fucking piece.”
My captor laughed manically behind me. “Are you sure you want to toss fucking threats around when I’m the one pressing steel against this whore’s head? A whore you seem to really want unhurt.”
Branches cracked in the distance, alerting the man to movement on our right. He jerked in that direction, taking me with him, pulling me harder against his chest. “Who’s there?”
Another guy holding a gun pointed at us emerged from the shadows. “So, here’s the deal. You kill the girl, and I’ll have a bullet inside your skull before you can turn that gun on me or my brother over there.” He gestured to the other man whose face I couldn’t see.
“Onyx, back the fuck up,” the man in the shadows warned.
“I got this, brother.”
“You’ll kill her. Back the fuck up!”
“Nah, you know I never miss a shot.” He moved forward slowly. Carefully. Gun still aimed straight at us.
The man who held me tightened his arm around my throat, and instinctively I grabbed at his forearm. “Both of you fuckers back off, or I’ll kill her. I swear to God.”
“Not happening. We’re not leaving without the girl.”
“Last warning, prospect.” The one with the gun moved closer.
“Onyx, don’t!”
There were so many voices, so many unfamiliar people around me, my mind could no longer distinguish between who was who.
I glanced from the man in the dark, to the one holding the gun pointed at us. His fingers moved, tightening his grip on the trigger. Our eyes met, and he winked. “Don’t worry, sweetheart, I never miss.”
“Onyx, don’t!”
I closed my eyes the instant I heard the loud crack of a gunshot. My body went rigid, bracing itself for impact. Within a split second, my life flashed before my eyes.
My mom.
My dad.
Red.
The tattoo.
Each and every recital I’d ever danced in.
My mom’s face of disapproval.
The fights.
The tears.
The pain.
My pink ballet slippers hanging behind my bedroom door.
It felt like I was drifting from one memory to the other, then got pulled back to reality as my body slammed into the ground.
Blurry. Hazy. My ears ringing and body aching, I pushed myself up on all fours. I heard men scream in the background, but I only looked down at the dry, brown leaves beneath my hands. Unable to comprehend what had just happened, I closed my fist around a handful of leaves, crunching and breaking them in my palm. When I opened my fist, everything around me faded to gray…everything but the crimson red covering my hand.
A sudden coldness hit me in my core. Shocked. Disorientated. Breathless.
I turned my head to the side and looked right into the eyes of…a dead man. Blood oozed out of his head, his wide-open eyes glazed over and mouth gaping. It was the man who had the gun against my head only three seconds ago.
The bloody scene in front of me was grotesque—surreal and distorted in a way I couldn’t explain.
I couldn’t move. No matter how much I told myself to look away, to get up and run…I couldn’t. A man was dead, and I was staring at the corpse.
Two strong hands grabbed me and hoisted me up. If I had any fight left in me, I would have squirmed to get free. But my mind just didn’t allow me to look away from the dead man, and I didn’t care that I was being carried away by a strange man.
It was like a movie, and this was the part where they carried the woman away from a bloody scene on mute and in slow motion.
I was slid off the broad shoulder that carried me, and for a second, I managed to tear my gaze away from the bloody body. As I looked up at the man who carried me, I sucked in a breath. “You.”
Intense green eyes with specks of strength stared at me, and I lost myself.
“It’s you,” I whispered. “You came for me.”
“It’s time, ballerina girl.”
A wet cloth pressed against my face, the sharp scent of chloroform taking over all my senses…right before it went dark.
Chapter Three
Granite
There was something about the darkness that soothed me. Even as a boy, I preferred the dark. Unlike my little brother, I never asked for a light to be kept on while I fell asleep. The black of night didn’t scare me. Shadows never bothered me. Maybe it was because I felt like a shadow myself. I didn’t know. And I never felt the need to get psychoanalyzed. What the fuck could a white jacket tell me about myself that I didn’t already know?
Psychopath.
Sadist.
Criminal.
Immoral fucker.
I knew all this shit, and I didn’t give a rat’s ass. If I did, I wouldn’t have such a long list of character flaws, now, would I?
I took a long, deep drag of my cigarette, the tiny coal flickering in the dark as I inhaled. The only other light in the room was the full moon shining in through the window. It fell perfectly over her small frame as she lay on the bed, her face toward me.
She seemed peaceful, blissfully unaware of how her life was about to change. But once she opened those pretty blue eyes of hers, she’d know. She’d remember what happened, and she’d know her well-manicured life would exist no more, tainted and ruined by blood and metal.
I’d be lying if I said it didn’t excite me, which was why I was sitting in this room like a fucking vampire in the dark. I wanted to look into her eyes once she realized what was happening.
There was a knock on the door, and I cursed under my breath, putting out the cigarette, downing my beer, and getting up from the chair.
I swung open the door. “What?”
Dutch cocked a brow. “She awake?”
“Not yet.” I glanced over my shoulder at the girl on the bed before walking out and closing the door behind me,
then focusing my attention back on Dutch. “What’s up?”
“Someone called the police, claiming to have heard gunshots in the area while all this went down.”
“Fuck.” I pulled my hand through my hair. “Who was on duty?”
“Lucky for us, a few detectives on our payroll. So, hopefully, nothing will come of it. Dude, what happened out there?”
“It didn’t go quite as planned.”
“Yeah, no shit.” Dutch seemed anxious and confused—two emotions that could send a grown-ass man reeling.
“Goddammit.” I felt like planting my fist through the fucking drywall. “I didn’t count on that motherfucking prospect having balls.”
Dutch frowned. “Does anything work out the way we planned around here? Ever?”
I sighed. “Guess not.”
Dutch’s worried look settled a little. “You going to kick his ass?”
“I don’t know what the fuck I’m going to do with my brother.”
“Just give me a heads up before you do.” Dutch’s lips curved at the edges. “I want to buy front row tickets.”
I let out a laugh thinking about how much shit Dutch and I gave Onyx when he was younger. Poor bastard never caught a break whenever we were around.
I pulled out another cigarette, tapping the filter on the packet before placing it between my lips. “Where is my brother?”
“He’s having a beer downstairs.”
I lit the cigarette then blew out a cloud of smoke, not caring that Dutch was at the receiving end. “Good. I’ll deal with him later.”
Dutch nodded then gestured toward the door. “You sure about this?”
I studied him for a few seconds. “If you have doubts, you should have brought it up at church.”
“I’m not doubting anything.”
“Good.”
“I’m just wondering what’s else is going on in that head of yours.” He gave me a knowing look, as if he could see straight through me. I hated it. If someone had the correct formula to figure me out, it would be Dutch. Fucker knew me better than I knew myself sometimes.
With my gaze pinned on him, I took a step forward. “Believe me, if you had to know what’s going on in my head, you’d be certifiable.”
A smile tugged at the edges of his mouth. “That, I know.”
I stepped back and dropped my cigarette before stomping on it. “Did you tie up loose ends?”
Dutch placed his hands in his jean pockets. “We found one of them in the car, still breathing. For some reason, Ink wanted to bring him here, see if he can make him talk.”
“There ain’t nothing the prospect can say that we don’t already know.”
He shrugged. “Tell that to Ink. Fucker is bat-shit crazy, man.”
“Best fucking sergeant-at-arms we could ask for.”
Dutch laughed and lit a cigarette. “If everything goes according to plan, we should get a phone call by morning.”
“Let’s hope everything does go according to plan.”
“Yeah. Everyone is anxious to get the ball rolling and finally nail those Python fuckers.” I placed my hands on his shoulders. “Now go shave your fucking head. Your hair color is starting to show.” I shot him a cocky grin before turning around, heading back to the room.
“I’m thinking about growing it,” he called after me. “Seems like red hair is becoming a trend these days.”
“Wishful thinking, fucker.” I chuckled as I closed the door.
Dutch and I had been friends for as long as I could remember. Both our grandfathers had been founders of the club. Being the same age, Dutch and I always hung out—even before we became members of the American Street Kings.
Poor fuck had red hair, hence the reason he shaved it. There was a time when everyone tried to convince him to grow his hair and join the Redhead Days Festival in the Netherlands, but the bastard refused. All the teasing about the festival eventually landed him his club name, Dutch, the club enforcer. To his family, he was Gabriel Carter. Fucker seemed all calm and shit, but I’d seen him lose his cool while holding a knife. Even I had to keep the gall down after watching him slice a man’s guts out as if it was nothing but a raw piece of meat. But I knew the cause of his anger that erupted every now and then. I shared that same anger, the same regret. It was something that would never go away.
I walked over to the bed, my shit-kicker boots hardly making a sound as I moved across the hardwood floor.
Everything had to go according to plan. I’d waited too goddamn long for this. We had planned this entire operation for weeks, discussing it endlessly at church. But what the rest of the club didn’t know was I had planned this for years.
Alyx stirred, soft little moans slipping from her lips. I stared down at her, my gaze raking over every contour of her face, every feature illuminated under the moonlight. Flawless, pale skin. Almond shaped eyes with a natural lift at the corners. And her lips? Beautiful, and plump in the center with a perfect cupid’s bow.
She shifted, her body moving over the newly bought sheets. Gently, I placed the back of my hand against her cheek. Warm. Soft. Begging to be touched and corrupted.
Soon.
Chapter Four
Alyx
Another migraine. God, I hated waking up with a head that felt like it had been hit against a concrete wall a million times.
I tried to stretch, my body aching in places it never had before. That was when I felt the rope around my wrists, and like a fucking wrecking ball, the horrible memories came crashing against my skull.
Men grabbing me…
Pulling my hair…
Punching me…
I moved my jaw, the pain radiating down my neck and up to my temples.
Getting shoved into the trunk of a car…
Gunshots…
Oh, God. Gunshots. Icy steel pressed against my temple…
Blood.
Holy shit.
I tried to sit up, but my feet were tied too, making it nearly impossible to lift myself off the bed.
Moving my elbows in beneath me, I pushed myself up, my back complaining with pain.
“Oh, my God,” I whispered, narrowing my eyes to try to figure out where the hell I was. But it was too damn dark.
“I’m afraid God ain’t here.”
I jolted, my tied legs suppressing my need to run. I glanced over my shoulder at a man sitting in the corner, cloaked within the shadow where the sunrise hadn’t touched the room yet. “Who are you?”
“A friend.” The gruff, guttural voice was familiar, yet it made me shiver, and every hair at the back of my neck stood up.
“It’s you. I recognize your voice.” I turned my face halfway over my shoulder. “You were there.”
Silence.
I glanced down at my tied wrists. “Why am I tied up?” I didn’t turn to face him, cautioned by the warning that clung to my skin after the sound of his voice filled the emptiness around us.
“It’s a precaution. We weren’t sure how you’d react when you woke up.”
“We?”
“Well, me.”
I glanced down at my tied wrists. “Now that I’m awake, you can untie me, then?”
Silence ensued before I heard the slight screech of the chair. Then footsteps. Slow, heavy, threatening. My body shivered, my mind reeling with thoughts of unfathomable horrors.
“I think it’s safer to keep those ropes tied for now.”
A chill slowly penetrated my spine, and I knew he was standing right behind me. His presence mantled every inch of me, my heart nearly exploding inside my chest. “I don’t understand.” I tried to think back to those final moments. “I was being kidnapped, and you saved me. But why…where am I? Why am I still tied up?”
“What makes you think I saved you?”
A soft whimper left my lips, fear coursing through my veins, every inch of me going cold. My hands shook, my stomach burning with fear. “I…um.” I licked my lips, words refusing to come out as I struggled to find my voi
ce. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
“I think you do.” Judging by the sound of his voice, he was standing close, and it made me shudder.
“What…why am I here?”
He remained still behind me, and every second that passed felt like a lifetime. I wanted to scream. I wanted to cry. I wanted to run. But I was too afraid to move. I couldn’t, not with this man standing behind me, his intimidating presence pinning me to the spot.
I heard him move, and I closed my eyes, the sound of his footsteps traveling around the room making my heart beat even faster. When his movement ceased, my eyelids twitched with the need to open. A part of me wanted to look at the man I knew was now standing right in front of me, yet another part of me didn’t—afraid it might be the devil I’d be looking in the eye.
“Open your eyes and look at me.” He didn’t raise his voice, but that didn’t mean it was less threatening. In fact, the low tone that wrapped around his words made it sound more intimidating, and it vibrated through my entire body.
With a deep breath, steeling myself while fighting against the panic that sent my heart racing, I slowly opened my eyes.
At first, I couldn’t make out his face in the dark. But as my gaze moved down, I noticed his broad shoulders, his over six-foot-tall body, and the shit-kicker black leather boots. It was all there, the familiarity of this man. Slowly, I began to recognize him, my mind putting together the pieces, creating the picture of him—the man I had been watching through the dark for so long.
I narrowed my eyes, willing the shadows away so I could see his face. “It’s you,” I murmured, more to myself.
“You say that like you know me.”
“I…you are—”
Then he stepped forward and switched on the light. The sight of him took my breath away. His messy curls hung over his shoulders, dark and thick and unruly. His beard was long and unkept, but it couldn’t hide the outline of his strong jaw. It was him. My stranger in the dark.
Briefly, fear and uncertainty fled from my mind, replaced with the memories of nights I spent by my window staring out at the man who always looked up, meeting my gaze with an unspoken promise. A promise that one day he’d come for me. And now it seemed that day had come.