by Sophia Gray
My hands tightened their grip on the handlebars and I sped up, steering towards the clubhouse of the Demon Catchers. I knew that what I was doing was dangerous. It was against all of the unwritten MC rules: don’t go fuck with another MC just because you want to. But I did want to. I wanted someone to pay, I wanted someone to hurt as badly as I was hurting when Vanessa left me.
My lips twisted into a scowl as my bike sped up to over ninety miles an hour. The road disappeared under me and I felt powerful as the engine between my legs thrummed with a comforting sensation. I’d been riding bikes since I was a kid, and somehow I’d never felt as determined as I felt in this second.
By the time I got to their clubhouse, I was so worked up that I could hardly even sit still. I expected them all to be out front, waiting for me, but then I realized a second later that my arrival was a surprise. I grinned to myself as I climbed off the bike and strode up to the building.
I frowned when I saw that all of the lights were off. It looked empty, like no one was home. Licking my lips, I walked back to my bike and pulled out a flask of bourbon from one of the saddlebags. I’d been carrying it around for emergencies for months, and this was the first time that I could think of that really qualified for its use. Settling down in the growing heat of the day, I leaned my back against my bike and pulled the stopper out of the flask.
The bourbon was warm, but it tasted delicious going down my throat. I closed my eyes and drank greedily, until the threads and veins in my head were throbbing with alcohol. I knew that by this point, I had to be dehydrated as fuck but I couldn’t make myself give a damn any longer. I wanted to suffer; I deserved to suffer. It wasn’t everyday that a girl broke my heart, after all.
By the time the Demon Catchers had pulled into the parking lot of their clubhouse, I was drunker than I’d been the night before. I could tell they were all surprised to see me—their Italian skin couldn’t hide that much about how they felt. When I began walking blearily towards them, I saw Dante and Bruno exchange dark looks.
“Hey, Mitchell,” Isaac, the lieutenant, barked. “What the fuck are you doing here? You get kicked out of Madison or some shit?”
I stepped closer. Without responding, I curled my hand into a fist and swung my arm back. My fist connected with his nose before he even had a chance to see what was coming. I felt something smash and break underneath my fingers—when I pulled them away, they were dripping with blood.
“What the fuck?” Isaac growled in surprise.
I reacted by lowering my body and charging him like a bull. Isaac went flying backwards and I stumbled, barely managing to catch my balance before falling hard onto my hands and knees. Isaac was still laying on his back and I crawled over to him, throwing punches left and right. I could hear the rest of the Demon Catchers screaming and yelling behind me, but curiously, they never came close enough to pull me apart.
By the time I’d finished with Isaac’s face, he looked like a bloody pulp. Hauling myself to my feet, I stomped hard on his upper arm until a crack rang through the air. Isaac screamed and clutched his arm to his chest. I glared down with a smug expression on my face. Finally, I’d done enough damage to really mean something. The Demon Catchers gathered around him and hoisted him up into the air as I crawled back to my bike, feeling the sun’s merciless heat beating down on my exposed face. The alcohol was throbbing in my veins and I climbed on the back of my bike, swaying and almost falling off as I drove out of the parking lot.
“It’s your fucking fault!” I screamed over my shoulder as I sped up, swerving out of oncoming traffic. My vision was blurry and I could feel the booze pounding through my body but I didn’t care. For the first time since meeting Vanessa, my body was filled with exhilaration and the sense of justice.
I knew what I’d done was wrong, but I couldn’t help feeling like I’d finally done something right after all.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
After I beat the shit out of Isaac, the Demon Catchers lieutenant, I knew that I had to go home. It was time to get back to the guys and try to start moving on with my life. Vanessa never wanted to see me or talk to me again, and I knew that even though I was hurting, I had a life to take care of. My own.
Kicking Isaac’s ass had been cathartic in a way that I’d never dreamed possible. I grinned as I drove down the main highway, back towards Madison, back towards the Bleeding Prophets. Rudy would be pissed off, I knew. After all, he’d promised me an hour and I’d taken almost two days. But it was worth it. It wasn’t every day that I got my heart broken, and deep down, I knew that I couldn’t keep causing any more damage. If I kept going after these assholes, I’d probably wind up dead. But this way, as I saw it, we were even. They weren’t gonna harass me anymore, they weren’t going to care.
As I wound my way back towards the hideout of the Bleeding Prophets, I felt a strange sense of relief mixed with anxiety flood my body. It was unlike anything I’d felt in a long time. Back when I first started up with the Prophets, when I started pushing pills, it was the kind of thing that made me excited and nervous at once. I’d been so eager to prove myself to Rudy and Colton, so green, so unsure about the future.
I wished I could go back in time and shake myself by the fucking shoulders. This wasn’t anything like the life I’d wanted. Or rather, it had been before I met Vanessa. But even before I’d her met, I’d been so sick of some of the shit that went on. I’d been sick of the girls, sick of the partying. Hell, I didn’t even like taking molly anymore. That shit messed with my head after a few days, and I didn’t feel like dealing with it.
When I pulled into the parking lot of the Bleeding Prophets hideout, I was feeling pretty fucking smug with myself. I was still drunk, and I even whistled a little as I walked across the parking lot, towards the door.
Bruno and Dante jumped out from behind a corner and tackled me to the ground. It hurt. Bruno dove towards my midsection and I felt one of my ribs snap as I landed on the hot asphalt.
Dante walked up slowly and stared down at me, a sick grin on his face. He spat, and I felt the sticky substance land on my face.
“Mitchell, what the fuck did you think you were doing, huh?” Dante shook his head and snapped his fingers. With no warning, Isaac hit me in the face—hard. I blinked and coughed and sputtered as blood began to drip from my nose and mouth. Some of my teeth felt loose, and the pain ricocheting through my body was more intense than anything else I’d ever felt. As I tried to groan and roll to the side, Dante kicked me hard in the ribs. I cried out and saw stars spinning in front of my eyes. The more I tried to curl up and scuttle away, the harder the blows rained down. I began to lose sense of where they were hitting me, or the intervals between each powerful punch. Dante laughed loudly as he slipped something shiny and metallic onto his hand, then began powerfully swinging punches at my head. He missed the first couple of times and I heard his limbs whistle through the air. Panic was rising in my body and I felt like every nerve was vibrating with fear. I have to get out of here, I have to call for help. Where the fuck are the rest of the guys? My eyes were closed and I could barely breathe as I tried to scramble away.
“Ah, ah, ah,” Isaac said. “Not so fuckin’ fast, you fuckin’ lunatic. You show up at our clubhouse, beat the shit out of our lieutenant, and now you come ridin’ back home, proud of what you’ve done?” He shook his head in disgust. The blood was pouring down my throat and mingling with the alcohol in my stomach, suddenly making me feel like I was about to be sicker than ever before.
“Oh, look,” Bruno said in a mocking tone. I shuddered as he stepped closer. My whole body was racked with pain and I didn’t even want to think about how I was going to feel at the end of this. “He’s hurt, Dante!”
“Better fix that,” Dante said drily. He leaned down and extended a hand to me. Blearily, I reached for his hand with my own. Dante yanked me up off the ground and then shoved me hard, sending me spinning. I tripped over my own ankle and fell hard to the ground with a loud cry of pain. Dante followe
d me, watching my every move. “This is for Isaac,” he explained. He swung his fist back with the dreaded shiny silver object and punched me hard in the jaw.
After that, everything went black.
# # #
When I woke up, I was in a world of pain. Everything around me was white: the ceiling, the floor, the walls. Something was beeping every few seconds and it began to drive me insane before I even realized where I was.
The hospital. Something bad had happened to me, and now I was in the hospital. I tried to move my arm and a sharp bolt of pain went shooting through my body. I blinked. I was lying in a bed, but I could barely move. When I looked down, I saw that one of my legs was wrapped with gauze.
“You’re awake.”
I glanced up and saw Rudy standing there, right beside my bed. He looked at me and shook his head.
“Yeah.” My voice was a croak—I winced to hear it out loud. “What the hell happened?”
Rudy folded his arms over his chest and shook his head. “You’re a fucking moron, Mitchell,” he said. “I can’t fucking believe you.” He glared at me. “If it wasn’t for this…situation, you’d be out of the fucking club right now.”
I sat up straight and looked at him. “What the hell? What are you talking about?”
Rudy sighed. “Man, you—”
Just then, a nurse bustled in. She was cute, wearing one of those old-school white uniforms that I hadn’t seen a nurse ever wear in real life. As she bustled across the room with a tray full of pills, I glanced up at the ceiling.
Everything in my body hurt. It felt like the worst hangover I’d ever had, times a million. When I closed my eyes, I could feel my head throbbing with each punch that the Demon Catchers had thrown me. Every time I breathed in or out, my chest ached from Dante and Bruno kicking me half to death.
“Mr. Mitchell!” the nurse chirped brightly as she sat down the tray and walked closer. “How are we feeling today?” She glanced at Rudy with some confusion on her pretty face. “And who is this?”
“He’s my lieutenant,” I croaked.
“No talking,” the nurse sang. She handed me a cup of water and at least five different kinds of pills. “Here, take these. Then I’m going to ask you some questions.” She glanced at Rudy nervously. “Is it alright with you if we have a little privacy?”
If I hadn’t already been hurting, that line would have stung. “I don’t give a shit if he stays in the room,” I muttered. The pills that she handed over were huge, and I had to really work the muscles in my throat to get each one of them down. The nurse stared at me and handed me cup after cup.
“I know these are a lot,” she cooed in a way that made me want to slap her. “But you’ll be feeling better soon! Just get lots and lots of rest!”
“So, what’s the damage?” I looked up at her. She’d finally stopped moving in and out of focus, but my head was still killing me and it hurt to keep my eyes open. “What happened to me?”
“Your friend here said you had a bad fall,” the nurse replied in a way that somehow made me think she was lying. “But you’ve broken a rib and cracked some vertebrae in your spine. Your arm is damaged and you’ll need to see an oral surgeon for those teeth. And your nose wasn’t exactly broken, but it’s going to be swollen for a few days.”
When I reached up to touch my face, I felt puffy hamburger meat where my skin should have been. I cringed. I must look like shit, I realized. At this point, I didn’t even wanna look in a mirror.
The nurse strolled around the room, glancing here and there before she finally left. When I was alone with Rudy again, he exhaled loudly and stepped close to the bed.
“Cade, what the fuck were you thinking?” Rudy asked softly. “What the fuck happened?”
“I was angry,” I said. “I’m still fucking angry.” I shook my head. “Vanessa fucking left me.”
Rudy looked uncomfortable. That was unusual. If I hadn’t been bound to the hospital bed, I would have expected him to punch me again. He didn’t like it when I questioned his decisions, and I knew that he was happier Vanessa had left. But when he didn’t answer after a few moments, I began to feel a cold trickle of anxiety crawling down the back of my neck.
“Rudy, what the fuck happened?” I stared at him. “Why aren’t you responding?”
Rudy licked his lips and plopped down hard in a plastic hospital chair. “Vanessa’s gone,” he said. “The Demon Catchers, they took her.”
“What?” I gaped at him. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
Rudy sighed. “I should have said something to them,” he said heavily. “I should have told them that she broke up with you.”
I nodded emphatically. “The fuck you should have,” I said harshly.
“Well, they thought you were still together,” Rudy said. “And they kidnapped her. And now they’re demanding that we agree to a trade. Her life for one block of our territory.”
“Jesus Christ, is that even a question?” I stared at him. “Of course we fucking give up the territory! They’re going to fucking kill her!”
Rudy stared right back. “Hold on,” he said, raising his hands in the air. “We can’t make any calls on that right now. Think reasonably, Cade. We Prophets don’t back down to the Catchers, not without a fight.”
At that moment, the last hope inside of me died.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Vanessa
“Boo, come on,” Calvin said. He was standing outside of the bathroom, shaking from side to side in my new hallway. The bathroom was small and cramped compared to the one that I’d shared with Kimmy, but at least it was all mine, without her cosmetics and dildo crammed in the cabinets.
“Sorry,” I said. I looked at myself again in the mirror. I was done up to the nines—winged eyeliner, dark mascara, purple eye shadow fading into my brows. Calvin had really gone out of his way to doll me up. I’d called him again once I’d left the library and explained that I’d just gone through a breakup. Thankfully, I hadn’t had to say anything else—Calvin had shown up at the door with a bottle of wine and a bag of makeup and told me that we were planning a girls’ night out.
“You look good already,” Calvin said. “Let’s pregame and forget all about your shitty boyfriend!”
“Ex-boyfriend,” I muttered under my breath as I pushed past him and walked into the living room. Against all hope, I’d managed to find a small one-bedroom apartment on the outskirts of Madison. It wasn’t very safe, and it wasn’t in a great neighborhood, but it fit my budget and that was all that mattered. The landlord had seemed sketchy as hell—they hadn’t done a background check or asked for a security deposit—but I’d been eager to find someone who would accept me. After all, I’d had to hightail it out of Kimmy’s apartment before too long.
I hadn’t seen her since the other day in the motel parking lot. All that time, I’d secretly hoped that Cade would call me and tell me that he wanted to be with me again. It was everything I was hoping for. Even though I’d technically dumped him, I hadn’t stopped thinking about him in days. He was on my mind all the time. I couldn’t stop dreaming of him, of wishing to feel his touch on my body again. I would have done anything for a kiss, just to feel his lips against mine.
The new apartment had come furnished, but the furniture had definitely seen better days. I’d hired a couple of local kids from Craigslist to haul my bed and some of the stuff from the old apartment over, but I was grateful for the free couch and dining room table that the new complex provided. The stuff was straight out of the eighties, nubby brown and tacky as hell, but I didn’t care. At least it was someplace, a place I could call my own.
Calvin flopped down on the couch and poured two glasses of sparkling rosé. “Here you go, babydoll,” he said, passing one of the flutes over to me. “How are you feeling now?”
I sighed. My face felt heavy and sticky from all the makeup and the bandage dress that I’d squeezed into wasn’t exactly comfortable. Still, it felt good to be doing something for me, in
stead of laying in bed and thinking about how it felt when Cade kissed my neck.
“Not great,” I said. I sipped the wine, then downed the whole glass. “But it’ll be okay. Things will get back to normal.”
Calvin nodded. “I’m sure they will,” he replied. “How is school going?”
I rolled my eyes, not wanting to tell him. School was going like shit. I’d failed all three of my important midterms, and because of that, I was now on academic probation. I wasn’t even thinking of how to tell my parents because I’d barely had a chance to take it in myself. Now, I worried that I was going to flunk out school altogether. And I had no idea what I’d do if that happened. I had no job experience, no marketable skills that would help me out in the real world.
“Not good,” I admitted. “I don’t actually know that I’m going to be able to graduate on time at this rate. Any chance you could help me out with a job?”
Calvin perked up. He poured me more pink wine and sipped at his own flute. “We are looking for a shampoo girl,” he said. “You feel like learning how to do hair?”