by Raven Dark
What! This can’t be happening. Thick, nauseating dread rolls over me. The look in his eyes leaves no doubt as to what kind of bonus he thinks I’ll be. I want to scream at him and kick him away, but I’m frozen with fear, afraid anything I do or say will only put my mom in further danger.
At the back of the car, my mom opens the trunk. I hear the guy rummaging around in there, and then the zipper on the money pouch opening, then closing.
“Cool,” the guy with her says. “This is going to top off what we already have nicely.”
What they already have. These are probably the guys who did the robberies on the bank. I sneak a look over my captor’s getup. Neither of them are wearing cuts, and if they’d ridden up on bikes, I’d have heard the engines. They probably aren’t Heathens.
Which means…
The trunk slams shut. As soon as it does, the guy in front of me opens the passenger’s side door and shoves me inside. My butt hits the seat.
The phone in my pocket beeps. I hear the faint sound of dialing.
Shit. I suppose it’s too much to ask that I would have butt-dialed the cops.
The gunman on me points his weapon at my face. “The phone. Give it to me.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I see the other guy slam the butt of his gun into the side of my mom’s head. She cries out and collapses behind the car.
“Mom!” Instinctively, I try to kick at the one in front of me, but he puts the gun right to my forehead. I freeze.
“The phone. Now.”
“Okay, okay!” I squirm, lifting my hips and pulling it out of my pocket. Before he snatches it from me, I see the screen is on.
“Baby, are you there?”
Vicious!
I open my mouth to scream for him, but the robber drops the phone and crushes it under his boot. “Can’t have your boyfriend coming to the rescue, can we?”
Damn it.
He shoves me the rest of the way into the car and is about to shut the door. “Let’s get the hell out—”
His voice is drowned out before I can hear the rest of what he says. Bike engines fill the air, a thunderous roar. I slump. The sound is heaven to my ears.
No less than four bikes roar around a corner down the street and barrel toward us. Vicious, without a helmet as usual, pulls the bike up fifty feet from the car.
I can’t believe it. He’s really there, larger than life.
The robber points his gun right at Vicious.
“Vicious—” I scream, but there’s no need, he’s already pulled a gun from inside his cut.
There’s a couple of loud pops. They go off like firecrackers in the night. The robber’s body twitches and drops like a stone to the pavement in front of me.
My chest heaves on short, ragged breaths. Frozen in place, I watch my boyfriend—my fucking criminal, degenerate boyfriend—point his gun at the other robber who’s come around the side of the car for me.
“Don’t. Touch. Her.”
Another two pops go off.
The second guy drops.
It half-registers that the other three bikers are there, moving around, saying things, but the sounds seem to be filtering through a long tunnel.
Except the sound of Cooker’s voice behind the car, speaking to my mom. The rest of my attention is on the bodies lying on the pavement. Both lie unnaturally still. Blood is pooling around one of their heads, a dark, crimson puddle that’s getting wider.
Then all I see is Vicious, kneeling in front of me, his perfect face filling my vision.
“Anne.” His warm hands are on my knees as he turns me around in the seat to face him. “Anne.”
My eyes meet his. My whole body is shaking. “Vicious…” My voice comes out shaken. “My mom… They hit my mom…”
He pulls me hard into him, his huge arms enveloping me. “She’s okay, baby. She’s okay.”
I look over my shoulder to see that Cooker has opened the driver’s side door. He lifts my mother into the seat as she mutters half-coherently at him.
“I’m fine. Where’s Anne… let go of me, where’s Anne?”
“She’s right there, sweetheart,” Cooker says, checking her over. Mom has a gash on the side of her head. There’s a trickle of blood down the side of her face. He takes a kerchief out of his cut and presses the cloth to her head, ignoring her attempts to stop him. “Here. Put pressure on the wound.” He takes her hand and presses the cloth to the side of her head. “There ya go, sweetheart.”
“I’m fine,” she slurs. “Young man, I can take care of myself.”
“Young man, is it?” He smirks. “I think she’s fine, Vicious. It’s just a small cut, but we’d better get her to the clubhouse just in case. We can take care of her there.”
She’s fine. The words sink in, and I deflate as Vicious holds me close, rubbing my back.
I’d been shaking like a leaf, but now, I’ve never felt so safe. “Wait.” I look between him and Cooker. “Shouldn’t we call the cops? And an ambulance?”
“Cops,” my mom murmurs. Her voice sounds thick and dazed.
“Anne.” Vicious takes my face in his hands, making me look at him. “Listen to me, okay? We have to go now.” His voice is cool and calm and completely in control.
“But my mom. And they’re dead, the—”
He shakes his head and tips my face up. “We have to go now,” he says slowly, carefully. “I know what I’m talking about. Trust us. We can take care of all of it.”
My mind spins, trying to understand what he’s telling me, and yet, somehow what he’s saying feels…right.
“Cooker, drive,” he says and draws me gently out of the car into his arms.
“Got it.” Cooker puts my mother in the passenger’s seat, ignoring her incoherent mumbling, and then slips into the driver’s seat. “Where’s your keys, sweetheart?”
I don’t hear the rest of what Cooker says, because Vicious is walking across the street to his bike, carrying me as if I weigh nothing. His voice is a soft, deep, soothing sound as he tells the other two guys something about taking care of things, grabbing the money, and making sure there’s nothing for anyone to find, including Cooker’s bike.
It occurs to me I should be scared, and on some level I am. Vicious’ tone tells me all I need to know. He’s told the other two guys to take care of the crime scene. Clean it up. But somehow, the notion also makes me feel protected, strangely safe. It’s as if hell has just swept into my life and made a mess of it, upending it, and Vicious and his big bad biker gang have swooped in and taken control of the storm. They’re going to set things right and keep us safe.
He sets me down long enough to stand his bike up and then helps me on.
His hands cradle my face, grounding me. “It’s going to be okay, Anne. We—I—will keep you safe. Trust me.”
I nod. I know he’s right.
The helmet slips over my head, and he pulls the chinstrap tight and secure. He swings on in front of me. I hear my mom’s car engine start, then Vicious’ engine roars to life, drowning it out.
I put my arms around Vicious and bury my face in his leather covered back. He squeezes my hand on his stomach. His warmth and strength seep into me, and I know I’m exactly where I should be.
We ride away, quickly leaving Whiskey and this horrible nightmare behind.
12
Brute
We pull up at the clubhouse at nearly ten o’clock.
The clubhouse isn’t what I expected. I’d expected it to be some sort of rundown and abandoned building, covered in graffiti and gangland symbols. It’s not.
Nestled in a clearing in one of the larger forests, hours outside of Whiskey, the building is a single, large grey structure, two floors, with clean brick walls. It’s huge, and dozens of bikes sit outside of it, scattered haphazardly. Bikers stand near them, talking, laughing, drinking. A few women dressed like Birdie flirt with them or sit in their laps. A few engines growl here and there, and an old rock tune pounds distantly from inside the club
house.
Within seconds of seeing the place, I can feel the relaxed, open atmosphere even before Vicious carries me up the stone steps and through the open doors. These people are close in a way that feels immediately like more than friends. It’s more like family.
Cooker has taken my mother from her car, and every head turns to watch him carry her up the steps, the same way they did with Vicious and me.
“It’s really not necessary for you to carry me, young man.” My mother sounds irritated, but her words also seem halfhearted, which I assume is because she’s out of it. That robber hit her on the head pretty hard. “I have legs, I can walk quite well on my own.”
Cooker ignores her and follows Vicious across the clubhouse’s large open front room.
“Is she going to be okay, Vicious?” I ask, clutching onto his shoulders. “She sounds really out of it.”
“Cook’ll take care of her.” He crosses to a sofa near the back of the room and lowers me onto it. “You just stay right there and let me take care of you.”
Vicious calls one of the women over with blankets, which she wraps around my mother, then around me. Then Vicious puts my hands around a cool glass of water and strokes my hair.
I still can’t believe he’s here, that I’m with him again. I sip the water slowly like he tells me to and then lean into him, resting my head on his shoulder. He holds me close, rubbing my arms.
Cooker sets my mother down on the sofa beside me and calls someone over. He introduces the man as Barber, the MC’s doctor. The heavily tatted-up biker kneels in front of her. He has a thick black and white beard that covers his neck.
“This place has a doctor?” She looks at Cooker with surprise. “Does he have a medical degree?” She doesn’t appear to be slurring anymore, her eyes more focused.
Cooker stands a few paces back to give Barber room, a crooked smile on his face, his big arms crossed over his wide chest.
Barber smiles and checks over her wound on her head. The bleeding has stopped. As he cleans and bandages her cut, he asks her standard questions, the kind a doctor would ask—her date of birth, her name, mine, who the president is. He bandages a scrape on her hand that she must have gotten when she collapsed earlier.
Mom answers his questions with obvious frustration. “Pretty Boy over there already asked me all of this, I’m fine,” she tells Barber.
“Pretty Boy?” Cooker sounds affronted, but his eyes sparkle with delight.
She tsks at him. “Will you tell ZZ Top here I’ll live?”
Barber grunts and looks back at him. “I like this one, Cook.”
Vicious’ shoulders are shaking before he leans down to my ear. “Your mother is… an interesting woman.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I look up at him when he draws back.
“I see where you get your temper from, beautiful. And your good looks.”
“Is that your name?” Mom asks when Vicious introduces Cooker and some of the guys. “Cooker? Is that a drug thing?”
“Mom!” I squeak.
Vicious and Cooker both roar with laughter.
When she’s been all taken care of, she starts to get up. “Well, boys, it’s been… educational. Anne, come on, let’s—”
“Not a chance in hell.” Cooker pushes off the wall he’s been leaning on.
“Excuse me?”
“Just slow your roll, you can’t leave yet. Sit down.”
She cuts him a look with a raised brow, a look that is usually enough to make any man back off. He doesn’t.
“Barber wants you here overnight for observation,” Cooker says.
“I told you, I’m fine—”
“You could have a concussion. You aren’t going anywhere.”
My mother opens her mouth three times, only to close it. A slight, pink flush I’ve never seen before rises in her cheeks. She looks at me. I’ve never seen her look so unsure of herself.
“Mom, just do it. Trust them, they’ll take care of us.”
I fully expect her to grab me and march me out of the clubhouse. Instead, she looks at Cooker, and all the fight and tension drain out of her. She sits slowly back down, her expression one of begrudging acceptance and confusion. She has absolutely no idea what to do with herself around men so self-assured and dominant, men who know how to handle her.
I look up at Vicious, my eyes wide. “What just happened?” I hiss. “I’ve never seen her do that before.”
Vicious’ lips wear a wicked smirk. His eyes flick to Cooker, then to me. “I think your mother just met her match.”
A short time later, after some more introductions and after we’ve had a bite to eat, Vicious takes my hand and pulls me up from the couch.
“Come over here, Anne.” He gestures to some tables near the clubhouse’s long bar.
Now that it’s all over, everything I’ve learned about him comes flooding back. Suddenly, I’m so confused, I can barely form a coherent thought.
Vicious is supposed to be a hardened criminal. We shouldn’t be here, and yet, being here, being with him, still feels inescapably right.
I sigh and follow him over to a table, leaving my mom talking with Cooker, Barber, and the woman who helped tend to her, a red-headed, leather-clad bombshell the named Princess.
Vicious sits across from me, leaning over the table and capturing my hand in his. I hardly know what to say. It’s a good thing Vicious does.
“Judging by the rather venomous way you called me Charlie on the phone,” he says carefully, “you know about what happened ten years ago.”
I nod mutely, sit back, and wait for him to tell me. My heart is racing so hard, it seems to be trying to burst out of my chest.
“I did kill someone,” he announces softly, and he holds up his hand with the spider’s web on it. “I earned every line of this web.”
I swallow, feeling my heart threaten to shatter.
“I was in a bar, and there was a fight. Some jackass creep was trying to drag a girl into a car to rape her. I got in his face, and she ran off. So the fucker put a pistol in my face.”
My eyes go wide.
“We fought over the gun, and I finally got it from him. He pulled a second piece and aimed it at me. I fired, and he was dead.”
“Oh my God.” My gut twists, but it’s not for what he’s done. He was defending himself, and he saved a girl from a monster.
“So,” he adds with a sigh, “I went to court, and it turned out the judge’s son was killed by a biker in a gang initiation. He took one look at me and sent me to Chillicothe for twenty-five to life. I spent two years in jail before my lawyer finally proved it was self defense. They let me out with an apology from the court…and this.” He shows me the spider web.
I cover my mouth with my finger tips. “Vicious, oh my God. So… the charges were false. They convicted you for being what you are, not what you did.”
“You could say that.” He nods. “It’s an unfortunate thing that happens in when you’re in this life. A lot of guys get jammed up in a system that automatically sees us as criminals before we ever commit a crime.”
“My mother only found the article about your conviction. I’m guessing if either of us had thought to dig deeper, we would have found something about your conviction being overturned.”
“Maybe not. It didn’t make nearly as big a splash as my being put in jail. People only remember the bad stuff, beautiful. Especially in this town.”
I sigh and squeeze his hand, guilt making my stomach twist for all the things I thought about him. For wanting to end it.
“I’m so sorry, Vicious. How did you spend two years in prison knowing you were innocent? I would have lost it.”
“I relied on the club to keep me going. Leaned on my brothers, and kept reminding myself that when I got out, I’d be with them again. Home.”
His thumb massages the back of my hand.
“That’s the thing about the club, Anne. It’s so much more than the parties and the booze and the good tim
es. It’s a family, full of guys who will do anything to protect you. The bonds of brotherhood that come from being part of the MC are like nothing else.”
I nod slowly, trying to understand. I don’t fully know what he means, but I can feel it in his words, the weight of his love for the other men in the club, the depth of the camaraderie that exists here. Growing up with no siblings, with only my mom and me after dad died, the concept of such close family bonds between so many people seems unreal, and part of me longs for such a sense of belonging. Mom and I had only had each other, getting by with no one to help us, no one to make us feel anchored and secure. I can’t imagine living in a place with so many people who care, who would go to any lengths to protect each other.
Including rescuing us from dangerous robbers and taking care of my mother. It feels incredible.
“I’m sorry, Vicious.” I shake my head. “You don’t want to know what I thought about you after I saw that article.” I shudder, thinking I’d nearly made the biggest mistake of my life. That I’d nearly lost him.
“Oh, I have a pretty good idea.” His fingers stroke mine. “You wouldn’t have complained if I ended up in an eight by ten cell again.”
I give a lame shrug. “Something like that. And I don’t think my mother would have complained, either.”
“I can imagine.” He pats his knee. “All right, enough of all this sappy talk,” Vicious says, tugging on my wrist. “Get over here, woman.”
I can’t get to him fast enough. As soon as I’m in reach, he pulls me smoothly onto his lap and closes his arms around my waist, pressing my back to his warm chest. Instantly, all the pain and loneness of these last days without him, and all the fear over what had happened that night, is gone. I’m safe here, with him, my mother taken care of, and there’s nothing else that matters.
“I don’t know how well my mother will take staying in this place overnight, Vicious. This isn’t exactly her usual style.” I grin.
He kisses my cheek, then my shoulder. “Don’t be so sure. Look.”