by Addison Jane
He underestimated us.
Unfortunately, we’d underestimated him too.
There was a reason he wanted to take the club down, and it had to be simply because he needed free reign of where we held strong.
I was gonna kill the mother-fucker.
I shook my head. “She’s everything, man.”
Optimus looked me directly in the eye. “I get it.”
Thank God Harlyn wasn’t around, because if I saw that kid right now, I might just fucking break, knowing that I hadn’t done what I should have and protected her mom. She’d stayed with my sister last night, and she was going to pick her up after school too. Optimus worried about her asking questions, wondering where Sugar was since she’d been staying at the club recently.
I picked up my hat and scratched at my head. I needed to go have a shower or some shit, try and wake my body up, make sure I was alert. The thought of food made me feel physically ill, so I hadn’t eaten. I wanted my fucking woman back, I knew she’d be freaking out, possibly having an attack and I couldn’t fucking be there for her.
My heart ached, and I palmed my chest. “I never fucking thought I could find someone who I felt…” I struggled to find the words. “…who I just fucking felt. Who understood me, my life, who I was? Never thought I’d find someone who I was this scared of fucking losing. That I felt like I was missing something.”
The last few months had been everything but smooth sailing for us, but we fought through and no matter fucking what happened, we always came back together. Like two damn magnets that couldn’t be kept apart.
“When you finally realize, it hits you like a ton of fucking bricks, I’ll tell you that,” Blizzard agreed.
He and Rose had their own issues. She’d hurt the club, hurt everyone that Blizzard had cared for, but essentially that wasn’t her. She’d been lied to and manipulated. It still took Blizzard a long time to trust her, though. And when she was in danger, he realized just what it was that he could lose.
“Wrench!” Hadley called from the top of the staircase with Macy on her hip. I jogged over and looked up at her. “Your computer is making crazy sounds!”
I raced up the stairs, Hadley just managing to leap out of the way as I plowed past her, Macy giggling loudly.
I could hear the dinging as I reached my doorway and flung my computer chair out of the way as I bent over the desk, examining the screen.
“What’s that mean?” Optimus asked, jogging in after me with Blizzard hot on his tail.
I stared at it with my eyes wide, looking at a picture of her, splayed across a bed, her eyes closed. She was clearly positioned provocatively, but I couldn’t tell if she was awake or just refusing to look at the camera.
The one thing I knew for sure.
She was still alive, and she was still in the state.
“Please don’t tell me that’s the website I think it is,” Optimus said, his voice heavy with dread.
My head hung. “Yup. And she was sold thirty minutes ago.”
It was a trafficking site. I couldn’t even fucking believe that these things were still around, but I knew that the FBI monitored them every day, looking for missing girls and hoping to find clues. Ones where exchanges would go down. Unfortunately, they were often just up for a few weeks until they were taken down, and new ones started and circulated through the community trying to throw police off.
“Birmingham,” I read aloud, before turning to Op. “Do we have a man in Birmingham?”
“That’s where Leo is,” Hadley said, poking her head in the door.
Op nodded and pulled out his cell phone, ready to make as many calls as possible to get every man to that city.
“How the fuck do we figure out where she is? That city is huge,” Blizzard groaned, pacing the room.
My brain was running wild. The image of Sugar lying across the bed in her underwear, staring at me from the computer screen, with the large red letters screaming SOLD in my face.
“Image search hotel rooms in the city. See if you can find one that looks like that room she’s in,” Hadley said, speaking up again.
Her words lit a fire under my ass, and I looked over my shoulder at her. “If you weren’t my brother’s woman, I would kiss the shit out of you right now,” I told her with a grin.
She rolled her eyes. “You forget, I lived with FBI agents for years. I know all their tricks.” She gave me a wink and walked off down the hallway.
I quickly brought up an image search of hotels in Birmingham, Alabama. Blizzard and I scanned through them, while Optimus was in the background, ordering as many brothers as humanly possible to get there now.
“There,” Blizzard yelled in my ear, pointing at the screen. I pulled up the picture of Sugar and put them side by side. They were identical. I clicked on the image.
“Grand Regency Hotel,” I read aloud, then looked over at Optimus who was instantly typing out a message on his phone. When he looked up, he narrowed his eyes at me.
“I’ve got Leo heading there now. What the fuck are you waiting for?”
I needed to hear the words, but as soon as someone had validated it, I was racing out the fucking door and heading for my bike with my brothers right behind me.
Like they always were.
“You want to play with me, my little addict?”
I couldn’t move, I couldn’t escape him. I felt his hand brushing my hair back from my face, his touch cool against my hot skin. I almost enjoyed it.
No! He’s the enemy. He did this to you.
That voice was back, screaming at me from somewhere in my head. All I knew was that I felt good. The comedowns, they were worse than before. I thought I was strong enough to fight them, to get through, but as soon as the withdrawals came, he slipped another pill through my lips. And I stopped fighting.
“Did I ever tell you that ‘Manic’ never actually cured your symptoms? When you would come down it would intensify them, make you feel like you needed more pills.”
He laughed. It sounded far away, but I could sense him next to me. See his outline as he looked over me, feel his lips brush my forehead.
His words really meant nothing, I was numb, in a state of indifference and peace.
I knew they were important, but I just couldn’t figure out why.
“I got a call from your new owner,” he murmured in my ear. “He’ll be here soon to see you.”
I heard what he said.
But I didn’t care.
I couldn’t feel anything.
I didn’t want to feel anything.
“If you see my wife, tell her I said hi.”
I want to be numb.
We made the one hour, thirty-minute ride in a little over an hour. Thank fuck the road was clear, and once again Deacon had our backs, telling us where the traffic officers would be, but warning us that if we came off our bikes at high speeds, it was our own fucking fault.
Optimus would one day have to acknowledge just how often Deacon puts his ass on the line for the club.
Leo met us around the corner from the hotel, parking our bikes in the parking lot of the mall a few streets over. We tried to follow the overhang of the buildings as we made our way toward the hotel, not sure if he would be able to see us out a window or anything.
“I called the hotel and asked them to put me through to his room,” Leo explained as we hurried toward the building. “Thankfully he’s a fucking idiot and instantly said, ‘You weren’t meant to call until tonight.’”
Before we’d left the clubhouse, I’d had the thought to give Leo the username of the person who bought Sugar. He’d been able to use that to change meeting times with Eric, so he thought he was expecting the buyer, but we were about to get in first. It eased the ache in my chest a little, knowing that she was still there and from the looks of the pictures he had posted, that she wasn’t harmed.
Optimus’ cell went off just before we reached the building and we all stopped as he checked it. “Almost everyone is here. All o
ur boys, and Kit and his boys should be here in around twenty minutes.”
Two entire clubs, coming together in this city, ready to bring my girl home. I pushed my shoulders back. This was what a brotherhood was. Men who have never met Sugar, hanging out in different cities and riding for hours, willing to do whatever it takes without any fucking question, because they knew what she meant to me, and they knew what she meant to the club.
She was my Old Lady.
Family backs up family.
No fucking matter what.
“I want her back right now,” I said harshly, venom in my words. I was like a snake, poised and ready to fucking strike. My poison ready for whoever tried to get in my way. Blood was going to spill today, and I would gladly bathe in it.
Nobody takes what was mine.
Nobody hurt the people I fucking cared about.
We strolled through the front doors of the hotel, the swanky upper-class atmosphere so incredibly Eric Deanwell. How could he have chosen anywhere else?
Leo stepped forward, explaining to the girl behind the counter who we were there to see.
“Oh yes, he’s expecting you,” she said with a smile. “He’s on the top floor, which means the elevator opens directly into the suite. So once it reaches there, just wait a few moments and he will buzz you in.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” Leo replied politely, and we veered off in the direction of the elevators. As soon as we were inside and the doors were closed, we all reached for our guns, checking the chambers and clicking them back into place. I flicked my safety off because I knew I wasn’t going to stall, the minute I had a shot at him he was a dead man. Or maybe I should shoot out his knee cap and just play with him for a while. Make him feel real pain.
The elevator stopped at the top floor and we hung there, our guns raised at the doorway, for anything. I didn’t know if he had men with him, or if he was working alone. I wasn’t sure what to expect from him.
A buzzing noise sounded and slowly but surely the elevator swept open. I stepped out, my gun still up and ready, my eye looking for a target.
“In the bedroom. Please come through,” his voice called out, the noise echoing against the walls. “You said in your first email that you wouldn’t be here until after six. I’m fine with you coming early, I’m just thrown off.”
I looked at Leo, who nodded. “Our flight plans changed last minute. You got the girl in there?” he asked, lowering his voice just slightly and trying to get rid of some of this southern accent.
“Yeah,” Eric called back. “I’m telling you, those photos just didn’t do her justice.”
Blizzard slipped into the bathroom before we made it to the bedroom. Op’s gaze met mine and he nodded for me to go in first, simply because he knew that if there was a shot that I’d want to be the one to take it.
Baby mama or not.
She was mine now.
I inhaled deeply, and then slipped through the doorway, my aim quickly finding its target. I should have taken the shot, but Sugar’s limp body threw me off as he held her around the waist beside him. Eric quickly moved her, pulling Sugar in front of his body, using her as a fucking coward’s shield.
“Put her down,” I growled, trying to keep my gun steady as I eyed her from head to toe.
She was dressed now in a silky nightgown that was see-through and barely reached her thighs. My temper rose higher. Her eyes flicked up to mine, but there was nothing behind them, they were blank. There was no emotion behind them, almost as if she didn’t recognize me.
My heart slammed against my chest. “What the hell have you done to her?”
He took a few seconds, his eyes moving from me to Op and then to Leo, who flanked my body on either side but none of us had a clean shot.
“She’s perfectly fine,” he protested almost smugly. “Back in that state of bliss and peace that her mind used to crave so often.”
“You fed her up on those fucking pills again, didn’t you,” I screamed, taking a step forward. As far as I could tell, he had no weapon. I could run at him, take him down and get him away from her before he could do anything to hurt her.
I edged forward, but he shook his head, holding up his hand and shaking a little baggy, identical to the one we’d found in Ruby’s locker at X-Rated.
“You don’t wanna do that,” he warned, his eyes shifting around the room as though looking for an escape. He wouldn’t find one, though. There was no way I was letting him walk out of here. Whether I got a hold of him or had to carry out a dead body, he wasn’t walking away from this.
“You’d like some more of these wouldn’t you my little addict?” he whispered to Sugar. Her eyes moved drearily to where he held them raised in his hand.
She nodded slowly, as though she was in a trance.
No, this wasn’t her.
This was the drugs.
She was lost inside her own mind. He’d poisoned her and she couldn’t fight her way out.
“Open your mouth,” he ordered, and she quickly responded, her lips falling apart.
“Sugar, stop,” I screamed and for a second her eyes focused, widening slightly and looking to me. “You don’t need them. I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.”
She didn’t respond, but I saw a glimmer of recognition in her eyes before it flicked away again with just a shake of that damn bag. She was like a fucking zombie, no thoughts of her own, just following her need for drugs, her addiction.
“Why the club, Eric?” Optimus spoke up, trying to keep him talking. Hoping to draw his attention away from her. “You’ve been trying to bust us for years.”
Eric frowned. “Your damn club and its rules. People are afraid of you, and the ones that aren’t don’t see Alabama as a money making state, so it’s not worth them fighting for it,” he sneered. “But I saw an opportunity, I just needed you lot out of the way.”
“So you can start selling drugs and trafficking women?” I asked in disgust.
“Whether you want to believe it or not, there’s a market for it, and it’s going on constantly.” Eric chuckled, but he was shifting nervously because he knew there was no way out. “Someone has bought her. In thirty fucking minutes, they’ll want her. They don’t get her, that’s fucking on you. They’ll come after you.”
“That’s a risk we’ll take,” Optimus growled, clenching his gun tighter in his hand, his finger poised on the trigger.
I could see his brain turning over and over, considering his options, and I hoped for the life of me, that he chose not to go against us.
Turns out, desperate men do desperate things.
He shuffled their bodies backward. Sugar moving with him like a puppet, even though her eyes were still fixated on mine. She was in there somewhere, we could still get her back, but after this I wasn’t sure just how long that would take.
The sound of the elevator stunned us all for a second, someone was on the floor, wanting to get in. Eric used the distraction to his advantage. He held her in front of him and tipped her head back, pouring the contents of the bag into her mouth and pressing it closed, so she had no choice.
His eyes met mine, they were full of glee, and I couldn’t hold myself back any longer. I ran at him and once again he used Sugar to protect himself, shoving her body forward and diving for the open door beside him.
I caught her and stumbled backward, but he only made it halfway through the doorway, his body in mid-air when it was hit by a flurry of bullets. The bottom half kept moving forward while the top half was thrown backward with the force, dumping him on the floor, his limbs spread in awkward and unnatural positions.
Blizzard leaped over him as I lowered Sugar to the ground and pulled her head into my lap, trying my best to dig out as many of pills from her mouth as I could find.
I knew there were far more.
She’d swallowed them.
Blizzard was shaking in fury. “Fuck! I couldn’t do anything, if I’d stepped out he would have seen me so I couldn’t tell if he had a weapon or
not.”
“Let us in,” a voice came booming from speakers in the room. It was Kit, they were in the elevator.
Leo rushed out to get them.
I shook her body and tapped her face, her eyes complete closed now.
“We need to get her to the fucking hospital,” Optimus said urgently.
I was just about to lift her into my arms when a group of brothers filled the doorway. Skins pushed his way through the crowd and dropped to his knees beside me. Technically he wasn’t even a prospect yet, but he was slowly proving himself to the club. Some of the brothers were being naturally suspicious given that he was an agent for the FBI just a few months ago until their operation was shut down.
“Where’s she hurt?” he asked, his eyes roaming her body.
“He forced a bag of pills down her throat,” I told him, suddenly remembering that he used to also be an EMT.
“Roll her on her side,” he ordered, and I quickly followed, laying her back on the floor and rolling her toward him. I could feel that her breathing was jerky and unnatural. “Sorry Sugar,” he apologized before prying her mouth open and sticking two fingers down her throat.
I felt her body convulse instantly, and Skins managed to leap out of the way before a wave of vomit hit the floor.
He took a quick look over it before kneeling down carefully again and doing the same thing. “Sorry beautiful,” he said again as he pushed his fingers down her throat and then threw himself backward as more bile and crap came up and onto the floor.
It’s was off-colored, but I could see the pills fizzing away inside the liquid. I tried to count them, wondering how much of it had already seeped into her system.
“Looks like we got quite a few out, but she still needs an Ambulance… like yesterday,” Skins said, pulling his cell from his pocket and looking over at Op.
Op nodded. “Make the call. You and Wrench go with her while we clean up this mess.”