Parking my bike, I kill the engine and Whitley finally speaks. “What are we doing?” she asks. I help her off of the bike, then step off as well.
“We’re going to get some furniture,” I announce.
She looks from the discount furniture store, then back to me. “This is a new furniture store, Free,” she mumbles.
“And?”
She shakes her head, looking down at her sandal-covered feet, then back up to me. “We should look at used furniture first,” she explains her voice barely above a whisper.
“We need a bed and a sofa, not hip on sleeping or sitting on cum stains, Kitten.”
Her eyes widen, and her face turns pink from my words. She inhales a deep breath and nods, “I can cover them, it’s just, new furniture is so expensive.”
“You think I’m destitute?” I chuckle, pressing my hand against her lower back and applying pressure to get her to walk forward. “Kitten, you don’t need to worry about money.”
She lets out an exhale, sounding frustrated, but I ignore her. I haven’t had anyone to spend money on but myself for years. My bike is newer and in great shape, my clothes aren’t expensive, and I don’t party much outside of the clubhouse. Financially, I’m fit as a fuckin’ fiddle.
“Relax, Kitten,” I grunt, opening the front door before I usher her inside of the building.
Whitley is timid walking through the door, and I look down at her to see that her eyes are rounded and wide as she takes in the store. I wonder when the last time she was in a place like this was? She’s looking about as overwhelmed as she did when we went clothes shopping for her.
A saleswoman walks toward us, and she gives Whitley a kind smile before her eyes slide up to me, then her steps falter and she looks scared. Her gaze quickly moves back to Whitley, and I wonder what the fuck her problem is with me.
“How can I help you?” she asks, keeping her gaze averted from my own.
Whitley either doesn’t realize this girl is freaked out, or she’s so freaked out she doesn’t care. “You wanted to look for a mattress, right?” She asks, looking back and up at me.
“A queen size mattress and box springs, a frame, and a headboard maybe a footboard,” I explain trying to keep my voice smooth and even. Whatever this girl’s deal is, I don’t want her traumatized.
The rest of the furniture store experience is the same. The sales girl never once becomes more comfortable with me being present. She never makes eye contact with me and goes about showing us things in an extremely robotic manner. Once I pay for the items Whitley picks out, we leave, and I feel like I can finally breathe.
“She was so scared; do you think something happened to her?” Whitley asks.
Looking at my shoes, I nod. “Yeah, I think something did, Kitten.”
Dropping the conversation, I straddle my bike holding out my hand for Whitley to climb on behind me. “I wish I could help her,” she sighs.
I shake my head, a smile twitching on my lips. Of course, she wishes she could help the girl, I don’t blame her. I wish I could too. I don’t respond. Starting the engine, I back out of the stall, then turn the front tire and we ride toward the clubhouse.
Hopefully we’ll find out in a few days if the small home is ours. The furniture is set to be delivered Saturday, and I would hate to have to change all that shit. I want Whitley safe and comfortable when I leave for Idaho.
WHITLEY
My stomach flutters and clenches. I want to go back to that furniture store and talk to that girl. I don’t know what it is about her, but there was definitely something going on. Free thought so, too, but it doesn’t seem to be bothering him as much as it does me. The clubhouse comes into view, but all I can think about is Sadie at the discount furniture store.
I’m lost in thought, trying to figure out what exactly happened to the furniture store girl as I follow behind Free on the way into the club bar. I’m not paying attention, and I slam into the back of him. He’s stopped in his tracks, and I peek around his shoulder, gasping when I see what’s stopped him.
It’s DD.
She’s sprawled out completely naked in the middle of a pool table, surrounded by blood. It’s thick and soaking into the felt of the table. Her mouth is open, as are her eyes but it’s obvious she’s gone.
“Free,” I gasp.
Ripping my eyes from her body, I glance around the room only to find it empty. It’s never empty, and this sick feeling slithers up my spine. Fisting the sides of his vest, I tug on him. “Where is everyone?” I whisper-shout.
He doesn’t respond to me. He reaches into his vest pocket, pulls out his phone and pushes on the screen, then places it at his ear. “Pres, we got a problem, call all of the brothers to the clubhouse,” he growls.
Free disengages my iron grip on his leather and turns around, forcing my hands at my side. “I’m locking you in Snake’s office. You’ll be safe in there,” he announces.
My eyes search his own, gone is the easy-going man from just a few minutes ago. This is someone that I don’t recognize. His jaw is set hard, and his eyes are void of all emotion. This man is the Vice President of a Motorcycle Club, this is not the man who sleeps beside me at night.
This man is not to be questioned or defied.
This man is ruthless.
I nod, afraid to speak to him. He wraps his hand around mine pulling me toward Snake’s office. He opens the door, looking around, then pulls me inside. “You don’t answer the door for anyone, you understand me? Nobody but me, not a single fucking person, I don’t care who they are or how well you know them,” he explains.
Lifting my hand, I cup his scruffy cheek with my palm then lift on my toes. Pressing my lips against his, I slip my tongue out to taste him. His hands wrap roughly around my waist and he pulls me against his chest. He doesn’t deepen the kiss, but it becomes harder, his lips bruising my own, and I don’t mind it at all.
“Whatever happens, you stay fucking put, do you understand me?” he growls against my mouth.
My breath hitches and I nod once. “I understand, baby. Be careful, please,” I plead.
“Look around for a gun, there should be one somewhere in here, just in case,” he instructs.
I don’t tell him that I wouldn’t know how to use a gun even if I found one, because he’s scared. He doesn’t need to hear that from me, he needs to know that I’m protected, I know that it’s extremely important to him.
Spinning me around, he grabs ahold of the back of my dress and rips it from the neck down over my shoulder, exposing my bra strap, and my new ink. “Anybody even tries a fucking thing, you make sure they know you’re marked before anything happens.”
My eyes fill with tears and my head bobs up and down in a nod. I’m too emotional to speak and too fucking scared. Suddenly, there are shouts from the bar area.
“Lock it,” Free grunts.
I turn my head and watch him stomp out of the office. Hurrying behind him, I do as he demands, I lock myself in the office. My body feels like it’s humming like it needs something to do, desperately.
I know that I can’t stay staring at the locked door for the undetermined amount of time that it will take Free to come back in here. I also know that I can’t try and sleep, every time I even blink, I see DD’s lifeless bloodied body on that pool table.
Walking over to the desk, I sit, and although I feel guilty, I rifle through the drawers. I’m not snooping, to snoop, at least that’s what I tell myself as I begin to look for a gun.
The bottom left-hand drawer is deep, and when I open it, I see that it’s full of files. The names on the files are the men’s road names. My fingers quickly flip through the files and when I land of Free’s, I freeze.
I shouldn’t pull it out of the drawer, I whisper to myself as I do exactly that.
I definitely shouldn’t open it, I mutter as I do.
My eyes should not scan the photograph of a much younger Free standing next to a bike, with his arm slung around a petite blonde. Her arms
are wrapped around his waist and her chest is pressed against his side. He’s smiling, the kind of smile that takes over his entire face, even reaches his eyes.
Picking the picture up, I turn it over. In slanted uppercase writing, Mason and Gemma, is written on the back. It’s dated, eighteen years ago. Mason, that must be his real name. I feel wrong for knowing it, I wanted him to be the one to tell me what it was, and now I’ve ruined everything.
I can’t take my eyes off of the photo though. I was only one year old, and here he is, standing with this gorgeous, tiny girl, and both of them are extremely happy. Reluctantly, I put it face down, and begin to look through the other documents.
It’s a complete file on Mason Kelly, AKA Free.
Skimming the pages, I freeze when I get to what looks like a report. It’s a detailed retelling of a rape. My breath hitches, as I read the words, my heart begins to slam into my chest as what happened to this poor girl is replayed in my mind.
Tears are silently streaming down my cheeks when I flip the paper over and I see more photographs. It’s Gemma, she’s a bruised, battered mess. But that isn’t what is haunting, it’s her eyes. She’s gone. She is completely gone. From one picture to the next, her soul has left her body.
The next paper tells me what I already knew deep inside of myself, she’s dead. She’d taken her own life. I wipe the tears from my face, slowly closing the file and returning it to its rightful place. Free loved her, and she was hurt. Then, she decided being gone was easier than living with the pain that life brought to her.
I can’t imagine leaving Free, not willingly. He isn’t a perfect man, but he’s the best man I’ve ever known aside from my father. Every person that walks this earth has flaws, but to leave a man who so obviously loves you, I just can’t picture it and he doesn’t even love me, not like he did her.
Maybe one day he will fall in love with me and I will be more than a means to make him feel less guilty. I now understand completely why he’s taken me, and marked me, the way that he has. He’s trying to make up for Gemma, for everything that happened to her, and then the fact that she took her own life. I can’t imagine living with that kind of guilt.
I abandon my mission of looking for a gun, standing from behind the desk, I walk over to the sofa and slowly sink down. My mind is whirling with the new information I found out today. I’m not sure if I feel sorry for him because of what happened to her, or because he’s been mourning her for almost two decades.
Nobody should have to live with that kind of pain for this long. Gemma’s ghost still haunts him, and I wish I could help him with that, but I can’t. He has to deal with his guilt revolving around her on his own, and if he hasn’t done it in eighteen years, I have a feeling that he never will. Which means, there will never be room inside of him for me, not completely anyway.
I should probably be upset about that fact, maybe try to leave him or force him to deal with the past, but that isn’t me. I’m falling in love with him, even the part of him that makes me angry and doesn’t always say the nicest things. I’m falling for the man as a whole though, not part of him, not the good pieces—just him.
Leaning back against the sofa, I try to calm myself down. I need to stay alert, and not get emotional. My head is swirling, and I keep flipping back and forth between DD and Gemma.
I feel like I’m running out of time, and I don’t know why I feel like I’m running a losing race.
Something is happening, something huge, and I know that none of us will be able to stop it.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
FREE
Snake looks from DD’s bloodied naked body to me, and back again. We’re all standing around, just staring in shock. She left, yesterday morning she made her rounds and packed her bags and was gone. I figured she was going to be driving from one Notorious Devils clubhouse to another, making her way toward Texas.
Where she shouldn’t be is dead on our pool table. This place is never empty, there are always men in and out. I have a hard time believing nobody saw a fucking thing, especially a prospect.
“Where were you?” I ask the prospect who is in charge of watching the entrance/exit gate during the day.
His face turns red and he looks down at his feet. “Jizzy was in the booth for a couple hours this afternoon,” he explains.
I look up to Jizzy, who is staring at DD’s body as tears stream down her face. “That true, Jizz?” Snake calls out.
Her head jerks and she looks up at him. “Is what true?”
“You spend a few hours with this prospect in the front tower this afternoon?”
Jizzy’s eyes slowly move to the prospect and then back to us, her lips start to tremble before she speaks. “It’s true,” she whimpers. “We were fooling around, I didn’t think anything of it. When I’m bored during the day and no one is around, I play with the prospects. I didn’t think anything,” she repeats.
Snake lets out a heavy breath, running his hand through his hair. “It’s okay, sweetheart. Go ahead and go to your room, don’t leave the clubhouse though, okay?” She nods, turning away and hurrying toward her room.
Looking from man-to-man, I wonder if one of these men killed her. It would only make sense that it was someone who knew the area well. Even if the prospect at the gate was distracted, there’s no way another man could miss DD being hacked up in the middle of the bar.
“We’re on fuckin’ lockdown until we know who did this,” Snake announces.
He looks to Crooner. “I want you to keep every member and prospect in the basement, until further notice. Everybody is a suspect right now,” Snake grunts.
“Yeah, even you, Pres? What about Free? He’s been acting shady as fuck lately,” a voice calls out.
Snake’s gaze narrows, and I follow it, as it’s directed toward Dawg. My own eyes narrow on the fucker. “Don’t you worry about me and Free. I know where he was, and I’m your fucking president. Get in the fucking basement or I’ll shoot you myself and drag you down there,” Snake growls.
Nobody else says a word. They all willingly walk toward the basement and a few minutes later Crooner appears. “They’re locked in, but fuck, what the actual fuck. How can we suspect our own men?”
Snake shakes his head. “Did you do a count, was that all of them?” he asks, ignoring Crooner’s question.
“Yeah, it’s all of them,” he mumbles.
Snake runs his fingers through his hair, letting out a breath. “Fuck,” he hisses. “Someone killed DD, right here,” he announces.
I nod, because yeah, I fuckin’ know. “We need to figure out every single man’s whereabouts this morning,” I suggest.
“There’s a reason I didn’t go to the police academy,” Crooner grunts. “This is bullshit, I don’t want to suggest a brother did it, but fuck, it does make sense,” he rambles, as he begins to pace. “I don’t understand why though?”
“To make a point,” Snake states.
“But what point?” Crooner asks.
Clearing my throat, I look to DD then back to Snake. “To prove that none of the women are safe. Starting with the whores is what they might do. Because who cares if a whore is killed, right?”
“Our men know how we treat our whores, and that they’re under a blanket of protection though,” Crooner mentions.
I lift my chin. “Our men might, sure, but prospects might not.”
“Bring me a prospect, I don’t care which one,” Snake announces. “We’ll be in the church room.”
Snake and I walk into the room where we normally hold church. He sits at his normal place at the head of the table, and I sit at my own, to his right. Crooner walks in, pushing a prospect through the door a few minutes later.
The guy is a kid, a fucking eighteen-year-old kid. I know his parents are pieces of shit, and he doesn’t know what to do with his life. He’s friends with a couple of the high school kids and has hung around here on and off for years. Six months ago, he came to us and asked if he could prospect. No way did he kill D
D.
“Where were you all morning and afternoon?” Snake asks.
He clears his throat, his voice trembling. “I was washing bikes in the barn like Dawg told me to do,” he states, his voice cracking.
Dawg. He’s not a brother, he’s still a prospect himself, but he’s up for a vote next month so he’s the most senior prospect we have. He also thinks it’s his job to boss all of the other prospects around—plus he hits on my woman, constantly. I can’t fucking stand him.
“Thanks,” Snake states. “Take him back.”
A few minutes later Dawg walks in. He has his head held high, and a smug smile on his face. “Where were you this morning and afternoon?” I ask, growling.
“Directing these fuckers on how to be proper prospects,” he shrugs.
I grunt, but Snake interrupts me. “I’m going to need more than that,” he announces.
Dawg shrugs. “Don’t know what to tell you. But why the fuck would I kill DD? I never even fucked with her. She’s not my type,” he says, his cold glare directed right at me.
“Whitley ain’t your type either,” I state.
He smirks. “Oh, you know she is, Free. Those big natural tits, that long hair, and her face—so fucking innocent. Makes me want to come all over it,” he smirks.
“Get him the fuck out of my sight,” I shout.
I’m about to end him and call it a day. I know he’s the sick fucker who hurt DD, I can feel it in my gut.
Dawg stands, his gaze still focused on me. “You keeping a good eye on your little prisoner. You know, if you don’t, someone might snatch her out from right underneath you,” he winks.
I watch as Crooner slams the butt of his gun on Dawg’s head and he goes crashing to the floor.
“Get someone to help you drag his ass to the shed and tie him up. He’s suspect number one,” Snake shouts from behind me.
I’m already on the move toward his office. The only thing on my mind is Whitley.
Flamed with Courage: Notorious Devils (Cash Bar Book 3) Page 13