“That bitch didn’t stand a chance. He had her from the moment she spotted him coming over to their table.” Spider grinned.
Beast nodded in agreement. “He’s lethal with the ladies.”
“Fuck if I know how he does it. He gets them every time.”
“It’s the smile, brothers.” Jagger said as he joined them. “They fall for that shit all the time.”
“Some good advice, my brothers, never ask that bastard along as your wingman. He gets all the pretty pussy while you are left holding the leftovers.” Wolf growled as he joined them.
They laughed and several female eyes turned their way. Obvious interest in some.
All of them ignored the women. They were waiting for the signal from Hawk to escort the newly engaged couple home.
Beast just wanted the night to be done. He was tired and wanted to get home. Hopefully his little girls would sleep through the night tonight. They had both been struggling with bad dreams. If Beast found proof his ex whore of a wife was responsible for those dreams he was going to fucking end her.
His girls were only four and a half and two, they should not be scared of going to sleep.
It wasn’t very late when Beast drove home with his babies fast asleep in their car seats. As he came to a stop in front of the house he was surprised to see Rider pulling in next to him. He had brought his girl and their baby girl home instead of crashing in his room at the clubhouse. His brother was a good man, a really good man. He put his little family first before anything else. And he already had the attention of the officers on him. They all saw the potential in him. He would make an excellent lieutenant when the time came.
Carrying his girls up to his room he settled them in their little beds and turned on the night light. Staring down at them sleeping peacefully he sighed with regret.
When they came to live with him they had had bad dreams virtually every single night and he had moved them into his room so he could be near. It seemed to have helped. The dreams were not as regular as they had been.
But even one fucking bad dream was too much as far as he was concerned. His girls should be dreaming of fucking stardust and fairies or some such shit. Nothing fucking scary.
Beast showered and pulled on sleep pants and a muscle shirt. He had stopped sleeping naked when he married the bitch, didn’t want her sneaking up on him when he was asleep. Not that it had saved him in the end. He had insisted on separate bedrooms and had made it very clear he was marrying her to give his kid his name. It wasn’t a real marriage and she would never be his old lady. He never gave her his property patch or claimed her in front of his club. He also refused her the use of his surname and insisted on her keeping her maiden name.
Ice and their lawyers had drawn up an iron clad ante nuptial contract he had the bitch sign before he married her. She would get a monetary pay out when they divorced with no claim on his personal property or money. She would not receive any further personal maintenance once she received the pay-out. Any children they had would receive maintenance as arranged by the courts. Not that he had planned to have more than just the one child with her.
He had gritted his teeth and survived his farce of a marriage until his baby girl turned two. That’s when he said enough was enough and started divorce proceedings. Bettie fought him and refused to sign any documents. Saying they needed to sit down and talk about it, Beast refused. He wanted it done and her gone.
The sly bitch had watched and waited. She struck when he was dead drunk at a club party. He woke up the next morning with a pounding headache, seriously hung over and with no memory of the night before, his naked smirking wife in his bed. His dick sticky with shit he did not want to think about.
He realised then how far the bitch would go to keep him on her leash. He knew he had to end the fucked up shit he was drowning in as soon as possible.
Two weeks later she gave him the news that she was pregnant and he lost his shit. As far as he was concerned the bitch had raped him. You did not fuck someone who was too drunk to know what the fuck they were doing. Obviously she did. He insisted that she sign the documents or he was going to the cops and would have her arrested for rape. He had a clause added to the documents that she had to go through with the pregnancy or she wouldn’t get a fucking penny from him.
She had been shocked. Stupid bitch had thought another pregnancy would tie him to her even tighter. But she had been wrong. He wanted out, he was done with her shit.
His big mistake was leaving his babies with her. He should have fought her for them from the start. But he had believed the shit the divorce lawyers had sprouted about children being better off staying with the mother.
Bull-fucking-shit.
Some women should never be mothers. He had learned that very hard lesson at a young age. Should have remembered but with time he had shoved those memories in a box and shut it tight. And in so doing failed to protect his babies.
Shortly after the divorce the bitch had moved herself and the kids away from Johannesburg where he could check in on them virtually every day.
He had been pissed when he found out she was back to her old tricks. Whoring herself out to the brothers of a small club in Vereeniging. They were a rough lot and Beast had been worried about his girls. To ensure they were taken care of he gave her money, more money than ordered by the court. He bought a two bedroom townhouse close to the club and set it up as a home for him and his babies. He never took women to the house, it was for him and his babies only.
As ordered by the court he had his girls every second week. Until the night the bitch turned up on his doorstep with his dirty and sobbing children, demanding money. Money he refused to give her. After swearing at him long and loud she had shoved his crying little girls into his arms and left.
Left with the asshole that had been waiting in the car he had bought so his babies would be safe on the road. The very next day he had sent a few of his brothers to repossess the fucking thing and it now sat unused in the garage at the clubhouse. No one wanted to drive it because it stank heavily of her perfume, even after being steam cleaned. He would have to make a plan to get rid of it.
The bitch had walked away from his babies leaving them with nothing but the clothes on their backs. Thank fuck for Aunt Beryl, she came the minute he called and helped him to get his girls settled down, after they had taken photos of the state the girls had been in. Luckily he’d had the basics at his place and his girls had been okay for the night. He went out the very next morning and bought everything they needed. His girls were never going back to that whore, they were with him now and it was where they would be staying.
Bettie had made a big fucking mistake thinking she could take him on. She would find out how wrong she was soon enough. Ice had the papers ready to go. And Sin and Jagger would make sure she signed them. Relinquishing all parental rights to his little girls.
No one was going to take them away from him ever again. He had given up too much in his life to lose them as well.
Sorrow burnt through his heart as he remembered the woman he had lost. He had given her up. Gave her up so she could follow the path she had planned for herself before she met him. If he had stayed she would not have followed her destiny. So he left.
He hadn’t checked up on her in years. Not since her affair with a fellow dancer hit the news two years after he had driven her away.
It shattered what was left of his heart and had him immersing himself deeper into the dark side of the club, retreating further and further from the light. Becoming the man he was today.
Trying to forget about the woman he still loved he made the mistake of fucking one of the club whores more than once and ended up tied to a whore.
And he had almost done it again. Why the fuck he hadn’t learned his lesson the first time around he just didn’t know. Not that Chris was anything like his ex, she made him smile, and maybe that’s why he went back for more. But he had no plans to make it permanent with her and therefore he would be keepin
g his distance. It wasn’t fair to Chris to build up her hopes of having a relationship with him.
He wasn’t going there ever again. The one woman he would have married without a second thought most probably belonged to someone else by now. Even though it burned in his gut he wished her happiness, she deserved it.
The only good thing that came out of his fucked up marriage was his little girls. They were the only bright spot in the darkness that was his life.
Shoving all his dark thoughts and memories to the back of his mind he lay in the semi-dark and listened to his babies breathe. Nothing would hurt them ever again.
No one and nothing. He would fucking kill to make sure of it.
CHAPTER THREE
Tori
Sunday
Thirst and pain woke me. I tried to move and caught my breath as pain speared through me.
“Ow, ow, ow, fucking ow.” I mumbled.
A deep chuckle next to the bed had me turning my head. One of the men who had brought me up to the room sat in an easy chair next to the bed. If my memory wasn’t faulty his name was Kid or something like that.
“You in pain, baby girl?” He asked as he sat forward, his brows drawn together in a slight frown.
“Yip, and I’m damned thirsty. I hate these pain pills. They make my mouth feel like a seagull shat in it.” I complained.
Kid shook with laughter and so did the other man in the room. The prospect who had been watching over me.
“Not sure I want to know how you know what that feels like, babe.” He stood and pulled the duvet away. “I’m sure you need to use the bathroom, so let’s get that out of the way before we get you something to eat and give you your meds. Okay?”
“Great, now I need a big, handsome, muscled man to help me to the toilet. How embarrassing is that?” I mumbled as he carried me into the bathroom chuckling like a damned stream.
“You do what you need to do while I organise you something to eat. Do you drink coffee, babe?”
“Is the pope catholic?” I shot back as he carefully set me down.
“You’re a handful aren’t you, Ms Victoria Keating?” He grinned.
Holding on to the vanity slab I shrugged. “So I’ve been told, and please, call me Tori.”
He tilted his head and narrowed his eyes. “Dom called you Victoria, why not Tori?”
Shaking my head I sighed. “You never know with Dominick. He does whatever he wants no matter whether you like it or not.”
He nodded and left abruptly, pulling the bathroom door closed behind him.
Getting my pants down and my butt on the loo was a scary balancing act but I managed and sighed with relief when I emptied my bladder. I had cut it very close, almost wetting my pants.
While washing my hands I stared at myself in the mirror. I looked like a horror show. My face was still swollen but not as badly had been the day after the attack, the swelling was starting to subside, leaving behind bruising in a wide colour spectrum of black, blue, purple, green and yellow. The split in my bottom lip that had been closed by two tiny stitches didn’t look too bad now the swelling was down and neither did the gash above my right eyebrow. The strips had done their job and a thin scab line was now visible. Not bad for two days of healing.
Filling the basin with hot water I used a facecloth to gently clean as much of my aching body and face as I could. Both my eyes were black and still slightly swollen, but at least I was now able to see out of a pair of bloodshot eyes. I gently patted the warm facecloth around my eyes and mouth trying not to grimace because any type of exaggerated facial expression was freaking painful.
I left my leg alone, because I couldn’t remove the brace and bandages on my own. It was a job that required more than one set of hands and at present I had only one and a half. At least my sprained wrist was so sore anymore.
Balancing on my good leg I opened the bathroom door, feeling halfway human again. But I wasn’t prepared for what awaited me in the room.
While I had been in the bathroom my room had filled with a bunch of men. Shit. A quick look reassured me that HE wasn’t one of them. I was sure I had heard someone say his name while I had been lying on the back seat of the SUV.
My luck was freaking atrocious.
Before I could say a word Kid had me up in his arms and had me settled against the cushions stacked against the headboard. He gently raised my leg, settled it on the pillows then drew the duvet back up and over my lap. Throughout him putting me to bed the men watched him silently, slight frowns on some of those watching faces.
“I’ve got you some breakfast, babe. Nothing that would be too difficult to eat, so try and get down as much as you can. You need to build up your strength.” Kid said as he settled a bed tray over my legs.
The tray contained a travel mug of coffee, a small bowl of oats porridge with honey drizzled on top and a small glass of orange juice. Heaven. I tried to smile but stopped instantly when my lip protested the movement.
“Thanks, Kid. Especially for the coffee.”
Kid nodded and sat back down in the chair next to my bed and again I noticed the frowns. What was with the frowns? What was going on here?
But then I was side-tracked by the wonderful aroma of the coffee and took several small sips and hummed with appreciation. Eating was a lot easier than I had expected and wasn’t very painful. And all the while the men watched me. Weird. But I was hungry and ignored them in order to finish my breakfast. When I was done the prospect removed the tray and left the room. I held on to the mug of coffee because I wasn’t done.
Apparently the badasses had been waiting for me to finish because now they drew up their chairs and virtually surrounded my bed. All eyes were on me and they were not friendly. Not at all.
Kid reached over and took my hand and I looked at him. “We need to ask you some questions, Tori. Okay?”
I nodded and looked back at the big intimidating man who was in charge.
Hawk Walker, the man who had claimed my friend DC as his own. I met his eyes and waited. I didn’t have to wait long.
“I’m glad to see you looking better, Victoria. We came to an agreement with Dominick Maingarde to keep you here until he considers it safe to take you back to Cape Town. I am worried that your involvement with Dominick will spill over on to my club. I can’t protect my people or you if I don’t know exactly what I’m up against. How long have you and Dominick been in a relationship and how the hell did he hide that fact from everyone?”
The snort escaped before I could stop it and the painful laugh followed soon after but it didn’t last long. I stopped with a slight grimace and held onto my ribs with my eyes shut tight. I started answering without opening my eyes.
“That’s so damned funny, if my ribs didn’t hurt so much I would laugh harder. Dominick and I aren’t together. He’s doing Pixie a favour but at the same time he’s using me to flush out a rat. Like he told you.”
I peeked through my lashes but the eyes on me didn’t waver.
“Can you tell us why they want to kill you?” The pretty blonde guy at the bottom of the bed asked.
“Sure, Dominick didn’t say I had to keep my mouth shut about that.” Closing my eyes again I thought back to the day my life imploded. “I was at Maingarde Enterprises on Friday morning waiting to speak to Dominick about funding a ballet school for underprivileged children when I overheard two guys arranging a murder. I was so shocked I gasped and the next thing I see is one of the security guards storming towards me with his gun out. I ran out of there and for some stupid reason I went home. Long story short, they were waiting for me, did this to me and when they left to find alcohol to continue their party I escaped. Pixie called Dominick, he took me to a safe house but it really wasn’t safe because we were attacked. Apparently he has a rat. We flew up here, we went to an orthopaedic specialist and afterwards he brought me here. He promised I would be safe with you guys until he sorts out his problem in Cape Town.”
I wasn’t sure about telling them Dom
inick had killed the men who had been searching for me, so I left that out of my story.
Kid’s hand tightened and I looked at him. “What happened to the men who did this to you?”
I gave a tiny shrug. I really didn’t care about what had happened to them. “They’re not a problem anymore.”
“Did you happen to hear who was going to be murdered?” Hawk sat forward, his eyes very intent.
I would never forget the name. It was the first thing I had told Dominick and he had promised to take care of it. He also made me promise not to tell anyone else.
“I gave Dominick his name and he promised to keep him safe. I know Dominick is involved in some shady shit but I believed him. I know he will keep this guy alive. Just as I know he would be highly pissed off if I gave you the name. He made me promise that I would keep my mouth shut.” I gave a little shrug. “So that’s all I can tell you until he says otherwise.”
They were not pleased. Hell no, they were highly pissed off.
Hawk Walker stared at me with those weird yellow-brown eyes. His face set and cold as ice. Shit. I had to somehow send this conversation in a different direction.
Clearing my throat I glanced at Kid and then back at Hawk. “Could I maybe see DC if she’s here? We haven’t seen each other for almost three years and I would really love to catch up with her.”
Now that face was no longer cold it was all frowny and suspicious.
“How do you know DC?” He asked as he leant forward in his chair.
I sighed heavily. “I thought Dominick told you all about me, seems like he didn’t. So damned typical of him.”
Relaxing against the cushions I explained.
“I was born and raised in Cape Town. I met Pixie at the fancy private school we both attended and we’ve been friends ever since. I met DC at Mainline Ink when she came to do her apprenticeship with Pixie. We hung out together a lot before I left the country to pursue my career as a ballet dancer and unfortunately we lost touch. Now I’m back and I would love to reconnect with her.”
Black Heart And Red Redemption (Iron Dogz MC) Page 3