“We were calling you in here, because we need to know a few things. I understand you were kept in the dark about a lot in your marriage, for obvious reason, but you knew about the connection to the Modern Saints MC, so we’re hoping you might know a little more.”
I thought about it, and shrugged. “Feel free to ask specific questions, and maybe it will trigger something I don’t think of on my own. All I know, off the top of my head, is that Josh was the financial backing for a supposedly legal brothel. I heard Modern Saints in conjunction with it, and honestly thought that was going to be the name of the place or something considering the longer version sounded more like a catchphrase than a brothel name. I saw that woman, the one he was apparently dating the whole time, outside of our place once, and she was wearing a t-shirt with a Modern Saints logo on it, and it looked like it was more about bikers than a whorehouse, so I wasn’t sure what to think. I figured maybe they were catering to a rougher clientele or something.”
“Did you ever see any bikers hanging around your place too?” Spinner asked.
I thought about it for a minute. “No. We lived in a condo downtown just a couple blocks off the strip, so there was always bike traffic.”
“How good are you with faces? Do you think you could recognize someone if we showed you pictures?”
“Sure, but why does it matter if you already know the Club is involved somehow?”
“That’s Club Business, sweet girl,” Shameless told me.
“It’s also my life. I get your need to keep club business separate, and if it didn’t have to do with me personally I would be fine with you all keeping everything to yourselves. In this case, my life is literally at stake, and I need to know if I have more people out there willing to kill me for what they think I’m worth, or if this will truly all be over once Josh and his whore are taken care of.” Every eye in the room deferred to Iceman.
“You’re right. In this case, you get a little more detail than I’d otherwise give. We have reason to believe that only a small faction of Modern Saints is involved in a human trafficking operation. Their Prez, Walker, is claiming he knows nothing about Josh providing financial backing in Wild Honey, which is the name of their brothel. It’s a club business, so they wouldn’t want to pull outside investors who weren’t interested in joining the club.”
“So, you think his investment was towards buying girls as part of a trafficking ring?”
“Partly. We think Walker has bigger problems in his own backyard, and some of his people want to get into a more lucrative game. Buying and selling women is a gold mine, especially when they’re dealing with high-end transactions that they get from rich bastards who are looking for very specific fantasies. Our brothers in Cedar Falls and Sierra High have been dealing with a rival club that have been bottom feeding, doing snatch and grabs of girls. When they were telling us about it, we had another angle to look into after Walker claimed Josh had no involvement with the club. Obviously, Walker has some bad apples in his cart, and he should know who he needs to weed out.”
“We also needed to know, because when the hit he put on you failed, there was another put out in its place, only this one was a little different.” Shameless added.
“He wants to sell me?” I asked doing the crazy outlaw math in my head.
Shameless nodded. “They have a buyer who has a particular kink for sexual violence against women, and one who makes snuff films out of it too.”
“Snuff films?” I asked, and then wished I didn’t when I got my answer.
“The women are abused in every way possible until they die, and it’s all filmed for future sales. It’s among the most expensive porn in the world, because the clients are able to verify that girl in the films died. After they’re used for filming, the girls’ bodies are strategically placed somewhere they’re certain to be found.” Spinner explained, and I felt as though I was going to be sick. I was certainly saying goodbye to my appetite as quickly as I had gotten it back.
Rage moved to me in a space quicker than a heartbeat, and pulled me over to the couch where he sat and pulled me on his lap. “We are not going to let anything like that happen to you, darlin’. I promise you that.”
“You’re damn right we’re not.”
“This is why we didn’t want to tell you, because I’d rather you not have this worry added to the burden you’ve already been carrying around.” Iceman informed me. “I do have good news though,” he stated, making me look back up at him. “We heard from Bishop.” That perked me up. My attention was completely on Iceman now. “He’s doing just fine, and checking into the people involved in the trafficking ring. Once we gave him our theories he was able to piece some things together for us. We’re closer, but we definitely need to keep you as close to home as possible. I don’t want you feeling like a prisoner, Charlie, but…”
I held my hand up in the air and shook my head. “No need to placate me there. If I have to stay locked in my room for the next few weeks or months to know I’m safe when I’m finally let out, I will. Running is exhausting, and that future you painted that they have planned for me… yeah, I’m okay feeling cooped up here.” Rage held me tighter to him when he felt me shudder.
“Well, Shame and Rage mentioned to me that you talked about possibly choreographing some dances for the girls at Ruby’s. I was thinking we could bring them over a couple days a week, during the day, and have you work with them here. We have a stage – though somewhat smaller – in the commons. It has a pole too, so if you think…”
I didn’t even let him finish that sentence. “YES!” I yelped. As everyone’s snickering grew louder I blushed and then calmly said, “yes, that would be fantastic.”
“Alright then, we’ll get that set up for you. Rage or Shameless will keep you updated – to a point – about the rest of it.”
“Okay,” I told them. “Thank you.”
“You don’t have to thank any of us for taking care of you. We look after family. We’ll have some pictures for you to look over soon though.”
Chapter 10
Hot breath on my neck woke me from the sensual dream I’d been having about Rage. We hadn’t done anything more than him holding me or kissing me on the top of my head. There had been no kissing, intimate touches, and definitely no sex since I’d been recuperating, but boy did my body wish there had been. A very small part of me was still disturbed by the thought that I wanted to have sex with another man when I was still a married woman.
Yes, I know how crazy that sounds considering the man I’m married to is trying to have me killed or sold into sexual slavery in order to be killed in an even more horrific way than he originally planned. Yet, when I took my vows, I meant them. No, that wasn’t even the part that was bothering me, because I think my allegiance to those vows ended when I found out not only did my husband want me dead, but also that he had been with another woman for the entirety of our relationship. That fact still made me cringe. No, my problem with moving on to someone else was that I wasn’t doing it with a clean slate. Whoever I decided to be with next, whether it be Rage or someone else, deserved to have all of me. He definitely deserved more than me being stuck with another man’s name.
While my thoughts were running wild, I remembered what had woken me up in the first place. Someone was breathing against my neck. The veil of sleep was lifting, and I began to panic, because I had definitely gone to bed alone. The breath at neck stank strongly of whiskey while the pungent aroma of stale cigarettes and cheap perfume also clung to the air surrounding me. Slowly, I began to pull away before the insane pounding of my heart gave way to my panic and informed my intruder that I was indeed awake. I was able to get out from under the solid arm of muscle that had me pinned to the bed, and I moved to the door that would lead me out into the hallway where I could scream for help.
It was when I opened the door and the light from the hall filtered in that I saw it was Rage who had crawled in bed with me. I had missed his familiar scent for all the whiske
y radiating from his pores and on his breath. What the hell? I moved closer, leaving the bedroom door propped open for light, and that was when I saw the lipstick marks all over his face and neck, along with a giant hickey that certainly hadn’t been there earlier in the day. His pants were unbuttoned, his shirt was missing, and I had no clue where his boots or socks had gotten off to, but they weren’t in my room.
“You okay, lady?” A man called from the hallway. It was my across the hall neighbor, Flint.
“Do you, um… do you know where Shameless is right now?” I asked, trying to control the edge that was in my voice. I was on the teetering between dramatic girly hysterics and supreme anger at the moment, and trying to find a way to keep calm in the wake of the absolutely heartbreaking mess I had just woken up to. I had just been thinking about how I wanted to come to this man with a clean slate, and he had the audacity to climb into my bed drunk with evidence of another woman all over him? My heart clenched so tightly in my chest that it physically hurt. Flint peeked inside my room then shuffled back as he huffed out a, “damn.” Then he turned on his heels. “I’ll go get Shame for you.”
“Thanks.” The word came out so quiet I doubt he heard me. It took about ten minutes before anyone showed up, but eventually, Shameless came crashing down the hall looking concerned.
“What’s going on sweet girl?”
I pointed into my room. Shameless, not taking in the complete picture at first, smiled. “He wanted to be close to you, huh? The boy had a rough night. I don’t blame him for seeking you out.” He turned to me then, noticing the sick look I must have had on my face. “I thought you two were okay and working towards something?”
I grabbed his hand and pulled him into the room. “I woke up to find him draped across me, stinking of whiskey, perfume that I don’t wear, and looking like that!” I almost shouted the last couple words as I let my anger get the best of me when I pointed to his neck and face.
“Holy fuck!” Shameless growled. “What did you do, Rage?”
“I don’t give a shit what he did, or why he did it, but get him the hell out of my room. I’m going to need a change of sheets too, so if you could tell me where to find those, that’d be great. If not, I’ll just go read while I wash these.”
Shameless had pity in his eyes when he looked back up at me, and I couldn’t stand it. “I’m gonna go see if Rabbit is in his room, and can help you get him out.” He tipped his head towards me, in agreement with my words, and I left.
I knocked, loudly, on Rabbit’s door before I tried the handle. It wasn’t locked so I pushed it open to find him in bed. He was not there alone, but thankfully they had only been sleeping, and I didn’t walk in on something I really didn’t want to see.
He lifted his head toward the door and noticed it was me. “Showgirl? What’s going on?” He asked as he lifted himself up to a sitting position while maintaining his modesty with the sheet.
“Shameless needs your help taking the trash out of my room.”
“Trash?” He questioned. “What the fuck, Charlie?”
“Please,” I begged. “Just come help!” I turned and left his room so he could get dressed. By the time I got back down to my room Rabbit was coming out of his door securing the button on his jeans. As he moved to my room he was asking, once again, “what’s going on?”
I just pointed to where Shameless stood with fists balled up and shaking his head. “This stupid motherfucker,” he started to say and glanced at Rabbit. “If he wasn’t completely fucked out of his brain and gone I would be beating the shit out of him this time.”
“What the fuck for?” Rabbit turned to me wild eyed. “Did he attempt something with you that you didn’t want?”
“If you mean did I want to wake up with a freshly fucked – by someone else – whiskey factory draped over me, the answer is definitely no. He didn’t touch me inappropriately though, because he had someone else for that before he crawled his sorry ass into my bed.”
Rabbit’s eyes flashed with murderous fury as he glanced back and forth between myself, Shameless, and the lump of useless asshole still passed out in my bed. Whereas Shame had held himself back, Rabbit moved forward and took in all the evidence on Rage’s body of what his night must have entailed. Then, he slapped Rage across the face with his open palm. The sound reverberated through the room and was successful in rousing the bastard.
“What the fuck!” Rage roared out as he came to a sitting position with inhuman speed. Then he grabbed onto his head, and groaned loudly.
“You stupid fuckwad!” Rabbit yelled at him.
“I fuckin’ trusted you with my baby girl,” Shameless added.
“What the fuck? Can you assholes tone it down?”
“Tone it down?” Rabbit screamed at him. “Do you know where the fuck you are right now?”
I could see Rage glance around and shake his head. “Charlie’s room,” he mumbled almost incoherently.
“Charlie’s room, motherfucker. You crawled in her bed, spooned up to her…” Rabbit cut off his spiel when Rage smiled a big goofy smile. Then he smacked Rage across the face again before snatching him up off the bed and dragging him to the bathroom. He flicked on the light, and pushed Rage in front of the mirror. “You crawled into her bed looking like this you stupid fucker!”
Rage’s eyes immediately bulged as his hand went to the nasty mark on his neck. Then moved to scrub the lipstick off his face. “What the fuck?” He growled out. “How the fuck?” He turned panicked eyes to Rabbit then. “What the fuck happened? I don’t… I wouldn’t…” Then he smacked his own head. “I don’t remember shit. Who the fuck was I with that did this? I was drinking, and then…” he just stood there blankly as if there was nothing after that. “I can’t fucking remember anything beyond the commons and taking a shot with…” His hands went to his head again where he tugged at his hair. “Somebody?” he whispered out questioningly.
Then something else dawned on him. “Where’s Charlie? Did she see me like this?” Again everything he said was slurred so it came out more like “whirs Chaw-wee? Id see me zis?” While slurred, the panic in his voice was still evident.
“Of course she did, fuckwad! Who do you think came to get me to remove you from her room?”
“Noooo!” He cried out. The pain in his voice almost broke my resolve, but not quite all of it. “Fuck, no! Everything was good. Who did this?”
“You did this!” Rabbit screamed at him, and I looked away then, moving over to strip my bed of the tainted sheets that smelled like whiskey and bad decisions. None of which belonged to me. “Come on, let’s go,” Rabbit said as both he and Shameless moved to prop up the man I thought I was falling for.
As soon as he noticed me, Rage was calling out to me. “Charlie! Fuck, Charlie, I’m so sorry darlin’! Don’t know what, how, this happened.” His words were slurring together even more and he looked absolutely pathetic as his damn near limp body was maneuvered out into the hallway, his feet dragging for the most part, while Shameless and Rabbit supported all his weight.
I received one more piteous look from Flint when I went to shut my door. “Sorry, babe.” He got out before I got the door shut and locked behind me. I also engaged the bolt lock too for good measure, something I hadn’t used in the entire time I had been here since that first day.
A part of me had been waiting for the other shoe to drop. I had figured it would come in the form of something to do with Josh though, and not as yet another betrayal by the man I was falling for. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. What in the hell had I been thinking? These people lived by an entirely different set of rules than I did. I should have known better when I watched the way Iceman interacted with his wife, old lady, or whatever the hell she was to him.
A knock at the door startled me out of my thoughts. “Baby girl, it’s me. You wanna open up?” Shameless asked me.
“No. I’m going back to bed,” I called out.
“Without clean sheets?” His ques
tion was laced in humor as I groaned, looking at the mess I’d made while stripping my bed and tossing the contaminated sheets in the corner. There was glitter on them. Glitter! That just pissed me off all over again. I stomped over and opened the door to Shameless holding out a fresh set of sheets.
“Thank you,” I told him as I accepted the bundle. He went to gather the dirty set so I warned him. “There’s glitter all over them.” The disgust in my voice made him hesitate in picking them up. “Do you know what glitter is, Shame?” I didn’t wait for an answer and continued my rant while Shameless paused mid-way to grabbing the offensive linens. “It’s the herpes of the dance world. I’ll be finding it on everything for weeks now!” I cried out, almost at shrieking level. Then I glanced around the room and sighed. “Maybe I won’t have to be here that much longer.”
“What?” Shameless growled. “I thought you said you’d like to stay?”
“I don’t think this world is for me,” I told him honestly as I sat defeated on my stripped bare matress.
“I’m not sure what to tell you sweet girl, because I don’t want you to ever think I’m putting my brothers before you, but I don’t know what the hell happened tonight. That was not the Rage we all know.”
“No? Because it’s not like he hasn’t done something similar before since I’ve been here.”
“Fuck!” Shameless huffed out as he sat in my desk chair. “That wasn’t exactly in character either, but I get what you’re saying.” His elbows were resting on his knees as he tucked his head into his hands and exhaled a sigh. “I don’t want to lose you because he fucked up. There’s more to the club than Rage and whatever the hell caused him to end up like that tonight.”
“Normally, I’d agree, but I saw the way Iceman spoke to his wife too. What if I mess up and get bitchy with someone? Will I be treated like that too?”
Dancing With Danger Page 12