by Blair Grey
“I think you would have done something to prove your worth, and that’s how you repay me?” he asked with a shake of his head. “After all I’ve done for you, all you do is get disgusting on me! You look like shit all the time, every single day, and you don’t pull your weight. You don’t do a goddamn thing, but hang around and mooch off me and my success, and I’m sick of it!”
“I haven’t done a thing to mooch off you!” I cried. “You’re the one who wants to pay for everything I do!”
“I have to pay for everything you do! You’re so worthless, how the Hell do you think you’re going to pay for anything yourself?” he sneered.
“If you just let me get a job-” I tried, but Shade cut me off before I had the chance to continue.
“I got you a job. All you had to do was sit back and let it pan out, but you didn’t, did you? You had to interfere and fuck it up, just like everything else you do!”
“I didn’t do anything!” I cried.
“That’s clearly part of the problem!” Shade shot back at me before I had the chance to say anything else. “But you must have done more than that! Last I hear, you’ve got someone coming to the hotel, then the next thing I know I’m banned from the damn site!”
I hesitated. That was new information to me. I didn’t know anyone could get banned from the site, but more than that, I knew I didn’t have anything to do with that part of the story. I hadn’t said a word to the site or anyone about what had happened – clearly, Harley had done that himself.
“You think you’re so smart,” Shade continued. “What did you do? Report me as trafficking you? Did you write to the owner of the site directly and tell them what was going on and to save your ass from the only thing you’re worth doing?”
“I didn’t say anything to anyone!” Terror was starting to well up inside me, and despite me trying to keep myself under control, I knew I had to be careful or I was going to burst into tears. And, that would really make things worse.
For as much as Shade liked to control me, he didn’t like it when I started crying, and I was never sure why. It would piss him off further, and he would smack me around all the more. And, with the tension already in the room, I hated to think about what was going to happen with him getting angrier.
“So, you mean to tell me it just so happened you only got one client off the site, then you just so happened to have your profile closed the next day? I was put under scrutiny, and I didn’t get a single penny from what he paid! How dare you defy me like that? How dare you?” He shook his finger at me, and I winced involuntarily.
I didn’t want him to see how afraid of him I was, but it was hard for me to hold myself together when he lorded over me like that. He knew he scared the shit out of me, and he enjoyed it, too. He made it clear he liked being in control, but he was always angry when I would cower around him.
But, he put me in the position to cower. He liked to have power over me, and he got that power through making me afraid. He would punish me if he didn’t think I was doing things the right way, and I had a feeling I would be punished for this.
“I don’t know what happened!” I said. “I was approached by a man who told me he thought I was a prostitute, and I told him I wasn’t. I said I had a boyfriend, and nothing happened. He left, and that was the end of that.”
It was basically a lie, but Shade didn’t question it. He stared at me, the rage building inside him. His chest rose and fell with anger, and I found it difficult not to swallow hard.
He stood for a moment, and then shook his head. He charged at me like a bull, and I fought to keep from screaming. I wasn’t sure if anyone in the hotel would come to my rescue, and I didn’t want the police to get involved. But I had a feeling he was going to hurt me if he got to me, and I didn’t know what to do.
At the same time he charged, he snapped at me, once more reminding me of just what he thought about me in the first place. The words were laced with venom and hatred. “You’re a worthless sack of shit! You know that!”
“Don’t touch me!” I cried out as he reached me. I didn’t dare strike him. God knew if I were to ever fight back, he would kill me. That was just the sort of coward he was. But, I didn’t know how far he’d go with this, either.
I was the only one staying in the room, and if he were to do something to me, then it would be the maid who would find me. He could have a massive head start before any of the authorities would even know I’d been attacked in the first place.
“You’re worthless!” he spat again as he shoved me down on the bed. It was a hard shove, and I struck my head on the wall as I fell. I cried out in pain and cowered, hoping the attack wouldn’t continue.
I’d told myself I was going to stand up to him. I tried to do what Harley had told me. He said I deserved better, and I should stand up to the person who was doing this to me, but it was a lot harder to do when I was in the heat of the moment.
Shade was a lot bigger and stronger than I was, and I knew he could do just about anything he wanted to me. But, instead of attacking me further, Shade threw things around the room.
Nothing he would have to pay for, of course. Things that I’d brought with me. Things I would miss when he left. But, I continued to cower on the bed, hoping the missiles wouldn’t hit me. I wanted to believe he wouldn’t hurt me when we were in a place I could start screaming for help, but he seemed to know I wouldn’t.
I didn’t know how far he’d go, and that scared me. Shade was in control over this situation. As always, he was the one calling the shots, and I had to just hope for the best.
He didn’t say much besides calling me more names and telling me how worthless I was after that, but I was still glad when he finally left. I didn’t want anything to do with him, and I worried if I were to try to make a case for myself, things would only get worse.
Though I hadn’t been the one to turn in the profile, I wasn’t stupid, either. Well, I wasn’t stupid in the sense that I wasn’t able to figure out who had done it. That alone made me feel like I mattered.
I’d spent so long with this person who made me feel worthless, I couldn’t help but question whether there was any real truth to it. But, knowing Harley had to have been the one to do that for me meant something else. He’d offered to help me, sure, but I’d turned him down.
Clearly, he wasn’t going to take no for an answer. Clearly, he went through with helping me, anyway, doing what he felt was best, despite the fact I insisted I was able to take care of things myself.
If I were honest with myself, I’d never been around a person like taht before. Well, I wasn’t even around him now. But, that didn’t change the fact that I felt something flutter inside me at the thought of him doing that for me.
He wasn’t afraid of Shade like I was, and he wasn’t going to let Shade push me around. No, Harley wasn’t the kind of guy I could just forget about.
He wasn’t going to let me go that easily.
Chapter 9
Harley
“Now that that’s done, I’m thinking I might be in the mood to get a little fresh ink myself,” Roman said as he scraped the blade of his knife on the grass.
“Sounds about right,” Ares said. “But I already made the appointment to get mine done next week. I’m not going to go drop money on getting work done when I might as well wait for it later.”
“Suit yourself,” Roman said with a shrug. “I’m going to head over to Smitty’s and see if I can get in this afternoon. Something to tell the world not to mess with us.”
“What about you?” Ares turned his attention to me, and I shrugged, but he continued. “Seeing all that ink get you in the mood for anything new?”
“I’m always in the mood for something new,” I replied. “It’s like Roman said, I might head over to a shop later and see if they can do a walk-in for me, too.”
“Suit yourself,” Ares rolled his eyes. “If you gave it more thought, you might be able to get something bigger than all these walk-ins you do whenever the
mood strikes.”
“Who says I’m not going to plan something bigger when I’m in the mood?” I asked. He shook his head, but I ignored him. We always teased each other, and were feeling especially loyal to each other after the morning we’d just had.
The day had started much like any other, but we had something to do that morning, and we went right to work. It wasn’t the usual work for us, but if we were perfectly honest with ourselves, none of us minded the break from the norm.
Jett had wanted us to take care of the problem long before it got to this point, but with the way work had been going down at the shop, and with what Roman and Ares had been up to lately, it was hard for the three of us to find the time to hunt down the men and take care of the job.
Word on the street was that there were a couple of guys who were sporting the Steel Wings ink. Flattering as it was, they didn’t have membership or any sort of affiliation with the club, and that sort of thing wasn’t allowed. Of course, Jett, being the kind of guy he was, gave them the chance to fix it.
This came in the form of a detailed threat each of the men received in a dark alley. The message had been clear: remove the ink or get it covered, but make sure it was gone before the he saw them again.
It was a far more generous offer than anything I would have imagined, but the two idiots didn’t take it seriously. And, when word reached Jett they hadn’t listened to his order, he put us on the job.
Ares and Roman were the two members of the club who upheld and enforced the rules. Roman was the SGT at Arms and Ares the Enforcer. Sure, it was Roman’s job to uphold the rules primarily, and it was Ares’s job to carry out the consequences when those rules weren’t being followed, but the two would often work together when the need called for it.
And me, well, I was more than happy to come along for the ride. I knew where to find the two men through the shop. They had both brought their bikes in for work in the past, and I was able to dig up an address on each one of them in my records.
From there, we paid our call.
We showed up first thing in the morning, catching them both hungover and off guard. Storming into the house, we had a short talk, discussing with them both the options they had and what Jett had given them to do. Of course, I expected the mocking and arrogance at first. That was what usually came of showing up on someone’s house and threatening them.
When the knives came out, the standard begging and pleading soon followed. And, of course, it did. Both knew we meant business as soon as the weapons came out, and neither wanted to own up to the consequences of what was about to go down.
But, our rules had been made clear, and they had both been given the second chances to make the error of their ways right. They were the ones who had chosen not to do as they were told, and they had to deal with the consequences of that action as a result.
Unfortunately for them, the consequences of those actions meant that they had to say goodbye to the ink. We weren’t leaving until the ink was gone, and since they hadn’t taken the chance to get it covered with someone else when they still had the option, we were happy to pull it off them ourselves.
Of course, we had to use our guns for extra motivation to encourage them to stay still and relatively quiet as we set to work on the tattoos, but before the morning was out, we had managed to get both tattoos cut off the bodies of the two offenders, and we’d even managed to nearly preserve one of them in the process.
“If he hadn’t jerked his arm right at the end I might have gotten it off perfectly,” Ares said with a shake of his head. “Shame.
“Not that I was going to take it back to Jett personally,” he added.
“I think the pictures are enough to do our job justices,” Roman said with a shrug. “He’s too busy to deal with the actual body parts that were involved.”
“I’m sure he’d still like to have seen our handiwork,” Ares said with a shrug, and I was inclined to agree with him. I thought we’d done a great job removing the tattoos, and it was pretty impressive we were able to get one piece nearly entirely off intact.
But, we didn’t save either, and with the photos on our phones to prove to our president we had done the deed, it was time for us three to get on with the rest of our days. Of course, we left the men to take care of their wounds inside the house, but we didn’t leave until we were sure they knew for a fact they had to keep their mouths shut about the incident to the cops.
It might be bad enough for them having to deal with this pain in the first place, but we weren’t going to let law enforcement get involved with the incident and let it go. No, they were going to have to figure this out themselves, and that was the end of that.
After we finished cleaning our knives, however, Roman and I were in agreement the sight of all the tattoos had put us in the mood to get more ink, even though Ares insisted he would rather wait until his actual appointment the following week.
Close as we were, I didn’t feel like hanging out with either of them for the rest of the day, and after slipping my knife back in my pocket, I headed off on my own on the back of my Harley. There was a shop that wasn’t far that I frequented, and I had a feeling they would be more than happy to make the time for me to come in for some quick work that afternoon.
They had just opened, since it was only one in the afternoon, and I was one of the first people to arrive. I headed inside and stood quietly, waiting for my artist to finish discussing an appointment with another person who had managed to get there just before I did.
But, as I waited, the curtains leading to the back room of the shop were suddenly ripped open, and a man came pushing through the room half dragging a woman along with him. She had her hands wrapped around his arm, trying to lessen the force with which he was pulling her toward the door.
Neither of them looked around the room as they pushed through the exit, and it took me a moment to realize the girl was Paisley.
Immediately, I was filled with rage. I had hoped she’d moved on from the guy who had signed her up to be a prostitute without her knowledge or permission, but if that guy’s behavior was any indication of who she was spending her time with, it didn’t take me long to realize she must not have dumped him.
But, I wasn’t about to let anyone treat Paisley that way and not step in. I didn’t care who it was I had to confront over it. If no one else in the shop was going to do anything about it, then I was more than happy to take a step forward and deal with it myself.
I pushed through the door after them, but by the time I reached the parking lot, they were already gone. That only infuriated me all the more. I didn’t know where they were going, but I did intend to find out what they were doing in the shop.
Turning on my heel, I headed back inside and headed straight for the artist who had done the work on Paisley. “Whoa, whoa, whoa, buddy, you’ve got to wait!” he told me as he held his hands in the air.
“I want to know what’s going on with those two people who were just in here!” I snapped. “Did that girl want to get inked today? Or did you do it because her boyfriend told her to?”
“She didn’t say she didn’t want to,” he tried, but I merely shook my head.
“That’s not what I asked you!” I snapped. “Did she want to get the tattoo? Do you work on women who aren’t on board with getting inked often? Maybe I need to take this gun and put some work on you!”
“Listen, pal,” he said with a condescending tone to his voice. “They came in here and asked for a design, she filled out the paperwork herself, if she wasn’t happy with the idea of getting ink, that would be news to me. She didn’t say anything.”
I relaxed slightly, sensing I wasn’t going to get very far with this man. But, he did have a point. If she didn’t say anything against getting the tattoo, there wasn’t any way he would know whether she wanted it or not. But still, it pissed me off thinking that she was being forced to do even more to herself she didn’t want to do.
And thanks to that prick she was with, she wou
ld continue to do this to herself.
I tried to settle down, getting my own design on some of the little space I had left on my arm before heading back to the shop to get whatever work done I could for the afternoon. But, my mind wouldn’t stop drifting back to Paisley. All I could think about was the way she had acted when we had spoken the other night at the hotel.
She was so afraid, but so sweet. It made me sick to my stomach to think that she would have to put up with someone like that. I wanted to put a bullet in the guy’s head, that was for sure. No one treated her like that. Anyone who would put his hands on her deserved to have those hands cut off.
But, there wasn’t anything I could do about it now. I had to find her. I had to talk to her again. I wasn’t going to let her be stuck in this life. She was going to have to make a change, and I was more than happy to be the one who was there and pushed her for that change, too.
As much as I wanted her to do it on her own, I knew she was afraid. But I wasn’t.
After work, I headed to the bar, eager to talk to her. I was sure she was still at the hotel, but I was going to try to convince her to leave with me. I didn’t want her there, stuck where she was under that guy’s control any longer.
But, even after sitting at the bar for a couple hours, I was still alone. Paisley wasn’t anywhere to be seen, and I didn’t know what to make of it. All I knew was that I wasn’t about to give up. I didn’t care what I had to do to get her out of there.
I would do it. I would save her.
And that was all there was to it.
Chapter 10
Paisley
I tried not to look at the new ink I had on my arm. It was just below the elbow. High enough I could hide it under sleeves, but still there. It didn’t matter that I didn’t have to look at it. I knew it was there, and it wasn’t going anywhere.