Steel: A Dark MC Romance (A Dark and Dirty Sinners’ MC Book 4)

by Serena Akeroyd

  “That’s why you said I needed to call her the other goddamn day. Because you knew—”

  “I knew someone she liked, a patient that was close to her, had died. That’s what I knew. So I looked into it, because she sounded really confused and upset, because that’s what family should do for each other—”

  “Fuck you, Rex. You know why I stay away from her.”

  “Yeah, and I thought it was a dumb fucking reason then, and I think it’s a dumb fucking reason now.”

  Link tensed at that. “What? Why? You know what happened between them, Rex? And you never fucking shared anything?”

  Rex snapped, “This isn’t the time, Link. Christ. Stop being a gossiping cunt and get with the program. A murderer has Stone. We need to get on the road.”

  Link winced at Rex’s insult, but he didn’t argue, just muttered, “Come on, Steel, get changed. Rex is right. We need to be heading into the city.”

  I didn’t respond, just shoved myself away from Hawk and Jaxson, who were clinging onto me like koala bears did to a eucalyptus tree.

  “All right, I’m fine,” I snapped. “I’m going to get dressed.”

  “Good, you have ten minutes, then we ride.”

  I tightened my mouth at his irritation—I was the one who deserved to be fucking irritated, but I didn’t go for him. Not again. Even though I wanted to, because I knew he would break my hand, and I needed that to ride my bike, especially now.

  They were right.

  I’d gotten caught up, snagged in all the stupid shit, and I didn’t have time for that.

  Stone didn’t have time for that.

  If someone had taken her, be it the Famiglia like I thought or this—what did they call them? Those weirdos who trawled the wards for victims?—angel of death fucker in the hospital, either way, they weren’t going to treat her to a Valentine’s dinner and a bunch of goddamn roses, were they?

  I tugged a wifebeater over my head, dragged on my jeans, and then slipped on my boots and laced them on tight.

  When I went out, I grabbed my cut from the dresser where I’d placed it before, and once I was dressed, I gave Link a look.

  He was pouting.

  Of course.

  Fuck.

  I glared at him. “I don’t want to talk about this. We don’t have time.”

  “I can’t believe you told Rex and not me.”

  “I didn’t tell him. He found out by accident.”

  Link scowled. “That doesn’t make it better.”

  I rolled my eyes at him as I started out of the bedroom that had been mine since I was patched in at nineteen. “This isn’t The Baby-Sitters’ Club, Link. I don’t share all my secrets.”

  He sniffed. “No fucking shit.” He grunted then. “Since when do you know what The Baby-Sitters’ Club is?”

  I flipped him the bird. He knew the answer to that.

  The series had been Stone’s favorite books as a kid.

  He heaved a sigh. “What do you think’s going on, Steel?”

  “I don’t know, bro. I have no fucking clue either.”

  “Think it’s the Famiglia?” Link asked under his breath, and I knew that was just in case the walls had ears and those ears belonged to Rex.

  The bastard somehow knew whenever we weren’t in agreement with him.

  “I don’t know. I think it’s more likely than this random theory that Rex has going on, but what the fuck can I say? His instincts rarely lie.”

  Link huffed. “I’m not sure what’s worse.”

  “Either way, they don’t want to hug her. We need to get her back.”

  “Stat,” Link agreed, just in time for the two of us to make it to the door.

  When we headed for our bikes, we split up because he was parked across the way near the bunkhouse where Lily and Tiffany usually sat with the women who’d been Donavan and Luke Lancaster’s victims. I climbed astride mine, tipped my chin at Rex when he glared at me, and as a unit, we set off, our engines revving and the bass making the earth throb.

  I had no idea what the fuck was happening, no idea what shit was going down, no idea if this was some kind of stunt, all I knew was that if anyone had laid a hand on Stone?

  It would be the last time they took a breath.

  She was mine.

  She knew it.

  I knew it.

  I just never let that fact get in the way of what I was doing—leading my life while letting her lead hers.

  She had a potential that few could ever understand. Rachel Laker, Rex’s woman, was just the same.

  Sometimes, it was a selfish man who got in the way of his woman’s hopes and dreams, her goals and a future that she’d been idolizing since she was small.

  I might have wanted to beat the shit out of Rex, but if anyone understood, I’d thought it was him.

  Until today.

  Of course, he was staying away from Rachel for his own reasons, and mine were a lot more complex.

  He wasn’t the son of a pedophile fuck.

  He wasn’t the one with tainted blood.

  No.

  I was.

  That was me.

  And there was no way I was tainting Stone with that, no way in fuck.

  If she was in danger, I’d save her. But I wouldn’t stain her.

  I couldn’t.

  I’d made that promise to myself years ago, and it was the only promise, the only vow I’d ever kept with the intention of holding true to it until the day I died.

  Stone

  My head ached like a motherfucker.

  In fact, a motherfucker was an understatement, because this was a level of excruciating agony that I’d never experienced before.

  For someone who wanted to heal sick people, I’d been relatively healthy all my life. I’d never taken a sick day from work, for God’s sake. The last time I had? It had been an excuse to grab a few more days at the Sinners’ compound to help Amara, Ghost, and Tatána.

  But that was how hardy I was. Pennsylvania stock…that’s what my grandfather had called us. Had said we were made of sterner stuff and that we were held to a different standard as a result.

  The irony was, I’d lived by that creed all my life.

  Even when I’d overdosed, I’d thought I was okay. I’d forced myself to carry on, to keep on moving, not stopping until the drugs had made me.

  I bit my lip hard, then when I realized what was happening—that this wasn’t just an epic hangover that made every other hangover I’d experienced in my life look paltry—I was careful to peer out through my lashes and force myself to stillness.

  Someone had taken me.

  I didn’t know who, but I had to figure I knew why.

  The angel of death.

  Shit.

  Who was it?

  I was still feeling it, so whoever had taken me knew their meds.

  My mouth was like cotton, my body ached, and I knew I’d been tied to a chair for a good long while, because my limbs were so sore they were numb.

  Which brought with it its own agony, because when they eventually started to work again, there would be even more excruciating agony to have to deal with.

  I peered through my lashes and saw only a simple living room.

  It was such a shock to see the furniture that I jerked back, my head flopping on my neck as though it wasn’t attached.

  When it rolled some more, the ache made me want to pass out. Little dots danced in my vision, and I had to work hard not to puke, because if I did, I might fucking choke on it, and while that was more amenable than whatever the hell my kidnapper had in store for me, I was a fighter.

  I refused to quit.

  Always had, always would.

  I’d only ever quit on one thing in my life, and that was because he was more trouble than he was worth… Okay, maybe now wasn’t the time to bullshit myself.

  He was worth all the trouble in the world, but he didn’t want me. I wasn’t worth it to him.

  So, I’d made it a point to strive hard for
every other thing in my life that didn’t come shaped like a biker.

  When I managed to control the need to puke by holding my breath which, in turn, calmed down the frantic pace of my heart, the next point of contention was to make my head roll forward.

  It took a disgusting amount of time to figure out how to do that, but from the angle I was in, I could see I was alone in the living room.

  All alone.

  In fact…my ears prickled with just how silent it was in here. I couldn’t hear traffic either, which was impossible in New York.

  There was traffic everywhere, for fuck’s sake. Even on the tiniest and smallest of streets. Traffic was like bird shit.

  A fact of life in NYC.

  The room was decorated in a way that reminded me of my childhood. A kind of teal matte green that looked a little like puke mixed with lime, then there was a kind of rail around the center of the room that I knew had a name, but I could never remember it. A pale peach sofa matched two armchairs that looked rather comfortable. A coffee table had been shoved aside, and there was a TV stand as well as a dresser with a glass vase on it. There were boards on the floor, shiny with varnish, and a highly ornate carpet was beneath my feet where—when I shifted them—I felt the stickiness and wanted to die.

  Fuck, had I pissed myself?

  Oh God!

  “Now isn’t the time to be feeling mortified, Stone,” I whispered under my breath, pretty certain that I was alone in the apartment now.

  Unless the person who’d kidnapped me was asleep, of course, but I doubted it. Whoever was behind it had to have been working the day shift. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’d snatched me, shuffled me into their car, and then driven me to their apartment all before getting back to work so that no suspicions were raised.

  I’d been on the phone to Indy, hadn’t I?

  I could hear her voice in my head, but I couldn’t recall the conversation. Not aside from me telling her about my theories.

  Had I told her she was like a stitch in my side?

  I couldn’t remember.

  Fuck!

  I hated that I couldn’t, because that was my clue as to whether or not I was screwed.

  I was more than that if I had said it and she’d cut the call, gone merrily on her way just thinking that I was okay when I was the exact opposite.

  If I hadn’t said it, that made all the difference. We always said goodbye. We had no choice. She freaked out otherwise.

  Indy played a good game. She looked normal on the outside, but the truth was she only looked it.

  She was anything but normal.

  Not necessarily in a bad way, but just in a ‘life’ way.

  It had fucked with her, and she did her damnedest to fuck with it right back, but sometimes, she fell short of the mark.

  I got it, I did. And it was one of the reasons why we were so close. The part of her that was broken was a part I felt compelled to heal.

  It had always been that way, but over the years, that compulsion had died, morphing into a friendship that was rock solid and, ironically enough, we kept under wraps.

  Very few people even knew that we were close, and we kept it that way because the fewer who knew that truth, the better.

  We weren’t being duplicitous, but sometimes, in our world, our ties put us in danger.

  Both of us worked hard to stay on the sidelines of the MC. If we were both friends and people knew about it, then it could be used against us.

  It was also ironic that, truthfully, I wished this was an MC thing. If it was, then I knew they’d be on their way. I wasn’t sure if they’d come if Indy told them her suspicions. I mean, I figured she had her own way of dealing with them too, but it wasn’t like our thing. It wasn’t as if they knew how close we were, and that we ended shit a certain way every single time we spoke…

  Unless she told them.

  Would she do that?

  It had become a point of pride for us to keep things from the brothers. Not out of malice, but because they had their whole secret boys’ club shit going down. Why wouldn’t we do the same?

  But I was in danger. She had to know that, right?

  She had to know that I’d find a way to say bye to her.

  I blew out a breath because there was no point in worrying about this. No point in fretting over whether or not she’d managed to call in the devil’s handymen, because if she had, they were on their way, but they didn’t have a clue who had taken me.

  So, regardless, I was fucked.

  Unless I helped myself.

  It always came down to that.

  I’d forgotten that, but then I figured I’d be forgiven, because things had definitely taken a turn for the worse since I’d woken up.

  I’d gone from having a headache from a bad hangover to realizing that I’d been kidnapped.

  That I’d pissed myself.

  And that the person who had taken me wasn’t doing so because he or she wanted to be friends.

  Nope.

  This wasn’t going to end well for someone, and I refused to let that be me.

  So I sucked it up, sucked it in, and forced my head upright.

  My neck twinged, but that’s what necks did, and I stared around, trying to get a picture on where I was. Who it was that had taken me.

  There were no photos on the wall, nothing that gave me a clue if it was Tonya, one of the auxiliary nurses, or Jason, a doctor with a god complex who fit the fucking profile of an angel of death to a T, if it wasn’t for the fact that he was too vain to think about ruining his life and his career over a little something like murder to grant a sick person peace.

  I bit the inside of my cheek when my vision wavered, and then I began struggling against the tape on my wrists when I started to worry that I’d fall asleep or pass out again.

  I needed to make a move.

  Now.

  I stared down at the clear tape, something that was definitely not duct tape, and that gave me an in, right?

  After all, that stuff was fragile, even if the person had tied it around my wrists in a large swathe.

  Duct tape, I was screwed. This tape? Maybe not.

  Okay, so I took one thing from this situation.

  Whoever had taken me wasn’t as good at kidnapping as a Sinner’s brat who’d been reared on a compound full of killers.

  Jesus.

  Serial Killing 101 was to have duct tape or cable ties as a means of securing people.

  Christ.

  I grimaced when the tape stuck fast, then I peered around, looking for something that I could maybe use to my benefit, and that was when I felt my feet coming online.

  The ache and the sting and the pins and needles all morphed together in a way that was beyond agonizing.

  I almost cried out, but just to be on the safe side, I didn’t. If there was someone in the apartment, then they’d hear I was awake, and I needed all the time in the world to try to figure out how to get myself out of this situation.

  When I began to move my feet, I realized the person hadn’t tied them down. Just my arms.

  Relief swirled inside me at the murderer’s incompetence, and I started flexing my feet and my toes, trying to get the blood flowing back into them.

  With a sigh when the pain cut off and they returned back to normal, I used that to shuffle forward toward the window.

  There were two, oddly enough, not just one, even though the room was small, and as I rocked my chair, trying to gain some momentum to reach the window where there was a kind of sticky-outy clasp that I could use to nick the tape, maybe, I over-rocked.

  Any desire to stay quiet, to stay under the radar, fled when the chair toppled over with me in it, and the boom was enough to make my ears roar with the sound.

  The desire to be sick hit me again, and only knowing that, this time, I wouldn’t choke on it, but I might drown in it, helped me contain it. This nausea came from fear, pure and simple.

  But no one came running.

  No one at all.
r />   I let out a breath that was loaded with relief, and when I started trying to edge my way across the floor, I cursed the carpets which didn’t aid me.

  With a groan, I started rocking again, but this time, when I did, I realized the tape on my hands was looser. Everything about this was a mess, and it was clear that something had gone wrong with the meds I’d been given.

  The kidnapper evidently calculated that I’d still be asleep in time for him or her to get back and deal with me then.

  Thank God I was a grower not a shower.

  I looked slimmer in my scrubs than I was in real life, and I’d never been happier for those extra twenty pounds I couldn’t seem to drop.

  Those twenty pounds had saved me, and I’d celebrate them when I got out of this fucking mess by eating two Big Macs and a double portion of extra-large fries. That meme about being harder to kidnap the more you weighed felt particularly on point right about now.

  Sucking in a breath, I tried to cheer myself on as I worked at the tape, trying harder and harder to loosen it.

  My skin felt raw, and the scent of blood powered through the air, making me realize just how badly adjusted my body was—some parts working, other parts numb and tingling.

  I couldn’t feel the pain yet, but I would soon, that was for sure, and I needed to be a million miles away from this place when everything started to work at the same time.

  Groaning as I finally got my arm free, I rolled my head and began pulling and tugging at the other hand.

  Thanking God it was my right hand I’d freed, my dominant one, I started to work faster and faster, only, as I did so, as the tape grew looser, I heard a door click.

  It wasn’t to this room, but it was definitely in this apartment.

  The click echoed around me like it was a gunshot, and to me, it might as well have been.

  Fuck, this was worse than ‘ask not for whom the bell tolls,’ because it was definitely tolling for me.

  Feeling sick to my stomach once more, I hissed out a breath and worked double time on the tape. I had only God knew how long to get myself in a better position than the one I was currently in, and there was that vase on the dresser across the room with my name on it.

  I heard footsteps, and my heart seemed to beat in time to them as I finally managed to liberate myself, and when I did, I crawled onto my knees with great difficulty.