by Harley Wylde
“I was watching a movie in the living room. You’re welcome to join me.”
I nodded and got to my feet. Dingo placed his hand at my waist and reached over to flush the toilet, then handed me a toothbrush. I got rid of the icky taste in my mouth, blew my nose and washed my hands, then followed him into the living room. He motioned for me to sit on the couch before he walked out. I could hear noises in the kitchen and he returned with a bottle of water for me and a beer for him.
I tried not to tense, or stare at the beer in his hand, but alcohol never proved to be a good addition. The men at the Ruby Slipper always became uncontrollable once they were drunk, and my foster parents had been even worse. Logically, I knew that not everyone who drank became mean or even drank to excess. That didn’t stop me from feeling apprehensive, though. Over a decade of seeing alcohol change people for the worse was a hard thing to overcome. Other than my first foster home, the others were mostly tolerable, but I’d learned that the men often drank and bad things could happen. Not as bad as what I suffered at the last house, but enough to make me apprehensive when men drank.
He only took three swallows before he set the bottle down and didn’t reach for it again. I kept casting furtive glances his way, but the drink was sweating and untouched even ten minutes later. Then another twenty passed and he still didn’t drink more of it. When I looked again, he was staring at me, an eyebrow arched almost as if he were challenging me.
“If it bothers you, all you had to do was say something, Mei.”
I stared at the bottle a moment. “Bad things happen when alcohol is involved.”
“I have one or two beers a day, on average, just to unwind and relax. It’s been a while since I bothered drinking until I couldn’t walk straight. Even when we have parties, I drink in moderation. But I don’t have to have it, Mei. If it makes you uncomfortable, then I won’t drink around you.”
I dropped my gaze to my lap. “It’s your house, Dingo. You can drink if you want.”
The silence stretched until I started to fidget, worrying if I’d angered him but too scared to look up and see his reaction. Sometimes it was better not knowing when a man was about to strike. My heart started to pound and my palms grew slick. After another few minutes, I couldn’t stand it another second. I looked up and found him watching me.
“Trotter will come for you tomorrow. I’m sure he’ll be at the gates once he realizes we haven’t sent you back yet.”
I sank my teeth into my lip to keep from whimpering like a pathetic puppy.
Dingo leaned forward, bracing his arms on his knees. “Mei, I’m not letting him take you, but I need to know what I’m up against. What kind of hold does he have on you?”
It wasn’t so much a hold he had over me, other than a lack of anywhere else to go, but he knew far too much about me. I couldn’t tell Dingo. Not because of the shame I would feel -- I was used to that -- but because it meant I’d have to tell him about Beau. That wasn’t my secret to tell. If Trotter came and I hadn’t told them about my past, would they make me leave? Despite my uncertainty over Dingo’s intentions, this was the safest I’d ever felt. I didn’t want to go, especially not back to the Ruby Slipper. What could I tell him that would appease his curiosity without giving everything away?
“My foster parents weren’t the nicest people. They’re friends with Trotter. When I aged out of the system, they sent me to him. He made it sound simple enough, being a stripper, and said I’d earn good money.” My fingers knotted in my lap as I thought about my first day of what I’d thought would be freedom. “If you don’t keep the clients happy, whatever it takes, then Trotter beats you and has been known to force drugs into your system. He has… unique ways of punishing the girls who refuse to fall in line.”
“Unique how?” Dingo asked.
“He has a special room for punishments. There’s a table with restraints, and he…” I took a breath. It was harder to talk about everything than I’d thought. Well, not everything but the parts I was willing to share. The parts that didn’t concern Beau. “He and his bouncers fuck whoever is being punished, over and over, however they want while she’s helpless to fight back.”
Dingo growled. “You mean they rape the woman being punished.”
I gave a jerky nod.
“Look at me, Mei.” I lifted my gaze and held his. “Did he ever punish you that way?”
“Once. When he realized he couldn’t break me, he would just beat me into compliance.”
Dingo shot to his feet and paced the room. “He’s a fucking dead man! I’m going to tear him apart, one piece at a time. Fucking asshole!”
I blinked and watched as he furiously stormed across the room, then back again, over and over. He was angry. On my behalf? There was an odd feeling in my chest as I listened to him threaten Trotter. I couldn’t remember anyone ever standing up for me. Even Beau hadn’t, but then he’d just been a kid too. Old enough to run away, but he wouldn’t have stood a chance against our foster dad.
It was strange to have someone want to protect me. It’s what I’d always wanted, why I’d even come to the compound in the first place. I’d hoped they would want to keep me, feed me, and make sure Trotter kept his distance. But deep down, I’d never thought it would actually work out. Then I’d seen Beau and everything had unraveled even faster. To know that Dingo felt that way, that he wanted to defend me against someone like Trotter, it warmed my heart and gave me hope that maybe not everyone in the world was as rotten as the ones I’d met so far.
He came to a sudden stop. “I need to let the others know. The Pres will do whatever it takes to keep you away from Trotter, but he needs to know what he’s fighting for. I swear to you, Mei, that you’ll be avenged and Trotter will never hurt you again.”
“Wait.” I stood. “If you tell him, then… I don’t want Beau to find out. He can’t know what happened to me. Promise me, Dingo!”
“What’s Beau to you, Mei? It’s obvious the two of you share a connection. Is he just a friend? A brother? Something more?”
“He’s nothing, not anymore.”
He folded his arms over his chest. “Not anymore, but at some point he meant something to you.”
I shrugged a shoulder, not knowing how to explain it. Beau and I were in hell together, and we tried to keep each other sane. Then he’d left. My mind wandered back to that day, when the foster parents had discovered he was gone and wasn’t coming back. They’d been so angry. Furious. And they’d taken it out on me every day for the rest of the time I was in the system, made sure I understood my place, that I was nothing. Less than nothing. I was just something to be used and tossed away.
“Mei.” I jolted and realized that Dingo was nearly toe to toe with me, his gaze concerned. “Where’d you go just now?”
“Nowhere good.”
“Beau was in foster care with you, wasn’t he?” Dingo asked. “And when he left, you were defenseless.”
“Something like that. I mean, yes, he was in foster care with me and yes, he did leave me behind when he ran away. It wasn’t like he could take me with him. He was only fifteen at the time. I understood.”
“I’m glad you do.” His jaw tensed. “He left you to be abused, to be raped. Maybe you’re okay with that, but I sure the fuck am not. I don’t give a shit if he was a fifteen-year-old kid. Once Griz found him and brought him here, he could have told us about you. Someone would have come for you, given you a safe place to live, a chance to have a happy life. Fucking hell!”
The last was a near roar and I winced. He made a lot of good points, but like he’d said before, the past was the past. It wasn’t like I could go back in time and change things, and neither could Beau. I’d survived and that was all that mattered. And now I was here, with Dingo, and things were finally looking up. I just didn’t know how to ask to stay… indefinitely. He seemed to think I’d want to leave in the future, but why would I? The bed he’d given me was the softest I’d ever felt. I had hot water, good food, and even more… a
man who was gentle and kind toward me. He worried over me, wanted me to be happy. I’d be stupid to want to leave all that behind, to leave him.
Eighteen was just a number. My birth certificate might say that’s how old I was, but the things I’d been through made me grow up fast. By the time I was fourteen, I’d suffered more than most people ever did in their entire lives, even if they lived to be ninety. I figured that made me a lot closer to Dingo’s age than he realized.
“Stay in the house, Mei, and don’t open the door for anyone. I’ll be back soon, but I need to see the Pres and fill him in.” Dingo reached for me, cupping my cheek. There was only a moment’s hesitation before his lips brushed mine. The kiss was fleeting, but one I felt all the way to my soul. And then he was rushing out the door, but not before locking the knob.
I just hoped that all hell wouldn’t break loose when he told them what I’d shared, and that Beau didn’t hear any of it.
Chapter Four
Dingo
Fucking Beau! I wanted to beat the shit out of that kid. He’d left her, and the things she’d been through… I ran a hand through my hair. I knew she hadn’t told me everything, but I could fill in enough of the gaps to get a rather gruesome picture of her childhood, and even her recent years. Someone here would have given Mei a home, possibly even the Pres since he liked to bring home kids in need. But no, that little shit hadn’t said a word about her.
I threw open the clubhouse doors and stormed inside. I tried to convince myself to keep walking, to go find Griz, but Beau was still behind the bar. It was like a red haze had settled over me and the monster inside wouldn’t be appeased until I’d spilled that fucker’s blood. With a roar, I launched myself toward him, dragging his ass over the bar. He hadn’t even hit the ground good before I started pounding on him.
“You. Fucking. Left. Her!” My fist connected with his jaw, then his ribs. “She was a kid! Helpless!”
Beau didn’t put up much of a defense, verbal or otherwise. Someone tried to pull me off him, but I wasn’t letting him go. He needed to pay! I landed four more blows before more of my brothers came forward and hauled me away from him.
“What the fuck is going on?” Demon demanded. “Why are you trying to kill Beau?”
“He left her. Just fucking ask him! He was in foster care with Mei and he ran away. When Griz brought him here, he never said a damn word to us about her. We could have saved her!”
I was shaking and felt moisture on my cheeks. The fact I was crying in front of my brothers was what finally snapped me out of it. I shrugged them off and wiped a hand down my face.
“Saved her from what?” Beau asked, his voice a little garbled from the swelling in his lip.
“From being raped.” I turned and walked off, unable to even look at him another second. We might not walk on the right side of the law, but there were rules we followed. The first was to never harm a woman. Beau knew that, and had to have known that Mei would pay the price when he left. Yet he’d never sent us after her.
A hand gripped my shoulder, drawing me to a halt. I looked over at the VP, Slash. He gave a nod to the doors down the hall that led into Church. I followed his lead, then claimed my seat at the table. I studied my hands. My knuckles were bruised and ached, but I didn’t regret what I’d done. Although, telling Mei I’d beat up her precious Beau wouldn’t be easy. She’d asked me not to tell him what she’d been through, but I couldn’t promise her that. He needed to know that his actions had consequences, ones that she’d had to pay.
Griz slammed the gavel on the table and I tried to focus. There would be plenty of time to figure out how to tell Mei what I’d done, and hope that she’d forgive me. It bothered me that she obviously still cared for Beau. I’d have never done that to her. She deserved better than the likes of him.
I caught movement in the corner and saw that Beau was standing in the shadows, holding onto his ribs. Good. I hoped the fucker hurt. I wanted him to remember what he’d done to her each and every time he drew breath. Even then it wasn’t near enough.
“I asked Beau to join us since it seems Dingo has an issue with him. Now tell us what the hell is going on,” the Pres said.
“When Beau came here, when you brought him to the compound, did he ever mention where he’d come from?” I asked. “We never questioned anything about his presence here. We just knew that you’d brought him home with you, so he was now a part of the family in some way.”
Griz sighed. “No. I didn’t ask many questions. He was just a kid and I found him scrounging in the trash in an alley. Asked if he had a home and he said no, so I brought him here.”
My gaze met Beau’s. “Why didn’t you tell Griz about Mei? Why did you run off and leave her? Even if you couldn’t both get away at the same time, we would have gone after her if we’d known she even existed.”
“I was ashamed and thought if you knew what I’d done, then you wouldn’t let me stay,” Beau said.
“What exactly did you do?” Slash asked.
Beau glanced toward Outlaw at the opposite end of the table. “If I give you a website, can you access it in here on that laptop?”
“Yeah, as long as it doesn’t require me to type fast for very long,” he said.
Beau rattled off a URL and whatever Outlaw saw made him pale.
“Holy shit,” Outlaw muttered. “Is that… you and Mei?”
“Yeah.” Beau dropped his gaze to the table. “When I was twelve, I was taken in by a foster family here in town. Mei wasn’t there yet. The foster parents were assholes, but it wasn’t anything I hadn’t suffered through before. But when Mei came, their little China girl, then that’s when shit got worse. The moment Mei came to the house, they looked at her different. I didn’t know why at first, not until later, when it was too late. I never knew what the other kids were going through. They were threatened to keep their mouths shut.”
“Worse how?” Griz asked.
“When Mei was thirteen and I was fourteen, they made us… make videos.” Beau swallowed hard enough his Adam’s apple bobbed. “The kind that get sold under the table or listed on illegal sites.”
Grizzly shoved his chair back. “Are you telling me they forced the two of you to make pornographic videos?”
Beau gave a jerky nod.
“So you knew what they were like when you left her there,” I said. “And you still never said a word, too afraid that you’d be left out in the cold. What you did goes against everything we stand for. How the fuck can you expect us to patch you in when you left a young girl behind to live through that hell and so much worse?”
Outlaw bolted from the table and threw up in the trashcan by the door. Colorado was closest to Outlaw’s seat and nudged the laptop until he could see what was on the screen. His eyes went wide, then his face paled, and he was joining Outlaw at the trashcan.
“That’s some fucked-up shit,” he said after he’d emptied the contents of his stomach. “Jesus fucking Christ! How the hell has she not lost her damn mind? I thought that video of her and Beau was bad, but that…”
“Wish I hadn’t kept digging,” Outlaw said.
I couldn’t look. Even when the laptop was turned so everyone could see, I couldn’t bring myself to watch. But the volume was turned up and I could hear it all. My stomach knotted and my eyes and throat burned as I fought not to cry like a damn baby as I listened to her suffer. The sounds of the men, and I could tell there was more than one, and her screams tore at me. It seemed that after Beau ran off the videos hadn’t stopped. They’d only become more brutal.
Beau broke. He fell to his knees and sobbed. “I didn’t know. I swear to God I didn’t know!”
It took me a moment to get myself under control, but I finally voiced my concerns. Well, the most pressing. “Trotter will be coming for her. You know when she doesn’t show up tomorrow, he’ll be at the gates demanding we return her.”
“Don’t,” Beau said. “Please. I fucked up, and I know it. Don’t send her back to him. She’s
paid enough for my mistake.”
Yeah, she had. The completely wrecked look in his eyes was enough to convince me that Beau was telling the truth. He hadn’t realized things would be that bad for Mei. It didn’t excuse what he’d done, and I had no doubt that Griz would hold a vote as to whether or not he was permitted to stay. I just wondered if we made Beau leave if Mei would feel like she couldn’t stay here either.
I pulled up the texts on my phone that I’d received from Larkin earlier and shared the results with the club. They needed to know everything, or as much as I knew at any rate. There was no doubt that Mei had been hiding more. She hadn’t told me about those videos, or what had happened to her. I could understand why, or I thought I did. She’d been protecting Beau, but I didn’t know why. Shouldn’t she be angry with him?
“Mei was trying to protect Beau,” I said. “She didn’t tell me about those videos when she shared part of her past with me. For whatever reason, she seems to care for him.”
“It would have been kinder if you’d just killed me,” Beau said. “How can I look at her knowing what she suffered and that I could have stopped it?”
“You man the fuck up,” Slash said. “That’s how. You go apologize to her --” I growled and glowered at Slash. He held up his hands. “Or not. It seems Dingo may disembowel you if you go anywhere near Mei.”
Griz sighed and rubbed his eyes. “I have no problem with her remaining here for however long she wants or needs, but in what capacity? We don’t exactly have a place for her.”
“The guest quarters?” Beau asked. “She could have her own place.”
“No.” I slammed my fist onto the table. “If anyone breached the compound, she’d be vulnerable. She’s not staying alone, and before you open your mouth again, don’t even think of saying she can stay with you.”
“I vote that we make her an official part of Devil’s Fury,” Demon said.
“Are you fucking crazy?” Steel asked. “We’ve never had a patched female before.”