Sarge: Book 8 in the Vengeance MC series

by Thomas, Natasha

  She was right. She was sick. Much sicker than before. The cancer was back, but this time it was far more aggressive, and far more advanced.

  After that, Marlee went downhill quickly. She lost fifteen pounds off her already tiny frame, she couldn’t hold anything down, and she was in immense pain, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. And throughout the whole thing, Gwen was again absent, but even more so than the first time we fought and beat this.

  It wasn’t until four days ago when Doctor Sable cornered me on my way back from the cafeteria that I found

  out Marlee’s chances of survival had dwindled to almost nothing. Up until then, we had been positive Marlee would kick cancer's ass again, that she would get through this. Apparently, we were wrong and had been living in denial.

  The last few days had been hell; the only thing keeping me from breaking down completely was my daughter. Marlee made me promise I wouldn’t be sad when she died – a promise I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep, but gave it to her anyway. She made me promise to plant a bougainvillea somewhere near the house so it could grow up like she wouldn’t. Finally, she made me promise to be happy. My girl didn’t care where I found that happiness or with whom, as long as I was. Seeing me with her mother, Marlee knew I’d never had that. She also knew this was her last chance to put her foot down and be the sassy, demanding girl who has always had her daddy wrapped around her little finger.

  Thankfully, when I needed it most, I found a way to channel my grief and despair at losing my daughter, and that began and ended with Gwen. Her desertion of her only child, her sick, dying child, and why fueled the anger I was already harboring toward her. My wife was off fucking random men at seedy motels while her little girl was being ravaged by cancer. Gwen was wasting her life while her daughter lost hers. And that last I couldn’t forgive.

  Turning to Hoss, I rumble.

  “Got things to do here, people to talk to, but I want you

  to find that bitch and lock her down. I’ll call your cell and find out where you are when I’m on my way.”

  “Any do’s or don’ts with how I lock her down,” he asks as an evil, somewhat sinister grin creeps across his face.

  “None. Take all the liberties you want, brother. But before you go, go say goodbye to your Goddaughter. She’ll be looking down to see that you do, and I’d hate to have her haunt your ass because you didn’t go and see her one last time.”

  Pulling me in for a quick one-armed hug, Hoss nods.

  “You gonna be all right dealing with all you’ve got to do here?”

  Shaking my head, I reply,

  “I’ve got to be. Knew this was coming, so I had some shit in place in the event it did. The funeral director is on standby for whenever we can get all the boys and their families here to do the service. I’m thinking Sunday.”

  Since it’s Thursday, three days should be enough time for the brothers from surrounding chapters to ride in to pay their respects. Personally, I don’t give the first fuck about having a big service, but my brothers, their wives, and kids, the ones who knew and love Marlee do. And I’ll give them that, because I know that’s what my girl would want too.

  “Excuse me. Pardon me,” the sweetest, softest, most beautiful voice outside my daughter’s sounds from behind a wall of leather and denim.

  “Is that…” Hoss’ mouth drops open in shock.

  “Fucking, fuck me sideways.”

  Grimm, a prospect turned patch who joined Vengeance a couple of years after Emmy left stretches his arm out to stop her progress, leaving me seeing red.

  “Do not fucking touch her or I’ll rip your goddamn arms off,” I bellow.

  Shoving his now limp arm aside, Emmy runs at me with no intention of stopping. I open my arms wide just in time for her to collide with the length of my body, throwing me backward into the wall. With her arms around my neck and her legs wrapped around my waist, Emmy bursts into tears and lays her head in the crook of my neck.

  “Oh, God. I’m s-so sorry,” she sobs quietly.

  Burying my nose in her hair, I inhale the subtle vanilla and lavender scent I’ve missed so much. My body shudders at the feel of her in my arms, Emmy’s soft curves pressed to my hard angles. Em is the last person I thought I’d see today. But she is, and I couldn’t be happier.

  Overwhelmed by I finally settle on asking.

  “How’d you know I needed you?”

  With a cute little sniffle, Emmy’s beautiful blue eyes connect with mine. The look of love, compassion and fear in them has my breath stuttering in my chest.

  “I’ve always known. You’re my other half, Atlas.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  ~ Sarge ~

  Vengeance is rewarded

  Emily holds my hand like a lifeline as I watch the coffin lower into the ground. She’s hasn’t said a word since we stepped foot into the church we held Marlee’s service in. Not even on the fifteen-minute ride to the cemetery. Somehow Emmy knows words, even hers won’t help. Nothing will. Today is the day I bury my daughter. Today is the day I have to say goodbye.

  With my brothers at my back, their wives standing close, but not close enough to be classified as hovering, and Emmy at my side, we stand frozen as the first shovel of dirt hits the lid of the coffin with a loud thud. We stay until the men tasked with entombing my baby beneath the Earth are done, slowly packing up, leaving us to say our final farewells.

  It isn’t until Emmy leans up to kiss my cheek and whispers,

  “Go and tell her you love her, Atlas,” that I break down.

  I drop to my knees and let out a howl of pain. The sound

  is brutal, violent, ripped from my chest as I release all of the pent-up agony I feel inside. There’s nothing cathartic about the rage I let loose to the heavens. There’s nothing remotely healthy about the seething anger crawling beneath my skin. At this moment, my grief is an entirely different entity. It is raw. Primal. Ferocious.

  Laying my hands on the wet, cool ground, six feet above where my daughter's lifeless body lies, I bow my head and sob. Seconds, minutes, hours pass as I let my tears soak into the Earth, praying that Marlee knew just how much I loved her. I don’t move when Emmy’s hands come to rest lightly on my back, allowing me to absorb her strength and comfort. I don’t lift my head when my brothers say they will head back to the clubhouse and wait for us to arrive. And I don’t even blink as Emily falls to her knees beside me and wraps her arms around me.

  “She is loved, baby. By you. By your brothers. By everyone,” Emily’s soft voice floats through the air. “Marlee will always be remembered in the hearts and minds of everyone she met – everyone she touched with her generous spirit and beautiful smile.”

  “Why’d it have to take her, Emmy? Fucking why?” I growl in outrage.

  “I don’t know, Atlas. It isn’t fair. It isn’t just. It just is.”

  I don’t have any response to that. She’s right, of course, but that doesn’t make Marlee’s passing any easier to accept.

  *****

  The numbness that started seeping in the day I buried Marlee became full-fledged over the days that followed. While Emmy and my brothers did their best to pull me out of the bottom of the bottle I was hell bent on drowning myself in, I knew only one thing could give me the closure I needed to start moving on.

  And I got it.

  Three days after my baby was lowered into the ground the sight of my soon-to-be-very-ex-wife, sitting tied to a chair in the center of the warehouse is exactly what I was waiting for. I should feel guilt or remorse at the blood steadily leaking from the cut below her eye and the expression of terror marring her once beautiful face. I don’t, though. Instead, I feel nothing but disgust and rage, building in the pit of my gut, clawing, scrambling, demanding to be set free.

  “How you want to play this?” Hoss asks, crushing his cigarette out with the heel of his boot.

  I’ve thought about that and not a lot else from the moment Hoss told me where to meet him. Leaving Emily at
the clubhouse with Diesel and Boss, I rode the seventeen miles here, dreaming about all the ways I’d make Gwen pay for deserting her daughter in her final hours. I could draw this out, make Gwen beg for her life before I send her to meet her maker. Or I could just end it all, ridding the Earth of an oxygen thieving cunt that caused more harm than she

  did good. There are so many variables, so many things I could do to her, and only one constant; after I walk out of here, Gwen will have taken her last breath.

  “You don’t have to do this shit, you know?” Hoss says, crossing his arms over his chest, tipping his head in Gwen’s direction. “You can go back to the clubhouse, back to, Emmy and let me handle it. I’d be happy to take care of the bitch for you.”

  Allowing my glacial stare to roam over the woman I once foolishly gave my last name, I clench my teeth and answer,

  “No, this is all me. If you want to take off go ahead. If you want to stay, that works for me. Whichever you chose, this is between her and me, though.”

  Gwen slowly raises her head at the sound of my voice, opening and closing her mouth a few times but no sound comes out. Hoss didn’t do a number on her, not like he would have if she were a guy. Gwen should thank her lucky stars she’s not in a hell of a lot more pain right now because it could have been a shit ton worse.

  Closing the distance between us, I gather the loose curls falling around her face in my fist and jerk her head back. Listless, dull green eyes rove over my face, looking for signs of mercy, finding none. That’s right bitch, you don’t deserve my pity or forgiveness for the crap you put my daughter and me through.

  “You know why you’re here?” I bark, causing her body to snap tight.

  “Y-yes,” she replies, squeezing her eyes shut at the brutality in my tone.

  “Fucking look at me,” I demand, yanking her hair hard enough to trigger her eyes to open. “That’s right, I want you looking at me the whole time. You close your eyes, and I’ll cut your fucking eyelids off.” I wouldn’t, but she doesn’t need to know that. From personally experience, that shit isn’t only messy, it’s time-consuming. And I have no intention of wasting more than I have to sharing the same air as this woman.

  Crouching down in front of her, I will Gwen to test me; to push me over the edge so I can react in kind. But she doesn’t; she simply holds my gaze and nods. Pulling my 9mm from the back of my pants, I tap the barrel restlessly on my thigh, praying for patience that these days is in short supply.

  “I did a lot of thinking while I watched my little girl fight for her life,” I start by telling her. “And the one thing I never could wrap my head around was why, after all the bitching about wanting to give her a real chance at a family, you took the fuck off the second shit got rough.”

  Gwen goes to speak, but my deep growl of warning has her changing her mind instantly.

  “Don’t talk. I don’t want to hear your bullshit excuses. Our daughter was sick; she was fucking dying, and you weren’t there. Instead, you were out spreading your legs for

  pin-dicks with fat wallets, offering your snatch up to the highest bidder.”

  “It, it wasn’t…” her hoarse whisper echoes off the barren warehouse walls.

  With my fist in her hair, I shake her to get her to shut up.

  “I said, don’t fucking speak. Facts are facts, Gwen. When Marlee was laid up in the hospital, while toxins were being pumped into her body and she vomited up every meal, her hair falling out and her body fading away, you were getting off. I hope those orgasms were worth it, bitch, because they’re going to cost you big time.”

  The only sound in the warehouse now is Gwen’s soft sobs and the crunch of gravel under Hoss’ boots. I suck in a deep lungful of air, breathing out through my nose in an effort not to beat the living shit out of the callous, self-absorbed, neglectful bitch.

  “Fantasized about ending you for months. Dreamed about you bleeding out, watching the life flicker out of your eyes. Prayed I could find a way for you to take my baby’s place, too. That was the only thing that kept me going sometimes,” I share with a vicious snarl. “Thinking about what I’d do to you when the time came; how I would hurt you for leaving our daughter in her time of need. It wasn’t until five minutes after my girl died, when I was all but ready to track your useless ass down, that something

  happened that changed everything.”

  Gwen’s face is pale, ashen even, her breath is coming in shallow terrified pants, and her eyes are wide with fear. Good. Mission accomplished. I want this bitch to die scared. I want her to feel a fraction of what Marlee went through while she fought and lost her battle to live.

  Tapping her forehead with the barrel of my gun, I smirk cruelly at her.

  “You told me once, she’d never come back. Swore black and blue that Emmy was gone forever. Well, guess what, bitch? She’s home. Better yet, she’s mine. All that poison you injected into my life, just having to live under the same roof as you, it’s gone. Emmy washed that shit away the second I laid eyes on her again.”

  Her sharp intake of breath makes me smile. The first real smile that has crossed my face since Marlee was taken from me.

  “Funny how things happen when you’re least expecting them, isn’t it? A bit like this,” I sneer, flicking the safety off, pulling back the trigger.

  “No!” Gwen screams. “No. No. No. Please, please, don’t,” she begs.

  Taking one last look at a woman the world will be richer without, I stand up and take two steps backward. Letting go of the trigger, I release one round followed by another. Both bullets hit her right between the eyes, double tap, execution style. When Gwen’s body is found out on the slip road, running beside the I-70, fifty or so miles’ outside of Denver, her death will be ruled a homicide, all fingers

  pointing to Hells Riders MC, Vengeance’s biggest rival. It fits their MO; I made sure of that. Two birds, one stone, I say. And good riddance.

  “Damn, that was a fuck of a lot quicker and cleaner than I thought it would be,” Hoss smirks.

  “Yeah, well, no sense in dragging it out. I don’t need to be explaining to Emmy why I’m coming home covered in blood and fuck knows what else,” I return, picking up the bullet casings and tucking them into the front pocket of my jeans.

  Shrugging, Hoss nods,

  “Suppose not.”

  *****

  Hoss and I wrapped Gwen’s body up in the plastic sheeting he’d laid out before tying her to the chair and toss her in the clubs’ van. Driving an hour and a half out of town isn’t ideal, but we can’t have her found too close to home, either. Three miles from the Hells Riders compound, Hoss turns the van onto the slip road, me following on my bike, and pulls up on a secluded curve, not visible from the Interstate. Under the cover of darkness, Hoss drags Gwen’s corpse out, unrolls the plastic, and lets her fall face down in the drainage ditch running parallel with the road.

  “Well, that’s done. Trash disposed of, brother. What’s next?” He questions, brushing his hands off on his jeans.

  “We go home, brother,” I smile, clapping him on the shoulder. “I don’t know about you, but I need a cold beer and a warm woman. Lucky for me, I’ve got both waiting for me back at the clubhouse.”

  Chuckling at me, Hoss balls up the plastic sheeting and tosses it in the back of the van.

  “Fuck you, man. No need to rub that shit in.”

  Natalie, the woman Hoss was seeing back before Emily up and disappeared, left town six months after Hoss started having real feelings for her. Not that I can blame her; the dumb fuck never told her as much, letting her go on thinking she was merely another in a long line of women to warm his bed. Hoss was cocky enough to believe that when Natalie arrived back in Furnace a little over a month and a half ago, them getting back together was a sure thing. Needless to say, Natalie wasn’t on board with that plan.

  Since then, they’ve been doing some fucking weird mating dance, neither one willing to make the first move. It’s fucking plain as day, Natalie is still hu
ng up on my brother, just as any moron with a pair of eyes can see Hoss is head over heels for her.

  Deciding to press my luck, I ask,

  “How’s it going with the tiny spitfire anyway?”

  Natalie is all of five-foot-one in her stocking feet, nearly a foot and a half shorter than Hoss. What she lacks in height, though, she makes up for in attitude. Not to mention, her family comes from a long line of champion boxers, so she knows a thing or two about bringing a man to his knees

  – something Hoss found out first hand when he slapped her ass last week. Faster than I’ve ever seen another person move, Natalie had bent back Hoss’ middle finger, twisted his arm behind his back, and kicked his knees out from under him. He landed on the floor at Hounds in an unceremonious heap, staring up at the redheaded firecracker like she was equal parts goddess and insane. Let’s just say, it was fucking entertaining to watch.

  “It’s not,” he grunts in frustration. “Last night she threatened to remove my balls at the same time, through the same orifice as my tonsils if I didn’t stop stalking her ass.”