by Sam Crescent
“Angel, I’d like to introduce you to Charlotte.”
“Hey, Charlotte, it’s lovely to meet you,” Angel said, drawing the woman at his side into a hug. Angel just couldn’t help it. She saw the good in everyone, and at times it worried him that she was going to end up dead for it.
“Angel? Is that like a club name or something?” Charlotte asked.
Gash glared at her, but Angel laughed it off.
“You would think so, right? Nah, it’s my real name, and I’m not joking around.”
Charlotte was red. “I’m so sorry. I don’t really know much about the whole MC thing.”
“And yet you’re friends with Gash.”
“I wouldn’t call us friends.”
Angel smiled. “You’re the first person that I know who he’s invited here. That would make you his friend.”
“You’re back already?” Lash asked, coming up behind Angel. He held her hip and reached out to shake his hand.
“Yeah. Lash, this is Charlotte. Charlotte, this is our new Prez, Lash.”
“Nice to meet you.”
“You’re the one he’s been looking for? The one who helped put him in jail.”
Charlotte tensed. “No. I’m not.”
“Leave it, Lash. She had nothing to do with it.”
“And you believe her.”
“Yeah, I do. Charlotte has never had a reason to lie to me, and I believe that.”
Lash glared at her for a few seconds, and Angel patted his chest. “I believe it as well.”
Once Angel talked, Lash listened. It was kind of a miracle to witness actually. Gash wished he’d been at the club to see the two fall for each other. The way the others talked about it, it had been something awesome to watch. Instead, he only watched them together.
“Did you hear the good news?” Lash asked.
“Good news?”
“I’m pregnant,” Angel said, placing her hand over her stomach. “I finally convinced him Anthony needed a play friend.”
“Anthony’s at school now,” Gash said.
“I know, but I’d like to think he wants a little brother or sister.” The smile dropped from Angel’s face. “What if he doesn’t want a brother or sister? What if he hates us?”
Lash shook his head, cupping her cheek. “No. I’ll talk with Anthony, and he’ll love us having a big family. Why wouldn’t he? He’s always around Tabitha, Miles, and the others.”
Angel sighed. “You’re right. We’re expanding our family.”
“Do you know where Whizz is?” Gash asked.
He could be around Angel all day. She helped to ease the bitterness inside him, and make him forget his need for revenge. He didn’t want to ever forget what he planned for the two people who put him in prison. It was his mission to end them, and he was going to do it while laughing.
“Whizz is at home. Since they adopted Sally, they spend a little more time at their own place. Lacey doesn’t want to force the MC onto Sally, and to give the girl a somewhat normal life,” Angel said.
“Sally’s at school.”
“Whizz has set up this nerd station in one of his rooms at his place. Several screens, internet, and all that shit that makes him a certified nerd.”
Gash chuckled. A lot of people wouldn’t believe that Whizz was not only a computer geek, but he was also one tough asshole. He had a lot of respect for Whizz, especially as the man had survived some of the worst kind of torture that he had ever heard about.
“Then I guess we’re paying Whizz a visit.” He grabbed Charlotte’s hand and headed out of the club.
As he was leaving Killer was walking into the club.
They shook hands and slapped each other on the back.
“Wasn’t expecting to see you so soon,” Killer said.
“What can I say? You just can’t get rid of me.”
“Tell me about it. Can’t stay, about to head out.” Gash made the introductions with Killer and Charlotte. “Where’s Kelsey?”
“She’s at work.” Kelsey worked as a dental nurse, and had returned to work not long ago. “I’m here to pick up Markus.”
“Angel has him inside.”
“Great.”
They said their goodbyes and headed back toward his bike.
“I have to say I’m shocked,” Charlotte said.
“About what?”
“Your MC life. I thought it was drugs, booze, and sex.”
Gash laughed. “Well, it’s got the sex and the booze. It’s also about being a family. The Skulls, they’re my real brothers and family.”
“What happened to your real brother?” she asked.
“My brother?”
“Yesterday, you mentioned a brother.”
Gash released a sigh. “I’ll talk to you about that another time. I’ve not seen him in years, well over a decade. He’s probably dead.”
“And you don’t care about that?”
“My brother was an asshole, Charlotte. Believe me, he’s better off dead, otherwise he’d have hurt every single person he could get his hands on.”
Charlotte frowned. “How do you know that?”
Gash sighed. “Can I just promise that I’ll tell you soon? I want to get to Whizz.”
She nodded. “Sure. You’re not obligated to share anything with me.” She placed the helmet on her head, and he swung his leg over the bike. Charlotte climbed on behind him and held him tightly.
Gash liked the way she held onto him.
Starting up his bike, he rode out of the clubhouse, all the time aware of her pussy pressing against his back. When he got out of prison, he’d fucked every single club whore, and then he’d gone around them again, wearing out all the women. He loved sex, but with Charlotte, it was something more.
Thinking back to this morning when he had his fingers inside her pussy, he’d been desperate for her to find pleasure. Usually he didn’t give a fuck about whether the women got off or not. With Charlotte, it meant more.
Get over it.
She’s not the one for you.
You’re using her to find peace.
Her legs tightened around him, and he gritted his teeth. There wasn’t going to be anything between them other than two people looking for revenge. He could do this, and place Charlotte in a little box for him to deal with.
Chapter Four
A woman with red and blue hair answered the door, and Charlotte loved the colors. It looked amazing on her as it wasn’t glaringly bad, or anything. She fingered her ponytail as she’d pulled her hair back, and her brown locks were dull and boring.
“Gash, what are you doing here?” she asked.
“Hey, Lacey, I’m here to see Whizz.”
Lacey turned and yelled Whizz’s name. “Come on in.”
“What are you doing now?” Gash asked.
“I’m actually in college right now. I’m taking beauty courses, and putting my love of dying my hair to good use.”
“Beauty?”
“Yep. I’m loyal to The Skulls, and the old ladies are more than happy to let me work on their hair.” Lacey smiled, looking at Charlotte. “I could do wonders for your hair. It’s so long.”
“You’re not touching her hair,” Gash said.
Tugging out her ponytail, Charlotte stuck her tongue out at Gash. “What do you recommend?”
Lacey chuckled. “I like you.”
“I’ll probably be dead before you can do anything.”
She noticed that made Lacey pause.
“Excuse me?” Lacey asked.
“Gash is threatening my life. I don’t know how much time I’ve got left.”
Gash slumped. “I’m not going to kill you.”
Charlotte looked at Gash and shrugged. “You’re the one that has been threatening to kill me. I accept my fate, and if I don’t make it out alive, then I don’t.”
“This is weird,” Whizz said. “Talking about your death should have you at least a little freaked. Normal women would be freaked out, even Lacey, and
she’s not that close to normal.”
“Hey!” Lacey said, chuckling at the same time. They were a strange couple, but seeing them both together, it worked.
Charlotte smiled. “I’ve had a lot of time to deal with it.”
“You’re Charlotte,” Whizz said, moving toward her.
Lacey didn’t stop running fingers through her hair. “Purple, it would totally rock purple, and a trim. I bet we could put some curls in the length, and it would totally look fuckable.”
Gash groaned.
“I tell you what,” Charlotte said. “When we finish what we’re doing, you can do whatever the hell you want with my hair.”
“Deal.” Lacey glared at Gash. “She better be back in one piece, or I’m going to start making some serious use of the knives that Whizz gave me for Christmas.”
“Lacey, keep Gash company. I want to talk to Charlotte.”
Before she could protest, Whizz was dragging her down a long corridor into a large room that looked like a command center.
“Wow,” she said. “That’s a lot of computers.”
“Yes, it is. This is my office. Welcome.” Whizz closed the door, and Charlotte leaned against the wall that had nothing against it, no technology, and nothing worth breaking.
“I don’t want to touch anything in case I, erm, I break it.”
“Have you told him?” he asked.
“Told him?”
“About what you lost?”
Charlotte tensed up. “No one knows about that.”
“There’s always a trail, Charlotte. No one is clear from shit like a forced abortion. There had to be paperwork.”
She pressed a hand against her stomach as tears filled her eyes.
“The suicide attempts, along with every other shitty thing that you’ve been through.” Whizz kept his distance, and she was more than happy about that.
“I … I didn’t think anyone would know what happened.”
“Gash asked me to find information on Rebecca and Jeff. You came up, and I gave him the way to locate you.”
“Wait? You told him?” Why hadn’t Gash asked? Why did he assume she helped put him in prison?
“No. I didn’t give him everything.” He moved away from his position opposite her toward his wall of screens. “To be honest, the information for me, it only gave me more questions. You see, abortions, documents, all of that stuff I can follow, but I cannot follow emotion. I don’t know what happened between you and Gash, or between Jeff and Rebecca. Only the paper trails, and possible security footage. It’s a lot in this day and age, but it’s not everything.”
She listened and watched as he clicked on the keyboard, and her life came up on the multitude of different screens.
Whizz moved away, and she forced herself to face the life that she had been trying to forget.
Pictures of herself before and after her life was turned upside down. Hospital images of her injuries and files of her diagnosis were displayed for her to see.
“I didn’t give him this. Gash doesn’t know that when you tried to testify on his behalf, you were drugged and shipped to a hospital to have the baby that you had created together, torn out of you.”
Her heart was racing. This was her secret. This was what Jeff did to her, and what Rebecca did to her. They held her down, forced her to sleep, and removed something so precious to her that she had already been making plans for her future. The promotion had come first, and then when she landed, she’d gotten the positive test, and for those few precious minutes her life had been perfect. A few minutes, that was all she got.
“Gash didn’t know, and he still doesn’t know,” she said.
“He still doesn’t know. You’re the woman from his dream. The woman he had sex with, and can’t remember it.”
She nodded.
“I was away when Gash was arrested. I got a promotion, and that was why I was out of the country. When I got back, I discovered he was on trial and I was going to testify on his behalf. I’d been feeling sick, and the only explanation I had was being pregnant. I took a kit, but Jeff was there, and Rebecca.” Her cheeks heated. “Before him, I was a virgin, and I’ve never been with anyone else. Sad really, I know.”
“That’s not sad. Everything that comes with you returning, that’s sad, that’s unbearable,” Whizz said.
“Everything had gone to shit in the time that I was away. Gash was being done for murder and rape. I knew he was capable of murder, but not out of jealousy. Gash didn’t give a shit about Rebecca, or who she screwed.”
“How did you know?” Whizz asked.
“He came around one night when she was entertaining another man.” Charlotte laughed. “I was so embarrassed that I couldn’t even talk. Anyway, Rebecca was always really loud. He came and laughed. Said Rebecca was an easy girl, and he’d wait his turn. No jealousy. He even picked up a cooking magazine, and read it while Rebecca was screwing another guy. Then, when the two came out, Gash shook the man’s hand, and grabbed Rebecca.”
“Wow, I didn’t know that.”
“Not everything is written on a computer, just like you said,” Charlotte said. “He’s not a rapist. Gash would never hurt a woman.”
“Yet he hurt you.”
She cupped her neck and shook her head. “I guess I’m not considered a woman in his eyes.”
“And yet for a short time, you were the mother of his kid.”
Charlotte flinched. “That’s a long time ago.”
“He or she would have been seven years old, entering his eighth birthday.”
Tears filled her eyes, and before she could hold them back, they fell down her face. “Please, stop.” She started to shake as the pain took over her entire body. For a little over two years she hadn’t experienced this. Two years, at least she’d known a struggled peace.
“Gash doesn’t know what he lost.”
“He wouldn’t believe me.” She wiped the tears away.
“You need to tell him.”
“You knew all of this, so why didn’t you tell him?”
“Some things are best said by the person who suffered through it.”
Charlotte snorted. “He tried to kill me.”
“Did he really try to kill you?”
“He had his hand wrapped around my neck, about to choke me.”
Whizz sighed. “I didn’t know him before prison, but something tells me if Gash intended to kill you, you’d be dead. He doesn’t leave people alive if he can help it. He’s a hard ass.”
“So, I should be grateful he didn’t want to kill me?”
“No, you should think about the fact he hasn’t.”
Charlotte licked her lips, staring back at the screen. “Why didn’t you tell him this?”
“I believe people deserve second chances. My wife, Lacey, she was going to kill me—well, she couldn’t kill me. It’s complicated. Anyway, I don’t believe you and Gash got your chance. Now it’s time for you to get your shot together.”
“He doesn’t want me.”
She stared down at her large figure and sighed. When she was trapped in a mental ward, she’d actually slimmed down to a size eight. She couldn’t eat, and the doctors ended up forcing her to eat. The moment she got out of the hospital and started making her way in the world, she promised herself she’d stayed slim. Then her pain would only be eased by baking and cooking in the kitchen. Her size eight didn’t last long. She had remained a size sixteen for the past two years, and she no longer believed in diets. Her life had already sucked enough without taking out her love for food.
“You’d be surprised what a man wants.”
“We’re looking for Rebecca and Jeff.”
“I get it. Okay, let’s go and invite Gash back into the room before my wife tries to kill him.”
“Lacey? She’d kill him.”
“Lacey’s an interesting character. I love her, but Gash, he doesn’t like her smart mouth.”
She smiled.
Following him out of the nerd ro
om, she saw Gash was glaring across the counter in the kitchen as Lacey sang out of tune at the top of her voice.
“Getting her out of the clubhouse hasn’t been good for her,” Gash said.
“What? I love her singing.” Whizz walked toward Lacey, kissed her on the mouth, and smiled at his wife.
Charlotte’s chest hurt. She had never experienced that kind of love.
Her own life was all about work and sleep.
Life truly sucked.
****
“We want to find Rebecca and Jeff,” Gash said. He’d had enough of hanging around Lacey. Just being around the weird woman irritated him. After everything that had happened to her, she was too damn happy. Charlotte wiped her cheeks again, and he noticed her eyes were red. What the fuck had Whizz said to her?
“How do you expect me to do that?” Whizz asked. “If I could find her, I would.”
“Tell him, Charlotte.”
She rolled her eyes. “Have you seen that room he has set up? I’m surprised he hasn’t found her already. You said so yourself, there’s always a paper trail.”
“Yeah, there is, but some people can make shit disappear, and it takes a little longer to find it. Tell me what you’ve got, and I can go ahead and find it.” Whizz took a muffin that was on the counter, and bit into it.
Charlotte frowned as she watched him turn green then spit out the chewed up muffin. “Babe, you used salt in place of sugar.”
“What?”
Lacey took the muffin from him and bit into it, doing exactly the same thing that he had done. “Shit, I sent Sally to school with two of them.”
“Yeah, she’s going to throw them in the trash.”
Whizz filled a glass with water and then nodded toward his room. “Let’s go.”
Gash waited for Charlotte to follow, and she did so with her arms folded. He loved her attitude, the fight inside her. She wasn’t broken.
Entering the room, Gash was amazed. “Shit, I thought your room at the clubhouse was damn creepy.”
“Now I can control my own world.” Whizz did a maniacal laugh, then sat down. “So, what did I miss?”
“I don’t know if you missed it or if it didn’t go anywhere. In the city there was this apartment she went to that was supposed to be in her name.”