The idea almost made me laugh but I bit it back as I made my plans. I was going to make up my own damn accent and no one except those who knew me really well would be able to understand what I was saying.
Then I heard it. They were coming. Footsteps sounded on the tiled floors and were coming towards me.
I didn’t pretend to be unconscious. I turned my head and watched as they walked into the room. They were dressed in dark suits with black ski masks over their faces and silently spread out around the room. The ones in my line of sight stood with their hands clasped behind their backs. Obviously waiting for the man in charge.
He made his entrance silently. The man walking towards me was unremarkable, bland and totally forgettable. You wouldn’t give him a second glance. And that, I’m sure, worked for him.
And how did I know what he looked like? Unlike the men ranged around the room he wasn’t wearing a mask.
Fuck. That wasn’t good, not good at all. It meant he didn’t give a shit that I and whoever would be on the other side of the camera saw his face. But why were the others masked? Did we know them?
He strolled around the room as if inspecting the men and their posture told me they were either scared or very wary of him. Neither one bode well for me.
Then finally he turned and walked over to the table, coming to a stop right beside me. I looked up at him and couldn’t stop the deep internal shudder. I could see why his men were wary of him. His pale eyes showed absolutely no emotion, they were like pale dead holes in his face. It took everything in me not to show my revulsion as I stared back at him. I knew he was waiting for me to speak but I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction.
I could wait.
Dragging an icy finger down my arm over my shoulder and down the centre of my chest then over the healing bruise on my ribs and down my thigh he snorted in disgust.
“I have no idea why they would put so much value on your life or call you their princess. Look at the mess you’ve made of your skin. No princess would desecrate herself like this.”
Keeping his cold finger on my skin he circled the table, dragging that finger over the marks Wolf had left on my skin.
“And this, allowing someone to chew on you like an animal is disgusting.”
He stood on my right hand side and tapped his finger on the mandala tattoo on my upper arm before dragging it down over the maze, waves, alligator and black bands that covered my arm.
“I can see this means something to you and maybe to your family. But unfortunately for you it’s too recognisable. It will have to be covered. Leaving them on your skin will make you too memorable during the auction.”
Jesus. Fuck.
I fought hard to keep all expression from my face.
I hadn’t only been taken as a tool to force my club to comply to their demands. The bastard was planning to sell me. They weren’t going to return me to the club.
I was being trafficked once he got what he wanted from my club or Hawk.
Fucking hell.
I lay there silently, not giving him any reaction. I looked away from him and only then did I notice my clothes had been brought in and lay in a tattered heap on the floor next to the table. My smashed phone lay on top of the pile along with the leather cords with my charms. The bastards had stomped on the charms and had partly destroyed them. I fought the tears. I wasn’t going to give them the satisfaction of seeing me cry. Not yet anyway.
I felt his cold eyes on me and knew he was waiting for a reaction, a reaction I refused to give him.
Rolling my head back towards him I almost, almost gave myself away when I felt that little bump at the back of my head. It was still there. My little ace in the hole. My one and only hope of getting out of here. I won’t be unhurt but I would get out.
As long as the damned thing was still working. With them throwing me around and manhandling me it might have been damaged.
Swallowing the fear down I faced the man who was going to hurt me and enjoy it while he does.
“I’m impressed. Such strength and resolve. A pity I will have to break you to get what we want.” He shrugged as he carefully removed his suit jacket and handed it to one of the men who folded it neatly and did something with it behind my head where I couldn’t see.
“Now, Leona, here’s what is going to happen.” He said in that emotionless voice of his. “I’m going to call Maniac and he’s going to give me what I want in exchange for your freedom. If not, he and your family will watch as I make you suffer.”
He smiled, a shark’s smile, when I snorted.
“I know, I know. A little duplicitous but then that’s business for you. And that’s what this is, it’s only business, not personal at all. Unfortunately for you, your family got in the way of the business interests of an associate of mine which brings us to the situation you now find yourself in.” He carefully rolled the sleeves of his white shirt being very careful to keep the cuffs at exactly the same width and rolling them an equal amount of times. Precision, this bastard was all about precision and control.
“What I will be doing to you will not in any way hinder the facilitation of your sale. Your new owner will still be able to fuck you even though you will most probably be in pain. Not that he will care about that. Most of our customers have a predilection for inflicting pain on their slaves which in turn gives us return business when we have to replace what they have broken.”
He clapped his hands once and two of the men carried a small table over and set it up next to the table I was on. I rigidly controlled my breathing when I saw the instruments of torture laid out on top.
Jeeeezuuuuz.
I immediately looked away. I did not want to see that shit. Closing my eyes I dug deep and drew on the strength of my belief that I would be found before he hurt me too badly. That I was going to hurt was a given but I wouldn’t die. He didn’t want me dead. He needed me alive.
And that’s what I clung to.
The fucker needed me alive.
“Now this is what is going to happen next. I’m going to place a call to Maniac and give him our demands for your release. You will beg him to give me what I want.” He smiled. “Don’t give me that look, Leona. You will scream and you will beg. That’s my promise to you.”
Waving a languid hand at his men they immediately responded and brought standing lamps like you would find in a photographic studio over and set them up around the table. And all at once I was brightly lit up. One of the men stepped up behind the camera and another did something on the laptop on the table next to the monitor. The screen came on with a click and I saw myself, laid out like a damned sacrificial lamb. And then Maniac’s face took my place.
One look at his face and I knew he was in a rage. He sat at his desk with Dad next to him and Ren and Viper standing behind them. My dad sat there totally emotionless, wearing his VP face. Fuck, this was so damned hard. Looking away from the screen I stared into the camera, letting my family read my resolve in my eyes.
Blinking twice I looked away then back at the monitor. Watching Maniac. The blinks let him know they hadn’t found the tracker at the back of my head. I heard his fingers tapping on the desk, once, twice, three times. It was most probably a signal because Maniac didn’t have any little mannerisms that gave away what he was feeling.
“Good day, Mr Maniac.” My kidnapper said in a friendly and chatty voice but I knew Maniac wasn’t fooled at all. “Well, maybe not a good day for you and your men but a very good day for me.” He said with a cold smile. “As you can see I wasn’t lying when I said I have Leona.” He waved his hand over me like one of those stupid infomercials. “Here she is, and all you have to do to get her back is to give me what I want. A very reasonable exchange between potential business partners.”
“Firstly, who the fuck are you? And secondly, not givin’ you a fuckin’ thing.” Maniac growled.
The kidnapper laughed. “You may call me Mr Brink. Not my name but it will suffice for now. Listen to what I want from yo
u before you force me to do something you’re not going to like.” He shrugged. “Me on the other hand, I’m going to like it, a lot.”
“What the fuck do you want?” Maniac sat back in his chair suddenly looking very relaxed. Dad did the same, crossing his arms over his chest. Oh shit.
Dead Eyes rested his hands on the table next to my body and leant over me to look right into the camera.
“This is what you are going to do. You will call in your officers and fire them, immediately. You will instate the men on the list I just had sent to you as your new officers. They will be running your club as of today while you will stay on as the face of the club. Those of your men who don’t comply with the new order will be eliminated. You are going to receive a call from our business partners and you will do whatever they want you to do. Protection, elimination, assassination, it doesn’t matter what it is, you will do it. If you don’t she will hurt a little more each day. And you will watch every single second of it.”
Maniac leant back in his chair and grinned. “No. And not just no motherfucker, but hell no.”
Dead Eyes smirked. “I don’t think you understand.” He turned, lifted a scalpel from the table behind him and drew a quick line from my shoulder down to my hand. The motherfucker sliced a thin line through my tattoos. It fucking burned and blood immediately seeped out of the cut. Not a very deep one, just enough to bleed.
Turning those dead eyes on me as he tapped the bloody scalpel against my belly. “Tell him, Leona, tell him what I’m going to do to you if he doesn’t give me what I want. Beg him for your life. Go on, be a good little bitch and do as I tell you.”
And here was the chance I had been praying for. No set speech but my own words.
I opened my mouth to speak but before I could say a word he slashed that damned scalpel along the top of my mound. It fucking hurt! I hissed with the pain but kept my eyes on the camera. I dare not look at the reactions of the men on the monitor.
When I finally found my voice and spoke my accent was so weird and broad I knew they would be hard pressed to understand all of it but I also knew they would puzzle it out. The accent I put on was mostly made up gibberish. I used accents I had heard at one time or another and ended up sounding like a redneck, hillbilly, Cajun, Irish, Jamaican and whatever else I could throw in there to get around this asshole.
“May-ni-hack, ah’s lyin’ he’ah in me birfdey kit. Caint ya see? Doan wanna bee he’ah. Hee’ah ain’t gon’ah lemme goah. Ya gi’ heem wah hee whahnts. Ah cain’t be treckin’ wha’ hee whahnts wif meah atall. Y’all cain’t he’p heem none. Y’all needs ta gits ta steppin’ ova dere. Ah wanna git back ta mah empty hoose afore eet gits ta fallin’ dohanh. Hee’ah sayahs dey’s gonna gi’ y’all wahun dey’ah den hee’ll be a callin’ all y’all beck. Doan be lettin’ tha’ thin’ ring see-hicks or see-effin tahms afore ya ans’er laaik ya allus doe. Ah’m no’ y’alls lil’ slave gurl no moah. No’ah, doan git ta stompin’ y’alls boots an’ lemme lie he’ah wit’ dem allus starin’ a’ mah cookey. Tha’s it.”
God. Half the shit I said I wouldn’t have understood myself so I hoped like fuck someone over there could.
Dead Eyes wasn’t pleased. No sirree. He did not like the broad accent that he very obviously found hard to understand.
“What the fuck was that? Jesus, Grave, could you not teach your kid how to speak properly? Why does she sound like she’s an uneducated streetwalker?”
“Tha’s de wahay ah allus talk.” I mumbled just before he punched the bruise on my side.
Bloody hell! A gasp of pain escaped before I could bite it back.
“I think all of you need a little lesson before we end our conversation for today. I will not be fucked with. Not by you or by this whore on my table.” Dead Eyes snapped as he stared down at me coldly. I think he had a suspicion I had tricked him but without proof he had nothing.
Turning to the table he picked up what looked like a pair of cutters and I gritted my teeth. Whatever he was going to do with that thing was going to hurt. I clamped my mouth shut as he gently picked up my hand that was closest to the camera, fitted the cutters around my pinky finger and cut.
Holy fucking shit balls!
Pain unlike anything I had ever felt before shot through my body and I screamed. The bastard smiled as he picked up my lost digit and laid it on my chest.
Oh God. It was my left hand, my dominant hand. I worked hard to wipe the horror from my face.
“I can’t have her bleeding out before I have my fun, now can I.” He didn’t look at me as he spoke. Everything he did was for my Dad and Maniac’s benefit.
And if he didn’t want me bleeding out it meant cauterising the wound.
Fucking shit balls. I gritted my teeth in preparation of the coming pain.
Still smiling he took the soldering iron one of the men held out to him and pressed it against the profusely bleeding stump on my left hand.
The pain and shock sent me spiralling and I mercifully fell down the waiting black hole.
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
Maniac
He had never felt rage like he did now. The girl who was like a daughter to him was bein’ tortured on camera and he couldn’t do a fuckin’ thing. All he could do was silently watch, givin’ her his strength as her father and brother’s breathing gave away their struggle to stay silent.
Finally, fuckin’ finally, the screen went dark. Maniac sat breathing deeply trying to find his control.
“I want him dead.” Grave snarled as he launched himself out of his chair. “But first I want him strapped to a chair as I carefully remove every single appendage the fucker has. I want...”
“Enough, Grave.” Maniac said quietly. “We don’t have the fuckin’ time to imagine what we’re gonna do to the fucker.”
Turning to Byte who was working at the station they had set up in the corner of his office he asked the question they all wanted the answer to.
“Were you able to track the fucker?”
“No, but I’ve been able to remotely activate Leo’s tracker. Dive will be able to track her on his phone. I installed the app before they left. Unfortunately we had to be cautious with it so it has a very weak broadcast strength. They will have to be within 5 miles of her location to start picking it up, and then it will still be very weak. While that fucker had you on camera someone tried to get in to our system via a sneaky backdoor but I was able to shut it down. I’m busy runnin’ diagnostics right now to be a hundred percent sure they’re gone.”
Maniac nodded as he clasped a hand on Grave’s shoulder and moved on to the next step of their plan to free their girl.
“Connect us to the Iron Dogz but be sure you’re protectin’ the connection. We can’t have those fuckers knowin’ that we’re workin’ on gettin’ her back.”
“Prez, before I do that. I just received the list of names and you’re not gonna like it.” Byte snarled angrily.
Maniac knew without havin’ to look at the fuckin’ list that he was gonna find brothers on it. Their betrayal was gonna cause trust issues once they cleaned the rot from the club. There were questions he needed answers to, and before they cut the rot away he would get them.
“Who?”
“Gear, Shutter, Red and Mug plus a few of the assholes who hang around with them.”
It was as he had suspected. The stupid fuck and his group of discontented misfits. Why the fuck had Shutter, Red and Mug fallen in with these plans? They used to be good brothers. What changed? He would have his answers once he was done with them.
“Why the fuck do they think these pussies will be able to control the club? What don’t we know?”
Viper was the one to give him a possible answer.
“They’ve been very cozy with some of the newer patches and with a few of the older guys who’ve been pissy about the changes we’ve made to the club. Especially the rules about the treatment of pussy and getting out of the whoring business.”
“Fuck ‘em. Once we get this done
they’re all goin’ to ground. Every fuckin’ last one of ‘em. Don’ care if we it leaves us short a couple of brothers. Viper, call those we can trust to have our backs. Have them come in but before they do clear the compound of those we don’t trust. Grave, I know this is fuckin’ hard on you but I need your head in the game, brother. Ren, get all the women and children to the safe location and lock it down, but do it quietly. I don’t want those traitors catchin’ on to what we’re doin’. And Ren, only Lucy, the ol’ ladies, girlfriends and children. No club sluts, we can’t trust ‘em.”
Narrowing his eyes he tipped his head to the side as he calculated everything that had to be done before the bastard called back.
“We have one day to get organised before that fucker calls. Get busy. Byte, get me Hawk on the screen.”
As everyone around him left to see to his orders he sat down with Grave next to him and waited.
Wolf
The image of his girl lying naked on a table bleeding was burned into his retinas. It was something he was never going to forget, not as long as he breathed air into his lungs. But, fuck, she was strong. She lay there, hurting, and played the fucker who held her captive.
He couldn’t concentrate as he and Ziggy tried to puzzle through the message. His head jerked up when the screen lit up again. Maniac was calling back.
Along with Dive and his crew he paid close attention. He didn’t want to miss a single fucking word.
“What do you have for us, Maniac?” Hawk asked.
“We’ve decoded her message. She’s bein’ held in an abandoned house somewhere. There are six or seven men that she can see from her position. She’s bein’ held by sex traffickers and she’s gonna be sold once they’re done with us. And fuck me, this part fuckin’ hurts like fuckin’ hell. Our girl thinks there’s a good chance they’re goin’ to rape her on camera to get us to comply to their demands.”
Wolf wasn’t the only one who shouted in fury. Every single man in the office had the same reaction. They fell silent the minute Maniac held up his hands and shouted them down.
Vengeance Of A Black Knight (Iron Dogz MC, #4) Page 26