Penny looked up at me as if seeking a second opinion. Feeling wholly unqualified, I gave it anyway. "Take them. No need for you to have to bite a bullet through this. Miracles of modern medicine," I added with a small smile I didn't feel.
She turned back to the guy and opened her mouth and he put the pills in and reached for the discarded beer on my nightstand to hold to her lips. She curled her face up, but took a swig to push the pills down.
"Fifteen minutes," he told her, putting the beer down and moving back beside his partner on the bed.
"I don't under..." she said, looking up at me, shaking her head.
"Don't. Don't think about that right now," I urged, releasing her shoulders so I could push her head back onto my chest. "Close your eyes and take deep breaths until those pills kick in." I let my fingers drift into her hair for a second until I felt her take a few deep breaths, then closed my arm around her shoulders again, tighter.
The woman looked up at me from behind Penny and gave me a wince and I figured if she was giving me that look, being an Army trained nurse, that shit was about to get worse.
"Oh my..." Penny shrieked, her entire body trying to buck against me. But I tightened my hold, closing my eyes as she started sobbing into my chest. My arm slipped lower on her back, my palm crushing into one of her hips, keeping her from using her legs to wiggle.
"Shhh," I said, resting the side of my face on top of her head. "Shh. Almost over," I promised but I knew fuck-all about if that was true or not, but needing to give her whatever comfort I could, even if it was false.
"Stop," she begged. "Please please stop," she cried, her hands going around my back and digging in hard enough to cut into my skin if I didn't have a shirt on.
Helpless, I kept whispering to her, not even fucking sure what I was saying, as my hand stroked over her upper arm, trying to give her something that wasn't the sensation of something stabbing into her back.
"Okay. Okay. That's done," the woman said and I saw her toss the bloodied threaded scissors down on the towel, smudging the white material with red. "Breathe, honey," she said and she was right, Penny was holding her breath. At the instruction, she let out a choked breath that came out on a sob. "We are just going to put a little salve on it and then wrap it, okay?" she asked, genuinely waiting for permission.
Penny nodded her head against my chest and they went to work quickly.
"Duke, let her up a little," the guy instructed me and I moved both my hands to her shoulders, pushing her back a bit and keeping my eyes up as her blue eyes widened, suddenly fully aware of the fact that she was naked save for the green and white leopard-print panties.
"They're professionals," I told her. "And my eyes are on your face," I added and she gave me a little nod.
"I know you," she said as she looked over my face, her light brows drawing together for a moment like she was trying to place me.
"I gave you directions yesterday," I supplied.
"Wait... what? Did you..." she started, eyes going huge, trying to push away from me.
"No. No. I didn't hurt you, baby. I might look big and mean, but I don't put my hands on women. I just... found you is all," I supplied, not sure how Reign wanted to play the situation and not wanting to fuck up the plan.
She relaxed slightly, her shoulders moving down as the man and woman slowly started wrapping gauze around her. "Big," she said with a nod.
"Sorry?"
"Big," she said again. "Not mean," she added with a small yawn, her eyelids getting heavy.
The Vikes were kicking in. Thank fuck.
"Okay," the woman said, reaching into her bag for a package of wrapped elastic bandages. "We are going to try to wrap the ribs best we can while avoiding the wound site on her back," she said, smoothly moving over the fact that she was fucking carved with a biker symbol.
So then they went ahead and did the best they could with that, which wasn't much, but anything would help in making sure she didn't jar them too much. Having had bruised or busted ribs half a dozen times in my life, I knew that shit didn't feel great.
"Alright, here," the girl said, drawing my attention and I realized that I had been lost in my own thoughts enough to not realize the guy had left the room. Likely to go fill in Lo. The girl was standing on the side of the bed beside us, holding out one of my t-shirts, rolled into her hands. "Let's get this on you," she said, dropping it down over her head. I released her shoulders so she could slip her arms in and kept my eyes over her shoulder at the door until the material fell down her body. "Okay. There we go. Is that medicine kicking in yet?"
"Mmhm. I think so," Penny said, words just a bit slower than they should have been. "I'm tired," she added, leaning forward toward me and resting her head back against my chest.
I looked over at the woman who shrugged at me and went to collect the used supplies, tossing them in the garbage she pulled out of my bathroom. "Let her pass out on you for a while. When she's good and out, put her down on her left side and prop some pillows in front and behind her so she doesn't roll. Then you can go down to church," she added, grabbing her bag, taking the garbage bag, and moving toward the door. "Oh, here," she said, stopping and reaching in the bag to pull out an orange prescription bottle and shaking it before tossing it at the bed. "Every four to six hours until she doesn't need it anymore. There's plenty of pills in there."
"Hey," I called as she opened the door and went to move into the hall.
She turned back. "Yeah?"
"Thanks..." I said, raising a brow because I didn't have a name.
"Ashley," she supplied, giving me a nod. "We'll be back to check on her in a day or two," she said then closed the door and left us alone.
Against my chest, Penny hummed something as her breathing got slow and even.
"How's your back?" I asked, letting one hand settle on her hip; the other stroked down her arm which seemed like the only safe place for it.
"Nothing hurts," she said, sounding sleep-foggy. "It's nice," she added.
"Get some sleep," I urged, already feeling her relax against me.
"I don't want to be alone," she said dreamily.
"I'm right here," I said, knowing I would have to leave her, at least briefly, but also knowing that I could send one of the women in to sit with her.
As if on cue, as I felt Penny's body melt into mine, the door slid open and Lo walked in, carrying two cups of coffee. "The men are filing out with the kids and wives. Church will be in about an hour. Figured I would come in so you could go check on Reign."
"Did Alex and Janie find anything?" I asked, a little reluctantly sliding out from under Penny, propping her on her side and stuffing pillows around her as instructed.
She nodded, handing me one of the cups of coffee. "Take it. You're gonna have a long night," she encouraged and I did. "Well, they went with the thing about Bella's and asked about her. Luckily, Bella doesn't exactly employ the Secret Service as employees and they were quick to cough up the information. Her name is Penny Williams. Her parents, Bette and Brian Williams live in the City. Her grandmother, Patty Weber, was recently moved into Blue Horizons after a hip break which, we figure, is why she uprooted her life in Florida and moved here. She only got here two days ago and moved into Miller's Grove Apartments. As far as they can tell, she has no connections to any organization in Jersey or Florida. Everything points to her being a normal, upstanding citizen who got caught in a shit situation."
"Because of me and Shred."
"Because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time," Lo went on, brushing away my feelings of guilt. "It sucks. It shouldn't have happened to her. But it did and you will find the fucks and have fun making them pay for what they did to her. She will, after a while, move on, chalk it up to a random act of senseless violence, and continue on her life."
"You make it sound easy. But you forget, Lo, that she isn't like us. She's not used to the violence."
"There was a time, Duke, where I wasn't either. But shit happens. You deal. I
think you forget that unlike most men, women live with the threat of violence every day of their lives. We pee in packs. We have boyfriends who make us call to make sure we got home safely. We ask people to walk us to our cars because the lots are dark and you never know what kind of monster is hiding in the shadows. We hope it doesn't ever happen, but are acutely aware that it is always a possibility for us. I think you overestimate how much of a shock this is. Granted, this scar on her back will not be easy to explain, but I think you'll be surprised how resilient she will be."
"Maybe you're right," I allowed, but I didn't like it. I didn't like our filth touching someone it shouldn't have. It wasn't supposed to work that way.
"Duke, you'll find them and trust me," she said, drawing my attention away from Penny and back to her, "Reign will let you spill all the blood you feel you need to to make this right. Though, I think you and Wolf will be fighting for that privilege. Hell, Shred even seems torn up about it and nothing gets to him."
I raked a hand down my face and took a deep breath. "Yeah, well at least that's something to look forward to."
"Go talk to your brothers. I promise I won't leave her side until you get back," she said, kicking off her shoes and climbing in the bed beside her, reaching for her phone, already shooting off some rapid fire text.
I looked over at Penny again, not realizing how long I did so until Lo's voice cut into my thoughts again. "Go."
"Right," I said, moving toward the door and stepping into the hall.
THREE
Duke
I almost tripped over Alex and Janie who were sitting on either side of the hall, Alex with her long legs straight out, Janie with her shorter ones curled under her. Both had giant state-of-the-art laptops on their laps and fingers tapping frantically on keys or the click buttons. Alex had a giant coffee beside her and Janie had one turned over and empty energy drink and another one already cracked open.
"Whoa there, Hercules," Alex said, not bothering to look up. "You spill my coffee and there will be consequences of the Eunuch variety."
"Nice to see you too, Alex," I said, smiling at her typical ball-busting attitude. It was an attitude that matched, and was maybe at times surpassed, by the tiny as a bird, tattoo-covered, black-haired, blue-eyed badass bomb and hacking expert protege of Lo's... Janie. When she was working, she was known as Jstorm and she was Wolf's woman, the only chick wild enough to tame that beast.
"Did they knock her out with something?" Janie asked, still moving around on her laptop, not looking at me.
"Yeah, they gave her some Vicodin. She's out."
"Good. She will sleep for hours while we try to suss this shit out," Janie said, voice a little tense. I wondered a bit fleetingly if it was out of anger for the random girl getting mixed in club business or because she knew that this was a declaration of war on some big and bad's part and that she and her husband and most of the people she loved would be at risk because of it. She looked up at me then, dark brows slightly drawn together. "I tried to convince Wolf that this was your kill if it comes to that."
"What'd he say to that?" I asked, genuinely curious.
"'Woman'," she said with a shrug.
"Gotta love his monosyllabic ass," Alex pitched in.
"Go talk to him and tell him. He will understand if he knows that you feel responsible."
"Right," I said with a nod, moving to walk away, then turning back. "Thanks for your help on this," I offered them, knowing that no one else likely had.
That made both their heads snap up to me, brows furrowed. "Weird," Alex said to Janie, who nodded.
They said nothing else and I shook my head and moved down the hall toward the common room where I only found Vin.
"Everyone is outside," he said immediately. If you saw him in that moment, you would think nothing was amiss. Vin was an old-timer. He had lived through more turf war and violence than most of the other members. He was calm in the face of chaos. But I could see the tension in his hands down by his sides, curled into fists and the way a muscle in his jaw was twitching. "She doin' alright?"
I shrugged. "We'll see when she wakes back up," I said and he nodded to that, understanding. "Go find the pres. He wants to talk to you."
I nodded and headed outside into the yard, seeing a swarm of leather cuts everywhere, eyes aware, bodies tense. I found the small circle of Reign, Cash, and Wolf and moved over toward them, finding my arm clasped from behind and I turned to find Shredder.
"Was she..."
"No," I said, shaking my head. "Just bruises, the H on her back, and a busted rib or two."
Shredder ran a hand across his brow, exhaling hard. "Those fucks are gonna pay."
"I'll give you that but since I'm the one who had to hold her while she sobbed and screamed into my chest, I get to be the one to do the most damage," I said, words firm, leaving no room for disagreement.
Shredder nodded at that, biting into his cheek. "Yeah man. But I get to do some hitting too."
"Sure," I agreed, moving toward Reign who jerked his chin at me.
"How is she?" Cash asked immediately.
"Passed out thanks to two Vikes. Stitched up and her ribs are wrapped. Other than that, just bruises. They didn't rape her."
Reign nodded. "She's an innocent far as everyone can tell. Clear cut wrong place, wrong time kind of thing."
"Yeah," I agreed, draining the rest of my coffee.
"But now she's at risk," Cash added. "Guilty by association, in a way."
That was also true. She wasn't safe. Especially now that we took her in and healed her up like she did belong to us. It was as if I put a cut on her with "Duke's Bitch" scrawled across the back. Her life just took a sharp turn into Fucksville. Until the threat was neutralized, she was in trouble and, whether Reign agreed or not, under our, or at least my, protection.
"We need to have the girls look into the Russians and the Columbians," Reign said, rattling off the closest gun runners. "Then we need to pool possible personal vendettas. So we all gotta bring the skeletons out of our closets," he said, suddenly pinning me with those intense hazel eyes of his, knowing how much I didn't want to do that. Not many of the guys knew my whole past. Reign, Cash, Wolf, and Repo knew because they insisted. Renny knew because the mother fucker couldn't keep his nose out of everyone else's business. Aside from them, no one else had a fucking clue and that was just how I preferred it.
I couldn't just take out my skeletons, dust them off, and hang them out like they weren't dangerous. They were bones soaked in monkshood. All you had to do was brush against them and you'd have multiple organ failure. You'd be dead before you knew there was a threat.
"None of us like it," Wolf offered and I looked over at him, knowing his skeletons weren't of the pretty variety either when he went full-on Hulk and raged out and killed people in inventively violent ways.
"It's different here and you know it," I added and Cash nodded.
"We're not asking you to share all the ugly details, just tell us if any of those fucks have it in for you or us."
"Yeah, alright," I said with a nod, knowing it was a long list. It was a long, fucking ugly list. Every single person in my past had a reason to want to hurt me by whatever means necessary. And they were crazy enough to take on an MC to do that. That being said, my gut told me it wasn't my past coming into my present. This wasn't about me. But I also knew that I had to fork over the information. There was no choice. The safety of the whole club was at risk.
"Where did the kids go?" I asked, knowing Janie and Alex were still upstairs.
"Breaker offered to bring Summer and my kids along with Malcolm, Maze, and Seth up to his place. He's on that hill that lets him see from miles off. It's safer than them being here or at our houses without us there to keep an eye. Shoot and Paine and their families likely aren't at risk so they just went on their way."
"Right," I said with a nod, not quite able to grasp how sick it must have made the men with families to be in a war, to know that their loved on
es could be used against them. I guess, in a way, it was fucking lucky that I didn't have anyone I gave a shit about.
Save for the girl a few yards away from us in a pain pills induced sleep because she stopped to talk to me for two minutes.
"What the fuck is this shit?" a familiar voice asked as he walked up. I hadn't noticed that Renny had been absent most of the day until I turned to see him walking up.
He had been young when he prospected with me almost seven years before, barely over twenty at the time. He had lost some of his youthful thinness, building a bit of lean muscle and making him more threatening. He had his red hair a little shorter where he used to keep it longer. And while he had always been a tattoo fan, he was mostly covered now.
He had barely stopped his long-legged gate by us before he was grabbing a pack of cigarettes and taking them out to light one.
"Hand one over," Cash said, surprising all of us. He had stopped smoking the better part of a decade before, back when Reign had just met Summer.
"Bro, Lo is gonna flip shit," Reign said, managing an amused smile as Renny handed one over and lit it for Cash.
"She'll understand," he said with a shrug as the smoke billowed around us.
"Where's the girl?" Renny asked, looking to Reign for answers.
"In Duke's room," he supplied.
Renny's annoying as fuck penetrating light blue gaze landed on me, watching me for a minute, then nodding like he had my number.
I fucking hated that shit.
We might be brothers in the MC, but I was pretty sure we would never get over that shit he pulled years back while we were still probates, ending in a knock-down fight that fucking Maze had eventually broken up.
And I was okay with that fact.
"So we have anything to go on?" he asked, still young, still itching for a fight. Oh, to be twenty-six and invincible again.
"Not shit yet," Cash said, closing his eyes as he took a long drag.
"No one else has had anything like this happen? Anything that seemed like maybe normal street violence shit that they brushed off?" he asked, trying to profile the men, doing what he was raised to do with his sick as fuck parents.
Duke (The Henchmen MC Book 5) Page 3