by Addison Jane
My heart stopped.
Isiah stared down at me as though he was looking back at the past. His eyes were glazed, giving him this soft, almost loving gaze. And even though he was staring directly at me, I knew it wasn’t me he was seeing.
One blink, and the look was gone.
Disappearing in a flash.
Replaced by a malicious and taunting smile. “Bet Huntsman didn’t share that part with you, did he?” Isiah spat, leaning in closer. “Didn’t share with you how he was one of my closest friends. How I considered him a brother, his family… my family. And then how he stole the woman I loved out from underneath me.”
I wanted to vomit again.
He couldn’t fucking mean what I thought he meant.
That he and my mother had been a couple?
That Mom had actual feelings for this psychotic piece of garbage?
I shook my head. I didn’t want to believe that it was true. That she could have been fooled by any part of his sick and twisted persona.
I’d heard the stories Romeo had told me what this man was capable of.
He nodded, a devious smirk pulling at the corner of his mouth. He found absolute delight in this, and that wasn’t all. He had more up his sleeve. His eyes were excited, gleaming with mischief.
Isiah took a couple of steps back, and I took notice of the rest of the room. It was like some kind of library. Bookshelves lined the room instead of walls, bursting at the seams with books. Different colors, sizes, and textures. Some looking like they were hundreds of years old, while others had glossy covers that sparkled in the light of the room.
A couple of guards stood in the doorway. While I could feel one more just behind me, the one who’d picked me up off the ground and dumped me here.
“You know, that’s not the best part of the story,” Isiah continued, his brows knitting together as he reached up to scratch his chin. “Hmmm… best part? Or maybe I should say, that’s not the worst part… it really depends on whose point of view you’re coming from.”
“You’re insane,” I rasped, followed by another deep and intense cough that felt like at anymore moment, I might hack up a lung, or by the pain coming from my torso maybe a broken rib.
He grinned maniacally as he took a seat across from me on another leather seat. “Just wait, I haven’t gone all cartoon villain yet. I still have plenty more to tell you. And I’m still perfecting my evil laugh, so feel free to offer your critique on that when I’m done.”
Holy shit. This guy was insane.
I needed to get the hell out of here and fast.
Where was Romeo? Or Ham?
Or better yet, where on earth was I?
And did anyone know where I was? Or even if I was missing?
Tears burned my eyes, but I refused to let Isiah know I might be scared. I wouldn’t go down without a fight, so if he was thinking he was going to break me…
“She came back when you were little, you know.”
I could feel my breathing beginning to lighten. Short, sharp breaths as opposed to the long deep ones I was using to try and keep the tears at bay.
You’re stronger than this Meyah. He’s trying to get inside your head. He’s trying to hurt you. Don’t let him.
“I don’t want to hear your stupid little story,” I argued, wiggling my body so I could sit up a little straighter, trying to prove I wasn’t weak like he thought. “Why don’t you write it on a little note, roll it up real nice and tight, then ram it all the way up your ass.”
His eyebrows went up, his eyes widening as he placed his hands on the arms of his chairs and pushed to his feet.
I pressed my lips together tightly and narrowed my eyes staring him down in defiance. At this stage, I didn’t care if he hit me, or hurt me, but what I didn’t want was to listen to what he had to say about my mom. That would break my heart. That would kill me more times over.
Unfortunately, I was pretty sure he knew that.
“You have a dirty fucking mouth, anyone ever tell you that,” he sneered, reaching out and grabbing hold of my jaw, his fingers digging into my face. The pain made my eyes water. “You’re gonna listen to my stupid little story because like every good tale, there’s a moral. One you could learn from, I don’t doubt.”
He released me, but before I could find any relief, his palm connected with my cheek, throwing my face to the left and sending a sharp sting across my skin. My brain struggled through the buzzing in my ear, and I shook my head, squeezing my eyes shut tightly as I fought to make it go away.
“Now be a good little bitch and listen,” he snapped, once I’d finally managed to force my eyes open and to focus again. He tugged on his suit jacket, straightening the cuffs and lapels before patting and primping his hair.
It was as though I’d thrown him a little. This asshole who was used to stealing women, drugging them, selling them off. You’d think he would be accustom to dealing with this kind of thing. Unless… the girls never really fought back.
They probably begged. Pleaded. And I bet that got him hard. Having them want to do whatever the hell he desired in order for him to just let them go. They would almost agree to anything.
It was fucking sick.
A new guard stepped into the room, handing Isiah a short glass with amber liquid and a handful of ice cubes. He swirled it around, the cubes clinking against the outside before he took a small sip. He hummed in approval before setting the glass down on the small glass table just in front of me. “You were five when Carly came back to town.” A smile touched his lips. One I wanted to say was genuine, but I couldn’t imagine using that word with a man like Isiah. “She told me all about you. How you were so smart, so outgoing, and ready to take on the world.”
His words hit me like a blow to the face.
Outgoing?
Ready to take on the world?
Coming from the mother who kept me caged up and wouldn’t even let me stir a pot on the stove even when I was thirteen.
He had it wrong.
“I thought she’d come looking for me. I thought she’d come to apologize and grovel. And you know what was worse? I loved her so much I would have forgiven her. Huntsman was always trying to take what was mine. Tell me I couldn’t do shit because he knew I was getting ahead, and the fucking MC was being left in the dust. I knew he’d stolen her from me purposely. I would have taken her back. I would have fucking loved her. I would have raised you as my own.”
“I would rather die,” I snarled.
“That comes later,” he threw back with a dark glare that burned right through me. “For now, you shut your mouth and listen. I’m getting to the good part, I promise.”
I needed to get the hell out of here, but there were guards on the door. My hands were bound so tight they were starting to go numb, and my body was running on adrenaline—which would only last so long. The aches and pains were becoming stronger and stronger.
“So then… your mom tells me she’s actually looking for Huntsman,” he continued, laughing loudly as if it was all one big misunderstanding.
I was starting to piece everything together now, and second by second my heart was cracking. That mom I’d seen in the picture with Huntsman, with the beaming smile on her face, the carefree way she lived, she was beautiful and free. Then my grandparents were killed, and she had to raise Kim, as well as a newborn baby, but she was still strong, she was still herself, she still had that soul I saw in the picture.
“What the hell did you do to her?” I whispered, my voice catching. I couldn’t stop the tears that trickled down my cheeks, not even caring about how his eyes lit up, and a dark and satisfied smile pulled at the corner of his mouth.
He took that as his cue.
Coming over to me, picking up his glass and crouched down in front of me. His drink hung from his hands, the ice cubes once again clattering loudly as he gently swirled the liquid.
“I punished her.”
My breathing was shaky and uneven. Isiah was perfectly calm. He
dipped his head, looked me directly in the eye and grinned. I imagined that this moment is what it would be like if I met the devil himself.
“I told her if she wanted to be a whore… then that’s what she would be,” he declared and took a sip from his glass. He swallowed and let out a satisfied sigh. “So I gave her to my men. And I let them destroy her.”
I couldn’t stop the distraught sob which forced its way up my throat and fell from my lips.
It was like a compliment to him. I saw the way his eyes lit up at the sign of my pain.
He broke her.
Isiah had turned my mom from that woman I saw in the picture with Huntsman, the one who was happy to announce how outgoing I was as a child, and who found happiness and freedom in life into someone who was scared at every second and every moment of the day that she was going to be hurt, and that she was going to have the people she cared about stripped away from her.
He left her barely hanging on.
He broke her.
“You’re a psychotic, jealous, and pathetic piece of shit,” I hissed, barely able to speak as my throat burned and tears fell continuously.
He didn’t flinch at my words.
I imagine he’d probably been called worse.
“And your mom is a fucking whor—”
I couldn’t let him finish it. Rage consumed me, and I threw my body back in the chair, lifting my legs and slamming both my feet into his stomach before he even had time to relax. The loud ‘oomph’ of air leaving his lungs and groans of pain were so fucking satisfying that I wanted to do it again. Over and over until he felt what he’d done to me, to Huntsman, to my fucking mom.
He ruined her, he destroyed her.
And I wanted to kill him.
Isiah climbed to his feet, hunched over, holding his stomach, his eyes burning through mine like fucking lasers. “Get her dressed into something pretty,” he murmured, the rasp in his voice letting me know he was in some serious pain. “I want to take photos and get them up in the next few hours. I already have a couple of buyers interested, the quicker, the better.”
Buyers.
Two men grabbed me, and I fought and struggled before Isiah stopped and grabbed my jaw in his hand, his fingers squeezing it painfully until I finally cried out. “Stop.”
“You’re lucky my buyers like their product feisty and mostly untouched,” he warned. “Or you’d be barely fucking breathing right now. Maybe even dead. Like father like daughter.”
I couldn’t hold back the sob.
I didn’t care if it made me look weak.
“Take her.”
Ham, where are you?
The time seemed to tick by so fucking slowly. I kept telling myself it wouldn’t matter what Isiah did with her, that I would find her and that everything would be okay. But in reality, I just wanted to walk into his fucking nightclub and blow the goddamn place apart.
But instead, I had to hold my tongue and try and keep my calm.
We were in Vegas by 8:00 a.m. the next morning after sending a few boys down the strip to ask around, hoping someone would have seen Isiah since last night. Luckily, he’s a creature of habit and likes to make sure he’s in the building every morning to go over the figures from last night. Plus, that was his safe place, the place where he thought was impenetrable. Where he could do his deals and his fucking bullshit without being caught. He thought he had a hometown advantage, but we were about to destroy him on his own turf.
We just needed time.
The sound of Harley’s had both Romeo and me leaping out of our chairs and walking swiftly toward the double doors to outside. While we’d agreed that bringing my brothers in was a good idea, Huntsman wasn’t keen to create any more tension than needed by bringing them to the clubhouse. So we were meeting on more mutual turf—the place I met Huntsman for the first time with Romeo, the construction site and company headquarters just a few blocks away.
The Exiled Eight had come in force.
The doctors had recommended that Huntsman stayed in the hospital, but after twelve hours in recovery, serious lifesaving surgery and against doctor’s orders, he signed himself out and had just made it back.
Luckily, Diddit’s Old Lady was a nurse in Las Vegas so she was there with him, checking his vitals and making sure he took his meds since I’d already threatened once to have him tied to the bed so he couldn’t kill himself trying to save Meyah.
Standing outside, five motorcycles came rumbling down the makeshift road, creeping cautiously and dodging those fucking potholes. By the time they reached the building and pulled their rides to a halt, most of the Exiles had already made their way outside.
This was a strange situation, two clubs meeting and having to join forces without knowing anything about the other. It was hard to trust a man to have your back when you’d only known him a couple of hours, and he had no fucking loyalty to you whatsoever.
Fortunately, we all had one thing in common, which meant whether we were strangers or not, Meyah was family to us both, and we weren’t done until she was home safe.
The roar of the engines came to a stop, and the old ladies climbed out from behind their men, standing by their sides until they parked their borrowed rides and climbed off themselves.
There were a few moments of silence.
I didn’t know what to fucking say as I looked over at Leo, feeling like I’d fucking failed him—like I’d failed the entire club—by not protecting Meyah like I promised I would when I claimed her. I wanted to punch myself in the fucking face.
I could see the pain in his eyes, the way he scanned the men behind me.
I hadn’t been able to tell him much on the phone. This meeting itself was going to be a real test of how much my brothers trusted me because all I’d said was that Meyah had found her dad. He was a part of a club. And that Meyah had been taken.
“That’s enough,” Hadley finally snapped, pushing past Leo and jogging over to Romeo and me. She threw her arms around me, and I hugged her tight. “We’ll get her back,” she whispered in my ear before pulling back and pushing my hair back from my face, just like a mother would.
Chelsea, Rose, Skylar, and Sugar followed suit, hugging me close and reassuring me that everything would be okay before moving on to Romeo and doing the same—much to his annoyance and the amusement of the club behind me who knew him as this big bad wolf.
I took a deep breath and walked forward to meet my brothers. Standing in front of the men who had taken me in, shown me what it was like to have a family that had your back through anything and fucking everything.
My president, my vice president, my old lady’s uncle.
“You’re running this show,” Op told me when I just stood there in silence. Not sure what to say.
Sorry?
I fucked up.
Just wait for one of them to punch me in the face?
“We need to know the plan, kid,” Blizzard added. “And you’re gonna need to introduce us or something ‘cause I’m not feeling awfully fucking great about this situation right now.”
I looked over my shoulder, there were at least twenty-five men all watching us carefully. Cautiously.
“We’ve only got a few hours left, we need to get this shit right,” Romeo added, looking at me, pressing me to sort my shit out.
To get Meyah back.
That’s why we were all here. That’s why this awkward and possibly dangerous situation was happening right now, and that’s why we needed to all put our shit to the side and focus.
And that was up to me.
I looked at Leo, directly in the eye. He’d yet to speak, but I knew it was probably because if he did, there would be hell. “I’m gonna get her back even if it kills me.”
“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” he finally murmured. “Because if she doesn’t come back, I’m gonna want that job.”
Optimus smirked and shook his head. “Let’s hear the plan.”
“Huntsman, these are my brothers from Athens.”
Huntsman used a wheelchair inside the building, each of the men took a seat on the sofas that surrounded him while Ripley stood at his father’s side.
I made brief introductions and tried to make things as smooth as possible, but I was nervous as all fucking hell. The women stood behind their men, the hard looks on each of their faces enough to rival any biker in that place.
If the Exiles hadn’t realized yet, Meyah was cherished. Every single person in the club felt protective of her.
I took a deep breath and moved on to the point I was hoping would go smoothly. “Guys, this is Huntsman, Meyah’s dad. And Ripley, one of Meyah’s brothers.”
Huntsman nodded in greeting. “I apologize for not being able to get up and shake your hands, the fucking nurse threatened to strap me down if I tried to get out of this fucking thing. I appreciate you coming.”
“We heard what happened,” Optimus commented. “Sounds like you were pretty lucky.”
“Isiah is a fucking coward,” Huntsman growled. “All talk, all money, but afraid to get his hands dirty.”
“Who is this asshole, and what’s his problem? What does he want with Meyah?” Leo asked seriously, his hands curling into fists. Hadley placed her hand on his shoulder, rubbing gently.
Huntsman sat up straight, rolling his shoulders. “Isiah and I used to be close. He did business with the club, owned a small strip joint back then.”
I listened intently to the story, wanting to really understand what this asshole was about.
“Carly worked there for a while. I’d met her a couple times. Isiah had a thing for her, but she didn’t want to get involved, especially not with her boss.”
“Because he was a fucking psycho,” Blizzard muttered under his breath.
“I went round there one night, he was high on some shit, hassling her about going on a date with him. Things were already going south with the relationship between him and the club. We were heading into more legit, with a few deals on the side, and he was heading in the opposite direction, one that we wanted nothing to fucking do with.”