by Cora Black
“I didn’t need all those things, Eric. What I needed was a husband, and my daughter needed her father. You never got up with her in the middle of the night. You never changed a single diaper or fed her even once. On your days off, what did you do? You played golf with your buddies.”
“It’s called making business deals outside the office, Kara. You wouldn’t understand that.” He put his hands on his narrow hips, the very picture of a high-powered businessman in his tailored suit and fashionable trench coat. Who the hell wore a trench in Arizona? One of his many affectations.
“Oh, so the women who sent you graphic texts and photos after those golf outings, they were just part of your business deals too, huh? Is that how that worked? Because that’s how it played out.”
He shook his head. “Just jealous because they managed to maintain themselves. They didn’t let themselves go the way you did.”
“We were married, damn it.”
“That didn’t give you the right to let yourself turn into a slob. You gained, what, ten pounds?”
“Who could blame me, after the way you treated me? God, Eric, I needed something to keep me sane. If it was food, it was food. People do it all the time. I didn’t have you—even when I did, you made it a point to make me miserable and throw it in my face that I wasn’t good enough for you. Why the hell wouldn’t I try to soothe myself? Why am I even explaining myself to you? You don’t deserve it.”
“As your husband, I’m the only person who does deserve it.”
“Ex-husband, Eric. We’re not married anymore.”
He leaned over me, his voice full of threat. “You don’t get to make that decision, honey. We were married in the eyes of God. You can’t just make that go away with a single slip of paper. You can’t run away from your commitments that easily. I’ll have you back—and if I don’t, I’ll have our daughter.”
“You’ll never have her or me. Ever. So help me, Eric. Try all you want.” My heart pounded so hard, I thought I might die right there on the spot. I had never been so strong, so totally ballsy, in all my life. He’d awoken the Mama Bear in me, plain and simple. When my instincts roared to life like that, there was nothing I couldn’t do. No one I couldn’t push out of my way.
“I don’t even have to try, you pathetic slut. I’ll take Emma and leave you with nothing. And you’ll finally be the nothing you always were. Don’t you get it? The only time in your pathetic life when you were ever somebody was when we were together. You were nothing before me, and you’re nothing now. Maybe things would have been better between us if I didn’t realize after we were married that you put on an act all that time when we were dating. Pretending to be somebody so I’d like you. You’re trash, plain and simple. I finally figured that out, and you couldn’t handle it.”
His words crept into my brain, ate at my soul. The very sorts of things he used to say to me when we were together—that I was nothing, nobody, that I would never be anything. That he was the only reason I had a roof over my head or clothes on my back. He was the only reason people spoke to me or spent time with me or even looked at me, pathetic as I was. It was all him. He was the reason I got by in life, and I needed to remember that. All the times he’d beaten me down with his fists and his words. It all came back.
And my blood, which had nearly frozen earlier, boiled over. I shoved him, pushing him away from me, sliding out from the corner into which he’d trapped me. “You’re the one who’s trash. I suggest you get the hell out of here before I have Charlie call the police. They can escort you out if you can’t find the door.”
“Him?” Eric jerked a thumb in Charlie’s direction. “He’s so scared, he’s liable to piss his pants in another minute or two. Look at him, standing there. You think he’ll help you? Nobody can help you.” My palms grew clammy as Eric’s eyes narrowed. His fists clenched. I’d seen that look on his face many times before. It was the look he got right before he was about to take a swing at me.
“Stop this, Eric.” I injected strength into my voice. “Stop doing this and just go. Okay? You got what you came for. You wanted to screw with my head? You did that. You wanted to remind me that you can take Emma any time you want? You did that, too. There’s no reason to come in here and mess up everybody else’s life, too. You’ve done more than enough. Please, go, now. Leave us in peace. I have work I need to get back to.”
I thought my little speech would be enough. I thought it would make him leave once he knew that I knew the reason he was there—just to scare me. I honestly thought he would turn and go. How naïve I was, even after all the years in which he’d made my life pure torture.
Instead of leaving, he lunged at me. I tried to slip by him, but I was too slow. My reflexes must have dulled in the time we were apart. No way I would have let him catch me so easily at the height of our marriage. I cried out when his hands, like steel grips, closed around my upper arms. He shook me like a rag doll until my head flopped from side to side.
Then, it all stopped. He let go. I slumped against the wall, dazed, shaking my head a little to clear it. When I did, I saw who had pulled Eric away from me. I couldn’t believe it when I recognized my knight from the biker gang.
Chapter Four
Dom
There were certain things in life that were a total no-no for men like me. The sorts of unacceptable things I couldn’t allow to go on in my presence. One was child abuse. Kiddie abusers knew better than to do business with MCs, or anybody who dealt with us, because when we got wind of what went on, we did what had to be done to balance the scales. Maybe that was because so many of us came from broken, fucked up homes.
Another thing was the abuse of animals. There was just no need for it. When we came across a dog fighting ring a few years into my membership with the club, it had damn near broken my heart. They used to make the dogs fight until one of them died, then threw the bodies into a dumpster behind the building. I had never seen grown men cry until that day, and I’d come damned close to crying myself. The sight of all those dead, mangled dogs. The live ones weren’t much better. It had been a joy to free to dogs, burn the entire building to the ground and tip the cops off to the presence of the ring.
Men who hit women were real high on my list of pieces of shit who needed wiping off the face of the Earth as well. Real men didn’t do shit like that—it only proved how small and scared they really were. They needed to hurt something smaller and weaker than them to feel good about themselves. Why couldn’t they see it? How did they get through life without killing themselves? If I woke up one day and saw myself for the low-life piece of shit woman abuser the man in the kitchen of the diner was, I’d put a bullet in my brain.
I saw red when I saw him shaking her like that. Darlene’s warning had been enough for me to pay attention to what happened in the kitchen, but the way she cried out back there was enough to get me barreling through the swinging doors and heading straight for the two of them. There he was, in his trench coat, thinking he was tough shit. Shaking a woman until her head bounced around.
I pulled his hands from her arms. It was nothing, really. He was so weak it was almost funny. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” I growled in his ear. I had an arm around his neck, and my free hand just itched to reach for my piece. It was locked and loaded. A single bullet to his brain would mean one less piece of shit scumbag in the world.
“Get off me.” He jerked in my arms, but it was no use. He was fighting steel. He gave up pretty fast.
“Not until you tell me why you had to hurt her like that.”
“I wasn’t hurting her. It’s none of your goddamned business, you piece of trash. Get your hands off me, unless you want a lot of trouble for you and your gang.”
I wondered who he was, and how he knew who I was. He must have seen the guys and me when he walked in, and saw enough of me out of the corner of his eye to put it all together. He threatened the club, too. I had to think as the president would think. What was best for my men? Killing the asshole right ther
e, threatening him a little more, or letting him go?
As much as it fucking broke my balls to do it, I let him go. Slowly, though, to let him know I wasn’t playing around. He hadn’t scared me personally—not a damn thing he could do to me that hadn’t been done before. I just didn’t want to get the club in hot water. The way he dressed told me he was a bigshot in town.
“What did he do to you?” I asked Kara. She was against the wall, rubbing her arms where his hands had dug into her. From the look on her face, he’d really hurt her.
“None of your business,” he spat.
I turned to him. “Last time I checked, I was talking to her. Not you. Why don’t you try minding your business instead?” I looked at her again.
“Don’t worry about it,” she said. “I’m okay.”
“You should go back to your buddies before things get really bad for you, pal.”
I looked him up and down. The perfectly combed blond hair—he must have put product in it to get it to sit just right. The gray eyes, the narrow face. He looked like a rat. He was also around half my size. I smirked at him.
“I’m not your pal. Why don’t you drop the shit and get the hell outta here, huh? She doesn’t wanna talk to you, and neither do I.” He moved a little closer to her, and I saw the way she shrank back. She was terrified of him, and not just because of what I saw him do. It went back a long way, the abuse he gave her. I had seen too many women with that same look in their eye.
“Go to hell, man. Get outta here. You don’t belong here.” I took a single step toward him, closing my fists. I was willing to use every bit of my kickboxing training on him if I had to. I would love it, actually. I wouldn’t have minded caving the fucker’s face in if given the chance.
He looked me up and down the way I’d looked at him, his eyes going over me. He must have seen me for who I was: a tough son of a bitch who was twice his size. He sneered but held his hands up.
“Fine, I’ll go.” Before he did, though, he turned to Kara. “This isn’t over, sweetheart. You’ll get what’s coming to you.”
“Do I have to put your fucking face in the fryer for you to get the message? Out!” I barely had to raise my voice for him to flinch, and he almost ran away. I waited until he walked out, watching through the order window to see him leave.
I turned back to her. “Are you all right?” When I thought about the way he shook her, I wondered how many other times he had done things just as bad—if not worse. No wonder she was such a hard ass when the guys flirted with her. She had seen enough bad guys in her life.
I couldn’t believe it when she looked pissed at me after what I did. “Why did you do that?” she asked. “You should mind your own business, Dominic” The way she read the name off the patch over my chest made it sound like a curse.
“What?” I took a step back. “Are you fucking serious? I only came in here because I heard you yelp. He shook you so hard I thought your head might come off.” I reached out, pulling up the short sleeve of her uniform. She winced, flinching back, but not before I saw the dark rings already forming around her arm. I wanted to kill him when I saw how he had bruised her.
“You’re gonna tell me I shouldn’t have stopped him? What should I have done? Walk out? Pretend I didn’t see it? And it’s Dom, by the way.”
“I don’t need your help, okay Dom? You don’t know what you did.” She pushed her way past me, going around a corner. I followed her without thinking about it. She went to a bathroom, but left the door open. I heard the water running as she splashed her face.
“You did need my help, and I don’t care what I did. I would do it again,” I insisted. Why did she have to be so stubborn?
She looked at me in the mirror, and I noticed how blue her eyes were. “Oh, you would? What if I told you that you just made my life even harder than it has to be? Now he’s going to come back after me, and when he does, he’ll be pissed off this time. Even more than he already was, actually. He’s going to want revenge. Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised if he took revenge on your club, too.”
“Who the hell is this guy? What makes him so goddamned special?”
“I know you probably haven’t heard of them, but he’s the Eric Cantrell in Cantrell, Dunkirk, and Brown. The biggest investment banking firm on the west coast. And he’s my ex-husband.”
“I knew he was your ex,” I muttered.
“How did you know that?”
“The other waitress told me. Darlene. I was looking for you, and she was worried.”
“Oh, great. I’m sure she told you the whole story, too.” Kara turned around, leaning on the sink, glaring at me.
“She didn’t tell me anything but that. She didn’t have to. I’m not fucking stupid, you know. I saw the way he treated you. If that’s why you left, you did the right thing.”
“I’m glad I have your vote of approval,” she said, smirking. “But he’s made my life even more of a living hell since I left. And he wants our daughter, and I won’t let him have her. I swear I won’t. I’ll die before I let him take her from me. You saw what he did, right? Imagine him doing it to her.”
I didn’t want to. I didn’t know her kid, but I could imagine a little girl shaking back and forth like that, with her head flopping around the way Kara’s had.
Like she heard my thoughts, her hand went to her neck. “Yikes,” she muttered, massaging it.
“You should go to the hospital. File a report on him. You’ve got the bruises, you’ve got an eyewitness account. I can tell them what I saw. I mean, come on. If he’s trying to take your kid, you need to have a case against him. Right?”
She smiled, and I noticed for the first time how tired she looked. “Yes, I have to have a case against him. Do you know how well-known he is in this town? How beloved? How much money his firm donates every year to various civic causes? The police and fire departments. The hospitals. The campaigns for local politicians. The schools, even. See a pattern? All the people who could potentially raise red flags against him. He convinces his partners they need to donate money, to raise their social standing and give back to the community. All these causes of his know the money will disappear if they say anything against him. That’s how he keeps them in his pocket.”
She shook her head, sighing. “Don’t you think I’ve tried? Three times I went to the hospital after he hurt me. One time I had a broken arm. Another time, a black eye and bruised ribs. Another time he broke my collar bone. All those times in just a couple of years. He took time off when I was pregnant. I can at least give him credit for that.” She laughed bitterly. “Do you think once, even one time, anybody asked me if my husband did it to me? That’s the first question they ask, isn’t it? If somebody in your household did something to you.”
“I really don’t know,” I replied.
“I went with a friend of mine to the ER once. She had tripped and fallen while we were out one day. Her wrist broke. I drove her to the hospital. And the first thing two nurses and a doctor asked her was that very question. Did somebody in her household do it to her, and was there anybody there she was afraid of.” Kara stared at me. “Nobody asked me in three visits. Not a single person. What does that tell you?”
“It tells me this town is even more fucked up than I thought it was,” I muttered.
She nodded. “You don’t even know,” she whispered. “So that’s what I’m facing. And if he can use that kind of power against me, imagine what he can do to people like you.”
The words hung in the air. Her cheeks went red when she realized what she had said. “People like me?”
“Motorcycle clubs. I know who you are. The Blood Bandits.”
“Congratulations. You can read.” Everybody knew who we were when we went out in our kuttes, and we never rode without them.
“I’ve heard of you is all. I know what you’re capable of. And he will know it, too. I promise. He’ll make it his business to find out everything he can and bring you down. I wish to God you had left it alone. It�
�s enough that he’s making my life a misery. I don’t want to see him doing it to anybody else.”
“Even trash like me. Isn’t that right?” I laughed.
“I never said that.”
“You didn’t have to. I’m used to it.”
She stood up straight, coming toward me. She couldn’t have been much more than five feet tall, but when she wanted to, she could make those inches count. She put her hands on her hips, staring me down. “I’m sorry if I give a damn about what my shithead of an ex-husband will do to you, okay? Maybe it’s all the years of feeling like a loser for staying with him as long as I did. I don’t know. Either way, I have guilt issues. If you have half a brain in your head, you’ll stay far, far away from him and lay low for a while. Don’t even stick your nose outside if you don’t have to.”