Viper (Bones MC 4)

by Marteeka Karland

  “That’s all I could ask for.” El Diablo made a sweeping gesture toward the two adults, hands zip-tied behind their backs. “I present Rayburn and Donna Mills. In exchange for permission to give my daughter a permanent way to contact me at her leisure, I’ll wait here to… assume responsibility for the couple after you’ve judged them.”

  That was a new development. Cain raised his eyebrows. “You’ll dispose of the two if we kill them. You’ll give us your personal guarantee no one will ever find the bodies or be able to trace the disappearances back to Bones?”

  “Guaranteed. My word as El Diablo.”

  Cain looked to Viper. His woman’s tormenters, his call.

  “The offer is much appreciated,” Viper said, “but we clean up our own messes. To ask another club to take on that challenge is too much even for a sister club.”

  Cain gave a sharp nod, approving of his decision. “No offense intended. Anything done permanently to another isn’t taken lightly by Bones. If we feel the couple needs to die, we’ll be the one to take care of the deed in its entirety.”

  Donna whimpered while Rayburn blustered. “You can’t do this! The state police will be all over this place! We’ll be missed! I’m an important businessman!”

  “You’re an important businessman who embezzled from your company and lost it all gambling,” El Diablo said, waving a negligent hand. “True, your company will be looking for you, but they will lose your trail after your plane leaves for Vegas with a one-way ticket to Moscow.”

  Rayburn’s jaw slackened. “I didn’t book a flight to Moscow! I hadn’t won enough money yet!”

  “Oh, but you did book the flight. Your passport was used for you to board the plane. It left about eleven hours ago, I believe. And the hotel books show you did, indeed, win a substantial amount of money before making your purchase. Oh, and one more thing.” El Diablo got right up in Rayburn’s face. “The men you had planned on selling your daughters to were my men. On your tail. Tracking you down to return you to your judgment day.”

  “How did they know we were planning on going to Moscow?” Donna demanded. “You said no one knew! You said we could disappear and live a life of luxury!”

  “I don’t know how they knew!” Rayburn snapped. “But I hadn’t made any arrangements. Anyone following the trail will figure that out. Who skips the country to Moscow, of all places, without a plan?” The look of triumph on his face made Darcy want to claw his fucking eyes out.

  “I’m afraid you did,” El Diablo said. “At least, that’s what we’ve made it look like. Lucky for you, Moscow doesn’t have an extradition treaty with the U.S., so you can live out your life there. Well.” He grinned. “That’s what it will look like to anyone looking into your disappearance.” He smirked evilly. “On the other hand, if you stay in the U.S., you’ll be arrested for a myriad of charges, including child pornography and sex trafficking. The proof is ready to be sent discreetly to the FBI should anything go unexpectedly here today. By unexpectedly, I mean that you live to walk out of here. No matter what happens to you now, Rayburn, your life as you knew it is over.”

  For the first time, Darcy started to feel a sense of power. These men were systematically tearing Rayburn’s life apart. Just as he’d done to her.

  “We should go inside,” Cain said. “Basement, if you please, Bohannon.” The enforcer and Torpedo escorted the couple to the basement. In one section of the vast space, there was a meeting table for all the officers of Bones, as well as places for spectators in the club. In front of the table, the accused would be shackled to a chair bolted to the floor. They would be interrogated and judgment would be passed. After that, well, it would depend on the degree of guilt. Darcy honestly wasn’t certain what she hoped for. She didn’t want these men to have to kill the two people who had made her life a living hell. She was fine now. She had a man who loved and protected her and would be there for her. He hadn’t said as much, but she felt it in the way he touched her. The way he made love to her.

  Once everyone was settled, El Diablo and Black Reign outside with a select group of prospects and patched members, Cain rapped on the table twice in quick succession, a sign for everyone to settle down.

  “You can’t do this,” Donna all but sobbed. “We have rights!”

  “If you can’t be silent, we’ll gag you until it’s time for you to give your account,” Cain said off-handedly. When neither Donna nor Rayburn spoke, he began the proceedings.

  “We have been provided with a file from one of Data’s contacts regarding crimes against you,” Cain began, “rangin’ from rape to human trafficking, to theft. I’m leavin’ off the theft accusations as I don’t really give a rat’s ass about shit like that. I am concerned with the other two. Specifically how it pertains to your three daughters.”

  Darcy noticed that Winter and Serilda were in the corner of the room. They clung to each other, sitting in a chair huddled together. Winter put herself in front of her sister. Darcy had never given thought to the sisters’ individual personalities. Mostly, she’d avoided them as well as their father as much as she could. Now, she was ashamed she hadn’t reached out to the two women. They might have been older than her, but she was obviously the strongest of the three.

  “Your daughters have been through enough, from what I’ve gathered. We took their statements from the report given to us by Data’s source, who just happens to be the protégé of El Diablo. She had no reason to manufacture information, and we’re taking everything she said as the facts as best she was able to gather. She drew no supposition, but stuck with information she was able to gather, itemizing everything carefully. All of it from the past week and a half. As such, we have no reason to believe their ordeal hadn’t been going on for some time.”

  “That’s not fair!” Rayburn exploded, his face red in his anger. “I want my lawyer! He’ll put a stop to this farce! I’ve got my rights! This isn’t even a fucking court! Who the hell do you people think you are?”

  Cain leaned forward. “Do I look like I give a damn about your rights? For that matter, do I look like the kind of man who gives a fuck about whether or not you have your lawyer? We don’t muddle the facts with legal mumbo jumbo.” He leaned back, his hand on the table. “You’ll have your chance to answer for yourself.”

  Rayburn lifted his chin. “I did nothing but try to be the best parent I could.”

  “I see,” Cain said. He looked to Viper and nodded. Darcy knew this was it. Her heart pounded and her palms were sweaty. She gripped Viper’s hand tightly, not wanting to let go. Just looking at Rayburn made her skin crawl.

  “If you don’t want to do this, you can always tell me and Cain in private. Or Angel and Magenta.”

  “No.” She swallowed. “I need to do this. No matter how embarrassing or humiliating.”

  She felt him growl where her shoulder rested against his chest. The man was the most protective, wonderful man she’d ever met in her life. It was his protectiveness alone that gave her the courage to do this.

  She raised her chin, still clinging to Viper, needing him to know she still needed him even after this was over. “What do you want to know?”

  Cain looked her straight in the eye, neither encouraging nor intimidating her. He was, for all intents and purposes, impassive as any judge. This was about the finding the truth before passing judgment.

  “You know that bitch will say anything to make me look bad,” Rayburn grumbled. “She’s just jealous of mine and my daughters’ place in Donna’s life. Always was from the moment she met us.”

  “Gag him,” Cain said mildly. Darcy could see Viper took great pleasure in watching as Bohannon stuffed a rag in the man’s mouth and secured it with duct tape. He smirked at the other man, gripping Darcy’s hand a little tighter. Rayburn glared daggers at her, and it was all she could do not to shrink into Viper for comfort. He seemed to realize this and put his arm around her protectively.

  “I want to know,” Cain said, drawing her attention back to him, “wh
y you felt the need to run into the wilderness in the middle of a snowstorm. Then, instead of welcoming help to get back to civilization, you fought, going to far as to tell Viper and Arkham you’d never go back to that molesting bastard.”

  She took a deep breath. This was it. Viper would know she was a coward. Would know she’d been touched by someone as vile as Rayburn Mills and hadn’t fought back. “The night I ran, Rayburn attacked me.” Mills mumbled angrily, fighting his bonds, but unable to say anything because of the gag. “But he’d been leading up to it for a long time. I’d wake up in the middle of the night with him standing over me, masturbating.” She shuddered and even stumbled over the word. “He’s disgusting,” she said under her breath. She looked at Viper, willing him to understand she hated every second. He nodded at her, telling her to go on. “No matter how I barricaded my door, he always managed to get in. I’d wake up and there he’d be. Standing over me. He’d just smirk. Like he’d beaten me by making it into my bedroom without me waking up. Anyway, the night I took off, he must have been standing there longer than usual because he was not only yanking his prick, he was on the verge of getting off.” She shuddered, unable to hide her disgust. “I heard him groaning, and opened my eyes, prepared to move away from him and scream until he left, but the second I looked at him, he came. Like all over me. Bastard wasn’t quiet about it either. I was so startled, I couldn’t move. The next thing I knew, he was on top of me.”

  Viper growled, his fists clenching. Darcy had to look away from him, unable to see the disgust she knew would be on his face. Nothing she’d ever done or been through compared to the humiliation in admitting what her stepfather had done to her. It was bad enough she had to recount it in front of her newfound father and people she was becoming to think of as friends, but Viper was there to witness it all. How would she ever face him again?

  “Did he rape you, Darcy?” Cain asked gently. There was compassion in his voice, but it bordered too close to pity for Darcy. She stuck her chin up. Now if she could ignore the tears tracking down her cheeks, she might not feel so humiliated. “No. He tried, but I got my wits about me enough to fight him off. My alarm clock was on the nightstand, and I clocked him with it.” She hoped her pun would ease the tension, but it was a pitiful attempt at best. “I hit him until he didn’t move. Then I crawled out from under him, packed my backpack, and got the fuck outta there.” She shrugged, trying to pretend like it was all no big deal. “Five days later, Bones found me.”

  “Was that the first time he’d actually touched you?” Cain asked his question calmly, but there was an underlying current of anger. Perhaps he was angry at her for dragging them into something like this when the man hadn’t actually sexually assaulted her. I mean, she’d gotten spooged on. Big deal. A little bukkake never hurt anyone, right?

  “The first time he had the nerve to try.”

  Cain nodded, staring down Rayburn. Then he turned his attention to Donna. “What about your mother?”

  “What about her? And don’t call her my mother. She might have given birth to me, but she was never a mother.”

  “I see.” He thumbed through the papers in his hand, the muscle in his jaw ticking like a son of a bitch. She was too afraid to look at Viper. “She know about any of this?”

  “She knew enough. Told me once it didn’t matter how young I was, he’d get tired of me and come running back to her. That was the night before I left.”

  “Did you know of either of them mistreating your stepsisters?”

  There it was. The real shame. She supposed it was better to get it all out now than to have to keep suffering one defeat after another.

  “I didn’t.” She wanted to leave it at that, but knew she couldn’t. “But then, I never looked into it. I never thought they might be in the same boat as me.” She gave a long, shuddering sigh. “Looking back, I suppose I should have.”

  “No one is blaming you for anything, Darcy,” Viper said quietly.

  “Well, maybe they should,” she snapped. Turning to her stepsisters she met their gazes boldly. “I was wrong to not get close to you guys. I was just ducking my head and staying out of the way. I should have stopped to consider you might need my help as much as I could have used yours.”

  “You had no idea,” Winter said softly. “We knew to pretend everything was fine. It kept anyone from looking too closely at us.”

  “The last thing we needed was for Dad to find out we had a friend willing to help us,” Serilda added, her voice a bare thread of sound. “The one time we thought we were free, he let us try, then laughed when he pulled us back into the very net we tried to escape.”

  “The men he gave us to that night were brutal.” Winter stood, walking slowly, as if in a trance, toward Rayburn. “Weren’t they, Daddy?” She asked the question like an innocent little girl asking a simple question of her father. The look of hatred on her face told another story altogether. As she crossed in front of the couple, she slowly, deliberately pulled a wicked-looking knife from her boot. “They played with us all night while you kept an eye on us, didn’t they? ‘They just want to play, sweetheart,’” she said in a mocking tone, obviously a repeat of what Rayburn had told his daughters on the night in question. “‘Play nice, girls,’” she said.

  The whole scene was eerie as fuck. Like something out of a horror film. Winter was on the offensive while Serilda was still curled in a ball on the couch, watching everything in silence.

  Winter struck out with the knife, slicing a thin cut down Rayburn’s neck. Nothing too deep. Just enough for it to leak a thin trickle of blood down his skin to his shirt. Rayburn howled, his eyes wide, but unable to get free or speak because of his bonds and gag.

  “They sliced at us,” Winter continued. “Made us bleed until it felt like our whole bodies were slick with it.” She made another cut on her father, this time deeper and on his shoulder. “You know what? I wanna watch you bleed now. Daddy.”

  This time, Winter stabbed the knife in the side of Rayburn’s neck sideways, clean to the hilt. The she pulled it out and did it again. And again.

  And again.

  Blood arched across the room to the sounds of Donna’s screams. The coppery scent was nearly overwhelming. Darcy wanted to gag. At the same time, she wanted to pick up a knife and helped Winter. But Rayburn wasn’t hers to kill. He was all Winter’s. All the while, Serilda never made a sound. Just watched on in silence, a little satisfied smile on her face.

  Finally, an arm snaked around Winter’s waist, pulling her away but in no way restraining her. It was the man from El Diablo’s limo. He murmured to her, soothing a wild animal. Winter threw the knife down at the body of her father and spat before going to her sister, urging the other woman to her feet and going with the man from Black Reign.

  “Don’t take kindly to another club entering our meetings,” Cain said as the other man led the women to the stairs.

  He turned, nodding at Cain. “The girls needed to know someone had their backs. I apologize for invading your territory.”

  “I assume you’re taking them with you?” Cain referred to Winter and Serilda. Darcy wanted to protest. She wanted the chance to get to know her stepsisters. Viper put a hand on her shoulder, preventing her from going to the two women.

  “I am.”

  “They want to go?”

  Winter turned to Cain, blood covering her from the arterial spray she’d just unleashed. She looked like an innocent child, her expression nearly dead. “No one will ever make me do anything I don’t want to ever again,” she said evenly. No inflection. “I’m going with El Segador. Serilda wants to go, too.” Apparently, the man traveling with El Diablo was, quite literally, the Reaper.

  Confirming her sister’s statement, Serilda stood and threaded her fingers through Winter’s. The three of them left the room, leaving a trail of blood in their wake.

  Chapter Nine

  Viper could see Darcy was hurting. The whole thing had taken something from her he wasn’t certain she had t
o give. The one thing he hated about meetings like this was the formality of them. Cain allowed any of the officers to have free say and the patched members to question with permission, but he wasn’t the same man Darcy was accustomed to. Neither was he. During times like this, every man in Bones had to be as dispassionate as they could be. Otherwise, killings happened when they might not be deserved. Other times, it allowed nature to take its course. Like tonight.

  Rayburn Mills had it coming. It was only fitting the ones he’d caused the most pain had been the ones to do him in. Now, it was the woman’s turn. Donna Mills.

  “Darcy,” Cain said softly. “With everything we’ve heard from you, and the report we have, there’s no question Donna is guilty.” Cain purposefully didn’t refer to Donna Mills as Darcy’s mother. “As the ones Rayburn tormented most passed sentence on him, you have the opportunity to do so with Donna.”

  The women turned pleading eyes to Darcy, darting her gaze to the body of her dead husband lying in a pool of his own blood beside her. “You can’t possibly, Darcy. I’m your mother!”

  “I never remember you being a mother to me.” Darcy’s voice was quiet, resigned. “You deserve everything Rayburn got and more. You may not have done the deed yourself, but you knew what he was doing.”

  “I didn’t know. Not until that night. I swear.”

  “Really? They why did you lash out at me instead of him? I’m your flesh and blood! Me!” Darcy had worked herself up now. Getting angry. Viper thought it was a good thing. She needed to let out her anger. There was no way he was going to allow her to kill her mother, but Donna didn’t need to know that. Neither did Darcy. “Instead of finding out exactly what he’d been doing or, heaven forbid, turning your anger toward him, you turned on me. Accused me of trying to sleep with him! Do you have any idea how disgusting that is?”

  “I didn’t mean it, Darcy, baby. I swear! I was just hurt.”