While he busied himself getting into the full swing of his diatribe, I watched as he taunted me and finally left the confined protection of his desk. “Never got to play with her, though, you know, really play.” I nearly puked when he gripped his crotch in front of me. Had he always been this twisted? The evil glint in his eye was enough to send me over the edge, his words sealing my action. With a rapid extension of my arm, I punched him, the sickening crunch of his nose barely satisfying me.
“Motherfucker!” He touched the wetness of his blood that dibbled onto his lip. “Truth hurts, eh?”
“Whatever you’ve done with her, I got no problem erasing it. Malia wants a real man, not some twisted dick who gets his kicks from pain and suffering.”
He nodded his head to my chest. “You think that cut scares me. That badge means shit to me. You’re here alone, asshole.” He wiped his nose again, the blood still steadily trickling. “You walked into my world. You think I didn’t check out Wolf when he got in touch? I’m never unprepared. This is my house, Reef, or whatever the fuck pussy name you got now. My house, and there ain’t nothin’ scary about a bunch of bikers. I’ve dealt with worse and I’ve seen worse off.”
Dean swung first this time and I reveled with joy that I was going to get my moment. My body and soul had yearned for this retribution, this chance to settle what felt like a lifelong score. It was irrelevant that he took her first and I stole her back; the blood we were about to spill had always been on the cards for us, just back then, I was more tolerant. That version of Reef Bryant was long gone. Dead and buried, burned under betrayal, given a new lease of life that understood true friendship and thrived on it.
Within seconds, everything outside that room and my anger cased to exist.
My sole focus became him.
My need to destroy him became my life’s mission.
I threw my anger behind my body and roared with delight at feeling him panic under attack. I got in another punch to his cheek and felt the bones in his face cave under the pressure. I could do this. I could end him right here, right now.
Dean sucker punched my middle, even my kidneys felt the force of the blow, bringing me back to the moment, back to understanding that he might have been down, but he wasn’t out. This was Dean Morrison and he’d use his dying breath to win, at whatever cost. As I let my rage free, hands grabbed my shoulders and dragged me off him. I fought against whoever it was to keep my fight going until someone whispered, “End game,” in my ear.
Wolf’s voice penetrated. “Grab him, bind him. We need to move.”
My brothers piled on the body grappling for freedom before they dragged him out. As we pulled his resistant body past the frankenfreak receptionist, I readied myself to subdue her, too, but like this was normal behavior round here, she didn’t even blink as he shouted for her to call for help. At the last minute, she dropped a nail file and reached for the telephone handset on the desk.
“Don’t.”
Looking at me, she shrugged her shoulders, replaced the handset and went back to her manicure.
Gears sat patiently behind the wheel of an old, battered commercial van, the engine idling and back doors open ready.
“I need to get Mal.”
Wolf looked at me as he put plastic ties around Dean’s ankles. “No. She’s out of this now. She’s doesn’t need to see what comes next.”
“But—”
“No,” he decreed. “She’s been gifted an out. Let her keep it. She’s with Angel.”
He was right.
Wolf was always right.
We all piled in the back of the van behind our captive passenger, which drove away from the Morrison Mayhem warehouse onto the next phase of this dangerous plan.
Chapter Thirty-One
Wave
Things took a dark turn in the back of the van, a turn I wasn’t prepared for. It was the first time I’d truly glimpsed the ex Carnal biker president that lived deep in the marrow of Wolf’s bones. Dean’s kicking and fussing increased the closer we got to town. He knew where we were, and our risk of discovery increased just from the noise.
“Shoot him,” Wolf ordered.
“What?” There was no way we were going to pop a bullet in his head in the back of a van with the rest of us so close. The fallout, the potential evidence left in both the van and on us would be catastrophic.
Most people would have calmed their shit at the thought, but not Dean. His anger overrode everything, including sense and the need to survive.
“On it.” Shorty grinned and produced a syringe from a backpack on the floor. Quick as a whip he shoved the needle in Dean’s neck as his protests escalated. Within minutes, his body went limp and the life drained from him.
“What was that?”
“Midazolam.”
“You’re kidding?” I asked. Where the fuck had they got their hands on that stuff?
Wolf laughed. “I have contacts, and besides, it’s the justice drug of choice for a reason.”
“If you’re on death row.”
The grin on Wolf’s face was evil. “Which he is. If he’s lucky his execution will be swift.”
The van suddenly quieted at his words. The only sound was the rumble of the rubber rolling over the road, not the chatter of a van full of men, hyped up on adrenaline at all the laws we were breaking. We drifted out of town and took a road leading nowhere but at the end, there was a large industrial scrap yard.
“Stop.” Gears pulled the van to an emergency stop at Wolf’s command.
“This is gonna get seriously ugly. Brutal. There’ll be no comeback or shame in ducking out before… well, you’ve got families. Decision time, brothers.”
No one made to move.
“Let’s be clear. You’re gonna witness stuff that could get you a stretch, but more than that, you’re about to hit the radar of some serious players. Motherfuckers beyond any control.”
“Take a look, Prez,” Shorty rumbled. “We’re all in.”
My throat clogged. They were doing this for me, for Malia, so we could have a clear future.
After Wolf had looked each of us in the eye, he gave Gears the all clear to proceed. When we rounded the last corner, Shadow and Mac’s bikes were parked in the forecourt, both of them waiting by a roller shutter door. Both nodded as we approached and reversed up to it.
Stood outside the van, all I could see were towers of piled metal crushed into cubes of barely recognizable junk. There were diggers and crushers left unoperated, spooky and eerie. The sun bounced off them, shining and blinding you into forgetting that this place had secrets, dark secrets we were about to add to.
“In here.”
Following Shadow, I stopped at the last minute and turned to see Shorty drag Dean out of the back of the van by his ankles. He didn’t stop when his body slumped over the tail gate and hit the floor. “What? A headache will be the least of his worries.”
Wandering back, I reached under one arm as Wolf grabbed the other and we followed Shadow and Mac to a metal chair in the center of a workshop, surrounded by more machines, smaller but still foreboding. The chair had four sets of handcuffs attached to it—one around each arm and one around each leg. Dean was still out cold when Shadow cuffed him in place.
“What now?”
“We wait,” came a cold, smooth voice from the shadows on the other side of the room.
Fuck. Me.
Luca Acerbi.
Luca Acerbi in the flesh.
Even though he wasn’t looking at me specifically, I felt like a bug under a microscope, a subject in a lab, just because I was in the same space as him. There wasn’t a hair out of place. His suit, clearly custom made, was sharp, making me believe that he wore a brand new one every day, just like the rumors said. “Wake him.”
His simple instruction jolted me back to the moment as two goons the size of linebackers appeared like ghosts, dressed like twins on the verge of bursting the seams of their expensive suits. They headed for Dean as Luca walked af
ter them and addressed Wolf. “Your reputation precedes you. Shadow speaks highly of few people. I was as intrigued about who had earned his gratitude as I was for his offer to help solve that problem.”
The disdain he held for Dean was evident in just one word.
“I could say the same,” Wolf replied casually.
My eyes flitted between whatever exchange was forming there as one of his goons shot Dean with another loaded syringe. “We’re even now, yes?” Luca questioned
“Marker repaid,” Wolf and Shadow both agreed. “As long as our brother and his old lady finish this happy then so are we, agreed?”
Shadow nodded.
“She here? I’d love to meet the woman who called an end to our long-standing agreement.”
Wolf laughed. “Not a chance.”
They had an arrangement? What the hell had Wolf and Shadow done to earn a favor from the fucking Mafia.
“Sensible. You might be a handsome bastard, but not many bitches can resist this.” Luca Acerbi chuckled.
Chuckled. Like he had a sense of humor and we were all just catching up over beers and a game.
“Ugh.” Dean’s limp body groaned, and the amusement fled so fast from the Mafia boss, it was as if it had never been there.
“Mr. Morrison.”
At the sound of his name, his arms jolted and the sound of metal on metal clanked. His head lolled, not quite with it yet. Luca Acerbi nodded to one of his goons, who threw water on Dean’s face, accelerating the process.
Dean shook the droplets of water from his hair, his eyes blinking rapidly in an attempt to focus, until they finally did, on Luca Acerbi. “What the fuck?”
“We have unfinished business.” His voice was mellow, calm… deadly.
“Like fuck we do. The scene went bad, but I held up my end. You never told me the bitch was a fucking fighter.”
“I expect my staff to be fully prepared.”
“I’m not your fucking staff,” Dean shouted back.
“Mr. Morrison, I pay you for a job. You are employed by me. You fail on that job, you fail me.”
To those who didn’t know Dean, they’d assume this was all bravado, but I knew him. He still believed he was in the right, still thought he would win, still thought there was some way he could bargain his way out of it. Whatever his plea deal was, he was building up to it. “There isn’t a guaranteed success rate in any job.”
“Wrong. There is for me. Look around you. Look at where you are.” Dean glanced around the room, taking in each of us. “Machinery, automation, robots, Mr. Morrison.” There was a knowing look in his eye. “Machinery doesn’t fail, only the operators, and fortunately for you, or rather me, I only employ the best. You were an anomaly, an unnatural statistic.”
Dean’s façade waned slightly when his attention was drawn to the machinery, the workshop. It was so normal in nature, a necessity in every day mechanical life, but shrouded with gruesome potential.
“We can come to some kind of arrangement.” Here it came, the expected offer of redemption. “I’ll gift you the studio, the whole fucking business, kit and caboodle.”
Luca Acerbi pulled his hands from his pants pockets and readjusted his cufflinks. “What would happen if word got out that I bartered with a man who had failed?” Dean’s hands became agitated and the more he tugged and pulled against his restraints, the more the handcuffs cut into his skin. “You know what you cost me? Millions, yes, but my reputation? A dent in that becomes a crack, a fissure of a crack, just a chink in my operation, even the smallest fucking dent leaves me exposed and I do the taking not the other way around. You failed to prepare for your part of our deal and now I’m having to exert my efforts to contain the fallout. My plans are delayed indefinitely, and I hate it when my schedule slips.”
Like spectators, we were lulled into his tale. He talked about his schedule like he’d been caught in downtown traffic and was gonna be twenty minutes late to a county club luncheon.
“The business, it’s yours!”
“I was taking that anyway. The new owner has plans for a reorganization.” I watched as he nodded at Wolf, who returned a nod back.
“Motherfuckers!” Dean roared, forgetting that he was attached to a chair and about to receive some serious payback. It was clear his frustration was solely down to being outplayed by a bunch of bikers.
“Now, I’d like to introduce you to some competent employees. Mr. Wells?”
“Sir?” An old guy stepped forward wearing a leather, heavy duty, machine operator’s apron, carrying gloves and plastic safety glasses.
“Meet Mr. Morrison. Let’s show him how adept you are with a power drill.”
The old guy pulled his old, tattered work gloves on and reached for a drill, lying idle on a nearby bench, and a plank of wood. The hairs on my arms stood upright when he pressed the button on the handle and the telltale, rotating scream of an everyday power tool rattled off the walls and overhead skylight windows.
Dean became apoplectic.
This was going to hurt, and I only prayed I could keep my breakfast inside me.
The two goons stepped up to restrain him as he bucked in the chair, pulling up one arm as the old guy slid the wood between his wrist and the chair arm, completely ignoring the fact that the subject tied to that chair had just pissed himself in fear.
“A moment.” Everyone paused. The only sound to be heard was Dean’s whimpering mixed with spittle as his breath became panicked. “Wolf, anything you or your brothers would like to say to him?”
Mac glanced at me and as I was about to step forward, Mac beat me to it. “The things you’ve done to women, to young girls, is unfathomable. I can’t make that right for those in the past, but I can stop you doing it to others. The pain you’re about to suffer has an ending. There’s an out for you. There wasn’t for most of those poor girls.”
Dean’s whimpering became louder as he repeatedly shouted, “No.”
“Proceed.” Luca Acerbi’s voice could barely be heard above Dean’s pleas.
The high-pitched noise of the drill went once, twice, as the old man held it up like a gun, signaling that the goons needed to keep his hand steady. With well-practiced precision, they splayed his fingers flat as the old guy casually drilled through each fingernail in turn. Dean’s howling rang out, his tongue bleeding as he bit it in pain. The ends of his fingers poured with blood mixed with wood shavings as the drill crunched through nail, bone and the wood underneath and then reversed back out.
I didn’t dare blink as I watched the guy I’d once considered my brother have his hand mutilated right in front of me. With one hand completed and Dean an agitated, sweaty, sobbing mess, Luca Acerbi spoke again. “You’re free to leave now, Wolf. Once we’ve eliminated his fingerprints, it just gets messy and I don’t need more witnesses. I trust your brothers understand my reach?”
“They do.”
“They also don’t need to see Mr. Jones and his colleague at work. Time to leave.” He stepped up to Wolf and shook his hand before doing the same with Shadow, which between the suit and two bikers just looked hilarious at a time when there was nothing funny about what was happening around us. “Pleasure doing business with you.” Wolf smiled and shook his head like he was deluded.
“No! No! No! Reef, don’t leave me here. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. She’s yours. Take her. Don’t leave me here like this. We’re brothers!” His words hurt my ears. Brothers didn’t do what he did. Brothers did what the guys around me did. They had your back to the very end of extremes, to the point where they became accomplices. The sobbing increased and I knew it was a sound I would never forget, something that would haunt me for life.
When Wolf turned to walk away, we all fell in line behind him. As I walked through the door to the clear blue sky and fresh air, I realized how much I needed to be away from all of that. How much I really didn’t need to see what was coming next for Dean Morrison. The noise of the drill and Dean’s screams for help were the last thing I heard as Sh
adow closed the door on a place I never wanted to visit again. It was safe to say I was not okay with what I’d just witnessed. Hearing the screams of another human suffering, knowing that it was only the beginning, was truly the stuff of nightmares.
No one had spoken since we’d climbed back into the truck. We watched the old Midazolam syringe roll around the floor until Shorty picked it up with a paper towel and shoved it back in the backpack.
The silence had become stifling.
“Pull over there.” Wolf pointed to an old parking lot on the edge of a nature trail. “Everyone out.” No one argued, even when we stood in a circle looking at each other. “You good, Mac?”
“Getting there.” I knew it was significant that he was given the chance to balance the scales for the past, even if they would be forever weighed down the wrong way for him.
“You know Luca Acerbi?”
“Yeah.” Wolf sounded exhausted. “A long time ago I helped someone he cared about. I reminded him of that in return for this.”
“No one actually calls in a marker with Acerbi’s Prez,” Shadow mumbled dumbfounded.
“I know and so does Luca Acerbi. The other misters he was about to call in work a cut off saw and a steel fucking press, which is why we’re now accessories and witnesses to torture. We’re as guilty as he is.”
Hearing out loud what was going to happen to Dean was gutting.
We’d done that.
I’d done that.
I’d done it to keep Malia safe, and my brothers had done that to avenge wrongdoings against a lot of innocent women.
Wolf looked at me. “How’re you holding up?”
So many emotions rushed to the surface. “What do you want me to say?”
“Whatever it takes to settle your shit. Not letting you see your woman before then.”
Malia: A Black Sentinels MC Novel Page 21