by Zoey Parker
I woke up when the beams of sunlight hit my face. “Fuck. Why didn’t you close the curtains?” I rolled over, which knocked the girl in bed beside me off my arm and further away. I didn’t care. I didn’t even know her name. I just wanted to sleep off a hangover.
“I’m sorry, baby.” She jumped out of bed and pulled them shut. The room was dark again.
“Thanks,” I muttered. I felt the bed move, heard the springs squeak. She got back in with me. I laid still, didn’t say anything else. I wanted her to take the hint that I wasn’t in the mood for small talk. The one thing I hated more than anything after a one-night stand was a woman who wanted to get to know me. Didn’t they know if I wanted to do that, I wouldn’t have picked them up at a bar?
I must have fallen asleep again, because the next time I opened my eyes, I was alone. She wasn’t just out of bed, she was out of the house. I didn’t bother looking around to see if she took anything. Another man might have needed to do that. Most people knew better than to screw with me.
Maybe it was the murder rap.
I checked out the clock as I stumbled, half-blind, through the house. My head was only pounding a little, so I tossed back a few aspirin and chased it with orange juice straight from the bottle. There was bread and peanut butter in the cabinets, so I made a couple of sloppy sandwiches and ate them, chasing it all with more orange juice. I started feeling more human.
It was three months since I got out of prison, but a lot of things still felt new. Like being able to eat whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted it. If I wanted to drink a gallon of orange juice a day, I could. If I wanted to eat nothing but peanut butter for a week, nobody could stop me. Or I could order a pizza, or go for tacos at two in the morning. There was nothing in my way.
So I’d been partying a little harder than I should have. I knew it, too. But after seven years in prison, I had a lot of catching up to do. I had missed the best years of my life, locked up like an animal. Worst part was some of the people I was with were real animals. If I hadn’t gone in a man, I had come out one. I had seen things nobody should ever have to see, and I’d done things I never thought I would just to survive. Partying helped ease all the shit going on in my head.
Everybody expected me to be happy that I was out. I was happy—no doubt. But I wasn’t gonna walk around with a goddamned smile on my face all the time. I wasn’t that sort of person before I went in, so why the hell would I start?
My house was a mess. I needed to have somebody in to clean it. I needed to do a lot of things. But it all fell under the number one item on my list: revenge.
Seven years is a long time to think about getting revenge on the person you know set you up. And I knew exactly who had in my case. Gareth. The son of a bitch leader of the Reign of Chaos MC. It was one of his guys I killed. I found out later on that the guy had been expendable—if I hadn’t done it, Gareth would have. A weak little nothing who had ratted on the MC to the cops. He tried to ambush me in my clubhouse on Gareth’s orders since I was next in line to take over the club once the president stepped down. He had thought he was gonna make things right, I guessed. Gareth would accept him back into the club.
Only he didn’t. Gareth knew I’d kill the pathetic fucker.
And he knew I’d go to jail for it.
Over the years, I had fantasized over all the ways I wanted to torture Gareth for what he did to me. Sometimes the images of a screaming, writhing Gareth were all that got me through. I would flip through the images in my mind when I couldn’t sleep. It was better than a bedtime story.
He was the only thing I cared about. Finding him, killing him. Making him pay for what he had done. He would regret it before he drew his final breath, and everybody else would know I wasn’t the sort of man to be fucked with. I wasn’t the type to let go of things easily.
I shook myself to keep from going too far into my fantasies. I had shit to do. This wasn’t prison, where thinking was one of my only activities. The only safe one, anyway.
I went upstairs and got into the shower, and by the time I finished I felt more human. I dried off quickly, thinking how much nicer it was to shower alone. I could take as long as I wanted, too. I didn’t have to look over my shoulder. I had people to protect me in prison, and they’d done a good job. But there was nothing like being in my own home, doing things my way again.
I dressed, slid on my kutte and got on my bike. That was another thing I had missed. The first time I straddled my bike after all those years, I almost had tears in my eyes. It felt that good to be back with my hands on the grips. I felt human again, like myself. It was easy to lose who you were when you were doing the time. There, you were just a name and a number, trying to stay out of the way of people who wanted to hurt you. The club had more than a few enemies in there with me, so I needed to keep an even closer watch.
It was all good, though. When I woke up in the middle of the night, I wasn’t staring up at the bottom of the cot above me. My house was silent. There were no guards walking around, there was no noise from other cells. I could breathe.
Every time I woke up with my heart pounding, thinking for the first split second that I was still behind bars, I would think of Gareth. He had done this to me. It was his fault. He might not even have known I knew—that was good. I didn’t want him to be on his guard. I wanted him to think he got away with it before I tied him to a chair and cut off his dick. One of my other ideas involved scooping out his eyeballs, but then I wanted him to see what I was doing. So the eyes would have to stay in.
I pulled up in front of the clubhouse. The Lightning Bolts had been part of my life for as long as I could remember, and this was almost more like home to me than my actual home. The club had been good enough to keep up the rent payments for me while I was gone, and had the utilities turned back on before I got home. They told me it was the least they could do.
There were so many familiar faces when I walked through the doors, and a few I wasn’t so familiar with. Most of the guys I’d known since I was a stupid thirteen-year-old kid running errands for them. That was how bad I always wanted to be part of them. I was willing to go for coffee and cigarettes, which legally I shouldn’t have been able to buy, but the storekeepers knew who I was with so they let it slide. The smokes weren’t for me. At least not back then they weren’t.
I lit up a cigarette and sat at the bar. Already one or two of the guys were drinking, even though it was only one in the afternoon. I asked Suzie, one of our girls, to brew me some fresh coffee. She looked happy to do it. The girls were usually pretty happy to do what we asked them to do, but I was sort of a hero around the clubhouse after what I did for the club. The asshole who ambushed me had a clear shot on everybody else in the room. We were playing cards at the time. He took a shot at me, and I ducked. He swung around to aim at Spike, the leader at the time. I took him out before he could fire another shot. Everybody else had been either frozen in shock or too drunk to find their gun, much less shoot it.
I saved Spike, and I willingly went to prison for killing a man whose name I didn’t even remember. Funny, so much of my life was affected by that night. But I couldn’t remember the name of the guy I killed. The DA had tried offering me a deal—if I turned on the club and the other clubs in the area, I’d get probation. No way. I took the rap and got out early for good behavior.
There was a weird energy around the clubhouse that afternoon as I sat and waited for my coffee. The lights were turned down dim, so I knew I wasn’t the only one with a hangover. Even so, there wasn’t any bitching or complaining. Normally that was the way it went. A bunch of babies who couldn’t handle the day after a bender.
“What’s up around here today?” I asked Suzie when she came back with the coffee. She only smiled like Mona Lisa. So she was in on it, too. Whatever it was, I was the only person who didn’t know about it. The hair on the back of my neck stood up. I wanted to make an announcement that anybody with half a fucking brain didn’t screw with the guy who just spent seven y
ears in prison.
Just then, the doors to the room where we held our meetings opened. The senior members of the club were all smiles. I hadn’t even known they were in there, and I froze. Why were they looking at me?
“Eric. We were just talking about you.” Spike smiled from ear to ear. He wouldn’t hurt me or fuck with me. He had always been like a father to me, actually. Before I got locked up, he was grooming me to take his place. Why would he hurt me after I gave up so much for the club?
“Really? What about?” I tried to play it cool. Had I slipped up somewhere and said something to the wrong person? I told myself it didn’t matter. I could take them out if they came at me. I wasn’t afraid of any of them. If they wanted to get rid of me, I would take a few guys along with me.
“Not much…prez.” Spike smirked, coming over and clapping a hand on my back. The other men all cheered and clapped.
“Wait…what? Prez?” I looked at Spike, who was still smirking.
“What’d you think? We were gonna wipe you out? For what?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t have that part figured out.” Everybody laughed again.
“We took the vote, brother. You’re in. I can’t ride the way I used to, and we need a leader who can ride. We also need somebody who’s willing to step up when they’re needed. You showed you’re more than capable of that. I wouldn’t want anybody else to head up the club.”
I was speechless for the first time in as long as I could remember. “Spike. I don’t know what to say.”
“Say you accept!” I didn’t know who said it, but the rest of the guys agreed.
I shrugged. “Okay. I accept.” They broke out into another round of cheers. Meanwhile, I was totally thrown off. This was the last thing I had expected after being out of the action for so long. I thought I’d have to work my way back up from the bottom. I had been ready to, in fact. I didn’t think it would be this easy. From the happy looks on the faces of my friends, it was. And I was happy, too.
I just would have been happier to have my revenge on Gareth. He was in all my thoughts, good and bad. He was always there, hanging over me like a cloud. I would never be really happy, or feel really in charge of my club, as long as Gareth lived. I had to find him and teach him a lesson. I would also be sending a message that I wasn’t the sort of person to be fucked with.
Suzie and two of the other girls poured shots. We all grabbed one. “To The Lightning Bolts, and to its new president, Eric Turner.” Everybody raised their glass, the girls, too. I looked out over the room and told myself I had a huge responsibility. But I was ready for it, and I downed my shot with a promise to myself that I would settle all scores.
I didn’t have to wait long either. Sometimes opportunity fell into a person’s lap.
My best friend came up beside me and put an arm around my neck. “How’s it feel, prez?”
“You tell me, vice prez.”
He looked shocked. “Me? I thought you’d want Spike or one of the other council members.”
I shook my head. “No way. You’re the only one I want. The only one I trust well enough. You’re like a brother, man. And I’m president, so what I say goes.”
He looked surprised, nervous, happy. I knew how he felt since the same feelings were going through me at that time. “Listen,” he said. “I got some news for you that I thought you might be interested in. it has to do with our good friend.”
I knew just who he meant. That was our code name for Gareth whenever Slash visited me. He would feed me any information I needed, but we never used actual names. I pulled him aside where we could talk a little more privately.
“What’s up?” I searched his face for any clues. I was desperate for more news since everything we heard about Gareth had dried up over time.
“He found a new way to make money on the side.” Slash grinned.
“How? Tell me it’s something illegal.”
“Why would any of us do anything legal?” He snorted.
“What, then?”
“He’s auctioning women.”
That rocked me, and I needed a minute to get my thoughts together. “Auctioning women? Like a slave auction?”
“Not exactly, but pretty fucking close. It’s virgins. Women auction off their virginity to the highest bidder.”
I knew the look on my face had to be priceless, judging from Slash’s laugh. “I know. It’s fucking sick, right?”
“Fucking sick and pathetic. Who does something like that? I mean, paying for a woman? It sounds like something pathetic Gareth might do.”
“Right? He would have to pay for a woman, wouldn’t he?” Slash smirked. Gareth was a pretty ugly dude. Scarred, pockmarked, skinny, greasy. Slash and I, on the other hand, never had trouble getting women.
“So where’s this going on? It can’t be legal, can it?”
Slash shrugged. “I don’t know. It sounds legal enough, unless he’s tricking the women into doing it. I don’t think he is. From what I heard, they go into it knowing what they’re doing. They’re all adults.”
“But it’s prostitution!”
“Auctions like this are held all the time, for charity and stuff.”
“But this isn’t charity!”
“No, but I think Gareth learned a little something from the way those charities work. These guys are only bidding on dates. That’s all. Or that’s the story they tell the police, if the police ever show up.”
I thought it over. “Still sounds sketchy. I think it’s worth checking out. Who knows what else is going on. I wanna get a closer look.”
“He’ll know you’re there.”
“But he doesn’t know I know what he did to me. It’s all right. I just got out—maybe he thinks I want a new experience. I haven’t had a virgin in years.”
“You’d better have some money handy, then.”
“How much are we talking about?”
“Thousands. Tens of thousands.”
“Get the fuck outta here. Who are these people?”
Slash grinned and grabbed another drink off the bar. “The kind of people who can afford to spend thousands on a virgin.”
I drank a beer, thinking about the auction. It was something Gareth would think to do, for sure. An underground auction. How sick was that? Yeah, it would be worth checking out, if only to see something new for once. I’d have a good story to tell the next day at least.
Chapter Four
Michelle
“I hate all of this. Maybe this is all a mistake.”
Mackenzie glared at me from the middle of a pile of clothes on my bed. “Would you stop saying that? You decided to do it, and you’re going to do it.”
“Why is this so important to you?”
“It’s not that it’s important to me that you actually do it. But it’s important that you do what you can to help yourself. I hate seeing you worry about money the way you do. It kills me, and I wish I could give you everything you need. So the least I can do is support you now. And I do! I’m right behind you in this.”
“Good. Somebody has to be, because otherwise I’d back the heck out.” I bit my lip, holding two dresses up side by side. Neither of them seemed right.
“So you said the dress code is pretty sexy, right?” I asked Mac.
“Yeah, that’s what I heard. It makes sense. You want to show them what you’ve got going on.”
“And you say that’s a lot, right?”
Mac rolled her eyes. “Girl, you need to leave that crazy hang-up shit at the door. You know you’re gorgeous. Get over it.”
I wasn’t so sure. Maybe because the boys had always made fun of me in school for being so tall. I was such a nerd, and I got teased for that, too. It wasn’t easy seeing myself as anything other than what others told me that I was at that age. The impressions we got of ourselves in those early days ran deep, and lasted a lifetime in some cases.
“So what’s your top three of these choices?” I asked.
Mac looked critically at what I h
ad laid out. A lot of the dresses hadn’t seen the light of day since college—I hadn’t changed much since then in terms of my body shape, so that was a relief. I didn’t think buying a new dress was exactly the most responsible thing to do, even though Mac swore I’d be pulling in tens of thousands of dollars that night.
“I like the red one, the blue one, and the black one.” She picked them out. All of them were pretty similar. Low-cut, short, tight. I had been going through a phase when I bought them, obviously. I might even have bought them all at the same time. They were classics, though. They hadn’t gone out of style. That was one thing I had been taught—to invest in the classics rather than in trends. Mom was always very frugal.
Now we had debt collectors practically pounding on our front door. Oh, the irony.
“What do you think it will be like?” I asked.