Ride Long:

by Amity Cross

  “Let her go,” the voice commanded. “That’s not the way to treat my daughter.”

  Harley’s lip curled, and his eyes burned with unmasked loathing. Leaning close, he delivered a threat directly into my ear. “Daddy won’t always be around to save you, Betty.”

  Letting me go, he strode off down the hallway toward the common room, leaving me against the wall. I was hyperaware my father was standing a handful of steps away. It was the closest he’d been in seven years.

  I didn’t want to look him in the eye, but I had to. There was no avoiding it.

  I turned my head slowly, my heart pounding in my chest. How one man could cause such fear in an otherwise smartass body like mine was chilling. I knew what he was capable of. I knew what he’d tried to do to me. I knew what he’d done to my mother. Now I had to cozy up to him so I could stab him in the back. It would hurt—oh, fuck, would it hurt—but the look on his face when he realized I’d taken everything from him would be worth the salt in the wound.

  In the last seven years, he’d aged considerably, but it was his eyes I noticed first. His Italian heritage shone through in their chestnut coloring, but they couldn’t be any colder. His short, scrappy beard was strewn with gray, and his severe short back and sides haircut gave his hard angular face a menacing look. Broad shoulders, a hard chest, and a towering stature completed the picture. A picture was worth a thousand words and all of them said don’t trust me.

  Anthony Marini was a big man. Bigger than Chaser. Bigger than Pube Face Bailey. But not as big as Harley.

  “You’ve got your mother’s looks,” he said, picking up a strand of my hair and rubbing it between his forefinger and thumb. The baritone of his voice was gravelly as though he’d smoked a thousand cigarettes a day and his throat was raw.

  “You’re acting like you never saw me before,” I snapped, pulling away. I wondered if that was why he’d wanted to sell me off. Because I looked like her. The woman he got killed.

  “You’ve changed.”

  “I’m not the same girl I was seven years ago,” I said, implying I would fight with deadly force if I had to. “Far from it.”

  He nodded toward the door behind him. It was a silent command, and one I wanted to follow for once. Things needed to be said. Things that no one else had any right to overhear.

  Dad—I wasn’t even sure I should call him that—held out his hand, gesturing for me to step into the room beyond like he was some kind of reformed gentleman. I wasn’t on the road with Chaser anymore. If he were the one standing there, I would give him lip, but he wasn’t. Where was he?

  The entire Fortitude compound was like a miniature city. Everyone had a room, though none were like my father’s—he was king here, so he took what he was owed, which was a private sitting room with posh leather sofas, a sleek bar fridge, massive flat-screen television. A private bathroom and bedroom completed the presidential suite, all fitted out with the latest mod cons.

  My gaze flickered around the room and settled on the automatic rifle mounted on the wall and the handgun and a long-barreled revolver on the glass-top coffee table. The grip on the revolver was inlaid with mother-of-pearl.

  Dad closed the door behind him and crossed the room. Sitting in the armchair, he leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. He was waiting for me to take a seat.

  I lingered behind the sofa, my eyes on the guns in front of him. Did the air have a tang of copper to it, or was it my imagination? I could smell tobacco, spice and…gunpowder. Taking in the room, I was aware of him watching me as I saw the patched hole in the wall behind my head. I promptly stepped to the side.

  Dad raised his eyebrows and resigned himself to the fact I wasn’t sitting anytime soon.

  “Did he hurt you?” he asked, his voice familiar yet oddly strange to my ears.

  “Who?”

  “Chaser. Did he take care of you?”

  “Yes.” I narrowed my eyes, not liking what he was implying.

  “Did he touch you?”

  “No.”

  Dad watched me closely, taking stock of my answer. Chaser had touched me deep and hard with his cock, but Dad couldn’t know that. He would cut Chaser open top to tail if he knew, and I’d be right back on the club’s list of items to sell…if I wasn’t back on it already.

  “He was stabbed,” I went on. “Butcher—”

  “Will sew him up,” Dad interrupted.

  “He did his job. He should be rewarded.”

  Dad grunted, his lip curling. “Will you sit the fuck down?”

  Tensing, I rounded the back of the sofa and perched on the edge. My thighs burned, and my back thanked me for it, but it was a bed I longed for the most. A bed, sleep, and knowing Chaser was going to be all right. Maybe I should’ve been thinking about my own fate, but I was running on fumes.

  “You will be given a room in the compound,” Dad declared. “You’re free to come and go as you please, but you are not to leave under any circumstances.”

  “That’s the direct opposite meaning of ‘free to come and go as I please,’” I pointed out.

  “If you need something, ask. Don’t bother Chaser with your inane requests. I know he saved your life, but that does not make him your errand boy. We have new recruits that specialize in shit kicking. Ask them for your tampons.”

  I snorted and rolled my eyes. Just like old times, Daddy. Just like old times.

  “When does the bidding start?” I drawled.

  He stared at me and didn’t bother replying. His fingers stroked his beard while his eyes retained their icy luster.

  “Them attacking you is a slight on me,” he began, lowering his chin. The light bounced off his face in a demonic way, making my spine tingle. “It makes me look weak. You know I’m not weak, Betty. They’ve declared war on Fortitude by putting a hit out on you.”

  I snorted. Manipulative bastard. He really thought I would buy that? Fortitude was going to war over me? Fat fucking chance.

  “Betty died,” I said, lowering my voice to match the tone of his. “Seven years ago.”

  “Ah, you call yourself Sloane now.” He smiled. He actually fucking smiled at me like I was a cute little child playing at grown-up games.

  “So, what’s it to be, Daddy? Lay it out.”

  “That all depends on your attitude.”

  “You could’ve had something good,” I murmured. “It could’ve been great, you know, but you screwed it all up. You raised your hand to my mother. You raised your hand to me. To you, a woman is something to be bought and sold. You tried to sell me into sexual slavery. Your own daughter.” I reached out and picked up the revolver, knowing full well it wasn’t loaded. I stroked the mother-of-pearl, watching the colors shimmer. “I’m half her, but I’m also half you.” I glanced at him, a smirk playing on my lips. “There’s power in that.”

  “Is that what you want?” The undertone of his smile changed, and he leaned back in the armchair, the leather creaking.

  Setting down the revolver, I rose to my feet, trying not to puke on the way up. “It all depends on your attitude.”

  He nodded, the ice in his eyes beginning to thaw. His gaze never left mine as he took a cell phone out of his pocket and brought it to life.

  “You must be tired,” he said before pressing the screen. Lifting the phone to his ear, he added, “Rick. My daughter is here. Get the fuck in here, and show her to her room. Get her whatever she wants.” He looked at me. “Within reason.”

  He put the phone away, and I wrinkled my nose.

  “That gun is pretty,” I said. “Is that within reason?”

  “I won that off a Mexican,” he replied. “Cartel, he was. Outside of reason. You don’t need weapons in the compound.”

  The door opened, cutting off any chance I had of making a witty comeback. The entire MC was packing heat, yet I was unarmed…like all the other Old Ladies in the joint. Being Marini’s daughter wasn’t a fast track to notoriety, not after the stunt I pulled getting out of the place the f
irst time around. I would have to earn that pretty sidearm, but it was worth a try.

  A man strode into the room, dressed in beat-up jeans, boots, and a faded Harley Davidson T-shirt. He had a shaved head, stubbled jaw, and soft eyes to match his baby face. A new recruit. I made a mental note to ask him for tampons.

  “Rick, this is my daughter Sloane.”

  I stepped around the sofa, glad to get away from the dangerous tug of war that’d begun with my father.

  The newbie recruit nodded, eager to serve his master like the desperate dog he was. “Room’s this way.”

  I took two steps before I stopped.

  “Dad?” I turned, leaving Rick out in the hallway.

  My father lifted his head and waited for my pearl of wisdom.

  “If you ever try to sell me again, the last thing you’ll see is my face as I put a bullet into your head.”

  “Of course.” He smirked, lips curving lopsidedly. “You are half me.”

  Chapter 3

  Chaser

  Deluca and Rocket dragged me through the garage, through the compound, and into Butcher’s room.

  Sloane was gone, I was back in my revolving-door nightmare, and the game had begun. The game to take Fortitude.

  Could she do it? Without a doubt.

  Was it dangerous? Without a doubt.

  “Did you get a look at her?” Deluca declared.

  “That’s Marini’s daughter?” Rocket asked before letting out a slow whistle.

  I shoved down my jealousy and sat heavily, my ass hitting the chair with a dull thud. Sloane and I had been on the road together for almost two weeks, and it was safe to say I’d gotten used to having her all to myself. Other men were going to look at her. Of course they fucking were because she was hot as sin with legs for days. I just wasn’t ready for how deep my jealousy cut. Now I couldn’t touch or even pretend to like her. I was so sick and tired of suffering for another man’s greed.

  “What happened out there?” Deluca asked as I unbuttoned my jeans.

  “Shut your pie holes,” a booming voice declared behind me. “He ain’t gonna tell you shits nothin’.”

  Butcher appeared in my peripheral vision. Like a lot of the guys around here, he was built like a tank. The boys called him the gray giant, but the name he took when he joined Fortitude was much more accurate.

  Everyone around here had a story filled with varying degrees of shit and piss. Some chose to share, others—like me—didn’t. Butcher shared because it got him status in his new life at the club. There was a reason for his name, and it had everything to do with his past life as a paramedic. His reckless behavior—slicing and dicing and manhandling violent sons of bitches—had gotten him banned from his profession, and his underlying violent tendencies led him to a life of patching up the scum that he now called his brothers.

  “What is it this time?” Butcher asked. “Bullet, knife, burn…”

  Since I’d been here, he’d patched me up more times than I cared to remember…when I couldn’t do it myself. I’d had just about every kind of injury I could think of.

  “Knife,” I replied, still aware that Deluca and Rocket hadn’t left the room.

  “She do it?” Butcher gave me a look, his silvery eyes full of suspicion.

  I shook my head. “One of them.”

  Butcher glared at the two bikers and jabbed his finger at the door. “Quit your lollygagging. Get outta here.”

  Rocket snorted and strode out of the room with Deluca on his heels. I got that some of these guys wanted to be on the in, but there was a hierarchy for a reason. Loose trigger fingers didn’t get the final revenge. They perpetuated the continuing cycle of bullshit.

  I lifted my ass off the chair and dropped my jeans, wincing as the material peeled away from my thigh. Back on the train, I’d wrapped myself up in a pair of Sloane’s tights, and now Butcher could see the makeshift tourniquet.

  He raised an eyebrow but said nothing. He just grabbed a pair of scissors and cut the material away from my leg. The moment the pressure was relieved, blood oozed from the stab wound.

  “If the fucker cut an artery, you’d be dead by now,” the big man mused. “But it should’ve stopped bleeding by now. How long?”

  “Ten hours.”

  Butcher grunted and slapped a wad of gauze over the hole. Grabbing my hand, he pressed in over the top. “Hold that.”

  My mind wandered as he rattled around in his drawers and opened the autoclave. It was a better setup than the one I had in that motel room. Sewing up my own arm in a moldy bathroom with nothing but a bottle of rubbing alcohol to sterilize the needle was a necessary risk. Butcher’s rooms weren’t exactly ER standards, but they weren’t half bad.

  “Don’t scream,” Butcher said with a smirk. He shoved my hand away from my thigh and poured antiseptic on the wound.

  I gritted my teeth, but the bastard knew I wouldn’t make a sound. I never showed weakness.

  “I’d ask you if you wanted a local anesthetic, but…” He shrugged. I always declined.

  Staring across the room as he got to work, my thoughts zeroed in on Sloane. She would be standing before her father right now, saying God knew what. It wasn’t any of my business, but I still wanted to know. Was he going to lock her up and throw away the key? Was he going to sell her off to the highest bidder? Now he had her back, was he going to use her to bait the Hollow Men?

  She could handle herself. Couldn’t she?

  “Done.”

  I glanced down at my thigh and counted the stitches. Five. Blood was smeared over my leg and had dripped onto the tiled floor. Rolling up my sleeve, I showed him my handiwork.

  “You’re a hack, Chaser,” Butcher drawled. “A real butcher.”

  “Look who’s talking.” I snorted as he picked up a pair of scissors and cut.

  “What happened out there?”

  I gave him a pointed look. He could ask all he wanted, but I never talked about what I did. Never.

  The door opened, interrupting our intimate moment, and Rick appeared. He was a new recruit. Fresh, green, and still in shitty diapers. A child playing at a man’s game.

  “Marini wants to see you,” he said, glancing at my thigh.

  Narrowing my eyes, I picked up a washcloth and cleaned some of the blood off my skin.

  “Now.”

  “Careful,” I said, my lip curling. “You may be wiping his ass, but it doesn’t mean you get to order anyone around.”

  “You better listen to what he says, boy,” Butcher said, pointing the scissors at the newbie. “Boss may have singled you out, but it’s not because of your intelligence.”

  “I—”

  “Don’t you even think of talking back.”

  I stood, my leg stinging like hell, and pulled my jeans back up. Looked like I was going to find out what happened to Sloane sooner rather than later. Good. It’d been a long time since I’d had someone to worry about—not since Madison—and I wasn’t sure I knew how to deal with it anymore. Hell, I wasn’t sure I’d even dealt in the first place.

  “Don’t rip those stitches,” Butcher said, glaring at Rick but talking to me. “You’re a tough asshole, but I’m lazy.”

  I smirked and flipped him the bird on my way out. I wouldn’t go as far to say I liked Butcher, but at least I knew where his loyalties laid.

  Ditching Rick, I limped across the compound, dodging eye contact with anyone I passed so I didn’t have to stop and make small talk. I didn’t see hide or hair of Sloane, but I knew I wouldn’t. I didn’t know when I would get to see her again. Should’ve kissed her one last time. My dick twitched. Should’ve fucked her, too.

  Marini was sitting in his shit-stained armchair when I dragged myself into his rooms. He loved that Goddamned chair. Why, I didn’t know, but his ass was permanently grafted to the thing.

  “Another memento added to the collection,” he said as I closed the door behind me.

  I grunted and walked over to the sofa, masking the pain behind my eyes. My
scars were a painful reminder of the servitude I’d been tricked into. So was the tattoo on my thumb and the psychopathic asshole sitting in front of me. They weren’t a memento for my scrapbook.

  “My daughter says you should be rewarded,” Marini went on. “But she’s covered in cuts and bruises. You delivered me damaged goods.”

  I gritted my teeth to keep from saying something I would regret. Knowing she’d probably sat where I was right now wasn’t very comforting.

  “You dropped the ball on this one, Chaser. Big time.” He picked up the revolver sitting on the coffee table and flicked open the chamber. Taking out some bullets from his shirt pocket, he loaded them one by one in slow, deliberate moves.

  “They’ve upped their game,” I said, anger bristling up and down my spine. “We were forced to take an Amtrak from Albuquerque. I don’t know how they tracked us, but they were connected enough to block out two carriages with no prior planning. They ambushed us.”

  Marini stared at me, his expression passive. He was a hard man to read at the best of times, but right now, he was blank. When he was like this, he was capable of his absolute worst.

  “What are you going to do with her?” I asked.

  “Be careful what you say next,” he snapped, closing the barrel on the revolver.

  “I went to great lengths to get her here. I killed five men, got shot and knifed. Almost bled out on the way here. I want to know if it was worth it.” The words burned my throat as they came out. Sloane was worth it. Took me time to realize it, but she was. I cared about her. When a killer cared about someone, things were destined to become messy.

  Marini snarled and waved the gun at me. “In the two fucking seconds she’s been here, she’s made an enemy out of Harley, threatened me, and showed a weakness for you.”

  “I can see the parallels,” I drawled. “Difficult was an understatement when I went to get her.”

  “Shut the hell up with your clever words,” he snapped. “Did you fuck my daughter, Chaser?”

  “I wish.”

  Marini’s expression dropped, and the room went silent. We were the only two fuckers in it, but it was like the air turned cold and someone pressed the mute button. He was holding a gun and had a reputation for using it—as recently as the day before I left to get Sloane. I noticed the plaster had been repaired.