by Amity Cross
“What did I tell you?”
The sound of an enraged male voice tore me from my self-pity party, and my head jerked toward the direction of the common room.
“Stupid bitch.”
The sound of something crashing and a pained wail drew me forward. I powered down the hall and into the common room. Screeching to a halt, my mouth fell open as I saw the scene before me.
Sam was on the ground, blood welling from a cut on her lip, and her face was stained with tears and smeared mascara. Harley stood over her, his fist raised and his face contorted with rage.
My heart twisted, painfully scraping at the sides of my chest cavity. The sight of her cowering like a frightened child was horrifying. I saw her lying there, Harley dominating her like a rabid beast, and I saw red. I sucked in a deep breath as a chill passed through me.
It was her. It was Mom and Marini was hitting her, calling her awful things. Bitch, whore, pathetic piece of trash, useless slut. Her lifeless eyes stared back at me from where she’d been lying on the pool table—the same pool table Sam was cowering against—and Marini was pretending to be livid that his wife had been murdered. Pretending. I saw it now. He’d been pretending he gave a shit about her when it was really the fact his power had been undermined by a rival.
It was the same with Harley.
He’d trapped Sam in an awful situation. He’d manipulated her good nature. He’d used her as a punching bag, abusing her emotionally and physically. He reveled in dominance and fed off violence. Didn’t matter who it was as long as he was in control of their terror. Why? Why?
Piece of shit.
I didn’t think, I just flew into action.
Striding into the room, my vision was tinted red with rage.
“Get the hell off her!” I roared. I grabbed the pool cue off the table and held it high.
His gaze snapped to mine, and his lip curled. The look in his eyes should’ve given me pause, but I didn’t give him the satisfaction of looking away. I didn’t even blink as his psychopathic ass attempted to intimidate me with his sheer size.
“What are you going to do with that?” Harley asked with a sneer.
“Get away from her,” I said again.
“She’s mine, bitch. That means I get to do what I want with her, and ain’t nothin’ you can do to stop me.”
My fingers tightened around the pool cue, and I swallowed the knot of rage that was threatening to take my control.
“Sloane.”
Harley’s attention shifted at the sound of Gasket’s voice, and I struck. I kicked the biker between the legs, the toe of my steel-capped boots colliding with his nasty cock and balls. He doubled over with a cry of pain, and I cracked him on the back of the skull with the pool cue. Then I brought up my knee, slamming into his face.
Harley groaned, and blood dripped onto the concrete floor from his nose. I stepped back, a wickedly satisfying grin pulling at my lips.
“Bitch!” he exclaimed. “You broke my fucking nose!” He lunged at me, his face crimson with rage.
I could see Gasket in my peripheral vision readying himself to launch onto Harley, but I didn’t need him to fight my battles for me. Not now, not ever.
Swinging the pool cue, it rapped him on the ear, and he slipped on his own blood and fell on his side. Hard.
I could’ve walked away from this. I could’ve kept my nose out of other people’s business and continued with my plan for low-key infiltration, but I couldn’t. Not when I saw a man beating up on a woman. Not when I could do something about it.
Leaning over him, I resisted the urge to spit in his face. At least his cock would be too bruised to use it for a while. That was some small consolation to add to his broken nose.
“If you touch her again, I’ll cut off your cock and choke you with it in your sleep,” I said, snarling.
“Sloane,” Gasket barked, the tone of his voice ordering me to stand down.
I wanted to be Fortitude, I bore their mark, so when my lieutenant gave me an order, I had to follow. I would be a hypocrite if I didn’t. So, I reluctantly tossed the pool cue aside and backed off before I stabbed it through Harley’s eyeball. He deserved worse. Much worse.
“Watts, get Bucket,” Gasket went on, handing out instruction to the audience I wasn’t aware had gathered for Harley’s smackdown. “Rhodes, get a mop and haul Harley’s ass off the floor. Enough humiliation has been handed out for one day.”
That was considered enough? That was a drop in the ocean.
* * *
I dabbed a cotton bud on Sam’s lip, and she hissed.
“That stings,” she said with a sniff.
“Of course, it stings,” I shot back. “That means it’s working.”
After I threatened Harley, I hadn’t waited around to see him drag his fat ass off the floor. Instead, I’d hauled Sam to her feet and got her out of there. We were now in my bathroom. She was sitting on the end of my bed while I cleaned her up. Well, attempted to anyway.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” she said, her eyes welling with tears.
“There was no way in hell I was standing by and letting him hit you.”
“I know what he is,” she said. “But I’m trapped.”
“Why?” I asked, my brow furrowing. “Why do you stay?”
“You don’t understand.” Her gaze lowered.
She was right. I didn’t understand. I’d always been strong and not afraid to speak my mind. I’d always stood up to men who tried to dominate me. My father, Chaser, other bikers, the slimeballs who frequented Teasers. I’d never thought twice about protecting myself even though I’d had my moments on the road with Chaser, so Sam was right. I didn’t understand, and I probably never would.
I could try to help her all I liked, but she had to want my help for it to mean something.
Sam was just one of many in this place. The stronger women—like Shondra, Raquel, Kelly, and Emily—knew how to get by in a world like this, but not her. She was too sweet and kind for any of this.
I couldn’t help everyone, not if I wanted to take over Fortitude and use the club to go head-to-head with the Hollow Men. Revenge was a dish best served cold, but it took an army to prepare a meal the size Chaser and I needed. Helping Sam might jeopardize everything.
Maybe I should just kill Marini and get the hell out of here. Maybe that was enough for now. We could get the Hollow Men and their King another way.
“Why?” she asked, turning my question back to me. “Why would you help me? I don’t even know you.”
Lowering my hand, I tossed the cotton ball into the trash and sighed.
“When I walked in, I saw you lying there…but it wasn’t you.”
“What?”
“When I was a kid, Marini used to beat my mom,” I said. “He’d hit me sometimes, but mostly it was her. So when I walked in, it was like old times. I couldn’t stand up for her. I was a kid, you know. But I can stand up for you now.”
Sam wiped her tears and glanced at the door.
“That’s awful,” she said, her entire demeanor changing. “I’m sorry that happened to her, but I’m not your mom.”
She stood and crossed the room, leaving me gobsmacked. Yeah, she was right. I really didn’t understand.
“She ended up getting killed,” I said, rising to my feet. “She stayed, and she got raped and murdered by a rival club. He used her death as an excuse to go to war with them. Then he tried to sell me as a sex slave on my eighteenth birthday. Harley is just like Marini, Sam. He’s just like him.”
Sam hesitated, her hand trembling on the doorknob.
“If you want to get out, I can help you,” I pleaded. “Don’t let it come to that.”
She turned, a smile plastered on her battered face. A smile that never reached her eyes.
“Harley loves me,” she declared, robotically. “He’ll protect me. Don’t worry, Sloane. Everything will be okay. You’ll see.”
Then she left.
Chapter 9
Sloan
e
When I needed Chaser’s reassurance, he was nowhere to be found.
But that was the life we’d signed up for when we decided to come back to Fortitude. Scratch that. It was my idea. I’d forced him to come along for the ride, and now I was in the shit. Big time.
I’d come in here with my bravado and big lady balls and couldn’t let go of my feminist ideals long enough to grasp the bigger picture. Instead of saving one life along the way, I might save them all.
When Harley turned up with a sticky plaster across his nose and two black eye sockets, it wasn’t as satisfying as I’d hoped. There was murder in his eyes, and it was aimed at me.
Chaser said he would keep watch over me, but I hadn’t seen him in days and days. Going to bed on my own was agonizing. Not fighting by his side was hollow. It was strange how much he’d come to mean to me in such a short amount of time…and how starkly I felt it when he wasn’t here.
Chaser didn’t give me courage, only I could do that, but the thought of us being together at the end of all this, free…that was something to be courageous for.
“Your father wants you to have dinner with him.”
I glanced up at Gasket and scowled. The leather sofa in the common room was sticking to the backs of my thighs it was so freaking hot. I’d forgotten how sweltering California could be when it turned up the heat. It was always on, but someone had gone out and turned up the dial…or broke the hell out of the thermostat.
“Someone really needs to work on the air conditioning in this hole,” I said, trying to ignore the part where Gasket said the words father and dinner in the same sentence. I knew I was going to get a talking-to over my various indiscretions over the past week and a half. Thinly veiled threats were Marini’s way of showing his love, after all.
“He’s not going to do anything to you.” Gasket sat beside me, the sofa dipping under his weight.
“I was just trying to help her.”
“You made it worse for her, you know,” Gasket said. “And for you, too.”
“You’re saying I should’ve let him hit her?” My mouth fell open.
“Harley would’ve got his eventually, but not like this,” the biker replied.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I demanded. “Were you—”
Annoyingly, we were interrupted before the insults began to fly.
“Betty.” It was an order, a bark from a little bitch of a dog designed to get my attention.
“Don’t call me Betty.” I snarled as Rick appeared like a creeper, rubbing salt into one of my many open, festering wounds.
“Go with him, girl,” Gasket said. “It’ll be worse if you don’t.”
It was hard for me to remember this place wasn’t a democracy. All those years of freedom had gone to my head and made me soft.
I followed Rick in sullen silence. Whatever happened in that room, I was going to hold my own. I had to tell myself I was more valuable to Fortitude alive than dead. Even if it came down to selling me off again, that was better than dying. While I drew breath, I had a chance of escape.
I’d gotten out of worse situations. With Chaser’s help, a little voice inside me taunted. You never got out of anything yourself. Even when you ran away, Daddy always knew where you were.
Rick opened the door to Marini’s rooms and eyed me like I was the bitch from hell. He had no idea.
He was styling himself as a mob boss, but there was one problem with that. Bikers weren’t so refined. They didn’t have the airs and graces to play with the big boys. Marini was a pretender…but try telling him that without getting murdered for it.
When Rick opened the door, I said a little prayer and stepped inside, hoping Marini had left his pretty mother-of-pearl revolver on the coffee table where I’d last seen it…unloaded.
But I was greeted with exactly what Gasket had said my father had wanted me for. Dinner.
The table was set, and two meals were waiting. Steak, vegetables, and roast potato. How…homely.
Marini was waiting, already seated at the table, a bored expression on his face. Leaning back in his chair, he waved me into the room, exasperated at my obvious reluctance to be in his presence.
Rick slid out the chair opposite and glared at me. He didn’t like being designated waiter for the evening. I’m sure he expected to be out dealing drugs, beating up people who couldn’t defend themselves, and fucking everything with a pussy and tits when he joined the club, not shit kicking for Marini and wiping his ass afterward.
I sat reluctantly, my gaze raking over the table, taking in the splendor of biker-made food and canned beer before settling on my father.
He sat at the end of the table stroking his beard like a slimy predator, his wicked eyes watching me, watching him. Finally, he lifted a hand, dismissing Rick, who sneered and strode from the room.
I eyed the new recruit and rolled my eyes. What a little shit.
“He’s green,” Marini said. No hello, no how are you doing, just straight into it.
“I’m sure he didn’t expect to be your slave when he signed up,” I replied, not skipping a beat.
My father smirked, the action letting me know my passive-aggressive insult hadn’t flown over his head.
“What do you want, Betty?” he asked, reaching for his beer. “Other than pissing off my men. Harley had a good beating coming to him, and quite frankly it was overdue, but not from you.”
“A woman can’t beat on a man who deserves it around here? I thought the strong prevailed, Daddy.”
“Sam is Harley’s property. Not yours.”
“What?”
He tilted his head to the side. “So, what is it, Betty? What do you want?”
“I made it clear what I wanted the first night I came in here,” I replied, my sneer matching his. “Crystal clear.” He sipped his beer, making a horrible slurping noise that made my stomach churn. Ugh. I wouldn’t be surprised if it were brewed with the tears of his victim’s families. “After what you put me through, I deserve it.”
Abruptly, Marini slammed down the can. Reaching over the table, he grabbed my hand and wrenched me close. The force jolted the table, knocking over the glass of water in front of me. The liquid spread, but I hardly noticed. My gaze was locked on my father’s face with laser point accuracy.
His smile had faded, and he’d taken on a demonic look. I remembered it well enough when his fist was raised in the air, ready to fly at Mom’s face. I imagined this was the look he got when he faced his enemies.
His eyes were wide and his lips thin with anger as he twisted my wrist. Pain shot up my arm, but I wouldn’t allow him the satisfaction of seeing me squirm. I let him hold me, steeling myself for the threat that was about to slap me around the face. Metaphorically speaking.
“Don’t think I can’t see what you’re doing, Betty,” he said, taking manic to a whole new level. “Taking women away from deserving men, interfering with their business, making friends, getting my fucking tattoo. You’re a child playing in a man’s world, little girl. If I don’t kill you, one of them will, and I didn’t go and get you for nothing.”
“You went and got me?” I asked, sneering. “You sent one of your little lap dogs to do what you should’ve done years ago. You did nothing but sit on your putrid throne and bark your orders.”
“You don’t need to fight anyone’s battles, Betty,” he said, pulling me closer. “No one takes aim at you. Stay out of Harley’s way. Hell, stay out of club business.”
“Or what? You’ll beat them up like you did Ratchet?”
“He was not given permission to mark my daughter,” Marini practically roared. “A woman should not be touched.”
I snorted, wrenching my wrist away.
He was just humoring me. Lulling me into a false sense of security so I would feel safe. Then when he’d won me over with his psychopathic threats, he wouldn’t blink when he had to sacrifice me for his own personal gain. Ratchet tattooing me with Fortitude’s mark was the worst thing he could’v
e done. I was damaged goods.
I couldn’t let him know I knew what he was up to. I had to play along, no matter how sick it made me feel.
“What do you want with me, Dad?” I asked, turning down the anger in my voice. “Tell me. It’s obvious you don’t want me to be part of Fortitude. Just don’t tell me the things I’ve done to get here have been for nothing.”
Marini leaned back, his face returning to its usual passive state.
“They had me,” I went on. “The Hollow Men had me until Chaser busted in and killed them all. I could be hanging from their King’s ceiling right now. I could be lying on the pool table in the common room like—”
“Shut your mouth.”
What? So now he cared about what happened to Mom? Fat chance.
“What are you going to do about them?” I asked, sticking my finger right into the open wound. “How long am I going to be locked up in here?”
“As long as it takes.” He rubbed his hand over his beard and snorted. “You’re a real pain in my ass. A real fucking pain.”
I shrugged. “I’m a Marini. It’s in my blood.”
He snorted again and picked up his beer. Looking at the food in front of me, I realized I’d lost my appetite and wondered how well it would fly if I asked to be excused.
I stood and glared at him with all the hate I could muster.
“Sit. Down,” he said, the threat clear.
I swallowed hard as my ass hit the chair.
“If you want to live up to that mark on your thumb, you have to earn it,” he said, his eyes narrowing. “Being my daughter is not a one-way ticket. People earn what they have around here through blood. You haven’t earned shit, Betty.”
I glanced at the steak, which was getting colder by the second like some kind of screwed-up metaphor.
“Then what do I do?” I asked. “Just sit around and twiddle my thumbs?”
“Gasket said you showed interest in the garage. Why, I don’t know, but if you must do something, help him. What I don’t need is a vigilante getting herself beaten up or worse. If you have to take your PMS out on something, take it out there, not on Harley’s face.”