His to Protect: Midnight Riders MC

by April Lust

I made to go after him, red clouding my vision as anger took over. I wouldn’t let him hurt her ever again. Not even with words. But I didn’t get very far. Zelda clutched at me, shaking her head desperately.

  “He’s not worth it,” she murmured, tears in her eyes, pleading with me to stay here in her arms rather than leave to disembowel the monster before us. “Please stay with me.”

  Her words and her big eyes were enough to convince me. I held her tighter and spat at him, “You’ll never fucking touch her again.”

  He laughed a little at that, but it was cut short as Schumacher—the only other member of my club who lingered—punched him square in the jaw. It was already tender from earlier, it looked like, so it couldn’t have felt good now.

  A groan escaped his mouth and Schumacher told him to shut up before things got uglier than his face already was.

  “Are you sure this is a good idea, boss?” Wildcard asked, glaring daggers at Santos, but still sounding worried about the police.

  I continued to hold Zelda as I nodded at him. “Yes. They have a pretty good idea of what’s going on, and more to the point, they’ve already got the file from—”

  “The file?” Santos repeated, sounding nasally thanks to his nose which was probably broken from earlier and filled once again with blood. “You fucking destroyed it! I saw you!”

  I let a malicious, cool grin spread across my face. I wouldn’t have smiled like that if Zelda had been able to see me, but she was tucked safely in my arms and couldn’t see my face. Which let me glace menacingly at Santos without worrying about scaring her.

  “You saw me destroy a file,” I corrected him. “I’d acquired more than a few from your manager.”

  Santos paled as he realized what I was talking about. I hadn’t been stupid when I arrived here tonight, prepared to trade my life away for Zelda’s. Santos was the kind of man who would destroy us both if he could, and make us miserable if he couldn’t. And I knew that though I had leverage against him, getting out of there with myself, Zelda, and the file all intact was unrealistic. I was hoping that maybe I could take care of all of this before things all went to hell, but I wasn’t counting on it.

  Before arriving, I made a point of sending the file with all its incriminating evidence to the police department with a few additional notes of my own. I included Calvin’s name and his willingness to testify, as well as the suspected bribery going on for the lawsuits that were unceremoniously dropped. In addition, I also mentioned that Zelda had been kidnapped.

  If all of that wasn’t enough to light a fire under their asses, then I didn’t know what was.

  The police arrived within another five minutes. They came up and ordered all of us to have our hands up. It took a little while after that to get things sorted out, but eventually they got the message that Santos was the piece of shit who had kidnapped and attempted to rape my girlfriend. They ordered Wildcard to go to the hospital—not in handcuffs, unlike Santos—and I ended up having to go as well. Zelda was told she could check out, though she insisted that Santos didn’t actually rape her, only molested her and savagely attacked her.

  It was enough that I noticed the cops weren’t particularly gentle as they handled Santos, despite his injured arm.

  Schumacher was the only one of us who didn’t need immediate medical attention, so he had to stay and answer question after question. I didn’t envy him, but I also knew the rest of us wouldn’t escape questioning either.

  But I didn’t care. All I cared about was the fact that I had Zelda in my arms again and Santos would spend a very, very long time behind bars.

  ***

  Over the course of the next week, we dealt with the police a lot. Answering questions and explaining how I’d gotten my hands on private documents regarding VCI and their involvement and direct responsibility with the collapse of the charity house. Thanks to Bones, who made some polite calls and veiled threats to the manager of VCI, he was going to testify against Santos in exchange for a reduced sentence, saving our butts by claiming to have “come clean” and given us the documents. That made the evidence admissible in court and it also meant that Santos was likely to take the brunt of the damage for what had happened.

  Santos would stay in jail until his trial date, so I was relieved. He wouldn’t be coming for us anytime soon. Thanks to what had happened at his house and the fact that he was no longer running around out and free, the Wicked Titans were beginning to break apart. Some lingered still, but most had gotten the hint that Santos was going away for a long time and that the Berserkers MC was unlikely to tolerate them.

  It seemed like there was nothing but smooth sailing, and I was more at ease than I had been in years.

  I was sitting on the couch at Jackson’s with Zelda leaning against me, her long legs stretched out and propped against the opposite arm. She was reading something, lost in it while also taking comfort in being close to me.

  I could understand that; I was doing the same.

  Though Zelda had her own place and it would be easier for us to go stay there, she had insisted on spending most of our time here at Jackson’s. I sensed that she was still upset about everything that had happened—and who could blame her—and wasn’t entirely comfortable with her house yet. From what I understood, Santos spent more than a little time there.

  I was just relieved that he hadn’t done what he’d done to her there. I wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to recover from that.

  I was playing with Zelda’s hair when the door opened and voices filtered in. Zelda stiffed, immediately taken out of her book, though she continued to stare at the page, pretending otherwise.

  “…redecorate! What’s wrong with the old color?” This was Jackson and he sounded like he was whining, though not truly upset.

  “Because I’m not two anymore! I don’t want baby pink on the walls!”

  I smiled when I heard the voice of the little girl answering him.

  I was pleased to see that he’d won out in the end and that she’d come home.

  As soon as Zelda recognized the voices like I had, she sat up, lowering her book at the same time. She peered over the back of the couch to see Jackson and Angel. Jackson was surprised to see her there and looked between the two of us.

  He’d missed quite a bit I realized.

  “Hey. So…how are things with you guys?”

  Zelda laughed at that, a rich, sweet sound. “We’re good, Jackson. We’re good.” Then she looked back at me, smiling softly. She stretched so that she could plant a sweet kiss on my lips. When she pulled away, she added in a soft whisper just for me, “In fact, I think we’re going to live happily ever after.”

  I couldn’t have agreed more.

  THE END

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  Forsaken: The Punishers MC

  By April Lust

  I BOUGHT HER TO SAVE HER. BUT I MIGHT HAVE DOOMED US BOTH.

  She looked like an angel on that auction block.

  Perfect for a devil like me.

  I came here to kill my enemies or die trying.

  But I can’t pass up the chance to claim her.

  This started off as a suicide mission.

  But now that I have something to live for…

  I’ll do whatever it takes to get us both out alive.

  Chapter 1

  Nicholas

  The first thing I remembered was white. White everything. Blinding, imposing white, closing in on me from every side like a huge, pale hand pressed over my eyes.

  The second thing I remembered was a noise. It was a steady beep. It chirped every few seconds, as steady and reliable as a heartbeat. That’s because it was a heartbeat. My own, to be exact. The monitor to my right showed a skittering blip that tracked the ups and downs of the organ pumping in my chest.

&nb
sp; A nurse came by, though I didn’t know at the time that was what she was. I thought she was just a warm voice and a soft hand mopping the blood from my forehead and picking out the bits of glass that stuck out from my skin.

  It was a miracle the crash didn’t kill me. At least, that’s what they used to say, back when I was in the group home. My parents’ bodies had been all mangled to shit, hardly recognizable as the people who had once walked and talked and more than likely did things that were at least a little bit valuable for polite society as a whole—like jobs or volunteering or whatever. But little baby Nicholas had made it out with just a few nicks and scratches. Hell, I hadn’t even cried. That’s how the story went.

  It wasn’t even a particularly good story. We were headed down the road; a drunk driver swerved across the partition doing ninety in his pickup truck. Boom, bang, life over. Happened every goddamn day. No dignity in that shit.

  But if you didn’t remember something, how could you be sure it was real? I didn’t remember my parents one bit, and for all I knew, the bastards at the holding facility for state wards, the place where I grew up, could have invented the whole damn story. I wouldn’t know the difference.

  A head-on collision at ninety miles an hour seems like something worth remembering, but maybe the impact shook up my soft, underdeveloped baby brain and turned that particular memory into mush. I guessed it doesn’t matter much. I woke up in a hospital, and that was where it all really started for me. White all around, electric beeps, and not a single person in the world who gave a fuck whether I lived or died. Not much had changed since.

  For as rough of a start as that was, it got worse. Most of the time, babies get adopted into foster families way quicker than anyone else. They’re cuter, I supposed, or else would-be parents just didn’t like the idea of picking up a child who’d already gotten someone else’s fingerprints all over it. Kinda gross, goes the thinking. Like using a fork that another poor sob just slobbered all over. Babies were preferable. That way, they were a clean slate. You got to fuck them up yourself.

  But I didn’t get adopted at all. I lingered there. I liked to imagine there was something to me that scared away the people every visiting day, a big shadow haunting those baby eyes of mine. I’d seen shit. One look at me and you knew it. Parents didn’t want that. They wanted innocence, purity, childlike wonder. I didn’t ever have any of that bullshit. I was then the same thing I was now: a cold-blooded son of a bitch. I was an outcast from day one.

  When you grew up in the shadows like I did, you learned a lot about people. Folks act differently when they think no one is looking. They get sloppy, show you who they really are. They steal and pick their nose and scratch wedgies out of their asses. But that’s just the little shit. Sometimes, you saw truly fucked-up things.

  Like when I peeked my head around the doorway of the state facility late one night and saw the teacher, Ms. Leon, bent over a desk with her skirt hiked up high while the security guard plowed into her with his fat, greasy dick. I’d never seen someone moan like that before. Shit, I thought she was getting killed at first. Took me a minute to connect the shit I was seeing with the rumors the older kids were always going on about—sex. Fucking. You know, the good shit.

  This prim little teacher getting rammed by an illiterate semi-retard making, what, eight bucks an hour? How could she do shit like that and then pretend to get mad when I drifted off during her stupid ass lessons? Fucking hypocrite. Fucking liar. Most of all, fucking whore. I didn’t have the words back then to say all that out loud or even to think it, but I knew I wanted out of that place. It wasn’t for me.

  Which was how I came to be tying together bedsheets in the middle of the night. Eight years old and I was working like a goddamn slave, knotting those things together and pulling on them as hard as my scrawny arms would allow to test the strength and make sure I wasn’t gonna end up four stories below with a sudden and undesirable right turn in the bones of my neck.

  “Psst!” hissed Robbie. He slept in the bunk above me. He’d been there just as long as I had. He wasn’t about to get adopted, either. A club foot was bad enough on its own, but when you have a lazy eye, too…well, I guessed some kids just had shitty luck. Robbie was one of them. He was gonna be a lifer in the group home. I almost felt bad for the guy. But I was even more determined to get the hell out.

  “What do you want?” I whispered back.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  I answered immediately, “Getting the fuck away from this place.” I’d never cursed out loud before. It felt good. A nice meaty, grating tone to the word. It came out of my mouth ugly and grim, just like I wanted. Fuck. I liked that one.

  I heard the sound of sheets thrashing, then the clunk-slush of Robbie struggling his way down the ladder. He hobbled around the bed to stand in front of me. “You’re leaving?” he asked, bug-eyed in awe.

  I nodded fiercely, not looking up from the long rope of sheets passing under my hands. I pulled hard on every knot, making sure it would be able to hold my weight.

  “What are you gonna do? Where you gonna go?” he said.

  I paused and fixed my gaze on him. I did everything I could to screw a serious expression to my face, clenching my jaw as I spit out, “Anywhere but here.”

  I hated the white everywhere. Not everything was so light and happy all the time. The shit they tried to make us see and think was so fake. Bright primary colors and stories about kids with puppies who went home to their families? What a load of bullshit. Every time Ms. Leon tried to reprimand me to pay attention, all I could think about was her bent over that desk, legs spread wide as the man in the jumpsuit fucked her through a torn hole in her pantyhose.

  “But how are you gonna, like, eat?” Robbie persisted. “And where will you stay? You can’t just leave!”

  “Quiet,” I said, “you’re yelling.” He bit his lip and shushed. I took one end of the rope in my hand and squatted by the bedpost where it stood on the floor. “I can do whatever I want,” I told him as I carefully passed the coiled sheets around the post and fixed a knot to anchor it down. “Here, hold this.”

  He took the fabric I offered him in his bunched hands. “Tighter,” I commanded. He leaned back, gritting hard and throwing his whole weight against the tension. I used his leverage to cinch the knot as tight as I could get it. Satisfied, I stood up and wiped the sweat from my hands.

  “Time to go,” I whispered. Robbie’s eyes were still riveted on me. I turned and scooped from under the bed the small bag I’d filled. It only had a sandwich and the few clothes I owned. The night yawning through the window was black as hell, but I wasn’t scared. I wanted out and away. Nothing else mattered.

  I picked up the rest of the sheets and tossed them out the window. They unwound and clunked against the side of the building softly. Peeking out, I saw them reach almost all the way to the ground. Perfect.

  I looked at Robbie one last time. Even then, I knew there was something different about me. I wasn’t the same kind of kid as him. It wasn’t just that I’d seen shit. My parents were dead, yeah, but then again, so were his. I wasn’t getting adopted, but he wasn’t, either. The thing was, that shit didn’t matter. Plenty of brats in here had the same kind of miserable, tear-soaked life. We were all pathetic in the eyes of the world, whimpering little runts, so desperate to be saved or loved or whatever.

  But I wasn’t desperate. I didn’t need any of that. I wasn’t yet sure what I needed, but I knew I had to go find it for myself. So when I climbed out the window, I wasn’t sad or frightened.

  I was ready.

  Or at least, I thought I was ready. When I heard the ripping sound, halfway down the four-story descent, my heart froze. I looked up just in time to see the last few frays of the sheets pop off one by one. The sharp, rusty edge of the windowsill had sliced right through them like a knife. Cheap fabric like this was no match for it. Every tiny jolt of my body ripped another strand. The ground was still a good twenty-foot drop below me. I stayed
as still as I could, not sure whether to go up or down.

  A few seconds later, the choice was taken out of my hands. A tiny breeze pushed me, swaying like a pendulum, and the increased pressure against the windowsill was all it took to finish parting the fabric. I fell silently through the night. The bushes below didn’t break my fall. All they did was add some bloody scratches to go with the snapping of my ankle.

  I laid under the shrubs, groaning softly. Tears were threatening to well up in my eyes. I forced them back, but I couldn’t believe I’d fucked up so fast. Barely a minute out of the door and I’d already gotten hurt.

  I looked down at my foot. It was twisted at a strange angle, pointing farther inside than I’d ever thought possible. Pain radiated up it like sunbeams. I was in agony. “Fuck,” I said. That was the only word that even got close to expressing how badly it hurt. “Fuck, fuck, fucking fuck.”

  The arc of a flashlight piercing the distance caught my attention. It was headed this way. If I got caught here, I was dead meat. I’d never see sunlight again. The facility didn’t have time to deal with runaway risks. The only place equipped to deal with that was juvie, and I sure as hell didn’t want to end up there. I had to keep going forward with the original plan.