Jerome stared on into the distance of the night stewing that his plans had been, literally, stopped.
Sensing the tension in the air, I spoke as sweetly as I could manage, “Sorry officer. It's all me. I'm supposed to be back home in the morning. My mom's ill and there's no one at home for her. She needs us to be back with her heart pills. She hasn't been able to get out of bed for the past few days...”
“I know how it is. My grandmother isn't too good.” The officer nodded understandingly.
I swear to god that would have been the end of it if Jerome had just managed to keep his cool, but he couldn't.
Jerome's boiling erupted and he slammed a fist down on the car wheel. “You heard her. Can we go now? You're wasting my time!”
The cop glanced at me and then back at Jerome confused. “Sorry sir. I'm going to have to see your license and registration.”
Jerome hissed straight into the flashlight, “You want to see it? You wanna see it, yeah? Fine by me.” He leaned across me and headed straight for the glove box.
Then it hit me. The glove box. The gun.
I screamed out, “No! Don't!”
The sound of the shot blasted through my ears numbing my senses. It was almost like time stopped dead in its tracks for an instant. Stunned, I went for the door handle and collapsed from the car.
From the other side I heard Jerome shouting. “How does that feel, motherfucker? You like that?”
I dragged myself up onto the car hood screaming. “Stop! Don't do it! Stop!”
Jerome stood over the police officer who had both hands pressed to his chest. With a lash of his foot, he kicked the officer straight in the center of the face. The flashlight he still gripped now fell from his hands and rolled across the concrete.
“Please, please. Stop!” I cried out while running around to the both of them. “Look at him! He's just a kid!”
“Fuck that!” Jerome pressed his foot down onto the cop's bleeding chest. The agonized yet deadened groan that poured from the officer's mouth in reaction was something I will remember forever. It was horrifying.
“Please... Please just give me the gun....” I urged before reaching out to the huge Desert Eagle he held pointed down at his target. It's long silver barrel shone unnaturally strong in the night. The reflection of the moon beat down on it.
Jerome's eyes didn't leave their target. “Bitch... I'm going to kill him, and I just wish it was that white motherfucker from Midnight who you didn't tell me about!”
The muzzle flash lit everything around us like fireworks. Bang. Bang. Bang. Jerome fired three more shots into the young cop and all I could do was cover my eyes. I held onto the car roof for support.
“Now let's see if there's anything worth taking on him!”
I uncovered my eyes. Jerome knelt beside the body rummaging through his pockets. He pulled a wallet out, his personal wallet. Behind the cash he pocketed were photographs of family peeking out.
I was in shock. He killed a man without a second thought and hollered while rooting through his possessions. I could have been sick...
In a daze I stepped away from the car, my heels dropping from my feet. Quickly my steps turned intro strides and before I began running down the road and away from the lights behind me. That monster behind me.
“Bitch! Bitch! Where you at bitch?” Screeched Jerome waving the torch in the direction I fled.
I sprinted on gasping for breath desperate to get away from him.
“Bitch! Bitch! Bitch!” He howled demonically while running after me. Each time he shouted that horrible word his voice grew louder and louder. I thought I had run so far, got too much distance on him, yet within seconds it seemed like he was behind me.
“You piece of shit! Try running from me?”
Out of nowhere he half grabbed my hair and half ran through me. I hit the road hard on my front, tearing up all the skin on my legs. Jerome rolled me onto my front while my arms and legs swung out to hit him.
“Bitch!” He swung his fist straight down into my womb knocking all the air out of me. Flat on my back, I dry heaved. The pain in my stomach was excruciating.
He picked up my unresistant body fireman's carry style and carried all the way back to his car. His gun, held in one hand, jabbed into my thigh all the way. We past the patrol bike and I saw the body. Blood pooled around the cop's lifeless form and spread across the road. It looked so red. Too red.
Jerome brought me to the trunk. He opened it and tossed me inside.
“Please,” I pleaded. “Don't do th---”
He pressed the Desert Eagle into my cheek. “One more word and you'll get the same as that cop.”
The trunk slammed shut above. I was trapped in a world of darkness.
~ Chapter Fifteen ~
When there's not a single flicker of light, it's hard to tell the hours passing. They all merge into one...
I don't know how long I was locked in the trunk for. Besides the hum of the engine, the only constant throughout the ride was the sound of Jerome's phone ringing. Someone was calling him. And they were calling him incessantly. His cell rung without breaking more times than I could count.
After a while I started to grasp the definition of what a stress position is. Jerome's car might have been large on the outside, but on the inside it was cramped. Locked between all the usual shit someone keeps in a trunk, my legs were squashed into my tummy with the tip of my head nearly reaching my knees. Quickly, soon after he locked me in and sped away, the cramping started. My toes went completely numb and tingling spread up my thighs. Each inch of my lower body was stung with a thousand needles piercing through me.
I screamed, I shouted, I pleaded for anyone to help – I really did. Yet with each distraught cry, I recognized that no one would come. Surrounded by fabric coating every surface around me and the heavy metal of the body, I doubt even Jerome heard a peep from me. Let alone anyone else. Still, I screamed myself hoarse. It was all I could do to fight.
I found my mind drifting back to Boyd.
It's strange, very strange. Since running into him again, he's been on my mind a lot. Funny as we must have spoken for less than half an hour in total tops at the clubhouse and motel. Going back to Midnight has really brought my past back into focus. A thousand memories I almost forgot have come straight back into focus at the forefront of my mind. And he's at the forefront of them.
Boyd...
The boy I loved before anyone else. It was kid love sure, though at that age it's as real as anything else.
We were close long ago. What would Boyd have done if I he noticed the cut and bruising around my eye? When we were kids we were thick as thieves and he would have done anything to protect me. But so much time has passed. We are two entirely different people. Hell, he's the president of an outlaw motorcycle club who only reconnected with me because my deranged ex of a man was running drugs and guns for him. Looking at it with pure objectivity, I couldn't have expected anything. How many people give a damn about people, friends or not, they knew as kids? Not many.
Suddenly, after endless miles, the car came to a halt and I heard the muffled cough of Jerome.
Thinking it was an opportunity for someone to hear me I kicked out and screamed, “Help! Help! I'm trapped inside! I've been kidnapped!”
But my begging went unanswered. The only person who did answer was the exact man I was trying to escape from. The trunk unlocked and abruptly opened. Blinding light from the morning sun scorched me.
“Chill with that bitching,” Jerome told me while standing over me, his appearance nothing but a silhouette. “There's no one out here. It's just you, me and the lizards. Now chill that whore mouth of yours.”
I yelled at him, “I'm not a whore. You sick murdering fuck!”
He pressed his gun into my forehead and I understood enough that he desired quiet. “Not a whore? Then why the fuck has your man been calling me all night?”
The cold steel of the gun drove into my skin. I eyeballed it, fear
ing the worst. “Who? I ain't got no man. Me and you are finished.”
He forced it down harder with its metal driving into my skull. “Boyd fucking Vendrell. That's who.”
“I don't know... Maybe it's about the drugs you stole. Maybe you're not as smart as you think? Maybe that whole MC has realized what you've done and are looking for you.”
His pit bull expression flickered for a moment. Confusion, fear and indecision all flashed across his face. All of this occurred in a split second, but, as someone who has spent too many years with this poor excuse for a man, I read him like an open book.
He lifted the gun from my head. “Come on. You getting out.”
I yelped when he grabbed my arm and tore me out. He lead my bare feet across hot dirt for a few steps before my eyes could adjust to the burning sun, but when they did all hope of escape left me.
We were out in the desert, way out in the desert. My head circled disbelievingly. In each direction there was nothing. Nothing except dust and mountain range. Never before in my life had I felt so cut off from the world.
Standing alone in this wasteland was a huge one story square house with floor-to-ceiling glass windows and black walls. It was completely incongruous with Virgil, the friend of Jerome's who owned it, and looked more like something a fashion designer would live in. While I only met him a couple of times Virgil drove tasteless cars and had a gaudier manner to match, but by all accounts he was higher up the drug food chain than Jerome. However, the last thing I would have suspected is for him to live in a house like this. Dealing with men in this lifestyle, it quickly becomes hard to separate the fact from fiction. Though when looking at this grand place, I quickly became convinced that the stories of him hosting private drug and sex parties for the very rich and famous must be true. One of the girls he was seeing confided to me that he can get whatever you want as long as you have the money. She stressed the whatever. I thought it was talk, though looking at this multimillion dollar property I now believed every word.
Jerome pushed me up the steps to the house. He let go of my arm, but made sure to keep his gun pointed at me. Lifting a pot with a cactus inside, he pulled a key out from underneath and tossed it to me. “Open it.”
I seethed, “What's your plan?”
He pushed me through the now opened door, the gun following the middle of my back. “I don't need no plan. We just need some quiet. I need to talk some sense in that bitch head of yours.”
Inside the grandeur of the house didn't stop. What I could see of things from the living area, the house was split into two large rooms connected by a hallway. One a decadent living area with a mezzanine bedroom above and modern leather couches, an electronic fireplace, bear skin rugs and views from the windows stretching out into the horizon below. The next was a flamboyant red kitchen with silver worktops and furnishings. I suppose if I didn't have my crazy boyfriend holding me here the surroundings would have been tolerable. The artwork on the walls alone must have been worth a bomb.
“How long are you going to keep this up for? Do you think you can keep me here forever make me love you again?”
“I'm gonna do exactly that. Now sit that ass down,” he ordered. The gun's barrel never left me.
I took my place on one of the black leather couches watching him walk to the phone on the coffee table opposite. He ripped the cord from the socket and then smashed the whole thing down onto the stone flooring.
“Not much of a house guest, are you?”
Jerome ignored what I said, sat down across from me and took a cigarette from his pack. He smoked and each inhalation agitated me more and more. It's hard to explain how ineffectual you feel when there's a weapon stopping you from fighting back. It's like a survival mechanism switches in your mind making you desperate to do something, yet the fear of taking any action means you are left feeling crushed.
Still, with his blow the other night taking all the feeling I had for him away, I wasn't ready to submit. “Are you that stupid? What are you going to do when someone discovers what you've done? You've kidnapped me! Someone will find out.”
He flicked his finished cigarette across the floor and laughed. “Who are you fucking kidding? You've got no one but me. Your parents are dead. You got no friends worth talking about. It's just me... Hell - out here I could shoot you dead, leave you out for the birds and no one would ever know you were gone.”
I shivered and my eyelids began welling up. I believed him. Too much.
Jerome leaned across to me. “You know that? You know how easy it would be? Just kill you if I wanted. You better think about that if you start giving me lip about leaving me again.”
Suddenly the cell inside of his jacket pocket began vibrating. He patted himself down and took it out to show me. Vendrell was the name that came up.
Seeing that name gave me confidence. “Not going to answer? You know what a motorcycle club would do to you if they track you down? It makes me feel good that anything you could do to me, they'll do to you ten times over for cheating them. And it's all on you... The coke you've snorted won't taste so good after that.”
“We'll see, we'll see.” He paused, watching the phone light up. Then, with furious rage, he tossed the cell across the stone floor shattering it into uncountable shards of plastic. “See? Problem solved.”
“You think so? You really think smashing it makes the problem go away?”
“I don't care,” he answered dismissively.
“You should.”
“Woman, it's you who should be ding the caring. When I've got the keys to the car and this semi-automatic in my hand, you've got more to worry about than me. You got to remember there's nothing but desert surrounding this home for a lot further than you can walk.”
As much as I didn't want to admit it, he was right. There was nothing in the distance and in the heat of the desert no one could have walked for more than a few hours.
“Stare on girl. You ain't leaving this place until I say so.” He stood up and made for me. “Come on, we going downstairs.”
“Don't come near me!”
Jerome jumped forward quickly and had me by the arm again before I knew what was going on. “Cut it hoe! There's no food in the fucking refrigerator and I need to go get some. I ain't letting you sit up here all civilized while I'm out. I'm locking you up.”
He dragged me to the thin strip of corridor separating the kitchen and living area. Once I saw a black door opposite the bathroom, I understood that there was more to this house than I initially thought.
“Go on, get down.” He kicked the door open to reveal a long metal staircase.
“What the hell is down there?” The lights were off, but my bones told me something wasn't right. There was a bad feeling in the air.
He shoved me forward laughing. “Didn't I tell you? That's the sex dungeon where Virgil hosts his parties. He like a brother to me, but that nigga can't even talk about half the illegal shit that goes on up in here.”
“Like---”
“What?” He chucked to himself. “Fucking nasty shit. Use your imagination. I bet my nigga is willing to organize anything for them as long as they got the green.”
With a flick of the switch behind me, Jerome turned on the lights and we began walking down. Instantly, I knew what he meant. I'd always heard about the freaky things some get up to in the Hollywood hills, and it was all in front of my in pure technicolor. Red walls were covered in shelves of sex toys of every description. Gags, dildos, latex costumes – it had everything and more. On the black ceiling above chains hung, some even connected to – let god be my witness - meat hooks. Littering the room were larges devices meant for mounting and binding, which wouldn't have appeared out of place in a medieval dungeon. But the worst thing, the absolute worst, was what the center of the room accommodated. A drain for whatever bodily fluids may have been split. All of this was enough to make me vomit.
Jerome could tell what was on my mind, “You remember that movie we saw last summer? Virgil got h
igh and swore to me the guy playing the superhero has been down here and locked in that swing. Fuck... he told me that dirty motherfucker got fucked by a pack of shemales. Funny shit.”
Of course, in the position I was in I didn't find it funny. What he planned concerned me more. “You're going to leave me down here then? With all this?”
“Yeah.” He waived the gun to the corner, guiding me forward. “Now get that chain around your neck.”
The leather strap on the floor was connected to the wall by a heavyweight ring chain and fastened around with an automatic locking mechanism. Like everything else in this borrowed holiday home it was built professional. If there was ever a premium BDSM standard this was it.
“You got the key for this? I'm not putting it on if you don't.” Only when he raised the gun did I listen. I placed it around my neck. It sealed in place tight. There was no way I was getting far from the wall.
“I don't know where it is, but I'll find upstairs I know it. That is... in case you ever deserve to be out of it. Now keep that fucking bitch mouth shut. I'm driving to get us food.”
Jerome walked up the metal stairs and out of my vision. Always the kind man, he turned off the overhead lamp on the way out. Though I suppose given the contents of the room it was a blessing.
I sat down against the wall absolutely wrecked from the past couple of nights. The previous anger and hatred that kept me motivated when dealing with him and the situation left me in the darkness. I held onto the chain and cried my eyes out. The emotions burst from me...
~ Chapter Sixteen ~
For hours I was left alone with my thoughts. Thinking back to what could have happened. What should have happened. Anything I could have done different so I wouldn't have ended up in this nightmare...
In the end it didn't make my situation any better. Out here no one could possibly hear me scream. Literally. That's why he brought me to this desert dungeon. I think, deep down, he knew he had lost me and this was his sick way of trying to keep me. At whatever the cost.
FOUND: A Motorcycle Club Romance Novel Page 11