SOLD: Jagged Souls MC

by Naomi West

  “We need to go to the motel now. I need to know what happened. I need to find them.” I turned back to Bax, who looked like he was ready to dive towards me again, holding me back from doing anything rash. But I was well beyond my initial rage, and the world seemed empty, cold, and clear. I was calculating my revenge, my mind filled with ice.

  “Okay, Creed. If you think that’s best, let’s do it,” Pearl said, but her eyes were on Bax. They were doing that silent communicating thing again. I didn’t care what they were thinking so hard at each other about. I just wanted to find Josh and Ivy.

  The four of us jumped into Pearl’s ancient van. I was always surprised when it started up; it was older than most of the men in the Devil’s Edge and nearly rusted through in several places. But somehow, the engine always turned over, even in the bitter cold of dead winter or the broiling sun of high summer. Nothing ever seemed to bother this giant bucket of bolts. Pearl was as attached to it as I’d ever seen anyone get attached to a vehicle.

  It took less than fifteen minutes to get to the motel, but it felt like an eternity. My mind kept wandering to the very worst possible scenario. The world seemed to fade in and out around me, my mind tangled up in the ice and fire of the potential pain that waited for me at home. My lungs felt small and useless, my fingers twisted around each other, my head felt like it was full of air.

  The motel was quiet; most of the citizens were probably bunkered down in their rooms, hoping to avoid any of the fallout from gang activity on their block. It was pretty standard procedure for those who did not want to be involved; it is what I would have done in their same situation. Who wants to be caught up in other’s business? But it still made my blood boil to know that any of those cowards could have helped somehow.

  Kelly and Christine were already there when I arrived, and I could feel my blood boiling harder. Who the fuck told these two about the kidnapping? Furious, I was forced to join the two of them. The Boss seemed to have something on his mind, and I could not be able to go against whatever decision he made.

  Grumbling, I waited beside Kelly for him to acknowledge me.

  “You know the Cartel would happy to help return any of your people, Creed,” Christine started. She looked more subdued than usual, but I ignored her. The last people I needed to help were the ones who got me into this in the first place. “We- we feel that protecting the Devil’s Edge is now something of a personal cause that must come first.”

  I rolled my eyes, not taking my eyes off of Kelly’s face. He was examining the front of the motel, his mouth curved down in an unusual frown. “You live in this shithole, Creed?” he asked, cutting into whatever nonsense Christine was about to start spouting again.

  “Yes, it was all I could find on short notice after our house burned down,” I answered, trying to keep whatever emotions were trying to surface at bay. Explaining all of those painful, fear-filled hours in such a terse, emotionless sentence made me feel a little like I was lying, but I kept my thoughts to myself.

  The fire and why it happened is not up for discussion at the moment. But that too was Kelly’s fault. The men coming after Josh, and now Ivy, this was all Kelly’s fault. The marks against him were steadily growing.

  I swallowed those thoughts hard, but they stuck in my throat like thumbtacks. I couldn’t seem to breathe properly around them, or around the rage that inevitably boiled up around them.

  “Well, getting your son back is, of course, a number one priority. Your son is just as much part of this as we are and less able to defend himself.” Kelly scratched his chin, glancing up at the darkening sky. It was nearly dark, and they would have to get a move on if they were going to figure out who had him in time.

  “What about Ivy?” I asked before I could stop myself. Both Christine and Kelly turned to me as if jerked by strings, their eyes narrowed and their pose defensive.

  “What about Ivy?” Kelly asked, his voice a careful neutral. “She’s not part of the Edge. She is of no concern of mine. Or yours.” There was a warning in his voice, one I wanted to punch out of him. But instead, I said nothing. “We don’t have time to mend the lives of our collateral damage. It’s not any fault of yours or mine that she got caught up in this.”

  Pearl cleared her throat. “We should check your room and see if they left some sort of ransom note or something. Which one is yours?”

  Taking a deep breath, I turned back to Pearl. “Follow me; I’ll show you.”

  Pearl and Bax were both silent as they followed me up the familiar stairs. I could feel my feet dragging at the thought of what we would find inside of my place. I wanted it all to be a joke. I hoped I’d throw open the door to my motel room and find Josh jumping on the bed, a smile on his grubby little face. Ivy would be hiding in the kitchen, making a meal out of the nothing we’d had money for.

  But there was nothing inside. A few odds and ends had been knocked over and the window was broken and spattered with blood. But the worst part was the suffocating emptiness of it. There was no Josh to scream at him, no Ivy to give a hesitant smile. How had these things become so damned important?

  “Look at this,” Bax said as I scanned the room. He picked up a dirty-looking piece of paper off of the carpet, glancing over it. “You’ll wanna look at this, Creed.”

  I snatched the paper from his hands, so impatient I ripped the corner. On it was a sloppily written note in pen written on the back of a receipt.

  This is C. I think we can both agree what’s going on isn’t right.

  It’s time to talk.

  Your son is collateral. Come alone without telling anyone and you will both leave here alive.

  You know where to find me. This is to talk.

  I crumpled the paper up in rage, tearing it to tiny pieces and scattering them around the room. Carlos is behind this. Carlos Adams, the leader of the Carrion Club. I wanted to shred him to bits, too. Anger surged in my chest and I slammed my hands into the wall. The dent I made only seemed to drive my anger higher rather than relieve any of it. “He wants me to meet him, alone, without telling Kelly.”

  “We can all guess why,” Pearl said, her voice soft and low. She crossed her rail thin arms over her chest, her blue eyes boring into my soul. “Will you go?”

  “Fucker hasn’t given me much of choice, now has he?”

  Sighing, Pearl laid a gentle hand over my shoulder. “Keep in mind that Ivy is an orphan. She has no friends and no family. If you don’t save her, then no one will.”

  That stopped me short. “She’s an orphan?” Pearl just nodded in response, no emotion on her pretty face.

  I knew getting tangled up with her was a mistake. How could I be so stupid? But the thought of losing her, especially if it was Kelly’s fault…

  No, I had to do something to save her. The question was what. If I came as they asked, would Carlos let her go too?

  I really hoped he would. Because I couldn’t be held responsible for how I reacted if something should happen to her.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Ivy

  I pulled at the ropes wrapped tight around my wrists, but that only seemed to make them hurt more. Nausea rose in my belly as panic set in, a panic that I fought against, tooth and nail. Panicking isn’t going to do me any good here. It will only hurt me.

  To calm myself, I looked around, trying to keep my brain busy. There were seventeen boxes, filled with who-knows-what, lined up against the far wall of my jail. The room was small, with a tiled floor. I counted one hundred and fifteen tiles; although several were hidden under the stacks of boxes and the twin-sized bed I was tied to, I managed to multiply the amount and guess the rest. There were twelve full-sized, ugly drop ceiling tiles.

  But I was running out of things to count.

  I leaned forward. If I stretched hard and pulled at the ropes, I could just catch a glance at Josh. He was allowed to sit in the other room, no ropes around his little wrists. They even gave him a pizza and some horrifying zombie movie to watch. He munched on his pizz
a rather happily, his little sneakers squeaking against the tiled floor he sat on.

  The men who watched seemed to have taken a liking to him. I was grateful. At least he would be treated kindly, even if I wouldn’t.

  “So, hermanito, who is the girl, eh?” one of them asked. Since the door to my little room was open, his voice wasn’t muffled at all. I froze at the question, holding my breath.

  But Josh seemed to be ready with a lie. He made a noncommittal sound, probably shrugging his little shoulders as his eyes remained glued to the TV. “I think she lives on the same floor as me and my dad; she’s a nice lady. I don’t know her name, though.”

  “Is that so, little man?” the voice answered, sounding skeptical.

  Josh made another noncommittal noise like he had already forgotten what they were talking about. His father’s son, to be sure. “Can I have more pizza?”

  “Anything you want, hermanito,” the second voice answered. His voice was less pleasant than the first, and I really hoped he wasn’t going to come in here with me.

  The men kept talking, as if to themselves. “So, the girly has nothing to do with Creed?”

  “Does that mean she’s free game?”

  The voice I didn’t like seemed to be smiling evilly as he said, “I think it does, amigo. I think it does. How should we split her up?”

  “One of us has to keep an eye on the boy; who goes first?”

  Panic welled up in me, a layer of sweat sliding down over my body. I could feel my fast food chicken nuggets rising in my belly, threatening to make a very gross and very violent reappearance. These men talked about rape like I would talk to someone about eating a damn salad. They want to--

  My mind seemed to go blank, the horror of what might be happening in here soon thundering through my veins. My blood seemed to turn to ice water in the face of the horrors in front of me.

  Who the hell are these people anyway?

  Sweat beaded on my forehead, and I had to relearn how to breathe around the lump in my throat. I was silent on the outside, but inside I was wailing, screaming, dreading, praying, and hoping for someone to save me. No matter how unlikely that was.

  The sound of a door crashing open thundered through the room, and I nearly passed out from fright. The shotgun sound echoed through my skull like a migraine, shattering what calm I had left. I pulled hard at the ropes, yanking on them even when they cut deep into my skin. My already bloody hands chaffed and split, red blood oozing between the ropes and dripping down onto the mattress below me.

  “You’ll do no such thing. If you touch the boy or touch that woman in there, I’ll gut you both myself,” a new voice boomed. There was no emotion in that voice, no threat. Just an icy cold promise. I shivered at the sound of it. There was a wet crackling sound and then silence. After that, a whispered order.

  One of the men who had been talking so casually about raping me came into the room, his eye already swollen and his lip bleeding. Without looking me in the eye, the Hispanic-looking man reached for my hands. He managed to look sheepish under all of those tattoos and muscles, somehow. It was almost as though he’d shrunk in on himself.

  I felt sick as he came closer, fear rising in my stomach as he got closer. But I needn’t have worried. With gentle fingers, he untied my hands and wrapped my bleeding wrists and fingers with Neosporin-laced bandages, careful not to pull too hard. I was surprised at his little touch. I wondered what would be waiting for me when I met the man with ice for a voice. When it was plain that the man had no other intentions but to wrap my hands and leave me alone, I took a deep breath. Relax. They aren’t going to hurt you. They said so. But the panic still waited in the back corner of my mind, waiting to overtake me again.

  Creed, how could you get me into this? I could feel the sting of those last words we’d shared. I remembered lecturing him for supporting Kelly and his cartels. I also remembered those other words. The ones that still stung my soul.

  “You are pathetic, Ivy. Sitting around in this dump, miserable and waiting for someone to come and fix your problems for you. I don’t need another child looking for protection.”

  I wanted Creed to think better of me. And that meant I needed to grow a spine. And fast. What would Creed want me to do? I wished I knew. He’d want me to stop crying and man up. I took a deep breath, trying to square my shoulders under the weight of my current situation. I needed to be strong for Creed and for Josh.

  So I sat up straight, took a deep breath, and waited, trying not to fidget. I didn’t have to wait long.

  The man that appeared in the doorway was nothing like I expected. I was waiting for another tattooed tough guy with a mohawk and a sneer. But he looked so little like a gang member, I was pretty sure that he couldn’t have been the leader with the icy voice. He looked like a lawyer, dressed down for a game of golf. He wore khakis and a button down, collared shirt with Ralph Lauren logo on it. If this man had any tattoos, they were well-hidden.

  But then I met his eyes.

  They were so emotionless that I stopped breathing for a moment. There was a coldness about his face that made me believe he could kill a man in cold blood like some men ate a steak. I shivered under his gaze and had to force myself not to wince away from him when he sat down next to me on the bed.

  “What is your name?” the cold man asked finally. His words were dripping with a heavy, Hispanic accent of some sort, matching his dark skin, hair, and eyes. He was handsome in a way, but he would have been much more attractive if he didn’t look quite so dark and sinister.

  I took a deep, quivering breath trying to steady my nerves. “My name is Ivy.”

  The man smiled, but it had no warmth in it. The sight of it sent shivers down my spine. “Well, Ms. Ivy. It looks like you’ve gotten tangled up in quite the mess. I do hope you’ll forgive the brutish ways of my crew.”

  “Why am I here?” I asked, forcing myself to look into that unfeeling face.

  The man tilted his head. “Because you were running away from my men with Josh Carver. We had to take you both. Now, if you’ll come with me, I’m sure you would like something to eat.”

  As banal as it sounded, I was hungry. “I could really go for some pizza,” I answered, hoping my brave words covered up my shaking. “What is your name?”

  “My name is Carlos Adams. I am the leader of the Carrion Club. We are part rival, part friend to the Devil’s Edge.”

  I decided to play along with Josh’s lie. “Devil’s Edge?”

  Carlos just smiled that icy smile again and held out a hand. I took it, surprised at how warm his skin was, considering how cold the rest of him looked. “We hold the same territory as the Edge has. It has been so for many years without issue. Until the Edge brought in a cartel’s wares to our territory. It is causing--” He paused, considering his words carefully. “It is causing a disturbance of the balance here. Which is why we have taken Josh. We know Creed, the future leader of the Edge, will come for his son. This will allow us to talk.”

  Leading me into the main room, I blinked at the barrage of bright sunlight streaming through the high windows. This place looked like it might have once been a car repair garage once upon a time. But now, it reminded me of the Devil’s Edge and their clubhouse. There were decidedly fewer motorcycles, but more men. All of them looked wary but determined.

  Considering what Kelly is doing, I can hardly blame them.

  “We have lost the ear of the leader of the Edge, Kelly, but we believe his next in line will listen, if given the right incentives.”

  “Josh’s dad is the next in line for a- a gang?” I whispered. Creed had never made any mention of it. Not that Creed keeping things from me would be surprising. He’d made it pretty clear that I was nothing more than a cheap night of sex. I swallowed, trying not to let the pain of those memories show up on my face.

  “Come this way, Ivy. I want to show you something.”

  So I followed, still tangled up in my own thoughts. I wonder if Creed will rescue me. The tho
ught lit my whole body on fire. I wanted that. I wanted him. I wanted to know he wanted me just as much as he had that night we fucked in my bed.

  But I was pretty sure that was something I would never have.

  Feeling lost, I stayed close to Carlos, hoping I wasn’t following him to my death. Or something worse.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Creed

  I’m going to tear that man’s throat out.

  I daydreamed about wringing that Carrion asshole’s neck, watching those ice-cold black eyes slowly fade into nothing. Then I’d leave his body for the birds. Carrion to the last.

  Fury burned like coals under my skin, seething along each one of my veins. The rage coated my vision like a cloud. I could hear Bax trying to calm me with reason, but I didn’t want to be calmed. I wanted Ivy and Josh back now, and I wanted that Carrion asshole to pay for it with his last breath.