by Ambere Sabo
“What? Wait,” I holler, reaching forward to grab her hand before she’s out of arm’s reach. Dragging her back to me, I ask, “What do you mean she doesn’t work here anymore? Where the hell did she go?”
Shaking her head, she tries to pull her hand from my grasp. Tears well in her eyes as she looks up at me in terror, “Please let me go. Please.”
“Where. Is. She?” I growl.
“She’s gone. She hasn’t worked here in over a year and a half. Now, please let me go,” she says, looking around.
“Why did she leave?” I demand.
She shakes her head back and forth, refusing to give me an answer. “We aren’t allowed to talk about it,” she says quietly.
“Fine,” I grumble, pulling a wad of cash out of my pocket. “VIP?” I ask, shoving it into her hand.
Slowly she nods, still searching the room around us. She follows me to the back while all my brothers hoot and holler. Good, let them think I’m just getting a fuck in.
Once we’re alone in the room, she takes a seat on the same couch I sat on all that time ago. Leaning against the door, I ask her again, “Where is she?”
“Gone, she left almost two years ago,” she tells me, pulling on the threading of the couch.
“Why?”
“No one wanted her anymore.”
“Why,” I demand.
“Not after what your father did to her.”
“Explain.”
“He cut her up pretty badly after they wouldn’t give him his money back.”
“His money back? Why did he need his money back?”
With a shrug, she tells me, “I don’t know. He said something about paying for services she didn’t finish. Wraith wouldn’t give him a refund, so he hunted her down the next day and demanded she give it back.”
When she doesn’t continue her explanation, I cross the floor to stand in front of her. Kneeling down, I take her hand in mine, halting the picking she’s doing to the threadbare couch. “What. Did. He. Do?”
“She’d spent the money. Single mom and all, the girl had bills. So he cut her up good. Four gashes across her face. No one wanted her after that. So she left.”
Leaning back, I fall on my ass. I should’ve known that twisted bastard wouldn’t only make me pay for that night. Looking at the ceiling, I scream, “Fuck you.”
I couldn’t go home to Ma’s and tell her what had happened, so I walked the four miles back to the clubhouse, hiding in the bushes with every headlight that passes. If that makes me a pussy, so be it. I wish he would’ve come for me then, instead of making me wait.
I know my old man well enough to know I’ll pay for that punch. One way or another, he’ll punish me for what I did last night. Today, he’s nowhere to be seen. I think he’s going to drag it out as long as possible, making me walk on eggshells until he decides how to punish me for what I did.
I don’t even hear the door to the hole open when he comes in. I wake to his hand around my throat as he drags me from my bunk. The stench of booze pours off of him and blasts me in the face as he puts a finger to his lips and whispers, “Shhh.”
I’ve seen the way he tortures men who’ve done the club wrong, so while I have no clue what he has planned for me this night, but I know it’s going to hurt.
Keeping his hand around my neck, he pushes me through the clubhouse until we get to the basement stairs. “Move,” he demands as he shoves me.
It takes all of my balance not to fall headfirst down the staircase. I know better than to try to run. It’ll only make the punishment that much worse. Besides, Wrecker loves the chase, and I can’t give him that satisfaction right now.
Once we reach the bottom, I see his playground before me. The room is littered with blow torches, chains, and ropes. The nail gun on the back wall is one of his favorites. My mind swirls with all the ways I’ve watched him met out punishment, wondering what he’ll decide to use on me tonight.
Stumbling around me, he walks to the center of the room where there’s a single wooden chair. “Sit your pansy ass down,” he demands.
When I stand rooted on the spot, my heart racing, he roars, “Now.”
With slow, unsteady feet, I make my way to the chair, but before I have a chance to sit, he flips it around so I have to straddle it. Once I’m seated, he pulls my hands through the slats and zip ties my wrists together. Then he ties each of my ankles to the chair legs.
He walks over to his wall of pain as he calls it. I watch as he reaches for the nail gun but falters as he contemplates something. Kneeling down he grabs the thick, cracked, worn leather whip from the bottom row.
He turns around to face me as a twisted grin grows on his face. “This boy,” he says, slapping the ends to his open palm, “is for the money you cost me.” Making his way back to me, he snaps the string of leather one, two, three times until he’s directly behind me.
The first hit cracks across my back, making me cry out in pain. The skin rips bare from my back. “One hundred,” he growls in my ear before stepping back and taking a second swing, “Two hundred.”
The leather cracks through the air, then the third strike hits my skin. “Three hundred,” he says as I grunt in pain. Blood drips down my back. Never in my life have I ever wished for death more.
“Four hundred.” He moves around to stand before me. Kneeling down, he looks me in the eye. “I should’ve known your bitch ass would cry. Cost me money again boy, and I’ll take it out in skin then too.”
Resting my chin on the back of the chair, I stare at the floor, refusing to give him the pleasure of seeing my pain. His boots move out of view as he crosses the room and walks up the stairs. With a slam of the door, I know he’s left me down here to die.
I don’t know when I pass out from the pain or who pulled me from the basement. I wake with a scream when something cold is dragged across my skin.
“Don’t move,” a man’s voice commands as I’m shoved into the table below me. “We have to clean the wounds, so they don’t get infected, Son.” Only then do I realize Hawk is the one holding me down.
A soft feminine voice chimes in, “I have to numb the area before I can close the wounds. This is going to hurt,” she says as the only warning before what I’m assuming is a needle is shoved into my back…
It took over twenty stitches to close the wounds across my back, but if what this girl just told me is true, it’s nothing in comparison to what he did to that poor waitress. How the hell did my life get so fucked up?
Chapter 5
“You plan on knocking,” a voice comes from behind me.
I’ve driven past her house at least a dozen times, never having the balls to actually stop until today. The fear of what she’ll say to me, what she’ll do has me rooted on the spot. I’m too much of a pussy to face the girl whose life I irrevocably fucked up because… well, because I wouldn’t fuck her.
“Haven’t decided yet,” I answer honestly, turning to look over my shoulder, squinting to see the man scowling down at me from the sidewalk. He crossed some pretty impressive arms over his chest. He makes damn sure not to cover the name patch on the cut he’s sporting. Just my fucking luck. I would run into one of the Sons.
They don’t like us. We don’t like them. Couldn’t fucking tell you why. Something to do with their prez and ours years ago. When the law got involved, it was agreed that we wouldn’t fuck with them and they wouldn’t fuck with us.
“Lynch, huh?” I ask, standing from my bike to face him. I don’t like being looked down on, never have. When I step onto the sidewalk, it puts us at almost eye level. He’s a big fucker, I’ll give him that.
With a nod, he looks me up and down before asking, “Any reason you’ve been casing my house, X?”
“Didn’t know I was, Lynch. Was looking for a girl I was told lived here,” I answer honestly with a shrug.
Grabbing the sleeve of my cut, he pulls me to him. “Why the fuck are you looking for Marisol,” he grits out through his teeth.
&n
bsp; “Damn, dude, what the fuck? She your Ol’ Lady or something?” I ask, pulling out of his grasp. “I meant no disrespect. Knew her a few years back, that’s all.”
“Marisol doesn’t live here anymore. Moved a few years back after one of yours almost killed her. You come to finish the job?” he asks, moving his cut just enough for me to see the Glock he has holstered there.
If that isn’t a punch to the fucking gut. Running a hand through my hair, I let out a deep breath and look at the ground before asking, “What the fuck do you mean almost killed her?”
Shaking his head, he looks at me like I’m the stupidest fucker to ever walk the planet. “You think a person can live through losing that much blood without complications? She’s lucky she didn’t lose an eye with what that son of a bitch did to her. And then to pay her off like they did? Like her life was worth so little.”
Without thought, I step right in this fucker’s face, spit flies from my mouth as I seethe, “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Why don’t you go ask your president what the fuck I’m talking about? Better yet, the bastard who did it. Pretty fucking sure you know where your father lives.”
“You know who I am? And still, you came at me?”
The motherfucker has the nerve to laugh in my face. “Knew who you were the first time you drove down this street. Think the Sons didn’t know Wrecker’s kid patched in? When someone’s being groomed after the biggest piece of shit to walk the Earth, we take notice. You have questions, ask your own people. Now get the fuck off my street.”
Without another word, the bastard turns his back on me and walks away. Not giving a single shit that I could shoot him right here and now for how he just talked to me. Hell, he doesn’t give a damn when he walks up to the house next door, letting me know exactly where he lives. Fucker even has the balls to turn and wave before he steps inside.
Son of a bitch.
***
“Where the fuck is Wraith,” I yell at the first waitress I see, drawing attention from the few customers Blue Bells already has. Truly, who the fuck needs to go to a strip club at one in the afternoon? Do these assholes not have lives?
“In, in the office,” she stutters, pointing behind the bar.
With quick steps, I make it to the door labeled office and pound.
“What the hell is going on,” Wraith hollers as he rips the door open.
“What the fuck did you do to her?” I growl, grabbing him by the collar of his shirt.
“X, what the fuck are you talking about?” Wraith asks, swatting my hands like I’m a child.
“Marisol,” I say through gritted teeth.
“Fuck,” he says, looking at the ceiling. “Come in.”
Pulling his shirt from my grasp he turns to walk behind the desk, plopping in the chair seated behind it. Pinching the bridge of his nose, he asks, “What do you know?”
“That you let Wrecker almost kill one of your waitresses because I wouldn’t fuck her,” I spit at him.
“Watch your tone, boy,” he snaps, glaring across the desk at me. “I didn’t let your father do a god damned thing. Hawk never could put a leash on that fucker, and it cost me one of my best waitresses.”
Leaning across the desk, I say through gritted teeth, “She was more than a fucking waitress.”
“And you know so much about the girl?” he asks with a snicker.
“I know she was a fucking mother. Did you know that?”
Slowly, he stands from his seat, getting in my face. “I knew more about that poor girl than you ever did. Watch who the fuck you talk to, boy. I don’t give a fuck who your father is. I will take your fucking life, damn the consequences.”
I swallow, knowing Wraith is probably the one man in the Reapers who says what he means. He gives zero fucks who I am to Wrecker. If what Ma has said is true, Wrecker wanted someone else in the VP position and was pissed when Hawk gave it to Wraith. There’s been bad blood between them since.
“Where is she?” I ask with a huff, stepping back from the desk.
“For that, you’d have to talk to The Sons. They moved her.”
“Of course, they did.”
Chapter 6
“You’ve got balls, kid. I’ll give you that,” Lynch says, sliding onto the barstool beside me.
“Figured this was safer than showing up at your house,” I tell him before taking a long gulp from my beer bottle.
“At my house, I would’ve had to deal with cops and possible witnesses. Here… here my brothers and I could torture and kill you without anyone being the wiser. Besides, don’t the Reapers consider this hostile territory or some shit?”
He’s right, coming to The Sons’ clubhouse was a risk. The looks I got riding up here told me as much. But I need him to know I’m not a threat if I have half a chance of getting his help.
“What is it you want from me son of Wrecker?” Lynch asks, chuckling when he sees me clench my jaw.
“I have to know she’s okay.”
“Why?” he asks, turning to face me. “Why does it matter now?”
“I can’t live with myself knowing she was harmed because of my decisions. Okay? That wasn’t on her. I took my punishment, and it should’ve been left at that.”
“Your punishment?” he asks, as his eyebrows pinch together.
“It doesn’t matter. Will you tell me where she is?”
“Hell no,” he says, shaking his head. “She’s doing fine. That’s all you need to know.”
“It’s not enough. I need to see it with my own eyes.”
“Don’t trust me?”
“No, there aren’t very many people I do.”
“Not even your own club?”
Turning to look him in the eye with no hesitation, I tell him, “No.”
“That’s a damn shame, Son,” the man behind the bar tells me. “Take him to her,” he tells Lynch.
“But—” Lynch starts before the man puts his hands up.
“I want to see how this plays out. Take him.”
“Fine,” Lynch grits out. “Let’s go,” he says, getting up from his stool. Without another word, I follow him from the clubhouse. He doesn’t tell me where the fuck we’re going, not a damn word. He just climbs on his bike, expecting me to follow.
The ride makes it impossible to ask questions. Who was the man behind the bar? What the fuck is he expecting to happen? And those are just the beginning. I’ve questioned my sanity about a million fucking times on this ride. For all I know the bastard is having me follow him to my grave and maybe that’s what I deserve.
Right before we hit Conroe, Texas, Lynch pulls off the main road. With a few twists and turns down a dirt road, a little cafe comes into view. Lynch pulls over to the side of the road, waiting for me to follow.
“You want to see her? She should be in there. But if you hurt her in any way, I’ll personally drag you from that fucking shit hole y’all call a clubhouse and kill you myself. Understand?”
All I can manage to do is nod in response. He doesn’t say another word to me before he walks his bike back and takes off in the same direction we came.
I don’t know how long I sit here, just watching the small café in front of me. As if God himself is going to come down and give me the answers to my questions. My mind begins to panic when the small open sign switches off. This is it. I have no other options. I roll up into the parking lot just as the waitresses are coming out, and I see her.
My chest lurches as the sight. Her once beautiful skin is marred with four gashes across her right cheek. My scars are hidden from sight. Very few people even know they exist, but hers… Hers are front and center for the world to see. I can only imagine the questions she’s been asked about them over the last two years.
“I’m sorry, we’re closed for the day,” the younger girl beside her says.
Reaching up, I pull off my helmet, and I see it, the fear that settles in Marisol’s eyes as she realizes who I am.
“No. God no. Jus
t go away,” she blurts out in a panic as she steps away from me.
“Mari, what's wrong?” the girl asks, reaching out for her.
“I’m not here to hurt you, Marisol,” I coo as I get off of my bike and move toward her. “Please, just let me explain.”
She trips over the stairs behind her and falls back onto her ass. Putting her hands up to protect herself, she looks at the floor and cries. “Your father already took care of the debt I owed. Please don’t hurt me.”
“Look, mister,” the girl says, stepping into my path. “I don’t think Mari wants to talk to you. Maybe you should go.”
Tears glisten off of her scars, and the sight breaks me.
What right did I have to come here? To do this to her?
“I’m… I’m just so sorry. For everything. Please know I never knew what happened to you. I’m… sorry,” I stammer as I walk back to my bike.
Never in my life have I seen that kind of fear. In all the years I’ve watched my father torture people, hurt people, that fear wasn’t something I saw. To see it in her eyes, directed at me… Nothing could’ve prepared me for something like that.
I get on my bike and peal out of the lot. I ride for miles, minutes, hours—contemplating every little thing in my life that’s led me to this moment, to being this person. I only wanted to protect Ma and Lil. Hell, a part of me wanted Wrecker’s approval or fuck even his acceptance. But is this really the person I want to be?
I finally stop and take note of my surroundings. Shaking my head, I park my bike. Never in a million years did I think my ride would end here. Walking into the Silent Sons’ clubhouse with questions for maybe the only one who can answer them. A man who I don’t even know.
People around the club glance in my direction as I make my way to the bar, all looking at the man behind it for guidance. With a nod from him, they leave me be as I take a seat on a stool before him.
“Who the hell are you?” I ask.
“Well, you don’t beat around the bush now, do you?”