The man who’d switched the light on now sniggered. He was delighted at how helpless I was in his hands. He’d just used light as a weapon and it made him feel like God.
He was a member of the Dark Legion. I could tell by his cut. That motherfucker had a grin on his face like he’d just been given cotton candy at the fair.
“You look fresh as a daisy,” he said. There was laughter in his voice. If my hands weren’t tied to my back I would have strangled him. He probably knew that.
I tried to focus on his face, but my head kept swaying from side to side. I was dehydrated and probably losing blood from all the wounds on my body. My eyes drooped as I tried to glare at him.
“I tried to dress up for you,” I said through gritted teeth and the guy threw his head back and laughed.
“Isn’t that charming.”
He walked up close to me and placing his hands on his knees, he stooped down low towards me. Leveling his face with mine. He seemed to be peering into the wounds on my face. Probably assessing me for damage.
I waited a few seconds until I’d built up enough bloody saliva in my mouth before I spat it out. Right at his face. It got him like a thick blood clot on his nose and he roared with disgust.
His knuckles hit me in a punch across my nose and I thought I heard it crack. Or I could have just imagined it. I was at the stage where I didn’t know imagination from reality anymore. Everything seemed real and everything seemed like a dream at the same time.
Blood. Sweat. Dizzness.
Those were the only truths and the only constants in my life right now.
“You do that again and you’re fucking dead meat!” he growled some more, wiping the stuff off his face and then wiping his hand on his jeans. No manners.
“You know, your friends are looking for you,” he continued.
When I heard that my ears perked up. I blinked furiously, trying to see more clearly again. But I couldn’t say anything. I couldn’t display my enthusiasm because then he would definitely use it against me.
“Yeah, they’re looking, but they’re never going to find you,” he said and kicked one of my feet. It sent cold vibrations through my body and I gritted my teeth.
“You don’t know by now? I don’t wanna be found.”
He laughed some more. He was convinced I was making that shit up. He had no idea how true it was. The farther I could stay away from the Marked Skulls, from Oz and Lewis and all the rest. The better their chances were of winning this war. The last thing I wanted was for these fuckers to use me as bait.
“And once we get what we want from your friends, you’re going to die,” he continued.
My nostrils were flared. I tried to even my breath as I glared at him. I hated the sound of his voice. If I could rip the veins off his neck with my bare teeth, I would.
2
Harley
Harley
The Hell’s Drifters clubhouse was secluded because they liked to keep their business to themselves. It was off the highway near the Everglades for ample parking for the bikes and muscle cars these guys used. The clubhouse was dingy, like all the other establishments they operated. It always stank of alcohol and cigarettes and no matter how hard I tried to get the floors clean, I never actually could manage.
It was the late afternoon now, and once again, as I swept the floor of the back room, I was thinking about how my life had ended up looking like this. Eight years ago, at the age of seventeen, I was an ordinary girl who went to school and tried to hide my makeup from my mother because daddy wouldn’t approve.
We didn’t have it great, but we had it good—was what mom always said. But I was foolish and I always wanted more. Maybe it had to do with the fact that they tried to keep me protected from the outside world and from getting pregnant or mixing with the wrong crowd.
They watched over me like hawks.
“She’s too pretty and too naive, our girl,” I would hear daddy tell mom at the dinner table when they thought I’d gone up to my room. I hated hearing that. Hearing daddy say he thought I couldn’t look after myself. That I was foolish.
I wanted to prove them wrong. I was acting out. I wanted my parents to look at me differently—as an adult. As a woman.
So, I started sneaking around. Very quickly, within weeks of my decision to start exploring the world; I was skipping school and buying makeup and clothes they would never approve of.
It had started off as something that was just supposed to be fun. I was making new friends, trying out cigarettes and beer, and wearing fishnet stockings and leather jackets. I even got my ears pierced and then spent ages styling my hair so mom and daddy wouldn’t notice.
It was thrilling, having this secret life behind their backs. At the dinner table I sat with them as their obedient daughter with the baggy jeans and modest blouses. By day, I led a completely different life. One they could never have imagined.
My new friends were convinced I needed a boyfriend. Someone to take my virginity. I blushed at that word, afraid of who they were going to find for me. But it was an adventure. They were right. I needed a guy to make me feel like a woman.
And then I met Caesar.
Well, he met me. He saw me across the room of one of the dive bars I had started to hang out in. I didn’t even see him coming. I only noticed him when he came up to me from behind and wrapped an arm around my waist and pulled me to himself.
“And what do we have here?” he asked, cigarette burning between his lips. “Fresh meat,” he added and the people around us broke into a laugh.
Caesar swept me away because I’d never met a guy like him before. He was older than me, in his early twenties, and I was as close to being starstruck without meeting a celebrity as I could be.
He wasn’t exactly handsome, but he was rough and a quintessential bad boy. Tattooed up with multiple piercings, thick dirty blond hair which he spent ages styling perfectly. A long scar going diagonally down his face. He belonged to a motorcycle club, the likes of which I’d never heard of before. I always thought bikers like him just existed in books and movies. Actually, meeting one in real life and hanging out with his friends seemed like a privilege.
Caesar took a shine to me. I was sweet and quiet and nothing like the girls who usually hung about his club. Like he said, I was fresh meat and he seemed to be my knight in shining armor. He was going to be the one to take me away from the oppressive upbringing I had suffered. Caesar was as good as a prince to me.
I let him have my virginity, because at the time I wanted nothing more than to be a real woman.
He took me in his small cramped apartment, fucking me against the wall of his bedroom while I tried not to scream because it hurt so much. But that was what sex was supposed to feel like, right? He was big and rough and was used to being with women who knew what they were doing.
I was afraid I wasn’t good enough for him.
I was surprised to find that after sex, he still wanted to keep seeing me. I took that as a personal compliment. I must have done something right for him to still want me.
The people I used to hang out with, the ones who had originally introduced me to Caesar—didn’t matter to me anymore. In my eyes, I was his girlfriend now and I didn’t need my family anymore either.
I left home.
It wasn’t easy because both my parents cried. I dropped out of high school and told my parents I had a boyfriend now who would look after me. I was free.
When I went to Caesar with the news, at first, he was confused and upset. I was ashamed of myself for assuming he would want me. He didn’t want the responsibility of me. But then he told me I would need to work because he wasn’t going to look after me.
I thought that was fair. I had my independence now and I could do what I wanted. Luckily for me, Caesar got me a job at his MC’s clubhouse. Cleaning and cooking and generally just being bossed around by the members of the club.
I was too young to know any better. This was my opportunity to earn some money, to live
on my own, to be with Caesar whenever I wanted…whenever he wanted. I thought he was the strongest, the bravest man and would protect me from everything. That I wouldn’t be sad for a single day in my life.
* * *
Within a year of this new life, when I was just eighteen, I got pregnant. Every fear that my parents had, was now coming true but that was not the way I looked at it. I was excited and hopeful.
I lived in a small one-bedroom studio above a Chinese takeout that Caesar had found for me, and the night I took the pregnancy test, I cried with joy. I wanted to be a mother. Even as a young teenager, I would think of baby names and imagine what it would be like to have my own child. To have someone who was totally and completely mine.
I just hadn’t expected it to happen this soon.
In the past year, my relationship with Caesar hadn’t been ideal. It wasn’t the fairytale I had imagined it to be. He was busy all the time and very rarely came to see me. When he did, he was drunk and violent and I had to tip-toe around him so as not to piss him off.
I tried to keep my head down at the clubhouse and get the job done, and I tried to be grateful for everything I had. Even though Caesar had turned out to not be my prince, I tried to still feel affectionate towards him.
After all, he was my man.
He was looking after me in the best way he knew how. And right now, he was the only one I had to call my own.
Then there was the pregnancy. I was overjoyed, over the moon, happy about the new arrival. I couldn’t wait to tell Caesar, thinking he would be excited at the thought of becoming a father. But when I did, he glared at me with rage.
“You’re going to be a daddy!” I said to him excitedly. I’d even wrapped up the pregnancy test in a box with a bow.
He’d stared at me and then the test.
“You fucking did this on purpose, you bitch!” he’d growled and slapped me across the face.
Despite all the times he’d shouted and abused me when he was drunk, this was the first time he’d physically hurt me. And he was sober.
“What are you talking about…” I murmured and he’d caught my hair, bunching it up tightly in his hand.
“You think you can fucking trap me with a kid? You think other bitches haven’t tried this trick before?”
He was growling, his eyes were bloodshot. I tried to wriggle free but he was much stronger than me.
“I’m not trying to trap you, Caesar, please. This was an accident, but I want to keep this baby. I want to be a mother!” I screeched.
When he finally let me go, my head was throbbing in pain. There were tears gushing down my cheeks. Caesar was cursing under his breath.
“If you’re expecting something from me, you’re not going to fucking get it,” he raged.
* * *
Our baby was born, healthy and happy and on time. I was the only one at the hospital, even though I should have been surrounded by my friends and family. There was nobody there to see me. Not my parents because they had no idea I was giving birth. Caesar wasn’t there because this was supposed to be a woman’s job. And I soon realized that he didn’t care about me or our baby.
Seven years later, and Amanda grew up to become a beautiful little girl and the pride and joy of my life. The truth was that she was the only thing that kept me going because I had given up hope on everything else.
There was no way to know what I would have done or what would have happened to me if she wasn’t born. Maybe I would have left, maybe I could have escaped this life but now that she was here; Caesar had the perfect thing to keep his control over me.
I would have been willing to take risks, to try and escape but my daughter’s life was more important to me than my freedom.
In the past seven years, nothing much had changed. I still lived in that small apartment above the Chinese takeout, which was too small for the both of us. I still went to the clubhouse every day to clean up after the men of the club and Caesar sometimes looked at me and decided he wanted to fuck me.
I had no control over my life anymore, because every aspect of it was dictated by this man who I thought was going to rescue me from everything.
I had to obey his commands, follow every order he gave me because he knew where I lived and I knew what he was capable of doing to Amanda. To his own daughter. He now had the perfect way to enslave me to him.
My child.
Sometimes when I watched the guys drinking and fighting with each other at the bar, I would look at Caesar and wonder what was wrong with me. Why had I been attracted to a man like him, or was he different back then? What had I fallen for?
He rarely ever saw Amanda, and he had no interest in her. Which was probably the only silver lining in all this. That my baby girl did not have to get to know her monstrous father. That she was blissfully unaware of the fact that her father didn’t want her.
Maybe when she was older she would ask questions, but for now, I could keep her safe and happy. When I cried, I hid the tears from her. With Amanda I always tried to smile and be cheerful. She didn’t have to know what I was going through. All she needed to know was that I would do anything for her.
* * *
The guys had been partying until late the previous night and they’d made a big mess of the place. Not that there was much benefit to spending the day cleaning the clubhouse because it would be back to the same level of mess by tonight, I knew.
But I did it anyway, because it was what I was told to do. The guys liked to see me around the place, doing their bidding. Caesar had strict instructions for me that I should be skimpily clad and looking my best. I was nothing but a piece of meat to them, and there was nothing I could do about it.
Most of them now at this time of the day were hungover but they’d started to drink already.
I was wearing a short denim skirt and a tight blouse, from which my ample cleavage spilled. I had a broom in one hand and a wet rag in the other. The floor was sticky and wet from beer and other things.
The job consisted of constantly bending down to scrub the floor and sweep. This was literally what I’d been doing for seven years, and even now when I returned home my shoulders ached and I wished I could have just one day off in the week.
The only time I really got to spend time with Amanda was a few hours on Saturdays and Sundays. Everyone from the club was usually too drunk or hungover to command me to come clean.
Now as I went around the bar, scrubbing and sweeping, I tried to zone out. They were talking amongst themselves, some of them looking over at me and my legs every so often. I’d overheard snippets of their conversation already and it was upsetting.
They’d been celebrating last night because they’d kidnapped someone important. That was all I could sense from the conversation. There was a man who had been kidnapped and being held somewhere in the clubhouse and these guys were excited about it.
I gulped, keeping my head down.
I had no idea who they were talking about, but all I could do was hope that he was doing okay. That they hadn’t harmed him too much. I knew what these guys were capable of and if this prisoner had done something to threaten them—they were not going to let him get out of here alive.
Caesar came in just when I was hoping I would have the good luck of not seeing him today. He stretched his arms and yawned.
“You bastards started without me!” he growled jokingly at the guys sitting around one of the tables drinking their beers.
I looked away from him, anxious about what he might want me to do if he noticed me there. But it was too late, he’d seen me.
“Pull up a stool here, give me a foot rub,” he growled at me and some of the others sniggered. I knew better than to delay. Dropping my broom and rag, I rushed towards him as he took up a seat. If a foot rub was what Caesar wanted, that’s what he would get.
3
Dash
Dash
The guy from the Dark Legion was still standing over me, the collar of my shirt was in his hand and he was
tugging at it, peering into my face.
“It’s a pity. So young. So little experience,” he murmured almost to himself. I was debating whether to spit in his face again but he didn’t give me a chance this time. He punched my jaw anyway and my face snapped to the side from the force.
I coughed out blood.
“That’ll teach you to show some respect to the people keeping you alive,” he growled and cracked his knuckles. My throat was as dry as bone and I could feel my stomach contracting from pain and hunger. He spat out on the floor by his feet and then, still cracking his knuckles, he turned and started walking to the door again.
Keeping me alive. I didn’t want to stay alive. The longer I lived, the longer I remained a liability for the Marked Skulls.
I heard the door slam and then the sound of a lock in a key. Just tying me up to this chair wasn’t enough, they were making sure I had no chance of escaping.
I could feel blood trickling from wounds on my face. My lip was swelling up from the impact of that fucker’s hand on my jaw. If I was in pain I couldn’t feel it anymore. It all felt the same to me now. Wounds, bruises, cuts, blood, headache, hunger. I was resolved to the idea that this was the end of my life. This was how I was going to die.
The only way this could remotely be a sweet death was by knowing that Kaya and the baby were okay, that her friend Melody was okay too.
My instinctual reaction to be free made me wriggle my hands in those zip ties over and over again, but I wasn’t going anywhere. Not unless I was able to rip my hands out of the ties and cut through the bones somehow. I considered it for a moment. The pain would be nothing compared to the helplessness of just sitting here and doing nothing.
The guy had said my friends were looking for me. That was the worst news he could have given me. I didn’t want them to come looking for me. I didn’t want them to give up any of their territory for me. I was nothing. I was nobody. Just a prospect and I had already let Oz and Lewis down.
Marked Skulls MC Series: Books 1-5 Page 59