by K. L. Savage
I sit beside him on the edge of the bed, ignoring the frantic heartbeat in my chest, and I lay my hand on his lap. “What do you need to know about Hector?”
“Is he really your father, or did he kidnap you?”
I open my mouth to tell him that Hector is my father, but again, an inkling inside me tells me he isn’t. “I don’t know,” I say honestly. “I've always known him to be my dad.”
“How did you end up in Jersey?” Poodle asks, laying the dagger next to his right leg.
“He sold me. He said I was too used up, and even though I was used merchandise, someone would still have use for me. I’m not from Jersey. I’ve lived all over. He never stayed in one place long.”
His hand hovers above mine, and I know he’s debating if I want him to touch me. I do. I always want his touch whether it’s bloodied or not. I flip my hand over, and he laces our fingers together. We take a deep breath when we touch one another, like we’ve found the ground again.
“You aren’t used up, you aren’t broken, and your home is here, with me, if you’ll still have me. I know finding this out about me is difficult. I don’t expect you to want to be with me, but I want to be with you. I would never hurt you like I hurt those other men. They are a means to an end.”
“Will you ever stop killing?”
“It depends if I ever find Ellie.”
“Poodle, you have to tell Reaper. If this keeps falling at his doorstep, and you know more than you let on, he might skip the punishment and go right to killing you. Then what will the point of all this be? Of you and me, of your journey to your daughter? You’ve gotten lucky that you’ve been able to get away with it for so long. When do you think that luck will end? It will unless you confide in the people around you. They won’t judge you. Look at everyone else, and you tell me if they won’t have your back.”
“Do you? Have my back?” His question is quiet, and he circles his fingers over my hand in tiny swirls.
“I’ll always have your back, Poodle.” The room is a wreck of papers strung about the floor and bed. I bend over and pick them up, and my brows crease when I notice their faces. Not just my father’s face, but everyone else. Page after page, man after man, I know all of them.
I know them because my father let them use me.
“Oh my God.” I throw the stack of papers on Poodle’s lap and point. “Those men, I know all of those men.” I cover my face with my hands and start to cry. “All of them, they all…”
“What? What do you know?” he asks. “Did they hurt you?”
I nod. “Every single night. One by one they came into my room. Hector kept me drugged, and I couldn’t fight back, but I remember their faces. I never thought—”
“These men touched you?” he seethes as he cracks his neck. “They took advantage of you?”
I nod, hating that I can feel their hands on me, gripping me, bruising me, their breath on my neck and their grunts in my ear.
He stands suddenly and wraps me in his arms, bringing me to his chest where I inhale pine and instantly relax. “You’re mine, and I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”
“I wish they were all dead,” I say as a tear escapes my eye and rolls down my cheek.
“Pick one,” he says.
“What?” I lean back and shake my head. “This isn’t shopping. I can’t just decide who I want to kill.”
“Why not? They decided to use you. They took from you. I need answers. We can kill two birds with one stone. You and me. We can find answers together.” He spreads out the papers, my worst dreams laid out before me, face by face.
I know which one I want dead.
“Him.” I point. “Roscoe Jennings. He was the cruelest to me.”
“What did he do?” Poodle circles his arms around me, and I sink into his safety.
“What didn’t he do?” I say in return. “Use your imagination, and he probably did it. I don’t want to go into details.”
Poodle’s chest lifts my head as he breathes in. His chin rubs against the top of my head when he nods. He pushes me back and reaches down for the paper that my abuser’s face is on. “This one?”
“Yes.”
“Looks like he’s just shy of an hour away. Do you want to go?”
That seems to be the question of the hour. I’m not sure what I want to do. I want to go, I want to give in, but I’m afraid. I don’t want to see Roscoe again, but I can see the need in Poodle’s eyes. He’s biting at the bit to go.
“What do you do when the men aren’t local? What if it’s too far?” I wonder.
“I usually take Lady to a dog show. It will be harder now. She was my cover.”
“Oh,” I say. This is all so much to process, too much to deal with. When I opened that chest, I didn’t expect to find Pandora’s box of horrid secrets. I thought yearbooks, embarrassing photos, maybe some personal keepsakes; not chronological albums of killings, kidnappings, and his murders.
And then that odd looking dagger.
Poodle has done this for so long, but I don’t know if I have it in me to be a murderer. I’ll support him on his journey to find Ellie, but I can’t help him try to kill his past. past I want them dead, but I could live peacefully as long as I never see them again.
“Do you want to go? We’ll need to leave now.” He moves around the room to grab a bag from the closet, and the movement is so natural it looks like something he’s done a hundred times.
The need to be with him outweighs the fear. “Okay, let’s go.”
His smile takes over his entire face, and he throws himself at me, tackling me to the bed. His lips meet mine, and it becomes heated too quick. We’ve taken a weird turn, but being honest with each other has brought us closer. His tongue plunges into my mouth, and he grabs my face with is hand to control the kiss.
I moan into his mouth and run my nails down his muscular back. My pussy floods with heat and need, and his cock is hard against my thigh as he settles between my legs. I’m not sure how long we lay there and kiss, but he works his shirt off my body, the one I put on when I rolled out of bed to look in the chest, and he kneads the flesh spilling between his fingers.
“Fucking hell, I want you so damn bad.”
“Take me,” I say. “Screw everything else. It’s just me and you, Poodle. We can figure out the rest later.” I’m already naked. All he has to do is take his pants off, and I can finally feel him inside me.
Right as he sits up to take his pants off, the door explodes open, and I scream as pieces of wood fly into the wall. Lady yelps and runs toward the bathroom, shaking in the far corner. Poodle covers my naked body with his and stretches his neck to look over his shoulder.
It’s Reaper.
And standing next to him is Badge.
His laptop is up, and there are photos of Poodle on the screen.
“You have some explaining to do, Poodle. Get the fuck up.” Reaper leaves no room for argument. He yanks Poodle off me by the thick of his hair. I grab the sheet to cover my body and back away until my back hits the wall. Reaper shoves Poodle out of the room and turns to point at me. “Get dressed. I’m fucking sick of secrets in this club. They always come to bite me in the ass. Badge, bring the chest.”
Reaper’s going to kill Poodle when he sees what Poodle has been hiding from him for so long.
18
POODLE
I’m so fucked.
Reaper shoves me into the room where Church is held, and everyone is there. All the members look tired, still rubbing the sleep out of their eyes. Pirate is in the corner, icing his eye. It’s black and purple, swollen shut. Everyone seems to be confused, and when they see Reaper behind me, they straighten.
He pushes his hands on my shoulders and forces me to sit in a chair up front near him. Badge drags in the trunk, and Tank gets up and helps him carry it where Reaper is, setting it in front of him on the table that every Ruthless King has sat at for generations. Melissa walks in with my shirt and sweatpants on, she and starts to
walk toward me.
“No, you sit near Skirt,” Reaper tells her. Skirt immediately pulls out a chair for Melissa. None of the other girls are here, which means Reaper thinks Melissa is hiding something from him too. Melissa is shaken. Her face is pale, and the only color she has to her are the red marks I placed on her neck yesterday. She folds her hands on the table and stares at me from across the room, almost as if we’re a continent apart.
Reaper stays quiet and stares at the chest I’ve kept hidden from everyone for so long. He doesn’t say a word, and no one speaks to fill the silence. It’s early in the morning, barely five, and I’m sure people think this is all a dream.
It isn’t.
It’s one of my worst nightmares. I never wanted Reaper to find out.
“You know, I’ve been worried about you lately, Poodle. I thought about it, and I knew nothing about you when you were just some kid Badge brought to me. All these years, everything we’ve been through together, and the way you acted about those deaths the other day didn’t sit right with me. I had Badge do a deep dive on you, and you know what I found?” He inches his face closer to me, and I’m not sure if he expects me to answer. “Nothing. Not until Badge ran into a sealed file.”
I start to sweat, and I glance around at my brothers, the men who have there for me all these years, and I can see the confusion written on their face.
“Reaper, it’s Poodle,” Bullseye snorts as if I’m not someone to be worried about. “Come on, he puts leave-in conditioner in his hair. I’m sure whatever it is, it’s fine. What, he killed a fly?” Everyone around the table laughs, all but Skirt.
He and I joined the club at the same time. We were prospects together. He always knew I was hiding something, but I never trusted him with it. The hurt and devastation on his face tells all. Our friendship might not be the same after this.
“Yeah, Prez.” Knives yawns. “Poodle is harmless. He’s a joker. Is this another joke?”
Reaper slams his fist so hard on the table that a piece of it cracks and falls on the floor. “I’m not fucking joking! You think I want to leave my wife, my warm bed at five in the morning, for some goddamn joke? I just got back from a run, making sure all of our businesses are running smoothly; you think I want to deal with this?” He cuts his eyes toward everyone, and nobody says another word.
“Reaper, please.” My voice cracks when my President yanks the key from around my neck, about to reveal everything I’ve worked so hard to hide.
Melissa’s hand is over her mouth, muffling her emotion as Reaper slides the key in the lock and opens the top.
“You don’t understand.” I try not to get emotional because the last thing any biker wants to look is weak, but he’s about to cut open a part of me that has only just begun to heal.
Reaper lays the dagger on the table, and gasps all around fill the room. He tosses the tier to the ground and picks up the albums, laying them next to the weapon I made out of vengeance and hate. He’s pissed, but when he starts pulling out photos of Holly and Ellie, I jolt from my chair to take the bear out of his hands. One shove with his massive palm against my chest, and I fall into the chair, rolling away from the table.
Piece by piece he lays out my past for all to see, lays out my pain and agony, and that urge to kill rears its ugly, familiar head.
The teddy bear, the album, the engagement ring I never got to give Holly, and then the stack of papers I just printed from Badge’s computer.
Reaper’s voice is calmer when he speaks, but I can still hear the vibrations of anger underneath the effort of trying to keep his shit together.
“Badge did a little research and found out that every man killed in the last thirteen years has had a connection to the state you call home, Poodle. This person, somehow, was getting addresses and records of people who just got out of prison, and that’s when he put a security lock on his computer to take pictures of whoever is using it besides him. Tongue gave you a password, but it was only to notify the computer that someone who isn’t Badge was using it.”
I cut my eyes to Tongue, and there isn’t an ounce of remorse on his face.
“Don’t be mad at him. Be mad at yourself that I felt like I couldn’t trust you, and you ended up proving me right.”
“Reaper—”
“Until Badge opened your sealed file.”
“What the hell is all this?” Tool asks, reaching for the bear.
“Don’t you fucking touch that!” I roar and rip the bear off the table to get it away from him.
“Kid stuff, weapons; is Poodle a sick freak? Does he hurt kids?” Tool accuses, and I press my palms against my eyes again. I hate being the most emotional one of the bunch; it’s why they never expect me to do anything out of the ordinary.
“Fuck you. The last thing I’d do is hurt children,” I whisper.
Reaper opens the file he found on me, and the first image I see is Holly lying in bed, dead, blood everywhere, something I remember all too well. I look away. “Your girlfriend was killed when you were seventeen, and your baby was taken.”
“Baby?” Bullseye repeats. “You’re a father?”
“A kid? At seventeen?” Tool says with shock.
I don’t say anything. I can’t look at that file. I’ve seen everything in there a hundred times. It’s burned into my memory.
“Poodle, you’ve killed all these men over the years, haven’t you? To try to find your little girl, to find your girlfriend’s killer.” Reaper adds another stack of paper in front of me, and they’re all the mugshots of the men I’ve killed. “Twenty stab wounds, just like your girlfriend.”
I let a minute or two of silence go by to try to figure out what I want to say. “I added one for Ellie,” I whisper, fanning the paper with my thumb. “You’ll have to kill me to get me to stop,” I admit and lift my gaze to his. “I’ll hunt every man until I find my daughter.”
“Holy fucking shit.” Bullseye blows out a breath and stares at everything on the table.
The guys pass around the picture of me, Holly, and Ellie, and all of their gazes soften. This, this is what I didn’t want. I didn’t want their pity. I’ve been fine on my own.
“Darius was my first lead. The Sniper Serpents are behind this. You can’t ask me to give up looking for my daughter, Reaper. If you do, I’ll fight you to the death.”
“You have a daughter?” Tongue asks as he stares at the picture. “She’s cute.”
“I’m sorry about what happened to your girl,” Bullseye adds. “I had no idea.”
“That was the point,” I say. “I never wanted anyone to know. It’s important that I do this on my own.”
“Well, that option got taken away when you killed Darius on my territory, Poodle. You got a bit sloppy too. One stab wound?” Reaper tsks as if he’s disappointed about my slip up. “I want to help you with this. This is what a club is for. I had no idea this shit happened in your life. I want to help you bring your little girl home, where she belongs.”
I give the table my back as a tear breaks free. I groan as I try to hold myself together.
“I’m pissed that you were so reckless and killed all those men. What if you would have gotten caught by the authorities? I’m just glad you aren’t a traitor. It’s the one thing that crossed my mind, but when Badge started to put all the dots together, and then unsealed that file, my relieved breath was short-lived when I figured out why you were doing what you were doing.”
“Please, put it all back in the chest,” I say, staring at the bear in my hands. I’ve seen all the items one too many times today. “Put it all back. You’ve made your point.”
“Damn, I never thought Poodle had a dark side,” Bullseye said.
“Try having the person you love killed and your daughter taken, and then get back to me,” I sneer and think back to the night everything in my life changed. “If I would’ve been there instead of pulling extra shifts at work…”
“This isn’t your fault.” Reaper lays his hand on my shoulder,
this time without force, and he squeezes it for reassurance. “Terrible things happen to good people, Poodle. That’s just how life is. It’s a cruel fucking bitch.”
“Look at how fucking scrawny Poodle was. What did she see in you, man?” Tim, the scrawniest of us asks, trying to lighten the mood.
“I wish I knew,” I say simply, thinking about when Holly first spoke to me.
“I know,” Melissa says, and her words have me looking from the proof of my outrage and into those eyes that have me changing everything about myself.
Someone shouldn’t have that kind of control.
One look, one stare, and I’m a new man.
I’m whatever she wants and needs me to be.
“Melissa, we tried looking into you, and Badge couldn’t find anything with your name. So who are you?” Reaper asks. “I swear if you’re a spy—”
“I'm not. The name I have is the only one I know. I swear. My father sold me to the Ruthless Kings in Jersey. His name is Hector Livingston. Apparently, he’s part of the Serpents. I didn’t know he was part of that MC, but I know all of those men that Poodle was getting information on. I’ll tell you what I know, but it isn’t much.”
“He’s the only lead I have to finding my daughter, Reaper. That club went under around the same time Holly died. It’s the only connection I have. I’m desperate.”
“Okay.” He grip his hips as he looks up toward the ceiling. “We have a lot of work to do, but you’re not to do anything alone; do you understand? This is a club matter now. We won’t stop until Holly has justice and we bring Ellie home. And, Melissa, we will find out who you really are too. We’ll figure this out. And maybe I’ll not look fucking seventy by tomorrow with the shit you all put on my plate all the damn time. If anyone else has shit they need to work through, don’t let your pride keep it away because if I find out like this, I won’t be as forgiving next time.”
“What’s this made out of?” Tongue holds the dagger, inspecting it as he twists and turns it. “It’s unique; the end is sharp. I like it.” He brings the wood to his nose and sniffs it.