Being that close to the silo and smelling the rancid, rotting flesh Cuda is doing everything he can not to blow chunks. I shake my head no like that will stop it but it’s too late, Cuda just lost his breakfast and we hear the men alarmed outside and start heading this way. I cover the side door and Scott gets behind the main, Cuda who gets his wits back about him, ducks and covers behind a round bale drawing his weapon. As the main barn door slides open, Scott slams his gun barrel to the back of the man’s head and knocks him out cold. I motion for Cuda to take my spot at the side door and cross over to the sliding door, abandoning my cover. When man number two enters with his gun drawn, I do a 180 spin and lifting my right leg as I do, managing to connect my steel toe boot upside his greasy head which in turn knocks the gun loose from his grasp. In that time, the third man had entered the side door watching the kick and downfall of his partner. Just as he is about to draw on me the man hears the click of the gun being readied by Cuda’s steady hand and Cuda tells him to drop it. Goon number three does as he’s told and drops the weapon and raises his hands to the sky. Scott picks the gun up off the strewn hay and I cold-cock the guy and he’s out with one mighty punch thrown.
We decide to keep them alive and hog tie them, getting the keys from one of their pockets as we did. We then threw them in a stall full of dried horse shit, leaving behind Cuda to watch them. If he couldn’t handle the stench from the barn, we are pretty certain he couldn’t handle the inside of the silo.
We cover our noses with our hunting masks and open the door. The scent of unbathed bodies, the feces, only masked by the dead bodies is a shock in its own but what we saw with our eyes was beyond anything I had ever come across in my life. The girls were huddled together as far as they could get, filthy tears streaking down their faces. The youngest looking to be approximately 5 years old with the oldest being in her early twenties. On the other side of the round metal building lay five dead bodies and judging by their clothes the females were either club girls or belonged in some way to that life. The two men were too decomposed to gather any information as to their identity but I did recognize the hair of one of the females and her hallowing face, the ratted black hair and blonde chunks it as clear to me that it had been Chains’ old lady Lilith.
“It’s okay girls, we are here to rescue you,” Scott says as he squats down and brushes the tears away from the youngest of the group, “I’m Lexie’s daddy and she sent us here to save you.” The young girl looked up at her savior and wiped her arm across her face to remove her tears, only smearing the dirt into sideways lines now. He bends down and picks her up and she wraps around him, holding on for dear life. As he heads towards the door with the littlest angel, shielding her eyes from the bright morning sun that she hasn’t seen clearly in a very long time. The older girls helping the other, younger ones out of this above ground, pit of hell, each one unaccustomed to the daylight.
Not knowing what to do next but knowing we have to get out of here ASAP with all of these girls, thirteen in total, I walk to the open front of the red barn door and go towards the school bus, with any luck one of the keys we found on the men starts it and we can just haul everyone back easily. Finally, the last key I try the engine wakes up and starts to rev after pumping the gas pedal, “Yes!” I think to myself. We then spend the next several minutes figuring out what to do with the three men we captured. Do we take them with us or end them here and now? We chose to rearrange the ties and get them loaded on the bus, tying their ankles to the bars underneath, holding up each seat. Once we are completely sure there is no way they can free themselves we load up our bows and things, get the girls loaded and settled inside and head down the road, stopping by to have Cuda drive the truck back behind us.
We arrive to a huge welcome of everyone cheering at our return and with the trafficked girls to boot. I know we are going to have to make a quick plan to take them out when 7pm comes and the whole club shows up to find the girls gone.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Elle
When I saw that school bus pull up I immediately knew that my hero was back. I pushed and shoved my way through the crowd of club members and took off in a dead run, jumping up into the muscular arms of my future husband. Benelli spun me round and round as I peppered him with kisses. Once he stood me back down onto my two feet, my boots crunching in the rock, my emotions started getting the better of me and I slapped him in the chest telling him to never do that to me gain. What he said next was the sweetest, most heart melting thing about always coming home to me. I love that man so very much. While we were reveling in our reunion, Sheila got the girls inside the clubhouse and that’s where the shock of the situation really registered with everyone. There was this little girl, and I mean little. I thought Lexie was too young to be kidnapped for trafficking, but there were girls younger than her, one only being five years old. Why would anyone think of someone so young in that way? Were any of them already raped like I had been? I can’t even put that thought in my mind right now. I picked up that sweet little angel and just held her, not even wanting to imagine. Her gangly arms and legs wrapped tightly around me, I can tell she hasn’t eaten and she is covered in filth. “What’s your name, sweetheart? Do you want to take a bath?” I ask the small sprite.
“Brenna,” then she lowers her head meekly, “Can I have a bubble bath?”
“Of course, Brenna, there must be bubbles!” I exclaim and spin her in circles, still held tightly in my arms, and she giggles.
In the tub Brenna is loving her bath, I’ve put so much bubble bath in there you can only see her little, angelic face. Her hair is styled in a shampoo mohawk and I can now tell it is blonde now that it’s properly washed. I rinse her hair, tipping her head back and making sure to hold my hand on her forehead so no soap runs into her little blue eyes. Her hair is so pretty, like strands of spun gold with the natural highlights that little children have, and we adults pay a small fortune to get. I heard a light tapping on the door and I open it a crack and peek my head out, it’s Lyric. “Hey, some of the women brought in clothes their kids have outgrown, I think this might work for now,” she says handing me a folded stack of clothes. I thank her and get back to Brenna before shutting the door.
I get her out of the tub and help her get dressed and brush out her locks. “Now, are you ready to go fill that belly?” I ask, giving her a Pillsbury dough boy poke.
“I’m so hungry I could eat food bigger than this whole bathroom,” she says, stretching out her hands wide to show how big.
“That much food! That’s a lot,” I say, trying to look shocked. We head out to the banquet hall and get in line. The others had been rotating, getting cleaned up in some of the other bathrooms and eating. I fix her and I plates along the buffet and we go to a table to sit with Lexie and her family. Benelli comes and places a kiss on the top of my head and sits on the other side of me.
“Lyric has been getting all the girls an outfit to change in to and after that her and Remington will be walking around trying to gather the addresses and phone numbers for the girls. There’s a big stockpile of clothes the women brought in to donate. Look at that pile over there!” he says and points to boxes and boxes of clothes, “We’re going to have to set up a whole bedroom as a closet for all this stuff. With the direction we are wanting to go with this club, I’m sure it will come in good use.”
I see Lyric walk up with a clipboard, “Brenna, this is Lyric, she’s going to ask you some questions.”
“You’re so bootifull!” Brenna tells Lyric, and she blushes.
Lyric sits down beside the girl, “thank you, I think you are very beautiful too.”
As she asks the little cutie patootie questions, I look around the room at all the girls; I notice how the older ones, closer to my age, have taken on mothering roles with the younger ones. Some of them look so frail and malnourished, you can tell who’s been locked up longer than the others. I think how that could have easily been me in that silo, had they had not rescued me so quickly.
They could have sold me to someone God knows where and who knows what kind of like I would have had to lead. I turn and lean over to Benelli and give him a kiss on the cheek, I didn’t have to say a word for him to know what I was thinking, “I know babe, it’s okay, we got you and these girls before it was too late.”
After the girls are all cleaned up and stomachs filled, we gather up all the sheets Lyric and Remington have filled out. Zen and Dr. Karen Lipe have each set up rooms where they will talk to the girls and give them check ups that way they were treated both physically and psychologically, at least temporarily. Virus has set up his laptop and input all the info into a file. It turns out that these girls were all from around the Tri-state area of Illinois, Kentucky and Indiana. After finishing, he closes his laptop and heads into church with the rest of the men.
Benelli
This was going to be a tricky situation. We need to get these girls home to their families, but we can’t have people coming in and out at the clubhouse with all the shit that’s about to go down. We need to maintain the lockdown until we have led the Vengeful Demons to their demise. The Indiana charter, led by Mayhem, Lucky’s brother, arrived just before we called church. Lerch is on his way with some of the St. Louis chapter to guard the clubhouse while we are gone. We don’t know what’s going to happen and need all the manpower we can get.
“I hate doing this, but the girls are going to have to wait before contacting their families to come get them or we take them home. We need to plan this out and get it done ASAP so they can see their families. We can’t have a bunch of people coming here we don’t know and you know that the second these people know we have found their girls this place will be crawling with strangers,” I tell the men and they agree. “Any ideas how we kill these fuckers once and for all without the police coming down on us? You know they aren’t gonna like the fact we did this on our own without getting them involved.”
“I say we blow those mother fucker’s up in that prison silo,” Phoenix states angrily, his jaw clenched. There’s a dangerous look on his face, his eyes the color of a moonless night, dark and void. I’ve only seen that look one other time, and that was just outside Bagram, 25 kilometers north of Kabul in Afghanistan, he had came across a man strapping a bomb to a young boy and before the man had it all the way on the child, Phoenix had snapped the man’s neck. He managed to get it off of the kid before it was detonated, took it to where the young boy had pointed, a small building holding several men, chucked it in, and he calmly and methodically walked away, clicking the detonator with his raised arm pointing towards the building and it exploding just as some of the men were exiting the building. Limbs and rock being flung into the air and he just kept slowly walking away. I ran and grabbed him, pushing him with me behind a tank as the shooting began. His eyes were the same color that day.
I clear my throat and ask, “Okay, I like how you think man but anyone have any ideas how to pull that off without the cops coming back on us?”
“Make it look like a meth lab blew up,” Justice states.
“I know where I can get a propane tank,” Toxey chimes in ready for his first “real” heavy action in the club since being patched.
“We’re down for that,” Mayhem chuckles, linking his fingers and leaning his arms on the table, and his members nod in agreement.
“Momma didn’t call you Mayhem for nothing,” Lucky tells his brother and slaps him across the back.
“Okay, we’ve only got a small window before they find out the girls are gone. How quick can you get that tank?” I ask, grinning mischievously.
We get all the plans lined out of who goes where, what we do in possible scenarios, how to get the most VD members there at one time to trap them in the silo and we thought, what the hell, barn too, go big or go home, right? We are currently deciding on what to do with the three members we captured when we rescued the girls. Of course, my twisted enforcer brother wants to torture them as well as Phoenix and Apache. He is one of the more sadistic members of the Indiana chapter. He can skin a man like a big buck and not even phase him.
The plan is set, and we have agreed to get as much info out of our hostages as we can before we take down the rest of their club at 7pm, after we have accomplished that and we are sure there is no more threat, we get the girls back with their families. Nothing like always having a miniscule amount of time to work miracles, but I know we’ve got this.
After we dismiss church Elle pulls me to the side, “Uhm, Lyric couldn’t get any information on where Brenna is from or who her family is. She wouldn’t tell her anything about her family.”
“Nothing at all?” I ask her, “where is she now?”
“She’s with Zen, I even tried asking her and she gets terrified and quiets up. She was a little talker before we started asking about her family. She loved her bubble bath. I just don’t get it,” Elle says.
Just then Zen walks over to us as we were heading over that way, “you are never going to believe this, look at them,” and she motions over to Brenna sitting on Phoenix’s lap and she’s talking and laughing and smooshing his face with her hands.
I look over to them and my mouth drops open; I mean I did see him keep an eye on that boy that he took the bomb off of but I’ve never seen him like this in all the years I’ve known him since we got stationed together.
“All I know is I told him that she closed off when we asked about her family and he whispered something in her ear and now this,” Zen says pointing at him.
“What did he tell her?” I ask.
“Hell if I know, she hasn’t left his side ever since he came over after church,” was her reply.
“Well, I’ve got to get everything lined out, we are going to pull out of here at 5pm.” I say to the two women before me.
“Do I need to grab him for you?” Zen asks.
“No, they’re fine, I’m going to guess he needs this as much as she does,” I tell her.
We go about our planning and getting things ready and our woman are kicking ass making sure all of the extra people from being on lockdown on top of the girls we rescued are all taken care of. We eat an early supper and kiss our families goodbye as we head out to take down the club.
As all of the Unfortunate Souls, New Freedom and Indianapolis, Indiana chapter head to the site where we found the girls, loaded down with weapons and all the ingredients to make it look like a meth lab explosion. I pull Phoenix off to the side, “You good man?”
“I fucking hate people that do shit to kids, they can all fucking die, I’m glad we’re doing this, taking this kind of shit on, we needed something like this, ya know? Like a direction, not just owning businesses and fun runs, I need this,” Phoenix replies.
“So, you ever gonna tell me what happened to you?” I ask point blank.
“It’s fucked up bro, my life was fucked up, I’d just rather keep it locked down for now,” he states then adds, “C’mon, we got evil to destroy,” and shoves his shoulder into mine with his hands in the pockets of his well-worn leather coat.
We get the propane tank and all the explosives set up and ready to go. We have all of our bikes and vehicles hidden but ready to ride and the entire place surrounded by two chapters of Unfortunate Souls. It’s really important that we take the whole crew out this time. Not one single Vengeful Demon is worth a pot to piss in, especially when they are all going along with the trafficking, but that ends today. We are all hidden in different areas of the farm, some in the old barn, some behind the silo, and the rest in the woods or hidden in the fields, there is no way they can escape. Now it’s just a waiting game until they start arriving.
At exactly 18:57 we hear the rumble of motorcycles and my muscles tense in anticipation. I raise my fist in the air for the men to hold their position. Two by two bikes are pulling up to location and parking in a long row from the corner of the weather-beaten barn and ending by the remnants of the harvested cornfield. Behind them two brand new Obsidian Black Mercedes-AMG G63 SUV’s pull up and p
ark. Someone has money, I think to myself and look over to Phoenix and he is pissed and I know why. Someone with that kind of money has to have been trafficking for a while now.
I watch as I see men exiting the vehicles in custom-tailored suits, the obvious security guards with their unnecessary sunglasses standing in front of the shorter man that stands trying to look superior adjusting his gold cufflinks. The men walk only a few steps towards the Vengeful Demons and then take their stance; the guards stand erect but not stiff, their feet shoulder width apart and each having their one hand clasped over the wrist of the other arm in front of them giving them an air of not only confidence but power. They might fool the Demons, but they don’t fool me, I know that tactic.
I watch as Snake walks up to the men, his patched jean jacket with its rips, tears and years of filth built up on it do nothing to impress the rich man. “Where is your boss, Calibar?” one of the men asks.
My ears perk up at the name, “He is close and will be here once you’ve seen the girls and agreed to our terms,” says Snake.
“I feel that you and your leader are mistaken. We already have a deal set in place. The price is non-negotiable. I was promised 14 girls with at least 10 of them being virgins, those that are not must be high-quality beauties,” says the well-dressed man speaking in Mandarin, and then translated by the first asking about Calibar.
Benelli's Elle: Unfortunate Souls MC Book One Page 15