“He died a little over three years back. Got knifed in a bar fight. Stupid fucked up way to go and he should have known better.”
“Did they catch whoever did it?”
Cane nodded. “We did. My blood-brother Caleb and me.” From the way he said the words, I had little trouble imagining what he and his brother did to the person responsible.
“My dad died, too. When I was eight. He had cancer. It was just Mom and me for a while after that. Things weren't great, but she remarried when I was twelve and they got even worse.”
“How worse?”
“I first ran away when I was sixteen. I didn’t make it very far.” I scoffed and shook my head. “Mom knew I needed to escape and get away, that’s when she gave me the tracker. I’d been so stupid to trust her. All this time... I tried five more times after that. I was even stupid enough to try and run away to college. I mean, who does that?”
My voice stilled and my body tensed as though a great weight rested on my chest. Mom had been so different when Dad was alive. She never drank or took drugs. She always had a smile, even on a bad day.
Cane squeezed my hand. “My Mom was a bitch too. Ran out on us a year or so after I was born.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. She was a fucking waste of space. We were well rid of her. Dad and Caleb raised me, along with my brothers in the club.”
A car engine sounded in the distance and gravel crunched beneath its tires. Cane rose and stood me on my feet before pushing me behind him. Holding my hand, he edged to the window being sure to stay out of view. My heart raced, and I worried Daniel had found us.
“Pizza’s here,” Cane said and smiled before moving to the kitchen to fetch his money.
I sat perched on the edge of the chair, unsure what to do with myself while he answered the door.
“That smells so good,” I said as I breathed in the delicious scent of cheese and tomato.
Cane tossed the box on the table, along with a bottle of cola he’d ordered with the pizza, and opened it up. He took a deep breath in through his nose and smiled. “It sure does.” He lifted a piece and took a bite. “I feel like I haven’t eaten for a week,” he said between mouthfuls.
I joined him and grabbed a piece of my own. To say the first bite was heavenly would be an understatement.
The next few minutes were consumed with silence. The only sounds were appreciative grunts at the much-needed food that warmed our bellies. I was done after three slices, but Cane went on to finish the entire extra-large 16” pizza, complete with mushrooms and pepperoni.
When he’d finished, he sat back in his chair and stretched his arms above his head before rubbing his tummy.
“I should have ordered two,” he said. “We might have had some leftovers for breakfast then.”
I glanced around the room looking for a clock. “When is breakfast? Other than to say it’s night, I have no idea what time it actually is.”
Cane moved to the kitchen and looked at his phone. “A little after two. Midnight Anchor will be kicking out now.”
I nodded and wondered at the relationship Cane had with Cherrie and Greg at the bar. Though it was clear now that Greg was a member of their motorcycle club. I closed the pizza box, carried the rubbish to the kitchen, and glanced around the simple cabin. The furniture was sparse, there was no TV, and while everything was in good working order, it wasn’t exactly high-end. I liked it. Nice and simple without ostentation. “Cherrie called you the owners of Midnight Anchor,” I said. “Is that what you do for a living?”
I worried that Cane would become annoyed at my constant questions, but what else was there to do. We’d had our fill of both food and sex, well... at least it seemed as though we’d reached a natural lull in the latter, for now, and with no other source of entertainment, conversation was our best bet.
It seemed silly to think of me as the conversation starter when I’d tried to be as quiet as possible and not attract any attention to myself for years. It seemed even more silly that I wasn’t afraid of Cane. Even after he said he wasn’t a good man, a small voice inside my head told me he was better than he realized. Although, maybe I’d seen the worst of people in Daniel and anyone, by comparison, would seem like a saint.
“Forever Midnight own the bar,” Cane said and leaned against the counter taking a swig of cola from the bottle before offering it to me. “That includes Greg and all the other brothers.”
The bar was busy, but I couldn’t imagine it providing enough income for the few brothers I’d seen. “Is that all you do?” I asked, wanting to dig deeper.
“Forever Midnight has many businesses. Bars, restaurants. A bike shop or two. Hell, you might even say were nigh on fucking legit these days,” he said while I took a sip from the bottle.
“These days?” I asked.
“Since, the blessed state of Colorado, legalized cannabis cultivation, providing we keep our license up to date.” He sighed and turned to me, his face a mask of concentration. “Life can be rough and tumble sometimes, and by that, I mean brothers get shot,” he patted the scar by his waist, “or stabbed, and they inflict the fucking same in return. Right now, we have a problem with the Feral Sons. Hell, we always have problems with the Feral Sons. Now those are some bad dudes, they’d piss on their own mothers for a buck. They’ve been trying to muscle in on our businesses for years, drive us out a few towns they think belong to them. They’re making a mistake pushing Caleb around. Forever Midnight may be mostly legit these days, but we take care of fucking business when we have to. I know you’ve had issues with your stepbrother, but the world you come from princess is very different from the one you’ve found here.”
I clutched my stomach and rubbed my arms, pushing down the nausea that threatened to churn my stomach. Cane had put me on some weird pedestal and made a whole world of assumptions about me. I may not cuss every other word or have a body covered in tattoos. I’d been privately educated. I’d even fostered the delusion that one day I’d become a doctor, but I was no princess. Our worlds were not all that different, no matter how much it may look like they were on the outside.
A sobbing breath escaped my lips. Cane walked over and pulled me into his arms. I rested my head on his chest.
How could I tell him that my stepdad was a drug dealer, or rather, a drug baron? Forever Midnight may be nigh on legit, but there was nothing legit about my family business. They may dress fancy and live in a big house with a pool, but a polished turd is still a turd. What was it Mom had said? ‘I’m not as precious as I think I am’. It was worse than that — I closed my eyes and focused on Cane’s heartbeat and the movement of his chest — I wasn’t as precious as Cane thought I was.
He ran his hand over my chin and lifted my head to look at him. “You okay?” he asked. When I didn’t respond, he shifted his head and rubbed at my cheek with his beard, tickling it, until I smiled. “You okay?” he asked again before taking a deep breath. “I think it’s time we talked about your brother and what he did to you.”
He kissed me on the forehead and pulled away, taking my hand, and walking me back to the chairs by the fireplace. He sat down and pulled me to sit on top of him. He was silent for a few minutes, and I wondered what he’s thinking. His neck was corded again, and his body seemed tense. He stroked the side of my face and gently brushed my hair behind my ear.
“Did he rape you?” he asked through gritted teeth.
I shook my head. “His father forbade him until I turned twenty-one.”
Cane cleared his throat. “How old are you now?”
“I turned twenty-one the week before I ran away. That was two months ago.”
He squeezed me tighter and ran his hand over my head as though smoothing my hair.
“So, if I’m understanding correctly, that means he now has his father’s blessing to rape you.”
“I guess it does.” I didn’t feel the need to add he had my Mom’s too. None of that mattered. Rape was disgusting and terrifying, and
the thought of Daniel touching me in any way made me want to scream. It was obvious Cane thought that the worst thing Daniel could do to me, but he was wrong.
“I was thirteen, the first time we had one of our ‘sessions’ as Daniel likes to call them.” I clamped my eyes shut to stop the tears from falling. “He told me to go down to the basement and fetch his philosophy book as he was late for class. I’d lived with him for a year by then and had already learned that all the men who worked for my stepdad did what Daniel said, despite his being much younger than them, and I’d automatically done the same. Plus, I’d never been in the basement before. It was off-limits, and I was a little excited to find out what was down there.”
“What was down there?” Cane asked.
“No books.” I huffed out a breath and wiped the tears from my eyes. I’d never told anyone what happened down there. None of my school friends. Not even my Mom, although she knew. It felt weird to be talking about it now, but Cane had asked, and it felt right to share it with him. “There was nothing there. It was dark and dusty and smelled like dirty socks. Only a single chair sat in the middle of the room alongside a small desk with a few things on it. None of them were books.”
My heart raced and I heard its beat echoing back at me from Cane’s chest. “Daniel followed me,” I said. “He grabbed me from behind before shoving a cloth in my mouth, and then pushed me into the chair.”
At the memory, my breaths came fast, and I was in danger of hyperventilating. I tried to move, but when I lifted my hand to push myself up, it was shaking, and all my strength had left me.
Cane clasped onto it with his own hand and pressed my palm to his chest. “It’s okay,” he said. “He can’t find you here.”
I wanted to tell him he was wrong, that Daniel would find me anywhere, with or without a tracker. Hell, if he got a good look at Cane back at the bar, he’d have seen the emblem on his jacket and would know everything there was to know about the motorcycle club by now. Even if he hadn’t, he knew I’d been working at the bar, knew Cherrie and Greg had been trying to help me. Checking out Forever Midnight would be the first step in locating me.
I was playing a waiting game, knowing what was coming and how futile it was to avoid it. I’d accepted my fate as Mom wanted. I guess you could call the time I’d spent with Cane my last hurrah.
“He bound me to the chair with duct tape and told me I was never to call him D-Dan again.” Even now, it was hard to say the word, to let it escape from my lips. “He kneeled before me and pulled the rag from my mouth. I’d sobbed and pleaded with him to untie me. Everyone called him Dan, it’s how he’d been introduced. I didn’t know any better. From then on, I was only ever to call him Daniel. I agreed, said I was sorry, that it would never happen again. But that wasn’t good enough. He said I had to learn. He shoved the rag back in my mouth and taped it in place. Then he put the tape over my nostrils, and stood, never taking his eyes off me. I struggled at first, desperate to break free. Then I stopped.”
Although, I sat safe within Cane’s arms, I was taken back to all the times Daniel had tied me to the chair. My mind swam. Panic flooded my body as though it was happening all over again. I kept talking, telling Cane what had happened, but my voice felt as though it was coming from a great distance.
“I couldn’t find the strength to move,” I said. “The room got darker. It shrank in, closer and closer, until all I could see was Daniel’s silhouette in a stark red outline. I knew then I was going to die, but Daniel moved, he ripped the tape from my mouth and pulled out the cloth.”
Cold sweat glistened on my brow. I pushed away from Cane and jumped to my feet, gulping in breaths. My hand shook uncontrollably. I couldn’t breathe. I had to get air. I had to get out. I rushed to the cabin door, but couldn’t open it. My head swam and my vision blurred. I had to get out. The room was too small.
“Thea,” Cane said and grabbed each side of my face, keeping it locked on his. “It’s okay. You’re fine.”
“I can’t breathe.”
Cane opened the door and pulled me with him onto the porch, engulfing me in his arms. “Take a deep breath,” he said. I gulped in the fresh forest air as though I’d been drowning. “Good, and another. I’ve got you. I promise, I will keep you safe forever. I promise.”
I looked into his face, at his serious lines, gruff beard, and concerned eyes, and knew he meant what he said. I just wish I believed he was able to.
“He did it three more times in that particular session,” I said. “Each time, I felt certain I was about to die.”
Cane swallowed and took a deep breath of his own. “How many sessions were there?” he asked.
“Too many to count.”
His neck corded and the vein on his forehead twitched. “Did he... Is that... is that everything?”
“If he wasn’t in the mood to watch me die, he would push the chair, so its back rested on the floor and my bare feet, bound to its legs by my ankles, pointed in the air. He’d hit the arches of my feet with a rod until he got bored of my screams.”
Cane’s muscles tensed and he felt fit to burst, but his voice was steady and calm when he asked how many times that happened.
“Too many to count,” I answered.
Chapter Twelve
Cane
A clamp of icy anger, more cold and deadly than any I’d ever felt before settled over my heart when Thea told me what her stepbrother had done to her.
Bono had talked about things like that happening in Guantanamo Bay. Dry-boarding, I think he’d called it. Fuck, it was bad enough to think the army used the technique to torture detainees, but they were trying to keep the country safe. Doing it to a kid, a thirteen-year-old girl... There’s no surprise she’s fucked-up. In fact, the big surprise was that she’s not as fucked-up as she should be. We should call her Lucky, as it’s a fucking miracle she’s still alive.
I wanted to phone Caleb and see if he’d found out anything about the fucker. It was past time, I paid him a visit. But the only thing that mattered at that moment was getting Thea to breathe and getting her to realize I was there for her and intended to keep her safe.
She’d been so strong and decisive since arriving at my cabin. It was hard to reconcile the fuck-goddess she’d become with the innocent and fragile mess she’d been at the bar and during her ketamine trip. But as soon as she talked about Dan — fuck am I ever calling him Daniel — and what he’d done, that person came swooping back.
I should have kept my fucking questions to myself and spared her the trauma.
He’d done these unbelievable things to her not once, not twice, but too many times to count. I wanted to know more, if there was anything else, he’d done to her. I wanted to do the exact same things to him, but Thea couldn’t take any more of my questions. Instead, I lifted her in my arms and carried her up the stairs to bed. She laid against my chest, silently crying until all the emotion tired her out and she fell asleep.
Hell, five hours before we’d lay in the exact same spot and the only thing on my mind was how quickly I could be inside her again. Now, I rested in shocked silence, wanting nothing more than to take all her pain away and remove its cause.
“Fuck, Caleb,” I said as I looked at her perfect face and the eyelashes that kissed her soft cheeks. “You were right, after all. I do have it bad.”
Eventually, sleep claimed me too. Only when my phone rang downstairs did I stir. Thea was still resting against my chest and I had a crook in my neck from the odd position I’d slept in against the headboard.
She lifted her head and rested her chin on my chest, huffing a breath into my beard. “Morning,” she said and flashed me a smile. Her way, I guessed, of letting me know she was okay now and not about to have another breakdown.
“Morning,” I said, echoing her words. My way of reassuring her I was calm enough not to rip anyone’s fucking head off. At least on the outside.
She pushed herself up and glanced down the stairs, where my phone still rang. “You’d bett
er get that.”
“Nah. They can ring back.”
They did, three seconds after the first call rang off. Knowing it had to be Caleb, and he’d likely send Bono over to smash down my door if I didn’t answer this time, I slid from the bed and slipped down the stairs.
“What you got on this fucker, Caleb?” I asked, wanting to get straight to the point.
“Nothing good,” was all he said in reply. “Look, I need you to get down to the clubhouse, like now. And I’m not fucking kidding. I need you out of that door within the next two minutes.”
The tone in his voice was urgent and I worried that things had kicked off with the Feral Sons. I sat on the chair at the table and rested my head in my hands. “I can’t leave Thea, and I don’t want to risk bringing her into town.”
“Fucking leave her,” he said.
“I just said, I can’t fucking leave her. If any shit’s that urgent, you can tell me over the phone.” I couldn’t keep the anger and frustration out of my voice and didn’t want to. It was about fucking time Caleb accepted that Thea was now part of my life, even if I was still figuring out what part that might be.
Caleb huffed a breath down the line and fell silent. I waited for him to spit out whatever the hell he had to say next. A hand rested on my shoulder. I jumped from the chair, but this time, I controlled my urge to lash out and punch my assailant in the face.
“Fuck, woman! How the hell do you move so quietly?”
Her face dipped to the floor and she clutched her stomach, rubbing at her arm. I instantly regretted the question. The answer was obvious: years and years of practice; years and years of trying to stay unnoticed, so Dan-the-Motherfucker wouldn’t hear her and decide it was time for another ‘session’.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Just try and give me a warning before you get too close, in the future. Clear your throat or call my name or something. Hell, throw a fucking brick at my head... just let me know when you’re coming, okay? I’d hate to accidentally punch you on reflex.”
Forever Midnight MC Collection: Books 1-3 Page 7