by Lilly Atlas
“Yeah, babe.” He jogged after her. “And don’t think for a fucking second you’re driving. Thunder take my bike back to the clubhosue. You ding it, you guy it. Get me?” Screw tossed his keys toward the slightly green-faced prospect.
“Uh, yeah sure, Screw.”
Twenty-four hours later, Shell paced the floor of the clubhouse with a knot the size of a soccer ball in her stomach.
Nothing. The entire club had been out searching for Copper for a full day and not a damn clue as to what happened to him. Something was very wrong. Shell could feel it deep in the pit of her soul. Copper was hurt, and there wasn’t a damn thing she could do. She’d been wracking her brain for hours and couldn’t think of a single place they hadn’t explored. Sleep had been impossible. She couldn’t even tolerate the idea of lying down and attempting a nap. Every ounce of thought and energy needed to be geared toward finding Copper.
“Hey, honey, why don’t you sit for a bit. Have a drink or something to eat.” Toni slung an arm across Shell’s shoulders and tried to guide her to the bar.
After casting a glance at her daughter coloring at a table, blissfully unaware of the seriousness of the situation she shook her head. “No. I can’t sit. My body stops moving, and my mind starts running wild. At least if I’m walking, I’m not going completely crazy in my own head.”
Toni nodded. She understood. She’d lived through fear not that long ago. “All right, hon. Just want to make sure you’re taking care of yourself.”
The door to the clubhouse started to swing open, and Shell swore her heart came to a complete halt. “Copper?” she yelled, charging toward the entrance. She ripped the door the rest of the way open and groaned when she encountered a startled Rocket.
“Where the fuck have you been?” Zach roared, just steps behind Shell. He reached over her head, grabbed Rocket by the shirt and slammed him against the wall. “Our fucking president had been MIA over twenty-four hours and where the fuck were you? I’ve been calling your phone all fucking day.”
“Zach.” Toni came up behind him, laying her hands on his back. His bulky shoulders visibly relaxed.
“Fuck,” Rocket said. “I got held up with some personal business. Fuck! I’m here now. What do you need from me.”
“You got anyone who can trace his phone?” Zach asked as he released his hold on Rocket’s shirt.
Rocket shifted his gaze to Shell. She’d been taking the whole thing in, standing stock-still just a few feet from Zach. “You okay, babe?”
“Freaking out,” she said.
A single nod was Rocket’s response. “Let you know as soon as I have something.”
A rush of air left Shell’s lungs in an audible whoosh. It might not be much, but it seemed like progress. Zach turned and wrapped his arms around Toni. She whispered something in his ear that had him closing his eyes and nodding.
Shell closed her eyes, unable to witness their closeness just then. Her own arms ached to hold Copper and be safe in his embrace once again.
“Get your asses over here,” Viper, the club’s VP, called out, waving everyone toward the bar. Shell moved with the crowd. Once everyone was gathered around, Viper scratched his long gray beard and said, “Let’s put our fucking heads together. Who are the major players here? Who’d have a reason to want Cop out of the picture?”
“Lefty,” Screw called out.
Shell bit her lip. Lefty was the most likely and also worst-case scenario. God, she hoped he didn’t have Copper holed up somewhere.
“Could it be Joe?” Mav said.
“Could be,” Zach spoke up. “But I’m not feeling it. Joe specifically said they didn’t want to fuck with us.”
Izzy caught Shell’s eye. She pointed to Beth then at the stairs. Thank God for this amazing family. Shell nodded to her friend. The things they were talking about weren’t for Beth’s ears, and she appreciated her friend getting Beth away from the chatter.
“I’m with Z on that one,” Viper said. “But we ain’t ruling him out completely.”
“Can’t rule out Rusty either,” Mav said. “That fucker’s been in the wind for a week.”
Shell’s money was on Rusty. Just a gut feeling, but she’d learned to trust them over the years. If only she could think of somewhere Rusty would stash Copper. Was there a place he’d loved when they were younger? Anywhere Copper loved that Rusty might want to poison for him?
A hazy memory started to make its way to the forefront of her mind. Rusty hovering over her naked body, whispering something in her ear. Normally she squashed those memories like the cockroaches they were, but this time she allowed them to come. She’d been eighteen at the time and had been at a club party earlier that night. Copper’s eyes had tracked her from the moment she walked in the door to the second she left. And it hadn’t escaped Rusty’s notice.
One day, I’m going to be fucking you like this, pounding you in this bed, and he’s gonna walk in and see me with my dick in you. Or hell, maybe he’ll find me with my cock buried down your throat. Yeah, that’d be fucking sweet. Can you imagine the look on his face? It would destroy him. That’s my fucking dream Shell. To destroy him. To have him look at this bed and know I’m the one who fucked you in it. I got here first. I ruined his perfect little MC princess.
Shell shoved whoever was standing in front of her aside and moved into the circle around Viper. “What’s today’s date?” she asked, tone panicked.
“March twenty-second, babe, why?” Viper asked.
Her mother was out of town. On a ten-day cruise.
“Holy shit! I know where he is,” she said, then spun and sprinted for the exit.
“Goddammit, Shell, fucking wait!” Zach’s voice chased her, but she didn’t slow.
She had to get to Copper. There was no time to explain.
They could follow.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
COPPER WAS NO stranger to pain. He’d had his ass beat more than a time or two back in his younger days when he was far more hot-headed and hadn’t learned to lock down his temper. Back in Ireland, his pop was in an outlaw MC. The old guy had been involved in some shady shit. Drugs, weapons trafficking, prostitution, even some murder-for-hire, and he hadn’t been afraid to drag his sons into whatever was going on. Copper’d been stabbed by the time he was fifteen. Drug deal gone bad. That was part of the reason he’d pulled the Handlers out of that shit when he took control. He had first-hand knowledge of the havoc that lifestyle could wreak.
The pain of the past day, however, was unlike anything he’d yet to experience. He woke to a burning hot sensation combined with tearing agony. Goddamn, he hoped it was the worst he’d ever feel because it fucking hurt.
“Welcome back, brother,” Rusty said as he dragged the tip of a knife up Copper’s exposed thigh, way too fucking close to his balls. A thin stream of blood immediately flowed everywhere the knife sliced.
Copper hissed out a breath, nostrils flaring and teeth clenched to keep the growl of white-hot pain at bay. “The fuck am I?” Clad in nothing but his boxer-briefs, he was on a bed with his arms extended and cuffed to the posts. He gave his one functioning leg a wiggle.
Ankles were bound, too.
This was pretty much how the past day went. Copper would wake to some kind of agony, demanded to know where he was, endured more pain, then drifted off to a fitful sleep without any answers. Although he had a sickening suspicion he knew where he was being held.
“We’re in one of my favorite places.”
Guess Rusty was finally willing to chat. Probably feeling pretty damn good about himself, having kidnapped and beaten his brother. The first few times he’d woken, it’d been to the whack of a baseball bat on various parts of his body. A baseball bat that looked suspiciously like Louie.
Zach was gonna flip his shit.
Hell, his enforcer would probably be happier to find Louie than his own president.
After Rusty removed the knife from Copper’s skin, he flicked a Zippo open, then stuck the tip of th
e steak knife in the flame. As he rotated the blade in the flame, Rusty stared at the glowing point.
Fuck.
No wonder that shit hurt. A searing hot knife slicing the fuck out of his skin. Glancing down, he noticed two jagged lines identical in size running from his knee to his groin. Shallow cuts, thank fuck because they were right along an artery that could take him out in minutes. He must have been dead to the world to remain unconscious through the first slash.
“Man, the memories I made in this bed. Shell was a damn wildcat back then. She still like that?” Rust removed the knife and tested the burning tip against his finger. “Shit.” He shook out his hand with a gleeful smirk then flipped the lighter open again. This time, he picked up a glass pipe from the bed and held the bowl over his flame. Copper watched the smoke swirl up the tube. The smell of burning plastic filled the air. After a few seconds, Rusty lifted the pipe to his lips and inhaled the smoke deep into his lungs. His eyes closed for one second then popped back open, smirk present once again.
That smirk. Must have been the one Shell spoke of. Evil, cheerful, and excited all rolled into one shit-eating leer. If there was even a cracked window of an opportunity, Copper’d rip that knife from his brother’s hands and cut the damn grin right off his face.
It’d be just the beginning of what Rusty had in store for him. The start of evening the score.
“Not gonna kiss and tell?” Rusty’s pinpoint pupils rolled skyward. His red beard was a scraggly mess, as was the hair on top of his head. Looked like the man hadn’t so much as run a brush through it since he was released from prison. Hell, he smelled like he hadn’t fucking showered in as long. A combination of piss, stale pussy, meth, and booze. The hand stabilizing the knife shook slightly as he said, “So fucking noble, my big brother. S’alright, I don’t mind sharing the details. Musta fucked your girl a hundred times, right in this very bed. Ate her pussy. Choked her on my cock. Made her come again and again. That bitch couldn’t get enough.” He thrust his hips forward and back.
Lies. Fucking lies.
“Damn, I miss those days. Wasn’t sure I’d still want her when I got out, but I gotta say, I’m thinking of starting back up with her again. We got a kid after all. Should be a happy little family, ya know?” He lit the lighter, and the knife went right back in the flame.
Breathing through his clenched teeth, Copper fought to keep himself in check. He stared at the flicker, feeling his own spark ignite deep in his belly. Images of Rusty’s hands and mouth on his woman had him crazed with the need to slaughter. But it was a reality he was going to have to accept. It had happened, so he had to learn to live with it. It’d been Shell’s reality for years. All Copper had to do was listen to the stories. She actually had to live with the sensory memories of the experience.
“Big man, huh, Rusty? Forcing yourself on a teenage girl. Couldn’t find a grown woman to fuck you? None of the club whores willing to spread for your toothpick dick?”
The cords of Rusty’s neck strained as his eyes flashed and a vein popped out across his forehead.
That’s right, fucker.
“Fuck you!” He dragged the flame across the entire length of the blade. Back and forth at least ten times.
Copper steeled himself for the impending pain.
Suddenly, Rusty tossed the lighter on the bed as he shot forward. The Zippo landed directly on Copper’s mangled shin at the exact same time Rusty pressed the length of the smoldering knife against Copper’s abdomen.
“Aggg,” he ground between gritted teeth.
There was an audible sizzle as his flesh melted under the heated metal. Copper breathed through his nose, nostrils flaring and head spinning. Nausea hit, sharp and swift.
“You’re not in charge anymore. Not in here. For fucking once, I’ve got all the control,” Rusty said against his ear. As quickly as he’d spring forward, he jerked back, ripping the knife away and taking a charred chunk of skin with it.
Blackness rimmed Copper’s vision, but he fought the oblivion. “That’s what this is fucking about? Your panties in a wad because you’re not top dog?”
Rusty prowled the small room like a rabid, caged dog. It gave Copper his first chance to check out his surroundings. The bed he was tied to wasn’t large, a double maybe, and the walls were decorated simply with a pale-yellow paint. Across the room, a white dresser held a few picture frames.
Shell with her mother. Shell with Beth. Shell with Sarge as a young kid. Jesus Christ, he was in Shell’s childhood room. Where the fuck was Cindy?
“All my fucking life you’ve ordered me around, taken shit from me, thought you were better than me. You even dragged me to a different country. Didn’t give a fucking shit if I wanted to go.”
“You pissed we left Ireland? Fucking twenty years ago? The men who killed Pop would have come after us. We had a shit life there. You’d have been dead before you turned sixteen. Cry about something else.”
“Shut the fuck up.” Rusty charged forward, ramming his fist into Copper’s face.
Copper spit blood onto the comforter.
“Fucking MC president! Acting like you still have control over me,” he screamed, so red-faced Copper wouldn’t be surprised if he keeled over from a heart attack.
I should be so lucky.
Then like a switch flipped, the anger was gone and the smirk returned. “Shell was just your type. Little blonde, curly hair, big tits, sweet as pie. All American girl. Kind you loved to fuck.”
Christ, his brother was crazy. “She was a fucking kid, Rusty. I didn’t so much as glance at her back then. Not in the way you mean.”
“Oh, I know. The great and honorable Copper would never do a goddamn thing wrong. But that girl was fucking obsessed with you. Knew she’d turn eighteen someday. And come on, all that sweetness turned your way?” He snorted. “You’d have hit that eventually. Remember, I’ve tasted those tits too. Guarantee they’re part of the reason you did hit that.”
Copper swallowed the metallic taste filling his mouth. Didn’t help his nausea. “You’re a sick fuck, Rusty.”
His brother threw back his head and laughed long and hard. “I’m good with that, brother. I go to bed each night remembering the feel of your woman on my tongue. And I sleep like a fucking baby knowing how much it’s eating at your fucking soul. You may never admit it, but I know it kills you that I was there first.”
It was the damn truth. It ate at his fucking soul like a starved piranha. But it wouldn’t for long. Because soon Rusty would die a painful death and that would be like a magical balm. He just had to stay alive long enough for the club to find him.
“Hey! I’m fucking talking to you!” Rusty screamed, hitting Copper’s face again. Then he sunk the knife deep in Copper’s thigh. Straightening, he left the blade buried to the hilt, lifted his boot, and stomped it against Copper’s ribs. His chest caved inward with a sickening crunch. Clenching his fists, he breathed as best he could without being able to inflate his chest.
Something had to give. He wasn’t sure how much longer he’d last with the way he was now bleeding.
“The fuck’s your plan here, Rusty?” Copper asked as he glanced at his thigh. Blood pulsed around the knife, running down his thigh and soaking the bed beneath him. The artery had been hit for sure. If Rusty decided to remove the knife, Copper would be in serious fucking jeopardy. “You gonna let me bleed out all over Cindy’s sheets? Then you’re gonna haul my two hundred sixty-pound dead ass outta here and clean the place before someone realizes what the fuck is going on? Good fucking luck. How the fuck you get me in here anyway?”
“Wasn’t fucking easy.” Rusty paced the room again, gripping his hair with both hands. He was losing his shit. Whether that was a good or bad thing remained to be determined.
“You forget, Rusty, the entire fucking club’s gonna be searching for me. No way in hell you cart me outta here unnoticed. Just take the fuck off. Get outta town.”
He lifted panic-filled eyes to meet Copper’s gaze. “
You gonna call off the hounds if I leave?”
Not a fucking chance in hell. “Sure. You disappear, and we’ll let it the fuck go.” He inhaled wincing at the pain and whistling that came from his lungs. It ended in a fit of wet coughs. Shit, were his lungs filling with blood?
“You think I’m stupid?” Rusty screamed. “Maybe I just slit your fucking throat and leave you here. Cindy won’t be back for a week. You’ll be nice and ripe by then, and I’ll be long gone.”
Copper snorted, the action sending a shooting pain from the bridge of his smashed nose straight through his head. “Won’t matter where you fucking hide. Club’ll find your murdering ass. Then they’ll skin you alive. My one regret will be not participating.” He shrugged as best he could with his shoulders aching. “But it’ll happen.”
Anger blazed in Rusty’s eyes. How long had Copper been here? He glanced out the window.
Twilight. The sun was nearly gone. I’d been early in the day when he rode off to meet Rusty. He vaguely remembered coming to when the sky was dark once before. Had a full day really passed?
The smirk was back, curling Rusty’s lips. He stalked forward at a slow pace. “Actually, think I got my plan.” When he was within striking distance, he wrapped his fingers around the handle of the knife, giving it a twist.
Shit. Copper tensed, pulling on the cuffs in a useless effort to break free as the pain shot to near blackout levels.
“How ‘bout I yank this sucker out, then go visit your ol’ lady. Maybe remind her which brother had her first. Thinking I’ll fuck her till she can’t walk anymore. Then maybe my daughter and I take a little trip. How ‘bout that for a plan.”
Fuck. Fuck! Copper pulled with every ounce of strength he had left. It wasn’t much, but enough to hear a loud crack as wood on one of the bedposts split. “You lay one hand on either one of them, and I’ll use that knife to peel your skin off one inch at a time.”
“Huh.” Rusty grinned. “Don’t think so, brother. You’ll be fucking dead,” he said then pulled the knife out with a harsh jerk.