CHOKE: A Dark Bad Boy Romance

by Ella Wolfe

  But he had been, hadn't he? Every time she'd wanted to leave, Slash had fought tooth and nail to keep her in. Hadn't that been what made her the angriest with him? That she was being kept like a pet bird in a cage, just another cell? But, no, she needed to look at the source of the ideas going into her head. This was Wayne she was dealing with.

  “He's a criminal, sweetie. A very, very bad man. And he's been keeping you because I was trying to do the right thing and protect you, and the town. Remember? I'm the good guy?”

  Okay, that part she knew was bullshit. He could lie to himself all he wanted, but that kind of shit wasn't going to fly with her. She brushed away his hand. He looked hurt as he retracted his hand.

  “If you're such a good guy,” she spat, “why the hell are you keeping me here with two guys who are talking about raping me?”

  His eyes went cold. Back to the same look he'd give her just before the beatings began. The old Wayne was back. With a vengeance. “What?” he asked, his voice almost a hiss.

  Before she could respond, though, he was up off the cot in a blur. His hand went inside his coat and came back out holding a chrome automatic pistol. With a shout, he shot both men between the eyes, one after the other. Lacey screamed, as her ears rang from the back-to-back blasts in the enclosed space.

  “See?” he shouted as he wiggled a finger in his ear. “I'm the good guy! They won't ever touch you, sweetie! You're all mine!”

  Chapter 42

  Slash

  Slash had been a lot of weird creepy places. Crack houses, cartel grow ops, meth labs, brothels, even back alley surgeries for the occasional stray bullet. But this place took the cake. Maybe it was because he'd spent forty hours a week here for nearly four years, but there was something about the big, sprawling building with its graffiti on the lockers, fallen ceiling panels, and broken beer bottles everywhere that gave him the heebie-jeebies as he pressed himself against the wall and made his way down the hallway.

  He stopped, his feet crunching on a piece of old dry wall, and listened. He heard voices ahead and, as he peered through the darkness, he could make it out the flickering light of something like a kerosene lamp coming out of one of the old classrooms. He held his breath, tried to listen more closely.

  “Walker ain't shit, man,” a gruff voice said. “Fucker thinks he's got us lock and stock on this, boys, but once he gets the rest of the money, we're gonna take care of him.”

  “Think we can really pin it on hem BB fuckers?” asked another man.

  “Hell, yeah, man. Slash is the only one still out. We take the money, take the drugs, then we kill Walker and blame it on Slash. Then, we move in and pick up the pieces, taking all their territory and business.”

  So, that was their plan. They were working for Wayne on this, but then they were going to double-cross him. If he just used the shadows to sneak by, the problem could take care of itself. Nothing screamed bad DA like being killed by a bunch of bikers over a bad deal. Of course, that would still leave the Lightning Kings out, running around, trying to pin everything on the Battleborn, and Slash in particular. The men inside the room laughed, and Slash counted three, maybe four guys inside. He gritted his teeth. Even with a surprise attack, that would be dicey to handle on his own. Plus, if they got a shot off, he'd alert anyone else still in the building.

  One of the guys inside the room piped up. “I say we take the girl back to the clubhouse when we're done with the DA.”

  “Yeah, chief, let's get the girl,” one of them added, excited. “We could keep her as a real clubgirl, like a pet or something. After a few nights, and some China White in her veins, we'll have her begging for all of us.” All the bikers in the classroom laughed cruelly, their voices filtering out into the hallway. “We get a collar and everything for her!” The men laughed again, encouraging him.

  Slash didn't hear the rest of their words. A spike of rage-fueled adrenaline entered his veins. His vision narrowed, his eyes clouded over. There was no way in hell these scumbags were going to touch Lacey. Not a fucking chance. Their words were a burble in the background, barely audible over the sound of rushing blood in his ears.

  He reached down and grabbed the canister of DIY tear gas off his belt and began to inch closer, along the wall. He got to the edge of the door, makeshift grenade in one hand, silenced pistol in the other. He pulled the pin on the canister and banked the tear gas against the open door of the classroom, arcing it inside. Just like pool.

  “What the fuck?” one of the guys asked as the hissing can bounced one, twice, three times, before rolling to a stop in the room. Then, the coughing began. “Motherfucker! What is this shit?”

  Slash raised his pistol to chest height, gripped it in both hands, and took a deep, grim breath. The men came running out of the room moments later, uncontrollable tears streaming down their red, blistered faces. “Jesus fucking Christ!” one of them nearly yelled as he ran out into the hallway, his hands frantically rubbing at his face. He turned left, passed right in front of Slash.

  He was the first to go down, heavy as a sack of potatoes. A quick singular bullet to the head from the Battleborn president's silenced pistol. He was a human one moment, a corpse the next. The other men streamed out behind him, all with cries of confusion and shock coming from their lips. Slash dropped them all, one after the other, still not saying a word as he seethed with anger.

  “What the fuck?” the last man cried as he dropped to his knees. “What the fuck's going on?” Clearly, he could hear the shooting, but he couldn't respond in any meaningful way. He put his hands in the air, and sobbed. “Please, don't. I'm barely even with these guys.”

  Slash walked around him, still not saying anything, a cruel grimace on his face. He could see from the patch on his back that he was lying. He was a full member of the Lightning Kings. Granted, he didn’t recognize his voice as one of the guys who had joined in on the conversation regarding Lacey's fate. He put his pistol against the back of the man's head.

  He started to sob. “Please, man, I got a little girl at home. Lemme live, okay? Lemme live.”

  Slash sighed. Maybe the guy was lying, maybe he wasn't a father. He was still someone's son. Now, as Slash paused, the blood-rage subsided a little. He took the barrel of the pistol from the man's head.

  “Oh, man, oh thank you. Fuck, thank you so much!” he cried out, shaking his head from side to side, not believing his luck.

  Slash whacked him on the back of the head with the butt of his pistol, whipping him into unconscious with the big hunk of tempered steel. As the man dropped to the floor, he heard something else. It sounded like gunfire, like two shots fired one after the other. He looked around. It had come from one of the nearby air vents.

  He ran over to the closest one and put his ear against it. Screams drifted up from below the school, from the basement where they kept all the maintenance stuff. He knew that scream. Lacey.

  Slash scrambled, trying to find the door he knew was around here, the one that would lead him to the stairwell that would take him into the bowels of the school. He reached down to his belt, pulled out a mini Maglite he'd been avoiding using, and flicked it on. He ran down a hall, found it, and threw it open. In the pitch black, with nothing but a round of pure, white light to guide him, he took the steps two at a time, running over detritus and kicking bottles of out of the way.

  “I'm coming, Lacey,” he breathed to the silent high school. “I'm coming, babe!”

  Chapter 43

  Lacey

  She slapped at Wayne's hands, trying to keep them off her.

  “Sweetie, honey, lovey,” he said, his voice saccharine sweet, as he tried to calm her down. “Calm down! I'm just trying to protect you! Trying to keep these goons off you!”

  “Get away from me!” she screamed in a shrill voice as she slapped at him harder, struck his face.

  He gave an exasperated sigh and stood up from the cot. “That's the way you want it, then?” he asked, his voice suddenly back to the old Wayne. “One l
ast chance.”

  “Leave me alone!” she screamed.

  “Fine, bitch,” he said through clenched teeth. “You asked for it. Time to show you some respect.” He descended on her again, his hands not brooking any argument. He reached for her clothes, began to tear at them.

  She clawed at his hands, at his face, trying to keep him away from her. He was too strong, though. He gripped her wrist, twisted it out of the way. He slapped her with his open hand, right across the mouth. She cried out in pain, too shocked to fight back for a moment. With her hands not protecting her anymore, he reached down and grabbed the front of her shirt, began to tear it off her. He ripped the buttons off with effort, opening her to the cold deserted room.

  “See?” he asked, as he grabbed her other wrist and pinned it down to the cot. “This is what you get, sweetie.”

  She came back to her senses, began to scream again. When he'd torn her top open, he'd had to let one of her hands go. She lashed out with her suddenly free fist now, instead of just her nails, and caught the bastard in the eye.

  He recoiled, putting his hand to his face as he stumbled a couple steps back. He took his hand away and looked down at the smeared blood. She'd split open his brow, and he'd smudged a little trickle of his blood. “You fucking hit me,” he said, disbelief filling his voice. “You fucking whore!” he said, louder. “You fucking hit me!”

  Her eyes widened in fear as her hands came up to defend herself. “Lay another hand on me, you son of a bitch,” she swore despite her wavering voice, “and I'll fucking kill you. So help me God.”

  “Better start praying, then,” Wayne said, his voice cold as the arctic on a January night, “cause he's the only one that's going to help you.”

  He closed on her again.

  She screamed back. “Fuck you!”

  If she was going to go out, she wanted to go out kicking, screaming, and standing up for herself.

  Chapter 44

  Slash

  He came out of the stairwell, the door banging and clanging against the wall. He shined his light around, searching, straining his ears. Somewhere, down the hallway to his left, he could hear the sounds of screams and struggling. Slash bolted down the hallway, splashing through puddles of water filled with needles, used condoms, and old cigarette butts. He had to stop every twenty feet or so and perk his ears up so he could make out the sounds.

  It was still there, the sound of a woman’s voice. Wherever Lacey was, she was down here. Finally, after what seemed like hours but had only been moments, he came to a screeching halt in front of an old custodian closet.

  Lacey screamed again behind the door. “Fuck you!”

  He tried the door. Locked. He threw his shoulder into it, but it wouldn't budge He tried again, but no luck.

  “No!” Lacey screamed again.

  “Fuck you, you stupid whore!” Wayne yelled.

  Slash drew back from the door, kicked at the spot nearest the door knob, but nothing. It must have been a steel framed door, one that wasn't going to break with any amount of kicking. Gripping his pistol in both hands, he stepped off to the side and fired two shots into the knob.

  The gunfire echoed through the hallway, setting his ears to ringing with its volume. The doorknob clattered to the ground with a clang and the door fell open. Yellow light from a kerosene lamp spilled out into the hallway.

  “Help!” Lacey screamed again as Slash rushed in. “Get off of me!”

  “Wayne!” he yelled as he barged into the room, pistol sweeping the room. He wasn't paying close attention and nearly stumbled over the two Lightning Kings corpses at his feet. When he looked up after catching himself, Wayne already had Lacey, half-naked with her blouse torn open, arranged in front of him as a human shield. In his other hand, he held a fancy-looking chrome-plated Kimber pistol, flashy but sort of weapon a rich kid who knew nothing about pistols would end up buying. “Let her go!”

  “Fuck you, Dustin,” Wayne shouted back, his gun waving back and forth a little. Blood trickled down from a cut on his right eyebrow. His face was a mask of rage, a twisted caricature of what he'd once looked like. “I'm taking her with me, and we're walking out of here.”

  “Slash,” Lacey sobbed, her hands up around Wayne's forearm at her neck. “Please, please, please,” she sobbed.

  Slash clenched his jaw, gritted his teeth. He could kill Wayne right then and there. He knew it, and had no qualms or ill-feelings. But he couldn't guarantee that he wouldn't hit Lacey in the process. And even if the odds were one-in-a-million that he'd hurt her, he still couldn't have pulled the trigger. Wayne didn’t know that though, so kept the gun leveled, kept it trained on the fucker like a magnet.

  “Back out slowly, Dustin,” Wayne said. “And let us leave.”

  Slash nodded, his eyes still very much focused. He had no intention of letting this piece of shit live. He’d let him walk out, for now. Slash had twelve bullets left, which meant he still had at least twelve opportunities to kill Wayne. “It's okay, Lacey,” Slash said as he began to carefully back out of the room. “Just keep calm. Alright, babe?”

  Chapter 45

  Lacey

  “Stop dragging your goddamn feet, you stupid bitch,” Wayne screeched in her ear as they made their way down the dark hallway. Ironically, it was probably safer that Slash was following them, since that meant they had some kind of light for Wayne to see by.

  She tried to keep calm, tried to keep her breathing normal. Slash was going to save her. She had to believe that. He looked like a professional, like he'd been saving people from hostage crises all his life, as he strode confidently after them.

  “You don't wanna do this, Wayne,” Slash said. “You're not gonna be able to pin this on me like you planned.”

  They stopped at a door that led off the hallway and opened up into a stairwell. Wayne pulled her back with him and they began to slowly climb the stairs, one step at a time. “Think I'm fucked?” Wayne asked. “I got a whole crew of guys, and they all want your head on a platter, Dustin. And they're gonna get it, too!”

  “The Lightning Kings?” Slash asked as he entered the hallway, his flat black silenced pistol still trained on them. “The guys you promised Battleborn territory to? The guys who ain't running to your rescue right now? You think I didn't take care of them already?”

  Wayne growled his frustration. She could tell from the way he was holding her, how tightly his hand was digging into her shoulder, that Slash was getting to him. All his plans were coming apart, all his machinations had had a monkey wrench named Battleborn thrown into them.

  “Fuck you,” Wayne screamed as they reached the top of the stairs and pushed out into the hallway.

  She realized then, as they backed slowly down the wide corridor, their feet brushing through the variety of detritus on the floor, that they were in the old high school. She idly looked down at the fast food wrappers, condoms, needles, empty spray paint cans that covered the old tile, and wondered for a moment at how long this old building had been this way.

  “You're going to let us leave,” Wayne said through clenched teeth. “You're going to let us leave, so we can be happy together.”

  Lacey almost burst out laughing. Somehow, she kept her mouth shut. Setting him off like that right now might get her and Slash both killed. Slash shook his head. “You know I can't do that, Wayne.”

  They turned down another hallway. “You know, Dustin, if you'd just left well enough alone, things would have been fine. Lacey and I would be happy and married right now.”

  “You really think I didn't try?” Slash asked. “You came after me and MC, you sent me the invitation to the wedding. Not Lacey. You're sick, Wayne, you're sick in the fucking head.”

  They backed up against a door with a push bar, slammed through it into a big, wide open space. The auditorium. Where all this had started? The place where Slash had first told her about his feelings. Where Lacey had first caught a glimpse of the madness behind Wayne's eyes. Where Lacey had made the wrong choice,
no matter what Slash said now.

  Wayne continued to drag her through the crumpled old newspapers, the flattened cardboard boxes, the broken glass, and empty beer cans. Right there, in the middle of the big, deserted gym, Wayne stopped them both. Slash came forward a couple steps, closing the gap a little, before finally coming to a halt, too. Lacey knew, deep down in the pit of her very being, at the core of her existence, that this is where it was going to end. Tonight. Right here.

  Where it had all started.

  Chapter 46

  Slash

  Slash glanced up at the ceiling of the auditorium. He needed to get Wayne's pistol out of commission and Lacey away from him somehow. The ceiling. He saw the beginnings of a half-cocked plan. Wayne's gun was a chromed up elegant version of the first pistol Slash had ever purchased, way back when, when he'd first joined the Battleborn. He'd needed a clean gun to go to the range on, something he could practice with.