by James, Marie
Surely there isn’t pain in his voice, but the possibility that there is somehow makes this easier for me. This is nothing like what happened when we were forced to bring Zoe down here. I can’t deny I didn’t know. He’s warned me away from her at least a dozen times, and I didn’t listen. Unlike Zoe, I don’t have an ace in my pocket. I have no way to prove my loyalty when my actions have done nothing but prove otherwise.
“S-she begged me to tell you. I knew it would come to this if I d-did,” I pause, taking a long, painful breath. “I asked her who would love her if I’m gone, and now I know the answer. You will love her. TJ will love her. S-she’ll need you after this. T-tell her I b-betrayed the club.”
He stares at me and I know I’m only seconds away, but the pain in his eyes is evident now, and it kills me to know this will hurt him, too.
“You love her?”
I nod, and the morbid reminder of the rope makes itself known once again.
“And I love you, too, Brother.”
I don’t even think about it. I would change my mind if I did, but my hope and my time have run out.
“Tell her I betrayed the club,” I beg one last time before I step off of the crate.
The rope tightens on my neck, my breath cut off, and I know it’s the last one I’ll ever take. I can only hope that in my death, they give me one last gift, that my loyalty to the club over the last ten years is enough to protect her from the truth. Without them, she has no one.
“Well that was ballsy,” TJ chuckles.
I look up at him, gasping, but somehow crumpled on the floor rather than hanging from the steel beam running across the ceiling.
“You were testing me?” The question rushes out raspy and disjointed.
“Take care of her,” Lynch says close to my ear.
“Welcome to the family.” TJ’s words don’t match his actions when he pulls his boot back and nails me in the ribs.
I guess he’s not very happy that Lynch got all the action up until now.
Chapter 35
Molly
My throat burns, but it’s nothing compared to the pain in my hands.
When pounding on the door didn’t work, I switched to kicking it, but all that’s done is left me broken and crumpled against the unrelenting heavy wood.
I’m on my feet, eyes swollen from sobbing when the two men who’ve broken my heart open the basement door and walk out.
My sore fists meet Lynch’s chest first. Instinctively, I know he’s the one who carried out the threats.
“All he did was love me,” I wail as my oldest brother stands there and lets me rain my hatred down on him.
“He did more than that,” TJ mutters, drawing my ire in his direction. I’m able to get a hit to his face, and I watch with murderous glee as blood trickles from his nose. Unaffected, he licks it as it pools on his upper lip. “He claims you sucked his cock.”
My eyes widen, and even in my pain, I somehow manage to also be embarrassed.
“I’m not listening to this shit.” Lynch walks away without another word, and a second later, TJ follows.
My knees are weak, threatening to give up on me when I’m left alone, standing at the top of the stairs, unsure of what I’m about to face.
If I run, I can pretend nothing happened. If I walk away right now, I can do exactly what he was hoping for. I can imagine he’s away, looking for a place for us to call our own, and not have to face the truth of what actually happened in the basement.
He deserves better though. He’s earned a proper burial, not denial and the indignity of what the others may do.
Twice, I nearly trip on my way into the belly of the basement, but I’m statue still when his crumpled form comes into view. Frozen at the bottom of the stairs, I cover my mouth to keep from heaving on the floor.
The sight of the rope still around his neck is too much. He doesn’t deserve this. I did this to him. He warned me what would happen, but I was mistaken by thinking love would conquer all. I was wrong in believing my brother, especially after finding love himself, would understand what Briar and I felt for each other.
Scared to touch him, knowing confirmation will gut me, it takes a long moment before I step off the bottom stair and cross the room to his body.
“Baby?” A gasped whisper fills the room, and a rush of cold chills washes over me.
Looking around the room, my first foolish thought is that he’s now a ghost, his soul, loving me so much, isn’t able to find peace in the afterlife, but then his body rolls over, and dead men don’t move.
The brutality of my brothers’ vengeance is all over his face in the form of cuts and bruises, and I know it’s going to take days if not weeks for the swelling to go down in his eyes.
With my arms around him, I use my hands to search his torso for more injuries. Telling by the hissing air rushing past his clenched teeth, he’s hurt everywhere, but he’s alive, and right now, that’s all that matters.
“We need to get you out of here before they realize they didn’t kill you.” With futile effort, I try to lift him but he’s so heavy, I don’t even manage to budge his shoulder from the ground.
“I love you,” he gasps.
“Baby,” I whisper on a choked sob as my hands work over his body again.
He’s hurt somewhere I can’t see. He knows how this ends, but I’m grateful, even in my hatred and anger with the two men in my life that were never supposed to cause me this much pain, that they left him long enough so I could tell him goodbye.
“Where did TJ stab you?” The rope is all Lynch, but TJ isn’t one to walk away without getting a piece of someone himself. I’ve seen the two of them in action more often than not. Publicly displaying betrayal in front of the entire club as a deterrent to the others was always my father’s style. I watched a man die for the first time when I was four years old, and it happened regularly after that.
“Tell me you love me,” he begs. “Tell me you’re mine forever.”
“Forever,” I answer, hating that forever may only last a couple more breaths.
“I would trade spots with you,” I confess on another sob as I situate us so his head is resting in my lap. “I can’t do this without you. I won’t.”
I didn’t think I could hurt myself, but the idea doesn’t seem so foreign right now. Something quick will be better than the slow, agonizing death I’ll suffer with him gone.
“I want your lips on my cock.”
“What?”
Looking down at him, both eyes are swollen shut, but a small smile tilts his lips up. “Not right now, because I’m sure I’ll be pissing blood for a month, but eventually.”
“You’re dying, and all you can think about is your dick?” I shake my head, thankful he’s acting exactly like himself. It’s the best goodbye he can give me. “Typical.”
His laugh is the most amazing sound, but then it turns into a gurgle and a wracking cough.
It seems like an endless wasted time before the coughing stops. Turning his head, grimacing from the pain, he spits blood on the floor before turning his face back to me.
“I’m not dying, baby. They weren’t trying to kill me.”
Even though it seems like it weighs a ton, he lifts his arm and cups my cheek with it.
“What the hell do you call it then?” I ask, letting myself believe him if only for a little while.
“They were giving us their blessing.” His smile grows wider, the split in his lip becoming worse. “Tell me you love me, and you’re mine for forever.”
“I love you.” Turning my head, I press my lips to his dirty palm. “I’m yours for forever.”
“Worth it,” he mutters before his arm drops, and he goes completely lax in my arms.
I don’t know how long I’m screaming for help, but my pleas are barely a whisper before I hear footsteps on the stairs.
“He finally told them, huh?” Ronan crouches beside me, looking down at the lifeless man on my lap with a smile on his face.
&n
bsp; “You owe me a hundred dollars,” Chains says as he joins us.
“You both owe me five hundred each,” Professor says as he joins the fucking party like Briar unconscious in my arms is an everyday thing to them.
“Bullshit,” Ronan hisses.
“I said less than six months,” Chains qualifies. “It’s only been two and a half.”
“You both said he’d end up dead. Look.” Professor points at the slow, ragged inhalation barely registering on Briar’s chest. “Still alive.”
“For now,” Chains says with a devious edge to his voice. He chuckles, holding his hands up near his ears when I glare at him.
“I’ll kill every last fucking one of you if you don’t help me get him to his room,” I hiss, meaning every damn word I said.
All the guys chuckle, clearly unaffected by my threat, but they lift him from my lap. Briar groans when Ronan shifts his weight, throwing Briar’s arm around his shoulder.
“Be gentle.”
They all laugh and refuse to let up. My man is jostled, run into two separate door frames, and tossed on his bed by the three goons.
“You hurt him even more,” I hiss when they begin to walk out of the room.
“Do you know the danger you put him in? What would’ve happened if he were any other man in this club?” Chains leans in, invading my space as the others walk out of the room. “Do you know what will happen to the next guy who doesn’t follow an order because Briar was given a pass? Do you know how what you two have done compromises your brother, his safety, and the entire foundation of the club?”
“I don’t know anything,” I answer before my chin drops to my chest in shame.
“Clearly,” he spits before walking away.
Closing and locking the door behind him doesn’t ease my fear. If I have a keycard to get in this room then so do others in the clubhouse, but I can’t worry about anyone except the groaning man in pain on the bed.
“Stay still,” I urge as I cross the room and go to the bathroom for a warm washcloth. “Where does it hurt the worst?”
Pressing the cloth gently to his forehead, he winces, his busted lip tugging up on the right.
“Are you smiling?”
He tries to nod but groans when it causes too much pain. I wash his face as best I can without hurting him further before returning to the bathroom for some pain relievers and a glass of water.
“I’m only giving you Aleve. When the clubhouse settles down tonight, we have to get out of here.”
“Staying,” he mumbles after it takes three attempts at swallowing to get the pills down.
“We aren’t staying here. I can’t trust them after they did this to you.” When he tries to argue, I press a soft finger to his lips. “Rest. I can’t carry you out of here on my own.”
When he passes out, I sit and wait, but the sight of his dirty clothes from the basement floor is too much to stare at. After the first snip of scissors at the hem of his t-shirt, I’m wishing I had just left him alone. His torso, from below his belly button all the way to his throat is bruised. The reds, blues, and purples make my stomach turn, and although I was able to keep it together earlier, right now is a different story. I barely make it to the bathroom before I’m heaving into the toilet.
I stay that way, hunched over the bowl for god knows how long, but a knock at the door startles me. I’m on my feet, hand clutching the gun Briar stashes in the bedside table before the electronic whir of the lock on the door tells me someone is coming in.
Situating myself between Briar’s unconscious body and the door, I raise the gun to welcome the intruder.
“You going to shoot me?”
“You hurt him.”
“Not as bad as I could have.” TJ challenges me with his eyes, but he’s smart enough to stand still in the doorway.
“What do you want? Come here to finish the job?”
He laughs, classic TJ, not really giving a shit which way this goes for him. “I brought some things to help make him more comfortable.”
His hands lift, and it takes everything I have in me not to pull the trigger.
“A fifth of whiskey and a bottle of pills? Please tell me you’re not considering a job in the health care industry because you’d flunk out on the first damn day.”
His smile widens.
“I want you to leave.”
“You’re worried we’re going to hurt him again.”
“You’ll have to kill me first.”
For the first time since he opened the door, his smile falters.
“I don’t have to explain the ways of the club to you, little sister.”
“Because I’m just a woman, and we aren’t supposed to know shit?”
“Because you already know what should’ve happened in that fucking basement. You’ve seen how little it takes for someone to end up swinging down there,” he seethes, taking two steps closer to me without an ounce of fear in his eyes.
“You still want him dead.”
“If we wanted him dead,” he says emphasizing the second word as a reminder that Lynch is involved in this, too, “he wouldn’t be lying in that bed.”
“It’s over?” How can that even be possible?
“I don’t imagine that Lynch is going to be doing backflips when he sees you two together anytime soon, but what he got down there was it.” He looks past me at Briar. “He was given numerous chances to tell us what was going on. He didn’t take us up on them.”
“So you beat the shit out of him?”
TJ places the whiskey and pills on the dresser near the door.
“We took him down there to kill him. Make no mistake about that, but he—” TJ swallows, shaking his head as he keeps his eyes on my man. “He said some things that we couldn’t ignore.”
“What did he say?”
Did he beg for his life? I highly doubt that. Even knowing he was going to die, Briar wouldn’t lower himself to beg.
“Not my story to tell, Sis.” I lower the gun as he walks closer. My skin tingles in fear for the first time as his lips brush my temple. “I’ll be honest, I had my doubts, but there isn’t another man alive I’d approve to be with you other than him.”
I’m still confused, staring at the door when he closes it silently behind him.
Chapter 36
Briar
I don’t know how much time has passed, but I can’t help wondering if death would’ve been better when I’m finally able to open my one good eye. Getting plowed over by an Army convoy wouldn’t have been as painful from where I’m laying right now. My eye doesn’t seem to want to work right now, so keeping it closed is my best course of action.
“Hey,” the voice of an angel whispers. “Stay still.”
My throat is dry and on fire, and my attempt to swallow only hurts it more.
“Th-thirsty,” I grumble, feeling like a damn baby. Grown men don’t lie in bed like an invalid when they take an ass beating. I should be on my feet, holding my head high, but just the thought of sitting up right now makes me want to hurl.
An eternity passes before a straw is pushed between my lips. The first draw hits the back of my throat like raindrops on fire, sizzling and making me cough. The hacking shoots agony through my rib cage, and I’m sure TJ would be thrilled to know his one hit caused so much damage.
“Easy,” Molly says. “Small sips.”
“I feel like death,” I finally manage after a few sips.
“You need to see a doctor.”
Trying to shake my head only makes me hurt more, so I lay still and look over at her. Even through the sliver of sight, I’m able to manage, my girl is beautiful, but I hate the concern that’s drawing her brows together.
“I’ll be okay,” I assure her. “I’ve had worse.”
She huffs, twisting her body to put the glass of water back on the bedside table.
“Help me up.”
She fusses when I sit up in the bed, and it takes every ounce of manliness I can muster not to cry out in p
ain when she wraps her arm around me and presses against my injured side.
“Other side,” I hiss.
Swiftly, she switches sides and helps me stand.
“Where are you going? Are we getting out of here? I don’t think it’s a good idea. It’s daylight.”
“Daylight? How long have I been out?”
“Like eighteen hours,” she mumbles, shifting her weight when I make it known we’re heading to the bathroom.
“I only took a couple of Aleve.”
“And two oxy.”
I’d laugh if it didn’t hurt so much, but surprisingly, getting up and moving around is making me feel better.
“Get the shower on for me.” She releases me as I lean against the wall over the toilet. “Where are my clothes?”
Only now am I aware that I’m stripped down to my boxer briefs.
“In the trash,” she answers as she leaves me to take care of business. “Are you sure you’re up for a shower?”
After flushing, I slowly turn back in her direction. “I can’t lay in bed all fucking day. The shower will help.”
“Let me find something for you to sit on.”
“I’ll stand.”
“Why are you being hateful?” I both love and hate the anger in her voice. I don’t want her mad at me, but I pray she never gives up her ability to fight for herself.
“Sorry,” I grumble as I step past her toward the shower, trying and failing to push my boxers down my legs. Bending in the middle hurts like a bitch.
“Let me help you.” Her hands replace mine, and she shoves the fabric down my legs. “You’re bruised all over.”
“Just part of it.” I step into the shower and am elated when she strips to her skin and joins me.
The nearness of her is comforting, and the sight of her naked flesh is almost enough to get my cock to stand up and notice. The pain searing through my body wins out, however.
“Part of it?” The indignant tone in her voice makes me love her even more. “This is just one of the reasons we need to get away from this damn place. Being bruised and bloody shouldn’t be a way of life.”
“I’m normally on the giving end of this kind of thing.”
She frowns, lifting her hand and brushing a tender finger over my brow. “I hate seeing you like this. I feel helpless.”
