“You remember what this is called, amigo? No?” I loosened my hold on the rope, letting him drop a few inches, before stopping him with a sudden yank.
“Sss-tttt—”
“Ssss-tttt… the fuck you tryin’ to say? We been over this. Strappado. Shit, can you imagine if I didn’t watch the History Channel? I’d be runnin’ out of ideas on ways to keep you entertained, hombre.”
Manny lifted his head to stare at me, the hatred rolling off of him in waves. In all honesty, I hadn’t meant to keep him alive as long as I had. No matter what I did to him, he was never going to give up Hawk or Cobra.
I knew that; and yet, I forced him to stay alive.
When he refused to eat or drink, we brought our club doctor, Eli, in and hooked him up to an IV. He’d been on the verge of death more times than I could count, but there was just something that held me back and kept me from sending him to the Reaper.
“Now…” I wound the rope around a hook on the wall, securing him in the air, before retrieving a CD from my bag and popping it into the player. “Let’s play a little game. You tell me where your buddies are, and I’ll…” I paused and lit up a cigarette, leaving him to dangle while I decided his fate.
Initially, I thought that it’d get old, but anytime I found myself ready to give up or thinking that maybe I’d gone too far, I imagined my girl’s broken body.
The monster inside of me had been well fed for months, and I slept better than I had in years.
I took a long drag. “How about this? You tell me what I want to know, and I won’t cut off another tattoo.”
Somber music filled the space, and I exhaled a stream of smoke toward his face with a smirk. “I told you how I ended up with this music, right?”
He bucked against his restraints but stayed quiet.
“I didn’t? Well, you see, I was in a real bad place after I saw what you did to my girl, Manny. Strung out and fucked up don’t even begin to cover it. When I was tryin’ to get clean, someone suggested meditation.”
I took another drag with a low chuckle. “It’s hard to imagine, yeah? So, I go down to the record store, and I’m fuckin’ lookin’ everywhere for somethin’ to help me center myself or some bullshit, and the clerk recommends Tibetan chants. Really thought I’d listen and find my inner peace, but Jesus Christ, it is creepy as fuck! Who am I kidding? You know; you listen to it every night.”
“K-k-kill m-m-me,” he whispered through cracked lips.
I stubbed my cigarette out on his forearm with a shake of my head and immediately lit up another. “No can do, amigo. Who would I spend my days with? Tell you what though, you tell me where your buddies are, and I’ll consider your request.”
In the early days, he’d bragged about the things they’d done to Celia, about the things he wanted to do to my girls. Maybe he thought that I’d lose my temper and give him a quick death. The old me would’ve put a bullet in his head and been done with it, but the clean and sober version had all the patience in the world.
I was in control.
The cigarette dangled from my lips as I pulled the knife from my pocket and opened it up, letting the back of the blade trail over his chest. “Tick tock, amigo. Time is runnin’ out.”
The door beside me opened, and Wolverine stepped inside, eying Manny with a look of disgust. “You ain’t cracked yet? How much longer you wanna drag this out?”
“He ain’t gonna give up his brothers,” I said, before poking the tip into the center of a tattoo on his abdomen. “I like this one. A tiger with a snake in its mouth. That’s somethin’ you don’t see every day.”
Wolverine moved in to inspect it. “I’ll be damned. That reminds me of someone else’s. What was that prick’s name? Chris? No, that ain’t it. Shit, Grey, you remember?”
“Yeah. Carlos. It’s funny that you joined Los Dictadores and got your gang ink, but you still got no fuckin’ clue what it means.”
“It doesn’t mean shit,” Manny croaked.
Wolverine held out his hand, and I placed the knife in it. There was nothing I loved more than watching him carve someone up. I’d seen him retrieve colors on more than one occasion, with a precision that couldn’t be matched.
“See,” he noted casually, as he slipped the blade under the skin. “That’s where you’re wrong.”
Manny’s nostrils flared, and he groaned as Wolverine lifted the edge of his tattooed flesh before continuing. “Back when I ran the club, Los Dictadores worked hand in hand with the Serpents. There was an incident involvin’ payment, and suddenly, Los Dictadores was out.
“Turned out, another MC had issues with them too. Knew to strike when the iron was hot, though, and they approached the gang to form a partnership. The Outlaws and Los Dictadores even redesigned their club ink to reflect the change.”
The skin was peeled away from his body, rolling up like a sheet of paper as Wolverine moved the blade.
I stepped forward and gripped Manny’s face in my hands. “How fuckin’ stupid do you have to be to join up with your gang’s number one enemy? And not only that, but to protect them? If you don’t think they would’ve rolled over on you the first chance they got, then you need to look long and hard at what it was they had you doin’.”
Wolverine made his final cut, and the tattoo fell away from the skin. I caught it in my palm and held it up for Manny to inspect. “You forgot what it was your gang used to stand for, so we relieved you of your colors. Tell me where to send it.”
I loosened the rope and lowered him back down to the concrete floor. He forced his head back and looked up at me, blinking slowly.
It was the same every time.
Wolverine nodded toward the hall, and I followed him out, but not before cranking the music up. After wiping the blade on his jeans, he handed it back to me and crossed his arms over his chest. “He ain’t gonna last through much more, Grey.”
I nodded. “I know. I was hopin’ we’d be able to get somethin’ out of him. I’m sick of chasin’ these guys.”
“I hear ya, but if he was gonna break, it would’ve happened long before now. Best we can do is find a place to drop his body that would send a message loud and clear.” He tilted his head to the side. “How are you holdin’ up?”
“Me? I’m fine. I could do this all day. Fuck, if we needed to keep him alive for years, I’d do it—”
He grinned. “Ain’t questionin’ your abilities when it comes to torture, son. I wanna know how you are—you seen Celia?”
“I see her every night. You know that.”
“Campin’ out in the backyard ain’t the same as seein’ her. I’m worried about her.” He tapped the side of his head. “She ain’t been herself in years, but ain’t a doubt in my mind that if anyone could reach her, it’d be you.”
I’d planned on waiting to approach her until all the threats were eliminated but still hadn’t worked out what exactly I’d say after she’d made it clear she never wanted to see me again the last time. In hindsight, locking her in the motel room until Molly arrived to pick her up hadn’t been my best idea.
At the sound of a wail, I tore my eyes away from Wolverine and looked back toward the door with a shake of my head. I hadn’t seen Celia cry in years, yet Manny seemed to do it almost every day.
“To be honest,” I admitted. “I don’t have a plan. For any of it. I thought that I’d finish them off and then go to her, but I just don’t know.”
Wolverine scratched at his beard with a slow nod. “You ever stopped to think about what she wants?”
It was all I thought about.
My last encounter with her had fucked with my head for days. How was I supposed to regain the upper hand while making her feel like she was in control? It was impossible.
“Old man, I think about what she wants every second of every goddamn day. Don’t mean shit if those fuckers are still out there though.”
Manny’s groans of pains blended with the chanting into one perfect soundtrack of torture.
�
�Have you ever asked yourself what it is that’s kept you from killin’ the gangbanger? You’ve had the opportunity to send him to the Reaper, but you pull back. Why is that?”
“We’ve been over this. I don’t know—”
“Think,” he interjected. “What does your girl want more than anything right now?”
Other men in my position wouldn’t have wasted time with hypothetical conversations, but Wolverine was like Slim in that he always seemed to know how to break through to me.
Realization dawned, and I looked up at him incredulously. “You’re serious? You want me to hand him over to her to finish off?”
“Normally, I’d be against an Ol’ Lady dolin’ out any sort of punishment. This ain’t their club, and they don’t call the shots; but the way I see it, you can kill two birds with one stone here. Club don’t even have to know it was her.”
My fingers curled into fists at the thought of him being close to her again, but Wolverine had presented the perfect solution. I’d had the answer staring me in the face for the past three months.
I ran my tongue over my teeth with a grin.
I suddenly knew exactly how to get my woman back.
* * *
A switch was flipped on in the laundry room, sending a stream of light across the back yard and directly into my eyes. It was the only room in the house without blinds and the one that she seldom entered at night.
After checking my watch, I sat up in the hammock and watched as Celia carried an armful of laundry over to the washer. The sight of her messy curls and sleep-scarred face left my cock aching, but it was the look of fear on her face that had me up and moving toward the back door without another thought.
The lock was engaged, and it took some searching before I found the spare hidden underneath a garden gnome in a nearby planter. The sound of the door opening seemed magnified in the silence, and I held my breath as I crept toward the laundry room.
I didn’t want to startle her, but I just needed to know she was okay. The washer was shaking violently when I entered the empty room, and I belatedly remembered that I was supposed to have replaced the suspension springs on it a few years before. It slammed into the side of the dryer with such force that an entire army could’ve entered the house and I doubted Celia would’ve heard it.
First thing tomorrow, they’d both be replaced.
The nursery door was closed, and I paused just outside, fighting the urge to go in and see Kate and Dakota. I realized the vision of them in my head was all wrong. Kate was a teen, not a toddler, and given what I’d heard about Dakota, me calling her a baby would end bloody.
I’d come for their mother, though.
Light spilled out from around the master bedroom door, and I silently pushed it open before entering. The bed had been stripped down to the mattress, and the floor was littered with uncovered pillows.
My pulse began to race as I scanned the room for Celia before spotting her in the bathroom. She sat in the tub with her back to me.
“Cry,” she stated, in a voice that sounded nothing like hers. She repeated the word, and I watched in horror as she picked up a razor blade and ran it sideways across her arm. Blood welled to the surface and trailed over her skin, but she didn’t even flinch. “Cry.”
“Celia?” I rushed in, only to be knocked flat on my back. I blinked until my vision cleared and looked up into the eyes of a stranger.
The softness I’d seen in glimpses the last time we were together was completely gone, replaced by a hardness that only came from surviving the unthinkable.
“Why are you here?” She demanded, digging the blade into my throat. Every nerve ending in my body went haywire at the feel of her naked body on top of mine, even as my brain tried reminding me that she had a weapon.
“Why are you doin’ laundry in the middle of the night?” I croaked, struggling to move. I managed to sit up, only to be knocked back to the tile in a way that didn’t seem physically possible.
“Asked you a question, princess.”
She snorted and shifted forward, right up against my cock. “I asked you one first. Why are you here?”
I swallowed and propped myself up on my elbows. “I’m pretty goddamn stubborn, so it took me a little longer, but someone once told me that when you love someone, you go after them. I saw the lights kick on in the laundry room and wanted to check on you—”
The palm of her hand came down on my chest, forcing me back to the tile as she hissed, “You broke in? This may come as a shock, but you don’t live here anymore! You can’t come and go as you—wait, how did you know that I was in the laundry room? Are you stalking me now?”
“Not stalkin’ you. I’ve been sleepin’ in the hammock. Wanted to stay close in case you needed me.”
“You—you’ve been spying on me? I thought I was pretty clear in that I didn’t want to see you again.”
I remained pinned in place under her thighs. Lying still would’ve been the smart thing to do. Instead, I thrust my hips up, watching in amusement as the denim of my jeans brushed up against her pussy, forcing a gasp from her lips.
I was nothing but pent-up aggression and sexual frustration. Frustration that was growing stronger the longer my wife used her body to hold me in place. “What happens when you get tired?”
Her green eyes narrowed. “I won’t.”
The corner of my lip turned up in a soft smile. “Darlin’, you need to be able to put a man down; not give him thoughts of fuckin’ you.”
I dropped my gaze down her body, driving home my point, and not missing the way her pink nipples puckered under my stare. Something like a whimper crossed her lips before she stood up, breaking the contact between us.
“You should go,” she said flatly, refusing to meet my eyes.
I rubbed the back of my head as I sat up. “You want me back outside, I’ll do it, but I ain’t leavin’. I don’t give a fuck how long it takes to prove to you that there ain’t nothin’ more important in the world. Before I go though, I wanna know why you’re cuttin’ yourself.”
Her hand dropped to the wound on her arm, covering it. “It was an accident,” she lied.
“And since when do you wash sheets in the middle of the night when no one’s sick?”
“Jamie,” she pleaded. “Just stop. I had a nightmare… just a stupid dream.”
Trauma could manifest itself in a variety of ways. And while Celia’s coping skills were impressive, her mind was filled with land mines of bad memories. She might’ve known how to avoid them during the day, but night was a different story.
“Your mind…” I trailed off, realizing that by saying anything more, I’d be revealing what I knew. “It, uh, it fucks with you sometimes. I’ve been there a time or two.”
She retrieved her robe from where it was thrown over her vanity chair and wrapped it around herself before sitting down. “You have?”
I walked over to her and knelt, ignoring the stab of pain in both of my kneecaps. “You know, I ain’t really opened up to you about my life. It always felt like you had this idea of me; that you saw me as a good person, and I thought maybe it’d be better if you never knew who I truly was.”
Her eyes widened, but she moved in closer, silently urging me to continue.
“I told you that my ma and I had a rough go with my old man, and her losin’ the baby only made things worse.” At the mention of the word baby, something like grief flashed in Celia’s eyes, and she reached for my hand.
“What I, uh, never told you is what happened the night I patched in. I was a sophomore in high school and used to spend all my time with Slim at Phantom’s body shop. It was easier than bein’ at home and watching Ma self-destruct or gettin’ in the way of my old man’s fists.”
I paused, struggling to say the words; to give a voice to the pain that I’d held onto since I was sixteen. “Slim told me one night that Donald had gone against the club and that from what he’d overheard, they were gonna take him out. I rushed home, ready to tell Ma to pac
k her bags, but I couldn’t find her anywhere…”
Celia’s fingers tightened around mine, and I took a deep breath. I’d only told the story once before, to Wolverine, while sobbing like a baby. “I found my old man in the kitchen, drunk and covered in blood. After runnin’ through the entire house, I found her, right where I’d come in. She’d been behind the front door the entire time—”
“Oh, Jamie,” she breathed.
I saw my mother’s lifeless eyes staring through me and shuddered. “She’d never even had a chance, and you know the worst part, is that it didn’t even hit me how much I still missed her until I found you. She would’ve loved you, Celia. And the girls, ain’t a doubt in my mind she would’ve spoiled the shit out of ’em. Mikey too.”
The tears fell to my cheeks as I blinked, and she brought a hand up to brush them away, watching me with a curious expression. “I never imagined… you and Angel have always been so tight-lipped on it. I guess I just assumed she’d passed, but never like that. And you were only sixteen?”
Her eyes softened. “You must’ve been so scared. What happened to your father? Did the club handle it? Is that why you patched in?”
I scratched at my beard, studying our linked hands while wondering how she was going to take the next part. “I handled it,” I choked. “I went back into the kitchen… and lost it. I hit him for hurting her… for hurting me. I beat him to death and never once regretted the decision. Wolverine showed up, and I thought I was a goner, but he surprised me. Allowed me to patch in; gave me an opportunity to have a family.”
She nodded, and it dawned on me that I’d just revealed the monster and she hadn’t run. If anything, her grip on my hand had gotten tighter. She lowered her head toward her lap before looking up at me from under her lashes. “What was it like?”
“I was just a scared kid—”
“No.” She shook her head. “What did it feel like to hit him?”
“It felt really fuckin’ good,” I admitted. “That was when I realized there was somethin’ wrong with my brain.”
Her fingers moved underneath my chin, bringing my eyes up to meet hers. “Wrong how?”
Protector: Silent Phoenix MC Series: Book Four Page 15
