Without giving me a chance to respond, he guides me toward the house. “We’re going to walk in, then walk through to the back. The guard there is one of my men,” he grumbles, keeping his voice low as we quickly hurry through the house.
There are women all around the space, so many that they are all standing, their bodies touching. They are all in different colored gowns, the exact styled ones that I’m wearing, their bodies on display. Dice pushes through the crowd, and his observation from earlier, it’s not lost on me. These women, they all look like walking, breathing zombies.
“Fuck, take long enough?” a deep voice growls.
The man at the back door glances down at me, his brows lift but he doesn’t say a word. “Get her to the Regina club. They’re expecting her. This fort is about to burn to the goddamn ground,” he growls.
A motorcycle is waiting, Dice tugs me over to it, and without hesitation, we both climb on. The engine starts. With a roar, the bike lurches forward and toward an opening in a back fence. I don’t ask any questions, Dice is racing away from this place and I can’t help but let out a sigh of relief.
Freedom.
But am I really free? I don’t know that I ever will be, that my mind will ever allow such a thing. I can only hope that such a thing is possible—freedom from my demons, from Maîtriser.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
HOUSTON
Four long weeks of research and planning have all come down to this week. Dimples’ fingers graze my back as she walks by.
Frowning, I look down at her. “Can I fucking help you?” I bark.
She flinches, but only for a second. She places her hand on her hip, dangerously close to her stomach. It was a move she used with me when she tried to pretend that she could be pregnant with my kid. She didn’t think that I’d take her ass to the clinic. She thought some rigged dollar store pregnancy test was going to be all it took to make her an Old Lady. Fucking wrong.
“Can we talk?” she asks.
Snake grunts, Free chuckles, but I just want to beat the fucking shit out of this woman. I’ve never wanted to hurt a woman more than I want to hurt Dimples. The rage she elicits is like nothing I’ve felt before. My hands shake, begging me to allow them the freedom to choke the ever loving shit out of her.
“You can talk to me right here.”
Her eyes lift to the men behind me, she sighs, but otherwise doesn’t protest. “You need to stay away from Regina,” she whispers. Lifting a brow, I wait for her to go on. She shakes her head. “Just trust me, nothing good can come from you going there.”
“What do you know?” Free asks, taking the words right out of my mouth.
“Nothing,” she snaps a bit too quickly.
“I think someone just bought herself a trip to the warehouse,” Snake states.
Dimples shakes her head, lifting her hand to her throat. “No, I just have a bad feeling. There was a shootout last time. I’m just worried for all of your sakes. It’s not even your territory, why are you so worried about them?” she asks.
“Put her in the warehouse,” Snake barks.
She pleads with me, her eyes screaming for me to help her, but I can’t do that. I am not her champion. I am not her anything. I’ve fucked her, that is all. Even that isn’t something I’m proud of. I hated myself for it each and every fucking time. Every. Time. It’s been a month since I’ve touched her, my desire for sex, even angry sex, has completely diminished. I just want Roxanne.
Dimples is dragged away to the warehouse. The prospects are all on errands, and it leaves just the actual members to discuss the plans.
“Women and children are already gone?” I ask as soon as Snake returns from taking Dimples away.
He lifts his chin. “Crooner and Baby have them under control. They’re in Idaho, arrived just after midnight.”
“MadDog’s Cali crew is all set up and ready in Regina?” I ask.
Keys clears his throat, his eyes lifting to mine. “Visual confirmation just about an hour ago. His nomad contacts have been there for over two months. They’ve mapped, cased, and searched the entire fortress. There is a false fence installed behind one of the houses. It’s where they will be moving out, so that we can move in and do what we do best,” he chuckles.
“Burn it to the ground?” Free chuckles.
“Absofuckinglutely,” Snake growls.
We finish loading up guns and anything else that can be used as a weapon into our personal trucks and cars. This ride is not for our bikes to take, this one we’re showing up with armor. MadDog’s club will be there too, along with the Regina chapter.
Whoever these fucks think they are, they are not going to grow into anything of significance, not this time. Keys did some research, did some facial recognition shit, and along with reports from the nomads we’ve discovered that these are the missing men from the Big Sky club. Skull may be dead, he was president, but maybe he wasn’t really the one in charge. This other man, Maîtriser, as he’s called. He is the mastermind, and he is about to die.
“That bitch is wailing for you,” Skinner announces just as we’re finishing up loading up our shit.
Shaking my head, I hold up my hand and jog toward the warehouse. Dimples is a bitch, she tried to fake a pregnancy, but I attribute that to her age. However, this shit, her warning us not to go, that leaves a sour taste in my mouth.
“What?” I bark.
Her watery eyes meet mine, then as if something inside of her shifts, her gaze turns ice cold and she smiles. “When you find Roxanne, tell the bitch I say, hey,” she sneers.
Without being able to control myself, I charge her. She’s tied to a chair, unable to do anything other than sit there and experience the hell I’m about to deliver to her. Wrapping my hand around her throat, I squeeze. Her smile quickly dies, just as her face begins to turn red. I’m watching, waiting, for it to turn a pretty shade of almost dead blue.
“Houston,” Skinner shouts. I don’t release her, I squeeze tighter, that is until Skinner wraps his hand around my shoulder and yanks me away from her. “She could be useful. Don’t kill her yet.”
“She’s a fuckin’ whore that knows something about Roxanne,” I roar.
Skinner squeezes my shoulder. “I heard her. We’ll keep her here until we’re done with our trip. She won’t go nowhere.”
Turning my head, I lift a brow. “I want a brother on her, not a prospect.”
“Can’t do that, you know that. We need all the men we can get. The prospects can stay here. Nobody is here but the whores.”
Something flashes across her face, something I really don’t fucking like. “I’ll stay,” I offer.
“Houston,” Skinner says, shaking his head. “Your military background is a need in this, not a want. You have to be there. We’ll be gone, two days, max. In and out, then back home.”
Skinner’s words don’t reassure me at all whatsoever. In fact, they make me feel even more ill, and I’m not quite sure why. Looking from Dimples, then back to him, I let out a breath and shake my head.
“If you aren’t here when I return, I will find you.”
She smirks but otherwise stays quiet. Turning away, I walk out of the warehouse, angry. No, I’m more than angry. I am so pissed off that there are no words to describe what I am. Once we’re outside and away from the warehouse, I turn toward Skinner.
“If she ain’t here by the time we get back, that shit is on your shoulders,” I announce.
He lifts his chin, his only response. He’s pissed off too, except he thinks that I’m being over the top, I’m not. If he knew what my body knows, what my body feels when I think about leaving her alone here with just a couple of prospects. If he could feel my instincts, then he would think differently.
“Let’s get the fuck outta here,” he barks.
ROXANNE
I hold on to Dice’s waist as tightly as I can. His bike moves throughout the dusty, dirty, pathways with speed and ease that I didn’t quite expect. Once we’re in front o
f a gate, I watch as it slowly opens. He lifts his hand, flicking the gate guard a two-fingered wave, then guides us toward the lone building that stands in the middle of a large empty space.
He kicks the stand down, turning the engine off, then helps me climb off of the bike before he disengages as well. “You need a doc?” he asks.
I look down at the sheer dress, my bare feet, then lift my gaze back up to his. “I don’t know,” I admit.
He shakes his head, his hand lifting, and he tugs on a piece of my hair. “You do. There should be one here to take care of the injured. We’ll get you looked at first,” he smiles.
“Why are you doing all of this?” I ask.
“If you were my girl, I’d want someone to take care of you until I could get back to you. That’s why,” he smiles.
I bite the corner of my lip, furrowing my brows. “What if I’m nobody’s girl?” I chance asking.
He chuckles. “You’re someone’s. I feel it. That group is going down today, and you don’t need to be in the crosshairs. It’s been a plan in the making for months.”
“But, I feel like…” I pause, taking a deep breath. “I feel like I was there for a reason. I had peace about being there with Maîtriser.”
Dice frowns, he wraps his hand around my shoulder and gives me a gentle squeeze. “No human should ever be kept the way that you were, pretty girl. That is no way to live, bargaining chip or not, I don’t really give a fuck. If you have no man that wants you, then I’ll claim you.”
“Dice,” I whisper.
He holds up his hand as if to keep me quiet, and it works. I close my lips and wait for him to speak. “Loved a girl, years ago. We aren’t together anymore, but fucking hell, I would go kill any man who treated her the way that fuckface motherfucker was treating you and those other women.”
“Thanks,” I breathe.
“Now let’s get you inside and seen by the doc before the rest of the men come back from that fort.”
Dice guides me inside of the clubhouse. Just one step inside and my nose is assaulted by familiar smells. Alcohol, weed, sweat, leather, sex, it all brings back a flood of emotions. I never expected to feel this, and my feet stumble with my next couple of steps. There is a man leaning against the bar, his eyes meet mine and he frowns, it deepens as his eyes travel down my body.
“She needs to be seen, maybe tested for shit too,” Dice announces as he guides me over to him.
“Fuck,” he curses. “More women? How did they get them so quickly? We’ve had eyes on that place since it was being erected. We haven’t seen any women going in at all,” he murmurs.
Dice sighs. “They did it after dark. Pitch black, with no lights. There are only about fifty women so far. They have been slowly building their stockpile,” he announces.
A shiver rolls through my body at his description of the women as a stockpile. He isn’t wrong, it just seems so so disgusting.
“Let’s get you checked out, darlin’,” the man says with a kind smile.
Dice walks me with him, dropping me off in an empty room with the doctor. I should be embarrassed when he asks me to undress and spread my legs, but I’m not. In fact, I don’t know that I have that inside of me anymore, embarrassment, it feels foreign.
HOUSTON
The man smiling up at me. The man that my gun is pointed at, he is called Maîtriser. A former Notorious Devil. A current piece of shit. MadDog growls looking around the room. Several of the men are former Devils, some are Aryans, and the rest are boys. All brainwashed, manipulated, and used.
“Where is Roxanne?” I demand. “You took her, right?”
His smile widens. “Oh, I didn’t take anything. She came to me willingly, like a lamb to the lion.”
My hand holding the gun shakes. Not out of fear, but out of rage. I want to end him, right here, right now. In front of his whole little group, I want to watch his brains splatter all over the fucking room. I’ve never wanted to kill a man more.
“She’s not in with the rest of the women. Man out back, the nomad, he says the other one, Dice took a woman to the clubhouse,” Free announces.
Smiling fucker’s face turns white as a ghost. I smirk. That’s it then. My girl is already safe. A breath I hadn’t realized I was holding escapes my mouth. A weight from my shoulders disappears. Fuck. My girl. My woman. My Firefly, she’s safe.
“Heard you had some fun with Dimples and that prospect I sent to your club as spies,” he announces.
The room’s noise level completely disappears.
“What did you say?” Snake asks.
He opens his mouth to repeat his words, but I can’t stop myself. My finger squeezes the trigger and I watch the motherfucker die. Nobody speaks. Nobody says a goddamn word. A pin could drop, and we’d hear it drop, then bounce.
“I told you not to leave that cunt alone,” I growl.
“What did he mean, you had fun with them?” Free asks.
Turning my head to face him, I admit something that I never thought I would ever have to face. “Fucked Dimples bareback, or so she says. I don’t remember much of it. I just remember her bouncing on my dick. I think the bitch drugged me, but I can’t make sense of the night enough to really say for certain.”
Crooner whistles, but other than that, the room stays quiet.
“I was drinking. It was the night that Roxanne said she’d be bait. I sent a prospect to look for her, I couldn’t find her anywhere. I was going to make sure she knew that we weren’t going to let anything happen to her. That I wasn’t going to let anything happen to her. That she wasn’t going to have to actually go anywhere.”
“Fuck,” someone hisses.
I feel pathetic. I feel like a goddamn pussy and without thinking, I turn my head back to the men who are on their knees in front of us and I empty my goddamn gun into every single one of their heads. Five more men dead. I wish I had the faculties to reload, but I don’t. I leave the room, needing air before I choke.
Making my way to the side of the house, I slide down onto the ground. I hide my face between my legs, and I breathe.
I’m fucking worthless.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
HOUSTON
The guns blast, one after another. I know that they signal the death of every man inside. I don’t feel anything at the thought of these men, and in some cases, boys, that have died. I should maybe give a fuck, there are more marks on our souls with each bullet that pierces another body. I don’t give a fuck. I’ve been killing since I was eighteen years old.
“It’s over,” Free announces.
Opening my eyes, I look up at him from my place on the ground. I hadn’t realized I was just sitting in the dirt, focused on nothing other than my own demons. I didn’t even realize he’d walked up to me, too lost in my own fucking shit to pay attention to the world around me, something that could very well get me fucking killed.
“What happens now?” I ask.
“Hopefully she’s at the Regina clubhouse, hopefully it was her that was taken there. If not, then we find her, wherever she is. I have a good feeling though,” he grins.
Movement from behind him causes my gaze to shift. There is a line of women walking out of a house. They are all wearing light colored floor-length see-through dresses. I can see their naked bodies from where I sit.
“What the fuck?” I whisper.
Free turns his head, looking behind him, then shifts his gaze back to me. “Their women,” he grinds out.
“What happens to them?” I ask, slowly standing to my feet.
The men file out of the house behind me, they’re all staring at the naked women, nobody saying a single fucking word. I watch as the nomad spy makes his way toward Snake and MadDog. Unable to stay still, I walk over to their group as well. I have to know what the fuck is going on.
“Each color was a designation of their station. Either they belonged to a man, were up for grabs, single, or whatever the fuck. It was some sick shit he was trying to implement and of course h
is followers were all for it. Naked women, ripe for the picking. Whores and baby makers, what could be better?”
“Fuck,” MadDog grunts. “You want to take them to the women’s shelter?” he asks, turning to Snake.
Snake watches the line of practically naked women, he’s thinking and I’m sure he probably has thoughts of Melodie in his head. I know that I do.
Melodie fucked me over, fucked my woman over, and it was because she was manipulated her whole life. I don’t even really blame the bitch. It wasn’t her fault. She was sick, made that way by the people who were supposed to love her the most on earth.
Isn’t that the way of the world, though? Aren’t we all fucked over the most by the people who are supposed to give the biggest shit about us? Roxanne fucked me over more times than I can count, and I let her, because fuck me, I loved her too much to ever truly walk away from her.
“They can’t be saved,” I announce.
Snake’s body jerks. I know that he is thinking about his woman. She was taken by this same group, fucked and used, and she’s saved. As are Crooner and Free’s women. But this is different. These women are gone.
“Look at them, look in their eyes. Melodie wasn’t able to be saved, can you know for certain that they can live a full life? I’m not so sure the other batches of women that we tried to save here are salvageable, either. Put them out of their misery,” I grunt.
“Should we put Roxanne out of hers, too?” Free asks.
My body jolts, it moves without a thought to consequence. I charge him. My fingers flex as I reach for him. Except, I never make it to his body. I’m held back by my brothers, held back from making a big fucking mistake again. One that will not be as easily forgiven as the last.
“Houston,” Snake snaps.
I don’t struggle against the men that hold me. “Roxanne sacrificed herself. She did that for our club, for your women. Do not put her in the same category,” I yell.
Twisted with Chaos: A CASH BAR NOVEL Page 17
