by Jessica Ames
24
Briella
My appointment goes well. Miranda, the counsellor, is a kind woman in her mid-thirties, who isn’t pushy at all. We didn’t talk at all about Sin, which surprised me, but rather she asked about my life, where I work, whether I like it, about my living arrangements and if I am dating. I didn’t really know how to explain what me and Daimon are to each other, so I told her he’s my boyfriend.
I come out of the session, relieved and tired from talking, the anxiety leaving me drained. Daimon is waiting, as promised, in the waiting area. He’s flicking through a girly magazine, which makes my lips curl up at the corners. He looks kind of funny, sitting there in his kutte, a chain spanning his hip, rings on his fingers, flicking through a magazine that is probably about makeup types and relationships.
He glances up as I step out of the room and pushes to his feet instantly, the magazine forgotten.
“You okay?” he demands, worry shining in his eyes.
That he cares makes me feel a thousand feet tall. I go to him and he wraps his arms around me, pulling me tightly against his chest. I breathe in his scent, relaxing instantly to his touch. Daimon makes me feel clean, he makes all the dirt Sin coated me in disappear. He keeps all my nightmares at bay, makes all my demons cower in his presence. With him, I feel like I can be me, not a victim of a horrible incident. He sees past that to the real me.
“Brie?” he says my name when I don’t answer him.
“I’m okay,” I tell him, pulling my face out of his chest, so I can glance up at him. “Take me home?”
He smiles down at me and my heart flutters. “You have to let go of me for that to happen.”
“Oh.”
I release him and he snags my hand instantly. “Let’s get you home.”
Together, we walk out into the parking area. The afternoon sun is still warm and I almost wish I wasn’t wearing my jacket, but Daimon wouldn’t let me get on the bike without something protecting my skin, although I think if he had his way, I’d be in full leathers, maybe even bubble wrap.
We walk over to his bike and he goes to the back to grab our helmets.
“It went okay?”
“Yeah,” I tell him. “The lady, Miranda, is lovely. She was really patient, really kind with me.”
He nods. “That’s good, baby. You think you’d feel comfortable coming back next week?”
“She already booked me in.”
He dips his head and presses his mouth to mine. I melt against him immediately. “Good to hear, darlin’.”
“I think she will be able to help me. She’s easy to talk to, which makes a huge difference.”
He collars the back of my neck with his strong hand as he moves his mouth over mine.
When he pulls back finally, he leaves me breathless and wondering how the fuck I got so lucky to find a man like him, a man who isn’t scared of looking into the darkness I carry and shedding a little light on it, a man who will walk through fire to bring me back to who I was before Sin raped me.
I nibble at my bottom lip, my stomach churning. I’m a fucking disaster. What the hell does he see in me?
“I don’t know how you put up with such a broken, damaged mess.” I say it with a smile to take some of the sting out of my words, but I’m serious. I have no idea how he puts up with my shit. I’m a walking disaster.
He shakes his head. “Don’t say that. Ain’t nothing about you that’s broken. You need time to deal with this shit, to put it into a place where you can live with it and I’ll be there with you every step of the way Brie. I’m not going to leave you for a second. I’ll come to every single appointment if you need me to, I’ll go to whatever rehab shit you need to do too, because every day I see you claiming back just a fraction of the control that cunt took from you and every day I see you growing into this incredible woman—the woman you are no matter what was done to you. I love you, baby.”
His words melt some of the tension growing in my spine. I can tell he’s serious.
“I love you too.”
The squeaking of rubber has my head shifting towards the sound. A white van is racing towards us. Daimon reacts before I do, shoving me behind him. His hand reaches to his kutte, where I know he keeps his gun holstered under the leather, but he doesn’t pull anything out, just mutters a “Fuck!”
The van screams to a stop in front of us and the side door slides open with a painful screech of metal. Three men jump out, their faces hidden behind ski masks. My brain is struggling to process what I’m seeing, but Daimon is faster to react. He punches the first guy in the head, but the other two are faster. I suddenly start to comprehend what is happening and try to pull them off him.
“Leave him alone!” I scream, running towards them, trying to claw at his arms. I rake my nails down the bare skin of his arm, leaving behind thick marks.
A fist lashes out and slams into the side of my head. Pain erupts through my entire face and I see stars for a moment before I’m hit again. I go down to my knees, everything around me sounding dull and warped. I can still hear Daimon, though. He’s yelling my name, roaring curses and when I peer up through the blood that is streaming down my face, I catch his eyes. For the first time ever, I see genuine fear in his eyes. Then a hood is pulled over his head and he’s wrestled into the van, kicking and fighting still.
I stumble to my feet, wiping at the blood in my eyes, smearing it across the back of my hand and probably across my face too. My heart is hammering in my chest, my stomach lurching and I feel nauseous, but I try to stop them from taking him.
“Daimon!” I scream.
I throw a punch at the nearest guy, who is struggling to get Daimon’s legs inside the van. He absorbs it with a slight jolt of his head to the side, but that’s it. He turns to face me and backhands me so hard, I slam back against the tarmac. Fear is clawing at my heart now, knives gutting my stomach. Daimon has been wrestled onto his stomach and they’ve managed to bind his hands. He’s hardly moving, which scares the shit out of me. He’d fight if he could.
The man who hit me, snags me by the front of my jacket, dragging me to my feet. I fight against his hold, clawing at his arms. The long-sleeved Henley he’s wearing rucks up as I do, and I see a tattoo on his forearm. It’s a snake around a skull. I don’t see anything else because the man raises his fist again and slams it into my face.
He releases me as he hits me and I topple back onto the ground, pain shooting up my spine. The man turns and gets in the van, pulling the door shut behind him as I scramble to find my feet. As I get to them, the van peals out of there like the devil is on their heels.
I swallow bile as I watch the van drive off with Daimon. Fear clogs my throat as the van turns left out of the parking area.
I turn, quickly locating my bag on the ground where I must have dropped it during the scuffle. Blood is pouring down my face now and I can hardly see through the stream of red. Somehow I get my phone out and manage to dial Levi’s number. He picks up after a couple of rings.
“Hey, how’d your session—”
“Levi…” I break through his question, my voice wobbling and on the verge of hysteria.
“Brie? What’s fucking wrong?”
“They took Daimon,” I practically wail down the line.
“Where’s Daimon?” Levi’s voice changes and something dark coats his words.
“There was a van and some men dragged him into it. Oh fuck, Levi, I think he’s hurt. He wasn’t moving.” I can’t cover the sob that breaks through my words.
“Are you safe? Where are you?” he barks down the line and I hear movement in the background, voices demanding answers.
I peer around the empty parking area, my heart still hammering.
“In the car park by the therapist’s office.”
“We’ll be there in five minutes. Don’t fucking move.”
I swallow down my relief, grateful my brother will be here soon. Hopefully, he will know who took Daimon and how to get him back.
/> Because there’s no other option. We have to get him back. I’m not willing to live a life without the best thing in it.
25
Daimon
“He’s waking,” a voice I don’t recognise craws.
Slowly, I blink, trying to clear my vision, but everything is still blurry. Fuck, my head is throbbing and my neck is aching. I try to move, but pain sears through my chest. My body feels like a block of agony, so I freeze, trying not to puke.
The last thing I remember is standing in the car park of the rape crisis centre with Briella. Then, light’s out. Fuck, is Brie here? Did they hurt her? The bile I’ve pushed down suddenly starts to rise.
I listen for a moment, not hearing her, which I take as a good thing.
Where the hell am I, and who do these voices belong to?
Think, stay calm, stay alive, I coach myself. I need to be smart if I’m going to survive this.
I’m lying on a cold floor, my hands, I realise, are tied behind my back and my feet are also bound. The air in here is so freezing it’s like breathing in shards of ice. Every inhalation hurts, so I try to take shallow breaths. The copper scent lingering in the air mixed with the acerbic stench of bleach tells me one chilling thing. I’m in a kill room.
“Hey, fucker, wakey wakey.”
I blink again and this time figures looming over me come into view. A dark-haired man with tattoos running up one arm, and eyes that are blazing anger, is staring at me. His friend has closely shaved hair and a smirk etched onto his face. His dark eyes promise violence. They’re both wearing jeans, one with a hoodie, the other with a blue button-down shirt. They’re not MC. There are no colours on their backs, but I have no fucking idea who they are.
“Where’s my fucking girl,” I growl out.
The man with the shaved head laughs. “Left her in the car park. I sparked the bitch out after she did this.” He points to the claw marks up his arm, making my lips twitch. They look deep.
Then his words register. “If you’ve hurt her there will be no place to hide,” I sneer, holding their eyes, letting them see the truth in mine.
The dark eyed man steps forwards and fires a kick to my ribs. Pain splinters through my entire torso, making me grunt. I refuse to cry out, but I can’t stop that noise from slipping from my mouth.
I curl in on myself, trying to protect my already bruised chest, the concrete of the floor beneath me scratching the skin on my cheek.
“The fuck do you want?” I rasp out, my breath ripping out of my mouth as I speak. I sound mushy and wrong, probably from the swelling to my face that I can already feel. The skin is hot and tight over my cheek bones.
“Justice.”
His words make no fucking sense. Justice for what? I’m not a saint, I know that, but I don’t know these fuckers or how I’ve wronged them.
“You’re going to have to be a little more specific than that.” I smirk.
The man with the tats snags me by the front of my tee and I realise my kutte is missing from my back.
“We don’t have to be anything, cunt.”
I peer down at his hand and see the snake wrapped around a skull embedded in his skin. I know that fucking emblem. What the hell is it for?
“Where the fuck is my kutte?”
I’m shoved back onto the floor and then kicked savagely in the side. Pain explodes again and I taste blood in my mouth. Fuck.
“You know what happens to prissy little cunts that come into our territory?”
Territory? What the fuck is he on about?
“Ain’t ever stepped foot in your territory,” I growl out. “Don’t even know who you fuckers are.”
Kicks and punches rain down on me. Pain slices through me as the furious attack continues. The skin above my eye splits and blood pours down my face, occluding my vision. I want to fight back, but tied as I am, I’m helpless against the onslaught.
The attack is unrelenting, and when they’re finished, they step back laughing.
“This cunt doesn’t know who we are.”
I breathe out through my nose, smelling the blood in the air.
“You know who I am, who I belong to?” I hiss out between clenched teeth as I try to control the pain exploding through my body. I’m lightheaded and feeling a little nauseous. My vision is wobbly, like I’m coming down from the biggest bender. “You know what my brothers will do to you for daring to touch me?” A laugh rips from my lips.
“Think we’re scared of your little bike club?” the tattooed man snorts. “Ain’t bothered what those fuckers do to us. This is about respect, and the lack of respect you showed us.”
I have no fucking idea what he’s talking about, but anger flares in my veins at his words. Respect? He wouldn’t know the meaning of the word if it hit him in the fucking face.
“Don’t have a fucking clue what you’re talking about, but trust me, this ain’t the way to make a point.”
Tat guy kicks me again and I grunt out, refusing to let the cry that wants to slip out escape. I won’t show these fuckers any weakness. I refuse to.
“Disrespect has a price to be paid.”
“What fucking disrespect?”
“You came into our territory without asking. Took us a while to find you, but disrespect like that has to be challenged. Can’t have every fucker in the city striding into our bars and clubs without anything being said. It’s bad for business.”
Something clicks in my mind. The tattoo on his arm, the mention of the bar. These fuckers are Sic Bastards. Fuck. I’d pulled Briella out of a Sic Bastards’ club a few weeks back. It was where I found her drunk with that cunt’s hand in her knickers. Fuck me, this is about that? I should have cleared it first, asked Titch to make the necessary calls to let me move through another’s territory. I shouldn’t have gone there in my kutte, but there hadn’t been time to dick around. I was worried about Briella. Now, I’m seeing the error I made, because I don’t think these fuckers are going to be content with beating the shit out of me. This punishment will go deeper than that. How deep I’m not sure. If a rival stepped into our territory without permission, we’d gut them. Is that what these cunts plan on doing to me?
I’ve never been a man who feels fear. I’ve looked death in the eyes so many times and lived to tell the tale, but it’s not just me now. I have Briella to consider and if anything happens to me, it will fucking destroy her. The thought of being without her makes my body fill with ice, my heart race. I don’t want to lose her, but this might not be my choice.
“You spying on us?” the other guy demands.
“The fuck?”
“You spying on us?” tattoo guy presses.
“Sic Bastards ain’t got shit we’re interested in.”
I earn a kick to the head for that disrespect, which leaves my vision rolling. I groan and try to control the fire burning through my skull. Fuck, these bastards have lead feet. Their kicks add more damage to the hurt I’m already feeling and my head and stomach feel like a ball of pain.
“Ain’t even lying,” I growl through my teeth, anger making my tongue loosen. “You ain’t shit to the Sons. Ain’t one of us giving two fucks about what you’ve got going on.”
I see the fist coming at me. Then, darkness claims me.
When I come around, I’m aware of intense pressure on my shoulders. My chest is a ball of fire and I can barely draw air in. I wheeze out a breath, my lungs burning and try to make sense of my new situation.
I’m still in their kill room, but now, I’m hanging from a hook in the ceiling, my arms stretched tight over my head. My tee is gone and I’m hanging there in just my jeans. My feet are bare and I’m barely able to get more than my big toe onto the concrete, which is putting even more pressure on my shoulders. I let out a frustrated breath. This isn’t going to end well.
The two arseholes who beat on me appear in my line of sight. I watch as tat guy moves over to a tray on top of the table and starts to examine an impressive collection of knives.
&nbs
p; He’s trying to scare me, to get into my head, but he picked the wrong bloke to try that with. I’m not easily frightened, and this isn’t my first time on the end of a torturer’s blade. If he thinks he can break me, he’s mistaken.
I give him the laziest look I can manage as he turns with a knife in his hand. It’s a wicked looking blade, with a serrated edge that will hurt like a bitch. I don’t show any concern, though.
“Why were you in our territory?” tat guy demands.
I sneer at him, not answering his question. I’m not bringing Briella’s name into this shit storm ever. I’ll die before any of this bounces back on her.
Tat guy steps forwards with a macabre grin. I stare him down, not willing to let a single emotion play across my face. He doesn’t hesitate to drag the knife down my bare chest. I grit my teeth. It is like dragging a line of fire through my skin and the burn is deep. Blood pumps down my torso, splashing onto the floor beneath me.
“Why were you in our territory?” he repeats.
“Fuck you,” I spit out.
He slices again, this time low on my side, beneath my ribs. I try to breathe through my nose to block the pain out, but I’m not sure it’s helping.
I’ve watched men be tortured many times, I’ve even tortured myself, but this guy lacks the finesse of Fury or even Rav. Our sergeant-at-arms has a way with a blade that would break even the strongest man. This guy is a fucking amateur. It hurts, but he could make me scream, if he had the first clue what he was doing.
“Why were you in our territory?”
My eyes slide to the dirty ceiling, asking the universe for patience. “My club will be here soon, and for every wound you inflict on me, they’ll pay it back ten times. Ever heard of Fury? He loves his knives too.” I give him what I’m sure is a bloodied grin.
Tat guy snorts, but his friend has the sense to look a little worried. His eyes widen at Fury’s name. None of us in the club are bitches. The Sons have a reputation, and for a good reason. We’re the nightmare that’s whispered in the dark, but Fury is the master of nightmares. These fuckers acting as if we’re a two-bit, weekend riders club is laughable. I wasn’t lying when I said the club would deliver retribution. It’ll be swift, too. I just have to survive long enough for them to find me.
