I glance around the room, trying to figure out who the courier is. Who gave him this shit….I know for a fact he isn’t buying from the cartel. He and Ramirez have been fighting for ages apparently, sworn enemies of each other. I act like I don’t hear diddly squat, but I do, I listen, because information will help me in so many ways. If I was smarter, I might use information to help me get out of here. Hell, maybe I’d have used my body at this point with one of the boys, and we could have plotted my escape. I’m not some bitch from a fairytale, though. There is no escape.
There is only one thing.
Death.
I plan on meeting the Grim Reaper as soon as I can, after all, being a Reaper is in my blood.
Chapter 2
There is no such thing as failure. There are only results. -Tony Robbins
Damon
Somehow, I manage to make it back to my room without picking her up over my shoulder and slamming her down onto the bed below me. Every fucking day that passes is a test. She tests my limits constantly, and tonight, Rage saw me staring. I fucked up, but that goes unsaid.
She is a fucking vision; the golden goose. Rage knows what he has, even if he doesn’t truly understand it yet.
I’ve been here for a while, and from the first day, I noticed her. I don’t know her entire story, only that she had been with Rage for years before I showed up. Not sure how long, and I bet if I asked she wouldn’t have the slightest clue either.
I have information on her, information that makes Kitten valuable beyond belief.
I take off my cut, setting it down on my bedside table. Next comes my shirt and jeans, and after I’m stripped bare, I slide into my bed and stare up at the ceiling above me.
Years.
I have been here for fucking years and have come up with next to nothing.
A trojan horse for my father, Roman Raines, AKA the half-brother of Rafael and Alejandro Ramirez. Our ties with the cartel are strong, as they should be. After all, what is life without your familia?
I’m reminded of that constantly, we make sacrifices for the family, the family comes first. After all, I should understand that more than anyone. Are my brothers and sisters asked to do my father’s dirty work? No. It’s just me. The eldest, the one who holds the most responsibility.
We aren’t Ramirez’s. My father tells us that all the time, we are Raines. I have a hard time understanding why he works for his brothers, how his MC somehow turned into this, into me working undercover and finding out where the enemy is purchasing their product. He wouldn’t have trusted anyone else with it, so he sent me.
When he sent me, I practically came in blind, knowing almost nothing. It wasn’t until I was over a year in that I knew Rage and my father had a past. A night of hard drinking caused Rage to get sloppy, he spat out information from years ago that my father didn’t fill me in on. It didn’t take me long to put together that my father left, with more than half of the brothers that were with the Demons of Hell, it’s when he founded the Brotherhood – the MC I grew up in.
The moment I discovered that, I knew that this wasn’t business. This was personal. It was exactly the reason my father didn’t send anyone else to do this job. He wanted to make sure it was done right and followed through. When I was done here, I would ruin them, and he knew that. I’m like my father in a lot of ways. Rage won’t know what hit him.
I lay here waiting for the Sandman to take me. This happens every night, where I lay in bed and stare at the ceiling. My mind constantly running, not allowing me to rest. All I can think about is how there is so much more to do; the only thing I want to do is finish this. I need to get to work.
Tomorrow, though.
Only so much can be done in one day.
***
“Papa is going to be furious when he finds out you came here today. Someone could have followed you, you know that! Don’t you?! How could you be so careless? Hmm? How could you?” I watch my sister, Amara, closely. She looks just like our mother; fair skin, long auburn hair, and somehow her personality is all our father; reacting first and using her brain second. She’s right. I probably shouldn’t have come here, and yeah, someone could have followed me, but what my sister forgets is that I’m careful. I’m not a rookie, I know what I’m fucking doing.
“I needed to get out of there. You don’t understand how it is.” I needed to get away from her, that’s what I should have said, but then my sister would know there was a problem. We’re Raines. We don’t deal with problems.
“No, you’re right. I wouldn’t understand because Papa doesn’t give me nearly as many opportunities as you. He chose you to do this. He fucking chooses you for everything. There are more of us, you know, not just you, Damon, on your high and mighty horse.”
I scoff.
There is nothing high and mighty about the pedestal my father puts me on. I would give anything for him to give Amara, Rose, Ashton, or Lyon the attention that he gives me. There are five of us, and he acts like I’m the only one here.
“Do you think I asked for this shit?” I snap at her, waiting for her response. I lift myself off of the couch in her apartment, walking past her coffee table and pacing next to her island. “I didn’t fucking ask for any of this. He put me there. He told me to go, so I went.”
“Oh, what a good little soldier you are. Should I give you a round of applause?” she grumbles, clapping her hands together.
“Stop being such a fucking bitch, A!” At this point I’m yelling. She knows every exact way to piss me off. Sometimes, I wonder if she does it on purpose. “You’re just pissed because he doesn’t choose you for anything. You want to know why? It’s because you fail him, every single time.”
Amara’s face goes ghost white.
Fuck.
I shouldn’t have said that.
Shit.
“You are just like him, you know…you want to say that you aren’t, constantly fighting it, but at the end of the day, when you’re not getting your way, you are just like him. You hurt people, using their feelings against them. All you are is Roman two-point-oh. How do you like hearing that, dear brother? Does the truth sting?”
“I am nothing like him,” I firmly tell her.
“You are exactly like him, don’t kid yourself.” She walks past me into the kitchen and grabs a bottle of tequila from the counter top, pouring herself a shot and handing me another.
“I’m not like him,” I hiss, taking the shot back, the alcohol stinging my throat as it goes down.
“You’re infiltrating a club for your own personal gain, you’re exactly like him.”
“Excuse me?”
“I said –“
I cut her off immediately. “I’m not in this fucking club for any other reason than to give Dad what he wants. He wants to know who the Demons are buying their drugs from. It’s not the cartel, and I’m so fucking close to finding out where and who is supplying them. The Demons are expanding where they’re dealing, which poses a threat to all of us. If our uncles suffer, we suffer, or do you not remember that? Oh, and let me enlighten you a little bit, Dad didn’t exactly give me all of the fucking information when he sent me there. He left out big pieces of information, baby sister.”
Amara watches me. I know what she’s thinking, she thinks I’m fucking with her, that I pulled a lie out of my ass and am feeding her with it. Our father has always made it a habit to show us the importance of our name, emphasizing we have the Ramirez blood flowing through our veins. Our loyalties will always lay within the familia. I might be in the club because Rage is fucking with cartel business, but let’s not be naïve, I’m here to finish my father’s war.
“Have you ever wondered how Mom got that scar, just below her chin, the one that crosses down her neck, into her shoulder?”
I wait, and when Amara doesn’t speak, I continue.
“Rage held a knife to her throat and did that. He was trying to kill her. She was pregnant with you when that happened, and you want to know how I know? Beca
use Rage fucking told me. He told me so much about our father, how Dad left and started the Brotherhood. We haven’t even hit the tip of the iceberg. I’m just wondering what else Dad hasn’t told us.”
“Papa is going to right the wrongs that were done to us, to our family, and to every brother that was fucked with by Rage and his insane schemes. He’s a sociopath. A sociopath who still has one of the largest clubs in America. You know what Papa is doing, right? We’re not just squashing Rage’s drug supply, or the business threat to the Cartel. We’re going home, and we’re taking back what was rightfully ours. I mean, c’mon Da’….who do you think the Prez is going to be after we slaughter them?”
I stand there, staring at my sister who has an evil snicker spread across her face, a replica of our father, down to his mannerisms. She claims I’m just like him, when she hasn’t even taken a look in the mirror.
“If you think he doesn’t share things with me, you’re insane, and in case you’re wondering, it’s you, big dummy. Papa is giving you what’s yours. You just have to take it, no distractions. Just get the job done.”
No distractions. Yeah fucking right.
I have a pretty big fucking distraction, and her name is Kitten. I’m supposed to be watching her, but not in the way that I am.
Chapter 3
Sleep isn’t just sleep anymore, it’s an escape. -TheGoodVibe.Co
Kat
The day passed by much quicker than I anticipated. Rage was busy with club business and shooed me away when the meeting began.
I went up the stairs into Rage’s room. When I was dismissed, this was where I was to go. Sometimes, he would allow me to stay downstairs in the club with the others, but if I’m honest, I really don’t care to be around anyone else much. They all knew what I was, and I knew what they were. The point is, they all knew that I was below them, and Rage made damn sure that I knew it as well.
Tonight is the night, where I won’t have to stand by and have to endure another moment of misery. I say I don’t care, and I don’t – but doesn’t one have to care in order to go to the lengths of suicide? I guess so.
There are so many ways to kill yourself. I thought of many, of how I could slit my wrists with a razorblade and let myself bleed out in the bathroom. I knew what would happen. I would hurt as the razor dug into my skin, and then I would bleed, and after a certain point, my body would begin to panic, a natural instinct. It would be fear, and that fear would cause me to act irrationally, maybe I’d even try to get help – but that’s not what I want. I don’t want help, so I can’t go that route.
Option after option plays through my head, almost as if I can imagine every scenario. Brutal thoughts invade my mind, but I know those will fail. Unless I have someone else beating me to death, it will be pointless.
Finally, it hits my mind.
Pills.
We always have plenty of pills.
I could just slowly drift off to sleep, and I’d never wake up. Never would I have to endure this life ever again, I would just drift into death.
Maybe death is where I can find peace.
I walk around the room to the corner of his bed and open the bedside table. There is bound to be something in here. I won’t say that I know Rage, because the point is that I don’t. I only know what he reveals to me. In a sense, the man is as stoic and guarded as I am. The only time he ever slips up is when he’s been drinking heavily. The old dog can’t hold his liquor like he used to, that’s for damn sure.
I place my hand on the old worn knob and pull it towards me. As the drawer opens I can finally take the breath that I was holding in. I see it, right there, a tiny Ziploc baggy filled with pills. Just from looking at them I can tell what they are, Vicodin. Like I said before, I pay attention to what goes on here. I listen, it doesn’t matter that I don’t use my knowledge to help me get out, I just keep it locked in this noggin of mine.
Rage has been using a new drug supplier for years. He buys it from a guy at a discounted price and then the club sells it on the street for profit. Up until very recently he’d only been selling heroin, oxy, the small stuff; if that’s what I can even call it. He’s been trying to implement the use of Vicodin into the community, I guess he wants to test his product for once. Usually, I’m his lab rat, taking anything and everything, he puts in my fucking mouth.
I take a quick glance around the room and spot a beer bottle from my peripheral, walking over to it I grab it and shake it slowly from side to side. There’s still enough in there to help me get down at least most of the pills. It’s not ideal, but it’ll work.
This is bad. I can’t even remember how long I’ve been here, I know it’s been years…but just how long? I stopped keeping track of the days after two years went by, after that point it was pretty much pointless. No one was coming to save me. The only thing I could do was survive, and for what? To become Rage’s pet, his toy to show off to everyone that he could. How fucking pathetic. That’s how I’ve come to the point I’m at today, with a beer bottle in one hand and my eyes on a bag of pills.
In this very moment all I can think about is my family, of what I can remember of them. My mom and dads, my cousin Ash who I never really liked all that much, but she was the only girl my age, so we kind of became sisters in a sense. She didn’t have any, and I didn’t either.
With each pill I swallow from that small bag, I try to remember something good of my life before – before it turned into what it is today.
If I am going to meet my Reaper, I am going to do it on my own terms, thinking of everyone that I loved.
***
Damon
Amara was right. Fuck. She is always right, though. I hate admitting that shit, but I couldn’t help it. At the end of the day, the last thing I should have done was go see her today. It was careless and stupid, ultimately, it could have ruined what I was here to do. Everything that I’ve worked so hard for could blow up in my fucking face.
As I pull back into the gravel lot of the club, I just have to be thankful that it didn’t. Rage had a pretty important meeting tonight, one that I wasn’t privy to join in on. I thought that the brothers would be here, but from the looks of it, they took their meeting elsewhere.
It’s just past ten, still very early in the night for most of us. Usually we’re up until well past two in the morning drinking, but tonight, things are quiet. That doesn’t settle easily for me. Do they know where I was?
“Hey there, Tiger,” I hear Verna talk to me the second I open the doors to the club. She’s one of the oldest club whores that Rage has. I hear he keeps her around, but I don’t know why. She has to be just a few years younger than he is.
“Where’s everyone at?” I ask her, cutting to the chase. I don’t care about her advances, or whatever the fuck she wants. She can bother someone else.
“They went out…mmm…about an hour ago. Kinda shocked Rage didn’t give you an invite, even the lil’ prospects went. You do something to piss him off, kiddo?” Damn, I went from Tiger to Kiddo really quick. That’s just Verna, she’ll use her brain to get whatever she wants, and I just cut the shit, meaning she did too. I can think of one thing I did that might’ve pissed him off.
Kitten.
I eye fucked the shit out of her. How could I not, though? She’s a fucking vision, even with Rage giving her drug after drug, and the scars that she thinks I don’t notice. I see them, all they do is make her even more beautiful. The woman is flawless. Olive skin, those dark brown locks that look black when the light hits her in just the right way, and don’t even get me started on those eyes. She’s been through shit, plain as day, I can see it. Everything about the woman is strong, yet something in those eyes of her call me to her. Flashing like a beacon. She wants help, even if she won’t verbalize it for me.
I see what he does to her. Day after day I have to watch it, and I just can’t help it anymore. I don’t want to watch it, to see what he does to her. She deserves far better than him, I just hope that she realizes that.
> “Who doesn’t?” I retort back, making my way up the stairwell, down the hallway until I almost reach my room.
I say almost because the door to Rage’s room is open, even though I try my hardest not to peek in, there’s just this force pulling at me. The next thing I know, I’m in the doorway, watching Kitten’s breathing. She’s on the bed, arm under her pillow and shaking. Immediately I want to drag the blanket on the end of the bed up and over her, so I do, walking in the room, grabbing the quilted blanket and pulling it up over her body. It’s just as I reach her shoulders that I see the baggy. It’s the same baggy that I gave Rage a few days ago, it had to have had at least twenty to thirty pills in it.
I glance around, looking on the floor, looking for anything that could help me determine what I don’t want to believe she did.
She takes drugs, but she doesn’t take that much….she’d know better. With as much as Rage gives her she’d know better than to…
Fuck. She did know better!
She.
Fuck. This is not part of the plan. I’m here to work, not to save the chick I dig from killing herself.
I scoop her up in my arms, blanket in tow and dart down the stairwell. Verna is waiting at the bottom, arms crossed, looking me up and down with Kitten unconscious in my arms.
“Well, well. What do we have here…looks like you’ve got something that doesn’t belong to you.”
That’s it. I’ve had enough. There is no more Mr. Nice Guy coming from me.
“I fucking dare you, try. You won’t even make it far enough to reach the phone, you old bitch.”
Havoc- Reapers MC Boxset Page 34
