Topaz: Book 8 of the Steel MC Montana Charter

by Michel Prince

  “What happened to your father and mother?” Onyx was sickened by her story, unsure how anyone could survive such a horrible ordeal.

  “Nothing. But it is why I moved away and lived with my Nanna. I couldn’t grieve alongside Byron’s family. Mine was torn apart because I finished my senior year from home and moved on. They don’t want me around and I couldn’t forgive them for taking him away from me. It’s why I found the Steel MC. I was running and landed in New Mexico first, Red needed girls and I thought why not move even farther.”

  “Was it just my complexion or something more when it came to me?” he questioned, seeing her avoidance of him was as protective as her Lakers comment.

  “I’d hate to see your senior picture,” she said stroking along his cheek, her touch soft on the swollen cheekbone. “Because you were who I saw sitting by my side at my kids’ games when I imagined my life with Byron.”

  “You know all black men don’t look alike,” he joked, hoping to break the mood even though he could see her body was already relaxing. The weight of years of pain weren’t gone, but the tension between them had shattered.

  “No, you don’t.” She laughed. “I just wished you were more of an asshole, so when I’m around you I didn’t think you could be my second chance.”

  “Well, I’m not him,” Onyx replied, having been a trophy more than once before and not in the mood to take the place of a man long buried. Fighting back ghosts and being second in his heart wasn’t his idea of a good time.

  “No,” Topaz replied taking his hands in hers and stroking her thumbs along the rope burns on his wrists. “But I’m not the girl he fell in love with either.”

  8

  “We have to get out of here, Topaz. It’s pretty obvious their ultimate plan is to kill us eventually, so we need to try and escape.” Onyx stood up and peered out the window.

  The slow movement showed her how much damage had been done as she got up, retrieved his coat and cut from the fireplace. Much loved and respected item of clothing was now covered in gray ash, but at least it hadn’t been burnt. Not yet, maybe because the men who took them didn’t understand the significance of the item and how important the symbol was. Strange, for the men who practically wrap themselves in the flag claiming to be the true Americans. The ones destined to rule the world.

  When she’d been younger, Topaz had heard things in passing. Never understood why one man was better than the other, when taken at face value. Then as she got older, she saw the insecurities of people. Lyna was the perfect example. Over sexualized and confident to the point of annoyance at times. Ready to lash out at anyone at the drop of a hat. All of it coming from her inadequacies and dreams for more unachieved. Topaz had wondered why the woman stayed so long with the Steels. Even with all the love and acceptance she never tried for more, but seemed upset with her station in life.

  For Topaz, the Steels did give her purpose. Not the dream she had in high school, but so few actually achieve that when they shoot past their station in life. Her cousins had hit their mark. Not the first in her family to do jail time and since their sentences were close to ending, too soon in her mind, they wouldn’t be the last. There was little doubt within a year of release they’d each have a baby raised by women as slow and ignorant as they were.

  She was under no delusion she was basically the queen of the trailer park even though the crap house she’d been raised in wasn’t mobile. It had a foundation and everything, but she’d been the pretty one in a town of fuck ups. The brain she attributed to her grandmother, but it wasn’t like she was a scholar. And the last thing she wanted was to go to college. Her Nanna tried to encourage her, saying it would be a fresh start, but Fayetteville wasn’t far enough away. Hell, Mars wasn’t at that time in her life.

  “Don’t think leaving would be that hard,” Topaz said, helping him put on his coat then placing her hand on the door handle only to have Onyx pull it away. “What? It locks from the inside.” Her body was a flood of emotions, twisting in bad memories and the image of the man, standing in front of her was gut wrenching. He was shadowed mostly in the dark cabin, but catching light from the full moon, cresting the horizon as twilight was shifting into dawn, gave her pain.

  “Maybe, doesn’t mean they haven’t rigged it,” he said. “Make us feel safe and boom. So we killed ourselves out here.”

  “You think they have a Brick?” she joked.

  Brick had a penchant for blowing shit up, more times than not, he at least warned the rest of the MC for safety reasons. But they’d found it was better to let him have a little fun every few weeks than to let him go months at a time without at least one explosion or another. While it had been useful to the MC more than one time, that didn’t mean the man’s issues weren’t annoying at times.

  “Besides, the sun is going down and even if it wasn’t, I don’t see any type of light out there. We could be five miles or fifty from Turnabout Creek.” Onyx again, looked out the window, this time, he was damn near parallel to the glass trying to see the door.

  The American Citizens for Truth Uniting Peoples or ACT-UP, the moniker alone showed how slow witted the people were since ACT UP had been and still was a big fundraising and AIDS research organization that had started in the nineties focusing initially on another of the groups’ hated class. Those in the LGBTQ community among others. And here these assholes used the same acronym. The group had been using Cream for some plan of world domination, and although they had tried a big national coup, the Steels caught wind and took them down. Now, the stragglers were trying to build them back up it seemed. Didn’t the world have enough hatred to refill their ranks as quickly as a dam and lock system refilled to allow boats to move along a river never meant for them?

  At least the group taught others a little about explosives when they tried to blow up the shop Baldy ran. Topaz, on the other hand, had learned from the Brick of the south, Dell when she’d been in New Mexico. Steel’s Ol’ Lady had served in a similar unit as Brick and while Topaz understood putting an explosive together, her dismantling a bomb she hadn’t constructed wasn’t in her skill set, but she did know one thing. Look for wires. It wasn’t like the door was flush to the edge of the doorjamb, there was a few cracks and she tried to make out if the block in light was natural or primer cord.

  “We need to find weapons.” Onyx limped toward the chairs. Snatching one, he smashed it against the wall splintering the wood and breaking it apart. Gathering two of the legs, he passed one to her. “Use this to protect yourself.”

  Topaz spotted a poker next to the fireplace. “Here, this is better.” She handed it to Onyx.

  He gripped it in one hand and the chair leg in the other. “I can use both. There ain’t much here in the way of getting out.”

  “Something tells me even Santa uses the front door,” she said trying not to go for the obvious route, as she placed her hand on the small chimney flute that went to a small hole in the roof.

  Setting his weapons down, Onyx tried the window, his eyes cautious of the destination. “Where the hell are we?”

  Topaz, content in her exam of the door and beginning to feel claustrophobic tried the door, shocked to learn it was locked from the outside.

  “Shit, they must have used something to lock it on the outside.”

  “I told you—”

  “I checked it okay,” she said holding up her hands in surrender. “I’m not dumb.”

  “No one ever thought you were dumb,” he countered, the sun setting outside the window, barely cresting the horizon, but still bathing him in light. “What time do you think it is?”

  “It’s summer,” she replied. “Could be near ten or so.”

  “No sun in the winter, all sun in the summer. My body still hasn’t adjusted to the long and short days,” he admitted.

  “We also don’t have a consistent seventy-five degrees or whatever it is in LA.”

  “Hey, can’t help it I was raised in the sunshine and happiness.”

  “Viole
nce and pollution.”

  “That pollution is for temperature regulation,” he joked.

  Having unburdened herself to him, she now appreciated the fighting, joking style he had in his banter. Similar to Hollywood in many ways. The guard needed to see what they’d seen, been who they were and do what they do. This past year or so, she had wasted enjoying a man for who he was, she couldn’t go back. Relive those moments and respond better. All she could do was move forward. Push on and hope they had a life to live where she could truly apologize.

  “What are we going to do?” Topaz worry trickled through her mind that they weren’t going to get out of this. “The window isn’t that small, we could smash it and—”

  Onyx pointed to the corner and she finally saw why he wasn’t taking the second easiest route. Yellow cord, could be a fake, could be real. Either way, neither of them were in the mood to find out.

  “What if we tossed something from the other side of the cabin through the window?” she asked.

  Onyx cut his eyes to her.

  “What?” she asked.

  “I wasn’t a quarterback in high school,” he said. A bit of sting in his words.

  “Never said you were, but hell even I can hit the broad side of a barn,” she reasoned holding her hand up by the window.

  “And the blow back?”

  “See now, you’re just being practical,” she mocked.

  “Look, I’m not about to sit here and wait.” Onyx moved around the cabin. Four walls, the room no more than fifteen feet by ten and no way to guard against an explosion. The cord may not be real, but that didn’t mean they should press their luck. “They must have secured this cabin before they took us. I didn’t hear them doing any of it. Did you hear them when they came back? Moving things? Disarming it?”

  “They were outside for longer than I expected?” Hopelessness washed over her because they couldn’t leave and there was a good chance when they came back what happened before would repeat. Already lack of water shown on Onyx’s cracked lips and ashen skin with no supplies around to mend him. The cut on his head had reopened, but the blood had finally clotted. His left eye had swollen, not to the point of vision loss, but enough to make the lid puff out past his eyebrow. Unable to take in his injuries, she looked out the window and saw they were in the middle of a forest. No cabins or houses around them, at least none she could see as the sun crested behind the pines and a plume of dust floated in the distance.

  “Someone’s coming,” she said and Onyx stood behind her, the heat of his body helping warm the ice of fear running through her.

  “We’ll have to fight our way out of here?” Onyx tipped her chin up and turned her toward him. “Do you have it in you?”

  “Like I said, I’m not that scared girl anymore.”

  “You didn’t sound scared in the story you told me,” he said. “Overpowered, that’s not the same.”

  She pushed up on her toes, closing the gap between him, no longer able to help herself. This wasn’t the way she wanted it, trapped, beaten, but she feared she may never get the chance to be with him and if she was about to die, she needed the taste of him on her lips. Heart beating wildly as her lips met his, the kiss went long and deep, but not hard. His body was too bruised and damaged for her to push on a physically broken man. Instead, the sensual caress sent her careening over the edge as he wrapped his arms around her, his tongue dangerously invading more than her mouth as they fused together in a single blissful moment that she wanted to freeze because it couldn’t last.

  Topaz felt safe for the first time in forever. Standing in Onyx’s arms, the attraction she had suppressed for a year tripled in those few precious moments before the rumble of the diesel engine truck silenced outside their explosive laden prison.

  Strength would be Onyx’s way to get out of this. Staring down into Topaz’s eyes, he saw hope. Belief in him in a way he’d never known. She’d tasted so sweet and the hunger inside him grew for the woman he’d only wanted to be civil with. Her body, yes he’d wanted, but not beyond any other woman’s. Not until this very moment and it wasn’t because it might be his last.

  “You ready?” he breathed against her lips, her body close enough to meld the two of them together.

  She nodded, but didn’t say a thing. Her eyes were wide and her lips pinched, afraid but trying to be brave for him.

  He kissed her on the lips then pulled away. Retrieving his weapons, he stood back from the door and waited for it to open.

  Topaz’s shoulders straightened as she held a chair leg in her hand on the other side of the door.

  The both of them finally fighting together and not with each other.

  Skin rose along his neck and he prayed babysitting duties hadn’t been passed off to a new set of assholes. Glen and Stimpy had earned his ire and he wanted to give three fold what they had to him.

  The front was rigged, the shifting of the men outside told of the need to disarm and he was ready to bulrush his way through them if he could. It all depended on their weapons. His didn’t have the whole twenty-five hundred feet a second touch a bullet had. Instead, he’d be dealing with how much force he could create with his arms. Not broken, but most certainly in pain. Shoulders burned once again from him holding the stance needed for him to swing, fast and in a hurry.

  With a creak, the plunger style door handle moved down and Onyx realized he hadn’t clenched every muscle. At least a dozen woke up, came to attention, letting him know their current bruise status while sending bolts of pain through his body. Adrenaline surged, masking the pain enough to where he could function. A gust of fresh air blew into the room as good old Stimpy stepped inside and Onyx jabbed the poker forward, his thrust so great he thought he might have stabbed him by the way he was unable to pull back. No matter, he’d hit hard enough for him to bend at the waist allowing him to smash him over the head with the chair leg.

  Glen raced into the cabin and Topaz slammed the door closed. Then swung the wood chair leg like she was in the majors.

  The hit hard enough, so he bent backwards, his belly exposed as he flipped around to face her. “You bitch!” Raising his fist, prepared to smash Topaz’s face like he’d done to Onyx’s prone body.

  Onyx caught sight of her panic seconds before grasping the muzzle and yanking it from his hands. Catching him by the arm, he turned him around, as the panic shifted to good old Glen once he realized Onyx was the one holding him. Fingers digging into his bicep as Onyx twisted it back. Making the man bend to his will, the training he received with the LAPD, both sanctioned and not, returning to him like a long lost lover. The moves fluid and familiar.

  Clearly with the upper hand, he punched him hard before Topaz swung again. This time hitting the man over the head with the chair leg and knocking him flat on the floor.

  The guy rolled and kicked at Onyx, but he was ready and blocked him enough it hit his arm. Pushing up, he regained his footing as old Stimpy writhed in pain by the bed.

  Topaz eyeing him as blood pooled from his belly and darkened his shirt.

  Holy shit, Onyx hadn’t thought the poker sharp enough, now he knew better and was ready to use the weapon again. Glen swung, but Onyx deflected, then hit him in the face with his fist gripping the chair leg allowing for at least double the force. His hand indenting his face as the sound of cracking bones echoed in the tight room. There was no doubt he did some damage, but the guy swung back, punching him in the ribs with a wicked under cut. This time, Onyx heard his own bones crack. The snap triggering already tender areas sending off a tidal wave of pain. A rush sending him over the edge and not allowing him to stop. Dropping the weapons, he flew at Glen. Fists balled as pain from a dozen places sent him and over the edge while he pounded his face until he could no longer feel his arms.

  Struggling and numb, he reached for the poker and sliced it across his opponent’s chest. Blood dripped from the gash as the broken and should be beaten man stood. Fuck me, Onyx thought, the man had to be on something. The only thing
worse than a man tripping balls, was a psych patient off his meds. It was as if God stole their ability to reason, feel pain, or even register potential danger, so there was no stopping them. The twitchy eyes and dilated pupils he’d missed the first time around. Had good old Glen gone for a hit of something sweet while he and Stimpy made their run.

  “You son of a bitch. I’m going to kill you!” The man pushed through and stumbled as he swung. At least, he wasn’t the only one feeling the rush, crash, rush of sore body parts.

  Onyx snagged his fist and wrenched it back, giving him a perfect angle for a few good hits, forcing him to the ground on his knees. “Kneel before Zod!” Onyx howled, enjoying the man who’d called him less, called him nothing on his knees before him. The man had seemed to like the classics, so who didn’t love a little black superman in the evening?

  “You’re a dead man.” The man shoved his fist forward, sending both men into the wall as he rose from the ground. Stepping back, he once again, went for Onyx’s stomach, then swinging with his left to the face.

  This knocked Onyx down to one knee, his good one which meant pain was surging from the infected one from the hard plant of his foot to the ground. Raising his head, he took in the room. He couldn’t lose this fight, he had to get the upper hand. Glancing over at Stimpy, the pallor of his face letting him know he wasn’t about to move, not from his current comfy spot of the bed. He may try, but Onyx doubted the man could move more than a step before collapsing.

  Topaz had taken over beating Glen with her chair leg on the back. Causing him to double over while slapping at her legs trying to unbalance her. All, while she smashed down as hard as she could with the splintered makeshift bat. With a pull, her leg was airborne and so was she. Ass over teakettle style, as she fell back and onto the dying Stimpy.

  Onyx grabbed Glen by the arm and turned him enough to face him. Once again, a hard blow to the man’s face made him wonder how weakened he’d become during their beatdown. Even high as hell the man should be down by now. Instead, it took a swift punch to the man’s gut followed by loud pop as if Barry Bonds had just hit one out of the park and he looked up to see Topaz panting with the chair leg at her side.