A Love So Hard (Aces High MC - Charleston Book 2)

by Christine Michelle

  “Whoa there, you shouldn’t try to move,” Merc called out as he slid quickly over to my side and pressed a button on a little dangling cord near the head of my bed.

  “Merc,” I started to say, but the harshness and the scratch in my throat stayed my words.

  He shook his head. “Wait on the nurse, man. I’m not sure if I’m allowed to get you anything to drink or what?”

  “What?” I started, but that was as far as I could get with my question before he shook his head and answered me cryptically. “Later, man.” Then the door to the room was opening again and a cute little brunette nurse came flouncing in like she was working the stage at the strip club instead of trying to nurse people back to health.

  “Mr. Brothers, I see you’re finally awake,” she cooed to me as she came up on the other side of my bed.

  “He’s trying to talk, but it hurts his throat. Can we give him some water?”

  “We can give him whatever he wants to have,” she offered with a seductive smile that made me groan.

  “Out,” I stated gruffly.

  “What was that?” The woman asked as she leaned in her, breasts practically spilling out of her scrub top that had been strategically unbuttoned.

  “Get. The fuck. Out.” My voice was a low growl due to my throat being on absolute fucking fire, but the menace wasn’t lacking from my words.

  “What my brother is trying to tell you is that you need to send someone in here who can be fucking professional. He needs a nurse not a whore,” Merc spat out at her.

  She gulped thickly. “I’m so sorry.” Her words were a whisper as she slunk out of the room.

  “I need you to listen to me. If I have to restrain you, I will. You fuckin’ stopped breathing and damn near died three times last night, so you probably won’t be able to put up much of a fight anyway.” I just glared up at my brother as he said this. I almost died? What the fuck had happened.

  “You remember showing me the kutte you got for Lucy?”

  I nodded my head.

  “You remember anything after that?”

  I had to think for a moment, because at first all I had was a blank and then I remembered someone coming into my room after Merc took off. I nodded my head as I started to put some things together. It wasn’t a complete picture, but considering the last person I remember being with was Stiff and then I wake up being told I nearly died… “Stiff,” I mentioned.

  Merc’s shoulders went rigged. “Yeah, Stiff,” he hissed out. “He give you something to take? Pills? Blow? Something to drink?”

  I nodded my head again. “Jack. Was supposed to be a peace offering,” I told him about the Jack Daniels the asshole had offered me, and how much I drank of it.

  “Fuckin’ peace offering that was laced with enough GHB and other shit that you stopped fuckin’ breathin’.”

  Shit. What the fuck? “GHB?”

  “That date rape drug,” he started explaining as my eyes went wide with the implication.

  Merc waved it off. “He didn’t fuckin’ rape you himself, but the result wasn’t much better.”

  A feeling like ice cold fingers running down the back of my neck washed over me. Before I could ask any more questions the door to my room opened again and an older lady came in the room with a stethoscope draped around her neck. “I apologize for the behavior of our nurse. She’s been sent home for the night and will not be back to bother you again.”

  I nodded. The woman grabbed up the pitcher of water sitting off to the side and filled a cup for me. After tucking a straw in the cup she brought it over and held it up to my parched lips. “Small sips so you don’t get sick,” she ordered. As I followed her instructions the nurse was watching my chest rise and fall and glancing at her watch. “You were intubated for a while last night, which is part of why your throat probably feels like it’s burning and scratched all to hell.” I tipped my chin to acknowledge that it was indeed those things. “You’ll probably experience slight discomfort when swallowing and talking for a couple days. You will most likely want to stick to liquids and soft foods if that’s the case. If it persists for more than a week or worsens in the next few days you will want to let your doctor know immediately.” I nodded. “I’m going to let the doctor on call know that you’re awake now, and he’ll probably check you over and let you know when you’ll be discharged sometimes within the hour. He’s on rounds at the moment, and you just missed waking up for them when he started, so he’ll catch you again on the tail end. If you need anything before then just press that button again and one of us will be down here to tend to you.”

  Once she was out of the room I glared up at Merc. “Finish,” I growled out.

  Merc pulled a chair close to the bed and hung his head for a minute. “Should have fuckin’ known something wasn’t right when I saw Lucy all by herself at the party.” My heart rate ticked up at the mention of Lucy’s name. “Some of the whores were talking and I didn’t get to her in time to hear what was said, but I followed behind when she ran off to your room.” He still wasn’t looking at me, instead hanging his head so his eyes never made it up past the floor. “She got there before I did, and she saw Savanna riding you. The woman even had your hands held up to her hips. She had your face blocked for the most part, except to show just a little of it once she knew we were there so that there wouldn’t be any doubt as to who was underneath of her.”

  They might just need to intubate me again, because I couldn’t breathe. Lucy had seen that? I closed my eyes and choked on the roar of frustration and anger that was trapped there. “Please, tell me you guys realized I was out cold?”

  He shook his head, still refusing to look at me. “I told her it couldn’t be what it looked like because you had a surprise for her, and she just said it sure was some surprise, and she took off.”

  “Did you go get her?”

  “No, I didn’t go fucking get her because you stopped fucking breathing and I needed to make sure you lived first.”

  “I’ve lost her.” The words slipped from my lips with the ring of truth. All of the anxiety I had been feeling for the past couple weeks had been preparing me for this inevitability.

  “You don’t know that,” Merc stated softly as he finally looked me in the eye.

  “I do. She promised she’d never let someone’s words send her running again without talking to me first. She also swore if she ever saw me behaving the way you do that she wouldn’t bother looking back when she left.”

  “Fucking hell,” he muttered miserably. “I’m so goddamn sorry, D. I should have checked on you when you hadn’t come out any earlier, but Lily showed up and she was throwing a fit because one of the whores had the audacity to approach me with my wife standing right there.”

  “I’m a fucking adult, man. It’s not your job to babysit me. I knew better. Hell, I’ve been telling anyone who will listen at the club that mother fuckin’ Stiff wasn’t to be trusted, and what did I do? I let him dose me and set me up.” My throat burned for the effort of saying so much making me regret saying anything at all.

  “I’m so sorry, man. We’ll find her and get her back for you, I promise you that.”

  I turned away from him then because I knew, somewhere deep down inside, that it was going to be next to impossible to do. Once she told Jack Carter what she’d seen, he’d make sure she disappeared. Hell, I wouldn’t put it past my own fuckin’ prez to make sure it happened since he didn’t want her involved with the club anyway.

  “You didn’t seem surprised when I said his name.” I ended up coughing through the last of the sentence, but I needed to know whatever they had found out.

  “When I pulled Savanna off of you and realized you had stopped breathing I backhanded the bitch and dared her to leave the fucking room. Told her I’d put a bullet in her right there if she moved. I breathed for you a couple times and then Snatched up the phone in your room and tried to get through to the office. Couldn’t so I dialed 911 and had an ambulance head our way. Tried the office a
gain and got Timeless then.” He gave me a half smile as he finished.

  “I fucking kept breathing for you until the ambulance got there, man. It was the scariest shit I’ve ever seen. They dropped that tube down your throat and the whole time that fucking cunt was sitting there crying and blathering on like she wasn’t just...” he cut himself before he could make the words come out. “Crow went with you in the ambulance so I could stay behind and get some answers. Knew the hospital was going to need to know exactly what had been done to you.”

  “Skip all the emotional shit,” I warned, my anger getting the best of me at that point. “Just tell me what you learned.”

  “Savanna was approached by Stiff earlier that day. Said he had a plan to make it so you wouldn’t be so caught up in Lucy’s pussy and you’d finally see the women of the club and give one of them a shot.” Savanna was one of the women who tried really fucking hard to get my attention during the time that Lucy was gone. She failed. I never touched her or any of the others during that time. “Three of them fell for it. The other two were Amber and Marley, the ones I saw talking to Lucy when I first noticed her at the party. Anyway, according to one of the prospects that overheard what they said at the bar they were covering for Sav, because they kept calling her Brenda and using different names for themselves. Guess they didn’t think anyone else would ever know who had been in that room with you.”

  “They all three new I’d been drugged?”

  “Yeah they did.”

  “Did they,” I started to ask and hated the way I felt about the words I couldn’t speak. Fuck, I was a man. How the hell did I ask my best friend if I was actually raped?

  “Amber and Marley said they didn’t. Don’t know if I believe them. There was evidence that they’d both had sex and whoever was with them hadn’t wrapped up. We could have it tested, our man took samples from them.” I was shaking my head already. No fucking way did I want to drag that out in any way that would mean having even more people know what happened. “Sav for sure was not pretending when I saw her. I’m sorry man. When I threw her off of you, it was obvious what she had done.”

  I closed my eyes and let that sink in for a minute. “How the hell is that even possible when I was out cold?”

  “Nature of the drugs apparently. Plus, the doctor thinks it was a whole cocktail of shit you got slipped and not just the GHB. They took blood to test, but wouldn’t release the results to us, or maybe don’t have it back yet, I don’t know.” He stopped talking for a minute until I opened my eyes back up and nodded. “Sav was quick to point the finger at Stiff. We have him in holding at the clubhouse.”

  “What about her and the other two?”

  “The other two are in their own holding room. Sav is no longer of this earth, brother. Figured you’d want to deal with Stiff yourself, but I couldn’t let that bitch live after what I saw her doing.”

  I nodded once more. “Get Jack Carter here and get me a notebook and pen,” I told him and then I passed out, the exhaustion and probably a little depression pulling me under.

  I was released from the hospital the following day, and Merc came to get me in his truck since I didn’t have my bike and wasn’t exactly in any shape to drive it anyway. He took us straight to the clubhouse. It was so quiet when we arrived that I had to ask. “Where the fuck is everyone?”

  “Timeless thought it best to clear the place out until you were settled back in,” Merc explained. I just shook my head.

  “Take me to where they’re being held.”

  He took me first to the room underneath of our garage where the two lying whores were. The room itself was hard to maintain in Charleston. It had once been an in-ground pool. Instead of filling it in when the club bought the property they built right over top of it and left that information off of the plans. The pool served as our wet room. It wasn’t often that it was needed anymore, but there was a time when our club had its own troubles and it got more use than it saw these days. Didn’t matter, because today it was finally going to be put to use again. The minute those whores saw me they dropped down and started begging for their lives.

  “Please, Double-D, we didn’t know what they were doing. We thought it was fake. We thought it was just a joke.”

  “Just a joke?” I parroted back in question. Amber nodded her head. “Just a joke. Some bitch rode me while I was passed out and you sent my woman back to see that. Then I stopped breathing, damn near died, and it was just a joke?”

  “No, it wasn’t supposed to be like that,” she whined. I just nodded my head and then I put a bullet in hers. I didn’t wait for Marley to say a word. I just turned and fired on her as well.

  “Jesus, D,” Merc hissed out.

  “What? Was I supposed to spare them?”

  “No, I guess not. Just didn’t think they’d get a death sentence for the bit part they played,” he admitted.

  “I wasn’t about to ask if either of them fucked me while I was unconscious. Even if they didn’t, they most likely led Luce to believe they had since they spoke to her. Besides, I almost got a death sentence for the game they played. Hell, I fuckin’ did get a death sentence. No one can find my woman. Her father is missing in action too. That only means he’s setting her up somewhere she won’t be found. Might as well eat lead myself.”

  “No the fuck you won’t!” Merc yelled in my face as he jacked my body up against the nearest wall. “You will fuckin’ do what you have to do with Stiff, get your shit together, and then I will help you track down your woman. You fuckin’ hear me?”

  I heard him. That didn’t mean my head wasn’t completely fucked over the events of the past 48 hours. Just when I thought my life was headed to the perfect place with the perfect woman it all got ripped out from under me. My mother’s warning came back to haunt me. “Charles, if you stay with that club it will doom you too,” she’d said to me. “That club took every ounce of my happiness from me. It even took you from me for a while. If you’re smart, you’ll leave before you turn into the man your father was.”

  I should have listened. The club cost me everything, and now, as my mom had predicted it was all I had remaining of the life I’d been dreaming about. I left the room where the two dead whores were leaking blood and other bits all over the concrete floor and I went in search of the other room where Stiff was being kept.

  “It’s about time someone came to get me,” he started to say as he stood from the little makeshift bed pallet he’d created using his kutte. I sneered at the mess he’d made of his club colors and he reflexively jerked back.

  “Oh, you have that all wrong. No one is coming to get you. You set me up.”

  “The fuck I did!” His shouted denial meant nothing.

  “Three fucking whores all had the same story to tell, Johnny.” He flinched at my use of his given name. It was the height of disrespect to call him by his birth name while talking club business.

  “It’s Stiff,” he corrected.

  I tilted my head to the side. “No, I don’t think it is. It will be soon enough though. You see, when you fuck over your club, betray a brother, and nearly kill him in the process you lose any respect you may have gained from the other brothers. You lose a bit more than respect too.”

  “I didn’t do shit. Those whores are lying little cunts.”

  “Maybe, but you came to me. We had a drink together.”

  “Right, we both drank,” he mentioned.

  I laughed. “Funny thing, that. It’s really easy to make it appear as though you’re drinking when you’re really not.” I shook my head and then raised the gun in my hand up to it, tapping the metal against the side of my skull. “See, the thing is, I remember drinking, and I remember someone telling me nighty, night, and that someone was most definitely you.”

  He glanced behind me toward the door and noticed Merc standing there. “You gonna let him do this? I didn’t have shit to do with this whole thing.”

  “We all know you’re full of shit, man. Timeless was having trouble
with someone stealing crap from the kitchen. He installed one of those nanny cams to check on things. Guess what it picked up?” That was a straight bluff on Merc’s part, because we definitely didn’t have a camera of any kind in the kitchen of the clubhouse. Shit, that would be a liability in case anything went down there that we wouldn’t want evidence of. That didn’t matter though because Stiff fell for the bluff.

  “Shit,” he muttered under his breath.

  “I don’t even have to ask why. You obviously still have a thing for Lucy.”

  “Fuck Lucy!” He yelled. “I wouldn’t touch her now that she’s tainted herself with you. I just didn’t want to keep seeing her here. Couldn’t stand watching you two looking so fucking happy together. She should have kept her ass in Florida.” He sneered in my direction. “At least she’s gone now.”

  I grinned for him then. “She’s not gone. She’s upstairs waiting on me to finish up here,” I told him. Another lie. Another bluff. This was one I wish I could feed myself, but for the sake of my own personal revenge, I made myself believe it for a moment as the words came out of my mouth.

  “Bullshit, I watched her run out of here in tears last night.”

  “Yeah, and you didn’t see PeeWee go and collect her and take her to the hospital to see what really happened did you?” I cocked my head to the side again, grinning widely at him as my words sunk in. “She heard the doctor talk about how I was under the influence of a dangerous cocktail of drugs that not only made it possible for me to be raped, but that nearly killed me when I couldn’t breathe on my own. She knows what you did,” I informed him. “Not that she wanted anything to do with you after the bullshit you pulled before, but now…” I offered up my most sinister smile. “Now, she gave her blessing for me to have no mercy with you.” I put my gun away and pulled a large Bowie knife from where I had it sheathed at my side. “Yeah, see, I allowed the whores mercy since they were nothing more than stupid gash. They were your pawns. You are the one that set this whole thing in motion though. You, I am going to take my time with. I’m going to enjoy every tiny little nick in your skin that I make bleed, and I am really going to enjoy stripping that club ink from your body since I never thought you deserved to have it in the first place.” I laughed then, giving him a once over. “I’m just glad you decided to get so much of it. It’ll make this process that much better for you.”