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

by Christine Michelle

  I took my time over the next two days carving out the club tats Johnny had inked on his skin since he’d been a member. There were four of them with Aces Insignia on his body. Each one was sliced off with precision cuts so that I could show him the flayed skin. Once he saw it I cauterized the wound with a hot iron so he wouldn’t bleed too much. Each time he ended up passing out like the little bitch he was. I thought about letting him go after that. Then I remembered this wasn’t his first offense. This wasn’t the first time he’d cost me Lucy. Last time he cost me almost three years with her. This time, there was no telling. No one had seen or heard from her. Lucy’s mom claimed not to know where she was. She wasn’t panicking and filing a missing person report for her daughter either though.

  At the end of day two I made 987 little cuts on Johnny’s body and I watched them all bleed. “There are 987, one for each day you cost me with Lucy when you pulled that first stunt.” I couldn’t tell him that the tats cut out of his skin were for the moments I was missing with her now because I didn’t want him to know that she wasn’t around. It was worse torture for him to think he was going through all this for nothing because he would die thinking his plan had failed.

  The door to the room popped open as I was watching the blood drip down his body in rivulets. “You have a visitor,” Crow stated coolly.

  “I’m busy,” I informed him.

  “It’s Ja,” he didn’t finish getting the name out before he reached out and sliced straight through Johnny’s jugular. There was only a slight arterial spray since he was already bleeding out from all of his other wounds. Then it just kept pumping in slowly weakening streams to the beat of his heart until that too slowed way down. Just as he took his last breath the door to the room burst open and Jack Carter, followed by Timeless, came barreling into the room.

  “What have you done?” Carter asked.

  “What needed doing,” I informed him. He turned his gaze on me.

  “He said this would happen if he helped her get free of you. The boy came to me a couple nights ago, told me you were fucking around on my girl and then let me know he’d get her out if it was the last thing he did.”

  “Jack, this was club justice for what he did,” Timeless tried to reason with him.

  “No,” Jack hissed.

  “Yes, he fucking drugged me. He had club whores rape me. Lucy walked in on that happening. This is his punishment.”

  Jack just shook his head back and forth. “Funny, he said you’d have a convincing argument, only I’m not convinced. A man being raped by club whores,” he scoffed the words out with complete disbelief. He shook his head still as he turned to leave. Before he got through the door he glanced back at Timeless. “You can torture me all the same, and I will never tell that sick fuck where she is this time.” With that, he was gone, and I was tempted to do just as he asked and torture the information out of him.

  “You won’t touch Jack Carter,” Timeless ordered. “Leave it to me. I will find Lucy and bring her home. I’m not stupid, D. I saw you with her. If she had to be involved in the club, had to fall for a brother, I’m just fucking glad it was you.” He left too after spouting off that lip service I just didn’t have it in me to believe, and I just turned to watch the rest of the blood trickle from Johnny’s body to the floor and eventually to the drain where it was beginning to coagulate a bit as it sat there without too thick to drain properly. I was supposed to pull a prospect in for this part, have them deal with the body and the cleanup, but I needed to see it to the finish line for some reason. This asshole had cost me my whole fucking future. I needed to see him put all the way to ground.

  I buried him face down in the dirt like the traitor he was, and then I shredded his kutte, and burned it in a separate place. He didn’t deserve to have it in death since he’d never deserved to wear it in life. Once I was finished with my chores I avoided the clubhouse, went to the house I had just purchased for Lucy and myself and I started writing in that notebook I’d asked Merc to get for me while I drowned myself in a bottle of vodka, because I couldn’t stomach whiskey anymore. Once again, I found myself ready to write them. There would be one letter for every day until I brought her back home to me. I would write them, but I didn’t have to write them sober. I found myself laughing hysterically at my ability to keep my vows. I was never supposed to have to write her another letter. There I was writing number 988.

  Chapter 12

  (Lucy – age 20, Double-D – age 23)

  Two months ago I walked in the clubhouse to find CJ – Double-D – naked in bed with a club whore. One month ago, my father had come to visit, and he told me that Double-D was plowing through the women like there his place in heaven could only be determined by how much pussy he had before he got there. I nearly lost it on my father when he spat those words at me while I cried and called him a liar. It hadn’t sounded like the truth. At least, it hadn’t until my father threw the truth in my face. “You saw him going at it with one of them for yourself. I don’t have to lie. You know what you saw. Is that the type of man you want to land yourself with? Didn’t he tell you how his father used to treat his mother? I know what that was like because I was around for some of that.”

  Double-D had told me about his mother and father; in fact, he’d made a point of telling me because he never wanted to be the man that did that to his woman. His vehemence in that was what made everything taste like a lie in my mouth. Even the things I’d seen with my own eyes, heard with my own ears. I couldn’t get the image of him with another woman riding him out of my head, and yet, it still left me ill at ease, because I knew he never wanted to be that person. What had changed? What had made him do that to me?

  It didn’t matter now though. A month ago, I’d told my father to leave and not to come back until he could avoid talking about Double-D at all. That was the other difference two months made. He was no longer CJ to me. Maybe I was going crazy, but I had to believe that he was simply two different people. CJ would never have done something like that to me. The man I saw that night was Double-D. It was the only way I could cope with what I saw playing out in my head every time I tried to close my eyes and rest. Which seemed to be all the time now.

  I knew why that was now too. I was staring at the stick that gave me the answer to why I’d been feeling so off. I hadn’t been sick like a lot of women complain about when they first get pregnant. I had just been so tired and I hadn’t felt right. I wrote it off as depression at first. Then while I’d been shopping two days ago I had gone aisle to aisle in order to try not to forget anything important. It was then that I had to think about the last time I’d purchased or used feminine products. I hadn’t brought any with me when I left town, and I still had yet to buy any. After thinking it through I’d gone over to the pharmacy section and picked up a couple tests. I’d taken two yesterday. One said I wasn’t pregnant. The other clearly showed I was. I waited until today to retest – a tie breaker if you will – and these two showed that I was definitely pregnant.

  I sat back on my couch staring at the tests I’d lined up there on the coffee table. I’d have to scrub it down afterward, but I just needed to see them and have the answer stare me in the face for a while. This meant I needed to decide if I was going to go back to South Carolina, or at the very least contact Double-D and let him know he was going to be a dad. Would he care? He had talked about us starting a family and having children together, but he’d also talked about never cheating on me. I wasn’t sure what to do. After everything I’d seen I wasn’t so certain I wanted my child growing up around that lifestyle either. Not to say there weren’t cheaters in the average every day relationships, but the club life made it too easy for men to stray, and to have a boatload of backup in doing it.

  I found myself wishing I had a girlfriend I could confide in, but sadly there weren’t any women in my life that I could trust now that my grandma was gone. My mom was never someone I could confide in. The women I’d met from the club had loyalties that belonged with the c
lub, something I was no longer even a part of by association. I only had me now. Well, me and the baby I was growing in my belly. It was then that I finally broke down and let all the pent emotions free. We were supposed to be in a happy place, planning for our future when I found out I was pregnant with his baby. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. I felt robbed of that on top of being betrayed, and discarded.

  It couldn’t have been too hard to track me down since he’d known where I was before. My grandmother had left me her house when she passed. Granted, it wasn’t the place where I’d stayed with her in the retirement community while I finished high school and most of college, but still it was in the same area. I’d been in Tallahassee before, but now I was tucked away in a little house on Apalachicola Bay. It was just a small two bedroom cottage, but it sat right along the water and gave me a view to die for while my soul wept for all that I had lost.

  My father had said he was too busy going through other women to bother to come for me. I hadn’t believed him. I hadn’t wanted to believe him. Yet, here I was a month later, two months after I left, and my father was right. Double-D wasn’t coming for me.

  Chapter 13

  (Lucy – age 20, Double-D – age 23)

  Seven exhausting, soul-sucking months since Lucy left and we were still no closer to finding her. Both her mom and dad were tight lipped and refused to tell me. Jack informed me that I never deserved his daughter and he certainly didn’t believe I’d been drugged, raped, and nearly killed in order to get me into the position Lucy found me in.

  I had my suspicions that Timeless knew where she was, even if he wasn’t passing along that information. I tried my brothers in Tallahassee to see if she was there again. I knew her grandmother had a house there somewhere even if it hadn’t been where Lucy had been living when she was there last, but they told me there was no trace of her in Tallahassee. I had even contacted the senior living facility her grandmother had been in to see if maybe Lucy had gone to work for them or visited with any of the elderly people she may have known. It was all a bust.

  Since I thought Timeless knew and wasn’t telling me, I found myself on shaky ground with the club for a while too which meant no one would help me. I’d refused runs, been caught screaming at Timeless to fix this shit, and I even spilled the beans that Lucy was in fact our president’s biological daughter. That was something the old timers already knew. All of it had been in the hopes of getting her back here. That last was the reason I think he refused to tell me where she was, or allow the club to help look for the past couple months. He didn’t want her to know he was her real dad and that he’d pawned her off on another man like she was nothing more than a bike he no longer wanted and discarded. It didn’t matter that he’d done it to keep her safe. What mattered was what Lucy would think of those actions. What really mattered was that I was stuck not knowing where she was because of the man’s shame.

  “What do you mean you can’t work on my bike any longer?” I heard Merc yell into the phone. “Listen, old man, your shop is the only one we’ve allowed to work on our… No. If you’re retiring why does it matter then?” Merc caught my eye and growled into the phone before he hung it up.

  “What was that about?”

  “Looks like your woman’s pops is tired of dealing with the inquisition every time one of us takes our hog in to see him. He just informed me that he’s retiring and the shop won’t be catering to anyone wearing an MC kutte any longer.”

  “What the fuck?” That was new. It also had me bolting for the door. I was headed to go see the man in person about this. It had to mean he was close to breaking and giving up the information on his daughter, right?

  “You know what Prez said,” he yelled as he ran after me.

  “Yeah, well he might be okay with giving up his daughter, but I’m not. Fuck his edicts.”

  “Damn it, D, you’re gonna get your ass kicked out of the club you keep going like this. Is she really worth all this?”

  “She’s worth everything,” I told him as I slid my leg over my bike and started her up.

  “Fine, I’m coming with you then. We can say it was all on the up and up checking to see why we can’t take our bikes in no more.”

  “Whatever you need to tell yourself,” I mumbled before taking off. It only took a few minutes to get to the auto shop run by Jack Carter and when we did it was to see that he was closing the place up. It didn’t look like he was planning on opening for business again any time soon either despite telling Merc that someone else would be taking over.

  “Jack,” I called out as he glanced up then continued about his business while he ignored me. I killed my bike and hopped off before making my way over to the man. Merc was hot on my heels as if he was expecting me to do violence on the man. Hell, if it hadn’t been for Lucy I would have done so long before now. I wanted to take him into our little underground room and show him exactly what I’d done to the last man who dared to keep my woman from me. Not that he hadn’t already seen evidence of that, but I wanted him to feel the pain I’d been going through for seven fucking months. Still, I knew she would never forgive me if Lucy found out that was how I finally tracked her down. That was the only thing staying my hand and keeping Jack fucking Carter breathing free.

  “What the hell are you doing here? Pretty sure Timeless told you next time he caught your ass here it would cost you those colors you wear.”

  “Pretty sure Timeless won’t be sitting in that pretty position much longer. Times are changing, things are being shaken up, Jack,” I spat back at him. “Soon your guard dog won’t be wielding that gavel.”

  He stood straight then and looked me right in the eye before nodding. “That they are, boy. One thing that won’t ever change though is you knowing where my girl is. Now, I suggest you get the hell on out of here.”

  There was a part of me that sincerely wanted to kill the man, but the larger part – the one who had used up every bit of his resources trying to find his woman – that part of me was tired. I sank down to my knees right there before the man I had come to loathe so much. “I never asked for shit my whole life. I never bothered to demand what could be mine with hard work. She is a piece of me though. How the hell do you expect me to go on with a piece of myself missing?” The question rolled off my tongue as I clutched at my chest in an attempt to soothe an ache that wouldn’t dull in her absence.

  Jack seemed taken aback by the gesture momentarily. Then he glanced over at Merc and back down at me before shaking his head. “Give it time, son. You’ll move on. She has.” He turned and walked away leaving me with that last hit to my soul. She has. He couldn’t mean what I thought he did. There was no way.

  “Come on, man,” Merc damn near whispered to me. “Let’s get you out of here.” He reached out to grab hold of my elbow and pull me to my feet where I proceeded to lose it completely. Everything I’d let out over the past few months had been nothing compared to all that I held inside. A deafening roar left my body, and I swear a piece of my soul tore free from my body along with the awful noise that filled the neighborhood as I finally let my grief over losing Lucy swamp me and pull me under.

  “We need a van here,” I heard Merc saying distantly as I continued to bleed out the last of my hope.

  “Why are you here?”

  “Why am I here?” My mother echoed back in question. “Lucy, look at you,” she snipped out. “You’re almost as big as this house and,” she glanced around the space that wasn’t filthy, but was starting to look as though a library and laundry mat had exploded inside it. I washed my laundry; I just didn’t see a point in actually putting it anywhere after it dried. Instead, there were piles of it on the couch, the chair, and a basket by the overstuffed bookshelf. “Obviously, you can’t bring a baby into this house looking like this. No doubt, you’d lose him in a week.”

  I rolled my eyes at my mother. She was both the last person I wanted here and the only person I could stand to be around. The last was simply because I couldn’t sta
nd to be around anyone, but at least I could openly hate her until she got tired of my crappy attitude and left.

  “Your father called while you were in the shower,” she informed me.

  “Did he close down the shop like he said he was going to?”

  She smiled widely then. “Yes, he did. He’ll be down here in about a week and then we’ll be here until the baby is a couple weeks old and I think you can handle it on your own.”

  “Excuse me?” I seethed through clenched teeth.

  She waved my attitude off once more with a flick of her hand. “You know what I mean.”

  “Did he do it?” I finally asked. I knew it couldn’t be good news since she’d looked entirely too chipper when she told me daddy called.

  She nodded her head and tried to appear contrite, though she was having obvious trouble containing her smirk. “He went by that filth hole the man calls a clubhouse and told him about the baby.” She stopped there and glanced down at her manicured nails, inspecting them for an imperfection she could complain about the next time she went into the salon.

  “And?” I hated that I had to play this game and prompt her for the information she was obviously withholding for dramatic effect.

  “Are you sure you care to hear this?” She asked.

  “Mother!”

  “Fine. Don’t say I didn’t try to spare you though.” She turned to make sure that we had complete eye contact before she continued on. “His exact words were, ‘since you wanted to be on your own so bad, keep the bastard on your own too.’”