by Ker Dukey
I gain speed as my heart ricochets in my chest.
A piercing sound screams out into the night air, shattering the calm of the trees. Fear causes my body to disobey my need to escape and I slow and crumble to the ground. A tortured cry rips from my chest when a hand reaches into my hair. My scalp ignites in pain as I’m dragged backward.
“Don’t ever fucking run from me again, bitch,” Brenner growls, yanking me up from the floor. Pinching my cheeks, he pulls my face up to look at his. The black of his pupils expands, swallowing the color of green.
“Don’t fucking touch me.” I fight and struggle against him. “You disgust me. Just kill me. Kill me.” My tiny fists pound against his chest.
His hand releases me. My head snaps to the side when the impact of his open palm slap makes contact, the sting setting fire to the soft skin on my cheek. The throb in my jaw steals my thoughts for a second.
“If I were going to kill you I would have done it already, you crazy bitch. You think you’re disgusted now? You have no idea how bad it’s going to get for you.” He bends forward and heaves me over his shoulder. Carrying me back to the car, he tosses me inside and locks the doors.
Losing control of my emotions and stability, I kick and punch at the door.
Lights coming in our direction garner my attention; headlights. They’re slowing as they approach and a pick-up truck with Buzz inside rolls to a stop. His bike is on the back, and he’s grinning.
“They left the fucking keys on the visor flap. Amateurs,” he boasts, jumping down from the truck.
“Get them inside the truck. We’ll drive the car as far into the woods as possible and torch it.” Brenner barks his orders.
He said get them in the truck, but it’s only me here.
Buzz goes to the back of the car and pops the trunk. To my horror, he reaches in and carries an unconscious Jenna to the truck. When he opens the door to get to me, I kick it with all the fight left in me. It smashes into his chest, knocking him backward. I sprint from the car and run straight into a wall of Brenner. His fist connects with the side of my face and robs me of consciousness.
Another fucking shipment seized. There is a rat among us, that’s clear, but who it is isn’t so clear. Everyone in here is a damn suspect. I don’t carry my father’s tolerance and trust for our brothers. Rank, relation, friendship; it doesn’t fucking matter. Everyone and anyone is capable of turning rat when the feds get enough shit on you.
I knock my glass on the bar and Kiwi scuttles over to fill it with whiskey.
“Anything else you want tonight, Frost?” She licks her lips and pushes her bought tits together to show me her cleavage.
Kiwi earned her name when a few brothers agreed her pussy tasted like the fruit. I’ve never put my lips there; club sluts aren’t my thing. I’d rather put my dick in a hole that’s not been passed around and used as a cum dumpster for all my brothers. It was the club whores who first started calling me Frosty, because I was cold toward them, and then the brothers shortened it to Frost.
I don’t bother to entertain her with a reply. If she’s honest with herself, she doesn’t expect one.
My old man has just left his office and is waltzing toward me. For anyone else, the broad, six feet three tank coming at them would make them stain their seat. Regardless of his sneer and the scar running like a crescent moon from his left eyebrow right around his face and coming to an end just under his chin, my old man is a talker before a fighter. He believes if there is a solution for any incident that doesn’t involve death or violence for his club then that’s the route to be taken. Don’t get me wrong, if he needs to kill, he will do it without blinking. He’s a great leader. The wellbeing of his brothers and standing of his club are a priority.
“Slade!” he barks. He’s the only person who calls me by my birth name.
“Prez.” I raise my chin in greeting.
“Where’s your brother?”
“I’m not his fucking keeper.”
He glares at me and my eyes drag to Stormy, who slumps against the bar next to Bullseye, the club’s VP and oldest member of our brotherhood. He’d been here when my grandfather ran things and was taken on as VP when my old man got voted in as president. I didn’t know much about my grandfather, only that he was ruthless, and his enemies caught up with him. He was sniped at a charity bike rally he put on for the locals. What’s the saying? A good deed never goes unpunished.
“Why doesn’t he answer his fucking phone?” my old man grumbles under his breath.
“He came in the back, Tank, and went straight to his room. Not alone,” Kiwi tells my old man as she pours Stormy a shot of Patron.
“Hard night?” I eyeball Stormy, who grunts.
Stormy is going through a divorce, and his bitch wife just upped and left, taking his kids and not letting him know where she or they are.
“That cunt is still AWOL. Miss my kids like fucking crazy. She knows this will kill me.”
“We’ll find out where she is, Stormy. Your kids will be home where they belong. Trust me,” my old man tells him, dropping a hand to his shoulder.
“I appreciate all you’re doing, Prez.”
“Slade,” my father barks again, jerking his head for me to follow him.
Sliding from the stall I’d been parked on for the past hour, I stride behind him as he makes his way to Brenner’s room.
“What’s going on?” I ask.
“I need to talk to you both about your sister.”
My fist tightens at the way he says sister, like she’s a hassle he has to deal with, but I’m soon distracted when he opens Brenner’s bedroom door.
A mass of curls lays sprawled on the floor, a body attached. Her arm is out to the side and cuffed to the stripper pole Brenner had installed on his sixteenth birthday as a gift to himself. There’s bruising around the sliver of her cheek that I can see under the hair covering her face. She’s wearing a pair of shorts that look like she’s stuffed ten pounds worth of meat into an eight pound bag. It’s not a bad thing; I prefer a woman with curves, but usually, Brenner will go for the skinny bitches. Seeing this shit wouldn’t be any different from any other day in Brenner’s room, but the ink on this bitch’s neck changes everything.
Cutter blood.
Getting a closer look at the back of her neck, a hole forms in the pit of my gut when I see a crown sitting proudly on top of the C.
“Fuck!” the old man bellows, punching a hole through the panel of the door. “Where the fuck’s your brother?” He turns to me like we didn’t just have this conversation five minutes ago.
I know when to be a wise-ass and when not to, so I give him the answer he needs. “I’ll find him.”
“Copper!” he barks.
Copper, our club secretary, appears from the room opposite to see what the fuck’s going on.
“I need this place emptied now. Lock it down!”
“On it, Prez.” He yawns, doing up his zipper and disappearing down the hall.
Just as I round the corner in search of my dumbshit brother, I see him walking toward me with his usual swagger, thinking he’s the king of the castle, but he’s wrong. He ain’t even close.
“The fuck?” He growls when I grab him by his cut.
“You’re in shit. I suggest you answer honestly and keep any retorts to yourself,” I warn him, my eyes boring into his.
“What have I done?” He curls his lip and attempts to push my hand away. Fucker is always trying to best my strength and fails every time.
“I think you know the fucking answer to that.” I cock a brow, tilting my head to the side. He breaks, closing his eyes briefly. I loosen my grip on him and wait for him to snap.
“Which one ratted? I’ll gut them.” He yanks himself free from my hold.
“No one has ratted, you dumb fuck. The evidence is laid out in your bedroom!” He never fucking learns and I’d hoped he would grow out of this shit, but the older he gets, the more of a liability he becomes.
Shoving past me, he shouts, “Butt the fuck out!”
I follow him and smirk as his feet stutter to a stop when he sees our old man standing at his bedroom door.
“She breathing?” our old man asks. His tone is stone cold and deadly.
“She was. Why do you care?” Brenner shrugs, but the slight break in his voice gives his nerves away, and our Prez is like a bloodhound when it comes to sniffing out weakness.
Trudging toward his son, he grabs him by the neck. “I’ll tell you why.” Forcing him up the small corridor to his room, our old man pins him against the doorframe and points inside. “Do you see the mark on her neck?”
I watch as my brother’s eyes drag over the unmoving girl on the floor, widening when the realization hits. “Fuck!”
“Yeah, boy. Fuck. With a capital fucking F!”
“Tell me she came here on her own to piss off her father,” I say, but the way my brother’s jaw is manically twitching, and judging by the beads of sweat pouring down his face, I already know the answer.
“Brenner!”
“I’ve fucked up.” He shrugs.
My old man releases him and adds two more holes to the door. “Just her?”
Brenner doesn’t say shit.
“Brenner.”
“No. Her friend is with Buzz and Tats.”
“Go get her,” my father tells me.
“Buzz’s room,” Brenner offers.
Yeah, no shit, fuckface.
I’m no fool. I know what to expect when I open Buzz’s door, but the burn in my gut as the burger I ate less than an hour ago attempts to force its way up my throat generates a gag.
The puddle of blood the bitch is laid in appears to be coming from her own ass. Her broken body is painted with a variety of slashes, cuts, and bruises, and her bloodied wrists are tied together with a thick length of her own hair, a bald spot on her scalp showing exactly which part of her head it was hacked from. Sick freaks. I hate these two bastards. I’m all for each to his own when it comes to kinks, but these two have issues. Real bad fucking issues.
“Jesus!” I retch as she groans and piss pours out of her.
How long had she even been here before they fucked her up?
Tats turns to look at me, unaware I was even here. He’s gone, his pupils blown.
“Frost! My man!” He laughs hysterically, as if the sight of my face is the funniest shit he’s ever set his eyes on. He’s so stoked up; I’m shocked he even knows it’s me in his doorway gawking at the poor skinny bitch he and Buzz have torn apart.
“What the fuck is this shit, Tats?”
Giving me a blank look, which isn’t unusual, he shrugs his shoulders. “What shit?”
I have to stick my hands in my pockets to stop myself from ripping his face off and feeding his eyes up his ass for a better look at the crap he’s forever causing. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
When he continues to give me that stupid goddamn vacant stare, I snap. Grabbing him by his neck, I force his face into the chick’s puddle of piss. “This–fucking–shit, you dumb fuck! What the fuck have you done?”
He giggles, wiping the wet from his cheek. There’s about to be another fucking death, and I’m not talking about the girl. “She was as slick as oil, man. Real hot fuck, Frost. You wanna go on her? She’s still good if you don’t mind body fluids.”
His head bounces off the wall when I throw him across the room. Anger is making my head throb, and I pinch the bridge of my nose and close my eyes in an attempt to settle the shitstorm building in my chest.
Buzz groans, gaining my attention. I hadn’t even seen him slumped on the floor in the corner of the room, the mess they created too shocking for my stare to shift from. His limp dick is hanging out of his jeans. I curl my lip in disgust and stride from the room.
This is going to cause shit beyond anything my dad and brothers have ever faced. The comeback from this will be taught to high-schoolers in the future. The war coming is one that will be logged in every fucking American history book.
The peace that had been wagered between us and the Cutters has been a good thing. When my dad had suggested it, I hadn’t thought it would be honored, definitely not from the Cutters, but it had, and it has brought a lot of good to both MCs. We each have our territories, and instead of both of us fighting for precedence in each zone, we now have a free rein to sell and steal as much as we want in our allocated sectors. Cutters also secured planning permission for a new strip joint right on the edge of town; so on edge, in fact, that neither law enforcement claimed jurisdiction and passed the buck. This was like hitting the lottery for any club. Our Prez cut a deal to own half the club and run all business meets there. He’s already talking expansion and using it as a base for the trafficking of women. Human trafficking is almost as big a business as drugs these days, and my old man wants a piece of every pie.
And now that’s fucked. Epically.
I make my way back to my brother’s room, and Copper’s door has been left ajar. The woman I saw him sneaking in here in the early hours is sprawled across his bed, her tits on display and the sheet covering her waist. Must be getting serious if she’s still here in the daylight.
“Prez.”
My father narrows his eyes on me, the fierce glint in his stare warning of the upcoming hurricane he’s about to unleash. He nods for me to go on.
“You’d better come see this.”
He growls and squeezes the bridge of his nose; an action I’ve inherited from him.
“Can this get any worse?” he grumbles through gritted teeth.
“Yup.”
He grabs Brenner by the back of the neck and pushes him out of the room. Brenner stumbles but quickly rights himself. Luckily, he doesn’t bite. Right now, that would be his death sentence, and for once he is wise enough to shut his fat fucking mouth.
“This is not on me!” Brenner blurts when both he and my dad see the wreck left behind by Tats and Buzz.
“Jesus H fucking Christ,” Prez mutters under his breath. Much in the same way I did, he gags and stares, horrified, at the poor chick. She is so badly broken that if she were a dog, one of us would put her out of her misery.
She’s young, real young. Too fucking young.
What the hell was my shithead brother thinking?
He wasn’t.
“Check her neck,” I bark.
Brenner moves forward and wipes the blood from her neck using her own torn up tee that’s lying in strips around her body.
“No tattoo.”
That’s something at least. She isn’t part of the Cutters club; they mark all their kids from age eleven.
I jerk when my dad shouts, “Kiwi!” His loud bellow makes the girl groan, awakening her. The bonus is, she’s still alive.
Kiwi rushes in. Her feet stagger to a stop when she spots the chick and she inhales a long breath. “Who is that?”
“Help her get cleaned up. Call the doc and don’t ask fucking questions!”
She nods, quickly snatching up a sheet from the bed and gently placing it over the girl.
“Call a church meeting,” Prez barks at me. “And get your sorry excuse for a brother out of my sight while I sort these two fucking cunts out.”
Brenner snatches away from my hold when I crush his cut in my fist and drag him out of the room. “I have my own legs, Frost!”
“Mom should have shut hers and fucking swallowed you instead.”
“Fuck you!”
“The morning after pill could have saved us all, but no, here you are, causing more sorry shit. What the hell is wrong with you, Bren? When are you gonna step up and stop being a dick? Do you even understand the backlash that’s gonna come from this?”
He remains silent, and if it was anyone else, I would have taken that quiet as remorse, but not Brenner. He doesn’t give one fucking shit. He doesn’t even have the brains to work out exactly what he’s brought to his club; a war that will end the last six months of peace between us and the Cutters. The Cutt
er princess currently strapped to Brenner’s stupid fucking pole the first bullet fired that has broken the ceasefire. “Those two you insist on being close with are fucking animals.”
“We’re all animals. Don’t play a saint, Frost.”
I move toward him until our chests touch. He shrinks a little under the intimidation I cause. I’m bigger than him, and if it came down to it, I could give him an ass whopping that would send him straight to the ER.
“That girl is no older than our fucking sister. What would you do if someone did that shit to her?”
His eyes storm over, a phantom entering the room and possessing him. “Don’t you ever say that. No one would touch her. I’d fucking kill them.”
“Yeah, not before me. Let’s hope this chick doesn’t have someone with our thinking.”
He snorts, his head flicking back as if stunned by my words. “Are you fucking scared?” He almost laughs but keeps it in.
What a stupid motherfucker.
“I don’t scare easy, little brother. It’s not about fear, it’s about the repercussions the club will pay, our brothers the price for your stupid mistakes.”
His face turns stoic and he glares at me, as usual saying nothing.
The place is bizarrely quiet. Since lockdown had been set in, most of the club kicked out, but those who bed down here are hanging around the bar, wondering what the fuck is going on and grumbling about where Kiwi is and why she isn’t pouring their booze.
“You’re all fucking lightweights,” I growl as I vault over the bar and grab a round of cold beers, popping the caps and slamming each bottle onto the worn slab of wood. “Church in an hour, and someone call in Denise. The bar needs tending.”
They exchange a few glances, already speculating what’s going on. Only Stormy has the balls to ask. “What the fuck’s going down, Frost?”
“Church,” I reply before necking my beer and throwing the empty bottle in the trash. I can hear their quiet murmurs as I walk away, but I don’t offer anything else.
Stepping into Brenner’s room, it comes as a surprise to find the Cutter princess sitting up, hugging her scuffed knees with her one free arm. Her terrified wide eyes dart to mine and she scuttles back, pressing herself into the pole she’s cuffed to. Her tight shorts strain against the plump flesh of her ass and her huge tits almost spill out of the blouse she’s squeezed herself into. Her wet tears have painted her cheeks with streaked makeup, but it pales in comparison to the bruise on her right cheekbone, the vivid purple making her resemble a punk rocker who’s overdone it with the face painting.
