“I don’t like it,” G.T. clipped in.
“I don’t give a fuck what you like,” Cruz said, turning to him.
“You’re gonna put my sister in the line of fire? Not gonna happen.”
“G.T.,” I said finally finding my voice. “We need to get to Babs so we can get to Cooper. It is what it is. I can take care of myself.”
“Since when does an ol’ lady get involved with club business?”
Cruz didn’t hesitate, “When that business involves her and her family.”
“Shit,” G.T. leaned against the door. “You sure about this Princess?”
“If it means getting my boy back, I’m ready.” My voice sounded steadier than I really felt.
“I’m gonna need to rough you up a bit. There’s no way that Babs is gonna think this bitch overtook you. She already looks like she was in a fight, gotta give you some marks, Babe.”
I nodded.
As far as we knew, Babs bought the bait. We even added me yelling some choice words through the phone muffled by a small towel to emulate being gagged. I gave Mel my leather gloves after padding her hand up with a towel, she bitched and complained that it hurt, but I didn’t give a shit. It was stupid of me to cut her fucking shirt, but luckily she had a bag of clothes in her trunk to change into.
Laying in the backseat of Mel’s car, I held on tight to my gun. If anything went wrong, I’d shoot to kill in a heartbeat. Babs wanted Mel to bring me to an old warehouse about ten miles off the beaten path. Already giving the location to the brothers, Cruz said he’d have all the guys in place. I had a towel to tie around my mouth, and when we got closer I was to put the gun at my back and slip my hands in the loose knot that Cruz made for me.
We just needed to see Cooper, and then the guys could come in. I just needed to buy a little bit of time. “Don’t do anything stupid, Mel, or the guys will find you and kill you in a heartbeat. You follow what we tell you; you’ll walk away alive.” I was full of shit, but she didn’t know that. For some reason, she trusted me; maybe thinking she was smart was a dumb idea.
“Will I get the money?” I rolled my eyes. What the fuck?
“Yeah, Mel. You can take the money and start off somewhere new, but don’t contact Cooper again.” I threw in the last part to edge the knife home, but it didn’t faze her.
“Got it.”
“You’d better not set her off, Mel. I mean it.”
“I won’t. I swear.”
As the car came to a stop, I placed the towel back inside my mouth, put the gun away, and laced my hands behind my back slipping it into the knots. I even squeezed out a few fake tears to add to the blood from my cut cheek, courtesy of Cruz.
The door flung open as Babs stood their laughing. “I didn’t think you’d pull it off, Mel. I thought she would have killed you by now.”
“Nah, I kept the gun on her and made her get rid of hers.” Mel’s cocky attitude was working well.
“Looks like you two got into it,” Babs said skeptically more than likely knowing I could take Mel in a fight hands down.
“She tried to get the gun away, but I hit her in the back where Liv shot her. She went down for the count.” Well played Mel, well played.
Babs seemed to have bought her replay of events as she began to look around. “Brothers around?”
“Nope. She wanted the boy so damn bad; she came alone.”
Babs laughed hard. “For an ol’ lady, you sure are a moron.” Babs pulled my arm having me climb out of the car. My mind wandered to how she knew I was already an ol’ lady. She must have better Intel on me than I thought, but just as that thought came into play, Liv popped into my head. Liv must have been feeding her information. I wondered for how long.
As we entered the big building, the smell of mold and musk invaded my nose. With my head snapping alert, I searched around as far as I could see to find Cooper, but when I didn’t see him anywhere, my stomach dropped.
Babs threw me into an old chair in the middle of the room as I continued to search every dark corner around.
“Can I have my boy so I can go?” Mel asked like she was pissed off having to wait.
“Sure. Go through those doors. He’s right there.” Mel walked to the doors opening them wide. Two shots rang out through a silencer, as Mel fell to the ground, dead. “She really is a few bricks shy of a full load.” Babs walked over to Mel and began pulling her by the arms, dragging her to the end of the room. My eyes stayed focused on the door where Mel was supposed to go through. “Clear!” Babs yelled as Liv walked through the door holding Cooper.
“Mommy!” he yelled, my eyes softening to him. But when my eyes landed on Liv, her once beautiful face was void of emotion. It was as if the person looking at me was someone I’d never met, let alone let run my studio or trust.
Babs started laughing. “That will be the last time he calls you that. See Liv, and I are gonna take him as our own. You’ll never see him again. Well that and you’ll be dead. But I don’t want to scare the poor boy.”
“Surprise,” Liv said with a deadpan. “You think I was gonna let you come back and take everything that I worked so hard for these past two years. Bitch. If you’d have just stayed the fuck away, none of this would have happened.”
This bitch was fucking crazy. I didn’t take jack shit from her. It wasn’t hers to begin with.
With my mouth still loosely gagged, I stared Babs down. She must have seen the questions rising from my eyes. Babs began talking, as she walked around the chair I was sitting in, gun pointed at me. I kept my eyes trained on my boy, but I was aware of where she was at all times.
“You remember Luke?” I stared in confusion racking my brain with the name, but nothing came to mind. She laughed. “Yeah. I didn’t think you would since you whore yourself out all around town so bound and determined not to fuck a brother… yet you fuck anything outside making you exactly that. Including my man.” Her man? What the fuck is she playing at?
“I can see by your wrinkled up little forehead that you’re trying to piece the puzzle together. So let me help you.” The butt of her gun slammed down on the shoulder that was shot a couple weeks ago, sending shooting pains throughout my arm, but I didn’t move or make a sound. Inside I wanted to scream like bloody hell, it was healed, but still tender.
“Luke was a bartender at Damon’s.” My mind instantly knew who she was talking about. The brown-haired, brown-eyed hunk of a man I fucked in the back room of the bar a very long ago. He was barely a blip on my radar. How the hell did I know he was her man? It was a onetime gig. “I see you remember him. He’s hard to forget.” Her fist collided with my stomach, but I remained impassive. Cooper, on the other hand, began to squirm. I just needed to wait for the right time, so Babs was in front of me instead of behind.
“See, he was actually my fiancé when you decided to fuck him. And you want to know how I know it happened?” She continued pacing, rage seeping out of her. “Because he fucking told me. He said he didn’t want my pussy anymore… that you’re ‘vice grip’ pussy was what he wanted,” she barked out. How the fuck could he want me after one time in my fucking pussy. Seriously?
But she wasn’t done. “Said he knew a buddy of his that was a hang around for the Ravage MC. Said since you were the Princess over there, he was gonna join. I couldn’t let that happen.” I stared at her. “He had to be dealt with.”
The pieces of the puzzle started falling into place, but they seemed minuscule in the grand scheme of things. I fucked her finance; she wanted to get back at me, so she created this elaborate scheme to do so. This chick was fucked in the head, more than I initially thought.
She walked around to the side of the room and clutched her gun in her hand. I took this as an opportunity to loosen the rope from my wrists.
As she walked towards Cooper, I halted, watching. “See, Liv here.” She ran her hand over Liv’s face lovingly, making me want to puke. “She and I had common ground. Hatred for you. Although her hatred is purely profess
ional, it’s still there.”
As she walked towards me, I slowly grabbed my piece; I was done with this dog and pony show. In one swift move, I aimed and shot Babs right between the eyes as she dropped into a heap on the floor.
Liv screamed as Cruz, and the brothers came barreling through the doors from every direction. I aimed my gun directly at Liv. “Give me my boy.”
“Fuck you. I’ll kill him before you have him,” she snarled, clutching the gun that just shot Mel.
Cruz didn’t waste any time. Shots rang out as Cooper fell to the hard ground screaming. I ran grabbing him tightly pulling him away from everything that was about to happen.
“Mommy!” he cried, grabbing on to me tightly. I clutched him hard, not wanting to let go of him, ever.
“It’s all right, Baby. Mommy’s got you. You’re safe.” I rocked him back and forth as his tears poured into my shirt. I heard shuffling and Liv’s screams but ignored them clinging onto my boy.
“Babe?” Cruz knelt down to the ground in front of us, wrapping his arms tightly around us. “He okay?”
“I haven’t looked him over yet, but he feels it.”
“How about you?”
“Better now. She gone?”
“No,” he said kissing Cooper’s head and standing up.
“What?” I yelled shocked. “Why the fuck not?” I picked Coop up off the floor and stared at the woman lying on the ground in a puddle of blood. From the rise and fall of her chest, I knew she was alive. The few shots on her legs were not life threatening.
“Club business,” he clipped as I glared at him. Normally I’d let that shit slide, but this time, it was taking everything in my power to hold it together.
Liv laughed, lying on the ground in her puddle of blood and dirt. “What the fuck are you laughing about?” I asked as Coop’s head buried into my neck.
“You killed Babs, now someone will kill you.” G.T. slammed his fist hard into her jaw. I could hear the bones cracking at the contact.
“Wh… what’s she talking about Cruz?” My voice was unsteady. I thought this shit would be over, but it was becoming to be far from it.
Cruz looked across the room at the brothers who all nodded to him. “Babs put a hit on you if you killed her. Right now the only one that can place it is Rabbit. So we need to get to him before he finds out. We’re gonna use Liv here. She, after all, has been fucking his ol’ lady.”
Liv’s body went still, all the cockiness from her little confession gone at those words. “You can’t tell Rabbit. He knows nothing about me.” Her voice shook.
“That’s what I was banking on,” Cruz said as he nodded to Dagger and G.T. They tied her arms and legs and gagged her, dragging her off.
“Cruz, what’s gonna happen?” I knew that in our world having a price tag on my head meant everyone would be after me. Everyone would want the chunk of the money. I’d be a sitting duck just waiting to die.
“I take care of you. Trust me.” I nodded my head because if anything was certain, it was that I trusted this man.
“Thank you,” I whispered to him.
“For what?”
“For getting my boy back,” I said, squeezing his little body into mine.
“Babe, you did this. You brought him home. I’m just here for back up.” I smiled up at him knowing he was only partially right.
“Can we go home?”
Cruz looked over at Diamond, who nodded to us. “Yeah, Babe. Let’s go.”
Lying in bed next to Cruz, I thought over the week I’d had. The whirlwind of emotions was tearing me up. Tension around the club was through the roof with everyone on edge about the meeting with Rabbit tomorrow night. Cruz has been in meetings non-stop, and I haven’t been privileged to the information. Part of me wanted to know badly what the hell was going on, but the other part wanted to distance myself as far away from it as possible.
I made it my life’s mission to keep Cooper in my sight at all times. I kept him attached to my hip, not letting anyone watch him. I knew that Ma didn’t intend on him getting taken, and she’d have done anything to protect him if she could have, but I just couldn’t risk it.
Trusting someone else with him was incredibly hard. Just the thought of someone else watching him kicked up my anxiety. I hadn’t been back to X, and as far as I knew Becs was running the joint.
I didn’t even have the urge to go there right now, or leave the clubhouse for that matter.
Shutting my mind off tonight was proving to be more difficult than I thought. Even having a couple of shots before bed hasn’t relieved the uncertainty of tomorrow. The horrible part of not knowing what was gonna happen was… I didn’t know what to do to help. They didn’t want me to. Cruz was on edge, but he’s been doing everything he can to be calm and collected for Cooper and me.
He’s doing a great job at it, considering at times I wondered if he was affected at all.
After about an hour of lying there, I couldn’t take it anymore. Sliding slowly out of Cruz’s grasp, I needed another drink. The clock on the nightstand read 1:37 a.m. and I knew someone would be up in the clubhouse, and there were no parties going on.
Walking into the main room of the clubhouse, the place was dead silent, my plan was ruined. I guess 1:30 a.m. on a Monday morning was not party-central. Grabbing a bottle of Jack, I headed down to the kids’ media room in the basement. It was quiet with all the families being gone, and it was peaceful.
Walking slowly down the hall, I made my way to the movie room, thinking some Vin Diesel would be a good pick-me-up. Passing through, rough moans began to invade my ears. As I passed the last bedroom door, the voices became more intense. Rolling my eyes, I kept moving along. Hearing this was nothing new in the club, it was actually quite normal.
“You like that pretty little asshole fucked. Don’t you?” The voice. The voice made me stop dead in my tracks as I listened unmoving. “You dirty little whore.” A loud slap followed by a woman’s moan and the slapping of skin had memories that I buried deep down coming to life right before my eyes. Making my feet move, I peeked inside of the door needing to see the face behind the voice.
Looking through the small crack, my body shuddered as my hands clenched tightly. Rocky was pounding away on the blonde that tried to give Cruz a lap dance a while back. This couldn’t be. It couldn’t.
“You fucking little whore. Doing this for daddy, huh?” My breath left me so fast it was as if I was a balloon, and someone just popped me with a needle. I was suffocating inside my body, but not wanting to make a sound for fear he would hear me. My mind raced faster than I could catch up. It was him. It truly was him. Was it?
I needed to get out of here. Needed to get away… get away from him. He couldn’t be here. Rocky… no. It just couldn’t be. Racing as fast as I could, I ran back up to the main clubhouse and locked myself in the bathroom.
Bracing my hands on the counter, my head hung as if my neck decided to take a vacation. This just couldn’t be. It couldn’t. First off, the brothers would have checked Rocky’s background. There’s no way they would let someone like him Prospect for the club. They couldn’t know. It’s the only explanation.
His words kept ringing through my head over and over again. “You fucking little whore. Doing this for daddy, huh?” He said those exact words to me over and over again, night after night. A memory I wanted to stay locked up forever was dredged up like vomit in my mouth. I focused on the mirror in front of me as my own eyes stared into each other. Whore. That’s what I am. That’s what I did in there for this club… to protect this club. Between him and Babs, the one thing I never wanted to be was being proven, I truly felt like a whore.
The wheels in my head turned quickly. I needed to protect this club again, but I needed to make a hundred percent sure it was him. In prison, he was the guard who provided me with the supplies to take care of some of the women giving the club troubles. But he always wanted payment, regularly. But Rocky, didn’t look like him… it’s the voice. The voic
e was his; I knew it.
I’d thought from the beginning that something was off with that man. I just never imagined this could be it. His body was so much different, while about the same height, the officer in prison was pudgy with a belly that protruded. Rocky was lean and muscular. The officer had green eyes, while Rocky had brown. The officer had no facial hair, while Rocky was covered with a beard and mustache, not to mention he had long hair while the officer had short.
As far as looks were concerned, nothing was similar, and I hoped to God I was wrong about that voice. I needed to make sure. I needed to know. My mind began formulating a plan, and thank God Casey decided to stay two extra weeks after everything went down to be here for us… for me. I was gonna need her help if I was gonna pull this off.
The rest of the night, I laid next to Cruz trying to control my breathing, not wanting to wake him. Today was such a big day for our family. I didn’t want to fuck with any of the brothers’ heads. They needed all their shit together, and this would fuck them up. The good thing was that Cruz mistook my uneasiness for nerves about what he was going to go do. While I was coming up with all kinds of scenarios of what could happen, I needed to screw my head on straight and get my end together.
For the first time in a week, I asked Ma to watch Cooper. It scared the shit out of me, not having Ma watching him, per se, but having anyone watch him that wasn’t me. I gave Ma another gun and told her to shoot first and think later. I wouldn’t lose my boy again.
After a quick text to Casey telling her, I needed her help and to be at the club at three o’clock, I pulled myself together before the guys left. Earlier this morning I asked Cruz, who was staying back with us, and when he said Buzz and Rocky, I was relieved. I needed Rocky here. I needed answers.
“Babe, you sure you’re okay?” Cruz asked while lacing up his heavy boots.
Walking over to the chair, he was sitting in, I kneeled down in front of him. “Yeah. Just be careful, okay?”
Ravage Me (Ravage MC) Page 20
