by Marie James
“You don’t want a new identity,” he begins taking a seat in the chair near the door. “But there’s something that’s keeping you close. You need to tell me what that is, Mak. Now.”
I hate how the low grumble and commanding tone of his voice makes my insides melt. It makes me want to defy him more, just to see how far he’ll take his insistence. Licking my lips, lost in the baritone, I hear him grumble something incoherent and turn his eyes from me. The quick glance at the door almost makes me chuckle. This huge biker, more than twice my size is planning his escape route when he initially came in here to give me the riot act and force me to tell him the information he wants.
My mind wars with itself. The fight between coming up with a resolution on my own, which I know I won’t be able to just to keep them out of this, and telling him the truth and having no control of the outcome of the situation.
I opt for the latter because I’m out of options.
“There’s a little girl there,” I say.
“Your daughter?” His eyes dart to the blanket covering my stomach. “With Grinder?”
I recoil at the implications. “Hell no. She belongs to one of the club girls. Jasmine is eight, and her mother has been around the club for as long as I can remember.”
“Does her mother want out also?” I shake my head. “You’re sure about that?”
“She’s picked up a pretty serious coke habit the last couple of years. She won’t leave out of fear of losing that.” I look down at my knotted hands. “I can’t leave before getting Jasmine out of there.”
He nods when I fully expected him to tell me some other woman’s child isn’t my responsibility. My heart, surrounded by walls built from years of abuse and neglect softens just a little.
“Jasmine is my sister,” I disclose. No reaction from him. The determination in his eyes to help Jasmine is the same before he knew she was a blood relative. The walls crumble a little more. “Her mother denies it. Says the girl belongs to some guy she met at a bar.”
He quirks an eye at me. “What reason do you have not to believe her?”
“Jasmine looks exactly like Scorpion and me. Just like us, there’s no denying our paternity.”
He leans closer, elbows on his knees. “She’s not safe there? Renegades are hurting kids now?”
I swallow, trying to force down the lump forming in my throat, combating the sting of tears behind my eyes.
“Grinder mentioned in passing once that nine is the perfect age to start grooming girls to be good little whores.” I avoid his eyes even though I can feel them burning a hole in the side of my head. “I was nine when he first touched me.”
The sound of his knuckles cracking pulls my eyes from my own hands over to his.
“I didn’t leave before,” I continue, “because I knew I had to stay there. I may not be able to do much, but I could keep an eye on things. When Grinder saw me outside the police station, I had no choice but to run.”
A renewed wave of guilt crushes me, but I speak through my sobs, wiping at the tears running down my face.
“I try not to think about the things I’ve gone through that he’s planning to do to her next.”
“I’ll kill him before he lays a finger on her.” His words are full of a promise so firm, I have no choice but to believe him.
“There’s more,” I admit. “He and two of the other guys are running an online porn site from the club.”
He chuckles. “Mak, there’s nothing I can do about illegal porn.”
“Some of the girls are underage.” The laughing stops immediately.
“Fuck,” he grumbles. I watch his large hand rake over the top of his hair. “He’s running child pornography?”
“The girls are fifteen and sixteen. Mostly hangarounds with daddy issues. As far as I know, he’s not forcing any of them, but I know he plies them with drugs when they don’t want to participate in certain activities. He’s only a couple of bad ideas away from deciding to use girls Jasmine’s age to feed the hungry fuckers who are into that disgusting deviant shit.”
I jolt when he stands so fast the chair he was sitting in bangs against the wall. My eyes follow him as he paces like a caged animal around the room.
“I never trusted those motherfuckers. Pieces of shit, every last damned one of them.” His eyes lock onto mine. “Has he forced you into porn? I’ll fucking kill him twice if he has.”
I shake my head. “He’s threatened it, but he wouldn’t want to share me like that.” I clear my throat again. “He says I’m his. That he owns me.”
He mumbles something that sounds a lot like. If anyone is going to own you, it’s going to be me, but I can’t be certain because his back is to me. I watch as his head tilts up and he focuses on an imaginary spot on the ceiling.
“Who’s fucking the girls? Is he bringing in underage boys as well?”
I shake my head, but then realize he can’t see me. “No. It’s the oldest guys in the club. The members that have been around since my dad was president.”
He growls his dissent, so I decide to lay it all out. Hopefully, we won’t have to have this conversation again if he knows everything today.
“The website is Grinding Daddies.” This information turns him around to face me, so I continue. “As far as Grinder’s concerned the younger the girl, the older the guy, the better.”
“Sick fucks,” he spits. “And your brother is right in the middle of this shit?”
“I don’t think so. All of the information I have was from listening in on a conversation last week. I confronted Grinder that same day.”
He shakes his head. “Not very smart, Mak. He could’ve killed you.”
My face softens. “I thought he was going to.” I point to the healing black eye, busted lip, and marks around my neck. “My point is he was adamant that if I uttered a word to Scorpion, I wouldn’t see the light of another day.”
“What kind of president doesn’t know this shit is going on right under his nose?” He searches my face as if trying to decide if I’m lying to protect my brother.
“You have to understand that the Renegades are like rabid hyenas. Each one is only out for themselves and what they can benefit from, even at the expense of the other members. The only time they stand united is when threatened by an outside force. Scorpion has no control over the men in his club. He’s distracted at best most days. Disappears dealing with shit on his own agenda. The club is falling apart.”
“Best fucking thing I’ve heard all day,” he mutters.
“Those underage girls, Jasmine, some of the club girls don’t deserve to just be left in the wind. Many don’t see a way out. Some have been in it too long to know any different. There are club girls there my age that were born into all of that chaos and abuse by their mothers.” I sigh, deciding to tell him what’s on my mind even though it makes me just as evil as some of the men there. “My only concern is Jasmine. If worse comes to worst, she’s the only person in that club I give a damn about. The whole thing could burn to the ground, and as long as my sister is safe, I’d call that a successful day.”
“I can’t let that happen, Mak. I would be no better than Grinder if I didn’t take into consideration the other people there.”
“I just want my sister to be safe,” I say as guilt pushes more tears from my eyes.
He takes a long moment to look at me, and I’ve never felt more scrutinized than in this moment.
“This shit stops today,” he seethes. “I’ll get the guys together and put an end to this shit today.”
“No!” I yell reaching out for him.
Chapter 10
Dominic
“Someone will get hurt,” she cries as the blanket falls from under her chin.
Perfect, milky-white tits with the most suckable dusty-rose colored nipples are on full display. I push down the idea that I’m just like Grinder and his “daddies” since I’m close to fourteen years her senior. She’s in her mid-twenties I bargain with myself as my throa
t clenches, mouthwatering excessively at the idea of my tongue on her.
“I can’t have it on my conscience if you or one of the guys from your club got hurt because you don’t have time to plan.” I don’t correct her about the your club part. It’s Kincaid’s club; I’m not even a patched member. I just like the excitement some of the missions they get involved in brings, a way for me to fulfill my need for the adrenaline rush that comes along with shooting and bringing pieces of shit to justice.
The way she’s looking at me, I don’t think she even realizes she’s showcasing herself, but being the asshole that I am, I can’t stop the words inching out of my mouth.
“You can’t tempt me with those gorgeous tits of yours, Mak.” I grin when she hisses and yanks the blanket back up to her throat. “I can fuck you all day and still save every one of those girls by nightfall.”
“They’re heavily armed,” she whispers.
“You don’t have to worry about us, sweetheart. It’s what we do.”
She shakes her head as if she’s speaking a different language and I’m not translating it correctly.
“No,” she urges again. “You don’t get it. Renegades aren’t like Cerberus.”
“You got that shit right,” I mutter.
“They’re different,” she continues, the narrowing of her eyes the only chastisement I’m provided at my remark. “Every single person in the club with the exception of Jasmine has something to hide. They’ve all committed a criminal act of some sort. There are some members who are on strike number two. It’s every man and woman for themselves if you go in there half-cocked.”
I grin at her tirade and just barely resist the urge to grab my dick to let her know that I’m, in fact, fully cocked and willing to prove it. However, the seriousness of the matter is no time for my dick even if I can’t get the image of her tits out of my head.
“What’s so damn funny? There’s nothing about this that is funny. Grinning like that is exactly why I know someone will get hurt.” I sober immediately.
“Sorry,” I mutter even though I have no idea why I’m apologizing.
“But seriously, Dom. Everyone there has something to lose. Whether it’s their freedom or their dope habit, no one is going to come willingly. It’ll be an absolute blood bath. You say you don’t want to just concern yourself with my sister, that all the women and girls there are important? Then you need to have a strategy.” She blows out a long breath and leans against the headboard, unfortunately pulling the blanket with her.
“What do you suggest?” It’s an olive branch. I have no need for her help in figuring out what to do in a situation like this. We spend our lives rescuing women and children from more insidious places than Durango, Colorado.
“If I knew, I’d have done it already,” she mutters. “Even with Grinder in prison, I’m not safe. I’ve seen what some of the members are capable of from behind bars.”
I hate the Renegades even more as the tears begin to flow down her cheeks once again.
“He’s not going to prison,” I promise. The words left unsaid aren’t lost on her.
A softness fills her eyes, a small smile playing on her lips, and the whole look makes me uncomfortable. I can’t negate the fact that she’s a crime lord’s daughter and she was raised in that environment. I’m trained to detect deception. I don’t see any on her face, but that doesn’t mean she’s as innocent as she’s portraying herself to be. The fact that I want to fuck her into next week doesn’t help my ability to remain unbiased either.
“Some of the members,” she begins after a long silence. “They may not be the most law-abiding, but they have honor. They’re not one hundred percent bad.”
I glare at her as she backpedals. “Really? The ones that put guns and drugs on the street? The ones who supply the dealers who then distribute dope to teenagers and kids? That’s honor?”
I shake my head when she drops her eyes back down to her hands.
“Honor, sweetheart is protecting those under your care. Honor is never putting them in harm’s way or supplying them with things that will eventually kill them. There is no honor in destroying lives to make a buck. Your club wouldn’t know honor if it showed up on the clubhouse steps waving a bright white flag.”
Her eyes snap up to mine. “That is not my club,” she seethes. “You think I asked for this life? That I wanted to be repeatedly raped by a man old enough to be my father? That I counted it a blessing that my father ignored me every day before he died? That I woke up at sixteen to find my strung-out mother dead in her bed and the piece of shit beside her leaving without so much as a call to the police to deal with the body?”
I take a step toward her, ready to take back what I’d just said but she holds me off with an upturned hand. “Don’t even,” she hisses. “You can’t take it back. It is what it is. No one was there to get me out of that place, but I refuse to let my sister grow up any longer in that kind of environment. I won’t turn a blind eye to the destruction of her soul from seeing the terrible things going on when people think no one is watching.”
My jaw ticks at the picture she’s painting. The guys at Cerberus are all for pussy, and sometimes things get heated before they move to one of the available rooms, but before Griffin showed up, there were no children. Things have calmed down a lot since his arrival, and I imagine after Kincaid’s daughters are born, things will simmer even more.
“Mak, I’m sorry. I—”
“It’s done,” she whispers turning her eyes from me. I miss the blue stare immediately. “I appreciate the honesty. It’s always good to know where I rank with people.”
“Let me speak,” I hiss, my feet moving me closer to the bed of their own volition. “Defending criminals and comparing them to honorable men went too far. Good men die every—”
“There’s more you should know if you plan to get my sister out,” she interrupts, and I can hardly fight the urge to yank her up and let me explain.
I decide, with both tempers ablaze, now is not the time to try to get her to see the light.
“They only film the first three days of the month,” she continues.
“Today’s the sixth.”
She nods. “Exactly. I found out about all this shit on the first.” She points to her face as if I need the reminder. “They don’t keep the teenagers there the whole month. So if you go in now, there’s no telling what will happen with those girls. I don’t know where they’re keeping them, and if you move on Grinder when they’re not there, you may never find out.”
Smart and beautiful, a deadly combination.
“So you have time to come up with a plan.” She still denies me her eyes and every dominant bone in my body wants to grab her by the chin and insist she speaks to me eye to eye. I don’t. For some unexplained reason, I want her to trust me, and I’m certain manhandling her is not a way to gain it.
“You know I can’t do this alone.” She finally raises her expectant eyes to mine, and I can’t tell if she thinks I want her to help me or she knows which direction I’m going. “If they are as volatile as you say they are, the entire Cerberus team needs to be brought in on this. We’ll need surveillance, floor plans, all sorts of shit to do our best to keep everyone safe.”
“You’re going to tell them where I am?” The fear in her eyes and tremble in her voice makes me cringe, but I know getting complacent is the last thing she needs. It’s the fact that she’s worried about Kincaid’s men knowing she’s here causing the fear that irks me. I have to remind myself that she’s grown up around pieces of shit, and in that environment, she’s smart to not trust anyone. It also forces me to realize the amount of faith she’s put in me just showing up at my house.
“For now, I’ll leave it be. We don’t need a month to get ready for something like this. A couple of days is generous compared to the timeframe we’re usually given, but yes, Mak. Eventually, they’re going to have to know that I’m harboring the runaway Renegade Princess.”
“I don’t tru
st any of them,” she whispers. “I know some of the Cerberus guys are friends with the Renegades, turning a blind eye to the criminal aspects of the club. Someone could tell Grinder where I am. Hell, some of them could be involved with the Grinding Daddies.”
“Stop,” I ground out. “Cerberus is keen on young pussy just as much as the next MC, but they draw the line at getting dirty with teenagers. If you doubt me, you need to talk to Kid and Khloe. I’m sure Kid still has an ache in his sac from the blue balls he had waiting for that girl to turn eighteen.”
“How can you be sure everyone can be trusted? Your club girls could get wind I’m here, and they’ll track me down. Please, Dom. You can’t tell them.”
I almost refute everything she’s just said, with an extra reminder that the girls at our club don’t get intel on things like this, but Snapper and Wrench come to mind. Wrench is long dead, teaming up with Emmalyn’s abusive husband, but Snapper is a wild card, a snake who’s not fooling anyone but tends to be super resourceful.
“I can easily convince them that I came across this info after looking into finding you since Grinder came by the club last night.” She nods, wiping at another tear that’s forced its way out. “But I won’t compromise Cerberus to keep your secret.”
“I understand. I wouldn’t expect you to choose me over your men.”
“Your secret,” I correct. “This isn’t about choosing, Mak.”
“I just want my sister safe and away from that life.”
My heart beats faster at her devotion. “I know you do, baby.”
Baby? Why the fuck did I say that shit?
I clear my throat, hoping she didn’t catch the slip. “I’ve got things to do today.” I turn and walk out, needing distance and time alone to clear my head.
Chapter 11
Makayla
“Please, please,” I beg, hoping that this one time he’ll listen to my pleas and leave me alone. I don’t know why I even entertain the thought, he never has before. “I don’t want this. I’ll tell my daddy.”
