by Malcom, Anne
Or I’d already lost it, and this was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
“You think this is funny?” Claw demanded, directing his fury at me. “Hansen’s gonna kill us, and if he doesn’t, Jagger sure as fuck will. No way he’s okay with you seeing this shit.” He jerked his head to the man hanging from the ceiling, the other gagged and bound to a chair next to him.
I finally yanked myself from Swiss’ grip. My arm protested, and I knew it’d bruise. What was a bruise, anyway? “I do not live my life according to what Jagger defines as ‘okay’ for me,” I snapped. His name was rancid on my tongue. “Swiss brought me here. I can’t unsee this.” I nodded my head in the direction of the dead man and the live one. “So I’ll observe it. Like Hansen said.”
Claw gritted his teeth with such force I thought his jaw might shatter. He finally relaxed enough to lift his cigarette up to his mouth and take a pull. His fingers and hands were stained with blood.
“Fuck,” he muttered, smoke wafting from his nostrils as he exhaled.
Swiss seemed to take this as agreement, and he walked over to a table littered with well-worn torture instruments. It was like that stupid close up in a horror movie when you’re presented with knives, forceps, and pliers to tell you all you need to know about the men who used them.
But this was not a horror movie, as much as it had seemed to start to resemble one.
The instruments on the table only worked to tell me things I already knew about the Sons of Templar. That they were ruthless. Held no mercy for anyone who crossed them. That they weren’t’ afraid to draw blood.
That cold fear slithered further up my throat with the knowledge I could’ve been just another stain on a long butcher’s knife if things had been different. But then again, every human being in the world was just one choice away from becoming a stain on the pavement. A body in the ground. Just another tragedy.
Claw stubbed out his smoke and walked over to the bound man. He was bleeding from a cut on his forehead, but he looked in much better shape than the man beside him.
“Now you’ve seen what happens when you don’t tell us what we need to hear,” Claw said, ripping the man’s gag off, jerking his head to the corpse. “It’s not pretty. And though it was fun for me, I promise you it wasn’t fun for him.” His voice had changed. Taken on something not entirely human. There was a lightness to it, that couldn’t be human when talking about torture and murder.
The man tied to the chair looked at him with an entirely inhuman look on his face. He was too young for such a look.
But I knew better than anyone that youth was the first casualty of war.
And as Liam had said that first night, this was a war.
Not one I was going to be walking away from unscathed.
But I was going to walk away. I had to.
After.
After I got the story.
From the club.
From Liam.
“Fuck you, biker scum,” the man spat.
Claw raised his eyebrow at Swiss. “That’s not a very polite way to talk to hosts, is it?”
Swiss shook his head. “Not polite at all, my friend.” He shrugged, wiping his blade on his jeans. “Some people aren’t brought up right, I guess.”
“It’s our duty, then, as scumbag bikers to teach him some manners, I’d assume?” Claw asked.
Swiss nodded, eyes darkening as he moved forward, snatching the man’s head and yanking it back so he exposed his neck. The flat of the blade laid against it. “Yes, it’s time for manners.”
He let his head go, and instead of making a cut into a part of his neck as I expected him too, he grabbed the man’s hand and sliced off his finger. It was an expert, practiced stroke.
The man screamed as blood poured from the wound.
Swiss regarded the finger for a second, then discarded it, as Claw had with his smoke.
It was the casual brutality that jarred me, not the brutality itself.
But it still wasn’t surprising.
Their job was to be outlaws, and torture was just another day at the office.
Both men waited patiently for the screaming to stop.
“Now we’ve gotten the formalities out of the way, why don’t we cut the shit and you start talking before I keep chopping off digits,” Swiss said. “Because if you talk now, you might still be able to jerk off with one hand.” He held the man’s thumb on the opposite hand. “If you don’t, you’ll be paying whores to do it for the rest of your life, and that shit will add up.”
The man glared at him through a haze of pain. “Fuck you,” he hissed. “You’re gonna kill me anyway.”
Swiss nodded. “True. No way I’m letting someone who works for the man responsible for the death of twelve of my brothers just walk outta here. But I might give you a kinder death than you deserve if you decide to start talking.” He paused for less than a second, then he cut off the thumb.
More screaming.
More blood.
“If not,” Swiss continued, discarding the thumb. “I’ll keep going. And I’m sure you know, there are things you can do to people to make them wish for death.”
Swiss glanced at me, I wasn’t sure if it was a threat or just curiosity to see if I had fainted or thrown up.
I hadn’t done either. My hands were steady.
They shook uncontrolled handling a feather a week ago, but in the face of this...nothing. I didn’t know whether it said more about what I was able to handle in the present, or what I was too afraid to revisit in the past.
“What do you think this man knows?” I asked, voice steady, the cold and calm tone I employed while interviewing. It was somewhat of a trademark, along with my red lipstick, that my voice never changed when I was interviewing victims or villains. All villains started as victims, after all.
Claw answered for him. “We don’t think he knows shit. We know he knows enough to help us.”
“Help you do what?” I asked.
His eyes narrowed and he opened his mouth, but the bleeding and thumbless man spoke for him.
“I’ll never help you. You have my word on that. Do what you wish to me.”
Claw grinned, moving his attention away from me. “Oh, I thought you’d never ask.”
Then there was more screaming.
A lot more blood.
And as promised, the man didn’t talk.
* * *
I had become strangely removed from the violence both men were taking turns unleashing on their hostage. Because it wasn’t merely violence for the sake of it. There was a purpose to it. It was a means to an end.
I wondered how much more this man would endure. There was always a limit to how much pain a human being could withstand. Most men in this world might be able to tolerate unimaginable limits of physical pain. But that wasn’t the only instrument of torture. Sleep deprivation, starvation, waterboarding, all effective.
Finding a weakness that didn’t exist on the body, but inside the mind was the most certain way to break a person. Whether it be a fear or a psychological trauma. Men usually went straight to rape with women. Because they knew it was almost the surest way to unravel the sense of control, of the sacredness of a woman’s body. To tear away the agency she has over her own body.
A lot of men did it because they were evil.
Most of them did it because they were weak themselves.
But in situations like this, with such toxic masculinity cloaking the air, I doubted the ruthless men in front of me would do something like violate another man for information. I hoped they wouldn’t do that to a woman. I had heard they had strong opinions on sexual assault. But I wondered how strong those opinions would be when all of their conventional methods of torture failed them with a woman. Would their conviction be strong enough to withstand their thirst for vengeance?
I didn’t get to think about it for long—thankfully—because the door smashed open from above us and boots pounded down the stairs.
Liam’s eye
s found me first.
Then the dead body in front of me.
Then the two men torturing their prisoner to my right.
The energy in the room shifted immediately. I had thought it was violent, deadly before, what with all the violence and death in front of me. But that was nothing, nothing compared to what Liam punctured the air with.
“You’re fucking kidding me,” he hissed at Claw and Swiss.
Claw was smiling.
He had blood on his cheek and forehead, so, along with his grip on a bloodstained knife, it served to make him look maniacal and unhinged.
Then again, from what I’d just witnessed, he was maniacal and unhinged.
“What, brother? We’re just helping her out with her reporting,” Swiss said, voice teasing, taunting.
I had to admire his stupid bravery for provoking Liam like this. The danger in his eyes was physical. It was a hand fastening around my throat. A vice constricting my lungs. More unsettling than anything I’d witnessed in here. Because it was something that I didn’t think I’d ever have to witness inside those emerald eyes. Something I didn’t even know existed until I buried Liam.
It was a look that told me again that I had buried Liam. This wasn’t him.
He strode to me, snatching my hand. “You’re getting the fuck outta here.”
I tried to snatch it back. He held fast. “They’re not done,” I said calmly.
His eyes bulged. Then they changed. All fury seeped out. The skin where he was touching me burned, not from heat, but from an icy chill that was coming from his eyes. He let go of my hand. Yanked the gun from his jeans, calmly walked past Swiss and Claw and shot the man in the head.
The gunshot bounced off the damp concrete walls and rang in my ears. But the silence was what roared. There was no silence louder than after a gunshot that ended a life.
Liam put the gun back into his waistband and walked over to me. “They’re fuckin’ done.”
“Dude,” Claw whined. “Not fucking cool. We might’ve got something.”
Liam didn’t take his eyes off me. “You know you wouldn’t have got shit.”
This time, when he took hold of my hand, I didn’t struggle. I let the man who had just shot a man in cold blood lead me up the stairs and back into civilization. Or whatever it was above us.
I didn’t say a word as he walked me back to my room.
He didn’t either.
He only let go of my hand when we were standing in the middle of the bedroom.
I blinked rapidly at him, throat still clenched with something like shock.
He still didn’t say a word. Didn’t try to explain himself. He just turned around and walked out.
The locks clicked after he closed the door.
Jagger
His hand was shaking as he locked the door.
It hadn’t been when he pulled out his piece and sprayed the brains of Fernandez’s third in command and second cousin all over the floor.
Not even when he touched her, when he fucking touched his Peaches with hands he’d used to end a man’s life.
It didn’t matter that the man in question was involved in one of the most brutal human trafficking rings in the world. Or that he likely had a hand in the massacre of an entire club. That he was likely one of the most vile and soulless human beings to walk this earth.
It didn’t matter because Jagger knew that he had just proved he was exactly the same. Just as soulless.
He’d done it on purpose.
He wanted her to be afraid of him.
To be disgusted by him.
So when his resolve failed, and he knew that it would, that she would fight violently against him being anything to her. He needed her to find him a stranger. A monster.
Which was why he locked her inside his room, despite the fact she was no longer a prisoner.
No, that wasn’t even why he’d locked her inside.
“Take this.” He threw the key at a passing Elden. “Unlock it in the morning.”
Elden nodded once and kept walking. No questions. Prospects didn’t ask questions.
Jagger thanked fuck for that. He’d given him the key because he didn’t trust himself with it. Didn’t trust himself not to give in to the urge to storm back in there, rip her clothes off and fuck her senseless. Something about her standing there, in pools of blood, in the ugliest part of their world, calm, collected, not fucking flinching, it disturbed the shit out of him. But it also hardened his cock instantly. Making him wild with need for her.
Not that he wasn’t already.
But he’d been able to keep that shit locked down.
Barely.
Mainly because he left as soon as church was over, with instructions to make sure Caroline didn’t sleep anywhere but his room.
It was fucked up that he wanted her in there. Especially since it caused her obvious pain being in that room. What kind of sick motherfucker was he? Hadn’t he already caused her a lifetime, two fucking lifetimes of agony? Now he wanted to give her more. The boy who won her heart sure as shit wouldn’t have made decisions like that. Decisions that hurt her. That boy, no matter how far he was from being a man, would’ve rather lost a limb than hurt her. That boy was more of a man than he was now.
But he couldn’t go back to being him, no matter what, and that was the ultimate cause of Caroline’s agony. So maybe that’s why he was intent on causing her all these little pains, to distract her from the one huge one that might destroy what was left of the girl he fell in love with.
Or maybe he was a sick son of a bitch who wanted to imprint her smell onto everything of his so he could torture himself for another fourteen years. And then some.
Because he may have been tortured before, knowing he left behind a sweet, innocent, kind girl. But having to let go of this, hardened, bitter, strong and fucking magnificent woman.
Fuck.
Which was why he left the clubhouse after church a week ago.
He wouldn’t have left if he hadn’t had Hansen’s word no harm would come to her. Because his brothers weren’t happy. They wouldn’t disobey their president, though. So no harm would come from them. But Jagger couldn’t be certain that the harm wouldn’t come from him.
He came back to the room empty, her nowhere on the property. Only one place she could’ve been by process of elimination.
He’d damn near ripped the locks off with his bare hands thinking of her in a chair, bleeding after one of his brothers decided to disobey Hansen. He guessed it would’ve been Swiss. Fucker was cold and lived by a specific code. Just so happened that code aligned with the Sons of Templar. He was not one to bend rules or dole out mercy.
So he imagined Swiss, with his cold eyes and merciless brutality working away the last of Caroline’s soft edges.
What he walked in on wasn’t worse, or even the same as that, but it was close. Because he saw that she had no soft edges left, confronted with it in that room. The room that some prospects and brothers alike had been unable to handle. That haunted even him.
She was jaded to some of the most brutal acts humans could commit. Unblinking. That was like seeing her bleeding and bound up in a chair. It was evidence that she’d already been torn apart, vital parts stolen from her in a life he didn’t know anything about.
And that’s what had him snapping. Had him killing a man right in front of her, adding to the cold brutality they were immersing her in. That he was sure Swiss had been intent on drowning her in. Not knowing that she could swim. Or that she could breathe in that polluted and blood filled water.
Swiss walked down the hall, wiping his hands on his jeans with nonchalance. He eyed Jagger, then the door with a raised brow. “She needed to know what she’d gotten herself into, brother.”
That got him. There was only so much of him he could lock down.
His fist flew through his brother’s face without hesitation. The crunch of flesh against bone wasn’t loud enough to silence his demons.
So he punched him a
gain.
And again.
Caroline
I heard the fight after the click of the locks.
I don’t know what was louder.
I wasn’t surprised hearing the violence. I shouldn’t be. This was Liam’s life now. This was Jagger’s life. He spoke in torture. In pain. Violence.
There were no reasonable, diplomatic conversations. There were thuds of flesh hitting flesh, grunts of pain, muttered curses. Pictures smashed off walls, bodies thumping against the floor.
There were dead bodies strung up in the basement. A man tied to a chair, missing all his fingers with a bullet in his brain.
Peaches.
I miss you.
I’m writing this when I can still see you wavin’ at the fuckin’ bus. You’re not crying.
I am.
Would be embarrassed as all fuck about doing so in front of all these men, were half of them not bawling too.
Not one woman saying goodbye shed a tear.
What does that tell you?
That it should be all of you on this bus instead. You’re much tougher.
Though I guess if you were in charge of things to begin with, we might not need to be on this bus.
It’s better not to work in maybes.
There is no maybe about the way I feel for you.
That will not change.
I promise you that, Peaches.
Over oceans, battlefields, tears (on my end, obviously), months, years, decades. It’s not ever gonna change.
I know you don’t understand why I’m doing this. I know you’re mad as all hell at me for doing it in the first place. I also know you love me too damn much to do anything but stand beside me. Because that’s the kind of woman you are. I know you’ll wait for me. For us. I’m a bastard for even asking you to do that. But I’ll do it anyway.
I love you.
I memorized the letter.
I didn’t want to remember it, especially not now, with the background noise being all too loud of a reminder of what I’d lost.
But my memories never complied with what I wanted.
So I replayed the letter.
Until there was a painful and violent silence on the other side of the door.
