WITHOUT SHAME: Babylon MC Book 4

by James, Victoria L.

  All the things Harry had said to me I couldn’t make sense of.

  All the subtle truths he’d whispered by my side that I didn’t understand.

  All the times I brushed his ramblings off as the talk of an over-concerned old man who needed to give me room to breathe.

  All the times I didn’t listen to him… and what I’d give to be able to listen to him now.

  Make him pay, Drew, I suddenly heard in the voice of Harry, coming from the dark, dusty recesses of my mind. Make that fucker pay.

  Before too long, we’d pushed into the Ram, securing Owen in the back so he couldn’t move an inch, leaving me to climb in the front and take the wheel as Ayda slid into position beside me. With one last lingering look her way, I released a breath and reversed out of the parking spot, swinging the Ram around before I led us all out of the yard, my brothers behind me, my enemy in my ear, and my woman by my side.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  AYDA

  The silence was deafening in the cab of the truck. Even with Owen’s grunts of pain as we bounced over potholes and turned corners, or the growl of the big Hemi engine, and even the standard whir of asphalt passing under the tires… the silence was pregnant, pointed, and significant.

  We all knew where this was headed.

  The three of us understood that this would end in death because it had to.

  Me? I was eerily at peace with this knowledge.

  I had this strange and unfamiliar urge to see the light bleed from his eyes and the lack of emotion attached to that meant that I was scaring myself a little. I should feel something more, something dark, something like remorse, but the only thing I was close to feeling was justification. This man had the power to destroy the man I loved, and possibly a child I didn’t know whether or not I was carrying. I couldn’t let that happen.

  I wouldn’t.

  Glancing over at Drew, I knew he had to be feeling the same rage and fury burning through him as he ate up the miles between The Hut and our final destination. Those beautiful blue-green eyes were trained on the road, but his hands were gripping the steering wheel so tightly that his knuckles were pale. The creak with the gentle twist of them against the leather alerted me to the fact that it was taking everything in him not to turn around and pummel Owen every time the asshole groaned in pain.

  Drew knew where he was going, but having never been to Owen’s home before, I found myself surprised when we turned from the county road and onto a small parcel of land that was surrounded by trees and open fields. In the back corner of the cleared land was a well-kept little house that had been recently painted. The quaint country feeling that sang of ‘family’ wasn’t what I’d expected from Owen, but he’d proven that none of us really knew him at all.

  His home also proved that he obviously had a lot of extra income, which many of the other guys in the club didn’t have.

  “What the hell is this?” I asked quietly, leaning forward to look a little closer as I caught sight of a small barn holding at least two more bikes and a Camaro. The barn was deep enough to hide a treasure trove, but I couldn’t allow myself to think about that just yet. My question was pointless considering what we were currently looking at. Where he’d gotten the money from, I couldn’t answer, but my gut told me it hadn’t been honestly, and it had cost the club more.

  Harry had been right. Harry was always right.

  The realization made me feel nauseous.

  “Are you seeing this?”

  “Mmhmm,” was the only sound to come from Drew, and he somehow managed to make that sound menacing as he turned the truck in a circle and brought us to a jerky stop.

  I finally forced myself to glance back as Owen grunted at the sudden halt of the vehicle. His big body had rolled into the front seats, a flap of his tattooed skin catching on the edge making more blood seep from the wound. He looked pitiful in his broken state, but that didn’t reflect in his expression. When his watering eyes rose to meet mine, they were filled with a smug satisfaction because he knew what I was thinking and feeling, and he thought that he’d won.

  He hadn’t.

  Not by a long shot.

  In order to win a fucked-up game like the one we were playing, you had to be alive to claim your victory. Owen wouldn’t make it to the end of the day. He already had one foot in the grave, and we were standing in the daylight with the dirt on the shovel, more than ready to fill in his unmarked grave and piss on his remains.

  I turned my gaze back to Drew who was staring straight ahead, his lip curled in disgust. I could only imagine what he must be thinking seeing all of this shit playing out in front of him, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to ask while Owen was stroking his own bloody ego.

  “Do you want me to search the place?” I asked, my voice hard and missing any form of emotion, unwilling to feed that smug satisfaction more than I already had.

  Drew blinked twice in quick succession, turning his head my way. “Let’s get him inside first. I want to make sure it isn’t rigged.”

  I nodded in agreement and pushed myself from the truck, circling around to meet Drew on the other side. I pulled the back door open to get to Owen out, and I barely blinked at the bloody mess of gore that was growing below him. This Dodge was never going to make its way back to its owners, but that seemed like the least of our problems right now. We had a storm brewing back at The Hut, and we were running out of time.

  Owen wasn’t a light man. His indulgences came in many forms, and though Drew was stronger than most, he didn’t feel the need to be gentle with his former brother, so getting Owen out of the truck became less of an issue. Drew simply dragged him out like he was road kill, the thud of his body hitting the hard-packed dirt and grass echoing with a sickening crunch of something breaking, teasing another satisfactory scream of agony from Owen.

  I tried to help, but Drew did most of the heavy work by dragging Owen’s grunting body over the lawn. It was only when we reached the bottom of the small porch that I came in useful for him. Once I’d rushed up to unlock and open the door with the keys Drew had plucked from Owen’s pocket, I propped open the screen door with a flower pot and darted back down to help pick up Owen’s boot-covered feet. We managed to haul him up the half-dozen steps together, and then into the house before we dropped him carelessly to the floor, ignoring his cry of pain as another curse fell from my lips on sight of the huge flat screen on the wall.

  The man had no shame.

  He also hadn’t worried about ever being caught.

  “Motherfucker,” Drew cursed under his breath, pacing the living space we were now standing in. His face tensed, along with every muscle in his body. Sometimes I wasn’t sure he remembered I was there when he was like this. Recently, more than ever, I was seeing flashes of the man he’d been hiding from me, warning me about, telling me to stay away from since before the day we got together. He scared himself, that much was clear, but what he had to realize was that he didn’t scare me. Not even when his eyes glazed over and his jaw set in that way which told me he was standing on the edge of a cliff, ready to jump into his own ocean of wild rage.

  Drew’s movements were slow until he came across a rock type ornament sitting on a rustic set of drawers. He picked it up in his hand to feel the weight of it. Then at once, he spun and launched it at the giant flat screen as hard as he could.

  The unit shuddered on the wall as a spider web of cracks appeared on the surface. The ornament dropped to the highly polished wood floors with a heavy thud and rolled away only seconds before a large click sounded, and the whole television pitched forward, landing with another crash. I probably should have been shocked by the sudden move, but the entire thing had been satisfying to watch. The odd-sounding electrical buzz that came from the inside of the television was even better.

  Owen was a lot of things, but he wasn’t smart enough to keep his mouth shut. Whether upset or smug, he just stared up at his living room ceiling, his face twisted in pain and body curled in on itself as mor
e blood seeped from the various wounds on his body. “Make you feel better, asshole?”

  Drew didn’t look at him. He just bent to pick up the rolling object and bounced the weight of the rock in his hand a few times, his attention focused on it as he slowly turned and began to walk toward Owen. Drew never looked up or spoke. All he saw was the rock in his hand, even when he stopped in front of Owen and let the silence linger for a few intense moments.

  Suddenly, Drew curled his arm, lifting it back and smashed the rock into the side of Owen’s already bleeding head, sending him crashing to the floor in a crumpled heap.

  Drew sniffed casually, looking back down at the blood-soaked rock in his grip. “Yeah. It really did.”

  Owen was out. For how long I wasn’t sure, but there were no groans of pain coming from him as he laid prone on his fancy blood-stained rug bound like an animal. I glanced back up at Drew before looking back to the rest of the house.

  “You think his new friends will know to come out here?”

  “I don’t feel like I know anything anymore, Ayda,” he answered robotically. Glancing up at me, he swallowed and straightened his shoulders. “We shouldn’t waste time. Are you sure you’re okay here? I know what you’re going to say, but I need to ask… just one more time. Before shit gets…”

  He didn’t need to finish.

  I crossed the room eating up the small distance between us. It was so much easier to stand in front of him and say what I needed to say than talk across the distance that was gaping in the silent room.

  “This was the one side you’ve hidden from me up until now, but you don’t need to do that anymore. I’m right here. I’m fine, and I’m utterly on board. I need you to see that.”

  His eyes searched mine. “I see it,” he said softly.

  I nodded with satisfaction, my hand brushing his lightly.

  “Now, what do we need to do here so we can deal with this asshole and get back to the club?” I glanced over my shoulder at Owen again and tilted my chin to the back of the house. “Do we need to make sure there’s nothing here that implicates the club before he dies?”

  Drew sucked in a breath and looked around Owen’s room. “Can you search the place? Grab anything that’s loose. Papers. His personal shit, laptops, passports, bank files, anything we can keep and search. Photos… take those, too. I meant what I said when I told him everyone he loved was going to pay. You take what you can, and give me ten minutes alone with him.” He kicked Owen’s limp leg lazily.

  I glanced down at the body and back up to Drew, nodding without another ounce of hesitation. Pressing my lips briefly against his, I took off and headed down the small hall.

  Owen’s house was very boxy and compartmentalized, each room a square with one entrance and exit. I’d seen a lot of these style homes around, but it was the first time that one of them had felt this cloistering.

  I stepped into the small kitchen first, throwing open drawers and cupboards, and pulling out anything that looked like it could be useful. I found a small box under the sink, and I started piling the shit I found into it as the screaming in the other room began. The sound wasn’t that reluctant howl Owen had been giving off in the training room. This was pure, unadulterated agony that ran down to his very soul. I took a small, steadying breath as the sound clawed through my body and tried it’s damnedest to trigger my empathy, but I stomped the inclination down again. This animal deserved nothing but the pain that was being inflicted upon him. He’d caused the deaths of so many of those I loved, and I wouldn’t allow my basic human nature to second-guess the way Drew chose to handle Owen’s death. Not now. Not in the twenty-fifth hour.

  I worked diligently as the screaming continued with barely any breaks or breaths in between. Anything I thought might be important was sectioned off into a paper bag for Drew to look at. I found bills, mostly, but there were a few photographs in a junk drawer, along with a set of keys. Then I hit the jackpot in the freezer when I opened up a box of frozen waffles and found his passport, a wad of cash, and what looked like a whole new identity.

  I moved on to the dining room next, taking a laptop from one end of the table and dumping it and my small box into a larger file box he had sitting close by. I was digging through a trashcan filled with scrunched paper when I heard another round of blood-curdling screams. There was a thumping that sounded like boots on the hardwood, and when I allowed my brain to process this, I had an image of someone going into a seizure.

  Shaking off the image, I rose, dumping the balled-up papers into the box before I headed back into the hall and into one of the bedrooms. This room had so much shit stacked inside of it that it took me a while to get through the contents before I found an ancient metal desk tucked away in a corner. I rifled through it carefully, dumping drawers on the floor, and pushing through the contents. When I finally found a locked drawer, I headed back to the kitchen, the sound of gurgled pleading filtering through the house pushing me to move faster. I found a knife and carving fork, and I took them back with me, forcing the thing open with as much speed as I could.

  Inside this locked drawer was a set of hanging files, all of which had dates and signatures that belonged to none other than the Mayor himself. In another folder, there were photocopies of what looked like a ledger, along with names I recognized. I grabbed them all, no matter what they were labeled and moved on.

  In the bottom drawer was a shoebox filled with club photographs. I took that, too.

  I was on my way to the second bedroom when I made the mistake of looking down the narrow hall to the front of the house. Blood was thick and viscose as it eased down the subtle incline toward the back of the house. The liquid stained everything in its path a sickly looking black-red color, and without looking too hard, I knew that had to be arterial blood.

  Owen was not long for this world now, and I met Drew’s eyes when I stumbled into a doorframe and dropped the box. Crimson spray touched the sun-kissed skin of his face, and his beautiful eyes were cold and empty like a predator who’d been startled feeding on its prey. I nodded to let him know I was fine before I bent over to pick up the box and moved to the bedroom.

  There wasn’t much in Owen’s room. A few pictures. A few porn magazines. The only beneficial thing being a smartphone and an address book.

  I only took a cursory glance into the bathroom, finding nothing but more porn and the usual toiletries, but I checked the linen closet and under the sink anyway.

  The box was heavy as I made my way back to Drew and the wet choking sound of a man taking his last breaths. My adrenaline rose with every step I took, my breaths coming faster and faster as I stepped into the only room I hadn’t searched.

  Drew wasn’t torturing Owen anymore. He was just crouched by the body; his bloody hands hanging between his legs while he braced his arms on his knees. I moved quietly, dropping the box by the door before I turned to study the man I loved who was watching his unlikely enemy struggling to pull in his last breath.

  “It’s time,” was all Drew said, the killer waiting to drop his ax. “Did you find any guns of his?” he asked me, eerily calm and in control as he stared at Owen.

  I thought about the question and shook my head. Suddenly finding it odd that I hadn’t. “Not one. Give me five seconds.”

  I darted back through the house and made my way into Owen’s bedroom again. One thing I‘d learned when I’d been cleaning The Hut was that every single one of the men slept with a weapon within reaching distance. I pulled all the sheets and blankets from Owen’s bed and pushed the mattress from the box spring, stepping forward to flip it on its side.

  There was nothing under the bed, but I felt the weakness under my feet and immediately knew where I would find the weaponry I hadn’t thought to look for.

  Dropping to my knees, I clawed at the edges, pressing down in random places until one end popped up. As I’d thought, there were three guns, as well as a hunting knife, a thick stack of hundred-dollar bills, and another laptop.

  I gr
abbed it all and headed back to the front of the house, handing Drew the .45 before dropping the rest of my haul into the boxes.

  Drew made light work of rolling Owen over with his one free hand, placing him on his back with his face busted and twisted to the side. He could no longer open his eyes, and as soon as I saw the harsh reality of his chest, I knew what had been going on while I’d been busy. Owen was going to die, but Drew had made sure there wasn’t a patch of Hound-related ink on his skin when he went to his next life. He was cut up like a butchered animal—only Owen was still somehow managing to draw in his jagged breaths.

  He didn’t even look like himself anymore.

  Opening up Owen’s hand, Drew placed the gun into his palm and wrapped Owen’s fingers around it as tightly as they would go. Then he pressed it against his head, making sure that Owen’s fingers were in place, just where they needed to be before he leaned over his former brother and sighed heavily.

  “You don’t deserve this, but I’m giving it to you anyway,” Drew whispered. “I never liked you, Sinclair, but that didn’t mean I didn’t love you. You were a brother, which meant you were family, and I would die for family. I would die for the patch on my chest. I would die for anyone who’d ever ridden by my side or behind me. But you… you betrayed us in a way that will go down in club history. You’ll be a lesson we’ll never forget. You’re a dirty mark on our memories, and you deserve to die in the cruelest of ways. I want to gut you, Owen. I want to spend hours tearing out your organs, ripping your spleen out, and stamping on your heart because I decided when it would take its last beat.” Drew exhaled heavily again, the obvious betrayal weighing heavy on his already burdened, strong shoulders. “But I’ve already made an example of you. I feel at peace knowing you won’t see another day. Now, it’s up to you how you go out. Your final choice. You have two minutes to pull the trigger and end your own life. Once those two minutes are up, if you’re still breathing, I take you out the way the rest of the men would want me to take you out.”