Her eyes were filled with fear. The man she was married to was forty years older than her. He was sick and sadistic.
I accidentally walked into a room and caught him choking her as he shoved his nasty thing down her throat. I gagged as tears filled my eyes. He wasn’t even trying to hide how horrible he was. They were right there in the living room where others could watch. And they did watch.
Some sipped whiskey while others smiled as they took in the show. I couldn’t see her like this, I needed to give her some dignity. So, I left.
I know she had seen me. Her fragile body shook as she leaned closer to me. Begging me to do what she said. I wanted the freedom she was talking about. The taste of freedom would be worth the death if I were caught.
I knew anything was better then what I had just seen. All I wanted was to be like other girls. Date boys and go to parties. Instead, I was wearing silky dresses and being shown off to all the gross men who were waiting for a chance to become my husband.
“You don’t deserve this life, Roslin,” she whispered as she pulled me to her. Her flowery scent filled my nose.
My arms instinctively wrapped around her waist. I loved her like she was my mother. Hell, she was more of a mother to me than my own.
My real mother saw me as a political advantage. She wanted the social standing that came with selling me off like a prized cow.
“You need to promise me, Roslin. Promise that you will get out of here and never look back,” her grip tightened as she said it with a forceful voice. Something in me knew I was saying goodbye.
“I will,” I tell her as my eyes started to sting.
“I love you, Roslin,” she tells me as she cupped my cheeks. She then pressed her lips to my forehead.
“I love you too,” I choked out past the lump in my throat.
I watched her walk away, and something in me died a little. She disappeared that night, and I heard whispers that she had run.
I prayed every night to a god that I wasn’t sure was listening that she found her happy. The thought of her living a better life made the pain of her leaving easier.
They found her a week later. My mom was telling me that they tortured her for days before killing her. I remember my mom leaning in and telling me to take that as a warning. That I shouldn’t try to do what she did, or I would end up just like her.
The problem was, I was now more determined than ever to get out of here. I promised a dead woman something. And I wasn’t going to take it back. Even if I only got a few days of the free life, I would take it.
“That’s everything,” Maria’s voice jarred me from the memories.
Another sadness filled me mixing with the brokenness of the past. I swallowed hard as I lowered Shawn back into his seat before strapping him in.
This wasn’t a permeant goodbye, just an ‘I’ll see you soon.’ I mean, I still had to help her unload the truck and everything.
“Alright,” I tell her with a bright smile.
I was good at faking it. In reality, I wasn’t happy about any of this.
Chapter 9
Ronnie
One Year Ago.
I thought we would get around to talking about our past at some point. But Maria got a job, and I became Shawn’s babysitter, not that I was complaining. I loved this little boy like he was my own.
His little coos and giggles were infectious. Shawn had his own room here, and so did Maria. Even though she chose to move out, I wanted her to know that the door was always open. Tonight when she walked through it, I was determined that she wasn’t leaving until we talked.
After Shawn went to bed, we will have a few drinks and figure shit out. I won’t tell her about Zec, but I will share some of the milder shit. I wanted to know what had her running and why Shawn’s father was MIA.
I felt like an asshole for cornering her like this, but we had to do it. No, I had to do this. So, I had a pot roast covered in carnitas sauce roasting in the crock pot.
Tonight, we will have baked potatoes stuffed with light butter, pulled pork, and some shredded cheddar cheese.
Chapter 10
Gage
One Year Ago.
Freedom had a smell to it. Like a fresh and sweet one, and I would have appreciated that months ago. Before I landed in that hell hole.
I went in a killer, willing to kill if I needed to, and came out a monster of destruction. Screams and blood made me happy.
How long has it been since I smiled? Weeks? Fuck, my last match was almost a month ago. I tried to keep myself busy with the thought of my freedom. I was hoping to keep my sanity, but I lost that after my twentieth fight.
Killing over and over and beating a man to a bloody death started to feel more like an air freshener than the clawing stench it was. Honestly, I had stripped away what made me human.
Sociopaths, shit I could relate. I felt nothing unless I was breaking bones and watching the light leave their almost completely closed eyes. You know, that glassy, cloudy look that filled them moments after their death.
Crow was leaning against his bike, and mine was a few feet away. That was it, no one else was here. Something had changed in him too. This coldness had taken him a few months after my transfer.
I asked what the fuck was going on. I guess his old lady left without a word, disappearing as if she was never there at all.
A small gust of wind blew my hair to the left. The whole inch that it was. While I was in there, I kept it shaved. When men realized it was do or die, they pulled out their inner bitch.
Hair grabbing was a go-to move. So, shaving it meant no one could latch onto my head and control my movements. I had a whole new respect for women with that move.
“Never thought you’d drag your ass out here, I’ve been waiting for two fucking hours,” Crow’s voice was loud.
The area around us was devoid of any houses. No one wanted to live near a prison, and every prisoner was inside waiting for the moment they could roam around the outside.
“Had a few things to clear up,” I tell him with a shrug.
I wasn’t telling anyone what went down in this place and not because the warden gave me some pussy warning about the consequences of spreading the word.
I tuned him out as soon as he started telling me that I needed to keep my mouth shut. There wasn’t a fucking thing he could say that would scare me.
“Are we going to stand here all fucking day or can we get our ass’s moving? I need a beer,” the words were harsh, and I expected Crow to say or do something to put me in my place. Instead, he laughed a hollow dark laugh and climbed on his bike.
Something tells me we both went dark. That we lost ourselves in the sea of blackness that lived in us all. I let mine consume me and fuck maybe Crow did too.
Chapter 11
Ronnie
Present Day.
It’s been a year since I asked Maria what happened. Her eyes watered as she told me about the love she found and the loss as she watched him with another woman. She told me who he really was and what he did.
Honestly, if I were normal and not raised in the nightmare that I called my previous life, I would have been terrified.
When she told me about being chained to the floor over the very man who didn’t want her, my heart broke, and tears filled my eyes.
She knew he wasn’t going to save her. She endured hell alone while waiting for death, and she didn’t see any escape or savior.
The cup hit the table hard, which caused me to jump slightly in my chair. Maria disappeared with Crow leaving me here in this room full of bikers.
I sipped the whiskey while I looked around. Every step that I’ve made brought me here to this moment, to this place, and to this dick face currently staring at me.
Said dick face was the only one who brought me a drink. Those dark eyes spoke of torture, pain, and dark pleasures.
Have you ever had that tingle of awareness? When the hairs stand up on your body. The desire to be closer and yet run further away
from whatever it was whispering over your body.
Gage was that exact thing for me. This deep need to lean in and the rooted fear to run. Everything about him pissed me off for no logical reason.
I resisted the urge to cover myself and throat punch him at the same time. His penetrating stare stripped away layers, leaving a coldness in their wake.
Fuck sipping this bitter shit, throwing my head back I drank the contents in the glass in one quick swallow.
I winced at the burn, but I needed the pain. You see, I did this. I brought us here. She thought she was running because of her sister and that she brought me into this nightmare.
My heart clenched, she was so wrong. I did this. I dragged her into my past. They had finally caught up to me.
My breath hitched. I saved Maria only to kill her. Sure, she was still living, but for how long? Maybe I should go. Call Zec and give myself over to him.
I could barter my life, my freedom, my soul for theirs. My eyes locked on Gage’s and he knew. I could read it on his face. He knew something wasn’t right with me.
I hated myself a little more. Darkness spread through me when I didn’t save Zec’s wife, and it continued to spread through me. I was a fool to think that saving Maria could change my past.
I was condemned the moment that I took a breath in this life. My life was never my own, and I’m my own bid for freedom. I was destroying other people, and I was so selfish.
Deep down, I knew this man right here was going to be the one to turn me over. He was going to take me to them like the executioner I could see lurking in his eyes.
“Staring is rude, you know,” I tell him with a smile.
“I’m more than rude, and you’re more than a pretty face.”
He had me there. But at the same time, he didn’t. In my family, I was nothing but a pretty face. Here, I was the destruction of all that I came in contact with.
“Do you use that line often? What’s the success rate for that big guy?”
I was goading him. Trying to draw him away from the scent before he went in for the kill. This crazy fucker right here would probably kill me.
Just lean forward and get a little taste of those sexy as fuck lips, the thought had my breath stilling in my lungs. Where the fuck did that come from? Not once in all my damn life have I wanted to kiss another person, let alone a man.
Well, except for Shawn, of course. I couldn’t help but want to kiss his chubby little cheeks. His little giggles warmed my soul.
A red claw-tipped hand slithered up his chest from behind. My eyes remained on that hand. Something in me wanted to grab it and squeeze the tiny wrist until bones rubbed together and toss it away.
Something dark swirled inside of me when a scantily clad woman stepped out from behind him. Her blonde hair streaked with brown had my eyes lowering to slits.
I wanted to snatch every one of those strands from her head. I wanted to make her cry and tell her to keep her dainty STD covered hand off my man.
My man? Oh god, I was losing it. I was cracking down the middle. Something in my brain had snapped since Gage was not mine. Fuck, I met him only a few hours ago or was it yesterday? I was losing time. How long have I sat here?
I was on my twelfth drink?
With that thought, my stomach dipped and soured. Bile filled my throat, leaving a burning sensation with each inch it conquered.
Standing, I tilted, and everything rushed to my head. I needed the bathroom, and I also need the room to still.
Something cool latched onto the back of my neck. It relieved some of the heat that was overwhelming my skin.
“Easy,” Gage ordered.
“Don’t tell me what to do,” I choked out.
It was coming on fast. That bathroom was my lighthouse in the foggy night. It was my hope of relief. I swayed as I tried to take a step. That hand I thought was so wonderful tightened.
“Let me go before I make you regret it,” in my head, I sounded strong and confident, but what came out was garbled and weak.
“If I let you go your face will be meeting the floor,” he says with a shrug.
The woman was still holding onto him like some sort of life sucking octopus or leach. Leach lips. Laughter tried to come out. Instead, my eyes watered.
“I need the bathroom, let me go before I take that sex appeal down multiple levels.”
His laughter was rich and deep. It pulled something deep inside of me. The vomit, it had to be that.
“Feeling a little green?” He was no longer Mr. Hottie.
“Seriously, Gage. My stomach is coming up my throat, and I don’t know how long I can keep it where it belongs.” Sobering up was happening way faster than it should.
Seeing this woman, his hand on my body, combined with my traitorous thoughts had me draining the liquor and making life reappear.
Shaking off his hold, I speed walked to the bathroom. I didn’t look back, I kept my head high and my dignity as much intact as I could.
The bathroom swallowed me as the door closed with a click. Tears filled my eyes for a different reason. That vomit I had been fighting hit me like a runaway train.
Dropping to the cold tile floor, I leaned into the toilet and empty the contents of my stomach. After what felt like an eternity, I was left shaking and weak. If only I could purge my sins just as easily as I purged the alcohol from my body.
Chapter 12
Gage
Present Day.
Fucking anything that walked was what I did. Emotions were never apart of the equation before prison. I would flash women a smile and maybe even give them some sweet words. Now, I fucked them and walked away, closing the door behind me before I even zipped up my fly.
Yet the women kept coming for more. Some of them had some fucked-up notion that they could tame me and that I would claim them as my old lady.
Old ladies were for others. There was nothing left of me to give or share. They needed feelings, and I lost those in the pit.
“You stare at her much longer, she might take a restraining order out on your ass,” Crow laughed as he sipped his beer.
I couldn’t take my eyes off her. There was something not right with her. She should be terrified. Especially in a place filled with bikers running from the mob.
I watched as she casually drank and watched the people around her. She had this look in her eyes. It told me that she had seen more than most.
Like a cat, she probably had multiple lives. Crow told me that Ronnie saved Maria’s life. There was something about this whole fucked up situation, and it involved her.
“She’s not right,” I tell him.
“Neither are you brother,” Crow reminded me.
I looked at him. His eyes had lost some of the coldness, but the darkness remained. Maria had lived in hell, and Crow hadn’t been there for her or their son. That shit ate a man alive.
“She’s involved in this somehow,” I tell him.
“Yeah, she’s in it with Maria,” Crow said harshly. Emotions were riding him hard. Something I haven’t seen in him in a long fucking time.
“I’m not going to stop watching her,” I tell him with a shrug.
I’m going to figure this out. Both of them put our club in jeopardy, and only one of them was an old lady. The other was just some chick dragging destruction behind her like a puppy on a leash.
“Club meeting in ten,” Crow announced.
I rolled my shoulders and drank my beer in a few deep swallows. Ronnie froze for a moment and then continued drinking as her eyes scanned the room.
Oh, sweetheart, you just showed me there was definitely something not right with you and Crow caught it too. I could see the way he tensed.
“We’ll talk about it in the room,” he tells me coldly.
“Maria must know something,” I tell him.
“If she does, she would have told me,” his tone darkened telling me to tread carefully.
“She may not know that she knows it,” my tone was cold.
&
nbsp; He nodded his head as his eyes lock on both women. Maria joined Ronnie at the table. They laugh and smile as they talk.
Something made me want to touch her, hold her, keep her close, and protect her. Feelings I’ve never felt for anyone swirled inside of me mixing with numb darkness.
Fuck! What the fuck was wrong with me? Slamming the empty bottle down, I follow Crow. I watch as all our brothers settle in their seats.
“Maria brought some trouble to the club,” Crow announced.
No one had the balls to say anything. I know what most of them were thinking, kick her ass out.
“She’s my old lady, and he’s my son. You know how this shit works,” Crow growls.
Lincoln shifts in his seat. Something about him has been bothering me for a while now. But his reaction to Maria had warnings screaming through my head.
“She’s been gone a long time,” Lincoln comments.
My eyes are glued to him now. He was another that I needed to watch closely. He had it out for Maria and has since she walked through those doors. I also took note of the way he looked at Ronnie.
The thought of him touching her in any way had me wanting to gut him from groin to throat. No one touched what’s mine, and Ronnie was mine.
What the fuck? She was an enemy until proven innocent. She was not mine. An image of him running his fingers through her long brown locks and the way her lips would part and the moan that would escape had me gripping the edge of the table.
I glared at Lincoln. I would kill him, tear him limb from limb. Crow was still talking, and I should be listening, but all I could think about was killing this piece of shit sitting at our table. I wanted to rip his spine out through his throat.
He was my brother, and he was my enemy. I knew one thing, Lincoln was going to die. He just didn’t know it yet.
Chapter 13
Ronnie
Present Day.
Pretending was exhausting. I was pretending to be some free-spirited badass. Although, the worst was pretending that none of this was my fault. The only thing I wasn’t pretending about was how much I cared for Maria and Shawn.
Destroying Gage (Bloody Saints MC Book 2) Page 3
