What the fuck are they going to do with those? Terror seizes me.
A third guy reaches under his shirt to a belt holster, revealing a jagged hunting knife.
THEY’RE GOING TO KILL ME! Panic wraps around my mind, and I flounder like a fish caught and thrown on a dock—despite the white-hot pain—willing my limbs to fucking work! My mouth is still gaping open as I try to scream for the angel.
One of the men jumps down on my arm, crushing it without mercy, then elbows me across the face. A shattering quake rips through my face and neck, and my ears begin to buzz loudly.
Vince carelessly grabs my face and forces my head back in his direction so I have to see him and what’s going on.
“Fucking little cunt, you won’t want to miss this.”
NO, NO! PLEASE NO! My breath comes panting in and out of my lungs as the hunting knife is brought closer.
The guy holding it brings the sharp edge to the bottom of my shirt.
Without a word, only violent grimaces in the dark, Vince and another guy pull the edges of my shirt taut while the knife slips up and under, cutting the fabric in half while the tip scrapes and digs against the tender flesh of my belly.
GOD, HELP ME, PLEASE! I HAVE TO GET AWAY! I HAVE TO GET OUT OF HERE!
I hitch in air to shout, then I realize something is wrong with my jaw! It won’t move like it’s supposed to!! Please, Angel, please!!
How will Cade ever find me back here if I can’t even scream? My vision blurs as hot tears gather and burn in my eyes.
I fight through the grating sound my jawbone makes as I try moving it, while it sends a shrill cry of torment reverberating through my head. “Please … stop,” I beg with pleading eyes.
Maybe one of them will take pity on me. Maybe one of them isn’t really this evil!
“Please, stop. Please, stop!” Vince sings and mocks in a whiny, feminine tone. “This is my territory, fuckin’ bitch!” he tells me with a deadly poisonous voice. “I don’t have to stop, and there ain’t no one who’s gonna stop me.”
At that, he grins maliciously and undoes the button and zipper of his jeans.
Oh God, NO! I swallow and taste blood.
He shoves his jeans and underwear down around his knees and grips his penis in his hand.
He’s going to rape me!
It’s more horrific than my mind can take. The reality of what’s happening shatters me into a million tiny pieces—as my mind refuses to believe it. Refuses to understand and pleads against what has now become the inevitable.
Vince gets on top of me as the other men hold my broken body down, and I feel his dirty, disgusting body penetrate into mine.
It’s agonizing torture as he violently shoves it in and out of me. It sears like fire, sending shock and pain through every fiber of my being.
With everything I am, I want to fight and shake my head in protest! I want Vince to know that this is MY body and he CAN’T DO THIS!
ANGEL!!
“Don’t … do this!” I cry. “How can you—?”
“Shut the fuck up!” Vince’s fists pummel brutally into both sides of my rib cage.
I can’t even ball up to protect myself—there’s a man on each of my arms and two others holding my legs. The more I cry, the harder Vince punches.
Then a savage, howling pain rips through my lungs. A scream is forced from my throat and one of the guys covers my mouth with his hand with such force it feels like it vacuum seals, and I can’t pull in enough air.
Quickly, I feel like I’m going to suffocate.
A new rush of panic takes hold because I can’t breathe!
Vince pulls himself out of me.
“Told you I’d fuck you until your pussy bled,” Vince gloats then presses his fingers inside of me. When he brings them back out, he shoves them in my face. They’re dripping with blood.
Seeing my blood throws me into hysteria!
“Virgin blood. I popped your cherry, bitch! Guess Liam wasn’t man enough to do it first,” he crows then hits the guy sitting on my right leg. “Your turn, man.”
Vince takes the guy’s place and sits on my shin, while the guy kneels between my legs. He’s short and stocky with wide shoulders.
I’m hyperventilating. I’m bleeding! I’m going to pass out!
He quickly yanks off his pants and crawls over me.
They’re all going to get a turn before they murder me!!
I beg him not to do it, but I'm barely able to speak, to breathe.
Without sympathy, he takes a handful of my hair in each of his big hands, lifts my head up, and slams it back to the ground.
More pain. More misery consumes me.
One of them tells me to shut up again and holds a knife to my throat.
I’m abandoned to their mercy.
All I can think about is that I’ll never see Liam again.
After the third man, I’m numb. Somewhere inside, I resign myself to the idea that maybe I’m already dead. Time’s gone now, and I feel like I’m flickering in and out of reality. One moment I hear them laughing while they kick and cut me, the next I feel and hear nothing at all. I keep wanting to scream, but I’m not sure if I do or if I can. My body is consumed with excruciating agony everywhere.
I close my eyes against the pain and the fear, and focus on Liam’s face—his blue-green eyes and dark hair—and the way it falls across his forehead. I think about how his strong arms feel around me, and I’m safe.
Safe.
Loved.
A thought drifts by. I wonder, if I live, if he’ll ever be able to love me after this.
Too soon, everything is going black, and I can’t even hold onto his image.
I think I hear a car door slam and then a gun firing. Maybe they shot me. But it doesn’t matter anymore. I’ve lost Liam’s face.
“Quinn?? QUINN!!”
“Cade?” I squeeze the whisper from my hoarse throat.
I can’t breathe.
And it’s so fucking dark.
*****
I listen as Debra reads my book out loud to me. She cries as she tells me she loves me and that I’m the daughter she never had.
I hear Cade begging me to stay and begging me to forgive him.
I feel Liam’s warm hand on mine. I know it’s him, I can just tell. He doesn’t talk for a long time.
After what seems an eternity, he starts telling me that when I get better Cade’s going to give us enough money to go to Florida and get an apartment. He tells me stories about what it will be like, walking on the white sands and listening to the ocean waves hitting the shore.
He tells me he loves me, and I feel his mouth right next to my ear, as he pleads with me to wake up, says that he doesn’t want to live without me, and his tears fall against my cheek.
I would do anything for him, but it’s still so dark, and no matter how badly I want to, I can’t open my eyes.
*****
There’s a sharp prick in my arm and the black starts to recede. But with the light comes enormous pain. I can’t move, at all; it’s so bad, I can’t even open my eyes.
“It’s okay.” Liam’s voice reaches me. “I’m right here. Don’t try to talk. Just rest.”
And although I hear him, I’m not sure if he’s real or if I’m hallucinating.
Not being able to move makes me feel like I’m back under Vince or one of his men. I can see their faces. I try to thrash and get free, but they’re still holding me down.
Liam cries out, and I try to yell back to him so he’ll hear me, so he can help me, but before I can, the blackness swallows me again.
*****
Beep … beep … beep … beep …
I wish I could make that infernal sound stop! Over and over again. It’s not loud, but it’s annoying, like a snooze alarm you can’t turn off.
“Off,” I whisper. Jesus, I’m thirsty.
“Quinn?” Liam says next to me. “I think she’s waking up!”
“Sleep … all day,” I say, but so
mething’s wrong. My mouth doesn’t work like it should.
He laughs at me, but it sounds strangled. “No, I don’t want you to sleep all day, I want to see your pretty blue eyes.” The way he says it sounds like he’s begging, not requesting.
I pry them open by sheer willpower.
And there is my Liam. He’s smiling and crying at the same time.
“What?” I strain from my lungs hoarsely.
He just shakes his head and rests it carefully against my hand.
I realize the room we’re in has only dim illumination to see by. I’m about to ask why it’s so dark when I see the heart monitor machine that’s making the beeping racket.
And then I remember.
Chapter Sixteen
July, 2005
Liam
Connor veers the car towards the curb on State Street in front of Vince’s favorite hangout, The DuBois—a rundown hotel that serves as the Westhill Cartel’s home base.
I open the car door, jump out before it stops and rush at the guy standing like a guard or bouncer by the downstairs door. Swiftly, I bash him in the shoulder with the bat. As he falls, he drops his walkie, and I smash it with the heel of my boot.
Reese kneels down next to the guy, gets his arms behind his back and wraps duct tape around his wrists, before putting his knee into his throat.
“Were you a part of what happened to the girl at State Street’s Town Pump tonight?”
The guy’s eyes fill with fear and he can barely shake his head no.
Reese rips off a piece of tape and covers the guy’s mouth. “Vince is a fucking rat who is about to be exterminated; I suggest you find another line of employment.”
Three girls who were standing on the curb huddle together now, watching us. “Where is Vince?” I demand.
They point up the stairs. “Room fourteen.”
“How many guys are up there?”
“Maybe twenty,” one of them guesses.
“Scatter,” I warn them, and they take off down the street.
I run up the steps two at a time and when I get to room fourteen, I kick open the door without ceremony.
Vince and his goons jump up from the chairs and couches they were reclined in, turn and move for their weapons, which appear to be laid out on the bar behind them, at the back of the room.
Ryder and Josh rush the asshole closest to the stockpile. It looks like there are at least two guns sitting there.
I don’t worry.
I don’t bother counting how many opponents there are, I don’t care.
I don’t care if I die—in fact I’d prefer it.
The only thing that matters is that my target is right in front of me.
My muscles bunch and coil as I tense. Then with a burst of speed I pounce, step up and over the top of the couch and come down hard, violently slamming my boot against Vince’s jawbone.
I will break it, like he broke Quinn’s.
As he stumbles, I swing the steel baseball bat, which Cade uses for fitness, with all of my power and strike between Vince’s collarbone and shoulder blade. I hear the crack, and Vince howls in pain.
A second later, some asshole’s fist jams against my kidney from behind.
Douchebag. I roundhouse kick the guy in the gut, and he falls over the couch, but then another intervenes with an elbow to my face. Before I can retaliate, Josh grabs him and throws him against the nearest wall.
I turn my attention back to Vince. “Sick fucker! It must be easy for a coward like you to go after a defenseless girl with four other guys, isn’t it?”
Forcefully, I ram the end of the bat into his chest. Vince’s breath halts as he opens his mouth to gasp for air.
I drop the bat to the floor and jab a powerful uppercut to the opposite side of his face that I kicked him on to make sure his jaw hangs loose. As I do, I picture Quinn’s jaw hanging the same way.
Fury makes me see red around the edges of my vision. “Motherfucking pussy!”
I kick his legs out from under him, pin him down and slam my fist, fortified with the steel bar, against his ribs.
He gets a few punches in, but they do nothing to hurt me. There is nothing anybody can do now to hurt me. One of his dick lieutenants could shoot my brains out and I wouldn’t feel it.
Nothing matters. I wasn’t there when she needed me the most.
Dying …
I punch him in the mouth—again, again, and again. He spits out a curse with blood and teeth.
He starts to say something about Quinn but stops when I jump to my feet and catch hold of his useless arm—the one I dislocated with the baseball bat. I twist it up and around behind his back as I kick him over to his belly. Vince screams as I’m sure I rip apart his shoulder ligaments.
“LIAM!” I hear Talon’s voice echo through the room.
Turning fast, I see a guy coming at me. He gets a couple hits to my gut before I get him in a headlock and flip him up and drop him on his head.
Before I turn back for Vince, I quickly register the scene around me. Josh and Ryder are each fighting two guys.
Reese, Connor and Chase have formed a back-to-back triangle and are kicking ass. Talon is directly behind me, and I realize he’s been my rear guard.
When I get my eyes on Vince again he’s crawling across the floor—like a half-smashed cockroach. I kick him over onto his back and put my boot over his Adam’s apple and press. He starts to choke and sputter and flail his good limbs.
I’ve been in a lot of fights—so many I’ve lost count—but I’ve never killed someone. Vince deserves to die, and I don’t have to think twice about being the executioner.
“EVERYBODY DOWN ON THE FLOOR!”
The police flood into the big room.
“We’re not done,” I tell Vince as I obey the cops. “I’ll be back for you.”
It’s early morning by the time Cade gets us out of the downtown lock-up.
On the way home, he says something about a deal with the district attorney for house arrest. I don’t give a shit, all my overly compulsive mind can think about is getting to Vince again.
He’s quiet for the rest of the ride, which would suit my mood fine, but he’s also not talking about Quinn, and I can’t bring myself to ask.
When I get home I go straight to my room. The guys follow me.
“What do you want?” I growl.
Talon stands tall in the doorway. His left eye is cut open and the side of his face is swelling. “Quinn wanted us to be brothers.”
“Yeah?” I shake my head. “What of it?”
“Tonight we were,” Josh states, walking past Talon and into the room. His knuckles are wrapped with gauze, but the blood has seeped through, and his arm is held up in a sling—seems he threw his elbow out of place.
I nod my head. Tonight we were.
“We should stay brothers,” Ryder says. His t-shirt is ripped at the neck and shoulder, and blood is smeared on the front of it. It isn’t his. And I’m proud of that.
“We spilled blood tonight for each other and for Quinn,” Chase adds in a low voice. He has two handfuls of busted knuckles “That makes us family now.”
Reese and Connor nod their agreement. They’re fucked up too, in one way or another.
“Tattoo it, Liam,” Talon says. “On each of us, as a sign of our brotherhood.”
Without a word, I rise and go to the drawer where I keep my tattoo gun and the bottle of black ink.
As I set it up, I remember a photo I came across in Ink Magazine of soldiers who scribed matching tats on their biceps. I had always longed for that band-of-brothers closeness.
“I am my brother’s keeper,” I state. “Quinn would like that.” Would’ve liked that …
“That’s perfect, man,” Talon says, and everyone else agrees.
Josh picks his dirty, bloody shirt up with a clenched fist. “It should go on our left upper rib—closest to the heart.”
I try to say okay, but I can’t; the emotions I’ve been holding at bay
seem to be rising. I choke them down and say gruffly, “Lay down.”
When I turn on the needle, the sound soothes me and makes me think of Quinn. The last time I used it was to etch the birds on her shoulder. A peace comes over me I can’t explain. In that moment, I think of her and the angel, and think to myself that maybe everything is going to be okay.
Josh is first, then Talon, then Ryder.
“I have a shitload of silver-steel barbells, I could pierce each one of us too,” Ryder says when his tat is finished.
We all agree to that, and he jogs to his room for his stuff.
Almost an hour later, as I’m sinking the needle into Chase’s skin, Cade pops his head in the door. He doesn’t look as surprised as I thought he would, with all seven of us in the same room, not killing each other. I also expect him to freak the fuck out when he realizes what we’re doing, but he doesn’t.
When he comes in for a closer look, he doesn’t smile, but his eyes radiate pride as he sets his warm hand on my shoulder. “Looks like you’re now the brothers of ink and steel.”
After he walks back out, no one says a word.
Ink and steel. I think of the steel baseball bat I used to beat Vince and the batons and blades some of the other brothers carried into battle. I think about the steel we lift regularly at The Core and how it’s made us strong—both physically and emotionally. I think of our own muscle and resolve as steel and of the black ink going beneath our skin to our souls.
It’s the perfect title for what we’ve become.
*****
2015
Liam
I run down the dirt path into the graveyard, past the headstone I leaned against when I first saw her …
And there’s Quinn, where I knew she’d be, by the angel.
I glide to a stop, slipping in the slush.
My brow presses down and my jaw clenches. She’s yelling and sobbing—her agony-filled voice reverberates across the open space.
I’m immediately consumed with her pain.
Taking a deep breath, I let the anger go.
Burn (Brothers of Ink and Steel #2) Page 23
