by April Lust
“Tanner, you okay?” I asked when I got to the door. It was closed.
“Yeah. Come on in,” he called from behind the door.
I turned the knob, ignoring the thumping in my chest, the loud pounding in my ears, and the little voice that told me to leave the door alone and run back to my car.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Michael
The door to Lauren’s apartment was open. Not unlocked, but pushed open. I yanked my gun out from my waistband and held onto it as I slowly entered. Nothing looked touched.
A news broadcast played on the television set. A plate with an uneaten sandwich and glass of iced tea sat on the coffee table.
Tony stood at the doorway, his own weapon in hand. I motioned for him to sit tight and made my way to the kitchen. Empty. The bathroom door was open, as well as Lauren’s bedroom. Both rooms empty and no sign of Asya.
The only room left to check was Asya’s bedroom. I put my ear to the door, listening for movement. Soft, muffled moans. Turning the handle, I threw the door open with my weapon lifted and ready.
On the bed, hog tied and gagged, lay Asya. Her eyes were red and puffy from crying, and her body battered and bruised. Before I went to her, I checked her closet and the bathroom attached to her room. Once I felt comfortable that she was alone, I went to the bed and pulled the dirty rag down from her mouth.
She spat on the ground, then took several gulping breaths. “Where’s Lauren?” She wiggled against her restraints.
“Not here. Who did this?”
“Fucking Dean!” she yelled, then coughed. “Fuck. Get me out of these ropes.” She wiggled more.
“The more you squirm the tighter they get. Just stay still.” I called out for Tony and then began using my pocket knife to cut her loose. Tony took in the scene and cursed.
“Where’s this Dean guy?”
“I don’t know. He made me send those messages to Lauren. I had to. He had a gun to my head.” She started sobbing as I finished removing the last bit of rope form her legs. By the indents and bruises along her legs and arms, I guessed he’d had her tied up for several hours.
“Okay, okay.” I tucked my own gun away and told Tony to do the same. “Where’d he go?”
“I don’t know. He left about an hour ago. Said he had to finish up at the warehouse. What does he want with Lauren? Where is she?”
“She’s safe,” I assured her. “Did he say anything else?”
“No. Everything was fine, normal. He woke me up, we fucked, but then he went all crazy on me. He asked if I would invite Lauren over for lunch, but I said no. I knew you guys were in the middle of all this shit and I didn’t want to bug her. He kept insisting, and when I questioned why he wanted her to get here so bad, he went batty. He hit me. Dean has never hit me. Then he pulled out his fucking gun and told me to text her.”
“Did he know she was with me?”
“Yeah. I told him you were watching over her until the driver of the car was found. He knew that.” She swiped her hand across her lips as more tears fell. “But you didn’t bring her.”
“No. He knew I wouldn’t.” My phone starting vibrating and I pulled it out. “What?” I barked into the phone.
“Mike, she’s gone. That little girl is slippery. She took off about thirty minutes ago. Isn’t answering her phone.”
I cursed into the phone, then looked back at Asya. “You said he mentioned a warehouse. Has he mentioned it before?”
“No, not really. I mean…wait. He was late once picking me up from work about a week ago. I wasn’t mad but he started spilling all sorts of excuses, saying some tan guy held him up at the warehouse. I didn’t know what he meant, and I didn’t ask.”
“Tan…Tanner?”
“That might have been it, yeah.”
“Tanner Hunt?” Tony asked from the doorway.
“Yeah, that’s him. You know him?”
“Yeah, I know him. He’s got an office at a warehouse over on Ogden. Runs shit out of there. Knew a few guys who ran for him, dropped them there for their pickups.”
“Fuck. If Tanner called Lauren to meet him, she’d probably go. Damn her ass. I’m gonna head over there. Tony, you stay here with Asya. Get her back to the clubhouse.”
“You can’t take that place on by yourself.” He pushed my chest when I tried to get past him.
“It’s not me you should be worried about.” I glared at him until he moved out of my way, then ran my ass out of the apartment and down to my bike. Before peeling out, I sent a message to Johnny where Lauren was. I wouldn’t be taking on the warehouse alone. My brothers would back me up.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Lauren
No matter what Michael was going to do to me for leaving the clubhouse, I would welcome it compared to the angry man I faced in Tanner’s office. A man covered with scars and scabs along his nostrils and covering most of his face stood behind Tanner, who sat in his chair with the barrel of a gun pressed against his head.
I stood in the doorway unable to speak, just trying to take in the situation, when rough hands grabbed me and hauled me into the room. Dean. His dark eyes avoided mine as he dragged me to the chair in front of Tanner’s desk. “Sit.” He pushed me down into the leather chair.
I tried to get Tanner’s eyes lined up with mine, but he kept them focused on the doorway behind me. “Tanner, are you okay?” I asked, and was rewarded with a slap across the face from Dean for my trouble.
“Shut the fuck up,” he growled at me. I heard tape being unraveled before I felt the thick duct tape being wrapped around my torso. I tried to jump up from the chair, but he already had it around my arms and moving around the chair. Well, hell.
“This is the girl?” the man with the scabs asked. His raspy voice grated on me, as though it could scratch me. “She looks different. You sure you got the right one?”
“Yeah. This is her,” Dean snarled from behind me. He leaned down so his breath was hot on my ear and continued to breathe heavy like a dog who’d just ran around a hot backyard and needed water. “Right, Lauren? You remember Mr. Leonard, right?” A drip of spittle landed on my neck, and I tried to lean away from him, but the tape held me tight in position.
“Daniel.” Tanner still didn’t look my way, but his fingers drummed on his desk. “Daniel, let the girl go. I’m the one who cut you off, you don’t need her.”
“Fuck that. This bitch owes me. It was she who started the whole fucking thing. Can’t manage to grab the right package, and next thing I know I’m being cut off from the best shit in town.” He didn’t move from behind Tanner, or take the gun away from his head, but glared at me. “See this face? See this shit all over my skin? That shit Snake sold me did this to me. My fucking face peels off over and over again. I’ve had to do my business like a fucking freak, never meeting anyone face to fucking face, because look at me. Look at me!” His voice cracked when he screamed at me. I kept looking at him, seeing the scabs and the scars as his penance.
“You tried to rape me.” I spoke low. I knew I should have kept quiet, but he wasn’t going to blame me for getting himself cut off from Tanner. That was his own doing.
“Yeah, and for that Tanner here threw away years of friendship! Do you know how many times I got my attorney to keep his ass out of jail? Too many fucking times! And this prick,” he nodded to Dean, “this little prick was so fucking easy to buy off. Do you see how easy it is for me to make you disappear?”
“Hurting me isn’t going to make your face better. If you really want Pierre to have my internship, he can have it. It’s not worth this, not worth anyone getting hurt.” I didn’t look at Tanner. I needed to be strong, and if I looked at him, odds were I would crumble. I’d never seen him vulnerable. He was always the man in control, the man everyone else looked to for what to do and how to do it.
“Fuck Pierre. That kid can get his own fucking internship. All he does is bitch and moan about what he wants but can never earn shit for himself. When he said your name
, though, when I heard your fucking name, it clicked; I asked him to describe you and I knew it was you. That white blonde hair of yours. Only took a few calls to figure out you were the same bitch who made this happen.” He pointed to his face again and I looked away. Not because the scabs disgusted me, but because of the raw hatred he held in his eyes.
“What are you going to do with me now?” I whispered. I needed time. More time to figure out a plan. Michael had no idea where I was. For all he knew, I was tucked away at the clubhouse.
“What do you think, bitch? We’re gonna have our fun with you first.” Dean’s breath carried the scent of raw onions that made my stomach turn.
“Where’s Asya?” I jumped beneath the tape, not getting far, but was able to move the chair away from him enough to angle my eyesight to him.
His lips curled over his teeth and he laughed. “Home in bed.”
“If you fucking hurt her—”
"Hurt her? Why would I do that? I just tucked her away for later use.” He laughed again. A nasty, toe-curling laugh.
“I don’t understand, Dean. Why would you do this?”
“Money.” He shrugged. “Mr. Leonard has gotten me out of a few scrapes, more than one that Tanner caused while I was playing his errand boy. I owe him some favors, and he pays fucking better than Tanner or the fucking Fallen. I remembered you from when you dated Colton. That fuckface didn’t know how to handle your ass. If you were mine, I wouldn’t be tolerating all that hoity-toity shit. You would have known your place.”
“Asya never mentioned you were in a motorcycle club. She would have told me.”
He laughed again. “Yeah, well, I didn’t need her all up in my business. Until I knew if I’d keep her as my old lady or not, I just kept her on the outside.” Obviously, Dean had lost his mind somewhere along the way. How could Asya not have noticed the tattoo? Didn’t he have one of his club on his body somewhere like Michael did?
“A double life,” I mumbled to myself. “Fucking pathetic,” I spat at him. “You are fucking pathetic to follow this asshole!” I’m not sure what came over me, but the burning anger in my chest exploded.
His response was quick and hard. A closed fist hit my jaw, the copper taste of blood spilled into my mouth. My lip had split, blood dripped from my lip down my shirt and onto my tongue. “Fucking bitch!” he yelled, and fisted my hair, dragging my head back.
“Touch her again and you’ll die slowly.” Tanner’s voice came across calm and collected, as though informing him of the weather.
Keeping his hand in my hair, Dean looked over at Tanner with a laugh. “How? By you?”
I tried to yank myself away but his fist connected with my cheek, this time cutting the inside of my mouth on my teeth. My teeth rattled and I worried he’d knocked a tooth loose, but the hot pain that scorched my face took priority.
Just as my vision started to clear up, I heard a pop. Dean grunted and let go of my hair. “Fuck!” he yelled, gripping his calf. “Where the fuck did that come from?” Before an answer could be given, another pop and Daniel was thrown back away from Tanner. Hitting the wall behind him, blood spread across the chest of his tan shirt, his eyes wide with surprise. His gun hit the floor at the same time he did.
Tanner stood up then and leaned over his desk, glaring at Dean. “No, fucker, by him.” He pointed to the door.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Michael
She was alive. Hurt, but alive. My heart started beating again when she finally moved, turning her head toward the door. I kicked away the gun lying beside Dean, just out of his reach, and got to her. Her cheek was already swollen, and blood continued to drip from her lower lip.
“Michael,” she whispered when she saw me, her head titling to one side. “I left the clubhouse.” Her confession made me smile, on the inside. On the outside my muscles were tense and my blood boiled.
“I see that.” I wiped the blood away from her lip and looked down at Dean, who was still holding his leg and trying to scoot his ass out of the room.
Seeing her with his hands on her like that brought back too many memories of finding her in her room huddled in the corner after her stepfather had gotten a hold of her. I had promised this woman that it would never happen again. I would protect her from all the bad shit. And here she was getting punched in the fucking face by this asshole.
“I’m gonna take care of this, don’t move.” I cut away the tape from the chair and peeled it away from her. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Dean squirming his way out of the room. Tanner watched him, too, not making a move to stop him. I had five guys standing outside, I wasn’t worried. A few more were positioned at the entrance of the warehouse. He wasn’t going anywhere. “Stay right here, Lauren.” She nodded, the fear in her eyes from when I first entered the room morphed into something colder, withdrawn.
“Where you going?” I heard a voice outside in the hall. A garbled yelp told me Tony and Johnny had helped our little friend up off the ground.
“Don’t you leave either.” I pointed my knife at Tanner.
“I’ll stay right here.” He nodded and sat back in his chair.
I walked out into the hallway, already hearing Dean’s moans and groans from the fists being thrown into his gut and face. They both stopped and let him slide to the floor when I approached them. Squatting down, I used my knife to raise his chin, making him look at me through his already swollen eyes. “You hurt my girl,” I said in a low voice. “You hurt her friend. You tried to kill her not once but twice. It was you in that fucking car, wasn’t it?”
“She wasn’t supposed to die. I was just trying to send a message.” He was lying, I could see it in his face, a dying man grasping at the last string of hope. As much as I wanted to be the one to end him, to take the life out of his body the way he tried to do to my Lauren, I needed to get back to her. I needed to be sure she was safe.
“Mike.” Colton’s voice called to me from down the hall. “The fucker’s mine.” He joined our little group, squatting next to me, looking over Dean’s face. “Good, still awake.” I’d seen that smile of Colton’s before, and it always sent a shiver through my body. He had ideas for Dean. Ideas even I couldn’t stomach. How Lauren ever ended up with Colton was beyond me. Two total opposite sides of a spectrum they were.
“Guarantee me this asshole won’t see the light of day again. His last breath happens today.” I still held Dean’s chin up by my knife, letting it dig into his skin just enough to prick it and bring out a few drops of his blood.
“The club had a vote. He won’t be seen again. They are waiting back at the clubhouse. First, we need to make sure all his club tats are gone—I think they voted to use fire for that. Then we’ll start his punishment for acting without club permission, and joining up with assholes like Leonard. And if he’s still breathing after that, I will personally rip his throat out for touching a single hair on Lauren’s head.”
I’d heard of the Fallen rules for kicking out a club member. If they were lucky, they were allowed to cover their tats with ink or have them removed on their own; if they weren’t lucky, they met up with the club for removal.
Through garbled speech Dean tried talking, but Colton put his finger to the bloodied lips. “Shhh…no talking. It’s better this way.” He laughed. He brushed off my knife and looked toward the open door. “She okay?” he asked.
“She will be. He got a few punches in before I could get to her.” I folded my pocket knife and slipped it into my back pocket.
“I’ll clean up this mess; you go take care of that one. And, Mike, make sure Mickey knows Dean acted on his own. We never had anything to do with him coming to him with those threats.”
“I’ll be sure to pass it along.” I stepped away while Colton picked up the piece of shit off the ground and threw him over his shoulder like a bag of potatoes.
“You aren’t going to tell him about the change in leadership?” Johnny asked as we watched him walk down the hall.
“Nah. Our
club, our business,” I said. “I’m gonna get my girl and head home. Can you handle Mick, or do you need me there?”
“No, we got him. Man’s getting old; he didn’t even argue with me when I told him we’d be doing the vote this afternoon for his seat. I think all of this wore him down, showed him how fucked up things can get.”
“Good to see those leathers back on you, man.” Tony grinned at my kutte.
“Yeah, see how much you like it when I’m sitting in the VP chair and kicking your ass for missing your dues payment!” I left them and headed back to Lauren.
She sat in the chair right where I left her. Her eyes were downcast, her hair covered her face.
