I nod once, pulling the towel closer to myself. I need to feel covered, secure...protected.
That’s what I need – to feel safe. But how am I supposed to? I close my eyes, forcing them as tightly shut as I can and reflect on every moment that led up to this point. How was I ever supposed to know things would be like this. That he of all people would do this to me? I know that I shouldn’t blame myself, but I will. I’ll take every ounce of blame. At the end of the day, I'm the one who allowed this cycle to continue.
“Yeah, you’d better get up here quick.”
I come back to reality at hearing Jenna’s words, looking up at her I see that she’s on her cell phone. “I don’t know the details, I just know you need to be here.” Jenna sits on the side of the tub, not giving a care in the world that its blood ridden. She rubs my back soothingly over the towel, not saying a word.
But I can’t dare to speak right now. Too many thoughts are running ramped through my mind.
“I would go to get you some ice, but I know the last thing you want right now is to be left alone,” Jenna whispers.
I don’t bother to respond. It doesn’t even shock me that she knows exactly how I feel, she’s been in my position before.
I hear footsteps coming in heavy, the slamming of boots against a wooden floor and immediately my heart is going a million miles a minute. I can’t help but shake from the fear, wondering if it’s Max coming back for more….imagining the things he’d do to me now that I’m awake.
I look and see Jenna is standing with a knife out, her gaze set directly on the doorway.
When he pops into my view, I shut down. Every single tear that I’ve held in comes barreling out, rushing down my cheeks. I place my head against my knees and sob, cry like I’ve never cried before in my entire life.
“Michelle?” His voice comes to me like an angel from the heavens, but I don’t mistake the fear in his voice, the horror in his tone.
His footsteps approach and I hear him mumbling something to Jenna. I don’t want to look up, but I know I have to. I know that I need to be strong in this moment, to tell him what happened. I have to tell him everything, and I’m so scared to do that.
I lift my head and look at him.
When our eyes meet, I watch as his gaze goes over my body, from my face down my neck, over my shoulders until he’s thoroughly examined me.
“I-I’m going to need s-stitches,” I sputter out, my voice choking with almost every word.
“Who?” He hisses, clenching his fists I see his face distort into nothing but anger. “Who did this to you, Michelle?”
“M-M…ax”
Kyle’s eyes widen and just as I’m about to speak, to beg him to come closer and be here for me, he rushes over to the door, looking back at Jenna. “Get her treated. I’ll be back later, and do not fuckin’ leave her Jenna.”
Just like that, he’s gone.
Chapter 24
If karma doesn’t kill you, trust me, I will.
Anonymous
Kyle
“Have you seen Max?” I grab Reed by the back of his shoulder and pull him towards me. “I need to know if you’ve seen him at all within the last few minutes,” I urge, glancing around to see if I can spot the motherfucker. When I get my hands on him he’s going to wish that he’d never come back here in the first place.
“No. What’s got you running around like a raging bull?”
“He attacked Michelle!” I snarl out, throwing my hands up in the air. “The second I find him he’s going to pay for what he’s done, Reed. I’m done with this shit. I’m done with letting bastards getting away with hurting our women. First Dais’ and now Michelle. What’s wrong with me…is something so fucked up that people have to go after my girls, or am I just unable to protect them when they need me the most?”
“Wait, wait. Slow down, brother. Max attacked Michelle?” Reed doesn’t believe a word I’m saying and I can see that clear as day.
“Yeah. Jenna found her in the ensuite bathroom, blood is everywhere…and I mean everywhere. I left Jenna with Michelle and I know Jenna’s gonna take care of her and get her treated but fuck, Reed. I can’t just stand here and do nothing. I need to find him. I have to fucking find him and rip his intestines out” I roar, pacing back and forth under the stars.
“Jesus, what’s gotten into you?” Enzo asks, waltzing over to where Reed and I stand in the pergola.
“Have you seen Max?” I question him.
“Yeah. He left maybe thirty minutes ago, said he had some business to do up in New York. Told me to hand this over to you, though,” Enzo says, handing Reed an envelope.
Reed furrows his brows and looks at me in confusion. “Why would he give you something to hand deliver to me? He could’ve just done it himself.”
“I dunno, brother. He seemed to be in a rush so I wasn’t askin’ any questions.”
Reed opens the envelope and out falls a patch. I watch as Reed flips it over in his hand and under the flood lights, I can even make it out.
“Is that a joke?” I hiss, eyes scanning over the emblem.
“Doesn’t appear to be. Let me get Roman on the phone. I’m sure as fuck not letting this go by unpunished. Kyle, we’ll have his head for this,” Reed assures me, but promises aren’t enough. I need to go handle this situation right now.
“Your promises are shit, Reed. Find out where he is and let me go deal with it.” I snarl.
“No. Your place is here, with Michelle. If you think I’m gonna let you do the same shit to her that you did to Dais’ you’ve got another thing coming. You left Dais’ when she needed you the most. You do not get to do that to Michelle. She needs you more then she needs you to get Max. Go!”
I didn’t look at it this way, that I’d need to be by her side. All that came over me is rage like I’ve never known it. I’ve felt something similar when the loan sharks took Dais’, but….this isn’t a damn stranger, this is someone who I considered to be a brother. We may not have gotten along all that much, but the betrayal is damming. I can tell ya one thing though, he fucked with the wrong man’s girl.
Reed isn’t wrong though, so I head straight back to where I came from and leave Reed to handle Roman, and alert him of his new patch’s betrayal. Max won’t live long enough to see Christmas, I can promise that. I just hope that Reed sends across the message that I need to be the one getting justice for Michelle. It won’t be him. It’ll be me, and I don’t give a fuck if he’s the Prez of the Brotherhood MC or not.
I walk back in through the main house and go straight into Michelle’s bedroom, but she isn’t there. Shit!
“Michelle?” I yell out, eyes frantically searching for her in every hidden corner. I’m grabbed suddenly by the back of my shirt and turn around to face whoever is daring to touch me in this moment. They may very well get their head bashed in.
“Ssh. Your little one is sleeping in the room across the hall. I gave her a sedative. She was too agitated. I hope you do not mind that.” Her accent is thick, even though her English is good I still take a few moments to process what she just told me.
“Is she okay?”
“Eh. It depends how you view okay. But she will live. She does not seem like a weak little girl, so I think she will be just fine. I have stitched her up everywhere that she needed it, she will heal with time but…”
“But what?” I ask, needing to know what the hell Katya is saying.
“He raped her, and while I do not know if she is on birth control or any of that…you need to know so you can be prepared. She needs one of those pills, but I do not remember what they are called. If you tell me I can make sure to go get it for her.”
My blood boils, heart pounding in my chest, making me want to rip his throat out even more.
Michelle doesn’t belong to Max, and she hasn’t for quite a while. While she and I may be reconnecting, everyone here needs to understand that she has been reclaimed by me and there is no way I will be letting her go ever again.
> Chapter 25
You were never asking too much, you were just asking the wrong person.
Anonymous
Michelle
The span of a week past us by in no time. I busied myself at the bar, working way more shifts then I ever do. I wanted to distract myself, to keep my mind occupied and off of the horrible things that happened. Katya came by Bubba’s earlier today and removed my stitches. She told me that they were healing very well and I just needed to keep them clean, that my body would do the rest in time. I happen to like her a lot more than I thought that I would and honestly, if things weren’t so complicated I think that Katya would fit in great with our group of girls.
Dmitri, Jenna, Slash and Ksenia still aren’t at the club, and that means that Katya isn’t there either. They won’t go in full detail, but apparently the big guns who busted in the club and got them the hell out of there is their baby sister.
All I could think about was how many more sisters Dmitri has, but the cherry on top of it all is that his little sister is the Queen of the Romanian Mob, Mariana Petran.
I don’t know too much about the Romanian’s, however I know enough. They’re one of the oldest lines of crime, I think that they actually surpass the Italian’s in their reign. The big fish are the Romanian’s, Italians and the Irish. You have the Mexican Cartel, and we can’t forget about the Chinese, Japanese or the Russian Bratva…but they’re something else entirely, they’re the ones you don’t want to be associated with. Unlucky for us, we’ve been associated with the cartel.
Dmitri and Jenna love to keep things to themselves. Something about those two just screams secrets and I know that they’ve both got to have loads of them. All they would disclose is the fact that Dmitri and all of his sisters are somehow tied to the Bratva, and their Uncle is the leader. Now, I keep up to date on my mafia family drama. Volkolv has killed off every bit of family he has left to assure that his son, Aleksandr will take over. Rumor has it that he even killed off Aleksandr’s mother. I can’t attest to the truth in that, but it sure is juicy. If what they confided to me is true, that means that Volkolv is after them and when we add in that their little sister is Queen of the Romanian Clans….well, we’ve got a next level shit show folks. To sum it up, for our own safety they aren’t staying at the clubhouse. I know that big bits and pieces were left out of the story I was told, but no doubt, Reed knows everything in full detail.
“You can leave, Meech. I can handle the bar by myself. You know I can, so please go and let me do this.” Polina tells me, those light blue eyes of her stare into my soul. I don’t know why she bothers to tell me that I can leave, she knows I won’t. She doesn’t know everything that happens, and to be honest…no one knows every gritty detail. I won’t leave because this distraction, working here…it’s the only thing keeping me from breaking apart.
“I think Miss Perfect forgets that she isn’t alone tonight and wants to act like she’ll be doing everything herself the second you leave,” Maria snidely adds.
“Because I will be. All you do is flap your jaws to Chaos, or to Pain, or to both of them! You become too distracted and do not get your work done. Remember what you tell us when we first come here? If we do not do a good job, we can be fired. Well, how do you still have job?! You always become distracted and do bad job because of it!” Polina tells Maria and I laugh just based on Maria’s facial reactions themselves. I’ve seen these two get into it a couple of times and watching a Mexican and Russian argue is the funniest thing on this planet, especially when they start insulting the way that they both speak English.
“She’s right, Meech. Get your ass outta here and don’t come back for at least three days.” Maria snarls in my direction.
I thought that I was gonna be lucky enough to not have to participate in this lovely talk, but apparently not. “I want to be here,” I firmly state to her.
“I’m sure you do, but you don’t need to be here and that’s the thing.”
She’s right. I’m not needed to be here and there are other things I could be doing. The Russian girls are all learning how to man the bar, and before we know it they’ll be overrunning it. When Jenna left, I had been picking up slack around Bubba’s, feeling like I needed to be the one to do it. Almost as if I was obligated in a sense, but the last week isn’t out of obligation, it’s from distraction.
“Seriously. Get out of here. We have Thanksgiving in two days and I’m sure you need to go and help Elena prep for that,” Maria adds. No matter what, I’m going to end up leaving this bar before I had originally planned so it’s best I leave now.
I say my goodbyes, go into the back, grabbing my winter coat and slide it over my shoulders. Winter’s are never really too bad in Tennessee, especially around this time of the year. I walk outside and get into Kyle’s Hummer, which he’s insisted I drive. I may not admit this to him, but I love Hummers. They’re my favorite type of vehicle. I slide the keys in the ignition, turn on the radio and Natural by Imagine Dragons pounds through the speakers as I drive out of Bubba’s parking lot and head home.
The drive passes much quicker than usual, but I’m sure that has something to do with my speed demon like tendencies. I come up on the club and pull right in, whipping the SUV around back and park.
As soon as I’m pulling the keys from the ignition, I see Kyle come out the back doors of the club and come walking right up to me. He’s smiling from ear to ear.
Immediately, I’m stuck doing the exact same. There’s just something about that radiant smile he has that makes my frown turn upside down. “What’s gotten into you?” I ask, smirking as he takes step by step closer to me.
“I’ve got a surprise for you, Princess.”
“I happen to hate surprises,” I remind him, giving him a worried look. Never in my entire life have I gotten a good surprise, they’ve always been horrible and I can’t stand them.
“Just c’mon.” Kyle urges me, grabbing onto my elbow as I hop down from the monstrosity of a grocery getter the man has. He pulls me in the direction of the houses and when I look up, I notice something is different.
“What happened to those trees?” I ask, knowing that we definitely had at least ten massive trees on the hill this morning before I left to go open the bar.
“I had them cut down. They were gonna be in the way.”
“In the way of what exactly?”
“You see those little wooden markers?” Kyle asks me, pointing to them sticking up from the dirt. I can barely make them out, but I nod. “That’s going to be the dimensions of our house.”
Wait.
I know I just heard him wrong.
“I’m thinking at least three bedrooms with two baths. You always told me that you wanted a big eat in kitchen where we could have nice dinners, and I plan on us having a massive basement for a game room slash man cave. I’ll even buy you one of those fancy mixers you like in whatever color you want to put on the kitchen counter.” Kyle goes on and on, telling us of all the things he’s planned for our house, all of the things that he’s remembered from years ago when I was just a dreaming young girl, hoping for her happily ever after.
“You keep saying our house.” I point out, and he nods just as he lifts me up and yanks me into his arms. I wrap my legs around his waist, holding his cut firmly so I don’t fall flat on my ass.
“Yeah, I do. It’s pretty plain and simple that I don’t see much of a future without you in it, Princess. I don’t wanna lose you ever again, so I’m just gonna do whatever it is that I can to show you I’m in this for the long run.”
I don’t allow him to talk anymore, yanking his face against my own I press my lips to his, showing him just how much I adore him for always thinking of me. He may not show that he is every day, but I know in his heart I am always in any decision that he makes. I was so afraid of giving him a second chance, but he was right. We’ve changed so much, and for the better at that. Nothing can hold us back now. Nothing.
Chapter 26
You don
’t deserve someone who comes back. You deserve someone who never leaves.
Thegoodquote
Kyle
Michelle and I ordered Chinese and have been sitting on the couch in my room watching old episodes of The Walking Dead for the last three hours. Mar’ basically kicked her ass outta Bubba’s, and little does Michelle know but it was me who asked Polina and Mar’ to do it. She’s been working too much and if she doesn’t take time for herself all she’s gonna do is crumble anyway. I simply just helped her along a bit.
Michelle sets down her coke on the nightstand next to the couch and straddles me. Yeah, I’m one of those guys who puts his furniture in weird places. I’m sure after Michelle is in here enough she’ll make me move it. Women are always rearranging men’s lives.
“I’ve missed you,” she whispers, placing her lips against mine, looking up at me in the most sensual way.
Everything about this look tells me to pull her close, kiss the living hell out of her and show her just how much she means to me using my cock and fuck, I want to. I keep my left hand at the small of her back, keeping her close to me, within my grip so she won’t move unless I allow her to. With my right hand, I bring my right hand up her skin tracing my fingertips lightly until I’m at her cotton hipsters. Gently I trace over her lips through her panties while sucking her tongue into my mouth.
Michelle rolls her pussy against my thumb, pressing down harder I roll it against her nub, reveling every time she lets out a soft mew. I move my mouth from her lips down her neck, sucking and leaving little love bites down my path until my lips hit the top of her breasts. I run my tongue over her nipple, sucking it eagerly into my mouth, removing my left hand from her back to twist and tease the other. She moves closer to me, grinding herself on my hand until I pull her down against my cock, letting her feel every bit of crazy she is driving me. All I want to do is bury myself deep inside her and show her all of the love that I have inside of me, ready to let it all out for her.
Reclaimed (Skulls Renegade MC Book 6) Page 9
