Hard Roads

by Lily White

  “I believe you know this man, Holly. He was the person to originally abduct you, the one who then came here seeking drugs. I gave him what he wanted and he was the person to mention that it was Hell’s Rebellion that had you. Word on the street is that your father is looking for you and extremely angry that you’ve been taken. I thought about keeping you for myself, considering what your father did to me, however I found an associate who is willing to pay a high price for you. Regardless, after your friend here came off his high, he realized what he’d told me. He called Big John to confess and I wasn’t too happy about it. He’s being punished for attempting to cause problems between me and a business associate. He is being punished for attempting to stop my ability to take you. It would have cost me a lot of money had he succeeded.”

  Clearing my throat, I tried to speak calmly. Despite my attempt at appearing calm, fear broke my words into pieces. “H … His name is Scooter. And I think he’s been punished enough.” I’m not sure if it was bravery on my part or stupidity, but I tried to defend the man who was responsible for me being in this situation in the first place. It shouldn’t have mattered to me and I should have asked to spit in the fucker’s face before Diablo carried out what he intended to do, but I couldn’t watch any person get tortured or killed, regardless of what they’d done. It was never a part of this life that I enjoyed and it was one of the main reasons I couldn’t handle living in an MC.

  Diablo laughed, dark and sardonic. He was enjoying himself. Death was nothing more than a game to him. “I’m aware of his name, I just choose not to use it. And no, he hasn’t been punished enough. He’s proven to have a big mouth and I’m not interested in dealing with people who have moments of conscious and go declaring their crimes. That’s how people get caught, Holly, as I’m sure you’re aware.”

  His shoes clicked across the bare cement floor when he approached the metal table. After looking Scooter up and down, he nodded to one of his men. “Grab the surgical saw. Start with the feet. You won’t have much time once you start.”

  My head shook “no.” Every muscle in my body contracted and pain shot along my spine and neck. The air in my lungs felt like mud, preventing me from breathing anything but short gasps of air. Pounding hard, my heart felt like it would come through my chest and I froze as I watched the guard retrieve an electric saw from the wall.

  After placing the saw on the counter, the man removed his jacket, picking up a black apron of some sort and plastic goggles. My stomach started to lurch just from the thought of what he was about to do and I couldn’t help but beg for it to stop.

  “Diablo…please. Don’t fucking do this. I can’t watch this.” Dry heaving between the words, my body reacted to the scene before it even played out. I didn’t need to see it happen to feel the emotions and for my body to react with a rush of adrenaline that left me dizzy where I sat.

  Cruel laughter filtered through the silence in the room. I didn’t understand why Scooter wasn’t fighting, why he wasn’t screaming to be released. Footsteps approached me and I looked up from beneath the curtain of my hair to find Diablo squatting in front of me. The expression on his face was feigned sympathy, but more than that, he appeared to be studying me, analyzing every detail of my reaction to the scene he was creating in front of me.

  Softly, he explained, “There’s a reason people don’t mess with me, Holly. If I was soft, if I allowed people to fuck with me and didn’t deliver horror in response, they would continue their attempts. I’m wealthy because I am willing to do things most other men will not do.”

  “JD told me about you already.” On a faint whisper, I interrupted him. I didn’t care about why he did what he did. I just didn’t want to be witness to it.

  He smiled. “It’s nice to hear that my reputation precedes me. I’ve worked hard to ensure that it does.” He paused, allowing a thick silence to develop between us. I felt nothing but fear around him. Never before had I met a person who could be so calm, while at the same time so evil and cruel. Not even my father’s punishments against men who fucked with the club could compare with this.

  When Diablo’s voice punctured the silence, my entire body flinched back.

  “Technically, you’ve done nothing to me, Holly.” He reached up to slide his finger along my jaw, his eyes sparkling with the evil of which he was so proud. “So I won’t make you witness this. Instead, I’ll give you a choice. You can either remain in this room and watch what happens to people who can’t keep secrets…” His hand moved along my neck, down the side of my body so that his thumb brushed across my breast. “…or you can escort me for the rest of the day willingly and without any further rebellion on your part.”

  I didn’t want to be within ten feet of him, but given the present circumstances, it was preferable to watching a man get dismembered with a surgical saw.

  I promise you that Diablo is ten times worse. He doesn’t care and I think the drugs mixed with the desert sun have boiled his fucking brain. You don’t want to end up on his bad side…

  JD’s words echoed in my brain and shivers ran across my spine. I knew Diablo was sneaky. I knew I couldn’t trust him farther than I could throw him, but I couldn’t watch what was about to happen. The thought alone had my body convulsing to keep from vomiting.

  “I’ll go with you.”

  He smiled, something sly and alien, the expression on his face was one of triumph. He’d presented me a choice that wasn’t really a choice, it was just an opportunity for me to choose what I thought was the lesser of two evils.

  Snapping his fingers at the guards, he stood up and waited for them to unchain me. My legs burned when I finally pushed myself up to my feet and I couldn’t stand completely straight because of the pain in my stomach. Diablo wrapped his hand around my arm to steady me.

  Once I looked up at him, he quickly grinned while pulling me towards the door leading to the hallway. Before we’d stepped out, he snapped his fingers again and I heard the high pitched shrill of the saw, followed by the most horrific, blood-curdling scream. I don’t know why I turned around at that second. I shouldn’t have, because as soon as I did, Scooter’s blood sprayed in my face just as a man stepped up to close the door.

  Diablo wasn’t fazed and he laughed quietly when my knees gave out beneath me. Violent tremors ran through every muscle of my body and he bent over to pick me up off the floor. Carrying me to a large bedroom, I listened as Scooter’s screams battled with the shriek of the saw, but the noise seemed to disappear when Diablo carried me in the room, shutting the door behind us with his foot. He placed me down on the bed, stepping back and pulling the suspenders down from his shoulders. Pure lust flashed across his expression and I realized that the death we’d almost witnessed excited him in more ways than pure joy. It turned him on.

  My eyes widened and once again I was silently objecting with a slight shake of my head “no”. “D-don’t…I don’t want…please.”

  My eyes followed his hands as they slowly unbuttoned his shirt, each unfastened button revealing smooth tan skin stretched taut over a rock solid chest. When his shirt fell to the floor and he stood in front of me with just the white linen of his pants hanging from his narrow hips, he smiled, reaching down to grab his cock from over the material.

  “No rebellion, remember?” His head cocked in question, but he didn’t give me the chance to respond. Walking into the bathroom, he disappeared for only a moment before returning to the bedroom with a washcloth in his hand. He walked up to stand in front of me, pushing his legs between mine where they hung off the bed.

  “Remove your shirt, Holly.”

  “W-why?” Stupid question, but when you’re facing something as soul splitting as rape, you do whatever comes to you to stall time, to think, to try and devise some way to fight until you sink down into the desperate realization that you’re powerless. There is no word strong enough to describe what you lose in that moment, because, in truth, what you lose is your entire being…your humanity.

  A soft
sigh slipped over his lips. “There is blood on your shirt. I don’t fuck in the bodily fluids of loose-lipped narcs.”

  I looked down at my shirt, wondering how he could tell there was blood on the black cotton. JD’s scent wafted up to me. I pulled the shirt out to examine it as more pain shot through me. What had they done to him? Were they torturing him now like they were Scooter?

  “Where’s JD?” Spoken so softly, I apologized for the question by keeping my voice weak. I didn’t want to insult him further, didn’t want to draw out his anger. I just wanted to know what happened to the man who’d asked me to survive.

  I couldn’t understand why I even cared.

  “He’s left you.” Three words. All he spoke were three single words, but they managed to hurt me more than anything had hurt before. “He picked up the drugs he’d come for and left you with me to do with as I please. You, of all people, should know that you can’t trust dirty bikers. Look what your father has done to you by making you a target. What have you ever been given by them other than heartache and loss?” His voice was soft, comforting and sympathetic, an odd tone coming from a man who would finish off what those ‘dirty bikers’ had started.

  I didn’t resist when I felt his finger beneath my chin, lifting my face to look up at his. With his other hand, he wiped my face clean of the nightmare that I’d just witnessed, my eyes closing so that he could remove every last bit of a fallen biker’s blood. The cloth was cool against my skin and I cried beneath the feel of it, hating the touch of kindness when it was nothing more than a lie. Diablo wasn’t kind, he was a monster who knew what it took to hurt the body, while permanently damaging the soul.

  When he finished, he threw the washcloth into a hamper on the side of the room, turning back to me to say, “It’s time for you to hold up your end of our deal.”

  “I didn’t know this was the deal.”

  A soft chuckle before he responded, “It’s not my fault that you failed to ask.”

  Peeking out at him from beneath my tear-spiked lashes, I attempted to hide the agony and scathing hatred I was feeling. It would only add to the pleasure he would gain from this. My hands moved to the hem of my shirt and I lifted it up, closing my eyes again when the cool air of the room met my naked skin.

  I didn’t want to look at him, didn’t want to see the power he felt slide over his expression as he reduced me to nothing more than an object for his use. I didn’t want to see how I amused him or the pride he felt for getting what he wanted. My decision to leave that room didn’t save me from Diablo’s horror, it had simply put me in a position to experience an entirely new brand of debasement and pain.

  “I’ll make you feel good, Holly, I promise you. The heat of his palms slipped over my breasts, his breath hissing over his lips. “I’m the only man who will offer you that. In a few hours, you’ll no longer be given the luxury.”

  Hands pushing me backwards, I refused to open my eyes when he unbuttoned my shorts, pulling them and my underwear slowly down my legs and off my body. Tears dripped along my face when I felt him crawl up between my legs, taking my arms and pinning them above my head.

  His cock pressed against the opening to my body and his lips, wet and warm, closed over the tip of my breast.

  My mind raced, images and memories of the past days flooding my system as I sought escape from the events occurring now. The only thing I could hear was JD begging me to survive, begging me to let go of the fighter inside me.

  But I couldn’t.

  There wasn’t a part of me that could lay back and take what others did to me. I couldn’t allow myself to be used and tossed aside so cruelly and callously.

  You can imagine Diablo’s surprise when I brought my legs up, bending one in such a way that I was able to pull it between his legs. I used all the strength I had left in me to kick forward, catching him in the stomach when I’d intended to hit him full force on his cock. Regardless of my fucked up aim, my effort worked when, caught off guard, he fell back and off the bed and I scrambled up to roll off the bed and onto my feet.

  I was stunned, not knowing what to do with myself now that I’d signed my own death warrant. I didn’t care how I escaped this hell or even if I escaped at all. The only thing I cared about was that I didn’t go down without fighting for my fucking life.

  Making a mad dash for the door, my hand landed on the knob just as a set of arms wrapped around my waist pulling me into a vice-like hold. Time moved quickly in those few seconds and I hadn’t comprehended I was flying across the room until the moment my body hit hard against the wall. Diablo was on me in seconds, dragging me by my hair back to the end of the bed. Every effort I made to hit or kick to free myself of his hold was useless. He was far too big to fight and far too angry to care about the pain he was inflicting on me.

  Within another few seconds, I was bent over the edge of the bed, his feet knocking my legs apart and his hand holding my face down into the mattress. I struggled to breathe around the thick cushion of his bed. His weight fell on top of me, his mouth so close to my ear that I could feel the heat of his breath roll along my neck.

  “You stupid little bitch. You’ll regret that.”

  The scream that tore from my throat wasn’t human as he forced himself inside my body, tearing the skin while at the same time shattering my soul.

  Chapter Fifteen

  JD

  Pulling up to the club, I idled as King and Holland pulled the gates open to allow me to drive through. Both of them were good kids that had been patched in a little over a year prior. Only 20 years old, they’d grown up together in a rough part of town¸ developing their love for bikes at a young age when racing dirt bikes had been the only thing that provided an escape from the gang activity and drug dealers that polluted their city. They’d moved away from home when they were only 17, eventually finding work at a diner not far from the clubhouse. At first, the brothers had ragged on the two boys, relentlessly picking apart the crap crotch rockets they always had parked out front on the days they worked. After months had passed and we finally started talking to the kids, they were integrated into the club, earning their keep and their patches by helping take care of the property.

  Eventually they outgrew the sport bikes they loved and moved on to something that rumbled as it tore down the road. Now looking at them, it didn’t look like they’d ever been anything but MC bikers.

  Once they’d cleared the path, I pulled between the gates, parking my truck outside of the main house. I was intent to drop off the duffle bag, grab my shit and forget that the club, Diablo or Holly had ever been a part of my life. Guilt for leaving her with Diablo had ridden on my shoulders like a lead vest the entire trip back to this fucking place. All I wanted to do was ride out of here and allow the wind to crash against my face, erasing every fucked up memory that plagued me. With each mile I put between this place and me, I’d gain my freedom from the club, from the terrible acts and circumstances that always seemed to throw a shadow over my life.

  “What’s up, JD?” Holland came running up, a smile on his face and his hair slicked back, tucked behind a black bandana. Reaching out, he took my hand in the strong grip of his, while slapping my shoulder with his other hand. “Goddamn man, it’s been for-fucking-ever since I’ve seen you. Where the fuck have you been hiding your ugly mug?”

  I smiled because I didn’t think there was a bad bone in Holland’s body. Sometimes I felt bad that this kid had gotten involved in the MC life, but Big John was aware that Holland didn’t have the spirit of a fighter and he kept Holland out of most of the turf bullshit and drug runs as a result.

  At 6’5”, Holland towered over most of the brothers. He had shoulders wide enough to match his frame and the sleeves of his t-shirt stretched over biceps built and hardened by all the work he constantly did on the grounds of the compound. In the years that I’d known him, I’d only seen him in one fight. Normally, if something broke out within the club, Holland would always stay out of it, watching and laughing in the ba
ckground while chugging down a beer. I respected that about him and even though I was fourteen years older than the kid, I preferred his company to any of the other assholes in this place.

  One night, a few weeks after he’d been patched in, Holland and I had rode out to stock up on beer and liquor. We were driving down the two lane town road leading out to the main highway when we saw a man, woman and child standing on a corner. The light we were approaching turned red giving us a front row view of the man suddenly turning, beating on his old lady as the little kid, who couldn’t have been older than two, fell on the ground crying. The next thing I heard was the loud roar of Holland’s bike. Before I could react to catch the little punk, he’d stopped, propped his bike on its stand and didn’t even bother killing the engine before tackling the man. Holland almost killed the other man in the time it took me to roll up and run over. I’d never seen someone fight like Holland and the empty look in his eyes as he threw punch after bone-crushing punch was enough to scare a seasoned fighter like me.

  After peeling him off the other man, I dragged him to the bikes, ensuring that he took off before I did so that I could trail behind him all the way back to the club. We didn’t speak about it again until another month later when it was just the two of us sitting outside by a dying bonfire late at night. He’d remembered what he’d done, but he couldn’t explain the reaction. He just kept sayin’ that when he saw that kid cryin’, he snapped. I’d left it alone, allowing silence to come between us, not wanting to press it and disturb some deep-seated pain or memory the kid had buried deep inside him. From what I’d been through growing up, I knew that, sometimes, when something happens that is so bad that your mind wants to bury it, it’s best to keep that pain under the mental fog and dirt instead of digging it up and letting it destroy you all over again.