by Nina Levine
“Don’t fucking call me that.”
“And there’s the man you’ve become. We just need to find a way to merge the two sides of you.”
He slipped out the door, and I doubled over in agony. Clutching my stomach, I pushed out a few sharp breaths. My entire body was alive with this pain. I was aware, though, that it wasn’t just physical pain. My soul was bleeding. It was oozing the blackest shit it had ever known. Joseph would not get away with any of this. I would die to ensure it.
* * *
Joseph returned sooner than I thought he would. “William has taken her home,” he announced as he entered the room.
“Was she in a state fit enough to call someone for help?” She needed a doctor to check her out.
“Yes.”
Thank fuck.
“Right, so you need to bring me up to speed on your business.” And get me out of this fucking room. It was bare except for one chair. I’d spent my time in there pacing and plotting revenge. The few hours of sleep I’d managed had been on the cold cement floor, which had been agonising as hell.
He closed the distance between us in two determined strides, his face clouding over with annoyance. “You don’t tell me what to do. That’s the first thing you must relearn.”
I stared into his dark eyes. “So tell me then, how is this going to go down? Because I thought you wanted me back to run your new Sydney operations.”
“You’re testing my patience, son.”
I clenched my jaw. He called me that to push me and I refused to show him what it did to me. I needed to lock my emotions down again.
When I didn’t say anything, he spoke again. “We’ve got a meeting with a new client tonight. Eric Bones. I want you there with William and me so you can begin building a relationship with him.”
I already knew Eric Bones. He was a Storm ally and if I was in that meeting, news would travel fast.
“Joseph, I have to leave the club first. If they hear word of this before I tell King, there will be hell to pay.”
“You think I give a fuck about a motorcycle club, Rhys? I could crush them in the blink of an eye.”
“No, you couldn’t.” He had no fucking idea.
He grabbed my shirt and yanked me to him so our faces were close. “You forget what resources I have. With the knowledge you have of Storm’s business and King’s way of thinking, we can bring that club down together.” He let go and shoved me backwards. “We start work on that tonight.”
I stared at him while he walked to the door. My next question was one I didn’t want to know the answer to. “What do you have planned?”
He looked back at me, his eyes glinting with menace. “Eric Bones is desperate for cash. I’ve agreed to sell guns to him cheaply in exchange for his loyalty. He’s also going to flood the market with cheap coke from me, undercutting the club. And you’re going to help by giving him details of Storm’s trade so he can use that information against them. Tonight.”
He exited the room without another word, and I stood in shock at what he wanted me to do. Joseph was a smart motherfucker. Forcing me to disregard my club loyalty achieved two things for him. One, it showed I was serious about returning to him. And two, it ensured my ties to Storm were cut. Because no way would the club take me back if I betrayed them like this.
* * *
Eric Bones inspected me. Every bruise and cut on my face were noted, as was the way I grimaced each time I moved. Finally, he met my eyes. “You’ve left Storm?”
Joseph and William sat either side of me, their bodies rigid while they waited for my answer. William had spent the drive to the meeting point trying to drill his special brand of fear into me. I’d anticipated that, though, so I had done my best to prepare my mind for it. And I’d succeeded. So far.
“Yes.”
His eyes widened and he whistled. “Fuck. Never thought I’d see the day, Nitro.” Jerking his chin at my face, he said, “They do that to you?”
My mouth flattened into a hard line. I needed to get this shit over with as fast as possible. Sitting there discussing my club was not fucking helpful.
Before I could reply, Joseph stepped in. “No, I did that to him.” Leaning his arms on the table, he added, “This is what happens when I’m not happy.”
Eric’s brows lifted and I took in his nervousness. I hoped to hell he was reconsidering his involvement with Joseph. With a shaky laugh, he said, “Remind me never to piss you off.”
“You will do well to remember this,” Joseph said. “Now, can we get down to business?”
Eric tapped his fingers on the table, jittery. “Umm, yeah, about that….”
“Yes?” Joseph’s voice was low. Dangerous.
William leant forward. “You haven’t changed your mind, have you, Eric? That wouldn’t make Joseph very happy.” There was no mistaking his threat. William had a presence that shrieked danger.
Eric stared at him. The fear rolled off him as he assessed William who had been silent up until that point. Swallowing hard, he said, “I just need a little more time to get some shit worked out.”
“This happens today or not at all,” Joseph said.
Eric’s indecision was blatantly obvious in the way he said he wanted in on the deal while his body language said the complete opposite.
Raking his fingers through his hair, he said, “Man, honestly, I just need a few more days and then we’re sweet. I don’t have the cash for the guns yet.”
Joseph fumed next to me. I watched as he splayed his hand out on the table in the way he did when his urge was actually to punch someone. It was one of his control mechanisms.
Silence filled the air for a minute while Joseph considered what Eric had said. Finally, he stood. “Three days, Eric. If you’re not ready then, you’re dead.”
As William and I stood to leave with Joseph, I took in Eric’s expression. He looked like he was about to shit his pants.
Greed was a dirty fucking thing. It made you do shit you thought you’d never do. I’d watched countless men fall after a relationship with it. I hoped that Eric gave up on this deal, but something told me that the threat of death wasn’t something a man like him would be willing to risk. Men like him would rather sleep with the devil than give everything up for some peace.
I wasn’t like Eric Bones.
I’d choose death over the devil every time.
* * *
I slept on the cement floor again that night. Not that I got many hours of actual sleep in. Probably two at the most. My body hurt too damn much on the floor. On top of that, I couldn’t shut my mind off. I spent most of the night worrying about Tatum. I wasn’t a praying man, but I prayed like fuck that she’d received the medical attention she needed. I also prayed that Marilyn was okay and that Renee and Dustin were dealing with it all.
When the sun rose, I paced the room while I waited for Joseph to arrive. He hadn’t said anything to me when we’d returned from the meeting with Eric Bones. He’d been furious with Bones, and because I knew Joseph’s evil mind well, I knew some of that fury stemmed from the fact my hand hadn’t been forced to declare my loyalty to him over Storm. I’d been given a reprieve, and all I could hope was that three days was enough time to show Joseph where my true loyalty lay.
He didn’t show his face that morning, but William did. He turned up wearing his cargo pants, black tee, and combat boots, which told me what kind of day it was going to be.
Throwing clean clothes at me, he fired his orders. “You’ve got five minutes for a shower and then I want you waiting outside dressed in these. You and me are gonna spend the day together getting reacquainted.”
I followed him to the shower and did what he’d said. The day was going to be tough enough as it was, I didn’t need to start arguing with him early on.
When I was done, he led me to a Jeep that was parked in the large open area of the warehouse and indicated for me to get in the back. He joined me there while another man slid into the driver seat. We were then driven abo
ut an hour away to what I guessed was Joseph’s base camp for soldier training. William blindfolded me at the beginning of the journey so I had no sense of where they’d taken me. When the blindfold was removed, we were parked in the middle of the bush.
“Out,” William barked.
He then proceeded to put me through my paces. Their land was dense with trees, but they’d cleared a section that held the shit I knew was designed to break a man. Trenches of muddy water, pits of mud, steel cages over deep troughs of water that could drown a man, dangling wires designed to shock, and a bath of ice were some of William’s favourite things. He could spend hours doing this part of his training. Brutalisation was designed to start the process of ripping a man’s sense of self-worth from him. It was just one aspect of what William did. And he did it well.
I spent the next five hours following his orders. I ran his fucking obstacle course and didn’t back down from any of it, even though my body was in excruciating pain the whole time. Hell, it had already been in a world full of hurt before I started. William’s goal was clearly to kick that up a notch, and he succeeded.
At the end of the five hours, he came to me and grabbed me around the throat. “You think you can beat me, soldier?” I knew from the way he spat his words out that he was pissed at me.
I held his gaze triumphantly. What he didn’t realise was that the day was exactly what I’d needed. My conditioned response to him was still there, but my mind was in a whole new place. They didn’t understand that by hurting Tatum they’d splintered my mind and screwed with the wiring they’d put in place years ago. So while I still felt that stirring of fear when I looked at William, I was able to mentally withstand it. The five hours spent with him doing his training, and surviving those hours mentally strong as fuck at the end, only solidified my ability to ignore the fear he tried to draw out.
“I know I fucking can. I might have agreed to work with Joseph again, but it’ll be a cold fucking day in hell before I fall at your feet,” I gritted out. “Your power over me is dead.”
His lips curled up into a snarl. “We’ll see about that.”
He dragged me to the ice bath and forced me into it. I wanted to fight him off and force him into it, but I knew I had to be smart. If I had any chance at saving myself and my family, I needed to wait for the perfect moment to kill both him and Joseph together.
I immediately began hyperventilating, drawing in very fast and deep breaths as the cold water surrounded me. William watched with smug satisfaction as I fought for air. My body was going into shock. I knew the process because he’d subjected me to it many times. I just had to get through these first few minutes, get my breathing under control and then last until he pulled me out of the water.
Easier said than fucking done.
“You think this is going to be a walk in the fucking park, Rhys?”
My teeth chattered as I stared up at him, still struggling for breath. I couldn’t reply, but then, he wasn’t looking for a reply. He was simply trying to strike fear.
Crouching, he said, “It’s been a good nineteen years since I’ve had the pleasure of training you. My program has evolved and this is just the beginning, soldier.”
I sucked air in as deep as I could. And I went to battle with my mind. He would never break me again. Never. As my muscles grew weak the longer he left me in there, and the pain in my body increased, I attempted to focus on Tatum. I imagined her smile, her eyes, her laugh, her fight. God, how I loved her fight. I’d never met a woman with the spirit she had. My thoughts drifted to the future. I wanted one with her. I knew that. When I escaped this hell, I would make it happen. I’d give her everything she’d never had before. Starting off with space in my fucking wardrobe.
“Almost five minutes, Rhys. You ready to fall at my feet again?”
I blinked slowly as I processed his words. Five minutes was a long time to be in icy water. Almost too long. I knew that. Hypothermia could kill me if I didn’t get out soon. And yet I refused to give in to William.
I waited it out. And eventually he was the one to crack. But not before my muscles became so weak I couldn’t walk when he dragged me from the bath. My coordination took a hit, too. After he had pulled me out, he left me on the ground and organised for the Jeep to be brought over. He and the driver managed to get me into the back seat. William yanked my clothes off and wrapped me in a light blanket he had stashed in the back as the driver sped all the way back to the warehouse.
I drifted in and out of consciousness.
So cold.
So fucking cold.
42
Tatum
“XO” by Beyonce
I lay on my hospital bed, drugged up on heavy-duty painkillers the doctor had me taking for all the injuries Joseph had inflicted on me and watched as Monroe walked into the room.
Meeting my eyes with a small smile, she said, “She’s safe.”
I closed my eyes and exhaled, ignoring the pain in my face as I did that. Opening them again, I asked, “Dustin?”
She nodded. “He’s safe, too. And Renee assured me her mother is okay in the hospital. Renee has moved into Nitro’s house to be with Dustin until Nitro comes home.”
I stared at her in silence while tears filled my eyes and fear clogged my throat. “What if he doesn’t come home?” I whispered. My throat was scratchy and sore, which made it difficult to talk.
I’d been in hospital for two days after being treated for multiple injuries including fractured ribs and a collapsed lung. Monroe hadn’t left my side until today when I’d been conscious enough to ask her to check on Nitro’s family. I was relieved to know they were safe.
Monroe took hold of my hand. Gently, because it hurt, too. Every inch of me did. “Your guy is tough, babe. He’s going to get through whatever he has to and then he’s going to come home. King was here yesterday, and the club is looking for him. They’ll find him. You can’t keep much hidden from bikers.”
She was right. But a lot could have happened in two days. The longer he was gone, the more concerned I grew. I just prayed that when they did find him, he was alive. My heart hurt worse than my entire body when I thought about him not making it out of that hellhole.
My phone rang and Monroe released my hand so she could answer it. After working out it was Billy, she held it up to my ear.
“Hey,” I croaked.
“Fuck, Tatum,” he said, pausing for a moment. I was fairly sure I heard devastation in his voice. “Thank fuck you’re awake.” His voice broke then. “When I saw you lying in that hospital bed last night with all those tubes in you and those fucking bruises and all that swelling….” He cleared his throat. “This shit has to stop. I swear to fucking God if anyone touches you again I will personally kill them.”
A torrent of emotions flooded me, his agony my undoing. Tears streamed down my cheeks, which was a bloody nightmare because it fucking hurt to wipe them from my face. So I let them fall and just waited for them to dry. “I’m done with being beaten up, too, Billy.” A little humour always helped. Especially with men who didn’t know what to do with their emotions.
“Yeah,” he said gruffly and then he added quietly, “Any news on Nitro?”
“No,” I whispered, unable to speak any louder. I knew if I did, the tears would flow harder than they already were.
“Okay,” he said. “You rest. I’ve been in touch with King and will help them find the motherfucking cunt who did this to you.”
“Thanks, Billy.” I jerked my head at Monroe to let her know I was done. Thank God Billy didn’t have it in him to talk about shit, because I couldn’t have handled any more. It hurt both my body and my soul to discuss this entire situation.
Monroe placed my phone down and picked up hers. Swiping it, she brought the Internet up as she settled into the seat next to the bed. Giving me a cheeky grin, she said, “Right, because you’re going to be in here for days according to the doctor, and we need things to keep us occupied, we’re going to surf this new singl
es site I found that has a lot of pierced cock on it.” Her eyes lit up. “And when I say a lot, I mean a fuckload.”
If I could have smiled without it hurting, I would have. Monroe knew me so well. She understood that I just didn’t have it in me to acknowledge my feelings. She knew when to push me and when to distract me. And it seemed her preferred way for the next few days was going to be with pierced cock.
“Okay, hit me. Show me what they’ve got,” I whispered.
She grinned. “I knew I could count on you to help a sister out.”
We’d been scrolling for a good fifteen minutes when King entered my room. I met his gaze and was taken aback at what I saw there. So much anguish. Something I never imagined King feeling.
“Tatum,” he greeted me, coming towards the bed.
“Have you found him?” Monroe said as she shot out of the chair.
He shook his head. “No, not yet. But I’ve got half of fucking Sydney on it so it’s just a matter of time.”
Disappointment filled me. I’d hoped he had come with good news.
He moved closer to me. “I just wanted to see how you were doing,” he said, surprising me even more. His gaze travelled over me and he hissed at what he saw. “I should have listened to him,” he murmured.
“What about?” I said.
He let out a long breath as regret settled into every line on his face. “Nitro warned me about getting into bed with Joseph. I was so screwed up in the head over this fucking war we’re in that I thought I knew best.” Scrubbing his face, he added, “It’s just another example of when I didn’t know best. And now we all have to deal with the consequences.”
This was a whole new side to King that I never imagined existed. The regret and anguish he expressed were real, and he seemed to feel it deeply.
Ignoring the pain it caused, I reached my hand out for his and when he gave it to me, I gently squeezed it. “We all fuck up in life, King. It’s what we do after that counts.”
