by Lake, Rae B.
“Revenge,” I repeat.
“Yeah, I got that, but why do the girls have to be here for that?”
I shake my head; he doesn’t understand. Sure, Wren has fucked us and has destroyed our lives but what he had his men do to our women was so much more. This isn’t about our revenge, but our wives. If I know one thing about my leader, it’s that he’s going to give them a chance to get that.
We set him up in the back room where Ink now reigns as the pain manager. It’s a little different from how Wire had it set up, but it’s just as deadly.
We walk out, and Wire calls a meeting right there in the main room. I make my way over to Siren, completely stiff with tension. I can’t imagine how upsetting it must be for them to see the man who ordered their abuse.
“You women are our lifelines. Every single one of you is the soul of this club, our soul. It’s our job to protect you, and we didn’t.”
“Wire,” Cherry starts to console him, but he puts up his hand to stop her. What he’s saying is true; this should have never been allowed to trickle down to them.
“No matter what you say, you know it’s the truth. Your protection is our duty. Since we couldn’t do that, we don’t deserve to enact our revenge on him. You were the victims, so you will be the ones to get your revenge.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Maven asks as she holds onto Lorelai. She’s taken it upon herself to take care of the little girl now her parents are gone, Cherry had her for a while, but she mentally couldn’t handle both LJ and the little girl. Angel is with Jazmine. Anywhere Inkpop is, that’s where Angel wants to be.
“He’s in there. Alive and strung up. You ladies can do whatever you wish to him. Whatever you need to do.”
“Like a get your power back sort of thing?” Clean asks from where he’s standing behind his woman.
“I’m down. Show me where he is.” Jazmine moves out of Ink’s arms and makes her way over to Wire. All of the women follow suit, everyone but Siren.
“You don’t have to do this. It’s okra if you don’t want to.” I whisper in her ear.
“I want to. I just want to make sure they all get a chance. I don’t want to kill him too fast.” Siren turn in my arms, an angry beast now replacing the woman I’m holding. She snarls, “He deserves to suffer, and I deserve to enjoy it.”
She pulls out of my arms and makes her way down the stairs, the last one to enter the room. I can only hope she doesn’t backslide after doing this, that this will be enough to appease her.
Siren’s POV
I follow Wire and the rest of the girls into the pain room. The man is tied up to a sturdy beam. There’s a gag in his mouth, and his legs are tied to a loop in the ground. He isn’t moving, but I see Wire take residency in the corner of the room. I shoot him a glance.
“Just in case, this is your show.” He’s there just purely as security and maybe, so the rest of the women feel a bit more at ease. They know they have someone else to watch their backs.
The guys have lined the long table with all matter of torture equipment. Knives, torches, blunt objects, pliers, even fucking acid.
“You piece of shit! Fucking bastard.”
Surprisingly, Cherry is the first one to attack him. I guess it makes sense. Though she was probably the least hurt physically, the act of someone forcing themselves on her caused her to rethink her way of life. She loves to fuck, or at least she did. They took her happy place and destroyed it.
She went for him with no tools, just her hands. Punching and pushing at him until she was well out of breath, and she fell to the ground in a heap of tears. Wire quickly rushes over to her and pulls her up and out of the way.
“You want more?” He questions her. She sobs hard and shakes her head. It seems quite cathartic for her. He helps her to the door and opens it. “Ryder!” He calls, and Cherry is carted away by her man. Wire comes back in and goes back to his spot in the corner, letting us have our way with Wren.
I can’t wait for my turn.
I see Jazmine grab the knife, and she slices Wren’s clothing off. The entire time he is yelling and screaming at the top of his lungs, but I can’t understand a word he’s saying. The gag he has in his mouth is quite efficient. Part of me thinks it a shame. Someone as fucked up as him should be heard begging like a scared bitch.
When he’s completely naked, I watch Jazmine try to grab the sledgehammer, but it’s too heavy for her one good arm. She switches to the small blow torch.
“You took everything from me. You deserve to burn in hell for what you had your men do to us. I won’t let you keep me in fear, and I won’t let you change who I am.” Jazmine declares, and instead of Wren crying, I can hear him laughing through the gag. I take a step in his direction, doing my best to keep my need to rip him to pieces at bay.
Jazmine screeches in frustration as she lights the torch and presses it to his body. The smell of burning meat fills my nostrils. Maven turns around and vomits at the sight of the man’s skin melting away from his body. After a few minutes of burning pieces of him to charcoal, Jazmine drops the torch. She cries but walks out of the room on her own.
Maven steps up before Jazmine is even finished. Of course, she goes for a blade. “You killed an innocent baby.”
Wren is in and out of consciousness; the slow torture is more than he can handle. I just hope he makes it through whatever Maven has planned.
I hop excitedly from foot to foot. It’s almost my turn.
Wire glances at me before he focuses back on Maven.
“I thought about all the ways I would kill you, I thought about all the ways I’d hear you scream, but nothing beats seeing you hanging here at our mercy. The same women you thought you could use to deliver your misplaced message. You thought you could fucking break us!” Maven yells and brings the long knife straight down into his gut. He grunts, and even before she takes a full step away from him, I can smell she’s pierced his bowel. The stench coming from the wound and the knife in her hand
“Ugh, this is what you’re made of? Shit?” Maven reaches up and takes the gag off his mouth.
Finally.
She swipes the blood and shit caked blade against his face. He tries to move away, but he can’t. I can see he is dwindling.
“You didn’t break us! You only pissed us all off. Everything that you are, everything you thought you were creating here in this town will fucking crumble.” She plunges the knife into him again. This time on the opposite side, right under his rib cage.
She quickly drops the knife and grabs the torch that Jazmine dropped. She turns it on and tries to cauterize the wounds she just created.
Wren wakes up suddenly and screams in pain. He’ll be gone soon enough, but not yet. He needs to feel what we felt, to know the pain and humiliation.
She drops the knife and grabs at her side. She’s still healing, and this is just too much for her to take.
Wire grabs her and walks her to the door.
“No!” Maven says and pulls away. “I want to see that piece of shit die. Siren, you do it.” She turns and leans against Wire, her eyes never leaving Wren as he whimpers and hangs there bleeding like a fucking stuck pig.
I work quickly, knowing it only takes a small amount of blood loss to cause someone to lose consciousness. I want him awake for this.
I turn to Wire, “Can we flip him?” I need him upside down.
He nods, and after moving a few cords and releasing a few latches, the man falls to the ground. He scrambles, his instincts telling him he needs to escape. Wire kicks him hard once in the face before he attaches the rope to his ankles and quickly raises him back up. This time with his head at my feet and his legs straight in the air.
“I’ve been abused and tortured for most of my life, so I know you’re close to death. How does it feel to know all you’ve done is for nothing? Your life means nothing. Your gang means nothing. Your business is nothing.” I speak clearly so he can hear me. He will go to his grave, knowing everything he did ha
s been for shit.
“You’re a dumb gash. All of you taking you’re revenge out on me. I’ll take it. It’s a risk I accepted.” Even as he dies, he still sounds so proper. “Are you sure it’s me who should be taking the heat for this, though? This Rooster, he’s blown up not only your family but his own. He’s been doing it for a while. No one figured that out? No one saw the writing on the fucking wall. Now you’re surprised the shit you’ve all ignored is at your doorstep. Kill me, but I promise you that you’re misplaced loyalty will be your downfall, even if it's not me. In fact, it’s already happened. Seems like my job is complete, and I can die in peace.” He closes his eyes. Waiting for me to continue.
As much as I didn’t want to admit it, he is right. We are too broken. No matter who we take our revenge on, they’ve already won. We let a wolf into our home, and he ripped it to shreds.
The Wings of Diablo crew might only have just become my family, but even I know they can’t just bounce back from something like this.
Fortunately, that wasn’t for me to decide right now. I was going to kill this fuck for hurting me.
I grab a pipe the guys left on the table. They’d probably intended it to be used as a blunt object to hit him with. I place my hand against one of the wounds Maven tried to seal with the fire and push hard until the crusty skin gives way, and he begins to bleed again. I quickly use the slick liquid to coat the pipe before I made my way behind him. If the amount of squirming and yelling Wren is doing is any indication, he knows what I am about to do. I spread his ass open and shoved the pipe as far into this piece of shit as I can. He screams in utter agony. The sound of vomit hitting the floor enough for me to move faster. I want him to feel everything.
I quickly rushed over to the table, throw the protective gloves on, and grab the acid.
This will kill him for sure, and as Harrington used to say, he would die spectacularly.
“Oh, fucking hell.” Maven puts a hand over her mouth, but she doesn’t look away.
I quickly open the bottle while I stand behind him. He mumbles and barely bucks until I turn the open bottle over into the opening of the pipe, letting every single drop of the acid burn through his fragile insides.
I run to be in front of him as he screams and shakes from the pain. I sit down and watch as he takes his final breaths, and the acid slowly starts to eat away at his midsection. A small patch of skin bubbling and melting away as the acid and blood began to pour out of his body. It paints his skin pretty colors. I’d remember this sight for the rest of my life.
His blood drips to the floor, the acid still present, and begins eating away at the ground.
I stand up, take the gloves off, and simply put them back on the table. I walk over to Wire and Maven, who stare wide-eyed at me. If they didn’t think I was completely crazy before, they sure do now.
“Thanks, I needed that.” I tap Wire’s chest once before I open the door and walk over to Mack.
Carefree and light.
Mack’s POV
After the women enact their revenge, Wire needs to find a way to get rid of the body. Usually, that would be left up to Vexx and her girls. But he can’t be sure if he can trust them, so we have also broken ties with them. The Wings of Diablo MC is once again alone.
Ink and Clean take care of the body, burning him and getting rid of the remaining pieces as best they can.
Wire sits in one of the chairs in the main area. He doesn’t say a word to anyone, just continues to stare at the door. I don’t know what he’s waiting for, but I can see he’s waiting for something. A sign? An enemy? Keeley?
Siren stays with me briefly before she goes upstairs to rest. She seems happy Wren is dead. I guess I could be thankful for that.
Clean grabs a beer and turns to go to his room to be with Maven.
“Church! Every patched member.” Wire calls, and without even looking at anyone in the room, he walks to church.
“What is this?” Devin asks as he comes from around the bar and follows behind Wire.
I let my head fall, Wire hasn’t said anything to anyone, but I know what’s about to happen. I’ve lost my family.
I walk into the room where we hold church and stand in my spot while the higher-ups sit at the table.
“Wire, what’s up? You have more information?” Clean speaks up. His voice is gravely and tired. He’s tired.
“I call church for a vote.”
Ryder sits forward now. It’s been a long while where we needed to vote on something, “I didn’t know there was any new business to discuss.”
“There is, brother. I hate that there is, but there is.” Wire leans forward and puts his head down. I can’t see his eyes, but I watch the one tear fall and hit the table.
“It’s on me. All of this shit that went down is on me.” Wire starts, and immediately everyone tries to chime in to put his mind at ease, but he shuts them up just by raising his hand. “We all made choices, we all had opinions, but it was my word that put our family in jeopardy. It was my ok that let Ripper in. I didn’t see the type of man he was. It was me who vouched for Rooster, forced an alliance with them, only seeing the money and power that came along with having one-percenters at my side. It was my call to ignore all the warnings, all of it on me.” He put his hand on the table, and for the first time in my life, I can see the shake of his nerves.
“I’m no longer fit to lead.” He admits, and Clean jumps up from his seat.
“Don’t you fucking do it! Don’t do this shit, Wire! We’ve had a shit run, but it’s not over! It’s not fucking over!” He beats his hand down on the table.
Wire looks up at the man, and I can see the determination and respect in Wire’s eyes. There’s nothing that Clean can say. Wire’s mind is made up.
“For me, it is, brother.” Wire lifts his hand off the table, and left behind is the president patch. He’s giving up his seat.
“I vote, no,” Devin says from where he is standing.
Wire chuckles. It's obvious this is Devin’s first time in an MC. Once someone gives up their patch, there isn’t anything any of us can do about it. “Sorry, that’s not how it works. The vote I’m calling is whether you will let me keep my colors. I can’t be here. I have to leave, and I don’t know if I’ll ever be back. I don’t know if the club will continue, but I can’t be here for it. I need to find my wife and child. I need to find my way again. I don’t deserve to wear this kutte, but if you allow me, I will wear it with pride.”
He looks around the room, but no one says a word.
“Make that, two,” Ryder says from his seat.
What the fuck!
Piece by piece, we crumble.
“What?” Ink asks and looks at Ryder.
“I love you all. You’re my brothers. I’ll do anything for all of you, but I love Cherry more. I didn’t think it would ever happen, but she’s not the same. She can’t be here anymore. I won’t sacrifice her for my patch, so I have to give it up. Besides, my old ass can’t keep up with you young bastards anymore.” Ryder jokes before he continues, “I’ll be a Wing until the day I die, but I just can’t do it here.”
Ryder reaches up and grabs the corner of his treasurer patch and rips it off before laying it down on the table. He pushes up from his seat, a calm but sorrowful look on his face.
“You’re letting them win,” I speak up now. “They beat us down, but we can get beck up. We can dig through the shit and get back to who we were.” I speak slowly.
“I have every faith that you can, and you will. I just won’t be the one to lead you down that road.” Wire said, “Barry, this your club now.” Wire stands from his chair. Clean and Ink are the only ones left at the table.
“I hate that you’re doing this. I hate this. Do you want me to follow you? I don’t fucking know what you want me to do?” Clean leans forward, not moving from his VP chair.
“You do what you think is best for your family.” Wire says from the side.
Clean erupts again, “What the fuc
k! You are my family! This club is my fucking family. This table, this church, this fucking patch is my family!”
“Rebuild. Bring us through the hell we’re in. We can’t just gin up.” I say.
“I hear that.” Ink says.
“I can’t make any decisions right now.” Clean stands up and looks at Wire. “You both want to keep your kuttes? Fine. You’ll always be Wings no matter what anyone says, as far as everything else? I just can’t fucking do this shit right now.” Clean tries to walk out, and I grab him.
“You cutting us all loose? Is WOD done?” We can’t leave this room without a president. No president, no club.
Clean glares at Wire. I never thought I’d see the day he would stare at his best friend like he was the scum of the earth, but here we are.
“I’ll take the patch for the time being, and all club activities are closed down. The clubhouse is closed down. Everyone is free to go wherever they want. If you want to drop your colors, do it. When I’m ready, if I’m ready, I’ll reconvene. Depending on if we have enough to keep us afloat will determine if the Wings will ride again.”
“Clean!” Ryder steps forward. Already the need to fight rising to the surface.
“You got it!” I say, my voice is louder than Ryders. He gave up his seat, and he left; he gets no say.
It’s a good decision. We need to heal and to take stock of our situation. We need to figure out if the patch is still enough for us to sacrifice our lives.
Clean looks around, and no one else says a word. “So be it.”
The room clears out.
The president and treasurer patch still sitting on the table. An image I’ll never get out of my head.
The wind whips against my face as Siren holds on to me tightly. Her hair flying wildly behind us as my bike hugs the road.
It’s been weeks, and we’ve explored from coast to coast. I thought I’d feel more at ease and forget about the craziness that exploded through our lives in the past few months, but nothing Siren and I do distract me enough from wanting to go home.
