by Marata Eros
“Hate those fucks. Drugging girls and putting them out on the street like turning out a cat on a stoop.” Viper's hate thrums through his voice.
Lots of assent passes around the table.
“Love the bitches, but I'm for them having a choice of who they want to bang.” Storm leans back in the chair, hands folded behind his head, eloquent as always.
I shake my head.
Noose tips Storm's chair back with a finger, and he falls backward, cracking like an egg on the floor, limbs scattered and tossed behind him.
He wails.
Noose grins as he and Lariat tap knuckles.
“Boys?” Viper says in a low voice of warning. Then he turns that Prez gaze on me.
There's a reason why he's the club president. He's steel, through and through. He's seen war. Close up. And a lot of other mind-numbing shit.
Like us knotters. Noose and Lariat are my brothers in the club. But we were brothers in war before we landed here.
Viper's got that kind of understanding, too.
“Anyway…” I shoot a glare at Noose, and he flips me off, shooting me a tight smile. “I knew she wasn't a whore, so I slowed down.”
“Why?” Noose asks.
Dick.
“She—fuck—she gave me a look, okay?” I toss out my words like throwing stars. Hoping, they strike any soft underbelly sitting here.
Hard eyes stare back, from hard men. There's no sympathy, only a need for answers.
“A fucking look?” Snare asks, incredulous.
I nod. “It was like she was speaking right to me.” I cup my hand behind my ear. How could I ever forget those big green eyes pleading at me from the sidewalk?
“What was she saying?” Lariat's lips pull up.
Jesus, these fuckers.
“Help.” My eyes blaze at Noose and Snare. They’ve got women. They know what I mean. “You know the look, Noose, right?”
He suddenly becomes interested in his hands.
“Right?” I roar into the sudden silence, and his chin jerks up.
“I don't want to scout this girl, if she's just some snatch you want to hump then dump.” Noose shrugs.
“Have I ever asked you to check anything out?”
He shakes his head. “No, but let me tell you something, pal. When we were fighting together, you were fucking ice man. Nothing thawed your ass. You were the most neutral fucking human being I've ever known. So forgive me if you wanting me to intel some librarian girl is a little fucking odd.”
Heat rises; my neck's a torch holding my head upright. I rub my nape, feeling how warm it is, then drop my hand.
“Okay.” Viper holds up his hands. “We've established that this girl—” He waits.
“Shannon,” I offer, and no one breathes a word. Better fucking not.
“Shannon, needs protection, but we also need to be fucking careful. This is Bloods here. And there's more of them than us. Even if our charters in Oregon and Idaho—and hell—Montana help, we're still fucked in the ass without lube, if this comes to an all-out war.”
“I thought we were taking back turf?” Trainer asks in a serious voice.
Still hard for me to think of him as a brother, but goddamn if he didn't do his time as a prospect.
“We are, but all our moves are like a waltz. We know the dance steps, and we're trying to lead reluctant partners.”
“Pretty poetic, Viper,” Snare says.
“Stick around. I can wax poetic if the mood strikes.”
Chuckling all around.
I know what I've done has stressed the resources of the club and put us in a vulnerable position.
“What about that cop that's working undercover in Chaos?” Storm asks.
I frown.
“What about him?” Viper asks. “Can't do anything with that. We're all under wraps about his identity. He's still playing MC.”
Everyone laughs. No one's got anything against the cops. Actually, we do, but we’re saving it in case they get in the way of us dealing arms.
Otherwise, everyone's fucking hunky-dory.
“Just sayinʼ.” Storm shrugs. “Thinking he might have some insight.”
Prez hikes a brow, clear surprise reigning supreme on his face. “Um, that's a good point, Storm.” He clears his throat, and it sounds like a grunt. “So, getting the cops involved in gang territory is never good.” He strokes his chin.
“You throwing down for Blondie?” Prez asks.
I would hit anyone else for calling her that. “No,” I answer in a short word. “I didn't come here for club support.” I lean back in the chair, folding my arms. “I wanted intel. I knew Noose could provide it.”
“You also knew that you were coming between Blood and pussy.”
Fuck. “Yeah.”
“So if you didn't think she mattered, and you knew what was at stake, it was poor judgement, at best?”
Viper gets to the heart of shit.
I crack my knuckles under the table. “Yes,” I hiss.
“If she's your property…” Viper shrugs.
“I know what it is if she's my property. I don't need property.” I direct the veiled insult at Snare and Noose but can't quite work up to disdain.
“Then we can't help you. If you throw down for Blondie…”
My flinty eyes capture his.
Viper chuckles. “You got it bad, you stubborn fuck. It's like a damn broken record. First, Noose loses his prick, then Snare—fuck, I'm getting too old for all the babysitting I have to do with you swinging dicks.” He shakes his head.
“I haven't Lost. My. Dick,” I say through my teeth.
“Yet,” Storm says with a smile.
I stand.
Noose does, too, wagging a finger at me. “I already pushed him over in his chair for ya.”
“I beat him up last year,” Snare volunteers, and I slowly sit down again.
“Stay away from Blondie,” Viper says. “Noose will look into why she's so attractive to Vincent. Because his interest doesn't seem to agree. Plenty of bitches love the gangbangers. He doesn't need this one. She's work.” He chuckles. “But it seems like all the brothers don't take after simple.”
I scowl.
“Yeah,” Trainer says, sucking on a lollipop, making his tongue bright red, “it's like Sesame Street. What doesn't belong.”
“You're fucked up,” Storm says.
“I bet there's some shit for you to clean up,” Trainer says conversationally.
Storm groans, and we laugh.
“He's right,” Viper says.
All heads turn to him.
“Noose will find out why this Shannon is so interesting to the Bloods.”
I know why. They want her home. Her. Noose isn't going to be finding out about that. I want to know about Shannon. The woman. Not the commodity.
That's why Noose is pissed.
If I would admit she’s important to me, he would be looking already. But because I won't, he got pissed.
I can't admit that to him. If I do, then it's real.
Chapter 10
Shannon
The Realtor is a smarmy guy with slicked-back hair and perpetually pursed lips. His mouth is an angry line underneath a beaky nose.
But he came highly qualified. His real estate company is rated number one in the state. I heave a mental sigh.
“Maybe two hundred thousand,” he sniffs, closing the drape over the window that faces the busy street.
Herman Humphries has already trudged with his expensive tie-up loafers across our diminutive backyard. An old cyclone fence from the fifties still guards the perimeter of the loosely rectangular parcel, and the clothesline runs from one side of the yard to the other like a sad piece of punctuation.
A tiny strip of cracked and weathered concrete circles from the back of the house and meets the front walk.
Humphries turns, giving my mom a condescending smile, and my heart drops. Vincent had offered to buy the place for fifty thousand more.
; Plus my body. Might as well sell my soul to the devil.
I swallow, shoring up bravery. “I thought it was worth a bit more.”
Mom is silent.
“Yes, well, during the bubble in 2005 to 2007, we could have got mid-threes for this piece. But now”—he shrugs dismissively—“it's only worth what the comps show.” He slaps a pile of paperwork on our small kitchen table and gives a grim chin flick toward them. “These are the comparable properties sold in the last three months.”
I glance at the papers. My vision blurs as I see figures lower than two hundred thousand. Damn.
I look up into his face. He wears a vague and slightly amused smile. I study my Converse shoes, thinking of what to say.
“I could try to put your property on the market for one ninety-nine,” he says like he's doing us a favor.
I meet his eyes again. “Thank you for coming, Mr. Humphries,” I manage to choke out. “I think my mom and I will need a day to think it over.”
“Suit yourself.” He reaches out to shake Mom's hand, but she doesn't move.
Shaking hands is painful for her, and he's too stupid to notice her issues.
His lips lift in distaste, and he turns to me. His smile brightens. “I'll leave you with the card of another client of mine who might be willing to pay more before listing.”
My heart begins to race. More? Fantastic.
He shakes my hand, slipping a business card into my palm. I try not to peek as the pompous prick makes the short way to the door.
I let him out and close the door, carefully engaging the million locks.
Mom's face is sour. “That man is the president of his own fan club.”
“Uh-huh,” I murmur, opening my hand to check out the card.
Vincent sends his regards, it reads. Bastard.
I close my hand in a fist, squeezing my eyes shut. I just gave this loser free reign of my property.
He’s obviously the one who set this wheel in motion with the purchase of the commercial buildings that flank our house to the bitter end.
God.
I try not to cry, but the effort makes me want to hyperventilate. Heat suffuses my head, and I sway.
“Shannon, what is it?”
Mom's voice. Worried.
I pry my eyelids open, my arm rigid with holding the damning little note from Vincent the Gangbanger.
“He's not self-important.”
“Who?” Mom asks sharply.
“Humphries.” I hang my head, and my long hair falls forward. “He's working for Vincent.”
I walk to where she sits and hand over the card. Mom carefully unfolds it. “We'll contact another real estate company.”
“No,” I say. “They're all going to be paid off with this guy's gang money. I bet this entire area of real estate has been tagged for their perusal first.”
Mom's face tells me my guess is right.
“I'm going to talk to Vincent.”
“Shannon, no—it's not worth your life.” With swollen hands Mom tries to grip the edge of her favorite chair, powerless to make me see reason, powerless to make this situation better.
“He's not going to kill me, Mom,” I say with a lot more bravado than I feel.
Vincent will just rape me and take my soul. I'll live.
Sort of.
*
I know where he hangs out.
Smoothing my damp palms over my jeans, I knock on the door of the commercial building that stands to the south of our house. While I wait, my mind wanders to Wring and what he did for me.
Two hoodlums, as Mom would call them, rake their dark eyes up and down my body.
“Hey baby, I got something you need—right here.” One grabs his crotch in a gruesome try at a come on.
Why does any man think grabbing his penis is going to be an effective seduction?
I turn away and tense when one of them comes up behind me.
“Hernando was talking to you, crack.”
Okay, maybe I was stupid to try to face Vincent head on. I pivot on the top step of the front entrance to the building, and Lead Thug grabs my shoulders, making blowfish kissing noises close to my face.
“Just a taste, chica.”
“Get your fucking hands off her.”
I'm released so fast I stumble, and a hand steadies me.
I twist at my torso and find that hard grip belongs to Vincent.
“Hey, bitch,” he says to me in greeting.
“Ah!” the gangbanger behind me says. “You're calling her a bitch.”
“She's not free game, Hernando. She's my bitch.”
I clench my teeth. I'll let his dumb comment ride until I can find out what I can get.
Or what I can't.
Standing next to him again, I realize how big he is. I gulp my fear like a bitter pill. His nose is taped, and heavy bruising in half-moon swaths run from the bridge of his nose to nearly his temples, crossing below is evil beady brown eyes.
Wring did this to his face.
A flutter of pure anxiety starts inside my breastbone just thinking about Wring and what his reaction to me being here would be.
It would be bad.
But he's not responsible for me. I'm responsible for myself. And Mom.
I take a deep breath. Resolution kicks my ass, and sheer stupidity propels me forward. “We need to talk.”
His hands run down my arms, and I shiver in revulsion, but Vincent smiles. “I knew you'd see things my way, baby.”
I'll never see things his way.
He pulls me by my hand inside the building, and a bunch of gang members look up from their various pursuits.
A man is between a woman's legs and she's groaning, shoving her hips into his face. I quickly look away, only to be visually assaulted by a man's naked hips piston humping another woman from behind.
My stomach rolls, and I try looking straight ahead.
But I'm not blind to my periphery, where another guy snorts drugs through his nose, using a dirty glass table top as a platform.
Someone who is even bigger than Vincent walks toward us with purpose in his stride.
Oh God.
“This the bitch that you've got a boner for?” His lips twist.
“Yeah,” Vincent replies.
Eyes bright with anger, the guy nods.
Then he backhands me.
I spin, landing on my knees, using my good hand to avoid falling flat on my face. Blood drops splatter across the rough cement floor, and I cry out, my cheek instantly aflame.
Not sure what I expected, but getting beat up wasn't really it.
“Don't, jefe. I'll keep the bitch in line.”
Surprise, surprise, Vincent wants to beat me, but nobody else can.
“Nope,” he snarls, “she brought those fucking Road Kill bastards in to protect her.”
I didn't. But that doesn't matter, because this guy believes I did.
He yanks me up by the back of my pants, and I don't even think about how strong a man would have to be to do that to a full-grown woman.
Rolling nausea churns in my stomach. “Please!” I throw up my arm in front of my face, and he tears it away, eyes blazing into mine.
We look each other over.
A smile starts to break over his face, and I'm surprised to notice how handsome he would be if he weren't Vincent's leader. If his hair weren’t so greasy.
If he hadn't belted me.
“I like her, Vincent.” He thrashes me. Hard. My head leaps back and forward. “You that fucker's property?”
What?
I shake my head, saying no without words seems safest.
“No MC fuck is going to come between a Blood and pussy unless he's got a stake in shit.”
More shaking. My teeth click together, and I reactively grab his leather coat to stop the horrible jarring.
He smirks.
“I don't know what you mean about property,” I say quietly, licking blood off my lip and trying to sound calm. Reasonable.
Vincent shakes his head. “No, hoss. She's pure. Innocent.”
His face whips to mine. “You got a cherry, bitch?”
The crowd of gang members around us grows.
Oh God. Oh God. Oh God.
Hymen?
I don't know how to respond. If I say yes—will they not do the unthinkable? If I say no, will they gang rape me? My expression must be all dumb.
He slaps me again.
I go down again, hard.
“Stop hitting me,” I growl from all fours on the ground.
“Then fucking speak, bitch.”
I don't cry. I stand.
“I'm Shannon Berg. I'm trying to make a deal.”
The jefe watches me. I know from my Spanish in high school the name means “boss.”
He waves a palm, telling me to go on.
The crowd of gangbangers is silent. A dozen eyes that mean me harm watch my every movement.
“Vincent said he'd pay me two hundred fifty thousand for our house.” I point to the north, wincing as my tongue runs along my cut lip.
The boss throws his head back, giving a belly laugh. “Yup. That's right, little cherry. Two hundred K for the hood, and fifty K for you.”
My heart thumps. “What?” I whisper.
“For your hymen, Shannon,” he says, pronouncing my name like he's still saying bitch. “Your white little perfection. Lots of men will pay top dollar for an intact snatch.”
I retreat a step as though slapped. “And if I'm not?”
He takes back the step I gained and looms over me. His breath is rank, his gaze is predatory. “Then we all get a taste of you—now.”
The group tightens around us, and one grabs my breast. I yelp, though it didn't hurt.
“No!” Vincent roars. “I wanted her. She's mine!”
The boss chuckles, extracting a gun from the small of his back, and presses the barrel to Vincent's forehead.
The blast is deafening.
Men duck, hitting the floor.
Blood slaps my face like a spray of heated rain. A tiny warm something tumbles down the front of my face. It makes a splat sound when it lands.
Realizing my eyes are closed, I open them.
Bits of skull have pierced my skin. I see them like cream shadows underneath my eyes. I hear a sound like mewling then recognize it as my own voice.
