WIFE FOR A PRICE

by Kathryn Thomas

  I don’t see his hand hit me. I feel it. It’s white hot and pulsing like a hornet sting on a sunburn. I turn my head away from him, not daring to let him see my eyes watering from the pain. I would not let him see me cry. My mother did that, not me. I would take this.

  There’s a long pause, as if he can’t believe that he laid a hand on me -- let alone that he’s done as much damage as he has. He stands up slowly and walks towards the door. My dad opens it just a crack before letting it close behind him. His face has warped back to normal from the monster that was just before me, dishing out punishments. Quietly, almost calmly, he asks, “Did you see him?”

  “Who?” I hate to admit it, but in this moment, I can’t even remember why I’m here in this bathroom. My mind has gone blank. All I want to focus on is surviving my dad’s wrath.

  “Don’t be stupid, Vanessa! You know who I’m fucking talking about. Did you see Gavin Wren or not?”

  The name is another slap as I am back to reality. Gavin. This is all about Gavin. Those colorful tattoos, the strong bruised hands, the bulging cock, the pursed lips…. Gavin. I am here on this floor for him. But my father didn’t know that. To my surprise, this isn’t about the sin we just committed in the back room. He’s oblivious to that. This is about my defying him by even daring to sneak out to one of Gavin’s parties. I can save this! I can!

  I lower my voice to an almost girlish whisper, as I say sadly, “No. I-I-I don’t know where he is.” I look up at him with my watery eyes blinking at him blankly and add, “I just wanted to say sorry about what happened at lunch. I didn’t mean—”

  He cuts me off as he shouts, “Shut the fuck up, Vanessa! You know what you were fucking doing.”

  “I’m sorry, sir. I’m sorry. I thought I’d only be here for a few minutes and then go home. I didn’t think you’d be here.”

  “Well, you were goddamn wrong on that one. And that will teach you to test my authority. If I so much as get a whiff that you were even on the same fucking street as Gavin, I swear to Christ, you won’t be the only body on the floor. Do you hear me?”

  I swallow, a jagged stream of air sticking in my throat as I nod. Grimacing, I answer nervously, “Yes, Daddy.”

  There’s no more discussion between the two of us. There’s just an arm around mine that pulls me harshly up to my feet. He stands behind me and grabs my wrists, crossing and then pushing them together like a handcuff. With my arms bound, he pushes me from behind towards the bathroom door before kicking it open with his boot.

  From the noise of the jukebox blasting old ‘80s rock songs and the men screaming and clinking glasses, I know that what just happened in that bathroom between Jonah Barber and his daughter isn’t even registering for any of the rest of the club, let alone Alice who is sitting on some guy’s lap just out of view. She doesn’t even turn to watch me be marched down the hallway and towards the back door.

  As we push out into the night from the bar, I glance back over my shoulder and past my father’s hulking body towards the back room where I should be, where Gavin is most likely still waiting for me. A part of me wants to twist my arms and break free to run back there, lock the doors, and hope that we could find a way out. But I know the realities of the situation. Gavin and I would never be, not as long as my father and brother lived. What we just experienced together was our one moment in time when we were allowed to let this all go. And that moment would have to stay there, wanting and waiting.

  I turned back around towards the parking lot now filled with motorcycles and cars. The few headlights glittered in my eyes as tears began to swell. I shake my head rapidly, pushing them away before they can fall and give me away to my father. He marches me past a line of men smoking -- all whom put out their smokes and gesture to him like the king he is. No one asks about me. I’m just one of the others.

  The ride home on the back of his bike seems to me to last an eternity. We hit every stop light, which is usually not a concern for my father. But tonight, he seems to know that the longer we wait to get back to the house, the longer he can drag out the unknown. Would there be more beatings waiting for me? Would he find some new and demented way of punishing me further? I didn’t want to know. I just wanted it to be over.

  As we pulled up to the driveway, I hopped off before he could even turn his engine off. However, his arms grabbed me before I could get a step in the door. He spins me around quickly to face him with a hand gripped around my arm. My father’s dirty nails dig into my skin through the layers of clothes. His low voice grumbles, “From now on, you wait for me. For everything. You don’t breathe unless I tell you to. You don’t speak. You don’t think. You don’t even piss. That freedom you thought you had in this house is over.”

  I nod and purposefully lower my gaze down to the slate gray cement driveway, unsure if I am allowed to speak here. Satisfied, he pulls me past my mother’s garden, through the patio, and into the darkened home. He lets go suddenly, causing me to trip on the hardwood floor and cheerful welcome mat.

  The tired, startled voice of my mother calls out in the distance, “Jonah! Is that you?”

  “Olivia! Get the fuck in here! NOW!” The contents of my stomach do somersaults, as I hear the muffled scuffed footsteps of my mother and her little slippers walk through her bedroom and down the hallway. I knew my father well. When something was wrong, she was the one easy target he could take it out on. This time, I was what was wrong, and I knew she would not escape this either.

  The hallway lights flicker on, painting a strange family portrait as everyone remains perfectly still. My mother’s eyes adjust to the light before falling on me in a sort of shock. I was the last person she expected to see down here, let alone laying helplessly on the floor to her entryway. The last she knew, I was in bed sleeping a bad day away. I was that one constant she could count on, and I had broken that facade.

  She whispers cautiously, “Vanessa…? What are you—?”

  “Don’t fucking coddle her, Olivia! Don’t you coddle her, you hear me? This little bitch snuck out while you were supposed to be watching her.” He points at her accusingly, as she backs up a few steps towards the hallway. “I can’t trust either of you cunts, can I?”

  “Hold on a sec there, Jonah,” she says, a mixture of menace and fear in her eyes. “Come on. You know that I had nothing to do with this. I’d never let this shit go down.” She stiffens herself like the good soldier she is. She’s experienced this kind of rage tons of times, but never with her own daughter playing witness and executioner. Still, she looks almost powerful, as she looks down at me with stern eyes and says assuredly, “I’m sure Vanessa had a good reason for going out.”

  My dad’s feet pound on the floor as he walks quickly over to her. With one large push of his hands, he slams her into the blue painted wall with such force that a family photo of us on vacation in Seattle falls and shatters near her, as she sinks to the ground. He looks over her as he yells, “Don’t you dare stand up for her! You raised a fucking slut. Same as you were. I should have known better! Goddamn fucking whores!”

  She only has moments to curl into a ball before his steel-toed boot slams into the side of her tiny torso. Air escapes her closed lips, and she lets out a sound I’ve only heard once from a family dog run over by a car. My mother falls in slow motion to the ground, her arms still wrapped around her legs.

  This was something I always knew happened between them, though I’d never seen it up close. For all of my life, I have been pretending not to hear her body fall and crash against the wall, slam into tables and chairs, slump on the floor. I can’t remember when I first started praying that it wasn’t as bad as what my imagination could have made it seem. However, seeing it in person and up close was like replaying all of those nights with a pillow over my head to dampen the sound of her cries and whimpers all over again. I have never felt more helpless in my entire life.

  But I don’t move. I don’t make a sound. I can’t; I’m absolutely paralyzed in both fear and shame. Tryin
g to help her would mean more punishment for the both of us. All I can do is hope and pray that my father tires himself out, like a boxer.

  As he breathes heavily over both of us lying in repose over the floor, he does the one thing I had been hoping for over an hour he would do: he turns and walks towards the door, finally leaving us there. With a parting, “Get to bed!” he goes through the entryway and back outside.

  We wait in our protective shells for the sound of his bike to roar to start and then take off past the neighborhood of darkened houses, each blind to what has always been going on in the Barber home. With that bastard safely gone, I crawl on my hand and knees towards my mother. To my surprise, she lifts her hand up and out towards me and wraps it around the back of my neck. I lower myself down to her and curl my body around hers with an arm placed high around her waist to avoid the tender spot.

  Despite everything, her body is still warm, still as comforting and as peaceful as I remember it being when I was a child. They say there’s nothing like a mother’s arms, and I know that to be true even when the mother can’t hold her baby any longer. Her voice shakily asks me, “Why Vanessa? Where were you?”

  I don’t bother lying to her. I owe her that much. “I went to go see Gavin. I admit I had to go see him, Mom. I know I shouldn’t have, but I had to. I wish you could understand.”

  Slowly she turns around to face me, our foreheads touching softly as she takes my hand in hers, “I do, Vanessa. Believe it or not, I was once you. Grandpa Aaron was the vice president just like Martin. He ran the Bloody Pagans with an iron fist, too, and he wanted me to have nothing to do with the club. But when I saw your daddy at a cookout for new recruits, I knew I had to have him. And just like you, I ran off with him. Grandpa Aaron tracked us down in a motel room just outside Reno, but by then I was already pregnant with your brother and there was nothing he could do but accept it.”

  I had never heard this story before. I hadn’t even bothered to ask. I knew my mom grew up in the Bloody Pagans--her own daddy was a Vietnam vet and the founding father. But I just thought she got married off to the first MC man my Grandpa approved of. Knowing she picked that man was unbelievable to me.

  “Why him? Did you know he was like this, Mom?” I stare into her deep brown eyes, a mirror reflection of mine as she struggles to answer me back.

  “I didn’t know. Power does strange things to a man, even a good one.” A lifetime of pain washes over her, and I can tell that the word “regret” is on the tip of her tongue. But she could never say it. She is too much of an indoctrinated lady to say it out loud, let alone to her daughter. Still, she adds, “But you, Vanessa, you’re smarter than me. You’re smarter than all of us. And if this guy Gavin is what you think he is, then I trust you, and I’ll take whatever comes from it.”

  “Mom, I can’t ju—”

  “Vanessa Barber, I won’t let you give up on this so easily. If this is what you want, then you go get it. I’m your mama, and it’s my job to protect you no matter what. And I promise you that I will have your back.” Her voice cracks as she stammers, “Someone in this house deserves that happier ending. Just promise me something.”

  “What?” I ask timidly.

  “Promise me that this is the right decision for you, and that you’re not doing it just because of your father. Promise me that you’re picking Gavin because you care for him and he cares for you. I can’t bear to see you get hurt over a guy who you just leapt at because we sheltered you for too long.”

  I pull her in closer to me, my arms wrapping around the shell of my mother, as I whisper the only words I can think to say, “Thank you.”

  CHAPTER 12 Something’s not right. I know it. I can feel it. The hair on the back of my neck is practically standing up as I scan the darkened room for the cause. There’s gotta be a reason why Vanessa left me here alone, waiting for her.

  What just happened between us wasn’t a fluke. It couldn’t have been. She wanted it more than I did—and I really, truly wanted it. Seeing her face twist in pleasure was one of the greatest, sexiest moments of my life. And it’s a memory I don’t plan on erasing for a long while. But then she just disappeared before the action started to heat up? From what little I know about her, that doesn’t seem right.

  Then, another, probably more sensible, voice in my head points out that she is a virgin and virgins are basically cold fish when it comes to this stuff. At her age and in this club, she’s an old maid. Most girls lost their v-card way back in high school—or at least fooled around. But she’s fresh meat, totally untouched. And while I was certainly impressed, I could tell by how she wanted me to take over that there was part of her that was unsure.

  And that’s the problem when you take on a virgin: they can turn on you. They fear guys like me with our muscles, position, and rough exterior. It’s intimidating to most, even the experienced ones who spread their legs for anyone. I wouldn’t blame her for running.

  But this was Vanessa. This was the girl who bandaged the hand of a guy who just broke a glass table with her fist. This was the girl who invited a man she just met to have lunch with her father. She was more fearless than I could ever be for things like this. And I wouldn’t peg her as the type to run away.

  I walk over to my jeans, which are still lying on the floor where we discarded them, and find my cell in the back pocket. There are few text from the boys in the bar asking me where I am and why I’m not enjoying a drink. There’s even a photo from Thad posing with some hot piece of ass I haven’t seen before. But there’s nothing from Vanessa.

  There’s nothing else for me to do but call it. Wherever she went, whatever she had to do, I would have to find out later. Right now, I just had to get back to the bar before any of the Barber boys grew suspicious. Despite everything, I could still turn this night around by getting into my guys’ heads about what was going on with upper management.

  The bar is more crowded than when I last left it. It seems like half the club and their women are crowding around the bar, ordering off my tab. As I waltz back in, Silva the bartender holds up my credit card with a look on his face that says he isn’t quite sure what he should do. I holler out as loudly as possible, “One more round, boys! Then this guy is tapped out!”

  There’s a rush of burly men towards the bar, each with their hands and glasses eagerly raised. Silva fills up their empty cups one by one until all the guys in the crowd return to their stools and chairs. Through their part, I spot Martin Barber. He’s stewing in the corner, a glass of golden whiskey sloshing in his hands. He’s flanked by a few of his men from earlier in the day, including Brock, my new partner.

  I suck in deeply, puffing out my chest, as I grab a glass of some cheap beer and head over to where a group of my friendlies are sitting and chatting. Thad pushes the little blonde bimbo off his lap to greet me, his arm pulling me in for a large bear hug. He’s already good and drunk as he shouts to the rest of the group, “To the best man I know. May he always reign as the one, true leader!”

  I pull his arm down and sit him back on his chair. His body sways against mine, and I can tell this just ain’t the alcohol talking. What he just said could get him in deep shit with the Barber family, let alone killed by Martin if he took offense. I glance over to him, but Martin doesn’t seem to even notice. He’s too busy gesturing over to Alice Dugger, who is practically screwing her boy, Moses, on one of the booths.

  I turn my attention back to Thad, as I reprimand him. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” I demand. “You can’t say that shit anymore.”

  “Whatever, Gavin!” he says, practically incoherent. “Everyone in this bar knows who our real brother is, and it ain’t no pussy like Martin—”

  My hand shoots up before he can say it, covering his mouth and pushing him in for another hug to drown out his shouts. The rest of our group watches with wide, shocked mouths. No one is sure what to say, but a few nod their heads in agreement. It seems that Thad has been doing all the talking while I’m away, and it’
s actually working.

  A big man we call Crush leans over across the table and whispers lowly, “Don’t worry about it, Gavin. We got your back. The Barber kid pulls something like he did today, they all have hell to pay.”

  Another kid, maybe only eighteen years old, chimes in, “He’s right. Not a man in this bar who ain’t willing to put it on the line for you, Gavin. You say the words, and we’re there.”

  I’m honestly touched. I mean, I had a hunch the guys felt this way, but hearing it said out loud was a whole different story. Loyalty and brotherhood were the reasons why I wanted to be a Bloody Pagan despite all the shit with my mom and being a bastard child. Now I’m finally being accepted, and not only that, revered. Maybe Martin and Jonah Barber did have reason to worry about me. My army was clearly already assembling right before their eyes.

  I sit with that little bit of confidence the rest of the night, as I listen to the men talk about their weeks, their runs, their women. They want to know about the incident with the Midnight Kings, and I gladly (and very loudly) recall how we managed to just barely escape near-death with a whole lot a cash and an even bigger stash. The entire bar with the exception of Martin and now Jonah seem to be totally wrapped up in my every word.