MALICE (A HOUNDS OF HELL MOTORCYCLE CLUB ROMANCE)

by Nikki Wild

  He blew an incredulous breath through his nose. “When have I ever struck you?”

  “You didn’t have to!” I retreated from him one more step. The back of my ankle hit the first stair. I hoped my words would distract him, would keep him from lunging until I was out of reach. “Your words did enough damage. They always have! You didn’t need to bruise my body. All you had to do was bruise my spirit, tear down my self-esteem, render me incapable of even raising my voice to you. I could never object to the things you did because you’d made it crystal-freaking-clear what the consequences would be!”

  “Lucy,” Delfino said very calmly. Very quietly. Even now, with so much at stake for him, he couldn’t be bothered to lose his temper. To yell or curse like any other man would. “We are running out of time. If you are not prepared to make the decision to get your things together and get in the car, then I will have to make it for you.”

  I felt my lip curl. “Some choice you’re giving me.”

  His eyes grew even more steely in a flicker-flash of lightning from outside. “Consider your alternative.”

  Oh, I was. The way I saw it, if I didn’t get the hell away from this man and this house, I was as good as dead—either in body or in spirit. Maybe both. That meant I had to choose to live, or die trying. I had to swallow my deep-seated fears Delfino had spent much of my adult life planting and let all the anger I’d been pushing down, all that rage I’d been denying, finally bubble to the surface in earnest.

  “Fuck you,” I said. And then I spun on my heel, running up the stairs.

  My feet hammered against each step, the sounds echoing under the protestations from an angry sky. I could hear Delfino coming up behind me, taking the stairs two at a time whereas my stride could only manage one. As I reached the landing, he grabbed me by my elbow and wrenched my arm back. Pain bloomed in my shoulder and phosphor dots exploded before my eyes.

  “Stop!” I shrieked, for maybe the first time ever. The word felt so powerful, so meaningful, that at the end of it my voice trailed into a sob. For just a moment Delfino hesitated, I think maybe out of shock, and I ripped away from him. It was a bad move—something tore in my shoulder and the phosphor dots burned brighter.

  But it didn’t stop Delfino for long. He lunged a second time, draining me of my power. Denying my agency to say “no.” Stepping on my will, my autonomy as a human being, just as easily as one might crush an ant beneath their boot.

  It’s difficult to articulate—to put into words—what it’s like to tell someone to stop and have them run right over you. To tell them they’re hurting you and have them keep doing it anyway. It seems like it wouldn’t have such an impact. On the surface, all it means is that you’re being ignored.

  But the reality of it runs so much deeper than that. Words are just too small to describe the sensation of violation, of insignificance, that being forced into a situation like this breeds. The damage it inflicts. The trauma that endures long after the violence itself is over.

  I knew that “stop” and “no” no longer afforded me any power, as far as Delfino was concerned. I also knew how true it was that actions spoke louder than words. And so, as he surged toward me, still nursing his bleeding hand, I moved forward instead of back—as he’d anticipated—and shoved him in the chest with all my might.

  He teetered on the edge of the landing. His good hand grasped the rail. He caught himself, but his palm was so slippery with blood he began to slide. This was my shot. I couldn’t throw it away. Even if it was anathema to everything I’d always believed about myself, my character, and what I was capable of.

  I looked into the eyes of the man who’d done nothing but torture and abuse me since the day we’d met. His pupils dilated and a sort of realization dawned in his gaze. One predator recognizing another. Recognizing that they’d become the prey.

  I pushed him again just as he was pulling up. I only had to make contact with him for a moment, but in that span of a second—maybe less—I felt his heart shudder beneath my fingers. I felt his terror. And I had but one thought.

  Good.

  He careened backward, tumbling down the wooden steps, striking first his shoulders, then his spine on their edges. Whatever sound he made was lost to the thunderclap that rose to drown him, as if the heavens themselves were complicit in my vengeance. As if some higher power approved.

  When he reached the bottom, he was little more than a crumpled heap of flesh and bones. Blood streaked the banister all the way down, smeared too across the stairs themselves where Delfino had tried to find purchase to stop his descent. I thought I saw a fingernail glinting in the half-light. My stomach dropped and threatened to revolt.

  But beyond that, I felt nothing. No fear. No rage. Just a vast emptiness, a gaping chasm where some feeling—any feeling—should be. Instead, there was just a void. I wondered, through the din of adrenaline pulsing in my ears, just how much of that blackness would swallow me whole when this was all over.

  And was it over? I stared down at Delfino’s body. He wasn’t moving. My mouth ran dry and a little tremble seized me. From this far away, I couldn’t even tell if his chest moved.

  Had I killed him? I couldn’t be sure, and I sure as hell wasn’t getting close enough to find out. That question, though—it didn’t bother me nearly as much as the other one that floated through my mind directly after. The one where I had to wonder, regardless of whether or not I actually had taken Delfino’s life… had I meant to?

  I turned away. Any part of me that wanted, or needed, closure was going to have to wait. I couldn’t get caught in the quagmire of a moral crisis now. Not when there was still so much at stake. The fact remained that even if Delfino never got up from the bottom of those stairs, someone else would be coming to check on him very soon. Don Carliogne’s men would want to know why he hadn’t shown up in New Hampshire. And once they found out, they’d be coming after me, wanting to tie up that loose end. I was going to have to protect myself.

  I went to Delfino’s room. On his bed, there was a pile of folded clothes, some cash, and his passport. And next to all of that, there was a gun.

  I didn’t know a whole lot about firearms. Just the important parts about where the safety was, how you were supposed point the end of it at the other guy and pull the trigger, and what would likely happen to them after you’d done it. I knew, too, that I should always assume one was loaded. My father had taught me that what seemed like a lifetime ago. And Delfino had reinforced it, albeit in a different way.

  Don’t you ever touch one of these, he’d said to me whenever he caught me looking. Usually when he was cleaning one. They’re dangerous. You could hurt yourself. But he never said it with any sort of conviction. He was a man who’d used guns frequently in his line of work, the kind of man who knew exactly what they could and could not do, and the kind of man who knew enough to know that a gun was very unlikely to go shooting anyone or anything of its own accord.

  What he really meant when he issued those warnings was that I could hurt him, if I so chose. A weapon like that would give me power. Control. And he couldn’t have that. As always, Delfino relied on fear to keep me in check, and to keep himself in a position of authority.

  I picked up the gun. With some fiddling, I managed to eject the clip. Yes. It was loaded. I shoved it back in and made sure the safety was on, then tucked the gun in the waistband of my pants. I threw all of Delfino’s cash into the duffel bag on his bed, but left the clothes and the passport. Assuming he was alive, what did I care if he ran, just so long as he stayed away from me? And if he wasn’t…

  Well, if he wasn’t, then it didn’t matter anyway.

  I hauled the bag into my room. The storm was picking up outside. I could hear the tree near my window bending, its branches scratching at the pane. The wind keened and a few shingles flapped in reply. I set down the bag on my bed and went to my dresser, pulling out clothes.

  I’d almost finished when another bolt of lightning split the sky so brightly it illuminated
the room. Thunder roared at almost the exact same time, and at a volume that bordered on deafening. I jumped, the zipper on the bag caught funny, and the power flickered, then went out. Strange, iridescent after-images danced through my vision. I rubbed at them despite the searing pain in my shoulder, and I tried not to think too hard about what, exactly, Delfino had done to me. How bad the damage was.

  I comforted myself with the thought that he’d never be able to do anything like that to me ever again. That soon, very soon, I’d be free of his influence forever.

  Sometimes, the most comforting thoughts are the ones that turn out to be lies.

  I didn’t hear him until he was at the threshold. Until he was already in the room. Until it was too late for me to do much more than fumble for the gun in the back of my pants. My hands were shaking again. Delfino wasn’t. He stood completely still. Unwavering, as if I’d never stabbed him. As if I’d never thrown him down that flight of stairs.

  “I’ll shoot you,” I said breathlessly. I still felt numb all over, but I was aware of my heart banging an S.O.S. against the back of my sternum. “I swear, you bastard, I’ll shoot you where you stand.” It was a line I’d heard in one of those old Clint Eastwood films he liked. It didn’t sound quite as intimidating coming from me as it did from somebody like Tyne Daly, but it was the only threat I could think of.

  Delfino must have got the reference, because he snorted a laugh. “I doubt that.”

  I took the safety off. Pulled the hammer back. “Are you sure?” I asked him. “Think hard before you answer that. You’re always one step ahead. Able to see the myriad outcomes before they’ve come to pass. You calculate probabilities in your head better than most people can add single-digit sums, with or without the use of their fingers. You practically see the future, practically read minds. So look into my eyes, Delfino—look at my finger on the trigger and tell me: are you really, really sure?”

  And for a moment—just a moment—he hesitated. For the span of a breath, maybe two, the surety in his gaze gave way to something more tenuous. His lips parted. The muscles in his face grew taut.

  Then the window behind me shattered into a flurry of glass shards, raining down like the flakes inside a snow globe.

  I turned, still holding the gun up, but a heavy hand wrapped around the stock and pulled me forward, off-balance. I shrieked and squeezed to hold onto the weapon and a shot went wild, piercing the upper pane of the broken window and careening into the night like a shooting star. The sound was deafening. That’s one thing I wasn’t prepared for… the thunderclap that followed pulling the trigger. The sheer magnitude of realizing that I’d fired a gun, even if I hadn’t hit anybody.

  The momentary shock made me loosen my grip, and that, in turn, made it easy to wrestle the gun away from me. I swatted blindly and heard the gun hit the floor and skitter just as two sets of fingers dug hard into my upper arms, where I knew they’d leave bruises for me to remember them by. I tried to scream again, but a hand clamped down hard over my mouth, squeezing my cheeks into the sides of my teeth. Spinning me back around before I even had the chance to register the details of the stranger’s face.

  All I could smell was oil and leather. Scents that reminded me of Leo. But I knew this wasn’t him. He’d never hurt me. He’d never put his hands on me like this.

  And Leo was dead. There was that to consider, too.

  The gun had slid across the floor, right at Delfino’s feet. Slowly, without taking his eyes off me, he bent to pick it up. No—his eyes weren’t on me. They were on the man behind me. And his expression could only be described as cold, monstrous rage.

  “You’re Delfino, right?” rasped the man crushing me to his body. He chuckled when Delfino didn’t answer and yanked me up onto my tip toes, creating a human shield between himself and Delfino’s raised gun. “I’m thinkin’ you are. Which means you’re probably lookin’ to get out of Dodge right about now. You, and the girl.”

  I felt his hot breath on my ear and turned my head to the side, but he wrenched it back into place so hard the muscles in my neck seared in protest.

  “I can make that happen,” the man continued, rubbing his gloved thumb over my cheek. Bile rose in my throat. “And for a very reasonable price. We’ll all just… disappear into thin air. Nobody’ll come after us ever again. Hell, nobody’ll know we’re alive. All you gotta do is put down the gun, and we’ll have ourselves a nice little talk.”

  Delfino did not, in fact, put down the gun. He kept it leveled right where it was. But there was an uncertainty in his eyes, a glimmer of intrigue, that made my stomach grow cold.

  He was considering this man’s proposal. And if he took him up on it, I was consigned to yet another prison sentence. Some new town in the middle of nowhere, no doubt. Some new house that would become my jail cell. A life sentence with Delfino as my warden. Only this time… this time, Leo wouldn’t be riding in on his chrome stallion to save me.

  I closed my eyes, letting the horror sink in. I never should have pointed that gun at Delfino. That was a mistake.

  I should have used it on myself.

  Twenty-Three

  Leo

  Riding through the suburbs at night felt strange. The night and the sideways torrents of rain shrouded the houses, the trees, even the white lines of the road in inky blackness, with only the occasional, errant streetlamp to light my path. I’d never felt more like an intruder in this town than I did in those moments, like I was sneaking through the halls of a house, only inches away from its sleeping occupants, all while riding on the back of a roaring motorcycle.

  I did my best to push my concerns to the back of my mind as I rode closer and closer to Delfino’s house, hoping that Lucy was still there, and more importantly, that she hadn’t been killed. Brutalized.

  Or worse.

  I pictured Delfino standing over Lucy as she lay on the floor, blood pooling beneath her slim frame as she stared blankly at the ceiling, focused on some point between worlds. There was a gun in his hand, or a knife—the instrument of her death changed from moment to moment, flickering, transient—but what stayed the same was the pale complexion of her corpse, no longer fair-skinned, but ashen, almost translucent, in death.

  No. I couldn’t think about that. I had to believe that she would be okay, and that when this was all over, that the two of us would ride out of Pleasant Lakes to live happily ever after. I had to maintain that hope, that blind, naïve faith… or I was going to fall apart in the middle of the street, a heap of scrap metal and bones.

  About a block away from Delfino’s house, I cut the engine, swinging my leg off the bike so I could push it the rest of the way. It was slower, but I didn’t want to let that bastard know I was coming—the thunder was loud, sure, but Crush’s bike was louder. I knew the second he heard me pulling into the drive, he’d do Lucy in right then and there, if he hadn’t already. I wanted to play this safe rather than end up sorry. I would have laughed at how out of character it was for me to actually plan shit out instead of flying off the handle, if the situation had been any different. If the stakes hadn’t been so goddamn high.

  After a few laborious minutes of walking the bike out to Delfino’s street, I pushed it up behind a row of hedges that blocked it from view of the windows.

  A thick, oppressive silence, palpable like a stagnant fog, smothered the ambient noise in a way that made my skin crawl. It was like walking through the woods and realizing just a little too late that nothing’s making sound except for you. I couldn’t even hear the song of the crickets foretelling the next day’s weather. It was as though the entirety of creation was holding its breath in anticipation of what might happen next.

  I peeked around the side of the hedge, glancing quickly around toward the front door and the side of the house, my eyes snagging on a glint of chrome highlighted by a lightning strike. I squinted, focusing my gaze on the metallic glimmer to see if I could make out what it was. The longer I stared, the more the thing took shape in the darkness, and sud
denly I realized I was looking at another motorcycle—one I would know just about anywhere.

  It was Jackal’s.

  Jackal was here.

  The moment the realization washed over me, I heard the brittle sound of shattering glass and a scream from someone up on the second floor—a woman’s scream.

  Lucy!

  She was alive—if clearly in danger. For just a second, I allowed my heart to soar. Moments ago, I hadn’t even been able to depend on that much, but now that I knew she was still breathing—that the visions in my mind hadn’t come to pass, not yet—resolve filled me like never before.

  I had no time to lose. But I needed to be smart about this. Jackal and Delfino were inside, two of the most dangerous people I’d ever met. Busting down the door was likely to make a tense situation already worse.

  I remembered how Lucy and I had gotten into the church offices. She’d disapproved of my methods then, but they’d gotten the job done, at least. There were two long, thin panes of glass on either side of Delfino’s front door, and I knew if I broke one in, it wouldn’t make nearly enough of a ruckus to be heard over the scuffle happening upstairs.

  I waited for thunder. Then, wrapping my jacket around my hand, I punched through the glass—unlike Lucy’s window, these shards only twinkled as they were crushed inward, like the ringing of a little bell. I brushed aside the remaining glass and put my jacket back on, then reached in and unlocked the door, letting it swing open into the darkness that lay beyond.

  It took several moments for my eyes to fully adjust, but from the strange angles of the shadows, the usually immaculate interior looked somewhat askew, and by my count, more than a few items were missing. Someone had started packing.

  “I ain’t just gonna be left here to die, Delfino,” Jackal’s voice echoed from upstairs. “I’m not going to let those fuckers catch me. Way I see it, you’re the only way I’m getting out of this hellhole. And little Lucy here’s my ticket to ride.”