Lessons In Corruption (The Fallen Men Series Book 1)

by Giana Darling

  Huge familiar hands gently appeared at the edges of my vision, a thick length of rope stretched between them. Before I could close my mouth, they jerked the rope into my mouth, pressed it tightly to the corners of my mouth so I was semi-swallowing the thick fibers. I gagged at the stress it put on my tongue. The rope was knotted behind my head and the person stepped back.

  “Why don’t you come show this bitch your face?” the horrible man in front of me ordered.

  No.

  No, no, no.

  As long as I didn’t see him, I could stay frozen and numb to the truth.

  I squeezed my eyes shut as the heavy thud of booted feet rounded my chair and made their way to the man who spoke.

  “Open your eyes, puta.”

  No, no, no.

  “Victor,” he barked at someone off to the left.

  Someone moved out of the shadows. I whimpered when cruel hands gripped my hair and wrenched my head back. The cold, sharp edge of a knife pressed into my throat.

  “Open. Your. Eyes.” Victor hissed in my ear.

  His mordant breath activated my gag reflex. As I shuttled forward with the force of my dry heaves, the knife bit into my neck and a thin trail of blood slipped down to pool wetly in my right collarbone.

  “Open your eyes,” he ordered again, wiggling the blade against the scratch until it opened wider, spilled more blood down my front.

  I opened my eyes.

  Even though I’d known who would stand before me, I nearly threw up at the sight of Lysander. He stood beside Luis with his hands behind his back, his posture straight and sure like a soldier before his commander.

  “You recognize your brother, of course,” Luis began conversationally as he patted Lysander on the back. “He’s been a good little informant for me the past few weeks.”

  I closed my eyes again on a sob but the man holding my hair gave me a little shake, so I peeled them open again.

  Lysander stared at me vacantly.

  I wanted to scream at him, tear out his hair and slam his head repeatedly against the concrete floor until it busted open and spilled all his secrets across the ground for me to shift through.

  My hands tried to fist with rage but pain had me rocking back in the chair.

  Fuck, I’d never felt so helpless in my life.

  I wished fervently that King and the boys were looking for me. There was no doubt in my mind that if I didn’t give Luis what he wanted, he’d kill me. Seeing as I didn’t know anything about The Fallen’s criminal side, I had nothing to give him. Therefore, I’d be dead sooner rather than later. I just had to give King time to find me.

  “Now, maybe, you understand just how serious I am about taking over The Fallen’s distribution network. I’m going to get Victor to take that rope out of your mouth and you’re going to tell me all about Zeus’ operation, aren’t you?”

  I didn’t react but he nodded for Victor to undo the tie. When he did, I spat it into my lap.

  “I don’t know anything about that, you moron. Old ladies aren’t privy to that kind of information and you know it,” I rasped through my sore, parched throat.

  “I know a man’s feeling good after takin’ his bitch, he isn’t afraid to share things with her,” he said.

  Fuck, of course he thought that I was with Zeus. Everyone outside of the MC did. What didn’t add up was that Lysander knew for a fact that I was with King and not his father. Why would he keep that from his ‘boss’ or whatever Luis was to him?

  My eyes darted his way but he was staring through me as if I wasn’t even there.

  Luis stepped closer and another man materialized out of the shadows to join him. The newcomer cracked his knuckles and smiled at me as Luis said, “We’re going to play a game where you tell me what I want to know and Harp here doesn’t beat your pretty face in, si?”

  I closed my eyes, wishing I had the gag in my mouth again. I tried to find a safe place to rest inside myself, as I couldn’t answer question after question and Harp’s fists kept coming. There was no such place. But I found that I could let the pain carry me away on dark clouds so that I drifted from ache to ache in mental purgatory. Anything was better than clueing back into reality.

  So, it took me a long time to recognize the sound of gunfire even though it ricocheted so close to my head. Through blurry eyes, I watched Harp drop to the ground, half his face blown off by a bullet. Then men were everywhere, wearing the Nightstalkers colors of red, black and green, and some others, others wearing my favorite colors in the whole entire world. Green, black and white.

  The Fallen men had arrived.

  Through my delirium, I spotted Nova crouched down by one of the doors, covering for King, Zeus and Priest as they ran inside, crouched low and each wielding guns in their hands. Blackness narrowed my vision like a camera filter and I kept dipping in and out of unconsciousness so I saw only flashes. Zeus rugby tackling Luis as he tried to run, his lion roar of fury as he began to pummel the Mexican drug lord’s face. Bat appearing from out of nowhere with a huge sniper rifle strapped to his back. He took down two Nightstalkers with his bare hands without any discernable effort.

  King. I tried to track his progress across the warehouse but I was too dazed, too dizzy.

  “Babe,” his voice called, his voice peeling through the heavy curtains of darkness shrouding my mind so that I could see the light.

  I opened my eyes to see his face in front of me. He had never looked more like a fallen angel than in that moment, his gorgeous face a mask of vengeful fury.

  “King,” I breathed but the effort hurt my ribs and I wondered if maybe my tormentor hadn’t just aimed his hits at my face.

  “Gettin’ you out of these ropes,” he was saying when I clued in again.

  Distinctly, I could feel him loosen them at my chest and ankles. When he got to my hands, he cursed so viciously I jerked and then whimpered as the pain abruptly followed.

  “Motherfuckin’ fuckers,” he swore again.

  He suddenly had a hammer in his hands, blood speckled over the metal head. I realized they’d probably dropped it to the floor beside me after they’d nailed me in.

  I gagged violently again but didn’t throw up.

  “This is gonna hurt,” King said over a particularly loud round of gunfire.

  He didn’t give me time to brace. With the other side of the hammer wedged painfully under the head of the small spike, he wrenched the metal out of my hand.

  I screamed, so hard and loud that I passed out for a few seconds.

  Then, I came to just in time for him to pull out the other spike.

  I passed out again.

  “Shit, she’s bleedin’ so fuckin much,” King was saying when I zoned back in but I didn’t open my eyes.

  “Wrap it tight,” someone, Nova I thought, said from my other side as they bound each of my hands with fabric.

  The pressure deepened the pain, then my hands felt oddly numb. It was a massive relief. I opened my eyes and mouth to say so and found two Nightstalkers approaching silently from behind King and Nova.

  I shouted wordlessly.

  They both shifted infinitesimally. Nova evaded his attacker, then threw himself at his torso in a low tackle.

  King wasn’t so lucky.

  He took the edge of a wicked-looking knife to his shoulder, the same blade that had sliced my throat. His face contorted in pain, but then he was trying to wrest the blade out of the man named Victor’s hand. I watched them fall hard to the ground, neither one on top as they struggled for supremacy.

  My thoughts rushed and whorled like water circling a drain. I could barely feel my body anymore, the pain had washed it clean of sensation, but I recognized that I was free to move.

  “Cressida,” Zeus bellowed from across the room as he came charging over.

  I blinked slowly, not understanding why he was yelling.

  A clatter brought my attention to King again and I watched as the knife flew out of Victor’s hand and skidded to a stop by my feet. V
ictor used King’s momentum against him and pinned him to the floor with his knees so he could reach into his waistband for a gun.

  No.

  Anything in world could happen to me, could happen to anyone else. I didn’t care if all the kittens, birds and bees had to die, if I had to personally slaughter men, women and children to make it so but nothing could happen to King.

  I wouldn’t allow it.

  The knife was at my feet, I just had to get it. I fell to my knees with a brutal crack that vibrated from my kneecaps and up my thighs, but I ignored the pain and tried to clutch the knife in my brutalized hand. It fell through my weak-as-water fingers again and then again.

  “Cressida,” Zeus shouted, closer now.

  I looked up to see him close to Victor, who was about to press the gun against King’s thrashing head.

  Fury launched through me.

  “Give it to me,” Zeus ordered, hand out stretched as he lunged towards me.

  I wrapped the knife in a excruciating grip and tossed it to him.

  He caught it on the fly, sprinted the two steps to where his son lay prone on the ground with a gun at his temple, and without hesitation, he plunged the bloodied blade into the back of Victor’s neck, right at the base of his skull.

  The sick sound of crushing bones and tearing flesh was louder than the last gunshot that reverberated through the warehouse.

  I tried to keep my head up and my eyes open, but moving so much had drained the last of my reserves. With a thin sigh, my head dropped to the concrete and I was out.

  I knew before I woke up that I would be in a hospital. The smell was the first thing I noticed, the plastic, medicinal scent of all hospitals everywhere. My body felt strange, not my own, but at least the mind-melting pain was gone. I tried to lift my hand, suddenly terrified that it would still be nailed to the chair. When I succeeded, I opened my eyes to look at the heavily bandage flesh and burst into tears.

  “Babe.”

  I turned my crying face to King as he moved to lie down beside me and carefully pulled me to him. I wanted to clutch at him, touch him all over to assure myself that he was alive and well but my hands were mittens, so instead, I nuzzled my face hard against his cheek, his neck, his chest.

  “I’m here, babe, I got you,” he assured me over and over again.

  I cried harder, so hard I couldn’t breath.

  “Shh, babe, I need you to take a deep breath for me, yeah?”

  The air rattled around in my open mouth as I tried to suck it into my uncooperative lungs. King took my face gently in his hands and breathed deeply, silently prompting me to mimic him. I tried again and finally found air. We did this, deep breathing together, until my mind cleared and the tears stopped.

  “I got you, babe,” he said then, each word low and weighty with significance.

  “Thought you were going to die,” I croaked out because even my throat, teeth and lips hurt.

  King’s thumb swept tenderly over my swollen mouth before he ducked down to kiss each side where the rope gag had given me a temporary Joker-like smile.

  “Luckily, I had my Queen to keep me alive,” he said.

  I stared into his eyes, desperate to mark each bubble of air caught beneath the ice of his irises and every color of pale blue that brightened and darkened them like shapes under glacial caps.

  “I want to go home,” I told him, suddenly desperate to leave the hospital. “Can I?”

  His lips pursed in thought but when I whined low in my throat, he sighed. “We can do whatever the fuck you want, Cress babe. The doc’s checked you out. You don’t need surgery on your hands but you’ll probably have nerve damage and you might need rehab. Otherwise, you have a concussion, a fuckin’ laceration on your throat and a fractured jaw. Not to mention your beautiful face is fuckin’ black and blue.”

  “Not great,” I murmured.

  “No,” he bit out.

  “Alive,” I pointed out. “Both of us.”

  “Thank fuckin’ Christ,” he said against my lips before kissing them softly.

  “Home?” I asked again.

  “Okay, wait here and I’ll get everythin’ in order,” he gave me another kiss before sliding off the bed and made his way to the door. He paused at the door and looked back at me, his hand pulling hard through his curls. “Need a second. Haven’t left you since it happened and I’m havin’ a hard time doin’ it now.”

  My heart stopped then restarted with a jolt in my chest.

  “Love you,” I told him.

  “Bone of my bone,” he replied.

  I waited for him while he talked to the doctors (who actively disagreed with my decision to leave but technically they couldn’t do anything about it) and brought me papers to sign.

  “My parents?” I asked softly, because if they’d been there they would have been given dispensation to sign them for me.

  As it was, it was hard to sign papers without the use of your fingers.

  “Called ‘em. To be fair to the cunts, they wanted to come but they were freakin’ out so much about you gettin’ what was comin’ to you because you involved yourself with ‘riff’ fuckin’ ‘raff’ that I ended up hanging up on them before I could tell them where you’d be.”

  I smiled only slightly because it was sad about my parents, but he was awesome.

  “Everyone else is okay?”

  His eyes warmed as he helped me sit up on the edge of the bed and then proceeded to dress me. “Priest and Zeus are bruised but fine. Nova got a bullet to the gut. He’s in the room down the hall. Puck, Lab Rat and Cy were also there, took care of the guys outside and they’re roughed up but cool. I got a nick to the shoulder, not bad. Bat’s the only one without a scratch but he was in the navy for ten years before he patched in so go figure.”

  “Good,” I said, placing my hand on his shoulder so I could step into the flip-flops he brought me.

  Someone had packed one of King’s big sweatshirts that said EBA on it in green and an old pair of jeans I’d left at the clubhouse. They were comfy and they smelled like King, which brought me instant comfort.

  “Have lots more questions,” I murmured tiredly as I took his hand.

  “So do I,” a smooth, deep voice said from the doorway.

  King growled, but I just sighed and collapsed to the hospital bed again.

  “Yeah, officer, come on in,” I welcomed Lionel Danner into the room.

  He stepped through the doorway, his partner Riley Gibson behind him.

  “Sorry to do this when you’re still recovering, but I just have to ask you some questions,” Danner said. To his credit, he really did sound contrite.

  If I were still the old Cressida who liked rules and regulations, I’d probably have fallen for Lionel. He was gorgeous, loyal, dutiful and tough like a Wild West sheriff. So, in short, female catnip.

  As it was, because he was Zeus’ enemy, he was also mine.

  And, needless to say, I was head over heels in love with the teenage biker who stepped slightly in front of me to argue with the cops about interrogating me while I was injured.

  “Just a few questions,” Danner urged.

  “It’s fine, King,” I said. “Just hurry up. I’m exhausted and I want to go home.”

  Gibson nodded, stepping forward. “We just wanted to clear up the timeline. Two nights ago—”

  “Two?” I asked.

  King squeezed my hand. “You were concussed and out of it for a long time, babe. Happy to see those whiskey eyes again.”

  I leaned heavily into his side as I turned to the cops again. “Go on.”

  “Two night ago, you were at Evergreen gas station when you were hit over the head by a man named Hector Alonso and transferred to a warehouse just off highway 99. They kept you for three hours before Zeus and his… friends,” he hesitated over what to call them but continued, “found you.”

  “Correct.”

  “In the ensuing fight, did you witness Zeus Garro kill a man named Victor Hernandez?”

>   My heart seized as I was thrown back to the night of my bachelorette party. The cops had asked me the same exact thing about Lysander killing Marcus Whitman. No matter what I said about my brother defending me from rape, they had still cuffed him, carted him away and put him in jail for six years of his life.

  Then I remembered that Lysander had been in the warehouse, had stood beside a man who wanted to kill me and had done nothing. I couldn’t reconcile the one image of him with the other. How could he go from being my defender to my persecutor?

  I shoved those thoughts to the back of my mind and focused on the irrefutable fact that I did not trust the police and I adored Zeus.

  So, I told them, even though it made my jaw ache, “I’m sorry, officers. I don’t think I can be much help. As you can see,” I held up my heavily wrapped hands, “I was preoccupied at the time and in and out of consciousness.”

  King slipped an arm around my shoulders and I knew he was happy with my answer.

  “You’re sure?” Gibson pressed, even taking a step forward in an attempt to physically pressure me.

  It was a low move after the trauma I’d already endured and both Danner, who held his partner back with an arm and a glare, and King, reacted. My man bared his teeth and declared, “This conversation is over. Cressida is concussed and she has a fuckin’ fractured jaw. Asking her to talk to you in this condition is physically painful for her.”

  The pain in my jaw was nothing compared to the pain in my hands, but I was done with the conversation so I allowed King to pull me to my feet and I followed him when he grabbed his bag and started for the door.

  The cops let us go but I could hear Danner murmuring to Gibson to let us be. I was grateful to him because exhaustion hit me like a physical blow as we stepped into the fresh air. Thankfully, King had thought ahead and my car was waiting for us instead of his bike. We were silent on the ride home, mostly because I slept.

  He took us to the compound but I didn’t question him. Truthfully, I was happy he’d made that decision. I was still shaken and I liked the idea of being on the compound, one of the safest places in BC if not the world.

  “No one else is here except for my dad, Bat and Buck. They’re in the garage and I need to take you to them before I put you to bed,” King said as he let me out of the car.