“Apart from the fifty women stuck down a goddamn pit, you mean?”
At Mars’s low growl, Major nodded, discomforted.”I asked him if there were any facilities for the women to wash up.”
“Are there?”
“A single shower and toilet.” Major shrugged. “Better than nothing. At least they can get clean and use a proper bathroom.”
Mars nodded. “Tell five brothers to head back to the clubhouse. Have the bunnies and the old ladies get their shit together; we need enough clothes for each women down there. If there isn’t enough, grab T-shirts and anything they can use to cover up. We can head to the supermarket later for what they need.” He grimaced as he realized Annette would want to help and she had the least amount of gear there.
She’d spent the last week in varying levels of nudity, wrapped either in a bed sheet or blanket, or some of Mars’s T-shirts and boxers.
They’d agreed that a trip to her apartment was a must, but fell back into bed before the opportunity arose.
Just thinking of Annette soothed him, calmed the ragged emotions of the beast within, and boy, did he need to channel inner peace. The bear wanted out, was furious at what had been happening in this warehouse, and yet, the man had to be in control. He had to divvy up the brothers and send them on tasks that were useful.
Though he longed to shift, he stayed silent, watching as the women crawled through the door before getting onto shaky feet.
The first one to pass him reeked to high heaven. Her hair was matted in clumps, her face was streaked with dirt. Mars didn’t even want to know what stained her legs and feet, but it didn’t take much to figure out what. She was almost unrecognizable. Her humanity had been robbed from her as her life had been traded like she was a piece of chattel, but he saw her inner shame at her state in her eyes and wanted to weep for her.
The sight of her filled him with misery. He’d helped perpetuate this fucking business and though he’d intended to break free from Martinez’s clutches then back the hell away, grateful to simply be cut off from the cartel, he knew that wasn’t an option anymore. Not after he’d seen this.
Seeing the women, staggering, ill, weak and frail, as they clambered back into the real world made him feel nauseated. He had to find a way to punish Martinez, and to bring this bunch of traffickers to justice, and Annette would be able to help with that. Her story had fallen by the wayside, but not anymore.
Dickie helped the women up as they got to their feet, each time murmuring something that had them smiling at him in gratitude before they turned to Mars, blinking at him before bringing their hands to their lips and kissing them.
“What are they doing that for?” he asked Dickie.
“They’re thanking you.”
Discomforted because he knew he deserved no thanks, Mars mumbled, “What are you telling them?”
“The truth. That they shouldn’t run because they’re too weak, and that there is a shower and toilet they can use to freshen up. Once they’re clean, we’ll have clothes for them, and we’ll get them food soon.”
Shit. Food. He’d forgotten. “Kiko, have some guys…”
Before he could continue, Kiko shook his head. “Already done. Trike, Nero, and Marty have just set off.”
“Where’s the nearest store?”
Kiko shrugged. “Fifteen minutes away.”
“Not too far. How the fuck are they going to bring groceries back?”
“They’ll figure it out. They can always do a couple of trips.”
“Not ideal. The women must be starving but what can we do? We didn’t realize we’d have the five thousand to feed.”
Over the next twenty minutes, the remaining women climbed up the ladder. Each one seemed frailer and dirtier than the last. As they clambered to their unsteady feet, weakness making each step more difficult, Mars knew he wasn’t alone with the sorrow and rage he was feeling. His bear didn’t know what to do with itself. It half-railed against the cage of Mars’s human body, while also being content to being deep inside as it wanted to tear Martinez’s head off—and as the man in the spotlight had run off an hour ago, there was no one to focus its rage on.
Mars the man felt like he could weep, especially as every woman was so fucking grateful to be out of that hellhole. They looked at him with adoration in their eyes, their gratitude pouring out of them. He understood but still, the shame he had to bear made him wish he could kill Jackson again. Really make the bastard suffer for dragging the MC into this. And to compound the confusing mixture of emotions currently bombarding him, he was also relieved that they were involved as they were helping these women escape. If they hadn’t been involved, only God knew where they’d have ended up.
Whatever fate had in store for them, it couldn’t be worse than the one they’d had an hour before when Martinez ran this warehouse.
“How many are still left to shower?” he asked Major who’d been rushing back and forth on Mars’s orders.
“Most of them to be honest, each one’s taking a tidy time to get clean and from the state of them, it’s no wonder. I don’t think they even care that the hot water ran off ages ago.” He grimaced. “Thank God, Trike thought to buy bottled soap, and the five who brought clothes back, also got towels.”
“Good thinking on their parts; it definitely slipped my mind,” Mars admitted. “What the fuck are we going to do, Major?”
Kiko turned from his position at the landing. He’d been looking over the railing but moved nearer Mars to say, “We could take them back to the MC for the meanwhile.”
“We don’t have anywhere for them to stay.” He grunted. “Unless we put them in three or four to a room.”
“Putting them in ten to a room is far more fucking comfortable than that prison down there, Christ Almighty,” Major grumbled.
Mars nodded, agreeing with him. “If the prospects slept in their skins for a couple of nights and rested outside in the yard, we could fit them in there, couldn’t we?”
“Yeah, we just need to make sure they don’t come across eight grizzly frigging bears.” Major folded his arms across his chest. “Someone needs to drive back to the clubhouse and come back in the bus.”
The MC owned a school bus. They used it as a cover when running drugs across the state.
“Good thinking. You want to go?” he asked Major.
“Can do.”
“Give the prospects a heads up. Tell them to get their stuff together; anything they might need because we need their rooms for the interim.”
“They won’t be pleased.”
“No, maybe they won’t, but tell them about those poor chicks down in that pit… that will guilt trip them into not minding.”
Major shrugged, nodded farewell, then hurried down the stairs.
“The bunnies won’t like it either.” Kiko pursed his lips. “They’ll think their turf is being invaded.”
“Then they can go fuck themselves,” Mars snarled. “I’m sick of the lot of them. They’re a pain in the fucking ass.”
“You won’t hear me arguing,” Kiko retorted, scratching his chin where his beard was thickest. “Most of them were picked by Jackson anyway; they’re all loyal to him.”
And that was all the reminder Mars needed. He rushed over the landing to the railing and yelled, “Major?”
His brother paused as he climbed on the back of his bike and looked up at Mars. “Yeah?”
“Tell the bunnies they have until Friday to get out so to pack their shit up ASAP.”
Mars saw Major wince, even from a hundred foot distance. “Seriously?” he complained.
“Yeah. Seriously.” When the brothers still scurrying around looked up at him in horror, he said, “They were Jackson’s choice. They’re loyal to him. Not us.”
And like he’d found the password, that was all he had to say about that for his men to listen and agree wholeheartedly with him.
Chapter Thirteen
“What’s going on, Major?”
Annette had
been watching the goings on in the courtyard for the last hour with growing curiosity. Mars had been gone for two hours, and she’d been nervously awaiting his return.
It wasn’t everyday the man you mated yourself to went to meet with the head of a cartel.
She’d been hoping he’d be back sooner rather than later so she’d know he was safe. Several times, she’d tried to open that link of communication between them they’d been granted after the blood sacrifice, but Mars had reckoned and been right that it didn’t work over long distances. He said that with time and practice it might, so not to give up trying.
She’d been trying so much her head was pounding, and when small clusters of bikes had returned only to leave moments later, she hadn’t realized anything was going on until she’d happened to look out her window and had seen Major had come back, alone and with purpose written on his face.
When he heard her question, he turned to face her, then reached for her arm and shuffled her down the hall back to hers and Mars’s quarters.
She’d spent so much time there this past week, she wasn’t sure if she was super comfortable in them or ready to go nuts from cabin fever. As it was, she hadn’t dared venture into the bar yet. That was the bunnies’ territory and she had no desire to know or to talk to the females who had fucked her mate before her.
She knew women. They were jealous and catty, especially when a good catch slipped from between their fingers and to a stranger. Those women were not predisposed to like her, and as Annette knew which battles were worth fighting and which ones were worth avoiding, she’d decided to wait in their bedroom until Mars came back.
Maybe it smelled of cowardice, but Annette just didn’t have it in her to start a fight.
Most unlike her but this past week had been so incredible, so out there, that it was a wonder she could put one foot in front of the other without feeling like her brain was being scrambled.
“What’s going?” she repeated when he’d shut the door behind him.
That he’d done that at all spoke volumes. None of the men liked to be alone with her, certainly not behind closed doors. She figured it was because they knew Mars would want to tear them limb from limb if there was even a smattering of gossip about any of them being alone with her.
“We met with the cartel; managed to frighten them off.”
“Dickie shifted?”
“Yeah, it went to according to plan.”
She nodded. “Good.” That had been her idea. Softly, softly catchee monkey, and all that. Mars had been willing to go in all guns blazing; willing to do anything to cut ties with the cartel. But she’d known that path led to a blood bath and she’d told him so.
Thankfully, he’d listened and taken her concerns on board.
“They ran off like frightened brats but when one of the cartel foot soldiers saw Dickie, he let off a round of bullets. One hit Kiko, just a graze,” he added when he saw her worry for Mars’s brother. “But it made a few of the others shift too. That had them scurrying them back to their rides like the rats they are. The bears went investigating though and they found a…” He cleared his throat. “The only way to describe it is a pit. It was filled with woman. They were covered in their own piss and shit, Annette. Those bastards had been keeping them in there.”
Nausea flooded Annette and weakness hacked at her joints until she had no choice but to stagger over to the bed and take a seat on the edge. Clutching at the piping on the mattress, she whispered, “Were they alive?”
“Just.” He shook his head. “We’re trying to get them cleaned up, fed, and clothed.”
“Hence all the activity in the yard.”
“Yeah. Mars wants to bring them back here until they get on their feet; they don’t want to involve the police. I can understand. They don’t want to go back to Ukraine, and that’s almost a guarantee if we get the cops in on this.”
They were right, as was Major, but how did they make the bastards in the Martinez cartel pay if they didn’t get the police involved?
She didn’t say that though, just nodded her understanding. “Of course they have to come back here. But where are they going to sleep? I thought the clubhouse was running at full capacity.”
“We’re kicking the prospects out for the interim. They can sleep out under the stars in their skins while the women take their quarters.”
“Good idea,” she conceded, trying and failing to imagine what those poor women had endured during their time in the cartel’s clothes.
Major grunted. “That’s not the worst of it. Mars told me to tell the bunnies they have to start looking elsewhere for somewhere to live.”
She blinked at that. “Why?”
“He wants rid of them.”
“I repeat, why?” He’d made no mention of throwing the women out, and even though she was kind of glad, because none of them had been particularly nice to her, and she knew most of them had fucked her mate, it was unlike Mars to make anyone homeless without good reason.
Major pursed his lips. “I think it might be up to Mars to tell you.”
That had her narrowing her eyes at him and getting to her feet. She didn’t stop until she was a foot away and could prod him with a finger square in the chest. “Tell me now, Major. I want to know.”
He grimaced. “Martinez, the cartel boss, told us something. You know before Jackson, the Prez was a guy named Cub?”
“Yeah. He died, that’s why Jackson could take his place.”
“We thought he died in an accident—turns out Jackson arranged with Martinez to kill him.”
“So he could be Prez?” She gasped. “Are you kidding me?”
“I wish I was,” Major said, his tone sour.
“Jackson also used the cartel to shoot up the clubhouse last week.”
“What the fuck for?”
Major shrugged. “I don’t know. Martinez didn’t say and Mars didn’t ask. I can only guess because he knew Mars was looking for a way to challenge him, maybe? Or because he knew there was a lot of discord where this trafficking shit was concerned.”
Annette firmed her jaw. “This is insane.”
“You’re telling me.” He snorted. “I’ve just found out my old Prez was a treacherous motherfucker, I’ve left fifty women who’ve been living in shit, and now, I have to tell twelve women they’re homeless at the end of the week. This day gets better and better.”
Her lips twitched in a small smile but still, there was very little that could be found amusing about the situation.
“Is there anything I can do?”
He shook his head. “No. I’ll deal with the bunnies; they’re used to me anyway because they come to me if they’re ill.” He jerked a shoulder. “Plus, after, I’ll be driving the school bus over to the warehouse so we can bring the women back here.”
Annette nodded. “I’ll leave you to it. But you deal with the bunnies, and I’ll handle the prospects. It’s the least I can do.”
“Are you sure you don’t mind?”
She shrugged. “I don’t mind at all. They like me.”
“Of course they do, you’re their Ursu.” He smiled at her, a genuine one that was loaded with feeling. “You’re our leader.”
MARS (BBW Bear Shifter MC Romance) (MC Bear Mates Book 1) Page 13
