Vengeance MC Box Set - Volume 1: Call Me...Vengeance ~ Fury ~ Jonas

by Natasha Thomas

  Crossing my arms over my chest, I ask,

  “Does she need anything? Her Mom left a couple of hours ago to get her some more shit from her apartment, which means she won’t be back till late.”

  “Avery has everything she needs right here, Fury,” Emily says, patting one of my forearms. “As long as she has people who care about her, that are willing to be patient and understanding, she won’t need for anything else.”

  Not believing her for a second, I narrow my eyes on the tiny woman in front of me.

  “She ready for me to go in and sit with her a while?”

  Avery hasn’t let anyone into her room aside from, Emily, her best friend Blaine – who drove down with her dad Tank two weeks ago and hasn’t left since – Adelyn, Reaper’s wife, Sarge, and her mother and father. The rest of the club, the people who love her, even Beth who went through the ordeal with her, have been relegated to waiting in the hall on the off chance she’ll let us in to visit with her.

  “Not yet,” Emily warns, returning my scowl. “You’re a smart man, Fury, and no doubt you’ve put the pieces together seeing how Beth is with Boss. It’s obvious to everyone with eyes that girl in there,” she says, gesturing to Avery’s door, “went through something far worse than, Beth. Whatever she survived through, we need to take our cues from her. Avery is no wilting flower, she’s strong, stubborn, and resilient. I have no doubt she will battle through this and come out the other side in one piece. A little broken, chipped, and dented, but nevertheless in one piece. Your job, your only job is to see to it that she has the time and space to do that.”

  “Been waiting, Em. I haven’t left this fucking hall unless it’s to shower or take a piss for the last week. How much longer am I gonna have to stand out here looking like an asshole before I get to see her, just see her? I don’t give a shit if she doesn’t talk to me, if she doesn’t say a word it’s all good as long as I can see for myself she’s doing alright,” I growl pushing off the wall.

  “I can’t answer that, Tanner,” Emily replies using my given name, which tells me she’s serious seeing as no one calls me by anything other than my road name. “You, like everyone else, are just going to have to wait until she is ready. When that is, is anyone’s guess, but I can assure you, she’s healing. It might only be physically for now, but that’s better than the alternative which would be not at all.”

  I fucking despise that she’s right. Avery doesn’t need me making things worse for her. What she needs is someone calm and in control of their emotions, and that’s not me. In fact, there couldn’t be a worse description of what I feel right now.

  Not seeing Avery since I carried her limp, lifeless body out of the room she was tortured in is killing me. Literally and figuratively. I can’t eat, can’t sleep, and I don’t get a moments peace from the voices in my head that are telling me this is all my fault.

  Rationally I know it isn’t. I know that I’m no more responsible for what happened to her than any other man, woman, or child here at the clubhouse. But where they and I differ is that I could have put a stop to it before it started. If I wasn’t so hell bent on shutting her out of my life, avoiding her at all costs, and in turn, offloading my job of watching her to a prospect, this would never have happened.

  Avery wouldn’t have been raped, beaten, and tortured for information for days on end. Beth, Boss’ woman wouldn’t be suffering the same night terrors Avery is and mourning Bec’s death. At the same time, Jonas wouldn’t be grieving the woman he believed was his one and only chance at happiness, burying her and his dreams two days ago.

  Like I said, it all comes back to me. My selfishness. My anger. My desire to put distance between us. If I’d just relented that night when Boss told me to follow the women to the bar to make sure they were safe, I would’ve seen the vehicles tailing them. I could have alerted someone, had my brothers there in less than ten minutes. That’s not how it played out, though, and because it didn’t, the guilt I feel I’ll carry with me until the day I die.

  Emily tugs sharply on my ear, something she does to get all the boys attention seeing as she’s too short to smack us upside the back of our heads.

  “I know what you’re thinking, and I’m telling you, don’t. Not only won’t it do any good, but it also won't change anything. You can go round and round in circles, Tanner about should’ve, could’ve, would’ve, but there’s no changing the facts – Avery and Beth were hurt and Bec is gone. That’s the horrible truth of it. But as tragic as it is, no amount of beating yourself up about it is going to bring that sweet girl back from the dead, or fix the two broken women that God saw fit to spare. All you can do now is move forward, and in doing so, hope and pray that they do too.”

  How she knew exactly what I was thinking is beyond me, but Emily’s always had a knack for reading the brothers minds. She calls it a gift, whereas we call it a curse. Whatever it is, it’s uncanny.

  “Don’t know if I’m in a place that I can offer you that assurance, Em,” I admit. “I would if I could, but I’m thinking it’s gonna take me some time to get there.”

  Taking my face in her hands, holding it gently but firmly between her tiny palms, Emily pulls my head down so that we’re at eye level.

  “Take all the time you need, sweetie. While you do, I’ll keep an eye on our girl. I think it’s time you ask Boss if you can take the time to go for a nice, long ride. Put some highway behind you and what’s going on here for a spell, Tanner. It’ll do you the world of good. And who knows, when you get back things might be looking up.”

  I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t thought about it – just me, my bike, an endless tank of gas, and a few thousand miles of highway – but I don’t necessarily agree that now is the right time to be taking off.

  Boss, Diesel, Gage, Sly, and myself have been discussing how to answer Hells Riders declaration of war for days. The reality is, we’ve come up short on every plan we’ve worked through to its disappointing end. Whatever we do has to be swift, devastating to their club, and permanent. There’s no way around it – Hells Riders has to answer for their part in our women’s abduction.

  MC’s don’t work the same way as laymen. We operate by our own rules, our own code, and our own set of beliefs. Beliefs such as you never, fucking ever recruit women or children as pawns in a game no one but the opposition knows the rules of. Following closely on its heels is, no harm shall come to women or children. Ever. It doesn’t matter if they’re attached to an MC or not, women and children are off limits.

  While none of us should be surprised at their involvement, especially since this isn’t Hells Riders first foray into kidnapping, rape, and torture, we were. It hadn’t crossed our minds they would have the wherewithal to align themselves with another MC (one they patched over to gain strength in numbers), a shady as fuck lawyer holding a mean grudge, and a Columbian drug cartel syndicate.

  The patience their plan took, the number of players involved, the manipulation, and lies they would have had to weave proved one thing. Hells Riders were planning something, and this wasn’t it. This was simply a stepping stone on their way to a greater goal. A goal we weren’t privy to.

  Looking at the woman before me, I shake my head to clear my thoughts. Emily was right when she said it would do me good to get out of here for a while. I need to put some distance between Avery and I until I can face her and give her the apology she deserves. An apology that I believe, not a token gesture. Because honestly, at the moment, I don’t know if I can give her that.

  Don’t get me wrong, I’m sorry, more than fucking sorry, about what happened to her, what she went through, what she’s still going through. I’d happily take away her pain and make it my own if I could. I’d suffer every lash, every violation, every kick and slap if it helped her heal. But sadly, I can’t, and she doesn’t need a man offering her platitudes and half apologies.

  If you’re as confused as I am as to why my sorry wouldn’t come across as sincere, hopefully, this should clear it up. For al
l of us.

  Her pain, nightmares, bruises, lacerations, the deep wounds on her wrists from the cuffs that embedded themselves in her skin, and the scars on Avery’s soul are my fault entirely. Everything she relives as her tears fall in rivers is my fault. However, there’s a small part of me that can’t help thinking, was what happened to her the lesser of two evils? At least, she’s alive. She’s breathing and has a chance at healing and maybe, one day being whole again.

  But with me, the harbinger of death and destruction, would Avery have had the same chance? The only answer I can come up with after dissecting it, mulling it over, and weighing it every which way is, no. Avery never had a hope in hell of getting out the other end of a relationship with me whole. She didn’t have the first clue about what she was getting herself into with me. None.

  Avery might think she knows me, but other than what I’ve shown her of the man I am, which is very little, she has no idea of who I am and what I’m capable of. She doesn’t know that I took pleasure in delivering pain to men in underground fights for years before I gave it up. Avery hasn’t met the man who without conscience beats the shit out of men for fucking with his MC.

  Worse still, Avery will never see the man who is capable of loving so deeply that she’d feel it down to the very depths of her soul. Why? Because that man is dead.

  My slow, agonizing death began when my parents and sister burned alive. It continued when my only two living relatives passed into the great beyond leaving me with no one. And finally, it came full circle when my wife and son, the family I was building, were taken from me in an act of violence that consumed the last remaining piece of my heart.

  And with that, I make a decision, another in a long line of decisions I’ll probably come to regret.

  “Call to check in every day. If I don’t get a call from you, even if it’s only once, I’ll turn my bike around and point it home, yeah?”

  Nodding solemnly, Emily orders,

  “Go and speak to your President and then commune with your brethren before you leave. She won’t let you in, but that doesn’t mean she can’t hear you through the door, so make sure you come back and tell her you’re going before you do. She needs to hear that. She needs to know that life keeps moving even when she wants it to stand still.”

  *****

  Four hours and a unknown number of minutes later, I find myself standing at Avery’s door. With my hand pressed against it, I say goodbye.

  “Ave, can you hear me, baby?” I don’t expect her to answer me, she’s yet to say a word to me other than my name the day I found her, but it was worth a shot. “I’m gonna take a ride. I don’t know how long I’m gonna be gone for, but there won’t be a mile I travel that I won’t be thinking about you and hoping you’re getting better.”

  Boss, my friend, and President wasn’t impressed with my declaration that I needed an adult timeout, and he voiced that in a way that almost everyone in a five-mile radius could clearly hear his degree of displeasure. That being said, he didn’t fight me on it, much. If anyone could understand what I was feeling, it was him. But where we differ is, his woman is willing to talk to him. Maybe Beth isn’t ready to share all of the details surrounding her time spent in captivity, but she’s letting him in more and more every day.

  Diesel, Gage, and Jonas proved to be the bigger obstacles on my road to freedom than Boss. That was something I went into Boss’ office equally unprepared and unwilling to face.

  These men have had my back through everything. They were there for the months I spent prospecting, my wife and son’s deaths, the years I spent only half living, and the fight to get my woman back, the very one who wants nothing to do with me now.

  Like I said, they’ve been there for it all, and because of that, they’re under the assumption I owe them for it. According to their fucked up logic, I should stay and share my pain. I’m supposed to unload on my brothers and open up, telling them my deepest, darkest secrets. Forget that I didn’t join an MC to be dictated to, and forget that we’re not part of a fucking knitting circle, these assholes want their pound of flesh. And they want it from me because I owe them that much, or so they say.

  Well, my answer to that is fuck them. I don’t owe them shit. What they’ve done for me was because they’re my brothers and that’s what we do – have each other’s backs. What we don’t do is throw it in each other’s face after the fact. No. What we give we give freely. No payback. No markers. No debt, not even one of gratitude.

  It took over an hour, but when that hour was up, so was the time for explanations. They either came to terms with my yet to be determined length of absence or they didn’t. I’d given them all I had left to give, and I could care less if they were good with it or not. Boss got it, so I left it up to him to make sure everyone else did.

  For the record, don’t take Boss not arguing with me as him being happy with my decision, he wasn’t. He just wasn’t going to fight me on it. He made a valid point when it came to the fallout the club was dealing with after we brought out women home. We didn’t have a full picture of what the fallout from that was going to be, but to my mind, it whatever it was wouldn’t take a whole charter to deal with.

  After packing the meager belongings – most of my shit is at my place anyway, and I didn’t need any of it for a road trip – I sat at the bar with Sarge, threw back a few beers, shot the shit, and said goodbye to my brothers.

  Avery’s Mom and Dad, Tilly and Saint, made it back just in time for me to let them know I’d be leaving town for a while, and to say the big man and his wife were happy about it would be a fucking lie.

  Tilly was upset and disappointed I was leaving, pleading with me to give Avery more time to heal before I took off. Nothing I said to Tilly hit home, though. Not even the what felt like five million times I reassured her that me going wasn’t because of Avery but because I had to. Saint, her husband, on the other hand, was livid. In his mind I was running away, hiding, putting off the inevitable confrontation between myself and his daughter, and that made me the world’s biggest asshole.

  See, this is where shit gets complicated. Saint knows how I feel about Avery, and until she was abducted, he made it clear that I wasn’t good enough for his little girl. He didn’t want Avery hitching her star to a biker, Saint wanted her out of the life and settled with some pansy-ass, suit-wearing motherfucker. Something, I’ll have you know, we’d come to blows over six months back because obviously I vehemently disagreed with Saint’s choice of men for his daughter.

  Saint’s complete one-eighty when it came to my relationship, or I should say the non-existent relationship with Avery came about on the heels of him seeing her cradled in my arms the day we found her. Avery refused to let me go when I tried to transfer her to her dad, holding onto me for the entire excruciatingly slow, painful ride back to the clubhouse. In Saint’s eyes, that made me her man. To him it didn’t matter that her actions screamed the opposite, for all intents and purposes, she was mine to care for and protect. Hence, me taking off wasn’t looked upon all too kindly.

  “Have you lost your fucking mind?” Saint roared as soon as he saw my duffle by my feet. “Where the hell do you think you’re going? My little girl’s gonna need you, so unless that’s a bag full of shit you’ve gotta get some bitch to wash for you, you better have a fucking good explanation as to what the hell is going on. And mark me, boy, you better start talking, and you better do it quickly.”

  “Just pointing it out, I don’t answer to you, brother. Never have, and never will. You’re in my clubhouse, these men are my brothers, and we’re doing you a solid by letting you come and go as you please. Don’t confuse that with you having the first fucking say as to what I do or do not do when it comes to my club, though,” I reply more calmly than I feel.

  Fisting his hands at his side, Saint tried to reign in some of his legendary control before saying,

  “Yeah, I’ll apologize for that later, but what I want to know now is, what the fuck is going on? It’s only been
a week and a half, Fury, you’ve gotta give her more time.”

  “I know what she needs, and right now that isn’t me. Avery needs time to heal physically before she starts down the long road her emotional recovery’s going to be. While I’m here, I’m only making it worse. I want nothing more than to go to her, hold her when she cries, soothe all her hurts and erase her pain, but I can’t because she won’t let me in the fucking door. There’s not one thing I can do for her that wouldn’t hurt her more, and that kills me. Fucking destroys me, brother. You know how I feel about her, what I’d do for her, but none of that matters until your daughter is ready to see I’ll be there for her, however she needs me to be.”

  “Fuck,” he hissed angrily. “How long are you gonna be gone for?”

  “Not sure, but I don’t think it’ll be more than twelve months give or take a few,” I reply shrugging a shoulder.

  And that’s the truth. I have no idea how long or where this sabbatical is going to take me, but however long it lasts and no matter how many miles I put between us, I know for a fact I won’t go an hour without worrying about my girl.

  “Please, will you take a day or two to think about it,” Tilly implores. “I know how hard it has to be on you that she won’t see or talk to you, but I promise she knows you’re out in the hall waiting for her and it helps that you are. Just knowing that you’re there seems to give her some comfort.”