Chapter thirty-two
When his car pulled up to the warehouse, Archon frowned at the sliding garage door for a moment before it finally began to sluggishly open. Idiots, he thought to himself. They should have started raising the door as soon as they saw his car approaching up the driveway.
As he pulled inside, he noted dispassionately that at least the men seemed to appear more alert and on guard than usual. He had chastised Bulldog several times about the lax attitude of his men, but the underling had clearly never bothered to pass on Archon's criticisms to his subordinates. He was not, Archon reflected, a good leader.
What Bulldog was good at doing, however, was finding people and killing them violently. And that, above all, was what Archon needed from him.
The men stood at attention around the sides of the chamber, dressed in dark fatigues, with black knitted caps and an assortment of weapons in their hands. Most of them carried either a shotgun or a rifle, Archon noted, and they all had pistols strapped to their belts as well. He didn't recognize the faces, but he approved of the upright stances and how the men clearly came to attention as the car pulled into the warehouse.
In front of the car... Archon's eyes swung back forward as he turned off the engine. The men had dragged a desk chair with arms out into the middle of the open space, and there, strapped in and bound by both wrists and ankles, was the bitch, Jenna, who had caused him so many problems.
There was no mistaking the girl, even with her head slumped forward so that her reddish-blonde hair fell across her face. Behind the wheel, Archon smiled, although there was no trace of humor in his expression. This was a smile of grim satisfaction that, very shortly, this whole matter would be concluded.
One of the men stepped forward, holding the door open so that Archon could climb out. For a moment, the eyebrows rose on the millionaire's face. What in the world had gotten into Bulldog? These men actually appeared well-behaved!
He glanced around the open area, and wrinkled his nose. If only he could say the same about the area, he thought to himself. There were several dark stains discoloring the concrete floor, scattered about, and some faint but unpleasant odor hung in the air. Archon couldn't quite place the smell, but it was quite disagreeable.
"So, you've got her out here - I assume that means that there are no clients, and the rest of the girls are put away?" he asked as he emerged from the car, not bothering with any greetings. He looked around for Bulldog. He at least remembered the man's jowly face that had earned him that unfortunate nickname.
"Don't worry, sir - the girls are all out of earshot, and there's no one here but us," said one of the men, stepping forward. "No one for miles, sir."
Archon glanced over at the speaker, sizing him up. The man was quite tall, easily six feet, but his body was corded with a layer of powerful muscles. There was some gray in his hair, and Archon pegged his age at somewhere in his early forties, but he still looked strong and capable. His dark eyes glinted with some emotion that the millionaire couldn't identify. He wore a pistol strapped to his hip, like the others, but didn't appear to carry any other weapon.
Although he couldn't remember seeing this man before, Archon gave him the customary nod that superiors give to those beneath them. "Good, good," he said, returning his attention back to the girl slumped in the chair. "Now, let's see if we can get some answers out of this bitch, shall we?"
He turned and gave an exaggerated wink to one of the men standing at attention behind the girl's chair. "Maybe, if she cooperates, we'll even let her go," he lied smoothly, hoping that Jenna was conscious enough to gain some false hope.
Sitting in the chair, the girl finally raised her head up so that her eyes met the millionaire's. Before he could regain control, James Archon took a half-step back, caught off guard by the intensity of hatred blazing in the girl's eyes. She didn't look scared at all!
Hatred, that was the emotion he hadn't been able to place earlier! Archon suddenly felt a moment of confusion - a rare feeling for the usually confident millionaire and CEO. Blinking, he broke away from the girl's hate-filled stare, turning back to the middle-aged man who had spoken to him earlier. He opened his mouth to speak, but never managed to get a word out.
Archon turned around to face the man behind him just in time to see a fist, airborne and headed straight towards his face. For just a second, he felt the blow connect, felt pain splinter across his face as something in his nose made a dreadful crunching sound.
Fortunately for the millionaire, he blacked out before he hit the ground.
#
A splash of cold water hit Archon directly in the face, and he sputtered and coughed as his eyes fluttered open. He immediately regretted the cough, as the momentary spasm of his throat and cheeks sent a wave of pain shooting through his face, radiating out from his nose.
That man had punched him in the nose! Archon's eyes shot open as he suddenly remembered. He'd turned around, just in time for the man to cold-cock him right in the face! And then he'd started to fall backwards, and then-
And then his mind went blank, until now.
With his eyes open, Archon could see that he was now sitting in a chair, facing the front of his car. It took him a moment to line up the dots, but he realized with a thrill of panic that he was now sitting in the same place where, up until he'd taken a punch, Jenna had been bound and placed.
What the hell was going on? His eyes flicked back and forth, trying to make sense of the last few minutes.
The other men that he'd observed were still standing around, although they'd clearly dropped the "at attention" bit. One of them was even smoking a cigarette indoors! Archon opened his mouth to snap at the man and leaned forward, planning on standing up to knock the cigarette out of the idiot's hand.
It was then that the millionaire made his second disturbing realization.
He couldn't stand up; rough braided plastic rope bound his wrists and ankles to the chair. He was effectively trussed and immobilized - and someone had relieved him of his gun.
"Well, well, look who's awake."
Archon recognized the voice. Turning his head, he saw the same middle-aged man who had sucker punched him sauntering over, also slouching a little and no longer standing expressly at attention. He strolled over and stopped in front of the millionaire's chair, looking down at him with a mixture of hatred and amusement on his face.
"Glad of you to rejoin us," he went on. "I was starting to worry that I'd punched you too hard, did some sort of brain damage."
The seated man opened his mouth, intending to blast this arrogant ass and put him in his place. How dare he tie up someone of his power, someone who owned him and all his companions! He'd be fired for this - no, he'd get so much worse! Whether he wanted a ransom or just some sort of payoff, he would get it - and then James Archon would ensure that he next received a bullet to the back of the head, or maybe a knife blade to the ribs.
At least, that was what James intended to tell the man. He didn't get more than a word or two out before the man, without any change in expression, lazily reached out and slapped the millionaire's face hard enough to slam his jaw shut and leave his ears ringing.
"Shut up," the man suggested, a little unnecessarily, as James tried to recover from the pain of the latest blow. "You clearly don't know just how much shit you've fallen into, do you?"
The question was clearly rhetorical, but James still opened his mouth - and again closed it, this time as Jenna herself stepped into view from behind him.
His male captor smiled at Jenna, and this time his smile was filled with genuine warmth, even affection. All of that emotion drained away as soon as his eyes returned to the bound captive, however.
"And now," the man said, "I'd like for you to tell us everything."
And James talked.
Chapter thirty-three
Eventually, the millionaire James Archon talked.
Oh, he didn't do so immediately. At first, he shouted out proud defiance, spat at his captors,
threatened them with various punishments. He warned them just how dead they would be, and lied that, if they let him go immediately, he might forget about this affront for just long enough to give them a head start on running. He ranted about how he knew many other powerful people, and how even if they killed him, they'd be buried so deep in an ocean of shit that they wouldn't even know which way to swim to reach the surface.
The man in front of him just listened impassively as he ranted. Occasionally, one of the guards standing behind the middle-aged man would snicker at one of the comments.
Eventually, however, the man in front of him appeared to grow tired of listening to these insults hurtled into his face. He reached for a knife strapped to his belt opposite the pistol, but then paused.
"You might want to step outside for this part," he said to Jenna, who had remained standing beside him, still glaring with burning fury at James.
The girl just transferred her flat gaze over to the middle-aged man. "I'm not going anywhere," she stated. "I'm going to watch him suffer for everything he did to me, and I'm going to enjoy watching."
For a moment, it looked as though the man wanted to argue with the girl, but he swallowed down his objections and shrugged. "Hey, it's your revenge," he said, turning back to James.
"I'm not scared of you," the millionaire lied as the man clicked the blade open.
"Really?" the man asked, raising one eyebrow as he locked the blade into the open position. "That seems surprisingly stupid of you. Now, let's see if we can get you to start talking."
And eventually, James talked.
He told them about the brothel, how he had acquired it from a couple of gangsters who were looking at moving out of the area. "Too many damn bikers around," they'd complained when they gave up the brothel to James.
That comment made the men standing guard in the back chuckle, although their faces still looked rather gray. One of them had gone running off when James's tormenter began using the blade, presumably to vomit, but had returned back, wiping off his mouth.
James kept on talking, after a bit of prompting from the man with the blade. He talked about how he had contacts to bring the girls in, how his men did most of the day-to-day running of the operation, but simply deposited the cash in one of the many accounts that he, as CEO of his branch of banks, both controlled and could mask from the authorities. He shared names, details, even information on some of the other illegal operations in which he played a part. The men listening to him exchanged another glance with each other when he mentioned that one of the truckers behind drug running operation had recently been robbed.
Eventually, however, even James fell silent, with nothing else to share. He slumped forward, breathing heavily as blood dripped down his face.
"There," he groaned, his voice hoarse from pain and exertion. "Now, what are you going to do with me?"
His tormentor stood up from the stool across from where James was still bound to his armchair. He stretched his hands up over his head, working out some of the stiffness that had settled into his joints.
"What am I going to do with you?" the man repeated, a bit of humor in his tone as he echoed the question back. "Why, nothing. I think you've answered all of my questions."
For a moment, James felt a little spark of hope flare in his bleeding chest.
"But now, I'm going to turn you over to Jenna, here," the man continued, nodding to the grim-faced girl standing beside him. "And, as I understand it, she's got quite the grudge against you."
James stared up into the girl's eyes, and he felt that little spark of hope extinguish itself. There was no hope in those eyes for him. He suddenly remembered all the torment he had heaped upon her during previous sessions together, how he had abused her body, like he had done to so many other girls.
The man beside her offered her the hilt of the knife, and Jenna solemnly took it from him. "Want me here?" he asked, leaning in to murmur the words to her.
She considered it for a moment, but then shook her head. "I think that this needs to be private," she replied. Her eyes locked onto James, and the hatred flared up anew, making her look briefly like an avenging angel.
"We've got a lot of history to discuss."
#
Sticking to his word, Cain stepped out of the warehouse. After a minute, he heard both Bucky and Talon follow after him. All three of the men stepped out into the warm morning air, feeling the sun warming their black clothing.
Talon was the first to break the silence. "You know, we're calling a lot of trouble down on ourselves with this," he pointed out. "This is going to attract law enforcement, the police, all of them. Even if we avoid their first sweep, there's going to be more eyes on the area for years, just looking for trouble."
"So what, you want to let him go?" Bucky burst out, spinning around to glare at the older officer. "Are you crazy? You saw what he did to those girls, heard what he told us! And even if we let him go, he'd still bring seven kinds of Hell down onto our heads-"
Cain laid his hand on Bucky's shoulder, cutting the man off. "I'm sure that Talon is just as angered over the offenses that man committed as you are," he said soothingly. "And Bucky's right, too. It's too late for us to give up now."
"Besides," he went on, "I'm not even agreeing it to because Jenna deserves vengeance. After all the evil that the man in there has committed, I can't even see myself making any other choice. It would be... wrong."
After a long minute, Talon nodded. The Iron Skulls might differ greatly in personal ethics from member to member, but they all held on to core values, values that forbid rape and torture of innocents and helpless.
As far as they could see, James Archon was neither innocent nor helpless - but his victims definitely were.
For several minutes, the bikers simply enjoyed the sunlight and the fresh air outside the warehouse; it was a welcome break from the lingering smell of death and the comparative darkness inside the building. Adding to that unpleasantness had been the smell of fear rolling off of James Archon, even before he guessed at his fate.
Just as they were about to turn around and head inside, the door opened once more and Jenna emerged. She looked a little stunned, wavering on her feet as though she was about to faint, and both Cain and Bucky rushed to support her in case she fell.
She leaned on Cain for a moment, but then stood on her own, waving the men off. "I'm okay," she said, after taking in a deep breath of the fresh air and breathing it out slowly and gratefully.
"How's the raping bastard of a millionaire?" Bucky asked.
Jenna took another deep breath. "He's not going to hurt anyone else, not any more," she said simply.
The men glanced at each other, and then nodded.
"And what about you?" Cain asked, after another moment of silence. "Are you going to be all right?"
Instead of answering him, Jenna turned and put her arms around him, squeezing her face tightly against his chest. She took several breaths, and Cain cautiously raised his arms around her as well, fearing that she was about to burst into tears.
When she lifted her face from his chest, however, she wore a smile. It was a faint and slightly watery smile, but it was a smile nonetheless, and it grew stronger as she tilted her face up towards the bright, clear morning sun.
"I feel all right," she said quietly, looking up at the blue sky above them. "In fact, I feel much better than all right - I think this is better than I've felt in a very long time."
Cain glanced back over his shoulder at the warehouse behind them, but Bucky and Talon both stepped forward before he could act.
"Don't worry about it," Bucky called out. "Wolf gave us some suggestions on how to make sure that everything vanishes. I don't think that we're going to have to worry much about someone stumbling onto Archon's body, or even realizing where he went."
"After all," Talon picked up with a grin, "what in the world would a respected millionaire businessman be doing in connection with an abandoned brothel?"
For a moment
, Cain still hesitated, but Jenna reached down and took his hand. As he felt those smaller, slender fingers slide into his own, thought of the millionaire, of the murder he had just helped to commit, slipped away from Cain's mind. Along with them went concerns over what would happen with the girls still at his barn, with the inevitable investigation by the authorities that would soon follow.
Instead, he simply allowed Jenna to lead him a few steps away, out into the softly swaying grass in the field, into the warmth of the morning sun.
Jenna laughed aloud, turning around in the field, and Cain watched her, once again feeling that strange surge of emotion inside his chest. Love! Such a ridiculous concept, one he had thought completely beyond him by this age.
But he couldn't deny it - and couldn't hold back his own smile.
Chapter thirty-four - Epilogue
Three months later...
With a squeal, Jenna grabbed at the handlebars, eliciting a roar from the engine in response. The big machine between her legs bucked at the acceleration, and she nearly lost her grip and went tumbling backwards.
Standing next to her, Cain hurriedly reached out for the hand controls, silently patting himself on the back for the fiftieth time for having the foresight to lift the machine up and put it on blocks so the rear wheel didn't contact the ground.
"You need to be more gentle with it - it doesn't need a ton of pressure," he said, not for the first time. "You don't mash down the accelerator in a car all the way when you want to accelerate, do you?"
Even as he asked the question, however, Cain felt as though he could have chosen a better example. Jenna tended to handle cars in about the same way that she was attempting to learn to control a motorcycle - throwing herself into it wholeheartedly, not bothering with any concepts like caution or gentleness.
The girl's eyes were wide as she let go of the motorcycle controls, but he could see that she was already raring to try again. "Come on, I almost had it that time!" she insisted, reaching out for the handlebars. "I just have to be fast enough when I pull the clutch in-"
CHAINED: A Motorcycle Club Romance Page 15
