Neither Black Nor White (Iron Dogz MC, #6)

by René Van Dalen

  Much, much later two pigs walked in and sat down across from me. I immediately saw they were too relaxed, it meant they had enough to charge me. Maybe even enough to convict me.

  “Tell me about your day yesterday. Start in the morning and leave nothing out.” The bald guy with a bit of a belly set his phone down on the table, sat back and waited.

  With a sigh I went through my day. Told them about the visit with Rentia and her man. It was when I got to the visit with my dad that both the men sat forward. I told them about chatting with my dad, drinking tea and then going home. (I lied about that one.) I said I went home and woke up this morning feeling weird and covered in blood. I told them I had no idea where it came from.

  Of course they didn’t believe me.

  I then found out what I had apparently done.

  According to the pigs I had broken into a jewellery store and stolen a bunch of stuff. (It was found in my flat, of course) On my way out the security guard surprised me and we fought. I stabbed him in the arm but he grabbed my knife and while defending himself cut and stabbed me. I ran away and he gave the pigs a description of the woman who had attacked him.

  Me.

  Needless to say they ignored my plea of innocence. The only ones who believed me were Rentia and her man but they were powerless to help.

  I was sent to prison while awaiting trial because my bail application was refused. The doctor at the facility took one look at me and ordered me transported to the closest hospital. By the time I arrived at the hospital I was weak, disorientated, covered in blood and in excruciating pain. Every time I spoke the wounds across my lips broke open and bled profusely.

  I had two nasty cuts on my face. One started in the centre of my forehead ran down between my eyebrows, slanted down the left side of my nose and curved around my nostril before slicing through the side of my lips and ending on my chin. The other cut started in my hairline above my left eye, sliced through my eyebrow narrowly missing my eye before continuing down my cheek to my jaw.

  On the insistence of the prison doctor I was taken to a state hospital to receive treatment. The doctors tried their best to minimise the damage but because it had taken so long before I received treatment some of the damage to my facial muscles couldn’t be repaired by a trauma doctor, even though two of them tried. I would need a plastic surgeon to fix my face. Obviously that didn’t happen. I spent three days under guard at the hospital before being returned to the prison hospital. Once the bandages were removed I took one look in the mirror and knew my face would never look the same again. I was disfigured and would never be pretty again.

  It took a long time for me to get used to the thick red scars but after a few years, as they thinned and paled I didn’t notice them anymore. They became a part of who I am.

  While I was awaiting trial one of the organisation’s lawyers came to see me. He stared at the healing scars on my face that I made no effort to hide. My hair was pulled back in a ponytail leaving them starkly on view. He told me he would get me off with a slap on the wrist sentence as long as I agreed to do a couple of jobs while I was on the inside. When I asked what use a thief would be on the inside he smiled, and it wasn’t a good smile.

  He almost broke me when he started laying photographs out on the steel table in front of me. The horror flashes I had been having were real. Olaf was dead. I was alone now but my father had trained me well. Trained me to endure anything that might be thrown at me, to be strong and survive.

  “Your father speaks very highly of you and he assured us you would be perfect for this assignment. You won’t be doing your usual type of job; we have something else we want you to do. There are a couple of loose ends we need you to tie up while you’re inside.”

  I played stupid. “Tie up how?”

  He smiled again. “Permanently.”

  My father and his people wanted me to kill for them while I was in prison. I sat in stunned silence staring at the smarmy bastard across the table from me. If I did what they wanted I would never get out. I would die in prison. It was most probably their plan but not mine. One day I would be free and they would start paying for what they had done. Every single one of them.

  Looking down at my clenched hands I sighed. When I looked up he was smiling as if he had broken me. The smile very quickly disappeared when I started speaking.

  “Tell Donald Murchison that as of today he is dead to me. I will not kill on command. Not for him, not for anybody. I’ll keep my mouth shut and do whatever time the court decides to give me. Don’t come back because I will refuse to see you.”

  The bastard gave me a knowing smirk. “Little girl, I advise that you rethink your position. You will not like what happens if you refuse us.”

  I lifted my shackled arms, pointed at the photographs then at my face and shrugged.

  “I’m in here with a ruined face and I’m not getting out anytime soon. You bastards made sure of that.”

  “Believe me little girl, we can make it so much worse. You have the afternoon to reconsider. If you don’t, well, I wish you luck in court tomorrow.”

  After slowly packing up the horrific photographs he left me sitting there in silence until the guard came to take me back to my cell.

  I did not have any luck in court.

  As promised I kept my mouth shut but it hardly mattered. My case was open and shut apparently. The evidence was overwhelming and I had no high priced lawyer at my side fighting for me. The magistrate’s decision was almost a foregone conclusion. She found me guilty of all charges and remanded the case for sentencing.

  I was fuming silently by the time I was taken back down to the cells below the courtroom. No one asked for my side of the story. It was brushed aside as if it didn’t matter. Like I no longer mattered.

  I had to wait two long months to learn my fate because the bitch of a magistrate had a full caseload. I’m sure it was just another way of trying to force me to give in and do what they wanted and a way to make me fear the outcome of my trial. But I was no longer afraid.

  I stood stoically as the bitch sentenced me to 10 years in prison. I, at nineteen, was apparently a hardened criminal who was a danger to society and therefore had to be shut away. She ignored the fact that I had no criminal record during sentencing. Ignored anything I had to say.

  With no one speaking up for me I was locked away. I looked at the magistrate before they led me away and she quickly looked down and shuffled the papers in front of her.

  And that’s when I knew the bitch on the bench was dirty, she had been bought. She had sentenced a nineteen year old to ten years in prison on planted evidence. A proper investigation would have highlighted all the inconsistencies in the case. But the pigs, the prosecutor and the magistrate had all been bought by my father. I memorised every single name. He did it for the organisation he was a part of and for the woman he was sleeping with. Winifred Maingarde, the bitch who ran the organisation.

  She did it to show me and the others who worked for her how powerful she was. That she could do anything she wanted and no one would stand up against her.

  She took ten years of my life because I refused to kidnap a child. Ten years of my life because I fell in love with a man not of her choosing. Ten years because I refused to kill for them once I was locked up.

  I saw Donald Murchison once right after I was sentenced. I sat across from him not saying a word as he coldly and very calmly told me to be ready to receive my orders. He couldn’t look at my ruined face and stared coldly over my shoulder the entire time. I didn’t say a word and he eventually gave up and left.

  The first thing I did when he left was to remove him and anyone connected to my old life from my visitors list. The only people who remained on the list were my sister Rentia and her man Denver.

  I was done with my father and the organisation he had trained me to serve and had then chosen over me. Done with the man who had coldly murdered the man I loved while forcing me to watch in a drug induced stupor. Someday I would make him p
ay for everything he had done.

  From the moment I walked through the prison gates after being released from the prison hospital I had a target painted on my back courtesy of the organisation. My battered face and age fooled the prison guards and the hard core bitches. I looked like an easy target but that was far from true. I had grown up under the hard hand of Donald Murchison and after the shit he had put me through I was determined to never again be anyone’s target.

  My second day inside I proved to those prison bitches that I wasn’t someone they could intimidate or beat down. Even with my freshly healed scars. A big rough looking bitch and her posse cornered me in the bathroom. Their idea was to force me into becoming the dyke’s new toy. I took exception to them trying to force me to eat her pussy and with Cuba, my new cell mate at my back, beat the living crap out of them all. The fight earned me a week in solitary but I didn’t give a shit, it had to be done. The viciousness of the fight and my face earned me my prison nickname, Scarface. It was soon shortened to Face and that’s who I became.

  Face Murchison, someone you should not piss off or approach without caution.

  I knew if I wanted to survive in that shit hole I had to seize control. I fought my way to the top of the dung heap that was prison and stayed there for the ten years I was imprisoned.

  Prison hardened me and made me into a woman other prisoners feared. It was a well-known fact that I punished bullies and rapists and protected the weak. And if you crossed me or ignored my rules I retaliated instantly.

  The guards were another matter. I had to be very careful around them because several were in the pay of the Harrison Syndicate, the renamed Maingarde Organisation. The renaming happened after Dominick Maingarde made it known to the underworld that anyone using his family name would die choking on their own blood. A few did before they believed him. Even in prison we heard how fast the Harrisons scrambled to comply with his demand. I had never personally worked with the man but I knew him and his reputation, and he wasn’t someone you wanted to piss off. He was the old bitch’s unofficial heir to her crime kingdom. On my list his name had a question mark behind it.

  I had always been wary of him, until the day he reached out through Rentia and changed the course of my life. In a good way.

  During my years inside there had been two serious attempts on my life and it left me with blood on my hands. Luckily neither of the attacks took place where there were cameras and I was never a suspect. Both of the women had been lifers with no possibility of ever getting out and didn’t give a damn about adding another murder to their prison time. As far as I was concerned I acted in self-defence and my conscience was clear. Emotionally I felt nothing, nothing at all. Killing them had been necessary, nothing more.

  I slowly built up a crew of women I had chosen for their skills but also because I liked and trusted them. There were six in my main crew who I trusted implicitly; Carla, Cuba, Starling, Evvie, Mads and Pet.

  Carla Willemse was my second in command in prison and a tough as hell hardened long term prisoner. She was in for a twenty year stretch and had already served five of those years when I arrived.

  Monique “Cuba” Gooding and I arrived within days of each other and were cell mates from the start. She was doing a ten year stretch for embezzlement, forgery and assault with a deadly weapon. She admitted to the forgery and the assault but denied the embezzlement charge. Her ex skipped the country with the money and the pigs were only too happy to pin it all on her. Typical.

  Santa “Starling” Burger was doing five years for hacking into government and corporate servers.

  Evalinah “Evvie” Burgess was in for a five year stretch for car theft.

  Madhuri “Mads” Naidoo was Evvie’s accomplice and was in for five years for car theft as well.

  Petro “Pet” Roux was the last one to join our group and was in for a short two year stint. She had been working as a high class escort for an exclusive agency where sex wasn’t part of the contract. Her last date tried to force her to have sex and she beat the bastard up. Unfortunately for her he was connected, to the damned Syndicate, hence the jail time.

  Pet was young and I gave her my protection when she came in and she joined my crew. She would be getting out three months after me.

  Evvie and Mads were released first and I was released a few months later. The others didn’t have to wait too long to join us outside.

  I made sure that once I left, Carla the stone cold bitch taking over from me, would keep Cuba, Star and Pet safe until they were released.

  The price for their safety wasn’t high. She asked me to keep an eye on her two girls and her mother once I got out. Easy. The girls were seventeen and sixteen and living with their granny but her health wasn’t the best. It was an easy deal to agree to for the safety of my girls.

  Unfortunately Carla wouldn’t be getting out with us. She still had five years left on her sentence.

  What Carla didn’t know was that I was planning to employ a lawyer as soon as I was free to start pushing for parole. It would cost money to grease some palms to expedite her parole hearing but it would be worth it. She had been given the shaft at her trial, same as Pet and I. She caught her boyfriend, the girls’ father, touching her babies inappropriately while jerking off and lost her mind. She attacked him and during the fight he was stabbed (with his own knife) and bled out. His family had money, of course, and Carla ended up in jail instead of walking free. His parents tried to take the girls but thankfully Carla’s mother got custody of them.

  Prison wasn’t as completely isolated as people would like to think. We heard things inside and those whose families came to visit kept them up to date on the goings on outside the prison gates. I was aware that the Syndicate had grown in strength and influence and that Murchison had done the same. He was the right hand of the bitch who had ruined my life.

  Tension was my daily companion and I became used to always being watchful and aware of my surroundings. Not a bad thing at all. It prepared me for the life I would be leading once I got out.

  I knew that the day I walked out the prison gates my destiny would be back in my own hands and not left up to the whims of corrupt officials in the pay of the Syndicate.

  For ten years my sister Rentia and her man Denver were my only visitors. The only ones I would agree to see.

  I was happy for her when she married Denver Kepler, even more so when she had his babies because he was a good man. During my ten years inside they’ve had two babies, a boy and a girl. I had photos of my nephew and niece on the wall next to my bunk along with photos of Rentia and Denver’s wedding day and some with them and their babies. My sister glowed with happiness every time I saw her and her man didn’t disguise the fact that he loved her. They were perfect together.

  It gave me peace to know she was happy.

  Face - Aged Twenty Nine

  With my release date fast approaching Rentia and Denver insisted they wanted to be the ones to pick me up and settle me in my new place. I had to refuse their kind offer. My big sister almost lost her shit when I explained why but thankfully my brother-in-law calmed her down before a guard noticed.

  A warning had reached my ears that the Syndicate would be coming for me when I got out. No way would I expose my only family to their shit. Instead Evvie and Mads would pick me up and take me to the house Denver had found for us. It was big enough to house all of us until the building I had bought with Dom’s help was ready for us to move in. A crew Dom trusted was busy renovating the building to my specifications. We needed a fortress and we would have one.

  On the day before I would finally walk out the gates of hell to my freedom I received a visitor I could not refuse.

  A pig.

  But not just any pig. It was the pig. The one who had started it all.

  I silently sat down and looked at the man looking back at me. The past ten years had been good to him and he looked as handsome, if not more so, than he had before.

  He didn’t beat around the bush
but came right to the point.

  “I compared a handwriting sample I had to two other samples I managed to acquire.”

  My insides cramped but I nonchalantly raised my shoulders in a shrug. “So, what does that have to do with me?”

  “Nothing and everything.” He smiled as he tapped the fingers of one hand on the steel table. He waited a beat before he continued. “Because of one person’s conscience my daughter is celebrating her thirteenth birthday next week. I doubt she would be alive today if that person hadn’t left a warning before walking away. I’m no longer on the force, haven’t been for close to four years now. I own and run a security agency, the Nichols Agency. I want you to call me when you get out because I have a proposition for you and your crew. A job opportunity. Call me.”

  With that he stood, touched two fingers to his forehead and walked out.

  I sat quietly for a few seconds before I was escorted out the room by two guards. One I trusted the other I didn’t so I kept my mouth shut and my eyes open.

  Later that night I lay in my bunk and wondered what had clued him in on my involvement with the attempt to kidnap his daughter.

  It happened ten years ago, so why the hell should I worry about it. Not going to let it clog up my brain when I needed all my wits about me for what was coming.

  Tomorrow I was walking out of the hell hole and starting a new life.

  All I had to do was survive one last night.

  One last night locked away behind steel doors and bars.

  One last night before freedom would be mine.

  One. Last. Night.

  I could do it.

  Easily.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Face

  Present Day / Thursday

  “Face!”

  Star’s panicked shout had me out of my chair and rushing out of my office to her office.

  “What? What’s wrong?”

  “Your sperm donor is at the gate and he’s demanding to speak to you.”

  I snorted through my nose and shook my head.