Bruiser let out another deep sob and then shook his head wildly.
“Now that’s just a glaring lie, Bruiser, and you know it. It says right here in your reply to Bridges that Dart has been talking shit about him for months. You’ve given him the names of every man in the chapter wanting to take Bridges down. That was nice of you. You really are his little bitch. That makes me think you know more than you’re telling me, Bruiser, about where Bridges is right this minute.”
“I don’t. I’m not.” Bruiser made the denial looking wild-eyed at the phone.
Steele shook his head as he thumbed through the texts. “Says he’ll do you no problem, Dart, just reiterates that Breezy is his after. Bridges goes on to say she might need a few hard lessons, and look here, Bruiser, you were more than happy to oblige.” Steele looked up from the phone. “You plan to beat the shit out of my woman? Is that what this means?”
“You’re saying that Bruiser really agreed to kill me?” Dart demanded. He couldn’t believe it, not even after Steele had shown him the texts.
“Kill you. Beat the shit out of Breezy. And there’s more. So much more, isn’t there, Bruiser? No wonder he sent you here. You’ve been his private little bitch for years. Stealing from the club. Spying on your friend. Spying on your brothers. Doing whatever he wanted. But I especially love this. You’ll personally, and that’s personally, but with one L, slit that fucker’s son’s throat right in front of her if Bridges will give you that privilege.”
Steele looked up at Bruiser. “I assume the ‘fucker’ you’re referring to is me. You’re going to kill your best friend, presumably when his back is turned. Beat the shit out of Breezy and rape her in every way possible. Slit my son’s throat in front of her, and all this is to get favors with Bridges. Nice, man, really nice. You really are a piece of shit, aren’t you?”
“Get me out of these chains,” Dart said. “I’ll kill him myself.”
“Sorry, can’t give that to you, Dart.” Steele stepped closer to Bruiser. “He’s going to die slow. But first, you piece of shit, you’d better tell me where Bridges is.”
“I don’t know. I don’t know!” Bruiser screamed.
Steele glanced at Savage and nodded slightly. He admired Dart in some ways. The man rode with the wrong club. He should have chosen better. He rode for his colors and backed his brothers, but whatever his personal code was, it included trafficking women and children, and that wasn’t okay with Torpedo Ink. Dart didn’t know a thing about Bridges, but Bruiser did. Savage stepped up behind Dart and cut his throat, the blade slicing deep. It was fast and quiet, Dart never even suspecting that Savage was behind him.
Bruiser screamed, a high-pitched wail. He fought the chains with almost superhuman strength and then subsided abruptly, his bladder letting go for the third time. Steele just watched him impassively until he quieted to a soft sobbing.
“We just carried out your intentions for you, Bruiser. It was merciful. You’ve been his best friend for what? Twenty years? Since you were kids? That’s the way he always told it to everyone. Since you were in grade school.”
Bruiser continued to weep, shaking his head as he did, looking down at the floor and the blood mixing with the water under Dart’s body.
“Where is he?” Steele asked quietly. It was going to be a very long day. He knew Bruiser wasn’t going to give up the information easily. Somehow, in his twisted brain, he still thought he was going to get out of this with his plans intact.
Steele was rarely wrong. He’d thought Bruiser would break first, but Dart had sacrificed in order to try to save his friend from suffering. The brotherhood at work.
* * *
• • •
Breezy was very cognizant of the fact that they were traveling on mainly motorcycles and she didn’t want to fill the truck with unnecessary sentimental stuff. It wasn’t that she had lots of beautiful things. She didn’t have beautiful things. She had necessary things, but she had managed to acquire them, piece by piece, from hard work. She looked around the bedroom. There wasn’t much there in the way of furniture, but she hadn’t needed much. The room was small. She could walk across it in several long strides. The carpet was old and threadbare with several stains in it.
She was comparing this tiny apartment on a bad side of town to Steele’s multimillion-dollar house, which was all white and pristine. She didn’t know the first thing about caring for a house like that. It was absurd to think she could live there. She sank down on the edge of the bed and buried her face in her hands.
“Honey, talk to me. We’re going to get Zane back. Everyone’s looking, and Czar’s called in favors from other clubs we’ve helped. We’re owed a lot of favors. We’ll find him.”
Breezy shook her head and looked up at Lana. “I’m just so confused right now. I swore I’d never live in a club, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to raise my son in one, but here I am, letting a club risk everything to get my son back.”
“We’re not risking everything,” Lana objected. “We have certain advantages.”
“Steele’s risking everything. His soul. I don’t know. He’s doing things a doctor, a man as sensitive as he is, shouldn’t ever do.”
“He’s done them all his life. He’s had to, for his own survival, and for ours.”
“Maybe, and then there’s that house. Have you seen that house?”
Lana flashed her a smile and sank down onto the bed beside her. “It’s a gorgeous house.”
“It’s too much. I don’t know what he was thinking, buying that house.”
“He was thinking he was getting the best he could for his woman. He might not tell you how he feels about you, but he definitely has no problems showing you.”
“You know about that? That he won’t say he loves me?” Breezy met Lana’s eyes, wanting to find something there, but she didn’t know what she was looking for.
Lana nodded. “He told me what an ass he’d been to you. The moment you were out of his sight, he wanted to run after you. He forced you to leave because he was afraid you’d get hurt or killed in the war between our clubs. He knew we were going to take down the international president and that the Swords would always be looking for us.”
“And my age,” Breezy said. “He was upset when he learned my age.”
Lana nodded. “None of us guessed you were that young. You were always so calm when chaos reigned in the clubhouse. No matter how big a party was, you had the food and the drinks ready. The other women looked to you for their orders. You took care of problems and looked after the kids. You never seemed to get upset. There was no giggling or teenage behavior. Never.”
“I grew up knowing if I made a mistake, no matter how small, I would get beaten. It was expected of me to take care of all things in the clubhouse or at home no matter whether Bridges told me about it or not. If I drew attention to myself in any way, he would beat me or hand me over to his friends. I was lucky in that no one could just put their hands on me. Bridges had to approve, and he was stingy. Growing up that way, I had to think like an adult.”
“Let Steele spoil you, Breezy. You gave him everything when you were with him. You met his every need, and that’s nearly impossible for anyone to do for anyone, but you managed. Let him have the chance to give back. He wants to give you a huge house and let you do anything you want with it, let him. Just remember he needs . . . clean.”
Breezy nodded. “I’m very aware. Fortunately, again growing up the way I did, I prefer clean as well. Maybe not like him, but it’s easy enough, at least it was until he decided we needed a mansion the size of Texas.”
Lana burst out laughing. “I’m sure he’ll hire cleaners to come in.”
“They’ll need to live there permanently and work twenty-four-seven.” Breezy rubbed her hand over her face. “He’s told me a little about his childhood. About the things that happened to you. I’m trying to understand what it
was like for him to have his need for such a completely ascetic home. The walls are white. The floors and ceiling, the stairway. It’s beautiful, but every speck of dirt shows, and there’s Zane. He has to be allowed to be a little boy, and honestly, Steele’s obsessed with cleanliness.”
Lana sighed. “You can’t imagine what the conditions in the basement of that school were like. It was really a prison they’d made into a school. We were shoved into the basement. The floor was filthy, covered in dirt and feces. There were rats down there and cockroaches. When we were returned from one of their sessions, we were bloody and raw, usually from several different areas on our bodies, front and back, so whichever way we lay, we were lying in filth and germs were multiplying. Often they used knives to cut us or whips, so open wounds. It was the worst nightmare possible for a boy like Steele. He felt responsibility, even when he was just very little. Something in him needed to help all of us.”
Breezy’s stomach churned and she pressed a hand to it. She couldn’t imagine Steele as a little boy in those conditions, let alone surrounded by wounded or dying children.
“Sometimes they left dead bodies down there with us for a few days to teach us a lesson. I was never certain what the lesson was, but it added to Steele’s distress and sense of guilt. He’s so protective now, I can’t imagine how that trait will manifest itself with you and Zane. He’ll go crazy trying to keep you safe. The fact that one of our worst enemies has his son has to be killing him right now.”
Breezy sighed. She knew it was killing her, and the fact that Steele was forced to do horrible things to get information for them was making it worse. She hadn’t been able to protect either one of them.
“If Absinthe can get truth out of people, why didn’t you use him?”
“Absinthe’s gift is extremely hard on him. None of us know how it works. Simple things, like pushing a suggestion into someone’s mind, are easy enough; forcing truth when someone is resisting can damage him. There’s levels of resistance, and what we need now is too important—you can bet there will be major resistance. Absinthe wanted to come, but both Czar and Steele refused him.”
Breezy pressed her fingers to her temples. There was no saving Steele from his task. “Lana, I love Steele with everything in me, but there’s things I don’t know if I can handle. He’s pushing me hard and I have this inclination to give him whatever he wants, but I don’t know if I can give in about the club. I’m sorry if that hurts, because I like you. I like all of you, well, the ones I know fairly well, but that doesn’t mean I trust the club life.”
“It was unfortunate that you arrived when we were entertaining the Demons. That chapter has been trying to thank us for helping the wife of their president out of a bad situation. They brought women because they knew most of Torpedo Ink was single. I know Steele looked bad coming out from under those women but—”
“He explained that to me. I choose to accept his explanation.” Breezy hesitated and then took the plunge. “He had photographs of me on his phone. Dozens of them.”
Lana frowned at her. “That’s a good thing, right? He kept them because you matter.”
“Some of them were of us in very intimate positions. I had no idea we were being photographed. He never told me. He likes to have photos. I think he even needs it.”
“Does it matter to you?”
Breezy rubbed the pad of her finger over her lips. Back and forth. Thinking it through. “It doesn’t bother me to have the photographs or that someone he trusts is taking them. It bothers me that he needs them. I think he uses them to reaffirm that I care about him. That he’s my man, the only one I want. He shouldn’t need photographic proof, Lana.”
Lana shrugged. “We’re all fucked up in some way. You are too, or you wouldn’t be able to handle him. You know that’s true. Steele might not look as scary as Reaper or Savage, but no one, not one single person in our club, would ever be stupid enough to cross him. But you, Breezy, you stand up to him. You smile sweetly, and you somehow get him to see reason.”
“Steele’s pretty reasonable.”
Lana nodded her assent. “That’s true, in a fight, or argument, he’d never lose his cool. But with you, in terms of your safety and Zane’s, I wouldn’t bet on it.”
Breezy took a deep breath and let it out, fighting a yawn. “I’m very tired and as soon as Steele is finished, he’s going to want to ride, isn’t he?”
“He’ll want you to get rest and eat,” Lana said and stood up. “What do you really need from here? Or want? We’ll bag it and go.”
Breezy stood too and looked around her. She didn’t need—or want—anything but her child back. She emptied the papers and photographs into a plastic bag and added the two small albums she’d already made up. “This is it. I have his birth certificate and Social as well as all his early photographs. I think Steele will like those.”
“Any favorite blankets or toys Zane might want?” Lana asked.
“Why didn’t I think of that?” Breezy asked and hurried to the crib. She caught up the blue blanket with the rows of sailboats on it and added a stuffed dog that looked a little worse for wear. “He loves animals.”
“Great. Steele might lose his mind if there’s animal hair anywhere.”
Lana started out of the bedroom and Breezy saw her suddenly duck as something whistled through the air. Whatever it was hit the doorjamb, putting a very large dent in the soft wood. A baseball bat clattered to the floor and rolled. Stepping up to the door, she saw someone wearing a Swords jacket facing Lana with a gun in his fist. Even from the back, she knew it was a man named Scalp. She had nightmares about him. He liked to say he could take anyone’s scalp off faster than others could shoot, and she believed him. He and her father went way back. Lana was smirking and didn’t look in the least intimidated.
Breezy wasn’t just scared; she was terrified. She knew how cruel Scalp was. She did the only thing she could think to do. She flung Zane’s little blue blanket over Scalp’s head, counting on Lana to do the rest. Lana didn’t disappoint. She was on the man in seconds, taking him down, knocking him out and calmly talking into her phone. “Need you to pick up trash for us, Preacher, and bring him to Steele. Will leave the bag just inside the door for quick collection.”
She grinned at Breezy. “Didn’t see that coming. Master and Transporter took the prisoners to Steele, and they stayed because they thought we were safe in your apartment. I was supposed to call them when we were done. Preacher was outside, on the roof across the street, not that anyone, including me, was worried, but this is going to make Steele really lose his mind. He’ll probably put all eighteen of us on looking out for you.”
Breezy was still shaken. She admired the fact that Lana didn’t seem in the least bit upset, where she couldn’t even look at the man lying on the floor. Gingerly, she caught the edge of the blanket and yanked.
“Is that Zane’s favorite blanket, or yours?” Lana teased. “If it’s yours, let’s get him a new one. I’m not certain Steele’s going to want that touching his son after it’s touched him.” She kicked the man with the end of her motorcycle boot. Lana wore particularly sharp-toed boots.
“It’s mine,” Breezy said. “I paid more than I really should have. It was new.” That made her ashamed. Zane hadn’t had a lot of new things in his life.
Lana looked at her sharply. “Let’s take it anyway. That’s what washing machines are for.” She caught up the blanket and bags of papers and pressed them into Breezy’s hands. “Grab the stuffed animal. I’ll get the trash ready. I swear, when we were with the Swords, if I heard him bragging one more time about practicing scalping on his bedmate bitches, I was going to do a little scalping of my own.”
“It wasn’t bragging.” Breezy pitched her voice low, afraid the man would overhear her. “I heard my father telling Junk about it. He was laughing. He helped Scalp get rid of more than one body. He said Habit complained that if Scal
p kept killing the women, they would go broke because they couldn’t sell them without a scalp.”
“That’s disgusting. I’ll make certain Preacher lets Steele know. He likes that kind of information.”
“Has anyone texted you? Are they making any progress at all?”
“You can’t hurry these things, Bree. It takes time to get reliable information. First, Steele has to scare the hell out of them without really hurting them. He has to get a feel for when they tell the truth and when they don’t. Also, there’s the whole bravado thing. The macho I-can-hold-out bullshit. We were tortured over and over. We learned to hold out and make it look as if we were caving. We had a lot of experience in that sort of thing. It makes it far easier to see when someone else is bullshitting.”
Breezy sank down into the one decent chair she had. “I thought my life was ugly, but there’s always worse, isn’t there?”
“We made it through,” Lana said practically. She caught Scalp by his jacket and dragged him across the floor to the front door. He was showing signs of coming around and she kicked him hard again, driving the toe of her boot into the side of his head.
Breezy watched her, the casual way Lana did it and then turned her back on him and sauntered across the room, her hips swaying, looking like a million dollars. She looked the epitome of confidence in herself. As a warrior. As a woman. As a biker. She was definitely an equal in Torpedo Ink.
“Do you have a full vote in your club the way Steele does?”
Lana’s gaze jumped to hers. She nodded. “Both Alena and I do. We’re charter members along with the others. Two of Czar’s brothers have joined and are fully patched members, and we have a few prospects. The club coming to us, the ones wanting to be patched over, are out of one of the other schools. They reached out to Czar’s brothers, who live in the area, and then, after they’re vetted, if we agree, we’ll have a chapter up where they live.”
“What about Blythe or Anya?”
Vengeance Road Page 25
