by Addison Jane
Josiah’s mouth twitched into a smile. “You’re a bastard, you know.”
I knew.
KENNEDY
“Jesus Christ!” Brooklyn cursed, leaping off the sofa and running straight to the freezer.
Laken pushed the door open with her back, cradling me against her side at the same time. My body was hunched over, and every movement felt as though someone had their hand inside my stomach and was pulling at organs trying to destroy me from the inside out.
Tears dripped down onto my cheeks as Laken helped me hobble the short distance to the tattered two-seater sofa which was really the only thing we could fit in our tiny living room. If you could even call it that. The back of the sofa was pressed against the kitchen counter. Technically, I think that made it part of the kitchen.
“Take a deep breath,” Laken warned as she lowered me into the soft cushions.
“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” I cursed, squeezing my eyes shut and gripping her hand tightly. When I finally settled into the seat, I managed to take a slow and painful breath. “Motherfucking ribs.”
Laken continued to hold my hand, sinking to her knees beside me and stroking my leg softly with her free hand. She knew this feeling all too well. She knew how much it hurt. She knew how it made us feel so goddamn broken, so fucking worthless.
“Here.”
I finally pried my eyes open to see my baby sister standing over me, offering me one of the many ice packs we kept in the freezer. She had a heavy frown on her face, and her lips were pursed tightly. I knew she fucking hated it when I came home looking like I’d done a couple rounds in the ring. You could safely say this wasn’t a rare occurrence.
“Thanks,” I said quietly, reaching out and taking it from her hand and placing it directly on my ribcage. “I think he might have actually broken something this time.”
“Do you want another one for your face?” Brooklyn snapped, her irritated teenage attitude the last fucking thing I needed right now.
I looked up at her, ready to tell her to watch her mouth, but the words slipped away the instant I saw the way her eyes filled with tears.
“If you’re okay, I’ll leave you to rest,” Laken offered, climbing to her feet. She leaned over and brushed the loose and crazy strands of hair away from my face and pressed her lips to my forehead. “Six months to go. Hang in there,” she whispered, pulling back and offering me a sad smile.
I swallowed back the burning sensation in my throat and nodded. “Six months to go.”
Brooklyn followed her to the door. I could hear Laken whispering something to my little sister who just bobbed her head up and down and chewed on her lip. Laken was my best friend, and apart from Brooklyn, the person I trusted the most in this entire world.
Brooklyn kept me strong, Laken kept me sane.
Thankfully, she lived a few doors down in our building. It was owned by the club, and just a few blocks from the clubhouse. They had this no women living on the property rule. We had to be out by midnight on weekdays, during the weekends we were expected to be there until someone sent us home. All of which I’d learned was different than a lot of other MC’s who had rooms in the clubhouse for their club whores.
Crow, he was far too paranoid and controlling for that shit. To him, we were untrustworthy, and he couldn’t be sure one of us wasn’t going to pull a knife on him in the middle of the night and slit his throat. To be honest, he was pretty on the money with that one.
“I’m going to bed,” Brooklyn announced, turning the lock on the front door. Her hand lingered on it for a few seconds before she finally turned to face me, tears streaking her cheeks.
“Brook…”
She shook her head and stormed forward. She was like me in so many ways. She loved hard which made her fight even harder to protect her heart. Neither of us liked that we felt our emotions so deeply, so we were constantly trying to counteract them by pretending we were stronger than we actually were. We stood taller, we cursed more, we lifted our chins and defied the world to try and protect our hearts.
And it always got us in trouble.
It was how I ended up like this.
“I’m sick of this, Kenz,” she protested. The tiny squeak in her voice as she said my name was like a hot poker through my heart. I knew this life hurt her, it destroyed her a little more every single time I walked into this apartment. She knew what I was doing, she knew the sacrifices I was making with my body so we could possibly have some kind of future without having to look over our shoulders every five minutes. “I can’t keep watching those assholes use you. What happens next time when they hit you a little too hard and you never wake up, or when they’re so angry their fists aren’t doing the trick anymore and they pull their knife or a fucking gun.”
“Six months, Brook… it’s just six months, and then the contract is over,” I told her, trying not to think about just how fucking right she was. One day, Crow was going to lose his shit completely, and he wasn’t going to stop. He was going to beat me until I was bloody and barely breathing. Because he was a fucking psycho.
A psycho who for some reason thought this was what life was. Maybe that made me a psycho too. Because I was just going along with it pretending like this was some kind of love story where you could break a person’s jaw and apologize after, and that made it all fucking okay.
Fuck.
“How the hell did I let it get to this?” I whispered, suddenly realizing what kind of fucked-up world I was bringing up my little sister in. When did this become fucking normal? When did I become okay just to accept a beating and return to that person in a few days and pretend like it had never happened?
Because that was what I would do.
After a few days, I’d go back to the clubhouse.
I’d continue fucking the deadbeat bastards there.
And I’d convince myself that soon, it would be over.
Soon, I’d be done.
Except…
“He’s never gonna let you leave,” Brooklyn voiced exactly what I was thinking.
Crow was a man who saw something he wanted and took it. And when I was eighteen, that thing was me.
I was that young girl desperately trying to keep my head above water. I was the naïve teenager who was stripping out front and fucking guys out back in order to make a little extra cash. All because I’d been dumped with a debt that wasn’t mine, and that was the only way I could make enough to keep the collectors at bay.
I thought this man was my savior.
The proposition he offered guaranteed me a place to stay free of rent. It promised protection. It was going to keep food on the table, and it was going to keep Brooklyn with me and not have her torn away by child protective services. So I signed right on the dotted line, and I gave the club five years.
It wasn’t really a hard decision to make. I was already fucking strangers and taking my clothes off.
Was I proud of it? No.
But I wasn’t ashamed.
I did what I had to do in order to protect my family, to make sure Brooklyn didn’t have to suffer, and to make sure she didn’t end up doing exactly this.
At the beginning, it seemed like a small price to pay.
Until I started paying in more than just sex.
I started paying in black eyes, broken ribs, and the occasional concussion.
Brooklyn licked her lips. I could see her fighting to get her words out because she knew I wouldn’t like them. “Maybe if I—”
“Do not make me get up off this sofa, Brook. Because if you finish that sentence, I’m gonna have to drag myself over to you, force you into your bedroom, and then lock the door behind you so you can never leave.” It was beginning to hurt just to breathe, but I wasn’t quite sure if it was because of the blow I’d had to my stomach, or whether it was the thought of Brooklyn ever being in any kind of position that resembled the one I was in.
She dropped to her knees beside the sofa and grabbed my hand. “It would be easier if we could do this together,
rather than you just trying to protect me all the time,” she argued softly. I opened my mouth, but she quickly shut me down again. “Kenz, we are all we have. You’re putting your life on the line while I’m going to school, getting an education, hanging out with friends. That’s not fair!”
“This conversation is over,” I told her sternly, squeezing her hand tightly and looking her directly in the eye. “I love you. And someday soon, things will be better. I promise.”
I knew she wanted to argue, to tell me I was wrong and give me some speech on all the ways it would be better if I just let my little sister—the only family I had in this world—join the club and be treated like trash.
I knew in her mind she thought she understood just how hard it was, to be owned, to be an object, to allow men to look at you as though you’re just a tool to get them off. She thought she understood what it would be like to have them slap you, punch you, and shove you down on your knees in the dirt.
She didn’t.
She had no idea what it was like.
And I would make sure that she never knew.
Once you know, you become complacent, it becomes normal. And every blow they throw doesn’t hurt any less, but you begin to convince yourself that you deserve them, that you should have known better.
I wanted her to know better.
“One day I hope you find a guy who shows you how a woman should really be treated,” she whispered softly, bringing my palm to her cheek. “So then you’ll see what kind of life you really deserve. Because this isn’t it, Kenz.”
I laughed, grabbing my side when a sharp pain shot through me. “Well, pretty girl, I hope I know when I find him because, at this stage, all men are the same to me.”
REPO
The sun was fucking scorching against my skin. I could practically feel it melting off my bones.
It was even worse standing on the bubbling asphalt in the middle of the fucking desert. God help these assholes when I finally got my hands on them. As if they weren’t already dead men walking, the fact that I had to stand in this heat and wait for their dumbasses meant I was gonna make it hurt.
I almost felt sorry for these motherfuckers who thought it was a good idea to start running their fucking drugs through our city. They had to be all fucking shades of idiot in a rainbow of stupid.
“Anyone got a damn umbrella or something?” Crush complained, holding his arm over his head. A second later the corner of his mouth twitched. “Your head’s looking a nice shade of pink there, Myth.”
Myth turned just slightly in Crush’s direction. “Same shade as your mom’s pussy when I’m done fucking it.”
The smile dropped from Crush’s face instantly, and I held my breath, trying not to crack.
“You’re a dick.”
Myth turned away, leaning against his bike with a satisfied smirk. Myth and I transferred to Phoenix together from our chapter down in Texas. He was a little light on hair up top. Not because it had fallen out on its own, but because he liked to keep it shaved almost completely.
He had a good reason to—he was a fighter.
Myth had more than a handful of national titles under his belt, and those were just the legal ones he’d earned before he was forced underground. He was disqualified from the national circuit when he almost killed his opponent just before his final fight.
The asshole tried to kidnap his sister a couple days before and use her as leverage to force Myth to lay down and take a beating, but what the other guy didn’t know was that Myth was prospecting at the time with the club.
And the club protects its own and their family.
We got to her.
Myth got to him.
After a few moments of sulking, Crush finally huffed out a defeated breath. “Fine, fuck y’all. But if I end up with third-degree burns, I get to shoot someone.”
He wasn’t the only one getting a little trigger happy. You’d think I’d be used to this kind of heat by now, being a Texas boy, but we didn’t go out in temperatures this fucking hot and just hang out on desert roads where there was no shade, no breeze, and wearing heavy fucking leathers.
Who were the goddamn stupid ones now?
“You sure they’re heading this way?” I confirmed, leaning back on my bike and looking over at Shotgun. I could feel the sweat dripping down my back, and I was pretty sure Crush was right about us all getting burned.
It’d be a cold day in hell before you heard me complain about it, though.
I did what I had to do for the club.
“Tag text and said that they’d turned onto this highway, and he’d set up the cones to block it off,” Shotgun confirmed, looking down at the time on the phone in his hand. Shotgun was the club president. He was quiet, stern, and fair, but he was also the first to cut your tongue out if you were disrespectful. “They should be here in a few minutes.”
This road bypassed the part of the city where the club was located. It was pretty dang empty, even more so now that the traffic had been stopped at both ends to make sure we had that little bit of extra privacy. These guys were trying to skirt around the edges of Phoenix, make it seem like they weren’t doing the fucking dirty by heading straight through the city. But everyone fucking knew you didn’t just drive your shit through another man’s backyard without giving him a heads up or offering him some kind of compensation.
Maybe they could have got away with their shit too if they hadn’t been so fucking greedy.
The reason we’d figured out what the hell they were doing was because last month they’d stopped on their way through to catch a drink and run their mouths, trying to sell some of their stuff off to the locals for a bit of extra cash.
You have greedy fingers, you’ll soon find them missing.
“Here comes the party.” Shake grinned as a small white dot which was probably the size of a small moving truck appeared on the horizon. All of us turned and reached into our saddlebags pulling out our guns.
With the road empty and contained, it was deadly quiet. That was until the fucker who was driving the truck must have spotted us waiting on the empty stretch and decided to put his foot to the floor. The truck engine revved louder, and I chuckled under my breath, shaking my head as I checked the chamber of my gun. “He thinks he’s just gonna plow through us and run us down.”
Shotgun snorted, cocking his sawn-off shotgun. It was old, worn, and clearly well used—with words and pictures carved into the wood of the handle. I still had questions about how Shotgun got his road name, but I was almost positive that gun had something to do with it.
“Little does he realize…” Shake murmured as the truck roared toward us at high speed.
The driver thought he was going to just drive as fast as he fucking could and head straight through our rides and us, and come out the other side all rainbows and fucking sprinkles. I clicked my tongue and shook my head as a loud, piercing pop filled the air, and suddenly the truck which was hurtling toward us began to fishtail.
“Tire number one,” Shotgun noted, the heavy gun hanging at his side in a relaxed position. He obviously wasn’t concerned even as the out-of-control vehicle still careened down the road.
It was getting closer and closer swerving back and forth across the slim road, the driver obviously fighting for control. He might have found it too, but a few seconds later there was another loud explosion.
“Tire number two,” Shotgun confirmed with a smile as the truck turned completely sideways and began to tilt.
Crush cupped his hands around his mouth. “Timber!” The truck landed on its side with a loud thud shaking the ground beneath our feet. The sound of metal being scraped and torn at speed by the asphalt sent a chill straight up my spine and forced a shudder through my body.
The metallic screeching was like nails on a chalkboard and filled the still desert air around us. Even though the truck was still more than five hundred feet from us down the road, the sound of deep voices screaming in horror was as clear as day. It almost gave me
the warm fuzzies.
“Call Auron, let him know to pack up his stuff and head back to the club,” Shotgun ordered, turning and throwing his leg over his ride and starting her up. He laid his gun across his lap and grinned over his shoulder at the rest of us. “Let’s go have a chat with our new friends.”
Crush pulled out his cell and dialed Auron while Shake, Myth, and I got on our rides and followed our president down the short stretch of road to where the dust and destruction was still settling.
Auron was another of our brothers—the one with the best fucking shot I’d ever seen. He was half a mile up in the small sand-type hills to the right side of the road. And he hit a moving target… twice.
We cruised beside the dented and destroyed truck which had dug out a four-foot deep trench in the soft sand. The tires were still spinning, and the air was cloudy as we kicked the stands on our bikes and switched off the engines.
Should have let them fucking idle because my ears were soon assaulted by the music inside the cab which was still pumping loudly—some kind of heavy metal where the guy just screamed in a high-pitched voice and wailed on about the devil. “Holy fuck, will someone turn that shit off,” I pleaded, cringing as we approached the truck. We were moving slowly on our toes, careful, and preparing for anything that might jump ou—
Bang.
I leaped back behind the body of the truck and pressed myself back against the hard white painted metal. Shake and Myth both did the same while Shotgun looked even more fucking pissed off, cocking the barrel of his gun and aiming it through the roof of the car. “You either climb out here, or my boys drag you out looking like Swiss fucking cheese. You got three seconds. One, Two—”
“All right,” a deep voice screamed from inside, followed by some serious coughing. It sounded like the accident had already done some damage. “We’re coming out.”
We stepped out from behind the truck as two guys pulled themselves from the overturned vehicle, climbing out the driver’s side door. One after another they pulled themselves over the edge and tumbled down onto the hot sandy dirt.
