A Chaos Novella
By Kristen Ashley
Click to purchase
Rosalie Holloway put it all on the line for the Chaos Motorcycle Club.
Informing to Chaos on their rival club—her man’s club, Bounty—Rosalie knows the stakes. And she pays them when her man, who she was hoping to scare straight, finds out she’s betrayed him and he delivers her to his brothers to mete out their form of justice.
But really, Rosie has long been denying that, as she drifted away from her Bounty, she’s been falling in love with Everett “Snapper” Kavanagh, a Chaos brother. Snap is the biker-boy-next door with the snowy blue eyes, quiet confidence and sweet disposition who was supposed to keep her safe…and fell down on that job.
For Snapper, it’s always been Rosalie, from the first time he saw her at the Chaos Compound. He’s just been waiting for a clear shot. But he didn’t want to get it after his Rosie was left bleeding, beat down and broken by Bounty on a cement warehouse floor.
With Rosalie a casualty of an ongoing war, Snapper has to guide her to trust him, take a shot with him, build a them…
And fold his woman firmly in the family that is Chaos.
* * * *
He spit on me.
I felt it land on the side of my chin and slide down.
I didn’t move to wipe it away.
I couldn’t.
Lying on my side, curled into a ball, the pain screamed through me. All of it—and there was a lot of it—demanding attention, I couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t think, couldn’t move in case it got worse. I couldn’t do anything but lie there and pray that it was over.
It wasn’t.
He bent over me, grabbed my hair, yanked it back, and I felt his hot breath hit my face.
“See if he wants you now, you stupid bitch,” he hissed.
He let my hair go and I felt him retreat, but he still wasn’t done.
He kicked me so hard with his foot in its heavy motorcycle boot, my body slid across the cement.
I was too far gone even to grunt.
I felt something bounce off my hip, clatter to the floor, and then his voice came back, this time from further away.
“There you go, baby,” he drawled. “Your line to Chaos. We’re done with you. I’m done with you. Now they can have you.”
I heard boots on cement, more than just his, his Bounty brothers in the club. I sustained a couple more kicks as they passed. One of them grabbed the underside of my jaw and shoved my head back into the cement, also spitting, his hitting my neck.
And then they were gone.
I lay there, my focus on breathing and continuing to do it even though each breath was not only an effort but an agony. The fear I’d felt early when he took me, how he’d taken me, the way he’d handled me and I knew he’d figured it out, had dissipated as pain took its place. Now, the fear was returning that they’d come back and dish out more.
He’d come back.
Throttle.
No, to me he was Beck. My boyfriend. Gerard Beck. He hated the first name Gerard so everyone called him Beck. All his life. Or since he could demand that happen and not allow anything but that. Even his mother called him Beck.
Until he got his club name, Throttle. All his brothers called him that. When I was with him when he was with his brothers, I also called him that.
But when we were alone, at home, he was Beck.
My Beck.
My man. My lover. My protector. My future.
The man who’d just spit on me and kicked me.
But he’d done more before that.
He’d grabbed me from work and delivered me right to them, right to where I was right then. Even starting it, choking me until I thought I’d blank out, then clocking me in the temple, then on the jaw, then on my cheekbone.
Throttle.
That name was given to him for a reason but not the reason he’d now become Throttle to me.
I shut my eyes tight, opened them, reached to the phone he’d tossed at me and endured the immense pain that scoured through me, leaving me feeling even more raw, which if my brain had room to process anything further, I would have thought unimaginable.
My fingers closed around the phone and I huffed out little breaths, which were hard to take since each one sent fire through my midsection. So I tried deep breaths, and those were worse because the fire lasted even longer.
Dread intermingled with all the rest as I tried to focus on moving my thumb to open the phone, but I saw the black creeping in at the sides of my eyes.
I couldn’t pass out.
I had to call for help.
I had to get out of there.
My body had different ideas, sending the message to my brain that this was too much, it couldn’t take more.
So I passed out.
* * * * *
I came to woozy and disoriented.
The pain, the stench of the room, the feel of the cement beneath me brought it all slamming back, along with the panic.
Having no idea how long I was out, feeling the phone resting in my hand, I actually grunted with the effort of sliding it up, wrapping my fingers around it, using my thumb to flip it open.
An old-style flip phone.
A burner.
We’d joked about it, Snap and me. He’d called me Scully. He had a burner too, so there’d be no caller ID when he phoned me. So I’d called him Mulder.
I was going to call him.
Not because I was working for Chaos anymore. I wasn’t. That officially ended on that cement. Definitely not because I was protecting Bounty. I’d tell the police. Absolutely, I’d tell the police my boyfriend’s motorcycle club beat the snot out of me. It didn’t matter that I broke the code, and knew it. It didn’t matter that I’d betrayed my man, and done it deliberately.
I was trying to save him. Save his brothers. Save his club. Save everyone.
I closed my eyes tight, my thumb moving over the phone from memory, knowing the way on its own, I called him so often. That was why I was calling him now rather than 911. I knew how to get to him. To Snapper. And the effort would be less. I could dial the digits to get him up on speed dial in my sleep, so I could do it lying on a cement floor, beat to hell and practically unable to move.
I couldn’t lift the phone to my ear so I just shoved it across the floor closer to my face, listening to it ring.
“Rosie?” Snap answered.
I closed my eyes tighter as understanding hit me with a blow almost as brutal as every strike I’d just taken.
God.
I hadn’t done it to save Beck. To save his brothers, his club…everybody.
At first, I’d done it to make Beck into Shy.
And then I’d done it to make him be Snapper.
And last, I’d done it to make his club Chaos.
“Rosie?” Snap’s Eddie Vedder baritone got sharper.
Oh no.
No.
The black was creeping in again.
“Sss…” was all I could get out.
“Rosalie,” he bit out, curt, alert, alarmed.
“Hurt,” I whispered.
And then, again, I blacked out.