Sweet Revenge
Chapter 1
Ethan
“What the fuck is that behind your ear?” I asked with rising panic that the world was about to come crashing down around me. I didn’t care that I was standing naked with my dick still hard.
“What’s what?” she asked, standing to look in my dresser mirror.
I watched her turn her head and bend her ear back until she could see what I was stressing about. Her eyes grew large and when they met mine in the reflection of the mirror, she knew what the fuck it was. I knew what the fuck it was too.
It was a death wish.
It was mutiny and betrayal.
But I still wanted her to say it out loud.
Calm passed over me as I realized there was nothing more to be done. “Did you hear me, Molly? I asked you a fucking question.” I didn’t yell. I just stood there, as naked emotionally as I was physically.
She stood stock-still, frozen, like if she didn’t move, time would stand still.
“Say something!”
My voice startled her and she flinched before nervously tucking her hair behind her ears. “It’s a tattoo.”
So she was willing to play dumb. I already knew what it was. I had enough ink to know it when I saw it. No. She wasn’t getting off that easy. I wanted to hear her say it. She was bold enough to be in my life, in my bed with that shit on her body, so she needed to be bold enough to tell the truth.
“Of what?”
“A skull,” she said as if barely breathing.
That’s right. She had a skull tatted on her – like a brand. Like a hidden bomb, ticking and waiting to detonate when I found it. Well, I’d found it and everything I thought we had was about to be blown to smithereens. No, scratch that: that shit was already gone.
One Month Before
Should I be doing this?
Probably not.
That’s never stopped me before.
I looked back to the man I considered a father. Gus turned to look at me as if he could feel my gaze.
“You ready to do this?” he asked.
“Sure. This ain’t my first rodeo. It won’t be my last.”
Alcohol is a liberator; you see people at their core; it removes the conscious controls that people have as social self-control mechanisms for managing their personalities and social behaviors in society.
When people are drunk, you can see them at their best and their worst. At their best, they are happy, looking for love. They meet somebody, have a tryst, end up in a relationship, and get married. Sometimes they create a friendship or find a common interest with somebody they meet. Or spill all their secrets, happy to have a reason to let all they’d been hiding out. At their worst, drunks are selfish, belligerent, mean-spirited, suicidal, and chemically-unbalanced. Alcohol makes everything worse – sadness, shame, rage, and any other emotion you can think of. I liked that because I was about to take full advantage of it.
We entered the bar ten deep, though five of us went one to the left while the other group went to the right. We wore all black without our cuts, but I would make sure there was no doubt of where this beating was coming from. Charming was a well-known, neutral bar. Bikers drank there and could coexist without a fight, or so it was said. Not that night, though. That night, we wore no emblems, so who’s to say it was a biker fight? The bar was full of women in short skirts, and shirts giving way to so much cleavage they could be arrested for public indecency. We sat and drank for a moment, pretending we weren’t together. Then, as planned, Luke broke off to go to the table beside the one where Casper and his crew sat.
A group of older gentlemen sat with young blondes on their laps.
“Hey,” Luke said, rubbing his head.
“Can I help you?” asked the bearded man, the most senior of the group.
“No, sir. I just don’t know how you can stand it.”
“Stand what?” Bearded Man asked.
“Well, if someone said that about my daughter—”
“Somebody talking about my Stacey?” he said, gripping the handle of his beer bottle.
“Is that you, miss?” Luke said to the blonde Bearded Man insinuated was his daughter.
“Yeah,” she said before she blew a bubble, popping it loudly. “What they say?”
“Well, I don’t say those kinds of things aloud about ladies,” Luke said as if he were embarrassed.
“What did he say?” the man with the huge beer belly said, sitting up straighter.
Luke huffed for effect. “He said, she’s got a pretty face but could benefit from a little bit more in the back. He offered to bang her a few times to help her along if she can’t get the money for a little plastic surgery.”
“What?” Bearded Man asked, standing in an outrage, all his friends following suit.
“Who said it?” Beer Belly asked, standing last and peering across the room like his perpetrator would somehow come into view. “Point him out.”
“Guy in the blue shirt,” Luke said, nodding to me, which was the signal.
Jason waited until Bearded Man came over and, before he could speak, Jason slugged him. Warren, on the other hand, punched Beer Belly, which set off a frenzy of flying fists.
In a bar fight, everybody was a potential victim. Everybody was also a potential combatant. You could never tell who was going to join a bar fight; people would throw a punch for no apparent reason, and that was why I chose that bar as my scene.
I made my way across the room and pulled Casper from the clutches of another man and punched him in the face. I was out to do as much damage as possible. My hand followed the other from his face to his stomach.
A sudden gush of pain jolted me as Casper kicked me, causing me to slide to the floor. I took him with me, using his body weight against him and, once on the floor, I rolled until I was sitting on his torso.
“You can thank the Bandits for this ass whooping,” I whispered as he struggled under me.
His eyes widened before hardening and he fought back with much more vigor. “Motherfucker!”
I brought my fist to his nose, snapping it into a smattering mess of cartilage and blood. Casper acted as if he couldn’t feel it and threw his arm up. The bottom of his wrist caught my chin and my jaw closed too quickly, clipping my tongue. My mouth filled with the taste of blood.
I grabbed a chair and smashed it over him, causing his body to go limp. Seeing that he was too banged up to move but was conscious, I leaned down and whispered in his ear. “You’ve just been robbed.”
With my goal completed, I sat up and caught the eye of my partners. Each one signaled the other, and together we ran out the back.
I came. I saw. I conquered. I rode on my bike, in formation with the crew back to our headquarters. In total, the entire fight was a little under ten minutes. We couldn’t stay longer because the cops were coming. Once at HQ, we debriefed and a few brothers poured themselves some brew.
“Thanks, fellas.”
“No problem,” Evan said.
“You know we’ll always have your back, brother,” Luke said.
I looked around. Most of us were unscathed. Luke had a cut along his cheek. It was thin, like it came from glass. I had no face injuries, but several bruises were on the way from Casper’s rebuttal. Evan’s hair looked out of place, which was unusual. He always looked so in control and kempt. Gus had a slight limp, like someone might have kicked him in the leg, and Jason was wet. From the smell, I knew someone poured beer on him.
“Good job tonight, boys,” Gus said, sitting heavily in a chair.
Everyone looked tired but me; I still felt the rush of adrenaline. I wasn’t turning in for another few hours; the night was still so young.
“I’m out of here, guys,” I said, adjusting my cut.
“Where you going?” one of the prospects asked from behind the bar.
“To celebrate,” I said without turning around. “Good night.”
There weren’t too many places that played good music and had beautiful women. Oasis was one of the few places. With one look at the leather on my back, the bouncer let me in with a reduced fee. The music and moving bodies were like physical electricity. I melted into the crowd without trying, and though I wasn’t dancing, I could feel the energy sway through me. This was exactly where I needed to be. The music was loud and the beat was so heavy that I could feel it in my bones and in moments, I was sweaty despite the cold chill I had from riding my bike.
I skirted along the edge of the wall to get a better look at the people. The bar seemed to be the only place with good lighting.
“Let me get a Jack and coke,” I said, yelling over the bar. He moved quickly and, with glass in hand, I stood to the side, in the shadows, drinking. Plenty of women came by, some more subtle than others, asking for a dance or more. I don’t know why, but something held me back. I was waiting for something. Somebody was going to get under me tonight and I wasn’t sure who it was going to be, but I would know her when I saw her.
The strobe lights masked so many movements, the sway of bodies pausing in different moments against the lights. The music hit a crescendo and something to the left caught my eye. The strobe lights flashed and I saw ivory skin highlighted. Her brown, wavy hair was haloed by the lights. I started at her stilettoes and worked my way up to the small pieces of fabric she was wearing, barely covering the skin I wanted to lick. It was pretty packaging, ready for me to unwrap.
My cock stiffened, straining against my jeans as she swayed on the stool to the music. When our eyes finally connected, she smirked like she could hear every nasty thing running through my mind. I smiled back and made my way over to talk to her. By the way she was looking at me, I could tell she was thinking of doing the exact same things I wanted to do to her. Somebody was getting fucked tonight. Casper already got fucked up; now I was ready to fuck.
The crowd parted and I flowed with it to her. I was going to buy the lady a drink.