Nora
“You don’t get to talk to me,” I snapped at Ryan. “You don’t get to say a fucking word, you worthless piece of shit.”
The wounded look in his eyes from the way Mark had belittled him turned to anger as I laid into him. But the most amazing thing happened. I didn’t feel obligated to put up with his bullshit any longer. Not in any form.
“You can get as angry as you want if that helps you feel like a man,” I continued. “But no matter what, you’re not a man. A man wouldn’t have sold me like chattel. A real man would have told him to shove it up his pompous ass, but no, you’re a coward, scared of your own shadow.”
The anger in his eyes faded as I continued. He must have realized I wasn’t going to back down because he looked all big, bad, and scary like he normally did. He knew I was right. He knew he’d fucked up by acting like he owned me in the first place.
I stood up from my chair. “You know what? I’m glad you sold me off. Now I don’t have to answer to you, and now that I belong to a real man, maybe I can get some dick from a man who doesn’t take six weeks to recover.”
I was surprised at myself. The words flowed from my mouth effortlessly, without any filter in place. I was saying things just to be mean. I didn’t want to belong to any man, whether it was Ryan or Mark, but at that point it didn’t really matter.
Ryan backed away from me while I was talking, lashing out at him with my words. I kept going, calling him every name I could think of, basically telling him he was the lowest of the low, the most worthless thing I could imagine.
“What do you have to say for yourself?” I finally asked him.
He stopped at the door, facing me with his hand resting on the doorknob. He looked at me like he was scared to answer my question. He stared into my eyes with uncertainty. Realizing he had nowhere to go, however, he finally spoke.
“You have never talked to me that way.” His normally thundering voice came out in a timid whimper.
“Maybe I should have sooner,” I told him. “If all I ever was to you was a piece of property, maybe I should have stood up to you earlier.”
“It wouldn’t have lasted if you had done that,” he said cautiously, picking his words carefully.
“Maybe it shouldn’t have lasted. Maybe ending this sooner would have been the best thing I could have done,” I said to him. I stood toe-to-toe with him against the door. If he could have backed up through the door, I was sure he would have.
“Nora,” Mark said behind me, his voice severe but controlled.
I turned around and instinctively took a step back from Ryan.
“I think he’s had enough,” Mark added.
Just then, I heard the door open behind me. Ryan was escaping. I turned back around in time to see him walking through the door and out of the office.
“Oh, that motherfucker,” I cursed under my breath as I lunged forward.
But Ozzy stepped in my way. “Sorry, Nora,” he said as I almost ran into his chest.
“What the hell? Why are you protecting him?” I asked both of them.
“Because he is no longer any of your concern,” Mark advised me.
It amazed me that with everything that was going on in his office, Mark was able to remain calmly seated behind his desk. But there he was, sitting back and looking as cool and casual as could be. He gestured for me to sit back down in the chair in front of his desk.
“Let him go,” Mark said.
I sat down and waited to see what else he was going to tell me. What did all of this mean? What did being kept by Mark mean for me?
“You can stay here for now while he goes and removes his things from your apartment,” he said, as if he’d been reading my mind and decided to partially answer my question. “And don’t worry, I’ll take you home later myself.”
“Look, I have some questions,” I told him. “Like what am I going to have to do differently?” My confidence from earlier was beginning to wane, and I felt myself turning back into the quiet, submissive girl I was before, with Ryan.
Mark laughed. “There’s nothing to worry about,” he said. “Just relax and leave everything to me.”
He checked the screen on his phone and started to gather up some of his things from his desk. He stood up and made sure he had his phone and everything else he needed.
“Are we going somewhere?” I asked him.
“I am going out on business. You will be staying here with Ozzy, who will be babysitting you until I get back. And then we’ll see about getting you home and all that,” he replied.
“So that’s it? I just stay here?”
“For now. Like I said, you’ll be under Ozzy’s care and supervision.” He patted Ozzy on the shoulder as he walked out of the office, and the big man smiled.
I wanted to protest, but I knew it wouldn’t do any good. I watched as Mark disappeared into the main room. I looked up at Ozzy standing stoically in the doorway with his large arms crossed in front of his chest. It could have been worse. I could have been stuck in there with a member I didn’t know.
“Hey, don’t look so glum,” he said, trying to cheer me up. “This isn’t so bad is it?”
“I don’t really know yet,” I told him. “I just got traded like a baseball card.”
Ozzy chuckled and relaxed, letting himself lean against the door frame now that Mark was gone.
“So, why are you so upset about getting rid of Ryan? It seems to me you should be happy to finally get away from a man you rarely ever saw anyway,” he added.
“That was kind of the point of Ryan, though. I never had to see him. He was only in town for a few days, and I had to play his happy little girlfriend for those few days, and it was over. I was back on my own,” I told him.
“I get it,” he said with a nod and a laugh. “But if you’re worried about playing Suzy Homemaker for Mark, you can rest assured it’s not going to happen. That is not his style.”
“That’s comforting,” I said. Really, it wasn’t. None of it was comforting. “You know, I was used to the way things were. Ryan was a jerk, but he was a jerk I only had to deal with a few days every couple of months, you know? Now I’ve got to deal with this asshole on a daily basis,” I complained.
“I know it’s new,” Ozzy said sympathetically, “but being Mark’s girl has its advantages.”
“I’m sure it does.” I rolled my eyes. I didn’t have to be afraid of pissing off Ozzy, and I didn’t really have anything to prove, so I could be myself around him. Being myself fell somewhere between the hard outer shell I put on in front of Mark and the submissive housewife type I tried to be for Ryan.
“No, really. You get all the access and protection of being a club girl—” he started.
“Which I already have, thanks to you and Alice,” I interrupted.
“No, there’s more. You do get treated well for an outsider already. I’ll give you that, but you’re in now. And you’re not just in. You get the prestige that comes along with being the boss’s bitch. You’re the president’s girl. You’ll able to pull rank over the other girls,” he said.
I nodded. “Now this is starting to have possibility,” I remarked.
“Yeah, and that’s not all, Nora. Ryan was paying your bills and all, but you weren’t living in luxury by any stretch of the imagination. He was basically helping you survive. With Mark, you’re going to be much more comfortable. There won’t be any worries month to month about whether or not your man will come through. Mark brings security to the table, something Ryan didn’t seem to have, especially if he was coming by to ask for money,” Ozzy continued.
I nodded. “Right, right. But what if…” I started to ask, but I let my voice trail off.
“What?” Ozzy asked.
“Nothing,” I said, shaking my head and deciding not to say anything about what I was thinking.
The deal sounded okay so far, but I wanted to know what would happen if I got in with Mark and he turned out to be dreadful? What was I supposed to do if he was abusive? Who went behind and checked on the president of the MC? Surely, if he wanted to make my life a nightmare, there was no one to stop him. I very easily could have been leaving a less than ideal situation for something much, much worse.
In response to my silence, Ozzy looked over his shoulder as if checking to see if anyone else was in the main room. Then, he leaned into the office and told me in a low voice, “If he becomes a problem in any way, you tell Alice, and she’ll make sure it gets to me.” It was like he’d read my mind.
“Got it,” I said. I knew what he meant by in any way. He made it clear in his tone.
“Now look, I don’t think Mark really meant for you to sit in his office and wait until he got back. Come on out and get a drink at the bar if you want.” He tilted his head back toward the main room and stepped out of the doorway.
“Really?” I asked. I sort of felt like his prisoner all of a sudden, now that I was his.
“Yeah, come on. Mark isn’t some kind of prison warden,” he said as if reading my mind again.
“You gotta stop reading my mind,” I joked as I got up and walked past him out of the room.
“It’s a gift, really,” he said, playing along.
“But you’re still going to be my chaperone, aren’t you?” I asked as I approached the bar. He stayed close behind me, like some kind of bodyguard.
“Absolutely,” he said almost cheerily behind me. “Ed,” he called to the bartender. “The lady needs a drink, man.”
“Already on it,” Ed called over to us. “Jack and Coke?”
“You got it,” I told him. I sat on one of the barstools and patted the one next to me for Ozzy to join me.
“I’m fine,” he said, stepping to the side to lean against the bar so it wasn’t obvious he was trying to keep an eye on me. He made it look like he was hanging around shooting the breeze with Ed instead.
I still didn’t see Alice anywhere. I wondered where she was. More people had filtered into the main room since I’d gone into Mark’s office a little while earlier, but she wasn’t among them.
I watched as the club girls came in and pranced around, hoping some of the members would see them. They tried their best to be noticed. And I felt a small sense of pride because I outranked all of them. Mark and I weren’t together but I still belonged to him either way. Like Ozzy had said, that made me special. That put me in a better position than everyone else hanging out at the bar.
It sickened me as I realized I kind of liked that feeling.