Chapter 17
Slayer walked into Church knowing full well he about was to be made an example of. As soon as he sat down, Ox nodded at him from across the table. Whatever was going on with the Madmen, it was serious enough that Ox was pissed at him for not telling Billie the truth.
Which, he had every right to be, and Slayer knew it.
“Everybody take a seat, and let’s make a plan. I don’t know what these fuckers have planned, but we need to get our asses in gear now that everyone is here,” Ox said.
Axel cleared his throat, “Jefferson was real helpful when it came to cleaning up the bar. Suggested we set up some kind of traffic block to catch these fuckers off guard,” Axel said.
Ox rubbed at the beard lining his jaw.
“Not a bad idea. I’m surprised he’s willing to help that much.”
“He said he’s just as pissed about the death of the locals. He knows we don’t cause any trouble up here, Ox. He ain’t an enemy. We won’t be needing his help very often, and I doubt he’ll offer again. We should take it.”
“Where is the traffic stop supposed to be? We can’t pinpoint these fuckers, that’s part of the problem. They have moles all over watching us, and they haven’t made their intentions clear,” Limit said.
“That’s where this gets tricky. I got a hold of Ty today and he called me back an hour ago to tell me that there are only five riders in this crew. They’re using my name to get more connections, and since Pierce and Chris were a part of my club, people believe them. I can’t have my name bein’ used like that. Ty offered a suggestion.”
“What would that be?,” Tango asked.
Slayer sat back in his chair.
“Nip the problem in the bud now. Ty gave me the location of where they’re stayin’; he had to pull some strings, but I got a good idea of where their little shack is. I say we have Jefferson stop them before they can leave the mountains and have him take them back to their shack while we lay in wait. If the sheriff and a couple of deputies fuck with them a little, they probably won’t suspect we’re already there.”
“Does anyone know what they want, though?”
Prettyboy snorted, “What any new MC wants. Territory.”
“Why is it always our territory they want?,” Green asked.
“Yeah, and why ain’t they ever nice about it? We could always use allies,” Rebel said.
Ox nodded.
“So, Limit, Tango, you gonna plan this? I can call Jefferson tomorrow, see what he can pull for us. I don’t know how soon he can block off the mountain for us,” Ox said.
“Works for us,” Limit said as he glanced at Tango, who just nodded.
“Now, Slayer, apologize to your crew.”
Slayer crossed his arms over his chest and sighed.
“I lied to Billie about what we do here. Didn’t give her anything to go off of. I put us at jeopardy, and I apologize for that. I spoke to her and told her everything. She’s on board.”
“Why would you do that to any woman?,” Fury asked.
“I didn’t know how she would take it. She ain’t like the other women who had a little taste of this beforehand.”
“Scarlett never did and she handled it just fine,” Limit argued.
“Maybe, but her daddy is our prez. That makes her situation a little different, wouldn’t you agree? Regardless of her status with you, she had ties to this club.”
Limit sighed, “Fair enough.”
“I didn’t know what to do, and I panicked.”
“We understand, but you also get why I took your ass to the cage, right?,” Ox asked.
“Yes. I got the message.”
“Good, you’re forgiven. Let’s go grab some brews before we head to bed. It’s good to have you ho-,” Ox was cut off by a scream that was loud enough to nearly rattle the windows.
“Billie! Billie!”
Shots rang out, so loud and fast that no one in the room had time to process what was happening.
There was more screaming, more shots, this time coming from inside the clubhouse.
Slayer dropped to the floor and ran for the doors, bursting into the hallway the same time he saw Rayna bounding around the corner, her gun firing shot after shot into the parking lot. Slayer ran for the doors the exact same time that he saw a shitty four-door sedan speed out of the parking lot, their tail lights busted from the spray of bullets both Rayna and Esme were putting out.
Slayer scanned the room, looking for one face in particular.
“Where’s Billie?”
“Slayer, she was out there! She said she wanted some air, and she was walking around in the parking lot. I tried to call out to her to stay close, but when I finally caught her attention, they were already shoving her into their car!,” Esme said panicked.
Slayer swore and ran out into the parking lot as fast as he could, hoping like hell he would catch a glimpse of the car again. He hadn’t gotten much detail out of it other than it was more than eight years old and red.
“Fuck!,” He yelled when he saw there was no sign of them anywhere.
“She’s gone! She’s fucking gone, and this is all my fault!,” He yelled.
Fury and Limit were there in two seconds flat, their guns out.
“Why the hell would they steal her?,” Fury asked.
“Leverage. If they have her, they have one of ours, and she was the closest thing to leverage they could get. They were probably hoping to sneak in here and take more than one old lady, but she was all they could get.”
“This is fucking bullshit, how the hell am I gonna get her back?,” Slayer worried.
“Ty sent me the address over text, brother. We’re gonna get armed, and then we’re gonna go after Billie, okay?”
Slayer glanced at Axel, who was holding his shoulder.
“Try to stay calm right now. We’re gonna save her, man.”
“Well this just upped our schedule by a full day. Limit, go inside and get the weapons ready. This little bust just turned into a hostage situation. They’ve already proven they ain’t afraid to shed some blood, let’s hope that ain’t the case this time. Hurry it up, too, we don’t have the luxury of planning this out very well,” Ox said.
“She’s gonna leave me if she makes it out of this alive,” Slayer said.
“Don’t think like that, Slayer,” Prettyboy said.
Esme came wandering towards them, tears in her eyes.
“I’m so sorry, I tried- I shot as best I could, but they were too fast,” She whispered.
Slayer shook his head and hugged her close for a second.
“It ain’t your fault, Esme. I’m not mad at you.”
She dipped her head and Prettyboy laid a kiss against the crown of her head as he tipped his head towards the clubhouse. “Get inside and help those women stay safe, okay? Keep Flora inside at all costs. No one’s leavin’ here, no matter where they live. This place is on lockdown.”
Esme grabbed the lapels of his jacket.
“You come home to me, Damon.”
He smiled, the scarred half of his face tugging with the gesture.
“I’ll always come back to you.”
Prettyboy slapped Slayer on the back and pierced him with his bright green eyes.
“You ready to save your woman? Now’s the time to prove yourself to her.”
◆◆◆
Billie was minding her own business, walking around the lot to catch some fresh air, when she heard the screeching of tires. She heard Rayna call her name, so she looked up for just a second- and that’s when the car she’d heard sped onto the lot, cornering her.
She wanted to run, and she tried; but there were more of them than she could fight off. Billie kicked and screamed, and she heard Rayna call her name. She heard shots, too, felt one of them close enough to burn the skin on her ankle, but none of them hit her. The man that was holding her got hit, though, and he cursed the entire way to the shitty shack they took her to.
She kept her mouth shut, even though she was panicking inside. There was no way she’d be able to fight off all of them once she counted five bodies. They had her blindfolded within the first couple of minutes of bringing her to their shit hole of a hideout.
Billie felt herself being shoved into a chair and tied down, the rope scraped against her soft skin, causing her to wince behind the blindfold.
“We got us a new one, boys!”
For a second, she wanted to fight; to scream, to curse them, but she didn’t. She knew that nothing she said or did would help her out of this situation, so she had to pray to God that Slayer and his men would find her.
Her blindfold was removed all of a sudden, and she quickly took in her surroundings. She was in an old hunting cabin it looked like, and it hadn’t been updated…ever. It was filthy, filled with trash, and there was more than one little mattress tossed onto the filthy floor. They were living like animals out there.
As Billie was looking around, she noticed something terrifying; there was another woman tied to a chair, and she looked half-dead. Filthy, with matted hair and nearly naked, she was covered in old wounds and fresh wounds. Splotches of blood stuck to her skin, too, and Billie’s stomach turned at the sight.
That’s what these men are capable of.
The woman had her head tipped forward, her mass of red hair covering her face, so Billie couldn’t make out any of her features, but she was small. There was no telling how long she’d been stuck in this cabin with these animals.
“We got ourselves a little Seven Deadlies princess, boys! This ought to get us what we want,” A man said as he came towards her. He had a shaved head, two earrings, and he was missing three teeth.
“Cat got your tongue, little lady? Word on the street is you belong to the pretty blonde one,” He said as he tugged on a strand of her hair. Billie just looked at him.
“You wanna play it like that, huh?”
Again, Billie didn’t answer. She looked directly at him, barely blinking, wondering if he would eventually give up. He sneered in her face and nodded towards another man behind her. When he came into view, she was surprised by how dirty he was. He looked like he hadn’t showered in a long time. His hair was stringy against his neck and his skin had patches of pure dirt stuck to it. He grinned and she had to wonder how his teeth remained in his head, they were so discolored.
“This one here is called Blade. He’s really good with a knife, honey. Maybe he can get ya to speak up,” The bald man with the earrings told her. Billie glanced at the man now wielding a knife and shrugged.
Blade stepped towards her and looked her over, his tongue sliding against his disgusting teeth. He watched her like she was next on his menu of things to eat, and that didn’t settle well with Billie.
“You got yourself a pretty face, you know that? I like to ruin pretty things,” Blade said gruffly.
Billie didn’t have to guess what he meant; he put the blade of his sharp knife to her right cheek, and cut her deep, causing her to gasp. She was stubborn though, not making a sound as he cut from her ear to her mouth.
Billie hadn’t ever had someone torture her, and she couldn’t make any promises on how well she would handle it, but she was damn proud of herself for not making a sound. It didn’t please Blade though, because he tipped her head back, and slipped the blade to the tender skin below her collarbone.
“Which one do you belong to?”
“All of them!,” She spat.
He growled under his breath and split her skin open, causing red to seep from the wound. Billie never did have much of a stomach for the sight of blood, but she had other things to worry about; like the fact that three other men were milling into the room, and they were all crowding around her.
“We don’t really want to hurt you. We just want your prez to grant us a meeting, and we thought taking something he cares about would make him more compliant to give us one,” A man with bottle-red hair said.
Billie didn’t say a word, even though her chest and face were on fire. She could feel drops of her blood slipping down her skin, soaking the collar of her shirt.
“This one ain’t gonna give us anything, Scott.” The bald one looked at her angrily and slowly began to circle her, his fingers coasting through her hair. He yanked her head back at the last second, his mouth too close to hers.
“What’s it gonna take to get you to answer a question? We have to remove digits, maybe? Cut off your fingers, your toes? Maybe you need something a little more invasive to make you talk, huh?”
Billie didn’t need for him to elaborate on what he meant by that, because he grabbed the front of his pants as he said it. More than one of them chuckled at the idea, and even though no woman on the planet would consent to that, Billie didn’t have a choice.
“Okay, let’s see if we can get an answer to a more direct question, then. Did Axel combine his crew with Ox’s?”
Billie didn’t even have to lie, “ I don’t know.”
Scott seemed to get even more irritated as he shook his head and slammed his palms onto the arms of the chair.
“If you don’t give me what I want, I’m going to kill you. We’ve killed way more than one person in this town, sweetheart, we won’t feel bad about offing one more.”
“Wouldn’t you lose your leverage if you did that?”
That question only seemed to make Scott angrier as he roared in her face, but he knew that she was right. If they killed her, they lost their bargaining chip, and that would get them nowhere.
“Okay, we’ll play it the hard way. As long as I keep you alive, then I can still get what I want. That doesn’t mean I can’t return you a little damaged.”
Billie didn’t like the sound of that, and she hated the feel of his fist connecting with her bloody cheek even more. She did cry out then, because it surprised her, but she clamped her mouth shut over the throbbing pain anyways. Her eyes watered and she was positive her cheek bone was broken, but she had to try and stay strong.
She may not know any of the answers to the questions he was going to ask, but that didn’t matter. None of it mattered. She was kidnapped, in enemy territory God knows where, and she wasn’t even the only hostage they had!
Billie knew her circumstances weren’t ideal then. She knew that no matter what beans she spilled, even if she lied, they were still going to have their fun with her. She was fucked either way. She didn’t want to end up like the poor woman in the corner, but she didn’t see a way out of this.
“Strip her down. Bra and panties,” Scott ordered.
Billie fought against Blade’s hands, but he stopped her by placing a gun against the side of her head. He pulled it out of his waistband, the black barrel scratched and obviously well-used.
“Sit still, or I’ll blow a hole through your knee, got it?”
Slowly, Billie nodded.
Blade used his knife to cut off her clothes, and she didn’t miss the way his hands groped almost every inch of her as he did so. She was sickened by the way he touched her, but she felt even worse for the woman in the corner of the room. She hadn’t anyone to search for her or save her. Billie vowed that if she got out of there alive, she’d take her with her.
“Such a sexy piece of ass, who would let you out of their sight?,” Scott murmured as he looked at her. Billie’s face was throbbing, but she managed to cringe anyway.
“She ain’t got any marks on her, Scott. No tattoos, no brands.”
“Maybe she ain’t an old lady, then! You idiot, I told you we needed an important woman,” Scott said angrily.
“If she ain’t someone’s old lady, then she ain’t important and we can keep her. We’ll go back for another one tomorrow,” The red-haired one said. He looked like a life-size bottle of Ketchup to Billie, but she couldn’t look away from the trio that were actually talking. The other two men remained silent in the corner.
How am I going to get out of this?