Chapter Fifteen
Ozzy
I give up on sleeping after two hours of staying in bed with Maria. Two hours of holding her. Two hours enjoying the feeling of her bare body against mine. Two hours of wondering where this beautiful woman is taking me.
And two hours of a thought nagging at me: that this is the kind of heaven that leads to hell.
I get up out of bed and leave her alone, taking a second just to look at her. She’s snoring impressively. Peacefully. It’s cute.
Downstairs, I look around for things to quiet my mind. I need something — anything — to keep my mind away from this sensation of being so torn. My club is my family, my home, the only place for ten thousand miles where I truly belong. My brothers there have stood by me for years. I owe them my loyalty and my life.
But the love I have for the woman in my bed is beyond anything I’ve ever known.
And this morning, in just a few hours as the sun takes it’s place above the horizon, I have to choose: them or her.
Do I go through with my mission?
Can I?
I made a promise to my brothers that I would. I’ve lived my life based on that loyalty and brotherhood, I’ve killed for my family.
But then I gave my heart to her.
And now everything’s changed.
I pace for a while, until I force myself into a chair and pick up the remote. It’s not long before I realize that the TV’s useless at this hour; I surf channels for a while, but the only thing on this late at night are some shitty movies and some weird local TV shows that all seem to be about how the world’s going to end and how people need to get right with Jesus before it happens.
I turn the TV off and look around.
There are some books in the bookshelf in the living room, but everything there is either some sappy Notebook-type book, or a cheesy western, none of which catch my interest.
Leaving the living room, I shuffle around to the kitchen, eat my portion of the pavlova out of agitated boredom, remind myself that I did a really fucking good job baking it, and look around the room for something, anything, to entertain me.
I catch something.
A flicker, a shift in the darkness outside.
At first, I tell myself it’s just a trick of my agitated mind. But then, I see it again: shifting shadows out the window.
Movement. And close.
It darts away as soon as my head turns.
We’re being watched.
My fists clench, but I fight down the urge to charge out there. Just like a hunt, I can’t spook my prey. Carefully, I stand and leave the room, heading towards the back first floor bathroom.
I shut the door behind me and press my face to the small window set over the bathtub. There’s no one out there. Perfect.
Naked as the day I was born, I climb out the window, making sure to keep my junk clear of any sharp edges. I lower myself out into the cold Montana night. The chill hits my bare skin like a sucker-punch, drawing a string of curses from my lips.
Shit, it’s cold.
Freezing temperatures shock my body, tighten my muscles and make my dick feel like I’m fucking Frosty the Snowman’s wife. But I stay quiet and sneak around front.
There he is.
Huddled by the front living room window, gun in hand. Rage heats my blood and pushes me forward.
Barefoot, freezing, naked, I sneak around front until I’m right behind him. It’s moments like these where I’m grateful for every hunting lesson my father gave me. Every trick on being quiet, every tip on sneaking up on my prey.
I step closer, ready to kill.
There’s a rustle. A sharp intake of breath. A flash of gunmetal in the moonlight.
I stop short and dodge sideways, narrowly getting out of the way of the flashing barrel of his gun. A puff erupts from the ground behind me and flying frozen gravel peppers my bare back.
I strike before he can get off another shot — I step in, seize his wrist with one hand and with the other, I crack him square in the jaw. Again and again, I pound him until he loosens his grip and the gun goes clattering to the cold earth.
Blood decorates my knuckles. Pain throbs in my fists.
I grin at him.
“Tonight’s just not your night, mate.”
I wrap my arms around him in a bearhug and wrest him to the ground.
He hits the frozen dirt with a heavy thud and I climb atop his chest. My fists rain bloody pain down on him — crack, crack — sending his head bouncing against the ground. He goes limp for a second, stunned, and, quick as a striking snake, I take him by the wrists and pin his hands to the ground.
Helpless.
He sputters at me, blood dribbling from the corner of his mouth and a wild look in his eyes.
“What the fuck were you doing spying on us?” I growl.
“Why the fuck are you naked?” he replies. “It’s really fucking weird.”
He glares at me and shifts beneath me, squirming, trying to work free.
I hit him again to let him know what dodging my questions gets him. Besides, I don’t need him being a smartass.
“Mate, I’m about as comfortable in this position as you are. Just tell me what the fuck you were doing so I can take my dick out of your face,” I say.
My freezing cock is about four inches from his mouth. Thankfully, I’m pretty sure it’s out of biting range.
“Fuck off,” he spits.
I hit him again.
“Do you think I want to spend all night out here? Naked, sitting on your chest, while my dick turns to an icicle?” I say. “At some point — real soon — I’m going to get tired of being naked with you and I’m just going to kill you. I never went to uni, so I missed out on that whole ‘experimentation’ stage they say most people go through there. This situation right here isn’t ideal, for you or for me.”
“I don’t give a shit. Go fuck yourself.”
I shrug, and belt him in the face.
A tooth — busted and bleeding — pokes its way through his lip. It makes me flinch, the jagged way it cuts through his flesh.
“I got a pretty good idea about why you’re here, mate. I’m not an idiot, even though the fact that I’m out here naked and sitting on your chest would make you think otherwise. I reckon you’re here about that David Ardoin thing because that bastard needs to die, and you were probably thinking to murder Maria and me while we were sleeping. It’s what I’d do in your place.”
He doesn’t say anything. But I don’t need him to. I know it’s close enough to the truth. Besides, my dick is turning a scary shade of blue and I’m ready to end this and get back somewhere warm.
“Whatever you do to me, you and that cunt are dead,” he says. He spits a gob of blood at me. It lands square on my stomach and dribbles down to pool on my left thigh, disturbingly close to my dick.
Yeah, I’m done with this shit.
“Watch your fucking language,” I growl.
My fists batter his face until his bloody skull’s bouncing around like one of those bobblehead dolls. His head cracks off frozen concrete and there’s a snap that cuts through the cold night air. He groans and stiffens beneath me, and I shift my punches — pummeling his body until he’s a bruised and bloodied mess.
“Talk, and I’ll make this quick,” I say. Then I hit him again in the face. Another busted tooth breaks through his lip. Blood spurts from his broken mouth. Whatever sick light there was in his eyes, dims — he’s broken. “Tell me how many of you there are and tell me exactly what you were doing here.”
“I was just here to keep tabs on you,” he says. “Watch you. So go ahead, kill me. It doesn’t fucking matter — the others are going to kill you. And her, too. Once they’re done raping her bloody.”
He manages to force his shattered mouth into a smile.
It makes me sick.
My vision goes red and I slip my hands around his throat and squeeze until I feel him shudder. It’s satisfying on a deep, personal level to feel his pulse die against my fingertips.
“This is better than you deserve,” I mutter.
I wait a minute there, hands around his throat and perched naked on his chest like some sexual deviant, until I’m sure he’s dead. Then I get up, pick up his body and carry it into the house.
There are some garbage bags under the sink. Thick, hefty, and black. I use them to wrap the corpse and then I toss it in the back of Maria’s rental car.
What fucking night.
I head back inside and sit down at the kitchen table and look around for something to do while I wait for my cock to thaw. Time is short, but I need to calm myself and keep things like cock-frostbite and the impending violence off my mind while I figure out how to dump the corpse.
Manila folders and papers call to me from Maria’s open bag. Worked up as I am, I doubt I could resist them even if I tried.
I know I shouldn’t look at them. I should trust her. But inside these pages is information on the man that is ruining the life of the woman I love. I can’t ignore it.
I fetch them out and tear through them. I’m finished with the damn statement before I even realize it. It’s multiple pages, and tells me some things about my club that even I’m surprised to know.
This man is a threat greater than I realized. What he knows, who he’s connected to and the groups that might try to kill him. What’s on this page doesn’t just implicate my club if it gets into the hands of the feds — it ends it. This puts me and everyone else I care about in jail.
He has to die.
There’s no getting around that.
I stare at the files for a while, processing, hoping that what I’m reading is just some joke or a mistake. I don’t want to admit the truth that is staring me in the face. No matter what she says, Maria is betraying me. She’s betraying the club. She’s betraying my family.
She’s only loyal to herself.
How could she do this? How could she be so selfish as to put her career above her family and friends? How could she lie to my face and tell me she’d keep the club out of this?
These last few days with her have been a farce; the woman who holds my heart crushes it while she whispers lies in my ear.
I put the files back how I found them.
Tomorrow, after I dump this body, Preacher and I are putting our plan together. No hesitation, no doubt. I need to protect my family and this ends in only one way: with David Ardoin’s death.