SEVENTEEN
Shane
I wouldn’t say I was surprised when Ryan made the call. That wouldn’t be the right word. Pleased, was more like it. Because when Lea realized the shit hit the fan and there was some level of danger, she didn’t hide, she didn’t hole up and worry, she didn’t jump in a car and head off on her own to try to stop it.
She went to my family.
That was important to me.
I think it went without saying that my family meant the world to me. So when I finally stopped horn-dogging around and found a girl I wanted to spend more than a night or weekend with, it followed that she would have to get along with them.
It was clear immediately that she and Fee got on, both being somewhat opinionated, headstrong, stubborn women with hearts of gold and iffy pasts. And I could also tell she had a lot of respect for my parents after she made that comment about them raising good men.
The night at Chaz’s also made it clear that she got on with each of my brothers. Mark and her were a good match, both quick and happy to one-up each other’s insults. Her and Eli had holed up in a corner for a long time, talking, tones hushed, eyes intense. The only one she didn’t really seem to make a connection with was Ryan. It was something that didn’t overly concern me because, well, Ryan didn’t make connections with anyone. If me and Mark made our determination to be uncommitted and unconnected with anyone seem like sport, he made it seem like a goddamn way of life. While he hung out with all of us when we got together and participated in conversation, it was clear he was a loner, he was lost in his own head. And outside of family, he almost never fostered any kind of friendships and certainly not any relationships. That wasn’t the kind of man he was. So Lea not ‘getting’ him didn’t mean anything.
She still respected him and in no way shied away from him.
My family mattered to her. And not only because they were part of the me-package. I think she found things in them that she missed with her own family, even if she didn’t really see it. She looked up to Charlie because he was everything a father should be. She felt safe around my brothers because they were everything her brother wasn’t. And she bonded with Fee and my mom because they were the mother and sister she didn’t get to have.
When she ran to them, it meant something.
“What?” I barked into the speaker in my radio when the call came in.
“We’re guessing we’re ahead of you by at least an hour at this point,” he greeted me. And, sure enough, when we rambled off the nearest towns, they were. “Thing is, we changed our minds. We aren’t going to stop you from what you need to do, what needs to be done. But we are going to make sure you aren’t walking into a death trap.”
I nodded to myself, letting out a breath. If I knew anything about my family, it was that they damn sure could stop me if they wanted to. Five against one was no fight. Even if Pops was older, he was every bit as spry in a fight as the rest of us.
“She can’t come here,” I heard myself saying, knowing she would hate me, would be pissed-as-vinegar at me for making the decision for her.
“We know,” Ryan agreed. “She’s not handling this well. First leg of the trip, she was rocking the whole time.”
“Fuck,” I snapped, cracking my neck to try to release some tension. A big part of me, maybe just as big a part of me that wanted to get my hands on her ex, wanted me to turn around, go meet them somewhere, and take whatever worry she had going on inside her to make a pretty badass bitch go all soft like that. “And the current leg?”
“She’s passed out,” Eli supplied. “Been out for hours now. Sleeps like the dead.”
“She kick any of you yet?” I asked, smiling a little at the idea.
“Only about a dozen times,” Ryan said and it was clear by his tone that he was the one who got kicked.
“So here’s what we’re thinking,” Hunter went on, me obviously being on speaker and none of them overly concerned that she might hear. “We will cross into Cali and drop her in a hotel. That way, she’s close when this is all done so she doesn’t freak too bad. And then we can all come and make sure shit doesn’t get too crazy with you.”
I paused at that, really not fond of the idea of her alone in a hotel room, especially if she got up with no idea of how she got put there. But she was sharp, she would put it together quick enough. And, if I knew Lea at all… and I fucking did, she wouldn’t freak. She would get pissed.
But that was okay. I could handle pissed Lea.
“Sounds good,” I agreed.
“We’ll see you in a couple,” Pops said and the call ended.
As much as it killed me to admit it, I liked that I had backup. Adrenaline having a fair amount of time to get reabsorbed into my system, I could see how storming off on my own to confront a fucking MC president was perhaps not my brightest plan. Granted, this shit was between me and this Rey fuck. But I knew my family would be there to make sure it stayed between me and the Rey fuck and the rest of the chapter didn’t come barreling in and find inventive ways of torturing and killing me.
It wasn’t hard to find the clubhouse of the Satan’s Sinners MC. It was out on a deserted end of a highway, set so far back from the road that it almost looked like it melted into the landscape and that your eyes were playing tricks on you by making you think it was an actual building. But the sunlight flashing off the several dozen Harleys was a pretty big X marks the spot.
I turned back around at the dead end and went back to the nearest parking lot, about a mile and a half down the road. It was a hole in the wall dive bar that looked like it had been built in the fifties and hadn’t seen repairs or upgrades since then. Perfect place for bikers. It was closed in the early morning light, though several cars and trucks were there from the night before from patrons who found other ways home. I jumped out and pulled off my plates, sticking them under the driver’s seat, slipping a piece of paper over the VIN number in my dash, covering all my bases in case someone got suspicious. My thinking was, whoever owned a shit place like that which was likely the watering hole of bikers who not only threw back a few, but handed out heroin to happy customers, wouldn’t be too quick to call the cops about an unknown car in the lot. But I wasn’t taking chances.
When my family pulled in, it was obvious they had the same thinking as their plates were already missing.
“You look like shit,” Mark greeted me.
I didn’t doubt that. I hadn’t gotten more than an hour or two sleep the whole way.
“Sure you don’t want to catch some sleep before you go in there?” Pops asked.
“You can’t go in in broad daylight anyway,” Ryan reasoned.
With that sound bit of logic, I climbed into their backseat and passed out for a bit while they bullshitted around me, made plans, did whatever the fuck they did.
They woke me up as soon as night started to fall.
“It’s time,” Pops said, shaking my leg. “Gotta go show your woman how much she means to you.”
With that, I got up, stretched, grabbed some shit out of my truck, and started the mile and a half walk toward the clubhouse.
My family was behind me, but far enough that I couldn’t hear or see them. Close enough to spring into action if so needed, but giving me the freedom to do what I needed.
See, the thing was, they knew her ex was a bad guy. And they knew that he was a threat. But they didn’t know he had fucking raped her for years. They didn’t know that my plan wasn’t just to beat the shit out of him and intimidate him into leaving Lea alone.
That wasn’t good enough.
If they knew that, they might not have rallied behind me.
We were violent fucks. Spilling blood was as natural to us as breathing. It didn’t mean much.
But we didn’t kill.
Not one of us.
There were no bodies in our trails, not even from going overboard on a beating.
That was a clean track record I was about to sully.
I might have been able to let it go if her ex did too. Okay, so he was a fuck and he put her through hell, but she was free and healing and I would be there for her to help her in whatever way I could. But he didn’t want to let her go. Not only that, but he would pile up bodies until she felt so guilty that she went back simply to stop the carnage.
That shit would not be happening on my watch.
And being the evil fuck it was clear he was, there was only one way this was going to go.
One of us would be in the ground by the end of the night.
My money was on that shithead pushing up daisies, not me.
I crouched down behind a gutted car on their land, a safe twenty or so yards from the compound itself, closer to some other external building, small and windowless, like the shed they had at The Henchmen compound.
I stayed there a good long while, waiting, trying to figure out my plan. Then, like some goddamn sign from a higher power, the back door opened and out walked the fucker with the knife from the video. He seemed a bit smaller in person, not as intimidating without a blade in his hand. He reached into the back pocket of his jeans for a pack of cigarettes and a lighter, taking a long drag as he tilted his head up to look at the sky.
Looking back at the compound door and seeing no one else, I decided it was then or never. I could sneak up, grab him, and hole up in his own mother fucking shed and do what I needed to do. He walked a few feet closer to the shed and I bent down low, closing my hand around the crowbar and charging. He heard me at the last moment, obviously used to having to be on guard given his illegal dealing.
“Who the fuck…” he started to say, looking at me charging. But the rest of that phrase was gone when I swung out the crowbar, knocking him cold before he could alert his men. I tucked the crowbar into the loop of my pants and grabbed the guy by the back of his shirt and cut, dragging him toward the shed and tossing him onto the floor inside, using the crowbar to slide into the door and lock, blocking anyone from coming in, no matter what they heard.
I wasn’t a coward; I was a firm believer in fair fights.
I wasn’t going to slit the bastard’s throat while he was passed out.
Instead, I fished around in his pockets, found his knife, threw it into a corner, leaned against the door and waited.
If there was something I knew about knocking people out, it was that the pussies were out cold for up to half an hour at times. The bad guys, the ones who had been around the block a time or two, their brains shocked them back awake in usually just a couple of minutes, like they knew their lives depended on it. They often did.
True to my prediction, I heard a hiss and movement from the fuck on the floor, choosing that moment to flick the switch and bathe us in harsh light. He winced against the brightness, likely having a wicked fucking headache, as he looked around for a minute, trying to place his surroundings.
When his eyes landed on me, his hand went behind his back.
“Got the knife already,” I said, crossing my arms, watching him as he took his feet, looking me over, likely noting that I had a good fifty pounds of muscle on him.
“Who the fuck are you? Russian? Italian? Since when the fuck do you want the H trade?”
“Nah,” I said, clucking my tongue a little, maybe enjoying the way his eyes were active, like his mind was racing. “See, this isn’t about your little drug peddling. This is personal…”
“Personal? I ain’t never seen your face in my fuckin’ life,” he said, planting his feet wide, not backing away, but obviously not ready to advance, wanting to get a feel for me first.
“No, but you’ve seen my girl’s face before,” I said with a shrug. “You put a look there that, well, I don’t like seeing on a face like hers.”
“Who the fuck are you…” he started, then realization hit, his lips tipping up at the side. He waited a beat, nodding his head, a muscle ticking in his jaw. “You having fun fucking my girl?” he asked, the possessive term making my teeth go on edge. “She’s good in bed, ain’t she? Puts up a good fight when she’s in a mood.” At that moment, my blood was fucking gasoline and that stupid fuck just flicked a match at me. “She send you here? Thought maybe her new fuck toy could take down the man who owned her for years?”
Owned.
Jesus.
“Really? She doesn’t suck my cock like she belongs to you,” I said with a smirk, enjoying the way his face went blind with rage for a moment.
“Listen, mother fucker,” he said, everything about him suggesting he was seconds from flipping his shit. That wasn’t exactly a good quality for a leader. “My issue ain’t with you. I want Lea back. She belongs here. She grew up here. Her family is here.”
“You mean the family that stood by while she got raped by you for years? That family? Yeah, she traded those pussies in for my family.”
His head tilted at that, picking up on something in my tone. “Family?” he asked. “What are you into?”
“Let’s just say we spill blood for a living. For a lot less serious issues than some bastard threatening what belongs to me.”
“Please,” he snorted, shaking his head. “You think your hired muscle of a family stands a chance against me and my men?”
“See that’s the thing. This isn’t between me and your men. This is between me and you. And this door isn’t opening until one of us is satisfied. That one of us being me, if that wasn’t clear.”
“I’d say you just signed your death certificate, but we don’t let bodies get found.”
I felt my smile quirk up, my blood humming. “Bring it, mother fucker,” I said, pushing off the door.
I let him plow into my center, momentarily surprised how much power he had packed in a more compact body, but knowing it wasn’t always a true tell to judge a man’s strength by how big he was. I took the hit, smashing harder back against the door. I raised my hand as he took a step back to do the same, swinging hard into his jaw. Nothing, no fight had ever felt as satisfying as the crack his cheekbone made as my knuckles crushed it.
We went that way for a long couple minutes, throwing blows, adrenaline-charged and oblivious to pain.
I shoved him back hard, watching him stumble and slam into the opposite wall, wiping blood from his lip as he tried to catch his breath.
“What’s the end game here, man?” he asked, trying to circle me, but I wasn’t moving from the fucking door.
“You out of Lea’s life.”
“Bitch ain’t worth this shit,” he said casually, but I didn’t believe he meant it for a minute.
“Don’t think I was clear enough,” I said, wiping sweat from my brow. “I mean the permanent kind of out.”
“You think you can kill me?” he sneered.
“Not before really making you hurt first,” I said, charging forward without warning, bending low and taking him at the waist, sending us both flying to the floor with a thud. I pushed up, sitting back on his waist, pinning any retreat with sheer weight.
“Even if you kill me, man, you’ll never be inside her without my ghost hanging there between you,” he said, looking way too pleased with that idea.
And, well, it was the wrong fucking thing to say right about then.
I never understood Eli’s rage until that moment. He had tried to explain it to us after a particularly bad bout once where we had needed to pull him off and throw him in the basement until he burned through it all. He had said it wasn’t that he blacked out, but more that his personality, the moral parts of him, the rational mind, it all took a backseat to the rage that coursed through him, that burned inside like a fire, that blinded you to anything but the urge to get it out.
That was how I felt as I started swinging into the bastard beneath me’s face.
It wasn’t that I didn’t see it each time my fist landed, didn’t see and smell the blood as it poured from his lips and his nose, as one of his eyes filled with it. It wasn’t that I didn’t hear his grunts become curses, then become something else entirely. It wasn’t that I didn’t feel my own knuckles, so hard from all the years using them, actually bust open and bleed. It wasn’t that I didn’t know there came a point where I had cracked all the bones in his face and was punching into the soft flesh underneath. It wasn’t that I didn’t know the point when he went slack and unconscious.
I just didn’t give a fucking shit about those things.
All I cared about was the rage, the vengeance, making him hurt for all the times he made her hurt, made her feel weak and helpless, made her feel trapped and less than the fucking amazing woman she was.
His head rolled to the side slightly, his chest doing one weird, raspy choke and blood dripped out of his mouth.
But it was different than a busted lip, a torn tongue, a knocked-out tooth.
It was blood from somewhere in his chest, like it had filled up his lungs until it rose up his throat and trickled out.
It was that moment that the more conscious part of me slipped back into the driver’s seat. I heard my own breath first, harsher, more uneven than I had ever heard it before. The sweat was literally dripping into my eyes, making my tee stick to my back, slick down my arms. My hands hurt when I pulled back and tried to curl them. Hurt. My hands never hurt after a fight. Not since I was a kid. The blood got me next. I thought I knew about blood before. And I sure as fuck knew more than the next guy, but this was different. This was what they meant when they said bloodbath. I was covered. The fronts of my jeans were saturated with it, my hands, arms, shirt. When I swiped the sweat off my face with my shoulder, I saw a huge smear of it there too.
Beneath me, her asshole ex was still.
And it wasn’t the kind of still that happened when someone passed out from a beating.
It was the kind of still that came from being beaten to death.
I beat him to death.
I must have busted a rib.
That was the only explanation really.
I must have busted a rib and it pressed in and punctured his lung. That explained why so much blood came from his mouth.
I pressed back and up, surprised when my legs were immediately assaulted with pins and needles, making me painfully aware that I must have been pounding into his flesh for longer than it felt like. It felt like minutes at most. But it had to have been the better part of half an hour to do that to my legs.
I turned away from his body, looking at the other wall, trying to get my breathing to slow, trying to ignore the odd, shaky feeling of my insides.
See, I knew what I was doing when I drove across the country and dragged the man into the shed.
The thing was, the idea of doing it and the reality of it were two completely different fucking things.
There was no going back.
I was a killer.
I’d killed someone.
And not in the impersonal way that it happened with a gun.
I had beat a fucking human being to death.
Granted, every time that mother fucker held down an unwilling woman and forced his way inside her, he earned every single goddamn blow he had gotten.
But it changed things.
Me, mostly.
It changed me.
There was no denying that. There was no denying there would be repercussions for my actions. Nightmares. Or maybe that rage thing might happen again. I didn’t know.
But that didn’t change the overall feeling I had as I forced myself to look back at his body.
I felt vindicated.
Justified.
I had taken Lea’s demons and fucking slayed them.
They could never touch her, not in a tangible way again.
Sure, I had taken on a few of my own in the process, but that seemed like a fair fate to me.
“Shane!” I heard yelled from one of my brothers outside, too loud and freaked-sounding for me to be able to place which one.
My heart flew up into my throat at it, knowing very little freaked them out.
I reached for the crowbar, dislodging it, then pulled at the door.
Right about fucking then, I heard a gunshot ring out, loud, almost deafening in the quiet of that secluded location.
I flew out the door at about the same time as half a dozen bikers, guns in hands, looking around.
All eyes, including mine, landing on the same person.
The one with a gun raised to the sky and a lifted chin.
Lea.