ROUGH & RICH
NOTORIOUS DEVILS #6
I call his cell phone. Again. He sends my call straight to voicemail, and I glare as his voice barks out orders to leave him a message. He calls himself Soar, and all of his little buddies call him that, too. I’ve even got it tattooed on the front of my hip, some misguided act of love and encouragement.
God, I’m such a fucking idiot.
Soar.
How stupid.
His name isn’t Soar. It’s Sloane Huntington, III. I doubt any of his brothers know that, though. Just like none of them know that my name isn’t Genny, it’s Imogen. We’re frauds, the two of us. I’m not some badass biker bitch. I’m Imogen Carolina Stewart-Huntington, the wife of Sloane Huntington III.
We’re both from well-to-do upper class families. Not just upper class—no, more like elite. Our parents are trust fund babies, as are we. Neither of us have had to work a day in our lives. We could both spend to our heart’s content and still have plenty of money to give our children.
I met Sloane when we were in high school. We went to a private school, where we were famous for our parent’s titles, our hand-me-down last names, and our breeding lineage.
Sloane was a bad boy. He was beautiful in every way a boy could be beautiful to a fifteen-year-old. His blonde hair was never out of place, yet he looked as if he couldn’t care about it. His leather jackets were expensive, yet looked like he beat the shit out of them—his jeans were the same.
We were married the day after I turned eighteen. He was twenty-one. He’d been running around with the club by then. Nothing much, just during the week in Shasta, a couple hours from San Francisco. He always reserved his weekends to spend with me. I loved it. I felt so special, considering I was in high school and he was older than me. I thought I was really something. He even took me to all of my formal dances after he left school.
Then we got married.
That’s when things started to change.
I didn’t know what being a Notorious Devil meant.
I didn’t know about the women, the booze, the drugs, and the constant parties.
I didn’t know about being left at home alone for days while my husband slept with other women.
“Sloane, where the hell are you?” I snap once his greeting is finished. “I’m not taking this shit anymore. I’m done.”
I always say that, too.
That I’m done.
Then he comes home and sweet-talks me back. Every time. I hate myself a little more each and every time I stay with him instead of leaving and going back home to my parents. They were pissed when I married Sloane. They didn’t understand why I wouldn’t go after someone else, anyone else.
Now, fourteen years later, I see exactly why they were so angry. Sloane hasn’t grown up. He hasn’t changed. He hasn’t taken on the responsibility of his father’s company, and he’s still running around getting high, fucking whores. He has zero ambition in life. At this rate, his little brother will be running his father’s company and everything will completely bypass him
I hear something in the next room and I know it’s Cleo. She’s been staying with me for a few days while her man and Sloane have been gone on a run. I feel like a bitch for ignoring her, but I’m so angry that I’m not good company anyway.
The phone rings in my hand but it’s not Sloane on the other end, it’s MadDog, his president.
“Need you to come down to the clubhouse, darlin’,” he murmurs into the phone.
MadDog—now he’s a member of the club that I can respect, and one of the only ones. He has ambition, he’s in charge, and he doesn’t take shit from anyone. He’s also fiercely loyal to his woman, Mary-Anne. God, they’re so cute and perfect; they make me sick and bitter.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, my heart racing inside of my chest.
“Just come on down here. Bring Cleo, too,” he says and then ends the call.
“Cleo, we’re being summoned to the clubhouse,” I call as I walk out of my bedroom and into the doorway of my guestroom where Cleo has been staying. Her head jerks and she looks at me, giving me a sad smile and a nod.
We take separate cars, probably because she thinks I’m a bitch. I am, though. Or at least I am now. I wasn’t always. When I was young, I was fun, always down for a good time, and always smiling.
Sloane used to call me his Sunshine.
He hasn’t called me that in at least ten years.
I walk into the clubhouse and MadDog tells me, with regret swimming in his eyes, that Sloane’s been arrested.
“What did he have?” I ask.
“I’m sorry, babe, I don’t know. I only know they hooked him up and carted his ass off,” Torch says, keeping his voice soft and gentle, like I’m some kind of wounded animal.
I nod, understanding filling me. He’s gone. I’m done. The entire room watches me like I’m a freak show, waiting for me to go insane. I look around until my eyes catch MadDog’s.
“I’m leaving. I’m not coming back. I’m going home to my family, and I’m sorry, but I’m divorcing his ass,” I announce.
“Now, Genny. We don’t even know if the charges will stick,” MadDog rumbles.
“No, fuck that. He doesn’t give a fuck about me. He cares about the club and the drugs and the whores. I’m not on that list anywhere. So, he can have it all. He doesn’t have to worry about me anymore,” I announce as I tamp down my emotions. I’m on the verge of tears, so I take a step toward the front door.
“Babe, you know that’s not true,” Colleen says.
“Do I?” I ask, arching a brow. “I know he doesn’t come home for days, sometimes even weeks. I know he’d rather fuck those whores then come home to me. I know that what I want—it doesn’t fucking matter.”
“What do you want?” Colleen asks.
I shake my head. No way am I telling this room full of people what I want out of my husband. No way am I telling them that I want him to come home at night, to hold me, to whisper to me that he loves me. No way am I telling them that I want him to slide inside of me bare, make love to me, and fill me with a baby.
I’m thirty-two years old.
I want a family.
I can’t let my own husband have sex with me without a condom because I literally do not know where his dick has been. No way am I telling them that I don’t want to lie awake at night, crying because my husband doesn’t want me. The only man I have ever been with doesn’t want anything to do with me. The man I love with everything that I am can’t stand to look at me.
“Everything,” I whisper, giving them that and nothing else.
“That’s too much,” Colleen whispers back.
“Then fuck Him,” I growl before I turn and walk out the door.
“Genny,” Mary-Anne calls out, chasing after me.
“What?” I ask, whirling around and giving her a dirty look. I don’t mean to be a bitch, but its basically just my personality anymore.
“Don’t leave. The club will help you out. We’re your family,” she says. I know that she’s been really sweet, helpful, and kind, but she doesn’t know shit. I let out a humorless laugh and shake my head.
“I don’t need the club’s help,” I snort.
“Don’t leave like this,” she whispers.
“I envy you. Having a man like MadDog who obviously loves the hell out of you and would do anything to keep from hurting you, it’s amazing really. I want to hate you, but you’re too damn sweet,” I chuckle. “I’m glad you have a man like MadDog, but please, don’t put Soar in the same category.”
I open my car door and slide inside, start the engine, and drive to my parent’s house. I leave everything in Shasta. Not wanting one single memory to come with me. Sloane’s fancy ass muscle car is in the garage of our house, as is everything else of ours. He can throw my stuff away, or give it to one of his whores. I don’t give a shit anymore.
Sloane Huntington is nothing but the past.
“I’m sorry, man,” MadDog says as he sits across from me.
It’s visiting day. I’m stuck in fucking prison for three years on a drug charge. It’s my own fault. I knew how much was too much to have on me, but I did it anyway. I was high and cocky. Now that I’m in forced sobriety, I can see a bit clearer.
I fucked up.
Big time.
“Why? Because I’m in here? Brother, I did this shit to myself,” I chuckle as I lean back in my chair.
“No, Genny,” he says. I sit up a bit straighter.
“She okay?” I ask.
I haven’t heard from her, but that doesn’t surprise me. My woman, my wife, she’s a bit temperamental, high strung, and high fucking maintenance, among other things. I’ve known her since she was a pretty little fifteen-year-old and I snatched her up quick. I saw the way the other thoroughbreds in school were eyeing her. No way would she be with them. My blonde-haired sunshine needed wild freedom.
I just didn’t know that we’d eventually be semi-miserable together. Love her, but the woman grates on my goddamn nerves sometimes. So I hide out until she’s over whatever snit she gets into, then I sweet-talk her down, and it’s all good again for a while.
It’s a cycle.
“Don’t know. The day Torch came back and said you’d been hauled away, she said she was getting shot of you and she left. We’ve been keeping eyes on your place, but she hasn’t come back, not even for her shit. We’ve had to up our security on the Old Ladies, shit is in limbo.”
I close my eyes for a beat. She wouldn’t need her shit, She has enough money to buy herself a new outfit every day for the rest of her life, and never repeat it. I know where she’s gone. She’s gone back to Frisco, back to her parents, back to society.
Fuck.
“Don’t worry about her,” I say with a shrug.
“Soar…”
“Seriously, Pres. She’s got so much fuckin’ security where she’s at, she’s safer than the fucking president,” I mutter.
“You sure?”
“Yeah, Prez, I’m sure.”
MadDog leaves a few minutes later, and I’m taken back to my cell. I pull off the photograph that’s taped up on my wall next to my bed and I look at it. It’s a picture of Genny. Imogen. She’s about twenty-one in it. She’s smiling, but it doesn’t reach her eyes.
That’s my fault.
She hasn’t been happy since the day she walked in on me fuckin’ a whore while I was high off my ass. It’s not that I want to hurt her, but fuck, nothing I ever do has made her happy. I bought her a house, and it’s about a quarter of the sized house she grew up in. It’s not fancy and perfect, but honest to fuck, I don’t give a shit about that material stuff, so I didn’t think she would either.
Then, she wanted me to come home every night. I have shit to do at the club. I couldn’t come home every night. Then, she started holding out on me as a form of punishment. We’d been married for two years when she started that shit.
That was when I started fucking clubwhores.
I hadn’t been with another woman in over five years. But I stooped, I fucked the bitch out of spite and anger. I didn’t get caught, so I kept doing it, it was just another high for me to chase after. Then when she caught me, she threatened to leave, I sweet-talked her and she stayed. Then, that was a high.
Fuck, I’m always chasing the next high.
Always.
Now, she’s gone and I’m stuck here. No sweet-talking her back home anytime soon, at least not for the next three years.
Fuck.