Broken (Soldiers of Darkness MC Book 1) (21 page)

I pull out of her and stand up, and she rolls over onto her stomach, and when she looks up at me – for the first time I notice how young she actually is. She ain’t wearing no make-up, and that kinda exposes her age. She ain’t wearing that mask, and I allow a shred of guilt to pierce any lingering anger I might still be feeling, but that don’t hang around for long. She might be young, but I’m sensing she’s lived some kinda tough, twisted life in a very short space of time, and Zeb and Sam – whoever the fuck they are – they were part of that life. A life that brought her here, to me, and I still don’t really know why. This shit still ain’t making no sense.

‘You need to talk to me, Izzi.’

She gets up and I watch as she sashays across the room, man, that girl has one
hot
ass! And she knows it, she uses it. She makes men like me who think we’re strong realize how weak and pathetic we really are. And I need to pull that back. That’s gotta change.

She stands in the open doorway, bare-ass naked, and I know she’s giving the prospects out there a show, and,
shit!
As much as I get one hell of a kick from letting everyone see what I’m getting, I really gotta rein her in.

‘Izzi.’

She turns around and walks back over to me.

‘You need to talk to me, darlin’.’

She looks up into my eyes and there’s a coldness in hers that I just can’t get my head around. Someone as beautiful as her, she shouldn’t be so dead inside.

‘OK. We’ll talk.’

‘There are things I need to know, baby.’

‘I said, we’ll talk. Can I grab a shower first?’

‘Can I join you?’

She smiles, just a small smile, but it melts the ice in her eyes a little and I kiss her – a soft, gentle kiss that is so at odds with who I am but she’s turning me into someone I don’t even know anymore. ‘Yeah. You can join me. Then you’re cooking breakfast, and we talk. Deal?’

I return her smile and pull her against me. ‘Deal.’

I don’t know what we’re doing here.

I don’t know how it’s all gonna end.

I don’t know much anymore. Except that I need this girl to stay.

I need her.

To stay.

Chapter Twenty

Izzi

‘Who’s Sam?’

I look at him, right into his eyes. I need to do that, when I tell him all of this. If I can do that, I think I can probably do anything. ‘You don’t need to know, Mack.’

He raises an eyebrow. ‘I don’t need to know? You tell me you find some guy on the internet who turns you into this hard-faced bitch you’ve become; someone who rocks up in
my
town and asks me to help her kill men I do business with, and you tell me I don’t need to
know
?’

I look down, because this is harder than I thought it was going to be.

‘I’m putting my life on the fucking line for you, sweetheart. You asked me to help you, and I’m doing that, I’m helping you, but now you gotta help
me,
darlin’. Last night I sat there and I looked Viper in the eye and I spun him shit I still ain’t sure he believes, but I think it might be enough to make him back off. For now. You hearing me, Izzi?’

I raise my gaze to meet his, and there’s something there behind his eyes that tells me this is a man who
can
care. I don’t think he’s all that he makes himself out to be, he has another side to him. I just don’t think he’s let anyone see it.

‘I just want to know who you are, baby. I want to know who I’m fighting for here.’

‘What if I don’t really know who I am myself, Mack?’

That’s the first time I’ve said those words out loud, and I’m torn between wishing I’d kept that to myself, and feeling relief that I’m finally talking about it. With Mack Slayer? Is he really the right person to be opening up to?

‘What I still don’t get, Izzi, is why this – this Sam, or Zeb… why didn’t
they
just help you? You went to them, they knew what you wanted to do, so, why didn’t
they
just help you?’

‘They
did
help me.’

‘They helped you become who you are, I get that. I don’t get why they didn’t just do the job you wanted them to do. Why they didn’t just kill Viper’s men for you.’

I feel my expression harden as I look at him. ‘Because I don’t
want
anyone else to kill them, don’t you understand that yet, Mack? That’s a job
I
want to do. I’ve got to finish this, otherwise I can’t move on. I’m stuck, in this constant state of anger and pain and I… I need to end that. By ending
them
; the bastards who took the lives of people I loved.’

‘Do you even know what you’re saying, Izzi?’

‘I’ve asked you before not to patronize me, Mack. I know exactly what I’m getting myself into.’

He says nothing for a couple of beats, he just looks into my eyes and I can tell he’s trying to find something, anything that’s going to make this all a little easier to understand.

‘You know all about retribution, Mack. You understand how that works…’

‘It ain’t always the best idea, Izzi.’

‘The words of a true one percenter, huh?’

‘You know nothing about this world, darlin’. Not really. You don’t know how dangerous it can really be.’

‘Don’t I?’

He frowns. He doesn’t know the half of what I really do understand. How much I really do know, about this world; about
his
world. About him.

‘I know enough, Mack.’

He pulls out a packet of cigarettes and offers them to me. I shake my head. ‘You gonna expand on that one, or are you just gonna carry on with the cryptic shit?’

I look down at my clasped hands. We’re sitting out on the porch steps and it’s a beautiful, sunny day – the kind of day I used to love. The kind of day that used to see me and Aiden grab our bikes and go riding before stopping off for lunch at a local pub; the perfect kind of day. I don’t think I’ve had a perfect day since he died. In fact, I know I haven’t.

‘After Aiden and my dad were killed…’

I look up, and I turn my head to face him, my eyes locking with his.

‘After they were murdered, I went into shutdown. I was working on some kind of autopilot, my head – it wasn’t in the right place. But at the same time I was probably thinking clearer than I’ve ever done before.’

‘How did you find them, Izzi? This Sam. Zeb. How the hell did you find them?’

I look down again, still unsure as to how much I should tell him. Sam never told me what the boundaries were, I think he trusted me enough to know I’d have some kind of an idea.

‘I got talking to people online, in the biker community, here and around town, on social media, chat rooms, that kind of thing. And at first I don’t think I really knew what I was looking for. I was confused and angry and filled with so much hate, I just knew I wanted revenge. I just didn’t know how to go about getting it…’ I look back up at Mack, and he’s looking at me with an expression that’s verging on confused. ‘I didn’t talk about revenge and killing people in the name of my dead family online, Mack. I wasn’t
that
out of it. I was just trying to get information, anything, something that could give me some kind of clue as to who it was who’d gunned my family down. And then, one day, I got a private message from this man who said he could help me.’

‘Sam?’

I nod. ‘Yeah. Sam.’

‘He messaged you?’

‘He gave me a number. Told me to call him.’

‘And you contacted a stranger, just like that?’

‘I was desperate, Mack. He told me he could help me, and that was all I was looking for. Help.’

‘So, OK, you called him, he told you he could help you, and you, what? Just hopped on a plane and went to him?’

‘Pretty much, yeah.’

He laughs, and I don’t think he believes me.

‘Seriously? Jesus, Izzi… he could have been anyone.’

‘At that point in time I didn’t care. I either got the help I needed or I died trying to find it, I was that low. Dying didn’t bother me, Mack. It just meant I got to be back with Aiden and my dad. There wasn’t a downside as far as I was concerned.’

He takes a drag on his cigarette and stares out ahead of him. ‘You really wanted that revenge, huh?’

‘
Want
, Mack. I
want
that revenge. No past tense. That anger hasn’t subsided, I just learned how to control it.’

He drops his head and I’m sensing he hopes I’m going to leave this alone. I’m not. I can’t. It needs to be done.

‘Do you think this is what your dad…’ He looks up and his eyes meet mine, ‘what
Aiden
would have wanted?’

I shake my head as I feel a wave of anger rise up. ‘No, Mack, don’t do that. Don’t put that one on me. No, they wouldn’t have wanted this, but they don’t get a say, do they? They’re gone, they aren’t here anymore because some piece of shit decided to cut them down for no fucking reason, and I can’t forget that. They killed me, too, that night. But
I’m
still here, and I spend every day in a fucking daze just waiting to make somebody pay. And I can’t live like that forever. I can’t do it.’

‘So you go to some stranger and he, what? Turns you into some kind of avenging soldier?’

‘Fuck you, Mack.’

I pull myself to my feet but he’s right behind me.

‘Hey, Izzi, I’m sorry, OK?’ He grabs my wrist and swings me around to face him. ‘I’m sorry. I’m just – this is crazy shit, darlin’. I mean, how the hell do you go from an ordinary girl planning her wedding to wanting to kill someone?’

‘When that someone erases your entire life in the blink of an eye. That’s how.’

I pull away from him and head inside. I need a drink. I need alcohol, yeah, it isn’t even 10am and I’m seeking out the solace of liquor.

‘This Sam…’

I turn around and lean back against the counter, folding my arms as he finds the bottle of bourbon Odi left yesterday and pours out two shots.

‘
How
did he help you? Because you haven’t exactly mentioned details.’

I take the glass he offers me and down the drink in one. ‘By helping me change who I was. You know this isn’t who I used to be. Who I used to be wouldn’t have been able to do any of this. She had to go. And someone else – some
thing
else – had to take her place.’

‘All right, so, this “change” – how did it take place, huh?’ He takes my glass and pours me another shot of bourbon.

‘It wasn’t instant. I had a lot to learn. But once I’d talked to Sam, he knew what we needed to do. I needed to get strong, stay angry, lose any fear or anxiety I might have at the thought of entering a world I hadn’t even known existed before.’

‘And he could do that all by magic, could he?’

‘Don’t be a prick, Mack.’

‘I just don’t get it, Izzi.’

‘You don’t need to. None of this really matters to you, you don’t need to know who I used to be or even how I got to be this person I am now…’

‘Maybe not. But I
want
to.’ He comes over to me and takes the glass from my hand, placing it down on the countertop, and his fingers slide between mine as he kisses me, but I’m staying focused here. I know what he’s trying to do and it won’t work. He’ll see that, eventually. But what he’s trying to do, it won’t work. ‘I
want
to know who you are, baby.’

‘Why?’

‘Jesus, you’re fucking hard work.’

I pull myself up onto the countertop and cross my legs underneath myself. ‘Like I said, Mack, I don’t know who I am myself. And I won’t really know until all of this is over.’

He leans back against the counter beside me and folds his arms, staring straight ahead. ‘So, he taught you how to be one kick-ass biker bitch, huh?’

‘Don’t cheapen this, Mack. This happened, this was real. What Sam taught me…’ I stop talking. I still don’t think he needs to know any of this. Not all of it, anyway. ‘What Sam taught me, it was necessary.’

‘And where does Zeb come into all of this? What did
he
teach you?’

‘Something
you’ve
had the benefit of.’

He looks at me, and I smile, but he’s still confused. So I slide down from the countertop and press myself against him, running my fingers lightly over his rough chin.

‘He taught me how to get a dirty mouth. Then he taught me what to
do
with that dirty mouth; how to fuck like a whore. He taught me how to go down on a man in a way that would make his world stop turning.’

He frowns, and I laugh, kissing him quickly.

‘You think I always knew how to do those things? I’d only ever slept with one man my entire life, Mack. Aiden was the only man I’d ever kissed, ever held hands with; ever had sex with. But we’d never fucked. We made love. We were just ordinary people who loved each other, it was as simple as that. And the sex – it was always calm and gentle and beautiful but that was never gonna cut it in this world. In
your
world. I needed to be able to step it up a few levels. Sam taught me the attitude, he taught me to fight. But Zeb, he taught me to fuck.’

He shakes his head but he doesn’t let go of me. ‘This is crazy, Izzi.’ He runs a hand over his hair, back and forth, he’s agitated. Frustrated. I think I may have unnerved him slightly, I don’t know. ‘He taught you to
fuck
?’