Hard Roads (22 page)

Crawling back to my pillows, I laid my head down on the cool cotton, my body relaxing into the mattress and allowing my body to digest the first bit of food it’d been given in a long time. I didn’t fall asleep immediately so I heard when JD came walking back in. He was attempting to be quiet, but every step he took rattled the floor and vibrated up through the bed.

I felt him when he stood above me, but I kept my eyes closed pretending that I didn’t realize he was there. Softly, his lips touched my forehead as his hand smoothed over my hair.

Spoken quietly because he didn’t intend for me to truly hear it, he said, “Thank you.”

And then he was gone and I drifted away to a place where I never wanted to be again.

. . .

They’d stripped him naked, laughing at his expression while he stared at his brother’s body. The body had no face where it hung from that tree. The tire had burned it off. Just to add insult to the injury, they’d sheared off the man’s fingers with the spinning chain on the bike as he’d died.

They couldn’t even let him die in peace and it was now his brother’s turn.

I’d thrown up twice by that time, my stomach still gagging on dry heaves. With Diablo’s knife still pricking my throat, I’d kept my eyes open as they stripped him before beating him down to the ground.

One of the guards looked over at Diablo, a thick grin pulling at his lips. “Face up or face down?”

Diablo laughed behind me as he raised his hand in the air, at first giving a thumbs up, but then dropping it slowly to point down. The guard nodded his head, reaching down to turn the biker onto his stomach before binding his wrists with chains.

“Keep your eyes on this, Holly, I’m sure you’re going to love it.” Diablo whispered in my ear, flicking his tongue out to lick along the sensitive edge. I jerked away, not wanting him to touch me, but the knife pricked in harder and I cried out.

He laughed. “Looks like you’re going to want to remain very still.”

With my breath rattling in my chest, I watched as they attached the man to a truck with the chains they’d tied to his wrists. Driving the bike up behind them, they killed the engine, kicking at the heavy machine until it fell on its side. After attaching a second set of chains to the bike, they wrapped the other end around the hips of the man several times, locking it in place so the chains wouldn’t slip free.

Once again, I couldn’t understand what they were doing until another guard jumped in the truck and started the engine.

“Oh fuck.” My stomach heaved again as Diablo continued to laugh behind me.

The engine gunned and pulled away slowly, the biker screaming as they picked up speed, dragging him and the bike in the truck’s wake. It drove out into the open desert that spread in all directions away from the borders of the backyard gardens. Moving in circles, the truck dragged that poor man over the low lying plants and rocks, his body stretching from the force of being between the truck and the bike that was being dragged as well. His screams grew louder as his body contorted and his skin was shredded, his arms finally popping at of the sockets before the skin started to tear through.

When I saw it … when I saw the amount of blood that came rushing out of where his arms had once been, my screams rang out louder than the man who was being torn in two.

“MUNCH! Baby, wake the fuck up!”

Screams tore from my throat and my eyes flew open. I noticed instantly that I was held in JD’s arms and I panicked, throwing my arms out in desperate need to get away. I continued screaming while I fought to break free and JD finally released me. The sudden ability to move had come too quick and I backed away faster than I should. Falling off the bed, my elbow and head hit against the floor, pain shooting through my already battered body.

“Shit. Holly, you okay?” His face peeked over the side of the bed and he reached down for me.

Immediately turning over, I scooted on my butt until my back hit the wall. Bending my legs, I hugged them to my chest, staring out at a man who was now crouched on the floor at the side of the bed.

“Holly…no, don’t go back there.”

“Keep away from me.” My voice shook with each word, but I said it clearly enough that he froze in place. If I didn’t hate him so much, I would have laughed at the position he was in. I could tell his leg was cramping from the odd way he’d knelt down. I would have felt sorry for him too if he wasn’t such an asshole.

“You were screaming and I came in to help you. That’s all that was.”

Anger flooded me, memories of being tied to beds and whiskey being poured on my skin suddenly flashing in my mind. “You sure?” I asked it on a humorless laugh. “Because not too long ago, you had no problem tying me down and fucking me.”

His eyes widened, but then narrowed as guilt flooded in around the beautiful amber color.

I didn’t know where the sudden strength had come from, but my entire body started to shake with rage rather than the constant fear I’d felt for the past few days.

“I … I’m … fuck …” His head dropped and he gripped it in his hands. Without looking up, he said, “I didn’t mean to hurt you, Holly. I’m a fucking asshole and I know that. I had no right to fucking touch you or grab you or any of the other shit I did and I deserve a fucking beat down as a result of it.”

“I. Fucking. Hate. You.” Spoken on a growl, I said the words slowly, noticing the expression on his face when he looked up. It was pain, clear as a summer’s day. It was like I could see the knife twisting in his chest. “You took me. You hurt me. You then left me to other men to hurt me and now you’re holding me so that your FUCKING CLUB can use me against my own FATHER!”

“What? Wait, no…” He finally moved, sitting on the floor and holding his arm out as if to stop me. “No, Holly, I’m not doing anything for the club, this isn’t about your father.”

More lies. After everything he’d already put me through, after all the times he’d lied to me before, he kept going.

And I fucking snapped.

“I DON’T BELIEVE YOU!”

Barely understandable, my words bellowed through the small room. He winced to hear them, but then his face turned down into an angry scowl. I could see his jaw clench as he ground his teeth. He stared at me, long and hard, the rage in his system causing him to shake where he sat. The air between us felt volatile, like a bomb that would explode as soon as one of us made the first move.

“Munch…”

“Don’t call me that.” I was sick of the fucking name, sick of the one word that reminded me of all of this.

“Holly...” He paused, most likely waiting to see if I would snap at him for calling me by my actual name. I should have, just to keep him from having any way to address me. I wanted him out of the room. I wanted to escape from this house.

There was nothing he could say or do to make any of this better.

“Don’t ‘Holly’ me. Just tell me how I can get out of this place and go home. I won’t be you or anybody else’s victim again, JD. I’ll kill the next person that tries it. YOU told me not to fight. YOU told me to trust you and go with whatever fucking plan you had. You PROMISED that I would be fine. I’m not fucking fine, am I? I’ll never be fine again because of what you’ve done. So just tell me where the FUCK we are, so I can go home!”

Once again, the seething rage slithered out with my words. I couldn’t contain it. It boiled inside me with a lethal vengeance. If I didn’t let it out to destroy those around me, it would ultimately destroy me.

My strength had found me again just like I knew it would and this time, I was going to ride my wave of anger regardless of whether it got me killed.

I wouldn’t be a victim again.

I would rather die before letting that happen.

Chapter Twenty-Three

~ JD ~

She was angry. That much was apparent. I was just as angry, but not at her. I was angry with myself.

I was angry that I’d hurt her, that I’d been responsible for every bad thing that had happened to her. Sure, her father was the original bastard to blame, but he wasn’t the one who grabbed her and had thrown her straight into the arms of Diablo and Hector. He’d only provided the reason, but I’d been the one to commit the greatest offense.

Every single word she said was true and I deserved to hear them. I’d lied, I’d used her, I’d been guilty of each intolerable act she accused me of having done. It was my fault.

Mine and no one else’s.

Other men in my position would argue that it was Diablo’s fault she’d been raped. It was Hector’s fault she’d been drugged. It was Big John’s fault for having ordered her capture. However, I couldn’t make that argument because it had been my actions that had allowed all of that to occur.

And I’d done it to gain something for myself.

My body tensed up with the absolute rage that I felt towards myself for what I’d done. My jaw clenched, my teeth scraped together and it took everything I had inside me to sit in front of her and not break down and lose it when I realized how far things had gone.

No matter what I did to fix her, I could never erase what had happened. The memories would always chase her. They would weigh on her for the rest of her life, never really letting go. Years could pass and the memories could fade, but all it would take was one night of fitful sleep for them to come slamming back into her, just like they had tonight.

And that was my fault.

She wanted to leave, she was screaming at me over and over again to let her leave, but I couldn’t. Not in her condition and not in a place where I barely understood where we were. I had to wait for Henry. I had to make her wait for Henry. And I would take her prisoner again, but this time to protect her from not only herself, but from the people who would hurt her.

There was no doubt in my mind that word had gotten out about the gunfight. I’m sure every dealer and MC in the area was now looking for the girl they believed was the key to getting even with her father.

So, while those forces chased her, Henry chased her father and I prayed to God and the universe that Henry could find him.

“Holly…fuck, I have to use a name for you, beautiful.”

She sneered, backing farther against the wall, absolute disgust flooding her colorless eyes as she looked at me. I worked hard not to smile to see it, though. It was better than the rocking, it was better than the terror that had been there only a few nights before. It was a rebirth of the fighter I’d met on the side of the road on that bright, sunlit day and it was a breathtaking relief inside me to see that she hadn’t been destroyed.

So strong, this little woman. She was stronger than most men I’d known, not in physical form, but in spirit. She’d endured and even though she was pushed to a point of no return, she came back.

“Listen, I’m not holding you for any other reason but to protect you. People are looking for you and they won’t stop until they find you. Nobody knows where this place is or what this place is and that includes me. I won’t hurt you, but if you try to leave, I will stop you if for no other reason but to keep you alive.”

“You call this ALIVE?” Her words were broken up from how loud she yelled. I could hear the anger and pain in her voice, the way the tissue in her throat must have been burning and torn from the strain.

“Yeah, babe, I call that alive. You’re fighting again. I’m not sure if you remember the night we took you back. You weren’t yourself, you weren’t fighting. This entire fucking week, I’ve been scared shitless that we’d lost you. Sure, you were breathing, but you weren’t yourself. You weren’t the person I remembered from the side of the road.”

Her chest heaved and her eyes narrowed. She didn’t look like she’d calmed down, but that was fine by me. I didn’t want her calm. I wanted her angry. She needed to be in order to fight whatever still haunted her thoughts. Those men had done more than physically hurt her. They’d built a cage inside her that had imprisoned her spirit and everything that made her what she was. She needed her anger to break free of that cage and I wanted to stoke it so high that, not only could she bust out of it, she could destroy it and never allow herself to get trapped inside it again.

“Tell me how much you hate me. Call me every goddamned name in the book. Tell me every fucked up thing that you were put through so that I can carry that pain right along beside you. I deserve it more than you and I’ll take whatever you want to throw at me. I don’t fucking care. Not as long as it makes you better. I’ll carry it, Holly. I’ll take the blame and the guilt and all the fucking pain that comes with it, just to get it out of you.” My voice was raised. I wasn’t asking her, I was telling her.

I wasn’t being an asshole by doing it either. I was being smart. If I could keep her talking, if she would purge every fucked up thing that happened to her by blaming it on me, it would help begin to free her of what those men had done to her.

The tears stung. Hot and wet, they rolled down her cheeks, dripping from her jaw to the floor. I couldn’t stand those tears and I wanted to cry right beside her, but I needed to keep her angry.

“TELL ME!”

She jumped at my booming voice, her face twisting even more into anger at the sound. Good. She was still fighting instead of shrinking back inside herself. I was risking it all by scaring her even more, but goddamn, this girl was still fighting.

“You think you can fucking handle it? You think there’s anything that will make this right? NOTHING can make this right! Not you, not my father, not even the deaths of those fucked up bastards that tormented me and LAUGHED while they did it. NOTHING! You want to know what they did? Will it make you feel better to know exactly how they broke me?”

She screamed and I scooted closer to her. I watched as her body shook and I wanted to be close enough to grab her if she started to do anything that could cause her to hurt herself. I wouldn’t let another man lay a fucking finger on her, not even the ones that lived inside her because of what they’d done.