Marek (Knights Corruption MC #1) (36 page)

A light humming noise filled my ears, the only one of my senses on high alert. My eyelids were closed, too heavy to open even if I wanted to. My hands and legs were numb, and it wasn’t until I tried to move them that I realized I was restrained. The shock of it wore off quickly, as soon as my memories flooded over me.

Vex had taken me. Shoved me in the back of a rundown car and driven for what felt like hours. It was the last thing I remembered before groggily waking up wherever I was now.

Was I back inside the Savage Reapers’ compound? Or did Vex take me somewhere completely different? Instinctually, I knew if he’d taken me back to my father, I’d be dead before Vex could exact whatever revenge he felt he was entitled to.

Wriggling my hands behind my back, I heard movement behind me. “Good, you’re awake,” Vex said. “I thought maybe I gave you too much.”

I opened my mouth to speak but no words came out. The only noise to escape was a low groan. My tongue felt like sandpaper, my lips cracking from the lack of moisture.

I had no idea what he’d drugged me with, but it obviously wasn’t meant to kill me.

His finger lifted one eyelid, the light above my head infiltrating my pupils and causing me a great deal of pain. It was like tiny shards of glass poking at me, and it only stopped once he’d withdrawn his hand and my eye closed into darkness again.

“It’ll take a few minutes for the drug to wear down enough for you to open your eyes. It’s a bitch, isn’t it?” he grated, happy with himself that he was able to impose pain on me yet again.

He rambled on for the next ten minutes about how much he was going to enjoy hurting me, that while I was away he had to resort to taking out his aggression on the countless club whores who were only too eager to jump all over him. That was, until he’d beaten most of them to within an inch of their lives. He’d even sliced up a few of them for added enjoyment.

Just when I thought I was going to throw up from the details of his rampage, my eyes flitted open. I tried to focus on something in front of me to calm my rising nausea, praying he wasn’t the only focal point in the room. Thankfully, he was behind me. I’d chosen a spot on the wall in front of me, inhaling long, slow breaths. Silently blowing them out through my nose. Within seconds, my stomach calmed.

A shadow moved at my side then quickly in front of me as Vex crouched until he was at eye level. I tried to lower my head but he wasn’t having any of it, his fingers roughly pinning my chin in place. He dug into my skin, instantly bruising the sensitive flesh.

I winced . . . and he laughed.

He had always enjoyed my pain.

His soulless green eyes pinned me, narrowing his gaze as if he was trying to read my mind. Funny thing was he was so far gone from reality that he probably thought he could. Whipping my head to the side before he stood, he cursed under his breath and walked away before uttering another word.

“Where are we?” I rasped, the vibrations in my throat instantly alarming me. I didn’t sound like myself, and it scared the hell out of me.

“Somewhere nice and safe,
sweetheart
. Don’t you worry about that.” Clanking sounded behind me, and my heart raced the longer he stayed hidden from sight. “You see,” I heard him say. “Your father wanted me to bring you back to him so he could do with you as he saw fit. But I couldn’t do that.” He tsked. “I needed to do my own thing first.” More clanking. “He can have whatever’s left of you when I’m finished. Or maybe I’ll go back and tell him I couldn’t get to you. Keep using that excuse day after day. Week after week. Hell, year after year.” He slammed something down on a metal desk, whatever objects were on top crashing against each other and creating a loud noise. “I watched you for weeks, Sully. I only needed to find the right time to take back what rightfully belonged to me.”

Following weeks spent with a man who let me speak my mind whenever I had something to say, I’d forgotten my place when it came to Vex. The words flew from my mouth before my brain could warn me against it.

“I don’t belong to you. I never did.”

There was no sound in the air around me before I felt his fingers around my throat. My body smarted at the aggression, my eyes bulging, my chest constricted the longer I was unable to take in oxygen. Just when black dots hazed my vision, he released his hand and backed away. Instantly, I went into a frenzied coughing fit, inhaling air as quickly as I could muster.

“You’ve always belonged to me. You were always mine. And nothing’s changed,” he sneered, his malevolent smile making my heart skip a rampant beat.

For someone to be so young yet so calculating—and dead inside—was something which had always baffled me about Vex. My father, I could see. He was much older, life having beaten him down. The only thing he had to cling to was his ruthlessness.

But nothing had happened to Vex to make him the way he was.

He was simply born bad.

Marek

Forty-five minutes we drove. Even though the odometer read a hundred miles an hour, it felt like we were driving at a snail’s pace. My fingers curled around the steering wheel while my stomach twisted the further away from the club we ventured. I couldn’t stop my mind from drifting to the image of Sully being hurt at the hands of that bastard, Vex. I tried my absolute best to keep her safe, always making sure either me or one of my men was watching over her, impressing upon her how important her safety was, yet she’d still made the decision to go off the compound without protection.

But I couldn’t blame her alone. Adelaide was the other half of the equation, although she didn’t know about the circumstances behind why Sully needed such protection. She probably just assumed I was being an over protective, possessive man, wanting his woman heavily safeguarded. While all that was in fact true, there was more to the story. Way more.

For as much as I wanted to point the finger at Sully and at Adelaide, I knew in my heart there was only one person responsible.

Me.

I should have paid more attention to her whereabouts during the party.

I should have drilled it into her how imperative it was that she not leave the compound without my permission.

I should have. . . .

Punching the dashboard, an immediate pain radiated through my hand, but I welcomed the quick distraction. It took my mind off the fact that if anything happened to Sully, I didn’t know what I would do.

Wait . . . That was a lie.

Yes, I did.

I’d rip through the Savage Reapers with the vengeance of the Devil, and I’d snatch every last one of their lives. If I perished in the process, then so be it.

“We’re gettin’ closer,” Stone confirmed. Sitting beside me, he studied the tracker to make sure we were headed in the right direction. I prayed her wedding ring was still on her hand, or at least somewhere on her body. I knew she was aware of the significance of the round piece of metal. Not only because it tied her to me, but if her club knew she’d married the president of their enemy, her life would be in even greater danger.

Hopefully, she’d had the foresight to hide the damn thing, all the while keeping it close.

Ryder and Hawke accompanied us, their silence in the back of the van a sign they knew how serious the situation was. I wanted to bring more men in case we ran into a few of the Reapers, instead of the single man who I believed had taken her, but I couldn’t leave my club unprotected. While I believed Sully was in extreme peril, it could also have been a setup of sorts.

Either way, we were heavily armed, never mind that we had the element of surprise on our side. There was no doubt they knew we were coming, but I doubted they expected us to find her so soon.

“It’s up ahead,” Stone called out. “Turn here and shut off the lights,” he demanded. I obeyed, not giving him shit for the first time in our lives.

He took our situation seriously, and I couldn’t have been more thankful. The second he found out she was missing he was by my side, firing off question after question and gathering a couple of the men to come with us.

The creak of the sliding van door screamed into the silence of the night. Looking around quickly, we noticed a large plot of land surrounded by vast emptiness. There were no houses. There were no cars. Hell, there weren’t even any people anywhere in sight. The further we walked, the closer we came to a small building set back in the middle of the wide open space, a tall chain-link fence barricading the structure into some sort of privacy.

The sun had long gone down, and in the absence of streetlights the only thing guiding us was the moon. We knew instantly we were in the perfect place to kill, or be killed, and no one would be any the wiser for days. Weeks even.

With the seemingly abandoned building a few hundred yards in front of us, we stealthily crept forward, the shadow of night cloaking us enough that we were able to sneak around without the fear of being caught.

I still had no idea what we’d walk into. Their entire club could be hidden inside, and although I had rage on my side, I was no match for the likes of an entire club. Or we could walk in on nothing, Vex having figured out we were tracking her, this stop-off point merely being a ghost hunt.

“Go left,” I instructed Hawke and Ryder. “Stone and I will go around that way.” I pointed to the right of the rundown building. Silence screamed all around me and the more the eeriness deafened me, the more alarmed I became. Pricking my ears, I listened for any signs of someone else there with us, but there was nothing.

Securing the perimeter, we’d all met up around the back and searched for a way inside. A busted-out window toward the middle was our best choice.

“I’ll go first,” Stone offered. When I tugged on his jacket, he wrenched his arm free. “I’m the obvious choice and you know it.” He winked. “Besides, if anything happens, at least I won’t feel a thing,” he tried to joke. Under any other circumstance, I would have laughed, but the precariousness of what we could potentially walk into still had me on guard. No time for carelessness.

I moved to go first, but he shoved me back, a stern look in his eye only he could get away with flashing my way. “I mean it, Marek. Let me go first. I’ll check things out and see if there’s another way in. One where we aren’t standing on each other’s shoulders to get inside.” His eyes gleamed as he tried to lessen my worrisome mood.

But again, nothing.

Just impatience . . . and fear.

Fear I would walk in and find Sully dead.

Fear I would walk in and not find her at all.

“Then go if you’re goin’. Stop blabbering on and get in there.” I cradled my hands together to make him a foothold. Raising him up, he took a quick look inside, as best he could with no apparent light, and lifted himself further until he was able to shove a foot into the corner of the window frame. Thankfully, the opening was wide enough for a man of his size, his broad shoulders skimming the sides.

We heard a thud, followed by a stream of cursing. At first, I thought he’d seen someone, but quickly found out a large piece of glass had cut his hand when he’d landed. The only reason he made any noise was because he had to rip a piece of his shirt to cover the wound.

He’d found a side door and beckoned us forth before we were caught like sitting ducks. Again, we had no idea if we were the only ones there, or if people were waiting to ambush us.

Twenty minutes it took the four of us to search around in the dark.

Twenty minutes of my heart in my throat.

Twenty minutes of agony while I searched for the woman who’d flipped me on my ass.

The vast space was cut into multiple sections, rooms disappearing into each other, plenty of hiding places to search. I wasn’t even sure what kind of building we were running around in, what type of business it could have been used for. And I didn’t give a shit either. All I cared about was finding Sully.

“Are you getting anything?” I asked Stone, pointing to the tracking monitor.

“Not really. Just a weak signal that keeps fading in and out, depending on where we are inside this shithole.” The place smelled rank, a mustiness mixed with the scent of dead animals filling our nostrils.

We’d quickly discovered there were two levels to the place, the one we were currently searching and a lower one. Hawke found a door with steps which descended below. Was that were they were all waiting for us? Were we walking into a trap?