misunderstoodebook (5 page)

Marie grabbed her shoulders and shook her. “Where’s Caro? Where’s my baby?”

“Gone!” Kendall cried. “They took her. I can get her back if I listen to Spoon.”

“Spoon?” Marie echoed on a gasp, the color draining from her face.

Denial dropped into her eyes and, for once, Kendall wished she’d had the ability to fall back on Marie’s defense mechanism. Deny all the ugliness of life and what was too ugly to deny, drink away.

“I’m going to get her back,” she swore, desperate. “I swear.

Short bursts of air escaped Marie’s lips and Kendall wondered if her mother was suffering a heart attack. She reached for her, but Marie shrugged her off. She wanted answers. Nothing else.

“How are you getting her back? Why aren’t you doing something now?”

“Because…because I’m hurting. I-I need tonight to rest and feel better.” Think of her biker and imagine she’d see him again one day. Pretend he’d be there to rescue her. Rescue Caroline. That he wasn’t a man and, worst, a biker, who’d hurt her and use her and humiliate her. In her head, he could be everything she’d always dreamed of finding in the man she loved. All the things that didn’t exist in the real world. “Spoon…hurt me.”

“I don’t care! I want Caro back.”

Kendall couldn’t continue…she had to. She
had
to push her words out. Somehow. Her mother was on the verge of coming unhinged. Just like she had when Kendall’s father had been crushed to death. Kendall had had to stay with her grandparents while Marie recovered from her suicide attempt.

“I’m going to get her back,” Kendall repeated, shivering at the wild, haunted look in Marie’s eyes. She wondered why her mother wasn’t suggesting they call the police. Or, maybe, she knew Spoon’s goons patrolled right outside the house. Watching her. Waiting for a squad car to arrive. Wanting Kendall to run away, so they could commit more violence against her and Caroline. “I swear, Mama. Please. I swear. I love you. I love her.”

Marie’s eyes widened and her nostrils flared. “Why haven’t you gotten her back yet?”

“Because—“

“Because what, whale?”

The nickname her mother had given her hit Kendall in her heart and she took a deep breath to shove away her pain. All her negative body image. Her self-hatred.
Everything
.

She licked her lips. “Because she’s gone.” She forced the words out, all of them. “They sent her away.”

“Sent her away?” Marie shook her head, at a loss.

She wanted Kendall to explain, but the hope of getting Caroline back and forgetting everything painful squeezed Kendall’s chest.

Marie got to her feet and planted herself firmly in front of Kendall, shoving her hands in her pockets. “Tell me,” she snarled.

Kendall nodded, bruised, battered, and hurt. “They want to sell her. Somewhere. For sex.”

Logan Donovan. Spoon.
Whoever
.

“My baby?” she whispered. “My…I’ll never…my baby’s gone. I’ll never…see…my baby again.”

Marie fell to her knees, wailing and Kendall scooted forward, slipping to the floor next to her mother and wrapping her arms around her, even though her entire body screamed in protest. She threaded her fingers through her mother’s hair. “I’m going to do everything in my power to get her back,” she whispered with conviction. “I promise.” She’d think of something. Someway, somehow. She’d—

“No, Caro’s gone. She’s gone. She’s never coming back. Never.”

“Mama—“

Marie shoved Kendall back. “
No!
You’re right, Kendall. She’s gone. You’ve said it enough times that you
know.
You
know
my baby isn’t ever coming back. You took her from me on purpose.”

“I didn’t—“

Kendall buried her head in her hands, blinking through tears.

A click caught her attention and she remembered her mother. For the second time that day, her world tilted. Marie pressed the gun to her own temple.

“My Caro’s dead.”

“No, Mama,” she whispered, her trembling voice matching her shaking body. “P-put the g-gun d-down, M-mama.”

“Caro needs me.”

“Caro’s alive.” Kendall let out another sob, the pent up sound breaking free with a pitiful wail. “I need you, too.”

Marie contemplated Kendall for a long moment, their gazes meeting, clashing.

“Ma—“

The report of the gun filled the small room and Kendall screamed, bone, blood, and brain spraying her in gore.

Chapter 3

5 weeks later

As the sun slipped into the horizon and further chilled the early April evening, Kendall drew in a deep breath, fidgeting with her purse straps. She peeped over her shoulder and saw nothing but motorcycles and cars along with men guarding them, relieved at not finding any sign of the two men Spoon had tailing her. They were there, somewhere on the other side of the gate. Waiting. And, possibly, watching.

She frowned in concentration, working out in her head how to best sound sensible and sane when she felt anything but.

Gathering her resolve, Kendall yanked open the door to the MC clubhouse and it banged shut behind her. She jumped, the sudden, frantic pound of her heart matching the throbbing in her head. She had to adjust to being out, amongst people again, after Spoon had kept her in a dark, decrepit house for weeks. Until he’d released her two days ago. Now she’d gone from being his prisoner to…
this.
Out, amongst men who could hurt her like Spoon had.

He kept her dosed with pills. The first few days after Marie shot herself, the sounds of gunshots and screams and the sight of her mother’s faceless body falling forward onto her haunted her. Her sister’s sobs and pleas for Kendall’s help.

She couldn’t help, though. She was a different person now.
Everything
was different. She hadn’t gotten Caro back. Her mother was gone and she’d...she wasn’t quite sure what had happened with her job. Spoon had taken care of it.

Now, she’d returned to the club to see the man also responsible for changing her life. Unused to light anymore, she squinted at the light reflecting in her irises. Her nostrils flaring, she hugged herself.

She’d expected a lot of noise. Spoon had even allowed her a radio to acclimate her to loud sounds. She appreciated tonight’s relative quiet in the clubhouse, though. The break of billiard balls and satisfied male laughter accompanied female giggles. A glass sliding across wood and the scrape of a stool across the concrete floor. All manageable noises.

Swallowing, Kendall stepped forward, turning left, remembering,
somehow,
the bar stood in that direction. A huge mural of the Grim Reaper, scythe dripping blood, sockets glowing red, punched her in the eyes and she gaped, trying to figure out where that symbol of death had originated and what role did he really play in someone’s passing. Blood and death chased her, but the Grim Reaper had never shown himself to her. Not even the day she’d had death painted on her.

She squeezed her eyes shut, willing the images away. A wave of heat and nausea curled inside her, another reminder of her predicament, of all the destruction and darkness she lived with now. Each time she stepped into the light, the darkness threatened to swallow her. Held by the Torpedoes, she hadn’t had to think. They hadn’t allowed it. Not in the dimness of that house where her every move was controlled. When she was really good and well-mannered—when they’d drugged her enough—they let her talk to Caroline.

Someone bumped into her and Kendall recalled where she was and why she’d been sent. She’d prided herself on the control she kept over her body. Now, she wasn’t in control of
anything
. Not even her life.

To get through her foray into sanity, she’d grabbed her mother’s technique and compartmentalized everything into ten degrees of denial.

Caroline was missing but not because Kendall wasn’t following Spoon’s orders. No, she was missing because people went missing every day. Her little sister was missing because things like that happened.

Spoon hadn’t attacked her in her office. They’d had a disagreement and he’d gotten a little too angry.

Marie hadn’t committed suicide in front of Kendall’s eyes. No. No. No. Her mother would never had preferred
death
over staying alive for Kendall, if nothing and no one else.

None
of that horror had happened to Kendall.

So she was there, at the club, once again attempting to follow Spoon’s orders, so she could get Caroline back. She’d spoken to Caroline via Skype, so she knew her little sister was still alive. As used as a hooker on a highway, but
alive.

Kendall stumbled to the bar and sat, ignoring how miserable and overwhelmed she felt.

A man with long dreadlocks released a cloud of smoke from his cigarette. Diamond studs gleamed in his ears, a big skull ring circled his middle finger, and muscles bulged through his short-sleeved T-shirt and leather cut. He lifted a brow at her, then narrowed his eyes, leaning over to whisper something to another Black guy who resembled him and a man with a buzz cut and a teardrop tat beneath his left eye. They wore cuts, too, with patches identifying the positions they held. The man with the teardrop tattoo shifted. A Grim Reaper identical to the one on the wall was embroidered on the back of the cut between the arced rockers with the words Death Dwellers MC on the top one and Hortensia, WA on the bottom.

While the two men in front of the bar came to her side and flanked her, the biker behind the bar sauntered over. Gritting her teeth so she wouldn’t flinch beneath the intensity of his dark stare, she gripped the bar top, her fingers digging into the wood and reminding her she’d bitten her nails until they bled.

“You the bitch who ground her pussy all over Outlaw, right?” the man whose patch identified him as Enforcer asked.

He sucked on his cigarette and turned his head, blowing smoke away from her, the courteous gesture surprising her, but not abating the trembles assailing her. Failure was not an option. She had a sister to get back.

Neither of the three men spoke, but they focused on her. She glanced around, looking for Johnnie.
Johnnie.
Her blond biker’s name. The man whose memory had kept a shred of sanity inside of her, a beacon to her lost soul. She met him in her dreams, even when she wasn’t trying to. But she held onto his memory, his
illusion
. Needing…kindness.

Kendall palmed her eyes, concentrating. She’d gone four days without her pills. Spoon wanted her to act normal. When nothing in her world was normal anymore. Least of all her.

The man with the buzz cut grasped her chin between his fingers and turned her head from side-to-side. She remained still, not protesting, not speaking. She hoped he didn’t lose his temper. She wanted to frown at him and snarl for him to step
out
of her personal space.

She couldn’t find it in herself to spit the words.

He nodded. “Yeah, this is her, Mortician,” he confirmed. He released her chin and she noted a bleeding skull tat peeping from his white shirt.

Kendall blinked at the club’s Road Captain, his patch identifying him, too.

“Your tongue fucking cut out or something?” Mortician tamped out his cigarette. “Far as I remember, you didn’t fucking talk that night, either.”

She had to
say
something. Normal people spoke. “I-I can talk,” she squeaked, nervous and nauseous.

Mortician took another drag on his cigarette. “I’ll be fuck. The bitch talk, Val.”

“What the fuck you want?” Val growled, folding his arms, his chest and biceps bulging with muscles, not acknowledging Mortician’s words.

The other man leaned over her and whispered to the road captain. Kendall’s scalp crawled in apprehension.

“You’re a fucking pussy, Digger,” Val barked around chuckles before returning his glare to Kendall and pointing to her
. “You fucking answer me.”

The words reached her, but the meaning caught up a few seconds later, the catatonic state Spoon kept her in hard to overcome. If she failed this time he’d promised her even more detriment. But, God, he’d stacked the deck against her. The woman she’d been…she wasn’t her anymore and wouldn’t ever be again.

The three bikers waited for her answer and she shrunk back, expecting their violence. Slowly, the response she’d been coached to say slugged into her memory. “I heard the club needed an attorney and I’m here to interview for the position.”

“Yeah?” Digger’s eyes widened. “No shit.”

Val sidled a glance at her in surprise. “Where the fuck you heard that?”

Erm…
somewhere
. She doubted that would be an acceptable answer, though.

Not waiting for her reply, Mortician’s gaze touched all points on her body visible above the wooden bar. “You an attorney?” he asked with unsurprising skepticism. An attorney?
Her?
More like a moron. “You?” the handsome enforcer went on. “One of the whores from Outlaw’s party?”

“Yes,” she confirmed with the quiet dignity she knew an attorney would possess. Because she’d once had it.

“How the fuck you found out about this?” Val tapped his thick fingers on the bar top and frowned at her, his look frightening enough to make an angry bull cry.

His scowl deepened when she didn’t answer. She’d forgotten what to do—if she’d ever been told. She braced herself to run, but she couldn’t because she was right between Val and Digger.

“What the fuck your credentials?” Digger questioned, relaxing his lean body against the bar.

Kendall managed to open her oversized leather bag and retrieve her “Letter of Recommendation”. She slid it to Mortician and remained silent. When in doubt, shut up. She’d been sent with a woeful lack of resources. She didn’t have her license, her degree or her resume.

The three men whispered amongst themselves, the conversation lost to her tuned out senses. She yearned to escape. Yearned for the darkness.

Mortician handing the note to Val captured Kendall’s attention. Val gave it a cursory glance before reaching over her and passing it to Digger.

Mortician rubbed his chin, leaning against the shelf containing the alcohol and situated into the recessed wall. “Kendall, huh?”

She nodded, meeting his gaze a task. She might’ve been quiet and she might’ve had food issues, but she’d always liked to laugh. And…and do other things. She just had to remember what they were. Forgetting the blood and the pain was more important, though. Escaping the horrible realities of her life.