Raw: The Ultimate Mc Collection (24 page)

The woman on the phone, Grace, had tried to calm my nerves, but it was no use.  My heart was still thumping in my chest.  I couldn’t stop shaking.  I was terrified, nervous, in pain, and yet, I was absolutely beside myself with bliss that Monty was actually dead.

Dead!  And at my hands…

Grace instructed me to leave Monty where he was, pack what I could and that ‘they’ were on the way, without explaining who ‘they’ were.  I knew I was taking a huge gamble entrusting my life with a stranger on the other end of the phone, but the way I saw it, I had no other choice.  I knew if I left on my own, I would be hunted down within hours.

Monty’s driver was waiting downstairs.  He had shown up around dawn.  I could see him in the limo from my window.

I knew I couldn’t let him see me leave.  I hoped like hell this Grace woman had a real plan to help me out of this.

While I waited, I started packing.  There wasn’t much I wanted to take with me from this life, but I threw a few pairs of jeans, t-shirts, and underwear in a duffel bag, along with a few pairs of tennis shoes.  I left behind all my fancy clothes, gladly.

“Good riddance!” I said.

No more sequins.  No more makeup.  No more of those fucking stiletto heels!  As my pile of discarded clothing and possessions grew, I became giddier and giddier.

Now that Monty was covered up, it was a little easier to move around my apartment.  I didn’t know where I would end up, but I knew without a doubt that anywhere was better than here.  Anywhere would be better than the horror I had endured at Monty’s evil hands.

Fuck Monty.  Fuck my mother, too. I wouldn’t have called her for help if my life depended on it, not that I knew how to get ahold of her anyway.

I pulled a box from the back of my closet.  I sat down on the soft, plush white carpet, and opened it up.  It was all I had left of my past, and as I sat there gazing at it all, I wondered why in the hell I had ever kept these things in the first place.

My first tiny little crown from the Regal Princess pageant.  The sash I had worn when I had won the Miss Young Washington pageant.  A trophy I won as Miss Teen Oregon.

I pulled out a photo album, and opened it.  A bouquet of flattened, dried-up roses fell out into my lap.  My Mother had bought them for me after I won the Miss Teen Oregon pageant.  It was the only time she ever bought me flowers, and it was only because she was trying to apologize for something.

I squeezed them in my palms, and let the crumbs fall, sprinkling the lush pile with the discarded ashes of my childhood nightmares.

I flipped open the album, and lost myself in the memories that the pictures brought on.  My misery was clear as day. Just by glancing at my eyes, I could see how miserable I was.  It was sickening to see the coked-out, tight, fake smile of the woman that was supposed to be taking care of me standing beside me, her arm thrown around me possessively in every picture.

It was all an act for the camera.

By the time I was ten, she spent more of her time backstage getting high with the other stage Moms, or secretly fucking their husbands, and less time fussing over every strand of hair on my head.  It was a bittersweet trade-off. Of course, that’s when I stopped winning the pageants and auditions and when she really started hating me.

I quickly became nothing but a burden.

For a moment, looking at a picture of the two of us together, the fake smile plastered across both of our faces, I had a fleeting moment of curiosity about her.  I often wondered what had become of her.  Where she was now.  If she had any regrets.  Considering how incredibly selfish she was, I doubted it highly.

I sighed, throwing the photo album back in the box, and shoving the box back in the closet.

Fuck all of that!

The past was the past, and now that I was going to be free of Monty’s oppressive bullshit, I had no need for nostalgia.  Especially nostalgia for a life that never actually existed.

There were no genuinely happy memories for me.

I would just have to start making some.  As soon as I got the fuck out of this apartment!

Grace called me again, letting me know they were only an hour away.  She told me to pack lightly, leave Monty exactly as he was.  I had yet to tell her exactly who Monty was, but I figured I would tell her all that when she arrived.

I instructed her how to get into the building through the employee’s entrance, told her where to find the freight elevator, and gave her my apartment number.  It was still early, and Monty’s driver was still waiting patiently outside.

I don’t know exactly what I expected, in fact, I hadn’t given too much thought to what kind of help she was bringing, but when they finally showed up, I was stunned.

I opened the door to four of the biggest, most intimidating men I had ever seen.  The petite woman standing in front of them would have been dwarfed by their energy, if it weren’t for her own starkly commanding presence.

The first thing she did was hug me. I hadn’t said a word, not a hello, nothing.  She embraced me, and her kindness gently enveloped me, reaching so deep under the hardened shell that I lived in and pulling up all the hidden despair I had stored there, until I was sobbing silently in her arms.

The men stepped around us and into the apartment, shutting the door quietly behind them.

I don’t remember much of what happened after that.  Grace took me in my bedroom, sitting me down on the bed, holding me, stroking my hair until the tears passed.  I heard a lot of muffled talking by the men in the living room and after a few minutes, one of them called for Grace.  More talking, a raised voice that turned to whispers, and then they all returned to me, the five of them towering over me as I sat slumped on the bed.

“Lacey, is that Monty Patterson?” Grace asked quietly.

“Yes,” I whispered.

“Monty Patterson, the Mayor of Seattle?” she asked.

“Yes,” I whispered.  The men looked at each other, shaking their heads. “I’m sorry.  I guess I should have mentioned that on the phone?”

“Well,” Grace replied, “a heads-up would have helped a little, but that’s okay.  We can handle this.”

“We can?” The massive man standing next to her exclaimed.

“Yes, we can.”  Grace said confidently, hushing him with one pointed look.

“Lacey, this is Ryder,” she said, gesturing to the man, who smiled down at me. “And that’s Doc, Slade and Riot.”

The other three men stepped forward and I finally registered just how different they were from each other.

Doc was wide and round in stature, and his wild grey curls were so unruly they were almost mesmerizing.  It was hard to look at anything else, but I forced myself to meet his gaze as he nodded to me.

“Hi, darlin’” he drawled.

Slade was skinny and tall, and he half-smiled at me, his grin crooked and missing a tooth.  Somehow, it made him charmingly handsome.

I turned to the last man, Riot, and felt a jolt of electricity as his black eyes locked with mine.  I tried to look away, but I was unable to resist the pull of his energy.  He was huge.  Every inch of his arms were covered in tattoos, and his face was covered in a thick, heavy black beard.  His eyes peered at me, mysterious and dark, and yet full of tenderness.

“Everything’s going to be okay, Lacey,” he said, his voice raspy and deep, laced with concern with a slight layer of anger underneath. “You’re safe now.  You should let Doc here take a look at you.  He’s a retired medic, he knows his stuff.” 

“Okay, th-thank you,” I said, suddenly feeling very grateful that I wasn’t alone anymore.  “But what about Monty?” I asked.

“That guy?” Riot asked, arching an eyebrow, and gesturing to my living room behind him.  “Well, Doc’s good, but he’s not that good.  There’s no helping Monty.  He’s pretty fucking dead.”

Everyone in the room cracked up laughing.  I breathed a sigh of relief, and shook my head.

“I meant, what are we going to do with him?” I asked.

“Oh,” Riot said, shrugging.  “We’ll just leave him right where he is.  I’m sure someone will be looking for him.”

“His driver is outside in the limo across the street,” I said.

“Good to know.  We’ll go out the way we came in.  He’ll never see us,” Grace said.

“You’re gonna have people looking for you, Lacey.  I hope you don’t have any objections to assuming a brand new identity from here on out?” Ryder asked, his intense stare shooting right through me.

“I couldn’t dream of a better gift,” I replied, my heart soaring with gratitude.

CHAPTER NINE

Riot

If that fucker wasn’t already dead, I’d have killed him.  Instead, I could only fantasize about the pleasure I would have received at the familiar impact of my knuckles breaking his nose, the satisfying cracking sound, followed by the gushing blood before he hit the ground.

Unfortunately, I wouldn’t get to enjoy that, because Lacey had done a fine job of killing the prick herself.

So far, we only knew bits and pieces of Lacey’s story, but I could already tell it was going to be a horror story.  She filled us in just a little on the ride back home as she sat between me and Slade.

Doc had cleaned up her wounds before we left.  Her face was covered in scratches and red marks that would surely turn to bruises and her left eye was slightly swollen, but she wasn’t banged up too badly.  Her blonde hair hung in loose waves over her shoulders.  She wore a loose fitting black t-shirt, and a pair of jeans that hugged her curvy hips that she had tucked into a pair of black, leather boots.  In spite of the redness and swollen flesh, she was absolutely fucking stunning.

The only thing that threw me off was the hardness in her eyes.

Although she had broken down when we first arrived, she had quickly pulled herself together.  The firm set of her jaw, the determination in her eyes, and the stiffness of her shoulders, all told me she had endured things most women her age would never know.

Things nobody should see.

I sighed as I listened to her answer Grace’s questions.

“How old are you, honey?” Grace asked.

“Twenty-two,” she replied.

“You have any family?”

“No. My mother…she…she sold me to Monty when I was sixteen.  I haven’t seen her since.  I don’t know where she is,” she replied, her voice breaking.

“Jesus,” Slade said under his breath, shaking his head.

“I’m so sorry, Lacey,” Grace said.  She was in the front seat, sitting next to Ryder as he drove us back to the clubhouse.

We had managed to slip away easily.  A quick confirmation that Patterson’s driver was enthralled in the book he was reading let us drive right past him, with Lacey concealed in the back, without raising any alarms.

“Thank you,” Lacey whispered, her voice small and quiet next to me.

“Why don’t you try to get some rest, honey?” Grace said to her.  “It’s about three hours to the safe house.”

“Okay, sure,” she replied.

“You can put your head on my shoulder, if you want,” Slade said.  I caught his eye and glared at him, a silent warning for him to remain on his best behavior.

“What?!” he exclaimed, glaring back at me.  “We didn’t bring any pillows!”

“That would be nice,” Lacey replied, gingerly leaning on his bony shoulder, and closing her eyes.

I turned and looked out the window, marveling once again at what my life had become.

Ten years ago, I spent every waking moment in the ring.  Boxing was the only thing I cared about and it consumed me with a burning passion that ended up eventually burning all my dreams to the ground.

Sometimes, you can want something so much that it destroys you.

I had started boxing in the Army.  I joined up when I was seventeen, lying about my age, wanting to do anything to get away from my alcoholic father. My mother had left us alone together years ago, and I can’t say I blamed her. He was impossible to live with. I was finally tired of cleaning up after him, worrying if today was the day I was going to find him dead when I woke up each morning, and trying to get him to eat.  I felt guilty about leaving, but if I didn’t leave then, I knew I never would.  I wanted a life of my own.

At first I was just a cook, but then I saw how they treated the boxers. They were the rock stars of the Army.  They got special meals, didn’t have to work, and spent all their time training.  They even got special living quarters.  After a year of breaking my back in the kitchen, I went down to the gym where they trained and started hanging around, just watching on my free time.