Torched (35 page)

She shook her head and mumbled something under her breath, then tried to walk around him to get to her car.

He grabbed her arm. “Talk!”

She stopped and breathed more fire. “This has
nothing
to do with you, Torch. I already told you what kind of people I deal with. I haven’t interfered in your business, so stay the fuck out of mine.”

“You expect me to believe that was a fucking client?”

“Right now, I don’t give a shit what you believe.” She yanked her arm away from him and took a step back. “You crossed a fucking line. This goes beyond being nosy. I’m getting my bike and having the car towed. We’re
done
.”

: : : :

The only reason he let her leave was to give her a chance to cool off. Biff had already installed a GPS tracker on her car. As soon as she peeled out, he was on the phone with Ty, instructing him to keep her ass there until they got back. Make no mistake, he was getting answers one way or another.

Today. Enough was enough.

All he wanted to do was protect her, why the fuck was he being made out to be the asshole?

Shit was about to boil over, he could feel it in his gut as soon as he pulled in through the gates. Scanning the lot, he saw that both her car and bike were there.

Jet walked up to him as he dismounted. “What the fuck happened, brother?”

Torch just shook his head. “No clue. She in there trashing the place?”

“Nah,” Jet chuckled. “Don’t think Liv’s that kind of psycho.”

Wasn’t she? Fuck if he knew. He’d just met some radical alter ego, maybe there were even more waiting to come out.

He braced himself for Hurricane Liv, but was met with an icy chill when their eyes locked. Flanked by Ty and Mack, she was sitting at the bar, tapping her fingers on the counter. “May I be excused, sir?” she asked, her tone oozing with contempt.

“
No
... Girls, prospects, out,” he ordered.

They kept staring at each other as the prospects and bitches scattered, practically knocking over the other guys making their way in. Ty handed him Liv’s keys and closed the door.

She rolled her eyes, which just pissed him the fuck off even more. He wasn’t in the mood for a shitty attitude.

He swooped in and pinned her to the bar top, a hand firmly planted on both sides of her. “I want answers, babe,” he fumed. “Start talking.”

“Or what? You’ll lock me in your room until I do? Come on.”

He slammed both palms down, making her jump. It wasn’t that he wanted to scare her—the last thing he wanted was to see fear on her face when she looked at him—but goddamn, nothing else seemed to work. It was time to quit being a fucking dipshit, waiting around for her to open up in her own sweet time.

Fuck it. “Like what the Henslow’s did to you?” he growled. “No, sweetheart, I’m not that kinda man.”

Her breath hitched and nostrils flared. “What?”

“You fucking heard me.”

He fished out the folded-up report and picture from inside his cut and held it up in front of her. When she snatched it out of his hands he took a step back and crossed his arms, trying to gauge her reaction as she read it.

But she didn’t, not the whole thing. It was clear as day that she’d seen it before. After a quick scan, she held it back up. “How long have you had this?”

“I’m the one asking questions here—”

“There’s a fucking time stamp, Torch. Almost five weeks ago.”

“Wasn’t like
you
were telling me shit,” he retorted.

“So, what? You hired another investigator?”

“Doesn’t matter how I got it, babe.”

“No, it doesn’t. What matters is that you figured me out, right?” She smirked and held the picture up next to her face. “This is why you’ve been working your ass off to keep me close. Because
this
is what you see when you look at me, right?”

How the fuck did she do this? Every goddamn time they argued, she turned shit around effortlessly. “Don’t try to spin it. Why can’t you fucking understand that we wanna protect—”

“
We?
So everybody knows. That’s fucking great.”

“Only the people in this room.”

“Oh,” she nodded. “Right, that makes it totally okay for you to completely invade my fucking privacy.”

“Christ,” he huffed. “Like I was saying—”

“You want to protect me. Yeah, I heard you,” she mouthed off. “And you just assumed that I need protection based on an eight year old police report.”

“What the fuck else am I supposed to go off of?” he demanded. “How about all the moving, fake identities, weapons, and security setup? You think I’m a moron? I know Henslow’s trying to kill you, if he hasn’t already tried.”

“I don’t think you’re a moron, I think you’re misguided,” she sneered. “I explained all that. Again, my business—”

“Quit your bullshit, we’re not leaving here ‘til you fill in the goddamn blanks,” he huffed.

“Fine, here’s all you need to know… I don’t need your protection, the meeting today had nothing to do with you or the club, and you have no right to go looking into shit that happened before we met. Shit I made clear wasn’t something I wanted to think or talk about. It’s not your place, just like it’s not my place to interfere in your—”

“Jesus Christ, you and your dodging. The guy slit his own brother’s throat and tried to do the same to you. Are you more worried about protecting your fucking ego than yourself?”

She jumped off the stool and held out her hand. “You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. Give me my keys.”

“Son of a bitch!” Torch roared, fisted his own fucking hair out of sheer frustration. “Can you just be honest for
once
in your life? How is it you can confess to a dozen fucking felonies, but not what happened to you? You
know you can trust me. You can trust all of us. Every fucking Serpent would go to war for you after everything you’ve done.”

“That’s the fucking problem! I
know
you would. But need to stay out of it, Torch. For
your
sake.”

For his sake? “What the hell does that mean?”

“It means there’s a reason I keep reminding you this ends at business and sex. I won’t let you get hurt.”

Let him get hurt? Christ, one fucking mystery after another. But at least he was chiseling away at the facade, he just had to keep pushing. She turned back around to the bar and reached for her bag.

“Why would I get hurt?” he asked.

Ignoring him, she tried to get around. He grabbed her. For the first time that day, he saw something other than anger in her eyes. Pain. They were turning red, like she was holding back a flood of tears. His own anger seemed to fade into the background, all he wanted to do now was take it away from her. “Babe, why would would any of this hurt me?”

“Because nothing good can come from me being in your life—”

“I beg to fucking differ, you’ve been nothing but good. Fucking hell, woman. You’re beautiful, kind, smart, and you can handle yourself around a bunch of goddamn buffoons.”

“That’s all surface shit. I’m not a good person, Torch. Don’t put me on a fucking pedestal.”

“Why? Tell me why—in a room full of outlaws—you think you’re somehow a bad person?”

“Drop it,” she warned, squirming to get away from him. He simply held on tighter.

“No. Tell me why Henslow’s after you. You didn’t talk to the Feds.” By now her entire body was shaking and he realized that restraining her was probably fucking traumatizing if she had Mitch on the brain. He loosened his hold.

She pushed on his chest to propel herself back. “It’s
not
about talking—”

“Then what? Tell me what he wants! Or so fucking help me, I’ll have every goddamn chapter of this club—”

“Payback! … He wants payback.”

Blowing out a lung full of air and leaning back against the bar again, she ran her fingers through her hair and looked up at him point blank. “Mitch didn’t kill his brother… I did.”

: 22 :

“What?”

There it was, the current pulling him under, even his ears felt like they were filled with water.

Her revelation froze him in place. He couldn’t move, couldn’t think, all he could do was stare. They all murmured and stared as she closed her eyes and bowed her head. By the time she raised it again, there was a look of defeat on her face. Not sadness, not anger, just… defeat.

“Torch,” she said softly, “I don’t do well when I feel trapped. I’ll tell you everything but I
need
my keys.”

Oh, she was going to tell him everything, there was no escaping that now. But if having her damn keys in her pocket made it less of a fucking battle to get it out of her, so be it. He held them out. When she reached for them, he wrapped his hand around hers. “You wanna talk in the room? Just you and me?”

She took a deep breath and shook her head. “No, that’s okay. I think I’d rather just do it once, everybody’ll find out anyway. Let’s sit though.”

She walked over to a couch, motioned for him to sit down, and planted herself on the coffee table in front of him. The rest of the guys followed and all got comfortable.

“I guess I’ll just start at the beginning since this goes that far back,” she sighed. “My name was once Chloe Belman. I was an only child, a happy child mostly, until the morning of my sixth birthday when I found my mother dead of a heroin overdose in the bathroom. The needle was still in her arm. I was a daddy’s girl before that, but he lost his way when she died. They were high school sweethearts and I think he just didn’t know how to cope without her. He turned to booze for comfort, but that cost him his job, so gambling to pay the bills came next. It turned into more than a side-hustle pretty fast. At first, he was home for a few hours every night, but gradually it turned into every other night, then maybe once a week. I think over time it got hard for him to even look at me because the older I got, the more I looked like my mom. He kept the electricity on and made sure there were frozen dinners and canned food for me, but that was about it. I’d have to sneak change out of his pockets after he passed out to buy clothes at a thrift store.”

“Swell fucking guy,” Torch muttered. He could relate.

She shrugged and gave him a pained smile. “Better than taking his problems out on me, I guess. Anyway, I always loved learning, so I still went to school, but I couldn’t really let myself make any friends because I didn’t want one of their parents calling social services. I think part of me just felt bad for my father and I didn’t want him to end up in jail on top of everything else he was dealing with. So, instead of sleepovers and sports, I spent most of my time at the library reading everything I could get my hands on. It was an escape.”

“That’s why you’re such a smart bitch,” Grimm mused.

Liv smirked. “I think you’re giving me too much credit.”

Torch reached across and placed a hand on her thigh, eager to keep her moving along before she changed her fucking mind. “Quit cutting yourself down. What happened next?”

“Well, this went on for years, until I was fifteen and a freshman in high school. At that point, it started going even more downhill. My dad was up to his ass in debt and constantly dodging loan sharks. Pretty much the only thing he hadn’t pawned off was my bed and the couch. One night, he decided to try one more hand and go all in. Except he didn’t have any money and he’d already lost what he borrowed against the house. So… he bet me.”

“What do you mean, he bet
you?
”

“Just what I said, I went in the pot. Not surprisingly, he lost, like he always did. But this time, he was playing against Mitch. He dropped me off the next day and never came back.”

“
What?
” Buddha asked, dumbfounded like the rest of them.

Torch dropped his head and clasped his fingers together behind it. “Then what?” he seethed. She was talking fifteen, not twenty when he found her. That was an entire five fucking years later. Obviously, she’d lied about every goddamn detail in the report. The question was why.

“Mitch and Vince lived together. At the time I didn’t know what they did, but they were low-level dealers. It wasn’t bad for the first few months. They pulled me out of school but mostly just had me cooking and cleaning. But then I hit a growth spurt and they both started looking at me in a different light.”

“They didn’t,” Zed murmured.

She nodded. “Mitch was the worse of the two, he’s just aggressive and violent by nature. But Vince got his kicks in too. I put up a fight the first few times, but all that got me were beatings on top of it. So eventually I just gave in and took what they gave.”

Torch—now feeling like a complete fucking dick for making her relive this—got up from the couch, sat down beside her, and stroked her cheek. “Baby, why didn’t you run?”

She looked away and brushed his hand off her face. “I tried. Twice. You have to understand that these two moved up really fast. By the time they started using me as a fuck toy, they had associates all over the state. Both times they caught up to me within an hour. After the second attempt, they decided to keep me shackled and locked up in the basement. The only time they let me out was to take care of the house when they were both home to stand guard. Trust me, I constantly thought about what I could use as a weapon to get away, but I also knew I had nowhere to run. I didn’t have an ID or money, so I had no way of getting out of Pennsylvania short of walking. And I still didn’t wanna end up in foster care. I was an isolated teenager and they kept me in line by telling me horror stories about kids in the system who ended up starved and forced to sleep outside. I guess I just figured that I was lucky to have a roof over my head and food in my belly. Thought if I stuck it out until I was eighteen, I’d be able to get away easier.”