Marek stared at his son in contemplation, narrowing his eyes before inhaling a deep breath. Once he released the air from his lungs, he turned to look at our VP.
“Call him,” he said before swinging his attention to Cutter. “No more for right now.” The ol’ fucker looked disappointed, but he threw his knife on the table, the clanking noise enough to startle me though I watched the blade leave his hand.
I didn’t know who he was, but whoever my ol’ man was gonna contact would hopefully put all this to bed, proving Tag was truly innocent.
If he wasn’t… then he’d be dead soon.
Marek stepped up next to Tag and leaned over him, grabbing a chunk of his hair and pulling his head up off the table.
“Where did you come from?”
“Boston,” Tag garbled, blood seeping from the corner of his mouth.
“Did you really not know your father?” Prez’s grip tightened.
Tag winced, but I doubted the pain he felt had anything to do with his hair being pulled and everything to do with the wounds he suffered.
“My mom sent… sent me to live with her parents when I was a little kid. I barely knew my dad. Then he disappeared.” Marek released his hold, and Tag’s head hit the table with a thump.
“Damn right he did,” Marek sneered. He grumbled something to himself, then smacked his friend on the arm. They both ascended the basement steps a few strides later. Hawke followed, but Cutter stayed behind. Although I didn’t trust him, he wouldn’t blatantly go against what our leader said.
“What about the hole in his side?” I asked, leaning down to get a better look. Blood continued to seep out, although it was slower than before.
Without a single word, the ol’ man walked to the other side of the room and picked up a blow torch. When the fire erupted from the end of it, he grabbed his knife and held the flame against the steel tip. I watched in disbelief when he then held the heated knife over the wound on Tag’s side, the sound he made at first contact making me wince.
“What the fuck is goin’ on?” Kaden asked. Of course, his question was rhetorical because I didn’t have an answer. He knew as much as I did.
But I supposed we were gonna find out if Tag would live or die soon enough.
5
“Let’s go!” Griller shouted in my face. I was barely awake, and already I was tossed out of his room and dragged down the hallway. Wiping the sleep from my eyes, I focused on the scene in front of me when I entered the main part of the clubhouse.
I wasn’t a neat freak by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, my parents used to yell at me all the time to clean up my room or put my dishes in the sink when I was done instead of leaving them all over the place, but I never once lived in utter filth like these guys did.
The floor was sticky beneath my feet, and I cursed myself for not slipping on my sneakers before coming out here, but with the way he pushed me forward, I probably didn’t have time for the simple act anyway.
There appeared to be hundreds of beer bottles and cans strewn all around the room, some of them spilling the rest of the contents on the floor, bar, and even parts of the sofa. A fog of smoke lingered in the air, thick enough to offend my senses even though I didn’t believe anyone had smoked anything for hours.
“Get to work.” Before Griller staggered back toward his room, he shouted over his shoulder, “Hurry up. Don’t make me wait too long, or else.” I remembered all too well what his “or else” entailed, often resulting in a black eye or sore ribs.
While I looked at the passed-out bodies of the members as well as the half-naked women who accompanied them, I wished again, for the millionth time, for God to save me from this hell. But something told me He was either too busy or just chose not to help me. Maybe He was punishing me for being stupid and going with Pike in the first place, a stranger who disarmed me with his smile. Whatever the reason, I was stuck until one of these guys either killed me or I killed myself—the latter not ideal since I’d been raised to believe suicide was a sin.
As I worked around the unconscious people, I gently placed the trash in a bag, careful not to make too much noise because if I woke up anyone, they’d punish me. Sometimes their cruelty was enough to make my mind drift off to another place, leaving my body behind to do with whatever they wanted. It wasn’t like I had a say in the matter, so I learned to adapt each time one of them held me down and thrust inside me. I was thankful they didn’t demand I watch them because I needed the darkness to fly away into another realm of reality in order to survive, albeit barely.
Sometimes only one of them would have a go at me, and sometimes it was one after the other. In the beginning, I begged and cried, but they didn’t care. The only one who seemed affected was Pike, and the first time he interjected on my behalf, they took turns hitting him before forcing him on top of me.
The torment I saw laced behind his eyes was enough for me to stop struggling… then I gave him a nod, a brief sign of my acceptance for the situation we were both in. I realized he didn’t have a choice either, so I closed my eyes and let him push into me. Thankfully, he was fast, groaning when he finished. I thought I heard him whisper,
