REIGN: A Motorcycle Club Romance Novel (25 page)

THE
END

If
you enjoyed this novel, please take a minute to sign
up for my mailing list! I do giveaways, cover reveals, and advanced reader
copies.
Click here to sign up!

Click
here to see all of my books on Amazon!

Flip
the page to start “Rough Love” a
free bonus novella!

It’s a standalone. Hope you enjoy it!

- Meg Jackson

Rough Love

~
1
~

The last thing I
remember before my life ended is smiling. That sounds like a nice last memory
to have, but you don’t know me – or at least, you didn’t know me then. When I
smiled back then it was for one of two reasons: I had bought something shiny
and new, or I had done something bad to annoy my father.

I was not a nice
person back then. I guess I’m still not a very nice person. I don’t know if
everyone has it in them to be a nice person; I just know that it’s never worked
out for me. For me, being bad has worked wonders. For me, being bad comes
natural.

Of course, there
are degrees of being bad. There’s the sort of bad that comes from genuinely
wanting to do harm to others; I’m not that kind of bad. I just like to get what
I want; that’s what I’m used to, and that’s what I expect. Or, at least, that’s
what I used to expect.

That’s why I
remember smiling: it’d been a great day. Not only had I scored some new Prada
shoes, I’d also managed to piss of my dad by shopping at Saks, which was a
client of one of his biggest competitors.

My dad runs one of
the most exclusive and successful marketing agencies in the United States; he’s
got
Bloomies
, Nordstrom,
Benneton
,
Harry Winston, Tiffany’s. Most of the big names on Fifth Avenue are under
contract with Pop’s agency.

But Saks is
contracted to Dad’s rival agency, and he’s told me time and again that he
doesn’t want me using his money to support the competition. So, of course, I
shop there whenever I can. Because he gets the credit card statement at the end
of the month, and because I know that he’d never cut me off, no matter how much
I push his buttons. He may want to, but he doesn’t have the heart to. He’s not
that kind of guy.

No, he’s the kind
of guy who’ll do everything else he can imagine to make your life miserable:
ruining relationships, squashing hopes and dreams, all with a smile on his
face. The backhanded compliment is his forte. The pat on the head that says “I
know you can’t do anything productive, I know you can’t survive on your own, I
know you need me” is the most affection he can give. I guess he’s not a nice
man, either.

So I do what I can
to get back at him, in little ways. Looking back now, I can’t even consider
myself being that bad – after all, the only thing I was doing was shopping for
expensive crap and trying to make Dad angry. That’s like, the sort of “bad”
that a teenage girl is. I wasn’t a slut, I didn’t party all the time, I never
graced the pages of the tabloids with a martini in my hand, coke under my nose,
and a new boy on my arm every week.

But Dad always made
me feel like a bad girl. So that’s what I considered myself. Now, of course, I
guess I’m more of what you expect from a bad girl. But how that all came to be
starts on that day as I walked into my apartment, smiling as I locked the door
behind me.

~
2
~

“Juliana,” I
remember calling out as I entered the apartment, bags in hand. “Juliana, can
you make me some coffee? Then come see what I scored at Saks…you’re
gonna
have a cow, I swear, you can even try them on!”

Juliana was my
maid, but also my best friend. Really my only friend. You know the stereotype
of the poor lonely rich girl? That was pretty much me. My only confidante was a
woman I had to pay to keep around.

When I heard no
response from Juliana, I called out her name once more. Turning around to face
my apartment, I remember my heart stopping. The coffee table in the living room
was overturned; the couch cushions were on the floor, and a broken vase was
leaking water all over the carpet. For some reason, I remember thinking
the water will ruin the rug.
Pretty
shallow, right? But that was the first thing that popped into my head. I don’t
know why, but it was.

The next thing I
thought was
HOLY CRAP I GOTTA GET OUT OF
HERE.
Obviously, something was wrong. I grabbed the door handle behind me,
but before I could make my getaway, I had another thought:
Juliana.
My heart pounded as I realized that she would have been
home when all this happened, that if there was a struggle, it was because
someone hurt her.

I wanted to just
leave; I wanted to just bolt out the door and down the hallway and call for
help. But I couldn’t leave my only friend. Not if she was hurt somewhere in the
apartment. I closed my eyes and prayed that it was a simply burglary, that
whoever was in here was gone, and that Juliana was holed up in one of my many,
sizable closets, intact and alive. Opening my eyes again, I took a deep breath
and released my grip on the doorknob.

There wasn’t a
sound in the apartment; no hint that anyone was in any of the rooms. Not a
cough, not a whisper, not a breath. I started to pull my phone out, meaning to
call the police while I searched for Juliana, but remembered that it had died
while I was shopping.
I have got to stop
leaving the house without a full battery,
I lamented before realizing just
how serious the situation was.

If someone really
was in the house…well, I didn’t want to think about it. For a moment, I
considered leaving again, asking a neighbor to use their phone to call the
police, but then I thought of poor Juliana again, scared and alone – or hurt.
The thought made my heart ache, and I knew I couldn’t leave the apartment until
I knew she was safe.

Thinking quickly, I
opened and shut the door loudly. I’d already announced my presence, so if
anyone was still in the apartment they already knew I was there. But I hoped
that by making it sound like I’d seen the damage and left, it would conceal my
presence. I kicked my shoes off quickly – if there was someone still around,
the clack of stilettos across the hardwood floors would be a dead giveaway that
I was still there.

I was only wearing
a short, light dress because of the brutal Manhattan summer, and I felt exposed
in my own apartment as I tiptoed towards the living room and hallway. At the
living room, I tried not to look at the overturned furniture; I didn’t want to
see if there was blood anywhere. I couldn’t bear it.

I looked down the
hallway; there were four doors, two on each side. One side had a closet and my
bathroom. The other had my room and Juliana’s room. The kitchen was at my back
as I stared down the hallway; the kitchen was small, so one glance had told me
that there wasn’t anyone there. Gathering up every ounce of courage in my body,
I began to walk down the hallway. I strained my ears, listening for any sign of
life. Pure silence. The first door I came to was the closet; I grabbed the
handle and didn’t even give myself time to count to three before yanking it
open.

Empty. Except for
mounds of shoes and piles of expensive clothes, nothing. I breathed a sigh of
relief, even though my heart was still pounding out of my chest. I turned
around to face the door to Juliana’s room. I always told her to keep it locked
because it was her room, not mine, and even though it was my apartment, I
wanted her to feel like she had a private space. I prayed that it was still
locked. Reaching out for the handle, I closed my eyes and turned.

Locked. My heart
skipped a beat and I started to feel safer; two down, two to go. I hesitated,
not sure whether to try the bathroom or my room first. The momentary hesitation
allowed all my fear to flow back into me and I stalled from panic.

Sure, the first two
were clear, but if I was a murderous lunatic I’d probably hide in the main
bedroom, or the bathroom. If Juliana’s door was locked I wouldn’t be able to
get in, and what sort of hiding place is a closet you can’t even stand in
comfortably because it’s full of shoes?

I knew I couldn’t
just stand in the hallway forever, that I had to either leave or try the last
two doors. I didn’t give myself time to consider anymore and lunged for the
bathroom door, throwing it open. I stifled a gasp as I looked inside. The
shower curtain was shaking slightly and I could see bright red streaks on it.
My heart pounded through my chest as I stared at the red marks.

This can’t be happening, God no, this can’t
happen to me, oh God Juliana, I have to get out, I have to call the cops,
thoughts raced through my head like brutal gusts
of wind. I stepped back slightly, then thought about Juliana, scared and alone
in the shower, hearing me but unable to speak, bound and gagged, knowing that
I’d left her.

I suddenly wished
I’d thought to grab a knife from the kitchen. I berated myself for my stupidity
and looked around the bathroom for some sort of weapon. The only thing I could
find was a plunger. I picked it up and held it tightly, feeling the rough wood
handle in my palms; it wasn’t much of a weapon, but it made me feel better
anyway. I tiptoed towards the quivering curtain. As I got closer, I heard
sniffling noises and knew that Juliana had to be in the tub.

“Juliana?” I
whispered, approaching the curtain and reaching out with one hand.

“
Mmmhm
unhhmmm
!” was the response,
and the distress I could hear in the muffled voice was like a shot of bravery.
I threw back the curtain; Juliana was tied up and gagged, a cut bleeding
profusely on her forehead. Her eyes shook with fear as she looked up at me. I
bent down and undid the gag quickly.

“Juliana, what
happened?! Did someone break in?” Even as I spoke I saw Juliana’s eyes fill
with terror, fixed just above my head, behind me. I didn’t even have time to
turn around. I didn’t even feel the blow to my head. I fell over onto my side
as the world began to spin and blur. From somewhere far, far away I could hear
Juliana screaming.

“Miss. Serena, no!”

~
3
~

When I woke up, the
first thing I felt was nauseous. I wanted to throw up immediately and struggled
upwards; I was lying on my back, but found that when I tried to raise myself I
couldn’t move. It was dark; at first I didn’t realize why, then I felt the cloth
around my face, the way my breath felt hot and heavy against whatever material
was covering head.

My brain was
pounding, and it felt like a train was roaring through my head. I couldn’t
think straight. It was like I was sensing everything at once, which was almost
like sensing nothing at all. The bag around my head. The ties around my wrists.
The ties around my ankles. The rumbling, shaking sensation underneath me.

It was all like
some sort of terrible nightmare, where it could feel so real yet still be fake.
I mean, it certainly couldn’t be real. I was Serena
Kascade
,
daughter of Max
Kascade
, of
Kascade
Marketing Solutions. I lived in a high-rise on west 81
^st
street. I
had just bought new shoes.

But real it was,
nonetheless. I was tied up, blinded, and stuffed into the back of a moving
vehicle like an unwanted carpet. My maid was tied up in a bathtub with a gash
on her head, and someone had attacked me from behind. This was reality;
probably the most real thing that had ever happened in my long life of being
spoiled rotten and never knowing hardship.

For a fleeting
moment, I wondered if this was punishment. For being so lucky, for disobeying
my father, for being ungrateful. That thought was soon replaced by more utter
panic. My heart was racing at a million beats a minute and my stomach churned.
I thought I might actually piss myself.

I had to do something,
because I felt like I was dying, so I did the only thing I could think of. I
screamed. I screamed bloody murder, my voice raw from dehydration and panic.
Screaming produced exactly no results. There wasn’t a sound, aside from what I
recognized as a car moving down a road.

I screamed again.
No one said anything, no one told me to shut up. Nothing. That scared me even
more than I would have been had someone thrown a shoe at me and told me that
they’d kill me if I made another noise. Then, at least, I would have heard the
voice of whoever did this to me.

As I opened my
mouth to scream a third time, the moving sensation and sounds ceased. I
hesitated as I heard the slamming of car doors. From outside, I could hear,
very faintly, the sound of voices. They drew nearer, and as I lay still in my
binds I felt new fear flowing through me.

“Yup, she’s awake
again, I heard ‘
er
screaming bloody murder back
there,” I heard someone say from outside.

“Ah, well, it’s too
risky to try knocking her out again, a little thing like that, one more blow to
the head could kill her,” another voice said.

“You’re crazy,
Gunner, you
wanna
try and get a struggling female out
of the back of the truck and into the room? She’ll fight like hell, it’s easier
just to send her back to la-la land,” the first voice responded. The voices
were very close now, and I felt tears springing into my eyes as the fear
settled in.

“Aww, what is it,
Ace, you afraid of getting a little bruised up? She’s tied up seven ways from
Sunday, no way she can put up much of a fight. Besides, you
wanna
explain a brain-dead hostage to the rest of the club? She
ain’t
worth shit to us if we leave her needing life support just to drool for the
next sixty years.” The second voice was very, very close now, and I heard
someone pulling on a latch, then the sound of a trunk being opened.

I realized for the
first time how hot I was as I felt the sun blaring down on me. I turned my head
towards the heat, hoping some light would shine through. No luck; it was darker
than dark. Pitch black. I wanted to die.

“Sorry about the
knocker, doll. No easy way to get a bitch to come home with you,” I heard the
first voice say with a chuckle.

“Shut up, Ace,” the
second voice said, sounding exasperated. In my panic, I didn’t know what to do.
Scream again? Try to talk to them? My body answered for me; I felt rough hands
grabbing at me and I shrieked.

“Jesus! That’s an
ear-splitter,” the first voice said.

“Of course she’s
gonna
scream, wouldn’t you?” The second voice was much
closer, and I could tell that the owner was the one who was currently lifting
me out of the trunk. I could feel how strong he was; he didn’t strain at all at
lifting me, even though I’m a fairly large girl – not fat, per say, but
definitely well-endowed when it comes to my breasts and hips.

Still, he lifted me
quickly, without any hesitation, like I weighed no more than a teddy bear. I
felt him begin walking as he cradled me in his arms, and I didn’t even realize
that I was still screaming until the first voice spoke again.

“Goddam, will you
shut up, lady? Giving me a headache with that shit.”
Good,
I thought,
I hope your
head explodes.
I kept screaming, and trying to struggle, but my hands
seemed like they were tied to my ankles so I had almost no way to move;
besides, the man who was carrying me had a strong grip, and no matter how I
struggled it didn’t seem like he was having any trouble keeping his hold on me.
Eventually, my breath simply gave out and I didn’t have the strength to scream
any more.

By that time, I
could hear more voices in the distance. As they grew closer, I could tell they
were all male, but I couldn’t understand what any of them were saying. The tone
changed gradually, and I began to make out snippets.

“...got ‘
er
…”

“….put up a fight?”

“…good on
ya
boys…”

“…always trust
Gunner to deliver…”

“…shame to hurt
something so juicy…”

The voices became
clearer and louder with each step, then began to fade away. As they faded, I
could hear the first voice fading, too, as whoever it was began talking to the
main crowd.

“Yeah, she didn’t
put up no fight. Had to clock the maid but she’ll be fine. Easy
peasy
, nice simple operation…”

I don’t know what
switch got flipped in my brain at that moment, but it was like I remembered all
of a sudden that I was a human being with the ability to communicate with other
human beings in words, not just screams.

“Where are you
taking me?” I said from within the bag covering my head. The pace seemed to
slow ever so slightly.

“You’re
gonna
be staying with us for a little while, doll. Try not
to worry too much. We’ll take good care of you,” the voice said. It was
gravelly and rough, but sounded young.

“Who are you?” I
asked, spirited by the response to my first question.

“If I tell you
that, I’d have to kill you,” the response came, but it sounded like it was said
with a smirk. Still, it was enough to make me shudder and plant a cold stake of
fear through my heart. The pace slowed further, and I felt the grip relaxing as
whoever was carrying me released one arm to reach for something.

I knew, somewhere
deep inside, that if I had a chance, this was it. Never mind being blinded,
never mind being hog-tied, my only instinct was to try and escape. I squirmed
violently and felt the grip loosen even further; then I felt myself falling,
and a heavy, thudding pain as I hit the ground.

It was only then
that I realized the true stupidity of my actions. Where, exactly, was I
planning to go without the use of my arms or legs? I heard a slight chuckle
from above and I felt myself blush, even though my face was covered.

“Well, that was a
valiant effort,” the voice said. I heard a door swinging open, then I was
lifted once more into the air and carried through the doorway; the man carrying
me let me down gently onto what I could feel was a cold, hard, dirty floor. I
heard a light buzzing above my head; the heat didn’t seem to penetrate wherever
I was, at least not to a degree. It was warm, but not stifling like the air
outside.

I wish I could
describe the utter shock I felt when the bag was suddenly lifted from my eyes;
it wasn’t just that I was forced to accept that it was all finally real, not
some hideous prank. It wasn’t just where I was. It wasn’t just the fact that
the person who was doing this to me would let me see him. It was the fact that
the person doing this to me was, without a doubt, the most handsome man I’d
ever seen in my life.

He was tall and
lean, but with ripped, muscular arms. His face looked dirty, and he had a
short, stubbly beard underneath a well-shaped nose and two piercing blue eyes.
His short dark hair looked wind-swept and unkempt. He wore a leather vest with
a tight black t-shirt underneath, dirty jeans and old-looking boots. He towered
over me, a powerful, intimidating man, in his early thirties. I barely even
registered the dingy room as I stared up at him.

 
“Welcome home,” he said. He smiled
slightly as he looked down on me. Then he reached into a pocket and pulled out
a switchblade; flicking the knife out, I felt cold panic race through me. He
took a few steps towards me and I tried to scuttle backwards but could barely
move in the restraints.

“Don’t worry, I’m
not
gonna
cut
ya
,” he said
with a smirk as he bent down over my vulnerable body. I closed my eyes tightly;
I could feel the warmth of his body as he reached around me, and even through
my fear I could smell the thick, masculine scent of his sweat.

I felt a sudden
release and heard a slight snapping sound as he cut the rope that was holding
my ankles and wrists together. I kept my eyes closed until I could feel him
moving away, then I experimented with moving around. My wrists were still tied
together, as were my ankles, but at least I could stretch out slightly. I
realized for the first time how sore I was from being so restrained.

“We’re
gonna
have to keep those one for a while, miss. Until you
prove you can be trusted. How long that’ll be is up to you. Of course, you
could be outta here by then. Depends on how much your Daddy decides to
cooperate,” he said. Somewhere in my mind, his name jumped out at me; I
remembered his voice, and the other voice I’d heard calling him Gunner.

“What does my Dad
have to do with this? What am I, a…a fucking hostage? And who the hell are you?
I know your name, you know, Gunner,” I said, suddenly finding my fear replaced
by anger. I stared up at him, trying to throw daggers with my eyes. He just
smirked.

“Your Daddy owes us
some money for some work we did. He’s
gonna
have to
pony up if he wants you back safe and sound. So, yeah, I guess you could say
you’re a hostage. More like collateral, though. And that’s not my name. And I
wouldn’t care if you knew my name. Why do you think I took that bag off your
head? Your Daddy knows who we are, he knows what we want, and he knows that if
he goes to the police, or you go to the police…well, let’s just say we won’t
give him another chance if he does anything like that,” Gunner said through his
grin.

I couldn’t maintain
eye contact at that point; my mind was swimming with everything that had
happened, and I felt tired, and worn out, and sore. My head throbbed and my
stomach was still nauseous. My limbs ached. I looked around the room; it looked
to be some sort of unused storage space. There were metal shelves lining the
walls, a single light on the ceiling, and no window. There was only one door;
the one we had come in through. In the corner, I saw a dingy-looking mattress
and a sheet.

“Am I supposed to
sleep on that?” I asked, shuddering at the idea of laying down on an old,
mildewed mattress that had been through god knows what.

“It
ain’t
the Ritz, princess, but it’s better than the ground.
We
coulda
kept you hog tied in the trunk. Try to
remember that. I’ll be back in a little while with some food for you. And we’ll
have someone come look at that head of yours. Just keep your chin up. Your
Daddy will have you out of here in no time, as long as you
ain’t
been bad lately,” Gunner said, turning towards the door.

I thought about how
I’d smiled about pissing Dad off right before it had all happened and felt a
pang of guilt – then a pang of fear. What if Dad didn’t pay up? What if he just
didn’t care? Or felt relieved? He’d never cut me off while I was alive but…