VENDETTA: A Bad Boy, Motorcycle Club Romance (8 page)

No matter what it took.

Emily

When I woke up, he was sleeping next to me.

One thing I’d never been able to enjoy with Tommy was a full night of silence and rest. Either he was up running errands for my uncle at two, three, four in the morning, or he wasn’t able to sleep over because his father didn’t like his whipping boy to be gone. The few times we’d been able to stretch out and sleep, it had always been interrupted and left me feeling jittery. By the time he decided to crack his dad’s jaw and get his own place, it was too late for me to want to stay over, even if I’d been allowed to.

“You can’t go out tonight, girl,” Uncle Dale said one of the first nights Tommy had been set up alone, looking up from the show he was watching. “Got a shipment here bright and early.”

“Cut it yourself,” I snapped, hating my entire life in that moment. The sofa had been nice when we’d purchased it to replace one that had burned a year before. This one wasn’t going to make it much longer, though. Holes were burned into the cloth where my uncle or one of his junkie friends let a cigarette go a little too long.

“Can’t do it.” He sighed and stretched out, his small eyes cutting into me like a dull blade. “I got places to be. Besides, you’re so much better at it than any of my other guys. Can’t leave anyway. I’ll just get the police on your ass.” Dale laughed like it was a big joke. As if he’d call in the police to drag his underage ward back to the house.

The greatest tragedy of my life was that I’d learned how to cut and bag meth with brutal efficiency. When I was 12, I’d escaped from one of his workers with a black eye and a cut on my head after I made a smart remark about his lack of personal hygiene. Dale said that if I wanted the man gone, I’d have to take up his spot in the production line—it was a joke, of course. He didn’t expect me to pick up the razorblade and chop meth that was almost perfect even before it was weighed.

Then I’d made a suggestion offhand a year later after reading a book on economics that some college student left behind and Dale had taken it seriously.  I’d increased profits by changing our price against other the price of other local suppliers. Turned out that undercutting them just a little boosted what we would sell—which Dale crowed that he’d thought of before, but hadn’t had the time to try. Right. So I cut the product, bagged it and pushed it out with his dealers every night.

Maybe I was ruining lives, but I was saving mine. Since Dale wanted to keep me around to bolster his profits, he kept the other guys from beating me for sport. When I got a little older, his protection became even more important.

That’s when we moved down to Malibu. He had saved enough to move us into a gated home with a few guards who allowed us to do our job without any clients showing up with a grievance and ruining a whole day. Trouble is, the gates did something else too: they kept me inside. I was allowed to leave for school, but if I wasn’t home at the right time or if I tried to leave to do something else—see a movie, go to the park—I’d get a taste of Dale’s belt before being sent to work without food.

The memory of hunger turned over in my stomach and I let my shoulders slump. “I just wanted to go hang out with Tommy.”

“Nothing doing. You need to stuff those teddy bears and ride with Joe to drop them off for shipping in the morning. It was your idea, girl. Don’t bail now.”

The teddy bears was one of my greatest ideas, even if I hated myself for it. The more money Dale had, the more often he was out of the house. I loathed working with the meth that rolled in, but it was better than working right under his twitching nose—so I did everything I could to increase profits.

One flash of genius was to sell online, through sites on the dark Web, and then ship the product out cloaked in things like teddy bears or candles. I preferred the candles, because they offered a hard barrier. Dale preferred the teddy bears, because they took less time. My latest idea was to stuff a baggie of meth inside a bag of coffee beans.

“What if I’m back before sunrise?” Billy was already using then, and I wasn’t keen to see him, but his place offered an escape from Dale’s.

“No. Get upstairs.”

Rage swam though me like a living thing, but I turned and headed for the stairwell.

“Emily.” The sound of my name was a gong and I stopped, not looking back at him.

“Get over here.”

Fight or flight kicks in when you know something horrible is going to happen again, but sometimes there’s just nowhere to run. Sometimes your only option is to grit your teeth and bear what will be done. Wild fantasies of running to the front door and getting off the property played out in my head, even as I walked back to him and clenched my jaw, preparing myself.

“What is it?”

“Why do you constantly defy me when I’ve given you everything?” His face looked genuinely confused and his tone was peppered with hurt, as if I’d betrayed him somehow. From the time he took me in, he’d done nothing but use me to build his drug empire. Dale had never offered me anything that I didn’t pay for.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. I wasn’t sorry. Not even a little. But sometimes quietly apologizing to him would stop him from beating me. Looking down through my lashes, I saw his fist curl just before he swung.

Pain arched through my face and I stumbled back, grabbing the couch to keep from slamming into the floor. I could have pulled myself back up then, but he’d have just hit me again and again until I stayed down, so I curled up into myself and felt his boot swing into my ribs. I choked, then gagged when he did it again.

“Why do you make me do this, girl?” Another kick, then his hand fisted in my hair and he dragged me up. Bright red agony played in front of my eyes and I struggled to stay conscious. It had been so long—almost two months—since he’d hit me that some stupid, willful part of myself thought he wouldn’t do it again. “I don’t like having to show you your place.”

His face was only inches from mine and his heavy breathing and wet mouth made my stomach turn over. Always I was scared that one day he’d take it farther, give in to his desire to beat me until I was broken or dead, but it wasn’t going to be today. I let my eyes close and felt him release me, heard his boots on the wooden floor and then the bang of the front door.

Crawling up the stairs and into bed, I reminded myself to set an alarm just in time so that I’d be up to get the shipment. If they woke up Dale, I’d be in for another round with his fists.

Dale was going to be pissed that I got caught up with coke dealers, especially The Fallen. There was no way he was going to do like he promised when he sent me to Mexico now. “When you come back,” he said, “I’ll give you your documents and enough money to get your own place. Just promise you’ll come back on weekends to work.” So I’d agreed and headed down to Mexico, not wanting to make waves when I was so close to getting what I wanted.

Now I wasn’t going to get what he’d promised.

All my plans were blown.

But I was alive.

Despite the horror of the past few days, I felt relaxed on the bed with Flash, able to look out and see the ocean. Though the beach was undoubtedly crowded, the roar of the sea muted the sounds of voices chatting or kids playing on the sand below. It was just the water, crashing against the shore before receding back down. Closing my eyes, I let it soothe me and wash away everything except me and the man next to me.

I was terrified of him.

Not that he’d hurt me, because I’d already seen the gentleness cloaked by his big body and gorgeous muscles that I just wanted to lick. The thought of him injuring me didn’t even cross my mind, as long as he didn’t find out about my uncle. Not all men were Dale, hurting women because they could. But the one thing I wanted in my entire life was to have power, to have control over myself and my destiny.

Flash made me want to give that up, that power, that future, so I could stay with him.

The second day after leaving the villa, after we’d grabbed a few hours of sleep, we’d stopped so he could put some gas in the bike.

“Should have fueled up in the city,” he said through teeth clenched around his wallet. I reached for it and pulled it from his mouth, freeing him to talk. The merest brush of his lips against my fingers made me light up inside again. I remembered sucking them on the bed, the rough slide of his skin over my lips.

“I’m glad we stopped,” I told him, taking a few steps back, then coming forward again. “I needed to walk around a little. Plus, it’s beautiful here.” Out in the distance, red rocks lined the horizon, reminding me of Arizona where my parents had taken me once. I knew that as the sun moved, their colors would change and dim with the light.

“Do you want to stop and eat a real meal?”

“Do you think we should?”

“Probably not.” I’d hoped for a different answer, but accepted the one he gave me. Knowing him for such a short time still made me believe that Flash was an honest man. If he thought it was safe for us to stop and eat something heartier than we had, we would be stopping. He wasn’t the kind of person who’d force me to stay hungry so I’d be easier to bend to his will.

Unless he was in such a rush to get rid of me that he was flying for the California border without fear of being pursued.

Guilt clawed at my throat there by the gas pumps as I thought about what I’d done to him. In my desperation at the villa, I’d talked him into giving me an orgasm that Flash didn’t want to give. The memory of his tongue delving into my pussy, the way I’d screamed under him…it haunted me through every single one of the miles we traversed.

Never had I given in to someone so completely.

“When do you think we’ll get to California?” I asked him.

“A few days,” he said, watching the meter tick up. The station had the old pumps with numbers that flipped instead of newer, digital ones.

“Do you think someone at the border will help me get a new ID and get into the country?” The fear had been dogging me ever since I realized everything I owned was at the resort. If the border officials required my legal documents, they’d have to get them from Dale—who might not be so happy with federal workers showing up on his property.

“I’ll get you over the border,” Flash said. “No ID required.”

“How?”

“Don’t worry about it.” I got quiet, but there was no way I wasn’t going to worry. If I needed ID and they had to interrupt Dale, I was in deep trouble. It wasn’t like I could just run away from him, because he always tracked me down. It had happened when I was 11. When I was 14. When I was 17.

I had the scars to prove it.

Besides, he owed me heaps of money, even if I got paid less than the lowest runner. I’d built the operation into what it was. Selling to Hawaii? My idea. Pushing candles in LA? Mine, too. Dale would still be operating out of a two-bedroom house in the suburbs if I hadn’t decided that helping him deal meth was better than being beaten for fun by his “friends”.

A dark part of me took pride in the work that I did, too, even if I’d never admit it to anyone. It was a rush and gave me a feeling I’d never gotten from anything else until Flash pushed his head between my thighs.

“Thank you.”

“It’s no problem,” he said, still not looking at me. “I’ve gotten people over the border before.”

“No, really.” I put my hand on his shoulder and waited until his gorgeous eyes met mine. “Thank you. For everything.”

“You don’t have to thank me, Emmy. Not ever.” I wasn’t sure what he meant by that, but I nodded and stretched again. Some people don’t like hearing gratitude, I guessed. The tank was full and now we were just loitering, but I wasn’t ready to get back on the bike. My butt felt bruised after days of slamming against the hard seat as we went over the rutted road.