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  “You need to stop your worrying and let me handle things,” Vince tells me, rubbing my shoulder softly with his fingertips.

  “That has to be easy for you to say. You aren’t me. It would be dumb of me not to worry right now, foolish even. By worrying I think we can both agree that we can come up with some sort of game plan. Don’t you? Do we even have one?” I ask, not trying to sound too irritated with him because I’m not bothered. I’m terrified. I am scared for our lives. The only thing I want right now is for both of us to be safe, and I don’t even know if that is a fraction of a possibility.

  “Plan is for you to rest,” he tells me, simply looking at me straight in the eyes before he stares at the television.

  “And then?” I ask, furrowing my brows, waiting for him to reply.

  “You rest. That’s the end of this discussion.”

  “This isn’t the end of our discussion. You just want me to sit here and rest without knowing what the plan is? We need to have one, Vince,” I urge, pleading with him.

  “Damn Roxanne. I’m telling you to fucking relax and rest, so why can’t you just do what I’m telling you? You always did what Rage told you to fucking do,” he snaps out, his words filled with lead. I don’t think I’ve ever been hit so heavy with what he’s said to me.

  “Are you going to start beating the obedience into me too?” There is no part of me that will allow a man to treat me the way Rage did, and I know Vince damn well knows this. At this point in my life, I would rather die than ever be in a situation like I have been in with my dear husband.

  “Is that some fucked up joke? Do you think I am anything like him?!” He roars it out at me, ripping his attention from the television to stare at me dead in the eyes.

  “No, I don’t. I know that you are so much better than that so I’m just wondering why you’d pull that shit and say that to me. We need to know what to do next. You know we won’t be able to sit here and hang tight forever. I know that you know that, so I’m gonna ask you again. What are we going to do?”

  Vince runs his finger over my cheek and rubs along my cheek bone slowly. “You’re going to rest cause you’ve been through a fuck load of a lot, and I’m going to worry about everything that needs to be taken care of. I know I don’t have to remind you of everything you’ve been through the last week, so I won’t. Just do me a favor and don’t fight with me, firefly. My only concern is you. You trust me, right?”

  I look up into his eyes and nod as I speak. “Yes, of course. I just need to know what to do if things go south because we can’t just expect that they won’t. This is Rage we’re dealing with.”

  Vince nods. “Your brothers live a few hours away, yeah?” Vince is the only person I ever told about Lloyd and George. I can’t even remember why I did, but right now I’m glad that I did because I didn’t even think about this option.

  “Yeah, a few,” I tell him.

  “If shit goes down, you’re gonna go down that hill into the back of the woods and find the car about half a mile away. I’ll show you in a few days after you’ve had more rest, and we’ll go over what to do, but baby, if shit goes down you’d sure as hell better drive your ass up into Montana and not look back. Promise me.”

  Every particle inside of me doesn’t want to promise him, but I know that I have to or he won’t drop it, he’ll make me bend to his will at some point. “I promise.”

  Chapter 9

  Can you see the “fuck you” in my smile? - Anonymous

  Tex

  “Where the fuck are you?” Rage hisses to me through the phone before I can even say hello.

  “I told you. I’m out of town,” I grumble it back, not pleased with the way I was greeted in the first place.

  “You need to get your ass back here. We have shit we need to talk about, and I need to rely on someone to oversee the club while I go out on an errand.”

  “Errand, or business?” I ask, wondering if this has something to do with the Sons of Gods bullshit that Rage is dragging us into. We just need to leave them alone. The thing about Rage is that he always insists on starting a war when one isn’t needed in the first place. I’m all for fucking shit up when the time comes to it, but I’ll be damned to lose a brother over a pissing match. After years of friendship with him I know the difference between an errand and business, an errand is usually him fucking around, maybe even doing so many drugs that he blacks out and can’t remember jack shit.

  “A bit of both” He growls at me, his voice sounding a bit more sinister than usual which tells me that he’s up to no good, and the fact that I don’t know about it isn’t resting easy with me.

  “What’s going on? Is this about the Sons of Gods?” I ask, needing to know whatever it is that he’s hiding from me. There’s no way that he’d know I’m with Roxy. I made damn sure to cover my tracks with that, paying off the security guys at the hospital to make sure the cameras had a malfunction that day when I was taking her out of there. Paying the nurses and doctors to make sure that everyone kept their damn mouth shut. I did enough to make sure that no one would decide to be a fucking nark. In the back of my mind I do wonder if he’s caught on – if he knows exactly where I am and who I’m with, but I have to keep telling myself that he doesn’t. There is no possible way that he could know.

  “For Christ’s sake. How do you not know what is going on? Is Roman not talking to you about shit? You two seem to be awfully close.” He’s right. Roman and I are close because of one thing, and it’s not because we’re “friends”. He and I both see Rage circling the drain and know that shit is going to go down sooner or later. In fact, we’re both prepared for that day. The man isn’t my friend, but he is an ally. What is that saying? The enemy of your enemy is your friend. Well, the saying is true in this case. Roman and I have nothing in common; well, besides the fact that Quinn and Roxy are close. That is our only common denominator. Otherwise, he and I couldn’t be more different. While we both tend to take charge, there is just some shady shit behind him, and I can see it clear as day. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but one day I will. I’ll finally know what it is that this mother fucker isn’t telling me.

  He and I have an agreement. We both see what Rage has done to our club, how he’s taken in slimy fuckers – the baddest of the bunch. There is no process on who we accept into our club anymore. It doesn’t matter if you’re the Pope or a child molester. Rage will take anyone who is willing to fight for us. Our values have been stripped, and the only thing that keeps the club running is hatred for those who oppose us, and the vast drug trade.

  Roman wants the club, and for all I care, he can have it. I want out. Back before the devil took ahold of my friend I could have stayed in the club until the day I died. Now, because of everything he has changed, I don’t want any part of it. I no longer want to be surrounded by men I hate, men that I can’t even stand to be in a room with. Roman, though, he’s not like Rage, and he’s sure as fuck not like me either. He wants to make changes – he wants to bring our club back to life, restore it in the sensible way. He doesn’t want war, or bloodshed. He wants unity, and that I can respect. Rage only sees the other clubs as our enemies when reality it is the exact opposite. We should have been creating alliances with them, not swearing to slit their throats or put a gun to their heads. He may think we will run the States, but I am not naive and neither is Roman. We have bigger fish to worry about, much bigger fish.

  “What don’t I know about?” I ask him.

  “Roxanne is in the wind, she just up and vanished. Sent that slime bag fucker of a prospect down to the hospital to pick her up and nothing. She wasn’t there, and nobody seemed to know where it is she went or when she went missing.”

  “She couldn’t have just disappeared into thin air,” I tell him, hoping that by playing along with his fake concern it will make him think I don’t know jack shit.

  “You think I don’t fucking know that? I want to know who has her! Who is the piece of shit that thinks he can take what belongs t
o me?!” His voice barrels through the phone in screams of anger. Never have I once heard his voice get like this. Roxy being gone is really fucking with him. That just means I have to do whatever I can to protect her. I was prepared to do that in the first place, but now I can see him for how distraught he is. He has always been unpredictable, but now I fear he will be so much worse than I have ever seen.

  I stay quiet for a minute, not because I’m scared or any of that shit, but because I really don’t know what to say. If I bring up just letting Roxy go, he’ll think it’s suspicious, but I bet you if I say anything his paranoid ass will look further into it then he needs to.

  “She was pregnant. She was fucking pregnant, and she’s gone. She killed my fucking kid, and she ran off like the bitch she is.”

  Don’t do anything stupid, stay calm, I internally tell myself. If there is anything I want to do right now, it’s lay my fist into him so many times until he’s in the same position she was. Roxy didn’t kill their baby.

  He did.

  He has done all of this shit and the fact he’s blaming her boils my blood like nothing else I’ve ever experienced.

  “You should just let her go, then. She obviously ran for a reason, and we know there are plenty of whores who can give you children,” I tell him, begging him to take the bone I’m throwing him. Leave Roxy alone and take a fucking club whore. He never had a problem fucking them. I don’t see why he couldn’t just take one of them and forget Roxy’s name.

  “No. Fuck no. I will find that cunt, track her down to the edges of the Earth if I have to. I will fuck her and keep her chained to a bed until she gives me what she owes me. You know what I’ll do then? I’ll keep her tied up to the bed and fuck her as much as I want, making her nothing more than my personal fucking breeder, giving me all the kids I ever want. Who knows, she might not even be good enough for that. If that’s the case I’ll keep her chained up and let the brothers do whatever they want to her, and she’ll fucking wish she was dead. I’ll show her that she can’t ever fucking run from me.”

  I’d be damned if I let any of that ever happen. If it came down to it, I’d kill my best friend before I let him hurt another hair on her precious head.

  Chapter 10

  Oh, sweetie. Monsters are real, and they look like people. - Anonymous

  Roxy

  We’ve been here for over two weeks at this point, still sitting pretty and “resting” as Vince loves to remind me. Every day we stay here my anxiety grows bigger and bigger, waiting for Rage to come breaking down the door.

  To sum it up, I am constantly living in fear. Fear of being taken. Fear of going back to a hell where I was abused and mutilated in more ways than anyone could muster up in their darkest dreams. I know Vince will do everything that he can to prevent that from happening, but at the end of the day…he can’t be the only one watching out for me. I have to look out for myself.

  Yesterday I asked him to show me where the car was in the event that this all went to shit. I say in the event like I don’t know it’s going to happen…let’s be real – it’s going to happen. It’s just a matter of when.

  Vince walks me down through the back of his property again today, weaving in and out of trees he points to spray painted markers on the trees. “You see these patches of yellow?”

  I nod.

  “You keep following them, and they’ll take you straight to the car. I didn’t think you’d remember all of my directions, so I wanted you to have a key incase shit went south.” I think he means when shit goes south. I’m not so much of an optimist any more, if anything I am as pessimistic as they come.

  “Thank you,” I mutter, following the trees that he spray-painted for me.

  We walk alongside one another in complete silence. I suppose there isn’t much to say, but then again there is so much that is unsaid. “How long do you think it’ll be before he puts the pieces together? Until he realizes something is up…Don’t you think he’s wondering where you are?” I turn to my right to look at him, awaiting his reaction.

  “No, I don’t. It’s not like I was around all the time in the first place, Rox. He’s used to me being gone for weeks and showing up out of nowhere. As long as shit’s being handled, Rage never really gave a fuck where I was or what I was doing.” Vince isn’t wrong, he was hardly around. Even now, I don’t know how he managed to be the VP of the club being gone as much as he was. Then again, I’m sure there’s a lot that I don’t know about. I can only imagine the things that he had to do in the name of brotherhood.

  I don’t say much of anything, I simply nod and start walking ahead of him, continuing to follow the marked trees. I need to make sure that I know how to get to this car like the back of my hand because when shit goes down, I know the last thing I will be doing is thinking clearly.

  He grabs the back of my shoulder, and the action forces my body to face him. “I didn’t want to be gone all the time, you know that. Don’t you?”

  “Does it even matter?” I don’t mean to sound so blunt, or so rude, but regardless, I know it’s how I come across. He was gone, either way he was gone. Talking about it, hell, even telling me about it now won’t change anything, and for some reason I feel like this is going to turn into him apologizing for being gone. I went through hell, and because of it, I am stronger than I ever imagined. Even though I believe Vince wanted to white knight me back then, I’m glad he did it now – giving me the chance at a new beginning, even if I don’t quite know what it means yet.

  “Of course, it matters. I was gone, and you were at the club going through whatever it was he was doing. I saw some shit, and when it got too difficult I just left the room because I couldn’t bear to see what he was doing to you. I was a coward. I could have helped, and instead I avoided it. You have no idea how much I regret that, Rox. I don’t go a day without thinking about everything I could have saved you from.”

  “It wasn’t your job to save me, Vince. I had to make the decision to save myself.”

  We both stand there as the wind picks up and blows my long hair in front of my face. Right as I brush my fingers over my face to collect the strands his hand is over my own, pressing both his and my hand against my cheek, wiping my hair away from my face. “That may be true, but don’t you ever think that I don’t wish I did… that I don’t hate myself for not taking you away from him, taking you away from everything that you had to experience. Fuck, I don’t even know all of it.”

  No, he didn’t. He knew quite a bit, but Rage was never so cruel when Vince was around. He was nasty, although he kept his gruesome antics for when Vince was away. In the back of my mind I wonder if he did that for a reason. Did Rage know that Vince wouldn’t tolerate it? Did he think Vince would act out? I guess I’ll never know. However, I don’t think that it was a coincidence. Thinking back on it now, I’m realizing that the worst treatment I ever got was when Vince was out of town.

  “If I told you every disgusting thing he did to me, would it make you feel better?” I stare into his deep hazel eyes, waiting for the answer I know I’ll get.

  He meets me with silence.

  “Do you want to know about every time he beat me until I could barely stand up and then would tie me down to the pool table and let them hit me with the pool sticks until they grew tired of it? How my ass would bleed from how hard they would hit me? Or how they would fuck me afterwards like some used up club whore? Or do you want to hear about the times he has had me so close to death only to bring me right back, teasing the fact that he held my life in the grasp of his hands for years? Are these the things you want to hear?” I don’t even realize I’m crying until he wipes his hand across my cheek, taking away the tears that spilled from the corner of my eyes.

  “The only thing I want, Roxanne, is to make sure that fucker never gets his weaselly hands on you ever again. Do you understand me? I will never hide the fact that I have regrets, if you want me to do that shit, I just can’t. Now we both know I can’t go back and change the past, but I’ll
be damned if I don’t change the future. You deserve so much, you know that? There is so much that I want to give you. Don’t you see?”

  I do, I see it so clearly. I see it every day, and every night.

  How could I not?

  Vince leans down, grazing his lips over my own. He sucks my top lip into his mouth, and I begin to kiss him back. Warmth floods over me, almost as if my soul is lifting out of my body. Vince makes me feel a lot of things, but the one thing he always does is make me feel treasured.

  I don’t ever want to be apart from him, or how special he makes me feel. I can only hope that I never have to.

  Chapter 11

  What’s comin’ will come and we’ll meet it when it does. - Hagrid

  Roxy

  Another week passed us by in the blink of an eye. I don’t know how the time continued to fly by, even with my worrying mind on overdrive every second of the day. I did my best to keep myself busy, cleaning and tidying up the cabin as much as possible, but one could only clean so much. It came to a point where Vince told me to stop, and not in the nicest way. Apparently, my continuous cleaning had been driving him to the brink of insanity, so I did what any normal woman would do. I took a soaking hot bubble bath and began to read some of the small novels he had lying around. It shocked me quite a bit to see that he had an old copy of Gone with the Wind, and when I’d asked him about it, he told me something about it being one of his mom’s favorite books. I couldn’t help but wonder if it was actually one of his.

  I laid down on the couch, watching an old horror movie on the television that sits a few feet away. Vince comes up in front of the couch and slides himself behind me, pulling me closer against him. I reveled anytime he did this, craving his touch and the safety net that I felt whenever his arms were around me. The man made me feel so much. While I constantly worried about the what ifs, I became happy with my day to day life and happy with the normal feeling that began to wash over me. Vince did make me feel safe, he always had a way of doing that whenever I was around him. The only person who made me fearful of my own safety was Rage, and he wasn’t here, so it only made sense that I learn to live in the moment and not in fear. After all, is living in fear even living at all?