Cook (The Ridge MC Book 4)

Chapter 1

Maddie

Present day

The new-paint smell burned my nostrils, which said a lot about my next prison. I had inhaled some real bad shit in my life. Blood, burned flesh, days old feces, old cum—everything that could be rancid and gut wrenching. My nose had sniffed it all.

Sold into sex slavery at twelve, I’d seen it.

Lived through it.

Survived it.

Now, they slathered new paint on the walls and called it fucking good. Such a contradiction. Nothing was good about me. Signora told me often how tainted I was, and it was true.

The door creaked open, and I stiffened, shuffling back against the wall.

Just do whatever they want, Maddie, I told myself.

I was good at following orders. “A pretty little puppet,” Signora had always said, but she slapped me and clawed at me anyway. How good of a girl could I have been to have earned the lashes?

A man stepped in, wearing a white lab coat. Something about him, though, said the lab coat wasn’t a common part of his wardrobe.

I faced him, knowing what men like him wanted. They wanted to play doctor, but I wouldn’t tolerate being cut up anymore! No more knives to be pressed into my skin or layers of flesh peeled back like I was a grape. Nobody would do those things to me and watch with wonder as juice oozed out.

I was too old for most of Signora’s customers, save for the few who had particular tastes where age didn’t matter.

“Hiya, Maddie,” said the doctor. “Everyone here calls me Doc. Do you remember me? We met when you were brought in.”

Brought in? To where? This sterile place wasn’t the shit show I had known for sixteen years, but one prison had been replaced with this.

One jailer with another.

“Your injuries were superficial, but you were very anxious,” continued the doctor. “We had to separate you from the others when you arrived. You tried to claw my eyes out.” He chuckled and pointed to a scratch on his cheek. “Nearly took out my eyeball.”

The last memories I had were at Barton Mill with Signora. And the flash of bikers?

I didn’t remember much of how I came to my new prison. Maybe Melanie was there? I searched my useless memory, something that tended to block out shit at will. There were so many black holes.

Melanie had always been with me, even when she wasn’t. It was like her spirit or whatever haunted my waking dreams and thrived deep in my nightmares. She had grown up free of such darkness. And while I would never wish my experiences on anyone, I resented her for being the lucky one.

At those hallucinations, I pretended I wasn’t alone. And she’d always been the ghost I could yell at and blame. Venomous words I could only utter in my head or in my nightmares.

But that was a child’s game, a talent I had for embracing my imaginary friend. When I saw her again in Signora’s office, I couldn’t think about anything except how healthy she looked. How I would look if I hadn’t spent so long in cages and used by all sorts of depraved people. She was the pure version of us.

But me, I was the ruined one.

The one with scars, both physical and slashed across my soul.

When I had been alone at Barton Mill or around people at one of the clubs or with one person in a hotel room, I disconnected from my body. The best way to deal had always been to allow the clients to use my body and escape into the labyrinth of my fractured mind.

I lost count of the years Signora sold me as a sex slave before, until I grew too old for her clientele, who mostly liked children. When my body filled out with a nice pair of tits and my hips widened, many of the clients no longer wanted me. New girls arrived. Signora had the hair under my armpits and across my pubic area waxed, but the attention I’d had before waned.

Sadly, the day they no longer wanted me wasn’t the day I regained my freedom.

Now, stuck in front of this Doc person, I still hadn’t.

The door opened behind him, and a woman walked in with short, spiky hair. She wore a broad smile that flashed her sparkly white teeth against her tanned face. Fake. Everything about her was fake. Too pretty to be real.

Did Doc make her into a doll, like Signora wanted me to become at times?

“Whatever the customer wants,” she would yell the command at me, so I became a marionette without strings, moving my body however they liked.

“Hey, kiddo,” said the woman before she turned to the doctor. “She talking yet, honey?”

“No, Kimmers,” said Doc.

“Oh, honey.” She turned her glistening eyes on me, and I backed against the wall. “You really will be safe here, we promise.”

Signora used to use the same tone, and it usually ended with me getting slapped in the face. Kimmers spoke with false sympathy, and I’d learned the tone. The first several times Signora had used it, I let her get too close.

Now, with Kimmers moving toward me, I trembled and held my hands in front of my face, seeing Signora’s face on her. My puppeteer before had soothed me that way just before she wrapped my hair around her fist and threw my face against the wall. Then none of my customers would want me for a week, so her men would get their chances with me.

“I brought you some food, sweetie.” Kimmers bent down, holding out a plastic lunch tray. Like one of those used in school when Melanie and I were there. Were they used in school anymore? That was ancient history.

It wasn’t like I finished school. Did my sister? What did she do with her life?

“Do you want to eat?” asked Kimmers. “I made you some nice home cooking. Thought you might like that.” She brought the tray closer, and I skidded back another step.

“Kimmers,” said Doc, “maybe we should wait for the psychiatrist.”

“Look how skinny she is, Doc,” said Kimmers. “She needs food.” She pushed the tray closer, closer.

I slapped it away.

The tray clattered against the hard floor, and the food splattered the walls. It was like a stupid abstract work of art, or something I made when I was a child.

Hunger gnawed at me, but I was used to being hungry. Signora rarely fed us, and sometimes I only ate when one of her paid men took a fancy to me—a blow job for a bread roll. Kimmers’s food smelled delicious, but I held myself back.

I had licked a lot of shit off the floor. No more.

“Okay.” Doc placed his hand on Kimmers’s shoulder. “Let’s bring Richardson in.”

Another fucking doctor. Wonderful. What would they diagnose me with? A sagging cunt for how many men have used it? Bad table manners?

“Go get her, would you?” asked Doc, and Kimmers backed away like a skittish animal.

I had seen that look before in new arrivals at Barton Mill. I had been that look. Lived it. Terror and helplessness were nothing new in my world.

I clenched my teeth. I wasn’t going to fucking apologize. I was no zoo animal to have something shoved in my face, but maybe polite society didn’t slap things out of people’s hands. Was that the kind of life I was living in now?

Doc waited while the woman left, and the door closed. “Can you say something, Maddie? Anything? We’re trying to help you.”

Was that really what he wanted? His overall demeanor—arms crossed over his chest, leaning against the wall—said he didn’t want to be here. I didn’t want him here either. If he so badly wanted to help and was smart enough to be a doctor, maybe he should’ve spent that time and effort not helping me, but building a time machine so he could go back and keep me from being kidnapped.

He could’ve helped me back then.

Now it was too fucking late.

“We have the other kids here,” he said to fill the void.

Why did men always need to do that? Why did they always need to talk?

“They’re safe, like you are. You are safe, Maddie.”

I nearly laughed. Safe? What did they think that word meant? Safe was a fairy tale. Something no one should ever believe, because someone can come in and steal it like a diamond in a matter of seconds. Safe wasn’t a thing.

A knock rattled my wooden door, and another woman poked her head inside. She didn’t try to force her smile on me, though her lips curled up around the corners. Kimmers waited in the hallway, wringing her hands, but the woman closed the door behind herself.

This must’ve been the other doctor Doc was talking about. Fun. I wondered how many they could pack into this room.

This woman didn’t wear a lab coat, but a pencil skirt and blazer, and appeared like she should be in a boardroom rather than whatever this place was. She wore her ashy blond hair in a severe French twist that accented the sharp cheekbones and pointy nose and chin.

Maybe she was distantly related to a bird.

“Hello, Maddie. I’m Doctor Ava Richardson,” said the new doctor.

The new doctor waited in front of me. Was I meant to give her a polite greeting? What would that look like? I couldn’t tell what she expected, unlike Signora’s johns. They were at least forthright about what they wanted.

Signora sometimes waited like this too, but it always meant that I had done something wrong. Whatever I did, it would always be wrong. And the smallest error left me battered, bruised, or worse... scarred.

The punishment, I figured out after years of trying to be good, often depended more on Signora’s mood and less on the crime.

“I see there was an accident with the food,” observed Doctor Richardson. Her eyes fixated on me, and I almost apologized.

Almost.

Apologies had never gotten me anywhere before.

Behind Doctor Richardson, Doc sighed as his bushy brows drew together. “Kimmers got too close to Maddie.”

“Then I’ll stay back.” Doctor Richardson sat on the floor a few feet away. “Is this enough space, Maddie?”

She was acting like I was an animal.

Was I not, though? Locked up and ogled at.

“Do you prefer to be called Maddie or something else?” asked Doctor Richardson. “Melanie was calling you Maddie, so I assume you go by that. Can you correct me?”

Melanie?

Mel. My sister. Was she here?

Memories floated back about when the bikers came to the old mill for Signora. The clash of glass and the booms from the guns. Mel had yelled for me, but it had been so many years. She had always been with me, at least in my imagination. In the chaos, I couldn’t be sure if she was real or all in my mind again.

There had been grunts, groans, and screaming, not only from me. Yet I’d screamed so much my throat had gone raw before I had curled into a ball in the galley. I’d pissed myself before they entered the galley, and I’d cowered as I’d waited and hoped I would survive. Or that death would come quickly.

Then, he had been there.

“Maddie?” asked Doctor Richardson.

Before my eyes, the wooden floor cleared from a blur into slats, and I dragged my eyes up from the woodgrain running the length of the room.

Doctor Richardson tilted her head, her image flickering before my blinking eyes.

“What happened?” she asked. “Where did you go? Are you remembering the other night?”

Which night? Could the doctor not even say what happened to me? Or were they all going to dance around it?

The doctor kept staring calmly at me, as if she could see deeply into my soul.

No, she wanted me to say it.

Did she want to hear all the horrible things that had happened over the last sixteen years of my life? Could she bear a narration about all the men who had raped me and the men I’d fucked to survive? Or should I share what Signora did? The scars marred my skin.

My scars should tell the story well enough. Why did I need to speak?

“Maddie?” tried Doctor Richardson again, lifting a soft smile.

I hated it, same with the pity in Doc’s eyes.

Fuck her.

Fuck him.

Fuck them all!

Pushing to my feet, I lurched forward a step. Doctor Richardson rocked back, reclining onto her arms, as I hovered over her. Saliva oozed from the corners of my mouth, wetness trickling down my chin.

Doc stepped toward me and withdrew a needle from his pocket before placing his thumb on the plunger. He tipped it toward me like a knife, but how could I be scared of that? Or him? He had kind eyes, not cruel like the bastards who used my body.

“This will help you relax, Maddie,” said Doc.

I snarled, baring my teeth and searching the room for whatever I could use to fight the two doctors off. I didn’t want more drugs. That shit would just knock me out, and I didn’t want to sleep. I wanted to be free. Why couldn’t they understand that?

“Doctor Richardson, you okay?” asked Doc as the woman doctor climbed to her feet, balancing on her death-spike heels.

Signora would never let us wear heels because they could too easily be used as weapons. If I could get my hands on her shoe, perhaps I could get out of here. The woman doctor hadn’t locked the door when she entered.

“I’m okay,” said Doctor Richardson, smoothing down her skirt. “She didn’t touch me.” Then she turned her attention back to me. “Maddie, why don’t we take some deep breaths? Let’s talk about this. Can we? I know you don’t want to—”

“What the fuck is going on here?” A man... the man ... stood in the doorway. His beard reached down his neck, covering up the beginning of the text on his T-shirt.

Everyone seemed confused how he got here, but I paused, knowing his face. Finding peace in him. My heartbeat slowed, and the fight wept out of me. The guy in the doorway saved me from Signora and drove me away from that horrible place.

Hewas my hero.

Hewas my . . .

“Help me!” I pushed between the two doctors, knocking them aside, and grabbed the man’s arm as I shimmied up to his side. His muscles... damn, I felt them through his shirt as he flexed under my hand. I grabbed tighter to him while the rest of my body slowly relaxed.

My breathing came easier. “Help me!” I whispered. “You have to help me! Please. They’re going to—”

Doc moved closer with the needle, and my savior drew me back, placing his body between the two doctors and me. Still stuck in the room, some invisible force held me there, but I could no longer see the doctors who wanted me to talk.

Regardless, weren’t my screams enough proof that I could speak?

“Don’t, Doc.” My savior lunged forward.

I peeked around Cook to see him press his fist into Doc’s chest, stopping the male doctor in his tracks.

“You don’t understand, Cook,” said Doc. “This will help her calm down. She needs it.”

“I don’t,” I countered, curling into Cook’s back and wrapping both fists into the back of his shirt. I dug my fingernails deep into the fabric and touched his muscles. The material shifted to show tattoos laced into his skin. I wanted to study the map of his ink and discover where each one went.

“She does,” said Doc, as though he didn’t hear me.

He stared straight ahead at Cook, and I felt forgotten. Just like I’d always felt with Signora. A prisoner. An owned thing. Some product she sold to the highest bidder. I was a prisoner all over again.

“She attacked Kimmers,” continued Doc. “And was after Doctor Richardson.”

“I didn’t. Wasn’t.” I clung to Cook, seeping the warmth from his skin.

His fist was still pushing at the center of Doc’s chest. I shimmied under his arm, rubbing my back against his chest. The man let out a soft growl, and a small smile tugged at my lips. I don’t remember when the last time I smiled was, but it was a relief to learn I could.

“Cook, this is meant to help her,” said Doctor Richardson. “It wouldn’t be my first choice, either. Please trust me. Maddie has had a hard life, and she needs more help readjusting to her—”

“You think sleep is going to help with that? Drugged oblivion?” asked Cook, hooking his arm around my body. He pulled me a little closer. “Of course she needs some fucking time. You know what those sick fucks did to her. You’ve heard what the kids say. And she’s been there forever. She needs help and the space to heal, not you making decisions for her. And certainly not whatever fucking drugs you’re about to give her.” His chest rumbled with every word he spoke.

I tilted my head back, catching the silhouette of his face. Just the outline, but it was strong and sure under his black and gray beard. Daddy had a beard like that, and my fingers twitched with the desire to run my fingers through it.

Cook’s face was set in a thin, grim line as he stared straight ahead at the doctors.

“Can you get me out of here?” I asked Cook. “I don’t want to be here. Please. Help me.” I clung onto him, fitting deeper into the crook of him like a gun in its holster.

When I looked up at him, I just felt okay. Not totally relaxed. How could I be when I had been held captive in one place and was now stuck in another? But next to Cook, tension fled and my body felt heavy, like I might be able to sleep peacefully for the first time in years if he were by my side.

The recurring dreams terrified me, but I trusted that Cook would keep them away. He would care for me.

“Please, Daddy,” I whispered, and Cook’s body went as still as a rock beside me.

All the air had left the room. The doctors shared a look while Cook dragged his gaze to me. Something dark lingered in his eyes, but his eyes were warm. They were identical to my father’s. He was safe. Maybe safety wasn’t a fantasy.

Cook was safe. Therefore, I was safe.

What did that mean? And how long could it possibly last?

After a moment, Cook jumped back. “Wait, what? What did you just say to me? I’m not...”

Pink color splattered across his cheekbones, and I was so close I could see. It was cute. Was he embarrassed?

“Why would you,” he stammered. “I’m not—”

I leaned away, confused as to why he didn’t like it. Didn’t he understand? He was my safety. My home. Daddy.