Chapter 22
Ruby
The man named Devereaux gave me no choice but to listen to him. I am scared that I might have jumped into yet another impossible situation. Despite all the years I’ve been on my own, I still feel stupid and na?ve. No street smarts to talk about here.
Now, as I walk with him and his huge bodyguard in the house they brought me to, I am in awe of my luxurious surroundings. I have never in my life seen anything this nice before. I am scared that my biker boots will scuff the flooring, and I try to walk as gently as possible, almost on my tippy toes.
“Make yourself comfortable, Miss Santiago,” Devereaux encourages once we passed the entry way and are not in a spacious living area.
I walk over to the couch and sit on the edge of it, trying really hard not to give into temptation and sink into its plushness. My backpack with all the cash is safely in my lap, and I hold on to it for dear life.
“Are you hungry?” he asks. “Thirsty?”
I shake my head, even more nervous than before. My stomach lets out a small grumble but I don’t even know if it is from the nerves or if I am actually hungry. Besides, it would be too easy for them to poison me if I took his offer.
Devereaux takes a seat on the couch opposite me. He nods at his bodyguard to leave the room, and as soon as the double doors close with a soft click, he smiles at me.
“I know that Bricks was targeting you at the strip club,” he starts.
My entire body tenses in anticipation of something bad happening.
“I was doing the same thing.”
His words fall over me like they are made of lead. They hit me hard and make me shrink into myself, unable to believe that I was stupid enough to leave the bus station with him. I could’ve been on my way to Alaska by now.
“Our motives were different,” he confesses while giving me an apologetic smile. “I’d known Bricks for a very long time. In fact, we used to be friends. We also became business partners, and we had lucrative deals for the longest time.”
“What changed?” My voice sounds raspy when I speak.
“Without getting into much detail, I will share with you that he betrayed me on a personal level, as well as a business one. The personal one occurred first, but it took a while to untangle all the mess that came with it. When he decided to go around my back on a business level as well, he became careless, and he finally gave me the perfect opportunity to take him out.”
His words don’t sound as vicious as his tone of voice. It makes my hands start shaking in an instant, and I can’t focus. This is not a man that one should cross. The fact that I may have crossed him by mistake does not make a difference to him.
“I needed the help of the Savages MC in order to put my plan into application. Hawk was their best man for the job. He did just as he was asked.”
I feel my eyes tearing up, and now I have a hard time looking at him anymore. Just hearing Hawk’s name evokes too many emotions inside of me. I miss him already, after only hours of being apart. The fact that I know I will never see him again is also weighing on me heavily.
“His mission was to make your acquaintance at the strip club,” Devereaux explains. “Once that happened, he was supposed to give you information purposely, knowing you would share it with Bricks.”
I wrap my arms tighter around my backpack and drop my forehead on top of it. I regret so many things right now. The only silver lining in all of it is my meeting Hawk and his mother.
Taking a deep breath, I lift my head and look straight into Devereaux’s eyes. I’m not sure what I was expecting to see in them, but definitely not compassion.
“Lala told me the Savages were running sex trafficking rings.” My voice gets shaky when I start explaining. “Then Bricks and Snake came to see me. T-they s-scared me,” I stutter. “T-they threatened to hurt me if I didn’t help them.”
Devereaux nods in understanding. “Unfortunately, that’s exactly how they operate. And they knew you’d be vulnerable and have no means to fight them.”
“What will happen to me now?” Tears stream down my face. “I have nowhere to go. Hawk told me to get on a bus and go as far away from here as I can. I don’t know where.”
I pause and try to recompose myself. My arms and shoulders feel numb as I still have a tight hold on my backpack full of cash.
“I have money,” I tell him in a shaky voice. “I saved every penny I could so that I could have something to fall back on once I stopped dancing. Hawk told me they might track me, and if I call the guy who takes care of investing it for me, they will take it all.”
I sound incoherent even to my own ears. I can’t even imagine what Devereaux can put together from what I’m saying.
“He said they will be able to find me like that. What am I going to do?”
I should be angry at Hawk and Devereaux as much as I am at Bricks and Snake. Between all of them, they ruined my very existence. It’s not like I had a good life to begin with. But they managed to turn it into a pile of trash. But that is only fitting since that’s what everyone seems to think of me. I am just the trashy girl who gets naked and occasionally has sex in exchange for money.
Unaware of what’s going through my head, Devereaux looks at me with pride.
“That was incredible smart of you, Miss Santiago,” he praises. “I have a daughter who is not much older than you. I’d like to think that she would be just as smart if she were in this type of situation, but I somehow doubt it.”
His words manage to warm my heart despite the fact that I doubt he would ever allow for his daughter to be in the situation I found myself in over the last four years. I can only picture a composed young woman who has steel running through her veins, just like her father who is now sitting in front of me.
“It may have been smart of me, Mr. Devereaux.” I sound like I am once again about to burst into tears. “But I didn’t take into consideration how easy it would be to have all my accounts hacked. My financial security blanket could be taken away from me in the blink of an eye.”
He watches me thoughtfully for the longest time.
“I would never allow for any of that to happen to you.”
I snort at hearing that and can’t resist the urge to roll my eyes.
“I don’t know you well enough for any of what you’re telling me to mean anything to me, Mr. Devereaux.”
His eyebrows raise in surprise. I can tell he is amused by me.
“You know about me as much as you know about Hawk,” he points out. “But you did trust him when he told you to run, and when he told you not to use your electronic devices.”
My mouth opens and closes a couple of times as I try to come up with a smart response. But he knows he got me there, and he knows that my connection to Hawk ran deeper than just him using me.
I feel stupid again for just assuming that I had a deep connection with Hawk. Then I remind myself that he trusted me to be with his mom while he was gone. And he did try to help me run away.
“Is Hawk in trouble?”
I can’t get out of my head the picture of his president telling him that he had three hours to make it to the club. Being late was not an option, and I am worried sick that he ended up being late because of me.
“Miss Santiago,” Devereaux sighs. “The politics in a motorcycle club are complicated and a lot more than what meets the eye.”
“I know there’s a hierarchy, if that’s what you’re referring to.” I’ve never drooled over the bikers coming to the strip club, so I never learned about how they run their clubs. I know that Lala was really into it. She kept on saying that she would be Puck’s ol’ lady one day, whatever that means. It sounded like their version of a wife.
“Loyalty means everything to them,” Devereaux continues. “Hawk being sent to work on this mission signified that he’d already proven himself to the club. His president trusted him to see it through. Hawk was prepared to do anything in his power to help his club. A lot was at stake.”
I get an instant lump in the back of my throat, and my mouth goes dry. I know exactly what Hawk did to get his mission accomplished, and ninety percent of it included him using my body as he saw fit.
“Fortunately, you were very cooperative, Miss Santiago. And I know a lot of it had to do with Hawk himself.”
I blush to the roots of my hair. He knows what went down. I’ve never felt embarrassed about my profession until this very second.
“Once the mission progressed to the next level, Hawk was given one clear directive by his president.”
Devereaux stops talking. He stares at me for the longest time, like he is waiting for me to connect imaginary dots.
“What was his directive?” I finally ask in a raspy voice when I can’t take the tension anymore. My anxiety is through the roof at this point.
“It was time for Hawk to wrap up the first leg of the mission. That included eliminating any witnesses who might become an issue at a later date.”
His eyes or face show no emotion when he stares me down like that, and I finally understand. I was one of those witnesses.
“Hawk was supposed to kill me,” I whisper, and he nods in confirmation.
This is what his president implied when he found us at the home where Mary lives. And it’s also what Hawk himself told me in not so many words.
“Why didn’t he?”
Devereaux shrugs. “It is obvious that he felt something toward you. What that was, it is hard tell. But he did care enough to get you out of there. Unfortunately, he was on a tight schedule, and he didn’t have time to do more other than take you to the facility where his mother lived. Mary taking an instant liking to you did not hurt at all.”
I drop my face in my hands and start crying again. I can’t help it. I feel defeated in a way I’ve never felt before. The fact that I know I’ll never see Mary again only adds to my heartbreak.
“I needed Hawk to come back to Austin,” Devereaux explains without actually giving me any details. “Things were moving at a faster pace than previously anticipated, and there was no time to waste.”
I lift my head from my hands to stare at him. “Why are you telling me all this?”
He leans forward and rests his elbows on his knees, a hint of a smile lifting the corner of his lips.
“Because in order to move forward, you need to look back for a bit.”
“I don’t understand this or you at all.” I shake my head, sniffing. I should probably blow my nose too, but other than my clothes, I don’t have anything handy.
“The president of the Savages MC finding you in Mary’s room hurt Hawk’s chances of explaining things himself.”
I lean back against the couch and allow myself five seconds of enjoying its softness. I wish I could rest my head and close my eyes, take a quick nap before life slaps me in the face once again.
“In that instant, Hawk became a traitor in the club’s eyes.”
Devereaux’s voice floats to me from somewhere in the room. I hear him, but I have a hard time processing everything.
“When he didn’t follow his president’s directive, he not only broke that trust but also the trust of the club and all its members.”
“It’s sounds more like a cult, if you ask me.” My voice sounds nasally and congested from all the crying.
“It is in a lot of ways,” Devereaux agrees with me. “When they join the club, their lives do not belong to them anymore. Any big change has to be made collectively, the club has to vote on it. They prefer unanimous voting.”
He continues talking, telling me all the ins and outs of being a member of a motorcycle club. I don’t really care. Why would I? The only biker I’ve ever been close to is no longer in my life. The thought brings a fresh wave of tears to my eyes.
“The most important thing to them all is loyalty.”
He finally has my full attention. I lift my head to see him better.
“Do they throw them out of the club if they’re not loyal?”
“You could say that,” Devereaux chuckles but not in amusement. “The only way to leave a club is in a coffin, Miss Santiago.”
He is only confirming what I already knew. I was just hoping that Hawk was wrong, and that his president actually had a heart.
The blood rushes out of my head. I blink to clear my vision, but he still looks blurry. My stomach churns in a painful way, and I think I might be getting sick.
“They will kill Hawk because he didn’t kill me.”
I don’t ask because he’s pretty much said the words to me through the long-winded explanation he’s given me about what being a member of a motorcycle club entails.
“That is the plan,” he explains.
The words hit me like a freight train, but I can’t even cry. My mind is a jumbled mess. All I can see is Hawk’s dead body being pushed into a shallow grave somewhere in the woods.
Us coming together has brought only grief, with him having to pay the ultimate sacrifice by losing his life.
I stare blindly at Devereaux, refusing to believe that this is real. It can’t be.
“After everything Hawk did for you, you are going to let him die?”
I want my voice to sound stronger, but I am in a weird state of inertia. I can hear myself talking, hardly recognizing my own voice.
“That is not my first choice, no.”
A sob escapes the back of my throat. It burns as it makes its way out, incinerating my insides in the process. It dawns on me that when I said goodbye to Hawk, I never expected not to ever see him again because he would no longer walk this earth.
Over all the noise in my head, I hear a firm knock at the door. Whoever is on the other side doesn’t wait for Devereaux to invite them in. When the door opens, I notice it is his bodyguard, Malone.
“Any news from the Savages?”
Malone gives me a sad smile before turning his head to make eye contact with his boss.
“It is done.”
My world goes completely dark.