17. Havoc
Havoc
I’m vibrating with rage as I storm through the clubhouse. Chaos spots me just as I reach the back door, but he’s smart enough not to cut me off. Instead, he meets my stride.
“Why did I get a call from Steel saying not to take my eyes off you until he gets here?” Chaos follows me on the long trek to the Shack.
My vision is dark around the edges. Corners of my sanity swirl with what Aimee said.
They sterilized me.
Out of the thousands of sick things I considered could have happened to her when she was with the Iron Sinners, I never considered that.
Maybe I wanted to believe the rumors about what they do to women were exaggerated when I knew better.
Maybe I wanted to stay in denial when there was no hiding the truth in her scar.
I was so fucking wrong .
Aimee tried to talk me down as I climbed off the bed to dress. But her words were a blur. They were lies parading as comfort to try and soften the blow when she probably assumes her confession made something in my brain snap.
She didn’t try to stop me as I kissed her and left. She knows me. She understands.
“Havoc…”
“I’m going to have a chat with Reyes.”
Chat being a bit of an understatement. There’s a tsunami crashing between my temples, and I need to let it out.
Reyes might not have been around back when Aimee was originally taken, but he’s Titan’s nephew. An Iron Sinner. He’s the closest thing to that club that I can get my hands on right now, so I’ll wring this frustration out through him.
My fingers flex at the thought of blood. Of revenge.
No wonder Aimee’s been hiding behind a fortress, barely wanting to participate in anything having to do with the club.
The things they did to her.
My cut has never felt so heavy on my shoulders.
I can’t imagine what she must think when she sees me wearing it. The deep-rooted reasons she flinches at the unexpected sound of a motorcycle. How she refuses to drink alcohol at the clubhouse.
This world took everything from her. And here I am, a part of it.
They sterilized me .
I’m going to break this fucking earth.
“You gonna talk to me before we go in there?” Chaos asks, eyeing his phone, probably responding to a text from Steel.
When I walked out of my room, I managed to compose myself long enough to call my president and let him know I’m going to kill our hostage. But I hung up before he could give me the order to stand down.
“Dead men don’t talk,” Chaos reminds me.
“Good.”
I mean it. We might still have questions for Reyes, but I want anyone wearing an Iron Sinners cut six feet under right now. I want to skin them one by one. To take Ghost’s advice on the best way to inflict pain and make them all suffer for what they took from her.
“Havoc.” Chaos finally cuts in front of me when we’re twenty feet from the Shack. “Stop and talk to me for a second.”
“Are you really going to stand in my way?”
My club is my family more than my own flesh and blood, but that won’t stop me from doing what needs to be done. To contain this anger, spiderwebbing over my skin. Seeping into my blood. My bones.
Chaos faces off with me, and I know he wants to stop me.
For our president.
For myself.
But for whatever reason, or because of whatever look I must give him, he steps aside, letting me pass .
More footsteps follow us now, but I don’t look back to see who has joined us. I could probably guess, and I don’t care.
All that matters is the scent of stale blood when I swing open the door to the Shack. The stench of fear. The type of silence that wakes the drums of war in my veins.
At that, a familiar calm runs through me.
It reminds me of the second before a battle begins.
Sitting at the brink of war before all hell breaks loose.
Sending a final prayer to the other side, knowing very well where the day might end.
It reminds me of the silence before the first gunshot.
Before any explosion. Before anyone knows what way the pendulum of fate will swing.
I’ve seen many men break in that second.
Fearing death.
Or worse, surviving and being forced to live with the memories. I’ve seen men find God in massacres.
All I find is her.
I close my eyes and rub the hourglass on the back of my finger.
I find my center.
The only peace I’ve ever really known.
Reyes is already bound to a chair in the center of the room, like I knew he would be. We’ve been holding him in a cell at an outbuilding on the property, but Ghost had plans to work on him this morning. Knowing Ghost, he had a prospect bring Reyes here early so he could sit with his fear for a bit.
Waiting and wondering what pain will be inflicted .
But it’s not Ghost he’s going to face this time. And when Reyes’s dark eyes meet mine across the Shack, he must sense the current of rage rippling off my shoulders because his face pales.
Good.
Now he has an idea of how Aimee must have felt.
I don’t hesitate as I stalk to the center of the room. And with the full force of my rage, I slam my fist into Reyes’s face. Bone cracks. Blood spews from his nose.
I hit him again.
And again.
Until one eye is swollen shut, and he’s gurgling.
That sound is all that stops me because I’m not ready for him to choke on blood and die just yet. That would be too easy.
I grip Reyes by his dark hair. It’s grown longer in the few weeks we’ve held him at the compound, torturing him for answers. I pull his head back and stare down at him, bound to the chair.
Something like a grin splits his face as he looks up at me with the only eye that will open. “I was wondering when you’d come see me, Havoc.”
He’s taunting me.
Begging for death.
“How is she—” He barely has time to get that question out before my knuckles slam into his face again.
While Ghost prefers knives and Legacy prefers guns, I’m more like my president in that I prefer to get my hands on someone. To feel their soul shake in their body. To know that it’s my fist—my fingers—that will rip them from this world.
The door to the Shack opens again, and from the shift in energy among my brothers already here, I don’t have to look to know it’s Steel. I do anyway, glancing around the room.
Steel pauses inside the door as Chaos murmurs something to him and then Soul. Ghost and Legacy stand in silence a few feet away. Everyone is in various states of dress. Soul didn’t bother with a shirt. But he did slip on his cut before following me out here.
Steel must have told them all to hurry after I hung up on him. He knows me well, and I don’t doubt my anger bled into my tone. That and the fact that I never disrespect my president by ending the call first.
Still, no one has tried to stop me, which means they all sense I wouldn’t do this without a damn good reason.
I watch Steel move farther into the Shack, stopping beside Ghost. Like the others, he doesn’t say anything to me, and I’m glad because the last thing I need right now is to defy an order from my president.
For her, I would.
They sterilized me.
Every time those three words replay, my insides go numb. I turn to Reyes and slam my fist into his gut this time. I strike again, and he spits blood on my shirt from the sheer force of it.
Grabbing his hair, I force him to face me. “Who ordered it? ”
“Who do you think?” Reyes barely gets the words out as blood trickles down his chin.
“Titan?”
Reyes nods.
I figured, but I had to be sure because the one I string up at the end of this needs to be the man who cut Aimee’s chance at having a baby out of her.
“It took her longer than I expected to tell you about it.” Reyes grins with blood between his teeth.
“I figured you’d be in here with these questions sooner.
How does it feel knowing you’ll never win this, Havoc?
That anything you thought—any upper hand you assumed you had—my president already took from you and your club before you ever had a chance. ”
I smash his already broken nose.
Reyes chokes on his blood, but the laugh that rattles out of his wheezing chest is still there. Haunting the corners of the room. Echoing in the silence.
“Aimee is his, whether you like it or not.” Reyes’s head flops side to side now that I’m no longer holding it.
“They all are. We all are once he claims us. Just because she got away doesn’t mean she’ll ever be free from what he’s done.
Tell me, Havoc, what are you going to do with her now?
Can you still love her when Titan sterilized the woman you love? ”
The room stills around me. Or maybe it’s that time slows and I can’t hear or think. A fuzzy calm blurs at the edges of my brain.
“I wasn’t there back then.” Reyes continues his taunts when I’ve yet to start beating him again.
“But I asked Titan about it when he put her in that cage. He said she fought him, like the feisty fucking thing she is. That’s why he did it.
He likes making them pay for being defiant. He gets off on erasing hope.”
I swallow, but my throat is sand. Bile stirs. No one in the room moves. And even if I’m looking at Reyes, I feel my club around me, as horrified as I am.
“Titan made her pay for not giving up on you and submitting to him.” Reyes grins, and his eyes are pure madness.
“He had the doctor keep her awake while he did it. Numbed her from the waist down and then let her suffer every second, knowing what they were cutting out of her. That is, until she blacked out.”
I slam a fist into his face again. His cheek cracks—or maybe it’s my knuckle. Reyes coughs and wheezes with every punch.
He wants me to kill him.
To end this.
That’s why he’s telling me everything. And it’s working because I can’t stop.
I punch him again and again.
In the temple. The nose. The side. The gut.
My knuckles bleed, and my entire body aches. But I can’t resist releasing this rage. I need to make someone pay for what Titan did to her.
Reyes’s vision starts to fade in and out. He’s on the brink of death, and it’s all that pulls me back into my body. Into this room.
Only then do I look up and feel the full weight of my club watching me, knowing what they just heard. And when my gaze stops on Steel, I don’t need to say anything for him to know what I’m silently asking.
I’ve never asked much of my club. I’ve given them my all and expected nothing in return. Until now.
I need this.
I need Steel to let me be the one to do it, even if we don’t have everything from Reyes just yet.
Ghost leans in to say something to Steel. His voice is too quiet for me to hear what he’s saying. But Steel nods in response, not taking his eyes off me.
Finally, Steel clears his throat. “End it, Havoc.”
Not an order for mercy, but permission to draw the blood I need to sate this rage before I rip the world apart. The club surrounds me, and Chaos is the one to approach with the blade.
He places the handle in my palm, and I find my center. The mouth of hell opens, ready to accept a soul, and I’m at peace.
Reyes is too beaten and bloody to form words, but it doesn’t stop him from trying to mumble something as I stop in front of him and grab his hair. I tug the back of his head to expose his neck. His dark eyes find mine, and I hope he sees the devil.
An empty abyss that will drink him down and offer nothing but torture until time blinks out.
They sterilized me.
I lift the blade to Reyes’s throat, and my voice wobbles as I choke on my final words to him. “This is for Aimee.”
I drag the blade across his skin, ripping through his vocal cords. No mercy or kindness. I tear him open like they did to her in one brutal sweep. Blood spits from his artery, and I drop to my knees.
I bathe in his blood.
In death, as it fills the room. But this is not the end.
I’m going to make every last one of them pay for what they’ve done to her. Then I’ll beg her forgiveness because I couldn’t stop this from happening in the first place.