Chapter 7 Bane
Bane
After Slade stormed out of the kitchen, I had Digits send the clubhouse camera feeds to my phone so I could keep an eye on her.
I met with Ash in his office and told him what had happened with Slade.
He stayed silent about the fact that I cooked for her—something I’ve never done for any other woman other than Pix—and was more concerned about what caused her to walk out.
When Slade left her bedroom and went into the gym, we pulled up the live feed on Ash’s computer and watched her killer workout.
Then, being the meddlers we were, we sent her brothers in there—that confrontation needed to happen, anyway—to see if we could learn more about Slade’s past and identify any potential threat to the club.
Slade remained unexpressive and flat throughout her confrontation with her brothers.
In my opinion, she should’ve been tearing into them for ignoring her cries for help, refusing to listen when she had tried telling them how bad it had been getting.
She was justified to go batshit crazy on their asses, yet she talked about it as if she was explaining that it was raining outside—dispassionate, detached, like none of it had ever touched her.
Ash sits rigidly with his fists clenched on the desk as I watch the screen over his shoulder.
“Two years ago, a predator took me. I survived; he didn’t.” Slade finally admits something of what happened to her.
Over the screen, her eyes are a deep green but so fucking flat with that almost-dead-inside look.
Her words shake me to my core, especially as I remember her reaction to what I had said to her in the kitchen—that at least she wasn’t being chained and tortured.
Fuck, is that what she had survived?
“Who?” Sten asks, pulling me back to what’s playing out on Ash’s monitor.
“It doesn’t matter,” Slade says. “I’m breathing; he isn’t.”
“She killed the cunt.” I somehow know that to be the truth—and it fills me with satisfaction and pride.
Ash spins around in his chair to face me. “We need Digits to dig into who took her…hurt her.”
There’s a wild desperation in his eyes. Ash had taken responsibility for Slade, and in the years that she had been missing, he had Digits search for her.
And now that she’s back, it wasn’t only her brothers who wanted the opportunity to make things right with her.
That was a big reason why he refused to let her leave.
My nature to defend was rearing its head when it came to Slade, however, my gut warned that this story ran deeper than Slade just surviving the predator who took her. If that was true, it meant there was still a threat to her, and with her here, that threat extended to the Havoc Guardians.
The Havoc Guardians need to come first. Slade is a bundle of mystery and intrigue, neither of which mixes well with trying to keep an MC operational, successful, and our members out of jail or the ground.
In fact, it’s like mixing a Molotov cocktail, tossing it into a roaring fire, and not expecting an explosion.
Slade needs to go.
Rubbing my jaw, I step out from behind the desk and pace Ash’s office. “The smartest move is to cut her loose, Ash.” My words are steady, even though they cause a violent kick to my gut.
When the muscle at the back of his jaw bulges due to his clenched teeth, telling me he’s doubling down on his decision, I stress, “We have to think about the MC as a whole, Prez.”
“Slade is family.”
“Who doesn’t want to be here,” I argue. “And we don’t know where she’s been, what she’s been up to, or who she has relationships with.”
“You have a problem because she’s married?”
His reminder of her ‘status’ kicks me in the nuts, and anger boils in me. Not at Ash, but at some unknown cunt who has claimed Slade as his.
But why the hell do I care? So what if her pussy is off-limits? There are plenty of options here, or I could go into any bar in the city and score.
However, the memory of Slade taunting Destiny in the kitchen, painting a picture of us fucking the night away, makes my balls ache for that reality to actually happen.
Christ, Slade needs to go for more reasons than one.
She’s a walking landmine—a whole field of landmines—I’m sure of it. If not for the club, then definitely for me.
In less than a day, this small woman is turning my world on its ass. I’m not interested in a woman outside of sex and getting both of us off, but with Slade…I want to know what makes her tick, what secrets she hides.
And as the defender, I want to find everyone who has wronged her and make them pay. Including her brothers who are members of my MC family I’ve sworn an oath to be loyal to and to protect.
This is a problem.
A huge ass motherfucking problem.
“Goddammit, they’re gone.” Ash’s words pull me out of my head, and I see the gym is now empty.
We had missed how Slade ended the ‘chat’ with her big brothers, but I know they didn’t hug and make up.
Everyone knows Slade isn’t allowed to leave the compound, but that doesn’t mean she won’t try.
If she escaped, that would solve all my problems.
So why the hell does the thought of her leaving here fill me with dread?
My conflicting emotions and thoughts are frustrating as hell.
I’m one of the most level-headed members of our club, and my analytical calmness makes me a damn good VP.
I’m exactly like a policy analyst who advises the leaders of the state.
Ash relies on me for my unbiased advice to help him lead, even though he’s not taking it at the moment.
I need to keep that level-headedness to bring Ash around to my way of seeing things.
I unlock my phone and pull up the camera feeds to find Slade and watch her enter her bedroom. Before I can renew my argument with Ash about letting Slade leave, Pix, Army, and Digits come into the office and close the door.
Pix flops into a chair, her blonde hair flipping over the side, and she crosses her ankles out in front of her. “We watched the show in the gym up in Digits’s tower. Am I allowed to give Breaker, Tyr, and Sten a stern talking to?”
A ‘stern talking’ from a tiny thing may seem cute, but those who mistakenly think so would quickly realize that’s the furthest thing from the truth. Pix rarely ‘talks’ with words—her favorite language is something long and sharp.
Ash walks over and grips Pix’s shoulder, giving it a squeeze. “Slade is okay.”
She looks up at him with a snort. “Okay? She’s as fucking okay as a bull missing his balls.” She shrugs Ash’s hand off, which is telling—Pix is a tactile person, and touch from those she trusts normally calms her. If she doesn’t want it now, that indicates she’s extra agitated.
“What I meant is she’s okay because she avoided the drug dealer all those years ago,” Ash says.
Pix stiffens, her fingers twitching. “She never should've been put in that situation. Her brothers ignored her. Look at how she is now; that could’ve been avoided. They need to pay for their role in what happened to her, Ash.”
Based on Pix’s childhood, she has a dark view of justice, and it’s black-or-white for her.
Digits sits on the arm of Pix’s chair and pulls her between his knees and smooths his hand over her hair. A touch from him can calm her unlike anything else. It had been that way since we first met her when she was a feral little thing.
“Breaker, Tyr, and Sten are family, Pixer,” Digits says, making her huff. “Just like Slade.”
Christ, not two more on Ash’s side about Slade.
“She’s a threat to the club,” I warn.
Ash regards me. “I hear you, brother. I’m not ignoring your advice.”
“If she’s still here, then yeah, you are.”
“Intel will help us understand and minimize any threat.” He turns to Digits. “I need you to find out about the predator who took Slade and is now dead.”
“Fuck’s sakes,” Digits mutters. “She gave jackshit for a thread to pull on, and you know she won’t give more.”
“I have faith in you,” Ash says, which makes Digits roll his eyes.
“Of course, you do. It isn’t your ass glued to the chair, searching for a needle in the haystack.”
“Sounds like the exact thing that gives you a boner, Digits,” Army taunts, leaning against the wall and crossing his arms with a smirk.
Digits’ face screws up, and he pushes his glasses up with his finger; his other hand continues to absently play with Pix’s hair.
“What’s one more thing on my plate? First, you add watching your asshole cousin, Cutt, on top of everything else I need to do to keep the MC safe, and now this impossible task. ”
He’s complaining, but he isn’t fooling any of us—he lives for this shit.
“Well, you could always get Bane to help you, Digits,” Army says. “You know, since he is fucking Slade and all.”
I don’t even get a chance to get out a word before I’m slammed into the wall with Ash’s tattooed hand clamped around my neck. “You fucked Slade?” He squeezes my throat, looking very much like an enraged father.
“No,” I grind out after I dislodged him enough to speak.
I glare at Army, who is smirking, knowing he was causing shit. “Slade and Destiny have history,” I explain to Ash. “Slade taunted her in the kitchen to rile her up. Obviously, the lie is spreading around the clubhouse like the fucking clap.”
“Except you told Jez that Slade wasn’t to be touched,” Army so helpfully adds. “He said you looked a bit crazed and thought you were staking a claim on her.”
“The fuck is this, gossip hour?” I grit. Ash lets go of my throat, and I push away from the wall. “Slade is not a Bunny.”
“Slade’s also married.” Pix arches her brow, considering me as she picks her nails.
Yeah, she’s married. Why the hell does every-fucking-body feel the need to point that out?
“Slade is family.” Ash gives me a pointed look. “And the Havoc Guardians have always looked out for family.”
“She doesn’t want to be here, Ash; she’s going to fight it,” I warn. “She was ballsy or desperate enough to go out her window.”
The Council knows this because I updated them last night after I marched Slade back to her room.
“I’ve cloned her phone and have been watching her activity,” Digits says, surprising none of us that he pulled that off already. “She wasn’t watching hot-wiring videos like she claims, so the girl has obviously picked up some skills.”
“Slade’s a Havoc Guardian brat,” Ash says proudly.
“We have to assume that wherever Slade has been these past few years, it wasn’t convent school,” I warn. So she’s a risk to us and needs to go, I don’t add this because Ash knows my stance and beating a dead horse won’t make him budge.
Instead, I ask Digits, “Is there anything on her phone that can give us insight into her contacts and where she’s been?”
He shakes his head. “It’s a burner phone. I haven’t been able to track where she’s been; I’m guessing she keeps the phone off or takes the SIM out.”
Another layer to Slade.
She’s been gone from this life, yet she still acts like she’s in it.
Is that because of how she was raised? Or because she’s been running in circles just as shady as ours since she went off the grid?
“Has there been any activity on her phone since she came here?” Ash asks.
“None.”
Pix twists in the chair, still between Digits’ knees, and looks up at him. “What about the marriage license and who Slade is married to?”
“I didn’t put it at the top of the list of things to dig into when I built her file,” Digits grumbles and adjusts his glasses. “I’ll add it to my ever-growing mountain of work.”
“Stop being such a baby.” Pix rolls her eyes. “You love any reason to stay behind your computers.”
Digits grumbles again, and I focus on Army. Besides the dick comment about me fucking Slade, he’s been quiet and right now he looks pensive.
“What are you thinking, Army?”
He glances at me, then at Ash. “She’s so flat. It’s like the switch to her emotions has been turned off.”
“She should be ripping her brothers’ eyes out,” Pix agrees.
“You’re thinking PTSD?” Digits asks. Not that Army is a psychologist, but he had his own experience.
“Man, I don’t know.” He threads his fingers through his ebony hair.
“Some people have severe emotional distress… Slade looks like she has no emotion, like she’s dissociated herself from them.
” He glances at us and shakes his head. “I don’t know, but she could be a walking time bomb if she continues to resist feeling anything. ”
“She did react,” I say, and they look at me with surprise. “A few times it looked like she was starting to feel something, but then she killed it.”
When I explain my 'chained and tortured' comment and Slade’s reaction, the room is filled with tension.
Pix is out of the chair, pacing, and Digits has his phone out, already programming searches to dig deeper into Slade’s missing years.
Army looks more concerned than ever. “She’s obviously been traumatized by something, and the emotional repression is a coping mechanism. We can’t just push her to make her walls crack, though,” he warns.
“She didn’t even react to her brothers,” Pix worries.
Slade didn’t even react to Destiny calling her a cum dumpster, and when she ninja-jumped over the island and punched Destiny after what she said about her mom, I still couldn’t say that she reacted with emotion.
Ash turns to me. “But she reacted to you.”
I don’t think I’d want to cause Slade to react again by making more comments about her being chained and tortured, but Ash is right. If he’s refusing to let Slade leave, then maybe I can play the role of nudging Slade toward feeling something.
It might help her trust me and open up, especially if there’s a threat to her, and by extension, to the MC. It could also help diffuse the powder keg building inside her—assuming Army was right about the dangers of her repressing all her emotions.
The thought of spending time with Slade is doing things to me; particularly to my dick. I do my damnedest to ignore how my body is completely onboard, thinking about Operation-All-Over-Slade.
I have no idea if I’m about to make the biggest mistake of my life, but I can’t deny I’m more than a little excited to try to get that small woman to feel something and re-ignite that light in her beautiful green eyes.