Chapter 2
Army
The Cell is a soundproof building with a large main room, some holding cells, and a back room, which Tats calls the lab, where he creates concoctions to make blood and evidence disappear, as well as the ones he uses to dissolve bodies.
Tats, in addition to being the MC’s tattoo artist and running a tattoo shop that’s booked a year in advance, is our top cleaner. A scary, mad-scientist you’d never suspect when you looked at the man covered in tattoos, including his bald head.
He’s quiet, standing off to the side, in the main room of the Cell, while Grinder and I stand in the middle.
The walls and floor are stainless steel, and there’s a drain in the middle that makes blood and body fluid clean-up simple.
Meat hooks hang from chains bolted into the ceiling.
There’s a wall displaying all the tools of the torture trade, which is handy and practical, but it also does the trick to let our prisoners know how badly they fucked up to land themselves in this place.
Grinder looks relatively calm for a man about to meet his death, but his Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows and looks at me.
Still, I question his reasoning and decisions for landing his ass in this situation, as well as his acceptance of his fate without even fighting.
It could be that he knows fighting is futile, or maybe it’s because he’s lived and breathed our MC since he was a kid and knows how things work.
He’s never been anything but trustworthy.
That’s why we started involving him with the club’s finances, to help Pix in her dual role as enforcer and treasurer.
None of us on the Council saw this coming.
“No burial?” Grinder asks me, pulling me back to this atomic shit sandwich.
My jaw shifts as I clench it. I fucking hate this. He was a good brother, a loyal member of the Havoc Guardians in every way that mattered, except for dipping his dick into forbidden pussy.
He knows that we can’t bury him, though. Not because we’re denying him an honorable resting place, but because of evidence. If Razor got a hold of Grinder’s body…well, I didn’t trust him not to use it to try to take Ash down.
Instead, I ask, “Is there anything you want your mama to have?”
Reaching up, he removes a long chain with a cross that was tucked under his shirt. “Tell her I’m sorry.”
“We’ll tell her that you died protecting the club.”
He shudders out a shaky breath and nods.
“Was it worth it?” I ask quietly.
Was having Angelica, someone he knew was one hundred percent off-limits, and who could result in his death, worth it?
I ask myself that same question every night before I fall into a restless sleep.
But my situation is different for multiple reasons.
Leeva is somewhere far away from the MC.
She’s my best friend, but she’s my hated blood-brother’s old lady. She had chosen Guerilla over me, not that I ever allowed anything other than friendship between us. I hid for years how much I loved and wanted her.
But more than that, Leeva wouldn’t forgive me for the part I had played in her pain before it all went to hell and she ran. Which leads us back to the point that she’s somewhere far away from the MC.
When I focus on Grinder now—and truly look at him—I see it. He's a broken man. Shattered.
"I loved Angelica." His voice is hoarse and raw.
"She was everything to me. Yes, I knew the risk, but it didn't matter because she was mine.
" He huffs out a self-deprecating laugh, shaking his head.
“Or I thought she was. When I tried to convince her to leave with me, she just laughed in my face and told me I was an idiot.
She chose Tank. She's the one who told him about us and why I'm facing death today.”
Fuck. Well, isn't that the arsenic on the blade twisted in his heart.
“For what it’s worth, I don’t want to do this, Grinder.”
He extends his hand and grips mine, squeezing it tight. “It was an honor to serve under Ash, you, and the rest of the Council, Army. Don’t let my dad, or Thunder, or the rest of the old guard fuck shit up.”
His actions make this so much worse for me.
“I said my piece to Ash.” He tilts up his chin, dropping my hand. “I’m ready. Do it quick like you promised. Please. I don't want to beg when I know you have no choice.”
If only we all could face our death with this courage and dignity.
Taking my gun from my holster under my cut, I flick off the safety and press it to his forehead. I could shoot him in the back of the head, so I didn’t have to stare into his eyes while I enforced his punishment, but that’s the coward’s way.
If he has the courage to look me in the eye while literally staring down the barrel of a gun, then I owe it to him to do the same.
His whole body shakes, and his hands clench.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Tats shift, as if ready to grab Grinder if he's going to come at me—either in a conscious last-ditch effort to save himself or involuntarily.
I shake my head, telling Tats to remain where he is, then focus on looking at Grinder's broken spirit through his haunted eyes.
“It was an honor to work with you, Grinder,” I say, my honest words heavy. Then I pull the trigger, keeping my promise to make it quick.
The gunshot fills the room and echoes off the stainless-steel walls. Since the entire building is soundproof, the noise is only heard by Tats and me.
Blood splatters my face as I watch Grinder’s head snap back. Instead of his body flying backward or just slumping into a lifeless pile on the floor, he falls to his knees, remaining upright for a few seconds.
His falling to his knees—like a comrade who’s mortally wounded—flings me back to another time, to another horrendous day where I watched my Marine squad fall one by one after we were betrayed and ambushed.
Len, the comrade who had fallen to her knees that day, had been run through the gut with a sword of all things after she watched the love of her life, my unit leader, Nile, die before her eyes.
She hadn’t even tried to stop her attacker.
Len wasn’t officially part of our Marine unit; she was a CIA agent traveling with us when we were ambushed.
Somehow, I saved her that day; the extraction filled with more black, empty spots than actual memories.
That day was filled with so much death, so much blood, so much pain and loss, and is the main source of my PTSD.
Right now, I feel that noiseless, black calm. The oblivion. Like I’m settling in to sit at the bottom of the ocean. It’s the siren’s call—one that feels wildly desired and deceptively peaceful, but will only lead to your destruction.
After I was honorably discharged from the Marines and returned to my MC family, I’d experience dissociation episodes like this, but they’ve become fewer. But right now, even though my subconscious warns me what’s happening, I’m unable to resist.
Stay. Stay here just for a little while. It’s calm, and no one hurts.
But that’s not true, because if I’m trapped in a catatonic state, people hurt. I can’t abandon my closest friends and family—Ash, Bane, Digits, and Pix.
Still, the thought of them isn’t enough to pull me out of the dark depths of myself, where I continue to descend.
“Leeva,” a faint voice says.
No, you don’t deserve her, my mind resists.
“Leeva,” the voice says again, louder.
She doesn’t want you. She ran when she found out the truth. She’s pure, and you’re filth.
“Leeva!” the voice shouts, and my body shakes.
Suddenly, my mind reconnects with my body, and I’m pulled out of the trance-like state I fall into whenever I have a dissociative episode.
Tats is standing there, but it’s Ash who grips my shoulders and gives me another hard shake. He knows how to pull me back—by saying Leeva’s name.
Concern is etched over his face. “Brother? You back?”
I blink, clarity and presentness returning. “Yeah.” I drag a hand through my hair. “Sorry.”
His hands tighten. “No need to be sorry. I shouldn’t have let you do this.”
My eyes fall on Grinder’s body on the floor, his position hiding the grotesque exit wound in the back of his head.
I shake Ash off and take a step back. “It’s my responsibility as sergeant-at-arms.” I look at Tats. “How long was I under?”
“About twenty minutes. I couldn’t snap you out of it; that’s why I called Ash.”
Shit. Twenty minutes?
It didn’t feel like I was under that long. But that’s all part of the deception of the siren’s call and the oblivion.
Sighing, I step back, looking down at Grinder’s body. “I’ll help you, Tats.”
“I got this,” he insists.
“I’ll help him,” Ash adds, staring down at Grinder. “What a fucking waste.”
I hear the pain and regret in his voice.
“How’s Razor?” I ask, looking away from the man I had to kill and back to my friend and president.
Ash’s jaw shifts. “On the goddamn warpath and out for blood. That’s why I couldn’t be here for…” He gestures to Grinder. “Bane is keeping a close eye on him now.”
“That club law needs to be changed,” Tats says. “Even though I’m not all for helping people cheat, this is a shit way to lose a good brother. We live with the threat of that in so many other ways, it’s ridiculous we’d do it to ourselves.”
“I don’t disagree,” Ash grits. “And I’m working on it.”
“And what are the repercussions for Angelica?” Tats demands.
Ash’s jaw shifts again. “We don’t touch the old ladies; not unless they betray the Havoc Guardians.”
“It’s bullshit,” he says in frustration. “This entire law is fucking bullshit.”
Ash clamps a tattooed hand on his shoulder, the silver rings he wears flashing in the light. “Again, you’re not wrong, and I’m working on it.”
Tats relaxes and nods. “I know you are, prez. I wasn’t challenging you. It’s just…”
“Fucked up the ass with a spiked hammer,” I offer.
They both chuckle, breaking the growing tension, and Ash says to me, “You good?”
“I’m fine.”
He jerks his chin toward the door. “Get out of here and go clean up. I’ll help Tats.”
After I give him Grinder’s necklace that he wanted his mother to have—since I know Ash will insist on being the one to break the news that her son died protecting the club—I decide to take him up on his offer. I need to lose myself and forget this, even if it’s temporary.
Some people turn to violence and fighting to cope. Others, drugs or alcohol.
I turn to sex. Sex where I live out my filthiest fantasies. The kind of sex I always fought like hell to resist fantasizing about with Leeva, my pure and innocent little dove.
Never would I taint my best friend, the only woman I’ve ever loved, with my filth.
I’ve lived in pain for years—sometimes so raw and potent I don’t think I’ll survive, other times it’s a numb ache. I walk around like I’m not a ticking time bomb, not choking on the pain of losing her.
And tonight, with what I’ve done, it’s the brutal reminder that I can never have the woman I love—even if, on the slim chance, she wanted me and forgave me—because this would be me lying on the Cell’s floor with a bullet embedded in my brain.
And that makes the pain pulse through me like a living monster.
So I leave the Cell and all the regret, sorrow, and death behind to head to Hedon, our sex club, where I can, for a short time, forget.
Forget what I’ve done tonight.
Forget the memory of kneeling on a hospital room floor, strangled by my betrayal and the pain I caused to the woman I loved. I never chased Leeva when she ran that day. I let her go.
Knowing it was the right thing to do for her, but for me…
That day took her from me completely and was the punishment for my sins, and my damnation.