Marked By Tank (Damned Saints MC #9)

Chapter 1

Julie

My head hurts.

Pain sits behind my eyes, dull and heavy, and every beat of music from somewhere beyond the walls pushes it deeper.

My tongue feels thick. My mouth tastes bitter. My stomach shifts slow and wrong.

I keep my eyes closed, trying to place the sound.

Music.

Voices.

Men laughing.

Not home.

My eyes open.

For a second, none of it makes sense. Red walls. A gold lamp in the corner. A mirror across from me. A low couch under my body, soft enough to swallow me whole. The room is dim, warm, expensive in a way that makes my skin crawl.

I blink once.

Twice.

This is not my room.

It is not my little bedroom in Swoon Peaks, with the slanted ceiling and the old window that rattles when the wind picks up.

It is nowhere I know.

I push myself up.

The room tips.

My hand shoots out and catches on the edge of the couch before I slide off. My whole body is slow and useless, like I am waking at the bottom of dark water and can’t get to the surface fast enough. My thoughts drag.

Something is wrong.

My pulse starts to climb.

I look down at myself.

I am wearing a silky chemise.

Pale. Thin straps. Bare legs. Too soft. Too little. It clings to my body in places that make heat flood my face even through the haze in my head.

No.

My fingers go to the strap on my shoulder, clutching it hard.

No.

The last thing I remember clearly is my gas station polo. My name tag pinned crooked after a long shift. My sneakers sticking on the kitchen floor when I got home.

Then my stepfather, Earl, at the table with a bottle in front of him.

Then my stepbrother, Travis, leaning back in his chair, watching me with that mean little look he gets when he thinks he has me cornered.

Then me.

I’m leaving.

I hear it again, my own voice in my head, thinner than I wanted, but steady enough.

I’m leaving.

I had my keys in my hand. My bag on my shoulder. My chest so tight it hurt, but I said it anyway.

At first Travis laughed.

Earl did not.

He just looked at me over the neck of the bottle, quiet in the way that always meant something bad was coming.

“Where you gonna go?”

“I’ll figure it out.”

I meant that too.

I was done.

After two years of double shifts at the gas station, bills that should never have been mine, and cleaning up after two grown men who acted like I was lucky to be there, I had looked at both of them and said I was done.

Done being the maid. Done being the wallet.

Done living in a house that stopped feeling like home the day my mother died.

Travis stood up slow.

“Sit down, Julie.”

“I’m not sitting down.”

“Then stop shaking long enough to make sense.”

“I make perfect sense.”

My grip tightened on my keys. Earl just watched from the table, one hand around his bottle, saying nothing. That was worse. Earl loud was ugly. Earl quiet meant he was thinking.

“I’m leaving,” I said again.

Travis let out a breath like I was exhausting him. Then he turned, grabbed a bottle of orange juice from the fridge, and poured some into a glass.

“You’re worked up,” he said. “Here.”

I stared at it.

“I don’t want anything from you.”

“It’s juice, Julie, not poison.” His mouth twitched. “Take it or don’t. Makes no difference to me.”

My throat was dry from my shift, from yelling, from trying not to cry in front of them. I hated that he could see it. I hated that he was standing there acting almost normal, like this was just another ugly fight in that kitchen and not the moment I finally walked out.

“Take it,” Earl said from the table, quiet and flat. “Then go, if that’s what you’re so set on.”

That was what did it.

Because for one stupid second, I thought maybe they were letting me.

I snatched the glass out of Travis’s hand and took a swallow.

Then another.

Cold. Sweet. A little too sweet.

Travis looked at Earl.

Earl looked back.

And the room started to go soft around the edges.

“Oh God.”

The whisper leaves me now, in this red room, and the sound of it makes something in my chest cave in.

They drugged me.

My own stepfather.

My own stepbrother.

I try to stand again, slower this time.

My legs hold, barely.

I make it to the mirror because I need to see something real. My reflection swims at first, then settles. Freckles across a face gone pale. Green eyes too wide. Long brown hair falling loose around my shoulders like somebody brushed it out while I was asleep. My lips look too pink.

Gloss.

There is gloss on my mouth.

My stomach twists hard.

I rub at it with the back of my hand until it smears.

The door opens behind me.

I turn too fast and the room blurs again.

A woman steps inside. Black dress. High heels. Dark hair pinned smooth. Red lipstick. She looks polished and expensive, like she belongs in a world I do not.

Her gaze moves over me once.

Quick.

Cold.

“Good,” she says. “You’re awake.”

My voice comes out rough. “Where am I?”

“Velvet Reign.”

The name means nothing for a beat.

Then it does.

I have heard it before. Quiet talk at the gas station. Men lowering their voices when they say it. Women looking away. A private club. Rich men. Girls.

No.

I do not mean to say it out loud, but I do.

The woman closes the door behind her. “You should sit before you fall.”

“I need to leave.”

“That won’t be happening.”

I stare at her. I know what she said. The words land one by one, like they have to drag through syrup to reach me.

“I didn’t come here.”

“No,” she says. “You were brought.”

Brought.

The word makes me feel sick.

“My... my family drugged me.” I hear how strange my voice sounds. Soft. Unsteady. Far away. “I need a phone.”

Something flickers across her face at family. It is gone so fast I almost miss it.

“I can’t help you.”

“You can open the door. Please.”

She says nothing to that.

The music outside keeps pulsing. Low and thick. My head throbs with it.

I blink at her. “What is this place?”

Her expression does not change.

“An auction.”

The room goes still.

Or maybe I do.

I know what the word means. I know it right away. My mind just refuses to hold it for a second, like if it lets go, this will become something survivable.

It doesn’t.

“They sold me.”

It is not a question.

She does not answer.

She does not have to.

The chemise. The gloss. The room. The way she looks at me like I am already spoken for by the building itself.

Earl sold me.

Travis sold me.

The thought should feel wild, impossible, too ugly to be true.

It doesn’t.

It fits.

The woman takes a small step closer. “You need to pull yourself together.”

I laugh once.

It sounds cracked and thin and not like me at all.

“I’m drugged.”

“Yes.”

There is no softness in it.

No apology.

Just fact.

I grip the edge of the vanity because my hands need something to do. “Why?”

“Because frightened girls make scenes.”

The words land flat.

Maybe because I am too dazed for them to cut all the way through. Maybe because some part of me is already stepping back inside my own head, trying to get away from what my body knows.

I think of my mother.

Before the hospital. Before the funeral.

Her hand smoothing my hair back from my face.

Her voice saying my name softly when the rest of the world felt too loud.

For a second, I can almost feel her.

Then it is gone.

A knock sounds at the door.

“One minute.”

The woman glances toward it, then back at me. “Walk when they tell you to. Stand where they put you. Do not make trouble.”

I should say something. I should tell her to go to hell. I should scream. Throw the lamp. Break the mirror. Do anything except stand here swaying in a chemise while the drug keeps pulling me under.

Instead, I just look at her.

My thoughts feel slow.

My skin feels too tight.

My body feels far away.

The woman comes closer and lifts a hand to smooth my hair away from my face. I flinch, but not fast enough to stop her.

“Better,” she murmurs.

The door opens again.

Two men step inside in black suits. Security. Big shoulders. Blank faces. One has an earpiece. The other looks at me like I am furniture that needs moving from one room to another.

I do not back away.

I think about it.

My body does not listen.

One of them touches my arm.

“Come on.”

My stomach turns.

I should fight.

I know I should.

But my limbs are heavy, and the fear inside me has gone cold and still. It sits under my ribs like a stone.

He guides me toward the door. I go because he is moving me and because I do not know what else to do with a body that does not feel like mine.

The hallway outside is red and gold and dim. Music drifts through it. Men’s voices rise and fall. Glass clinks somewhere ahead. The carpet is thick under my bare feet.

We pass a half-open door.

Inside, another girl stands with her face turned away while somebody fixes her strap.

I look at her.

She does not look back.

At the end of the hall hangs a heavy curtain. Light spills around the edges. Bright. White. Too bright.

A man’s voice rolls through the microphone beyond it, smooth and pleased.

“Gentlemen, next we have a very special addition tonight.”

Laughter answers him.

My pulse stumbles.

The guard’s hand tightens on my arm.

I should pull away.

I don’t.

I can’t. My body doesn’t obey.

Maybe some part of me already knows there is no point in making them drag me the last few steps.

The woman in black appears in front of me one last time. She straightens the strap of my chemise. Pushes my hair off my shoulder. The gesture is almost gentle.

That is the worst part.

“Head up,” she says.

I do it.

Not because I want to please her.

Because if I let my head drop, I think I might never lift it again.

The curtain parts.

Light crashes over me.

The room opens around me all at once. Tables in the dark. Men in suits. Glasses catching the light. A raised stage under my bare feet.

I stop where they place me.

My face feels numb.

My hands hang at my sides.

Inside, I am shaking so hard it should be visible from the back of the room. Outside, I feel like marble.

The man with the microphone smiles down at a clipboard.

“Young,” he says. “Sweet. Untouched.”

The words drift over me like they are meant for somebody else.

A paddle lifts.

A number is called.

Another follows.

The sound in the room changes. Interest sharpens. Men lean in. They decide what I’m worth.

I look at nothing.

Not the faces.

Not the hands.

Not the smile on the man with the microphone.

Then, for one second, I look at him.

A big man in black near the edge of the room. Broad shoulders. Hard face. Eyes fixed on me with something that does not look like hunger.

He goes still.

Something in my chest tightens.

If I keep looking, I think I will break apart right here under the lights, and I do not know how to put myself back together again.

The bidding climbs.

Higher.

Then higher again.

My toes curl against the stage.

That is the only sign my body gives me that I am still inside it.

The man with the microphone glances toward the back of the room, listening to something through an earpiece. Then he smiles wider.

“Sold,” he says. “Via phone to one of our long-time clients.”

The men clap.

The sound washes over me.

Flat.

Far away.

A hand closes around my arm.

Then another on the other side.

Two security guards.

I know that matters. I know it should make this feel more real than it already does.

Instead, I just stand there for one more second with my face blank and my heartbeat knocking slow and hard inside my chest.

The guard on my right tugs.

“Move.”

My legs obey.

I let them lead me off the stage and into the dark.