CHAPTER FOURTEEN
-:- MAV -:-
I’m so taken by surprise I don’t react quickly enough, and fuck, I’m going to pay for this. I jump to my feet and watch as Sharon falls to the floor squealing ‘Ouch’, as if I give a shit about her.
“BLAKE!” I shout as I run after her out of the front door of the club, and see her in the back of a cab while it pulls away, leaving me watching my date leave.
Storming back inside, I see my club brothers staring in shock at what they just witnessed. But what has me stopping in my tracks and my mouth hanging open is Raven, who had been having a meal with Grease.
“What the shit do you think you were doing? How dare you assault Mav like that?” Raven is right in Sharon’s face, but it’s frightening because she is not screaming or shouting. She is deadly quiet. Turning to look at me, Raven surprises me even more, “Mav, I reported this as assault to Forest, and he’s sending Ty and Aaron to arrest her. I’m a witness, and so is everyone else.”
“No, I didn’t assault him. I just kissed him,” Sharon whines.
“That’s classed as sexual assault.” Raven is getting angrier as the minutes tick by, and I look at Grease, who is watching Raven with pride in his eyes…we are all fucked! We watch our women being bold and independent and we glow with pride. What happened to bikers being in charge? I blame Axel for this because it all started to go downhill when Mia came on the scene. Mind you, I’m not brave enough to say that out loud. I want my balls to produce kids one day, and not be sitting in the bottom of Mia’s purse.
“Go find Blake and speak to her. Go on, move it, or you’ll lose your woman before you even get her. What a first date this turned out to be,” Raven snaps, which shakes me out of my stupor, and after giving her a chin lift of thanks, I dash outside and to the SUV.
It doesn’t take me long to get to Blake’s house and I know she is safely inside as a light is on in the bedroom. I shout her name, but she’s not answering, and when I step back and look again at the window, the light has been extinguished. Fuck…fuck…fuck!
Walking into the clubhouse, I head right to the bar and grab a bottle of beer. Taking a seat, I swallow half the bottle in one go. I’m well and truly in trouble now. I know that Bitty claimed her as a daughter and she’s gonna be hot on my ass, that’s for sure. Sighing because I know tomorrow is going to be one hell of a day.
“What’s up?” Turning my head, I give Brag a look that has him cringe. “Oh, fuck, what did you do?”
“Actually, I did nothing, and that is the problem,” I reply, and not sure how this is going to sound when I explain it. Brag takes a seat next to me at the bar once he’s taken a beer for himself.
“What didn’t you do?”
“I took out Blake on a date. Our first date too. We had a basket meal, and it was going great when fuckin’ Sharon appeared from nowhere, threw herself in my lap, wrapped her arms around me and kissed me.”
“Oh, fuck…that’s not good.” Brag’s eyes are round with the shock of the scene I’m painting for him. “What happened?”
“Well, I was so shocked I didn’t move for a minute. I didn’t fuckin’ kiss her back, Brag. But when I jumped up, Blake was gone. She’d run out the front of Club Whisky and bolted in one of the cabs that hang around looking for a fare.”
“Oh, that’s not good,” Brag repeats, and is shaking his head in disbelief. "You know Bitty is going to be after your ass now, don’t you? Oh, and Kenzie too, as she and the Stooges have been big friends. I hope she doesn’t set BigDog on your ass.”
“Goddammit…” I snarl as I rub the back of my neck. I’m in deep shit in more ways than one.
The next morning I’m dodging Bitty, who keeps giving me odd looks. I’m doing my best for it to not be known what happened last night. I need a chance to catch up with Blake. I’ve arranged with Wings to take my place at training this morning while I go over to see Blake.
“What’s going on?” I hear Bitty ask, and fuck me, Raven and Grease have walked into the clubhouse kitchen. Now they don’t usually come in the kitchen before training on a Sunday, but of course, today they have. It is, however, the look they are giving me which is alerting Bitty to something amiss.
“Well, Bitty…you see…there was a mishap while I was on my date.”
I get no further when Bitty drops the spatula she was using to concentrate on Raven, Grease and myself. Now, Grease is smirking at me, obviously taking great delight in the shitstorm I’m sitting in. “What mishap?” Bitty snaps, placing her hands on her hips.
Amelia, Sybil, and Meat all step over to Bitty and look over her shoulder at all three of us standing here in front of them, but the glare is aimed at, you guessed it, me. Fucking hell!
“Look, it wasn’t my fault. Sharon came up to where I was sitting at the table with Blake. She came up behind me, so I didn’t even know she was there. She threw herself into my lap, wrapped herself around me, and kissed me. I was so shocked I had a delayed reaction before I stood up and chased Blake, who had left the club and jumped into a cab.” I quickly make my case and see Bitty grinding her teeth. I hope they are not false teeth because if she breaks them you can bet she’ll blame me, and I’ll end up paying for new ones. Damn, where did that thought come from?
“I’m going to speak to Blake and Kenzie. Don’t you think you are going to walk away from this free and easy. Your cousin isn’t going to be happy about this as she likes Blake from what she’s seen of her.” Meat smirks from behind Bitty and walks back to the stove, humming under his breath. Fucker, I think to myself, because it’s obvious he is taking delight in my predicament.
“Hey, Bitty, come on, it wasn’t my fault. Raven had Sharon arrested, and was the witness to what happened.” I do my best to smooth over the anger on Bitty’s face, and I see it has eased somewhat, especially when she turns to Raven.
“I did. She was arrested for sexual assault, and you can ask Forest when you see him, Bitty. They hauled her ass away, and she was screaming and crying, making a real fuss she was. We watched it all happening and we are waiting to see what is going to happen to her now.” Raven is grinning and Grease is chuckling. They are both finding this highly amusing.
“Leave Blake alone for a couple of days, Mav. Let me get the details from Forest and then I’ll speak with Blake. If you are innocent, that is.” Bitty gives me a raised eyebrow and I hold both hands out in a sign of surrender. I know I stand no chance with her at all. She’ll check all the information before she gives me the go-ahead to speak to Blake again. “You just wait until I know all the details.”
Giving Bitty a nod, as I know I’m defeated at this point, I walk over to a table and take a seat. Placing my elbows on the table, I stare at my hands while I run through everything that happened. There was no way I could have seen what was about to happen. I was just slow to react. Sharon, what a stalker she has become. I hope Forest can get rid of her. It’s about my only hope without doing something radical. But Nell is someone I can speak to if I get to a point of urgency.
Star walks into the kitchen with Carrie and Kya. They take a seat at the table next to mine and I can’t help but overhear Star telling the others that Meat is building a nursery onto the treehouse so he can have all his godchildren stay with him. Now, I’m not sure that Mia will want all three of her kids in a treehouse, or Eden or Tilly, if it comes to that. But, you know I have enough drama of my own to work out, so I’m minding my own business.
BS walks into the kitchen, quickly heading to Kya where he gives her a kiss which leaves her misty-eyed. Sighing because I want to get to that point where I can kiss my woman whenever I feel like it.
“Okay, Mav, let’s go. We are going to do some recon.” BS nods for me to follow him outside and he leads me to the club’s van, where Wings, Chaos, Garth and Graham are waiting. “We are going to check out the shop, and yeah, I know we were going to do it before, but things happen and we didn’t get it done, so here we are. Now you are with Garth, so stick together, Mav. We need to check what the fuck is going on, as I’ve had more intel that young girls are being taken inside.”
Ninety minutes later, I’m standing with Garth across the street from the shop we are watching. We are lounging on a bench that has seen better days. But, it is giving us some cover and as we’ve no colors showing for the club. We relax back on the bench, watching from behind our shades.
“You noticed the same four teenagers that have been going in with bags of what looks like groceries?” Garth asks.
“Yeah, it’s odd, isn’t it? They’ve had something from that fried chicken place, too. You think they are making it headquarters for themselves? You know, for their baby gang?” I chuckle at my own description and see Garth smirk, too.
Seeing BS pop his head around one of the buildings opposite I give him a thumbs-up sign and we cross the street. Heading to the back of the shop where we can hear soft speaking through the slightly ajar door.
“Thank you. Can we leave tonight?” Hearing a female voice, and a young female by the sound of it, I give Garth a questioning look, and a worried one I have to admit.
Garth doesn’t wait for any other signal before he storms into the back of the shop, and I’m right behind him because fuckin’ hell, I’m not leaving him to face whatever it is alone. A high-pitched scream rips through the air, and I stop when I see six teenage girls huddled together on a dirty mattress.
“What the fuck is going on here?” BS snarls, and I can see he’s getting ready to grab one of the boys. But that boy is standing firmly in front of the girls, in a protective manner.
“Mister, you need to move out with your friends. These girls are not in danger from us. We are getting them out of the area, is all. Now, who are you? What do you want here? You are not taking the girls.” One of the young boys states, keeping himself in line with the other three boys, so all four are in front of the girls.
“We are not here to hurt the girls. We are working on a case at the moment where some asshole is using a date rape drug on women in our club and bar. We are brothers from the Raging Barons MC. Now, who are you and what are you doing with these girls?” Chaos asks, and he asks in a better manner than BS had.
“Please don’t hurt them. They are helping us, not hurting us.” One of the girls murmurs from behind the boy that spoke to us.
Stepping forward but keeping a calming distance for the boy’s sake, I squat to look at the girls behind the boy’s legs. “We are trying to save women from a group of men who are, as my brother said, date-raping women. We want to drive them out of town and find Mark Milanas, who is their leader.”
“We have been watching a group of men. They try to take girls, but we’ve seen how they pick them out. They are watching for girls whose parents don’t care. They even pay them to take the girls, and now we know what to look for we speak to the girls that are targeted and if they want us to help them, we have been getting them out of town.” The boy who spoke earlier speaks again. It looks like he may be the spokesperson for them all.
“Where are you taking them? Somewhere safe enough to stay away from parents and these motherfuckers I hope,” Graham asks.
“Yes, we’re not stupid, mister. We have a man who takes them to a safe place. They are taken out of state and placed into good homes, if that is what they want.”
BS steps forward and gives the teenager a look over. “What about yourselves? Are you safe?”
“We are leaving town tomorrow. Taking these with us and none of us are coming back. You need to know that Mark Milanas is bringing in at least ten men on Tuesday and will be scouring the town for any young girls or women around twenty. He has an order to fill from what we heard, and that’s why we are getting out of town while we can.” One of the boys that had not spoken before tells us this and fidgets a little under the eye of the boy who had spoken.
“Empty your pockets. What cash do you have?” I ask the brothers, and we all empty our wallets of what cash we have on us. It amounts to nearly seven hundred dollars and the boys’ eyes round as they watch me hand it over to the main boy. “This is what we have on us. I’m going to give it to you to do what you need to do. We have a van outside. If you can all get in without anyone seeing you we’ll get you to Nell’s and she’ll make sure you get out of town safely.”
Graham slaps my shoulder because he knows Nell will do whatever is needed to make sure all these teenagers get away safely. If she has to involve Vincenzo I know she will.
“You mean Nell out of town, the one that runs the bed and breakfast, or boarding house or whatever it is?” One of the young girls asks.
“That’s the one. She’s my sister, and she’ll make sure you get away with no one knowing where you are going. She’ll make sure you have enough to get clothes and anything else you need.” Graham stands proudly as he speaks of his sister.
“Come on, let’s get out of here. Garth, go bring the van around back and we’ll get everyone in fast and get the fuck out of here.” BS takes control once more, and I’m surprised Wings has kept quiet, although I have noticed he’s been watching the door and been alert the whole time. Probably was wise as we all seemed to close off to our surroundings whilst finding out what was happening.
Two hours later and sitting in Axel’s office we have told all that happened, and had our ears bent for not informing Axel of what was happening. But he is good that we got the teenagers to safety. Now he is bent on finding Mark and sorting him out once and for all, but he’s got to do it before Nell finds him, and she has Tank and Richie on the trail, so time is limited if we want to get to the man first. Richie is an excellent tracker, and a prize winner on recon, so we know we are on the back foot and need to pull in every lead we can. If Nell finds him first, she’s never going to let us live it down, and Axel won’t be happy about that. No, he surely won’t.