7.
Dahlia
I kicked the door over and over and over, the sound and feel of it reverberating around me until I could feel it in my bones like a pulse. I thought I would tire of kicking the door, but I didn’t. In fact, the more I kicked it, the angrier I got, and the ferocity of my kicks got worse.
“Will you shut the fuck up in there,” a deep voice bellowed from the other side.
“Not until you let me out of here!” I screamed back. “You can’t keep me here.” My throat was feeling raw from shouting and screaming at the closed door, but the fire inside me still hadn’t died down. “I swear to God, I’m going to make sure you all go down for this.”
I kicked at the door three more times for good measure and someone on the other side kicked back twice as hard, making me startle. If I hadn’t been zip-tied to the chair, I would have jumped back.
“Shut up!” the deep voice yelled back.
I heard mumbling from the other side. Male voices talking loudly, but not loud enough for me to hear what was being said. I knew deep down that I should have been scared about what was going to happen to me—Alex had always said not to talk about the Kings to anyone. When I’d asked why, he hadn’t said, but he had hinted that they weren’t afraid of killing people to get what they wanted.
Was that hat was going to happen to me?
Were they going to kill me? Did I even care?
Yes! a voice in my head yelled back furiously. It was true. I didn’t want to die. It might have felt like my life was over right now—Alex was gone, and I wasn’t sure what that meant for me, or my future—but I didn’t want to die. I wasn’t ready for that.
I lifted my leg to kick the door again and stopped, my temper finally waning. I hated that though. I wanted the anger and the rage, because without that all I felt was pain. And not a physical pain from the first hangover I had had in years, but a deep, soul-crushing pain that wormed its way around my body and made me want to curl up and cry.
“Please,” I said, but there was no force behind the word, no effort, and no anger. Now the grief came.
It came in waves at first. I felt like I was standing on the shore as the grief hit me, throwing me backwards and then pushing me forward. My limbs were not my own. My muscles were too weak to hold me up. My mind was quiet despite the raging sadness inside me, and then I was being swallowed up inside the grief and overwhelming sadness.
The tears came hot and hard, my chest heaving quietly as the tears leaked from my eyes and streamed down my cheeks in hot tracks. I couldn’t wipe them away, so my clothes swallowed them up.
I didn’t sleep, but I must have dozed to some extent, because I barely heard the door opening. I moved to use my arms, realizing that I couldn’t a moment too late, and I yelped as the zip-ties dug into my flesh. I hadn’t noticed how the thin, hard plastic was cutting into my skin earlier—probably my anger numbing it for me—but now with nothing but misery to keep me company I felt the biting sting and I yelped.
“For God’s sakes, get the ties off her. She’s not a fuckin’ prisoner,” a deep, rumbly voice said.
“You wouldn’t be sayin’ that if you would have heard her earlier. Bitch was kicking all hell out of the door. Look at the state of it. Little itty-bitty thing like her almost broke the damn thing down,” another angry voice cut in.
“That’s Rocky’s old lady, brother, and you’ll give her the respect she deserves whether you like it or not.”
I lifted my head and looked up, staring into the face of Alex’s so-called prez, JD. The man I loathed. As if on cue, all of my anger rushed back in my body like a tidal wave, and I felt my mouth turn into a snarl.
“His name was Alex,” I said.
A slow smile crawled up JD’s tanned face, his eyes dancing with something that I couldn’t quite fathom. He stood casually, his arms crossed in front of his large chest as he stared down at me.
“Well, he will always be Rocky to us, darlin’,” he drolled.
I pulled on my restraints, fury coursing through my veins. I wanted to slap that smug smile from his face and scream in his face, maybe kick him in the balls for good measure.
“Oof, there she is,” the other man said, and I glared over at him. He didn’t look at all intimidated by me. None of them did. And why would they? Not a single one of these men were shorter than six feet tall, and all of them seemed built like giants in one way or another: broad shoulders, large chests, thick thighs. Each man was individual in their own right and yet they were unified in their stature.
JD continued to stare down at me from the doorway, a quizzical expression on his face. The other man dropped down in front of me, an eyebrow raised.
“Now, if I untie these, are you going to behave?” he asked, waiting for me to reply before doing anything. I had a good mind to kick him in the face and knock out a tooth or two, but really, what did I hope to achieve? Alex was gone, and getting myself killed, or worse, wasn’t going to change that. And kicking this biker in the face would definitely put me on his bad side.
My self-preservation won out.
“Yes,” I finally gritted out.
He moved to stand behind me, and seconds later I felt the plastic ties snap. I pulled my hands in front of me and rubbed and the sore, red rings circling my wrists. They wouldn’t scar, but they would be marked for a long time—that was for certain.
“You think you can come with me and not lose your shit?” JD asked, his tone dull, almost bored.
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. JD jerked his head for me to follow him, and I had no choice but to do as instructed.
We walked back down the dimly lit hallway I had walked down the previous night, my eyes glued to his broad back the entire time, my mind racing and thinking of ways to make him pay. To hurt him. To make him feel at least an ounce of the pain that I was currently feeling.
Alex had never talked much about the club. He swore an oath, and he stuck to that. But a few things had slipped out every now and then. Mostly to do with his brothers and what they were like.
“Can feel your stare, woman,” he said without turning back to look at me. “If looks could kill—am I right?”
“If only,” I snapped back, and he chuckled.
We went back into the same room from the night before, only this time we weren’t alone. This time there were lots more men in there, and they were all staring at me with angry expressions. I stared right back, despite the way my heart skipped a beat. I might have been angry, but I wasn’t stupid enough to not be scared of them.
JD moved to his seat and sat down, and the biker behind me gestured to a chair before ordering me to sit. I did as I was told with a scowl and a roll of my eyes, wondering what was going to happen next. Were they going to kill me? Let me go? I couldn’t see that happening without there being some consequences for my actions. After all, I had tried to kill him last night.
My eyes flitted to the bullet hole in the wall. I hadn’t just missed him; I had missed him by a long mile. I was a terrible shot, clearly. I wondered, briefly, if I would be able to get away with pretending I hadn’t tried to kill him, and it was more of a warning shot. But despite what little I knew about JD, I knew he was a very smart man. He listened first and acted second. There were no kneejerk reactions from him. He led with his brain and not his heart.
That, though, I thought bitterly, was likely what got Alex killed in the first place.
There was a quiet muttering around the table, though I couldn’t say who was talking and who wasn’t because I was too focused on glaring at JD to notice anyone. My head was throbbing with the beginnings of a hangover, and my stomach growled noisily. It was only then that I realized I hadn’t eaten in over twenty-four hours and the only thing that had gone in my body was alcohol. I had never been a drinker—I just didn’t enjoy the feeling of not being in control—but after getting so blindingly drunk the day before I could understand why some people did. It allowed you to forget—at least for a little while.
JD banged a wooden gavel on a wooden block in front of him and the room fell to silence. I rolled my eyes and shook my head. The whole thing was so ridiculous, like a weird biker cult that these men had bought into. I didn’t get it, and I didn’t want to. I wanted to go home, crawl under my duvet, and sleep for several weeks. Maybe when I woke up I would find that this was all some awful nightmare.
“All right, brothers. As you know, we’ve got a couple of important issues to deal with today,” JD began.
“You can say that again,” a man with long dark hair said. “We discussing everything with the woman in the room?”
“No. That’s club business. But we do need to deal with the Rocky situation and then we’ll get her dropped off home.”
I scowled harder. “The Rocky situation? He’s not a situation, and I’m none of your business.” I stood abruptly. “I have his truck outside, and I’m going home.”
“Sit down,” the man next to me practically snarled out.
I looked down at him. “No.”
He had dark blue eyes, and they burned like fire as he lifted his gaze to me. “I won’t ask again.”
“And I won’t—”
A heavy hand landed on my shoulder and my body was pushed down into the chair. I let myself be forced to sit, deciding it was better to get this over and done with, and then I could get the hell out of there. I had no idea what I was going to do next with my life, but I knew I was going to get as far away from this club as I possibly could. I didn’t care what Alex had left for me. I didn’t want any of it. I only wanted him.
He had always protected me.
He had made feel loved and wanted.
I had been at college in New York City, a long time ago. Back then everything had seemed simple—easy. But I hadn’t known the heartache waiting for me. I had lost everything I had, and when I came back home, I didn’t know what to do with myself, or where to start. But Alex had found me and looked after me. He had made everything more bearable.
JD leaned over and pulled open a drawer, pulling out a wad of paper. He gathered it loosely in his large hands and cleared his throat before looking across to the door. I had been so focused on him that I hadn’t heard anyone come in, but now when I looked there was a man wearing a dark gray, expensive-looking suit. His hair was slicked back, and he wore a thick-rimmed pair of glasses. He was young, possibly younger than me, but he had an air about him that spoke volumes, like he was much wiser and older in his head than people gave him credit for.
“You listenin’?” JD asked the man, who nodded. He cleared his throat again and began to read.
By the time he had finished reading, I was shaking. The words blurred into one inside my head and I struggled to make sense of them.
“The house is yours,” JD was repeating, “there’s fifty grand in cash, and the stocks. Rocky was a rich man, though you wouldn’t have known it to look at him.”
“Brother owes me at least five K of that cash for all the beers I bought him over the years,” a shaved-headed man with a bull ring through his nose said with a chuckle.
“He really had stocks?” an older man said, his tone showing his disbelief.
JD nodded, looking amused.
“God damn, motherfucker could have shown me a thing or two,” he replied with a shake of his head.
The man in the suit went to JD and pulled out a pen from his inside pocket before leaning over and signing the papers. He offered the pen to JD, who signed them too, and then the man picked up the paperwork and headed toward me.
I was still reeling from everything that had just been said. From the money, the house, the stocks and shares, from the death of my husband. This past twenty-four hours had been a blur of confusion.
The man, smelling of expensive cologne, was leaning down to me. He smiled kindly, pointing to the bottom of the page where my name was printed.
“If you can sign here, ma’am.” He held out the pen.
I didn’t want the money. I didn’t want the house. I didn’t want anything. But this was what he had wanted for me. His final gift to me. My memory rewound to the last night I saw him. To the way he had scooped me up and carried me to our bed, undressing me slowly, carefully, caressing every inch of my skin. Tasting me, kissing me, stroking me. Alex had made love to me like he had known it would be our last night together, and then he had snuck out as I was sleeping. But it was his words that were caught in a loop in my head right now. Not his rough touch from his calloused fingers or his beer-soaked tongue.
His words as he had gripped my hips, and plunged himself into my waiting body, had been different from any he had said before. Alex wasn’t a gentle man, and he didn’t have a soft tongue in his head, but that night he was and he did.
‘I will always be with you.’
Kiss, kiss, kiss.
‘I will look after you, even after I’m gone.’
Thrust, thrust, thrust.
‘You’ll never want for anythin ’. And when you’re old and gray you’ll look around you and you’ll know it was all worth it. Every bit of pain you went through, because it created us.’
Kiss, kiss, kiss.
I realized, with despair, that he had likely worried he wouldn’t come back alive. I wondered how many times he had thought that as he went out on the road, giving one last glance at me. Waving and giving me his cocky smile…thinking that he might not come back this time.
I began to sob.
I took the offered pen with shaking hands, and I signed my name, and I wished I could go back in time.