Chapter 9 #3
Ranger had a dark matting of hair over his chest, quite the opposite of his white-blonde hair and eyebrows, but it was not thick enough to hide the small imperfections in his skin.
Dozens of small dots that looked very much like chickenpox marks littered his chest. Stepping closer with the flashlight, she realized they were too symmetrical to be from chickenpox, and with a sick, twisted realization, she pieced together that they were burn marks from repeated electrical prongs.
Likely a taser or maybe even a low amp cattle prod.
They littered his skin, and if she thought his chest was bad, it was nothing compared to his arms.
Horror filled her at what he’d endured—and this was just what she could see months later. What about the marks she couldn’t see? The ones that had healed or were inside his body? Broken bones, cuts, bruises… Not to mention his addiction.
Toni understood now why she was here. This wasn’t about getting even, regardless of his poor choice of wording.
Ranger wanted her to see everything. The good and the bad.
As an attorney, she’d vowed to uphold the law.
But this wasn’t about the law. This was about revenge.
Ranger had killed his attackers, his tormentors.
He had not waited for the slow wheels of justice to serve them their sentence. He’d done it himself.
Toni should have been appalled by this. She should be running from this field, from him, as fast as her legs could carry her. But she wasn’t.
How many times had she seen justice fail?
On both sides. People talked of the rich and powerful getting away with things because they had the expensive attorneys to help them skirt the system.
Which was entirely true. But there were two sides to every coin.
Toni had also seen prosecutors who were meant to uphold the law twist and turn evidence to suit their narrative or bias.
Innocent people went to prison and guilty people walked free.
It was not a perfect system, but it was what they had.
Toni believed in right and wrong. Broken or not, without it, there would be chaos and mayhem.
And look at her own situation. When push came to shove, she did not rely on the system to serve justice. She’d called a burner phone she had stashed away in her house and had a motorcycle club of strangers enter her house to dispose of her father’s body.
How many times had she seen a rapist smile at a victim and know he was about to get a sick satisfaction by making the woman relive the worst moment of her life over and over again?
How many times had she wished she could just walk up to him and shoot him?
Or someone like him? That’s why she had her rules about who she took on as clients.
Did she believe in what Ranger had done? No, but she understood it. She couldn’t imagine the pain and suffering he’d endured during those four days. And then to be released before his sister? Had he known she was pregnant then?
Toni reached for his arm, but stopped, remembering how he was about touch. “Do they hurt still?”
Ranger shook his head. “My body’s all healed. It’s,” he tapped his temple, “up here that’s still fucked up.”
Her eyes fell to his elbows, where she saw no visible track marks. With him only being held for four days, even with multiple injections per day to keep being compliant, it wouldn’t be enough to scar.
“Can I hug you?”
“Never need to ask permission for that,” Ranger said, holding his arms open to her.
Toni rushed to him, burying her face into his chest. She knew he didn’t want pity, but fucking hell, how could she not pity him?
Feel sorry for him? “I don’t blame you for killing them,” she told him, her voice muffled by his bare chest. “I know many others who wish they could have done what you did. What they did to you and to Becks and the bar… That was despicable. They deserved to die. But you can’t just go around killing people who hurt you or the club.
Carlos can’t protect you from everyone, and one of these days, the law will catch up to you. ”
“Good thing I know a kickass defense attorney,” he said into her hair.
“Not funny,” Toni moaned.
“A little bit funny.”
Toni shook her head. “I’m not sure if it makes me feel better or worse to know where my dad is buried. It’s not like I can give him a proper burial or anything, but eventually people are going to start asking questions.”
“Keys is working on that. Since we don’t know where your mom is, he’s not leaving a false trail for her.
But he’s made it seem like your dad is heading south.
If anyone goes looking for him, it’ll lead them in that direction.
For now, just keep going to work and living your life like nothing’s changed. ”
“Of course things have changed! I met this really hot guy who keeps fucking me every time I see him.”
Ranger’s chest rumbled with his laughter. “That’s certainly a change I can get behind.” She felt his lips in her hair. “Are you sure about this? You want to be with me, even after everything I’ve told you?”
Toni stepped back, needing to see him as she answered.
“From the minute I met you, I felt drawn to you. I can’t explain it.
I don’t want to explain it. All I know is that you’re important to me, but we’re going to have to set up some boundaries and rules, Liam.
I won’t be with you if it means risking your recovery.
I will help you and support you, but I can’t be your rock.
At least not yet. Maybe someday when we’ve known each other longer than two nights. ”
Ranger kissed her quickly. “We’ll figure that out later. I just need to know there’s a chance with you. For now, that’s enough.”
“More than a chance,” she admitted. “And you need to give yourself more credit, Liam. You went through hell. To be honest, I’m impressed you’re even interested in a relationship with me after the way your last one ended.”
“You sort of came out of nowhere. I was resigned to live out the rest of my life as celibate as a monk, but like you said, the minute I saw you…” His voice trailed off.
There was clear hesitation in his voice when he continued.
“There’s more that I have to tell you, and it hasn’t been fair of me to have been sleeping with you without saying something first.”
Toni’s eyes went wide. “Do you have a STD? Are you HIV positive?” What if they’d used dirty needles on him?
“No,” Ranger insisted. “I would never put your health at risk like that. We would have had this talk a lot sooner if I was.”
Toni was still confused. “Well, good. I guess. So what is it then?”
Ranger started to get antsy. Shifting on one leg, then the other. Rubbing his arms like he was cold. Toni didn’t like that he stepped away from her, but she gave him space. “Fuck. This is hard to explain.”
Harder than telling her he’d been forced on heroin and tortured for four days? That surprised—and terrified—her. She wanted to comfort him, to help him in his agitation, but she wasn’t sure how when she didn’t know what was bothering him.
“While Becks and I were held captive, they kept me high pretty consistently. I tried to escape the one time they missed a dose, and after that, it was nonstop. I don’t remember much.
I’m not even sure what’s real or fictional.
” He stopped moving, but kept the distance between them.
“Ritchie was the one who tortured me. I remember that. But Cameron… She tried her own kind of persuasion.”
As Ranger struggled to speak, Toni recalled his words from earlier.
How they’d starved him, tortured him, and sexually assaulted him.
Did he even remember saying those words or had he been so far into his story that he’d let that detail slip?
To be honest, he’d said so much that it had been a small detail in the grand scheme of things.
“She raped you.”
Ranger closed his eyes, his jaw tightening so much that it was a wonder he didn’t break his teeth.
He seemed to be holding his breath before letting it out very, very slowly.
Then he nodded. “I hate that word. Not because of what it means or signifies, because it seems too big and terrible a word for what happened to me. She did not anally rape me or make me have vaginal sex with her. She tried to give me a blowjob. It feels…ridiculous to even call it rape when there are actual rape victims out there. Ones who suffered so much more than I did.”
Toni stared at his profile in the dark, not sure what to say or do.
How to argue with his point of view without insulting him or emasculating him.
Admitting to the woman he had growing feelings for that he’d been raped had to be hard enough, and she wanted to commend the courage it took to tell her.
“My therapist would scold me if he could hear me now. He keeps trying to get me to understand the broadness of the word ‘rape’, to accept what happened so the memories don’t hold power over me anymore.
But it’s difficult, when I don’t know if what I remember is real or something my mind created to fill in the blank spots that were torturing me more than that fucking baseball bat. ”
Toni winced, not needing to ask what baseball bat he was referring to. No doubt Ritchie had used one on Ranger when he was too high to defend himself.
“He’s right,” Toni interjected, not wanting Ranger to fall down the rabbit hole of despair. “You survived, Liam. And beyond that, you didn’t end up living as celibate as a monk. You are stronger than anything she did to you.”
Ranger shifted his head to look at her out of the corner of his eye. “Pretty sure your sexy ass didn’t give me much of a choice in that regard.”