Chapter 5 Xavier #2
“You want me to carve your fucking throat out, Cass? Is that what you want?” My voice drops, low and sharp, every ounce of patience I have burned to ash. “Because then you’d have no use for me at all.”
She gasps, quiet, and takes a single step back like she’s only now realizing how close she is to pushing me over the edge. “What is wrong with you today?”
Everything. Nothing.
A thick little killer vixen with green eyes and a mouth that won’t quit—sleeping in my brother’s room. My brother, who finds her before I do, who wants her just as bad, and now I’ve got to fight him for her.
“Go get Zay and fucking Ash!” I roar, and it’s only because I know she’s in love with Johnson that she doesn’t break down crying. Instead, she storms out, cursing under her breath in a way that would’ve had Marcus carving her tongue out at the next public Raiders meeting.
She’s lucky I don’t waste time on grotesque shows of power.
I rub my temple with both my middle and forefingers, rolling over and over as I think about how the hell am I going to get Cassandra out of here without succumbing to the monster my brother and father was.
They would have tossed Cassandra out the minute whispers of a pregnancy start.
The minute they don’t get rock hard by her walking into the room she’d be gone, and if she cheated on them the way she cheated on me, they would have killed her with no remorse.
I can’t do that to her, but I also can’t let her think she can trap me with a baby that ain’t mine.
It’d be one thing if she asked, but this is fucking treasonous.
I walk over to the mini fridge in my room, because the fridge in the kitchen is a black hole, whatever goes in anyone in the club can have and therefore it does not stay there for long.
I pull out a Guinness, cracking the can open and letting it breathe for a second so the foam gathers at the top, before it bubbles back down.
“You had to yell at Cass?” Asher deadpans, and I turn around taking a quick sip of the foam on the top.
“She’s trying to trap me again.” I murmur as he closes my bedroom door.
“She is trying to survive, everyone knows Johnson’s days are numbered.” Asher states in that matter of fact tone he’s always had. While Zay is my half-brother and our bond is one of mutual protection, and understanding of each other’s madness, Asher is my best friend, my ally, my anchor to sanity.
Zay grew up starving for love. By the time we were older, he’d been diagnosed with OCD (Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder).
Not the tap three times or turn off the lights type that most people talk about but the kind that sinks in deep.
When he locks onto someone, that’s it. They become the center of his world.
His every waking moment gets eaten up by that need—to want, to love, to worship them, even if it kills him in the process.
The new love of his life is Valentina Torres, and until she is dead, or she breaks his heart, or disappears off the face of the planet, she is his, and he will be utterly devoted to her.
I, on the other hand, didn’t have a diagnosis but it takes a lot for me to be good.
My basic instinct is one of control, manipulation, corruption, and when the darkness creeps in, it’s hard for me to leave it.
It’s like I’m allergic to the light, to goodness, and everything I touch turns to fucking ash in my hands.
Zay gets the impulsive thoughts and uncontrollable urges.
He gets why it’s so easy for me to drown.
Asher understands us both, even though the idea of feeling anything is foreign to him. The fucking sociopath.
“She needs a better plan,” I snap, taking a long swig of my beer, the yeast crawls across my tongue, and I sigh at the sensation lulling me from my irritation.
“Or you could be honest with her and tell her you know,” Asher’s voice is that strange therapist calm where everything they say makes exact rational sense, and you are eased by his suggestions.
“And then what?” I snarl walking over to the leather coach on the far side of the office. “Give her a couple of dollars and send her away?”
“That’s a valid option,” Asher nods, leaning against the desk and I snarl watching as the door opens and Isaiah walks in with a goofy smile.
“How far did she make it man? A mile? Two?” He is stupidly giddy as he bounces on the balls of his feet and smiles at me the way a kid does on Christmas.
“Come on Zay,” I groan, and he jumps into the desk chair spinning around the office. I sink into the leather couch and sulk.
“Don’t hold out on me, man.”
I look over at Asher, and he sighs, answering the question. “She was a couple of yards from the highway.”
“Fuck she’s incredible,” Zay coos and I take a bigger swig of my beer, because yes she is, shaking off a fucking roofie in under two hours and making it 2.5 miles through the woods on foot in under thirty minutes means that she is painfully fantastic.
“I hope she’s in the basement,” I groan.
Zay shoots up, looking at me as he wiggles his eyebrows. “Nah. She's knocked out with double the dosage and handcuffed to my bed.”
“She’s going to love that,” Asher says, his voice void of any emotion.
“I know, right? She’s perfect man, a complete ten out of fucking ten,” Zay spins in the chair again. “I think I am going to marry her.”
The thought of Valentina in a white dress makes me want to smirk, all innocent in pure white as if there will be anything virginal about her on her wedding day.
I want her to never fucking escape us. I want her to be mine.
Ours. Even if she does get married, I’d fuck her in that pretty white dress and make her walk down the aisle dripping with my cum, sore from my cock, thinking about the next time she can sneak away to be with me.
Fucking Hell. I sound like Zay.
“Before you decide to walk down the aisle we have to figure out what we’re going to do with her.” I groan, finishing the rest of my beer.
“We made her bottom bitch,” Zay responds in this duh sound that makes my fucking ears ring.
“You did what?” Asher questions, eyes narrowing on me from across the room.
I know why he’s mad, the original plan for Valentina was to bring her in and parade her in front of the club, and publicly hold the cartel up for ransom.
We need money. We need the defenses and Cast, Valentina’s brother and leader of the Cartel, wouldn’t take a meeting with us otherwise.
I would get my revenge. The club would get a body.
The three of us would rule in peace until we are eventually killed by some young fucker who thinks he can run the club better than us.
Win fucking win, but then Zay becomes obsessed and we have to take his feelings into account, not to kill her publicly but to punish her privately.
And now I made her bottom bitch of the club, which sounds as bad as it is.
See, in a motorcycle club, there’s a hierarchy.
At the top, there’s leadership. I’m the President.
Asher’s my Vice President. Zay serves as Sergeant-at-Arms. And then there’s Jackie—our pain-in-the-ass fourth.
She was Road Captain, but after she has her kid, that spot’s on hold.
We don’t exactly do maternity leave in the Raiders, but everyone knows the rule: unless one of us ends up dead, Jackie’s off-limits while she raises her little girl. Everything else can wait.
Below leadership, you’ve got the full-patch members—the ones who’ve earned their place. After them come the prospects, still proving themselves.
And at the very bottom? The ones who orbit us without really belonging. Hang-arounds. Property. Playthings.
“Bottom bitch” means she’s marked. It means she doesn’t belong to one member of the pack like an old lady, it means she is everyone’s plaything.
Anyone can fuck with her. Anyone can touch her.
Anyone can make her life a living fucking hell and she can’t fight, because if she does they’ll have to break her in. That’s club standards.
“She pissed me off,” I mutter under my breath, tossing my can into the trash can across the room.
“Zay, you let her be named bottom bitch,” Asher looks at him, and Zay is sitting with his feet up in the chair staring at his phone.
“He said it too fucking loud,” Zay responds. “Don’t worry, I intend on beating his ass during the next cage fight. I just have to keep her close to me until we can move her up in the ranks.”
“You can’t be around her every minute of every fucking day,” I bark, but he doesn’t flinch, he just runs a had through his moss green hair and shakes it out.
I roll my eyes at him, because he can’t truly think a girl like her needs him to protect her, as if we won’t be running after her with an ambulance for all her victims.
“I will if I have to,” he shrugs. “I’m not leaving her vulnerable to anyone in the fucking club. You still haven’t cleaned house. I don’t trust any of those fuckers who hung around Marcus.”
“I can’t just hold an execution date,” I snap, running a hand over my face. “There are too many of them. I need to see if anyone will flip to my side, or we’ll lose most of the club to the Vipers.”
“Then we need to move her up,” Zay protests, kicking his feet out and finally looking at me. “I’ll claim her.”
“The hell you will! Are you out of your fucking mind?” I roar, and a part of me thinks he’s insane because if he claims her then she is off the market. She will be fucking club royalty.
“You’re the one who kicked her to the bottom of the club! You can’t do that and then not let me protect her,” Zay is on his feet, his eyes are blown in that manic way that tells me he is going to really fight me on this.
“Zay-”
“Look,” Asher sighs, cutting off our argument and we both look at him, as exhaustion takes over his features. “What’s done is done, if she is bottom bitch then she stays bottom bitch.”
“Ash-” Zay gasps.
“It’s done,” Asher snaps, with that finality that shuts Isaiah and me up. One thing about Asher, if he says it’s done then it’s done, because Asher having to repeat himself, or get angry is a big fucking no unless you want to leave in a stretcher…if you’re lucky.
“Fine,” Isaiah huffs walking closer to me, his breath smells of cigarettes and mint as he snarls in my face. “If anything happens to her I’ll skin you alive myself.”
I flash my teeth, tilting my head to the side like the sadistic fuck Isaiah thinks he is, until I’m in the room. “Is that any way to speak to your brother? I’m the reason you’re even alive, Zay, don’t forget that.”
“Oh,” he chuckles, nodding his head slowly. “Is that how you want to play it?”
“Not a damn thing is being played. I meant what I said, Isaiah.” My voice cuts through the room, low and unyielding. “She’s a bottom bitch, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Understand?”
I lock on to the dark swell of his eyes, searching for some flicker of humanity, but when Zay’s in this state, there’s nothing human left in him. His gaze is flat and lifeless, black tar instead of warm brown, like he’s already drowning in his own rage.
Isaiah steps back, his tongue running slow along the inside of his cheek, jaw flexing with restrained violence. “You’re a fucking tyrant, Xavier.”
“Really, Zay? That’s what you think?” I lower my gaze, letting my deep honey eyes meet his dark brown ones head-on. “You’d be dead without me. Don’t forget that.”
He laughs—dark, hollow, a twisted kind of laugh that says he’d rather bleed than bend. His nod is slow, deliberate, like he’s filing the words away in the place where grudges are kept. “You’ll never let me forget that.”
“Never.” I roll my shoulders back, owning the space, staring at the hatred simmering in his face until it threatens to boil over.
The silence thickens until Asher breaks it, clearing his throat as he slides the bourbon he had snagged from the corner of my desk to the center. I hadn’t even noticed him moving, too wrapped up in going toe-to-toe with Zay.
“Xavier,” Asher says evenly, “don’t be a dick.”
Zay lets out a scoff, sharp as a blade, flicking his head toward the door as he turns away. “Don’t waste your breath, Ash. He can’t help it.”
Zay slams the door so hard the walls seem to rattle, and the echo of it leaves the room heavier than before. I sink back onto the couch, elbows on my knees, burying my head in my hands. A harsh, jagged chuckle scrapes out of me, the kind that tastes like iron in the back of my throat.
Asher clicks his tongue, that little sound of disappointment he loves to wield, but I don’t even look his way. Why would I? He doesn’t get it. None of them do.
Because I am the king here. Not Zay. Not anyone else. Me.
Isaiah’s only still breathing because of the shadow of our mother, the faint memory of her voice keeping me from putting a bullet in him years ago. That’s the only mercy he’s ever earned from me. And Valentina? She’s mine. My bottom bitch. I’ll take her, use her, break her—whatever I please.
And there isn’t a goddamn thing Zay can do to stop me.