CHAPTER TWO
I WAKE UP to the sound of a spoon clinking against a bowl.
At first, I just keep my eyes closed and breathe through the sour smell of the blanket pulled up to my chin. My body aches—the constant pain I always seem to be in. My jaw is tight. My neck is sore from the angle I slept at.
“Hey,” says Billy. “You hungry?”
I blink at the wall, and then turn over and face him.
He’s sitting on the edge of the bed, shirtless, holding a bowl of cereal floating in pink milk that smells like melted candy.
I don’t answer, but he doesn’t seem to mind. He takes a spoonful, staring at me thoughtfully while he chews, and then says, “I got you a bowl.”
I follow his eyes to the nightstand, where a second bowl sits, spoon sticking out.
“You always liked this cereal,” he says fondly. “You used to pick out the marshmallows and leave the rest.”
I blink at him, and he smiles, pale grey eyes soft with warmth.
“Go on,” he says. “Eat.”
I sit up slowly, dragging the blanket with me. My limbs feel heavy and foreign, like doll parts that have been screwed on wrong.
Billy stands and picks up the bowl, crouching in front of me and holding it out.
“There you go, sweetheart,” he says, handing me the spoon.
His kindness is worse than his cruelty. It cycles around now and again, some sentimentality for our shared history. Some crooked echo of who he used to be—who he still thinks he is. As if he can undo any of this. As if he can undo Ryder.
He watches me, waiting for my reaction. A thank you. A smile. A hint of the girl I used to be.
But she’s not here. She doesn’t live in this body anymore.
Still, I take the spoon.
The cereal tastes like dye and powdered milk, like the foster home we used to eat it in. I swallow it down numbly, because it’s easier than resisting.
When I finish, he takes the bowl and brushes my hair back from my face, his fingers lingering at my temple.
“You’re home now,” he murmurs.
The worst part is that he sounds like he believes it.
He stands and moves behind me, grabbing my old hairbrush off the dresser, and starts brushing my hair with gentle strokes, careful not to pull on the tangles at the ends.
By the time night falls, I’m someone else.
At least, I look like someone else, dressed in the clothes Billy chose for me.
Black mesh crop top, no bra. Leather shorts. Heeled boots that dig into my ankles when I walk. And around my neck, the collar he never lets me take off.
I said nothing when he laid out the clothes. I stopped trying to cover up weeks ago. It doesn’t matter anymore. There’s no point in trying to hide.
“Fucking sexy,” he had said, leaning back and admiring his choices with satisfaction.
The clubhouse is always busy, but it’s packed tonight, and thrumming with the sounds of loud music and voices. It’s familiar, although not comforting. But it’s the sound of home, I guess. For six years, after all, this was my life.
The hangar is a space so big it feels like its own ecosystem.
A whole world under a single roof. The ceiling vanishes into shadow, the walls feel too far away to ever reach.
Two levels of rough-built bedrooms run along one wall, the upper floor connected by a wooden staircase and a gangway that overlooks the main open space.
A bar stretches across the opposite wall, made out of scarred wood and steel reinforcements, always sticky.
There are bikes lined up near the entrance, packed tight and shining, like animals waiting to be unleashed.
A few pool tables, a stripper pole, couches everywhere—some upright, some half-collapsed under the weight of years.
The ceiling’s crisscrossed with steel beams, from which heavy-duty industrial pendants hang from thick chains bolted to the steel trusses. When the hangar’s quiet in the early morning, you can hear them buzzing.
Up front, near the stairs to the second floor, the boardroom and Billy’s office have been constructed out of corrugated tin, newly outfitted with high-tech, science-fiction-looking doors. And high in the rafters, the club’s banner is hung with pride.
The Order of Disorder.
The screaming skull patch looks down over everything that happens underneath it, furious mouth open to the sky, haloed by a ring of chain—like I am.
Hands touch me as we walk by, groping because Billy’s told them to. He’s told them they’re free to look, to touch, to enjoy the show. And they do. Fingers brush over my nipples, through my hair. A hand slaps my ass. No one asks. No one ever asks.
“Beautiful,” says a low, admiring voice.
“Fucking whore,” hisses a woman’s voice—not so admiring.
I ignore them all, walking dutifully behind Billy, feeling eyes on me. Everywhere.
We stop at the bar, where Billy orders two vodka sodas from Cash, a prospect who’s playing bartender.
Like a lot of the prospects, Cash is young.
Maybe nineteen, twenty max, with a baby face he tries to hide under patchy facial hair.
His knuckles are raw, like he’s been fighting just to prove himself.
He bows his head respectfully as he slides the drinks across the bar.
Eager. Obedient. Useless. Like everybody here, he worships Billy.
“Smile, sweetheart,” Billy murmurs against my ear after handing me my drink. “You look like you’re at a funeral.”
I drain the entire drink in one long gulp, place the glass on the bar, and look up at him and smile.
Then I picture stabbing him in the throat with a shard of glass.
He laughs, satisfied.
We walk around the space, Billy shaking hands and clapping shoulders. On the largest pool table, two naked women are dancing—one on all fours. A handful of men cheer and throw bills.
Next to it, a guy sprawled in a folding chair is getting a crooked skull tattooed on his arm by someone who definitely isn’t licensed, a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, the machine buzzing like a wasp nest.
On the far wall, a bearded man wearing his screaming skull patched vest and no shirt is spray-painting O.D. for life on the hangar wall, the paint gathering and running, dripping like blood. Beside him, a bald guy adds a crude cock and balls.
Just outside the front entrance, a man lights a trail of gasoline on fire while a crowd hoots. The flames lick at the edge of a woman’s stilettos and she just laughs and doesn’t move out of the way.
It’s a circus. A war zone. Pleasure Island for men who’ve forgotten they were ever children.
I used to know the whole club when it was small and just starting out. Now I don’t recognize half the people here.
Some of them are from the support clubs—the Grave Sons, Iron Order, Bandidos. Others are hangers-on: party girls, dealers, strays and sycophants. People who orbit the chaos, drawn by hedonism or money.
Billy tugs my leash as we walk through the crowd, keeping me close behind him.
“Look at our girl!” he calls out, to no one specific. “Here for your viewing pleasure.”
A few men laugh. One claps him on the back.
“Doesn’t she look sexy?” he adds, and yanks the leash hard enough that I stumble. Then he spins me in a slow circle like he’s showing off a prize at auction. “Fucking hot as shit.”
I keep my face blank.
“Go ahead,” he says to a young prospect in a sleeveless top with the screaming skull on it. “Feel her tits. You’ve got my permission.”
The kid glances at Billy, then at me, uncertain.
“Don’t be shy,” Billy urges, grinning. “I’m telling you to do it.”
The kid steps forward with eager hands, and grabs my breasts, squeezing like he’s kneading dough. He doesn’t even look me in the eye.
Billy laughs and jerks the leash again, dragging me forward.
I don’t know how long we circle the room. Ten minutes? An hour? Time slips sideways in this place. Especially on evenings like this—these nights of punishment, when Billy is determined to debase me as much as he can.
Eventually he pushes me toward one of the couches in the center of the room. Cracked brown leather, stained darker in patches. Men jump up and move aside to make room for us.
“Sit,” Billy says, and I do, grateful to get off my feet.
He drops down next to me, fingers finding the bottom of my mesh top, and then he pulls it up over my breasts, exposing them fully. I exhale and turn my chin slightly away from him. It doesn’t matter what they see. What he does.
I pretend I’m not even here.
Neutral expression. Dry eyes.
“Lift your arms,” he instructs me. I slip my arms through the arm holes as he pulls the shirt off and discards it. He bends down and circles my nipple with his tongue, and despite my dissociation, it tightens. I hate my body for reacting.
He chuckles.
“You’ve always had the most perfect tits, Max,” he murmurs.
I stare into the middle distance, but it’s impossible not to notice how the bodies around us creep closer, eyes glinting in the darkness, bright and hungry.
And then I see him.
Silas. Billy’s VP and second-in-command.
Just across from us, standing near the bottom of the stairs to the second-floor walkway, drink in hand, looking straight at me.
His eyes are locked on my breasts, looking too hard, lingering too long. It turns my stomach.
It’s not the way he’s looking at me that makes my blood go cold. It’s that he’s the one who did it. He shot Ryder.
Ryder’s killer—and his only punishment is that he has to watch Billy licking my skin instead of doing it himself.
My hands curl into fists. My whole body goes taut, frozen between violence and fear.
I hate him with a consuming passion—so much so that it’s almost a relief to feel anything that strongly again.
Rage is cleaner than grief.
I stiffen, instinctively moving to cover myself, but Billy shakes his head and pulls my arms down. He knows exactly what I’m reacting to.
“Don’t be rude. He likes you.”
“No.”
His hands curl around my wrists, holding them down in my lap, and his voice gets hard.
“You do what I tell you.”
I freeze, warring briefly with myself, and then relent, nodding and swallowing down my fight. Not because I want to, but because I’ve learned what happens when I don’t.
Insolence gets punished. He’s made that lesson clear, over and over again. There are worse things than being watched.
I train my eyes on a section of the floor in front of me as his hands slide off my wrists and onto my thighs, now that I’m compliant. He pulls down the zipper of my shorts and slides his fingers under the leather until they’re brushing against my pussy, rubbing against my clit.
I shiver involuntarily, and a man on the couch across from us whistles low. Someone else laughs.
More bodies move in and press around us.
They know what to expect. This isn’t the first time.
Billy didn’t build a powerful and fearsome motorcycle club out of nothing because he’s dumb.
He’s strategic. This isn’t just about asserting his dominance.
It’s about showing the club that he owns me, that he can’t be disobeyed.
It’s about humiliating me, objectifying me, and displaying me like a dog that’s been dragged back to heel.
Because if he’s willing to debase and humiliate me, then he’s willing to do anything to any of them.
He removes his hands and starts undoing his jeans.
“Take your shorts off,” he says.
My heart sinks, but my body doesn’t move.
His hand grips my jaw. “I said, take them off.”
Around us, the people watching move in closer. I stand and slide my shorts down in front of all of them.
I can feel Silas’s eyes on me, but there’s no way I can be defiant. Billy wouldn’t just punish me, he would savor every minute of it. If I displease Billy he’ll throw me to Silas just to teach me that I have no safety here.
Billy, ever the exhibitionist, lowers his jeans just enough to free his cock—rock hard already—and then he pulls me into his lap.
“Ride me,” he says, low and commanding.
I hesitate, and he slaps my ass.
“Ride me.”
I straddle his lap, and he groans as I sink onto him. The room itself seems to exhale. Silence, worshipful and watchful, falls.
But I don’t make a sound.
Billy grips my hips and starts pumping into me, fast and rough. Like I’m just a fleshlight with a pulse.
I stare past his shoulder, eyes unfocused, and try not to see all the eyes watching. The slack mouths. The hands reaching into pants.
Someone catcalls. Another voice says, “Fuckin’ hell, man. I bet she’s nice and tight.”
Billy laughs and grabs my hair in a fist, pulling my face toward his.
“You’re mine,” he huffs in my ear. “Forever.”
Then louder, for the room: “I will always own this fucking cunt.”
More laughter. Somewhere behind me, the sound of flesh smacking.
Billy pulls my hair, making my head tilt upward, his other hand digging into my hip.
He’s close. I can feel it.
“Come on, baby,” he pants. “Show ‘em what a good little bitch you are. Let ‘em see you come.”
I never come with him. But I’ll fake it. Anything to end it.
I perform a moan. Roll my hips. Arch my back.
“Fuck…” he groans. “That’s it. Fucking take it.”
“Please, Daddy,” I purr, imitating his guest from last night.
His whole body tenses, his jaw clenches, and then he comes with a low, broken groan.
Someone whoops. A woman moans.
“Fucking perfect,” he mutters, dropping his head back against the couch. “A fucking perfect little cunt.”
I slide off him without a word and pull on my shorts. My thighs are sticky. I don’t bother picking my shirt up from the floor.
What’s the point?
Billy pulls his jeans back up, tucking himself away, and drops his head back against the couch again, still breathing heavily.
“Good girl,” he says, rolling his head to the side and giving me a doe-eyed, intimate smile.
I look away, and my eyes land on Silas again. Still watching, black eyes burning. He tips his drink back, and then sets it down on a table, his lips curling into a knowing smile.
A shiver crawls down my spine. I blink and look down at the floor, swallowing against the rising bile in my throat.
I hate him. God, I hate him.
I didn’t think I could hate anyone more than Billy. But Silas—
Silas murdered Ryder. He’s the reason Ryder is gone. The reason I’m alone.
And now he gets to watch me in the most intimate act like it’s a show just for him.
Billy hasn’t let him have me—not yet. But he uses the threat of it to get what he wants, to get me to comply on nights like this. And what’s the difference really? Silas gets to see every part of me. To get something from me I don’t want to give.
There’s nowhere I can go. No one’s coming to save me.
This is my life now.
And they’re never going to let me go.