30. Ash
Ash
Putting as much distance between me and the building I just left, my bike snarls underneath me as I weave in between the traffic. Cars skid out of my way and angry honks follow me, but I couldn’t give a single fuck even if I wanted to.
If I stop, I’ll turn right around and go back to the Dally building. I’ll march up to the top floor and put a bullet in the middle of Maddison’s father’s head, for ruining the only good thing in my life.
I guess it was doomed from the start. There is no way a girl like her could love a man like me. A monster.
I laugh a feral laugh at how stupid I am. How stupid it all is. I’m a God, a Devil. I don’t feel heartbreak…I don’t even have a heart.
I’m exactly what my mother said I am. I still remember tiptoeing into her room that night, slinking under the blankets and cuddling up next to her. I was so scared, so sad. But her body felt different. Cold and lifeless, unmoving.
I remember begging her to hold me, to tell me it was okay. But she didn’t. She couldn’t. Her lips were blue and vomit stained her pillow; her mouth parted as if she was about to speak.
But she didn’t speak.
She left me to go be with him. Her last words forever etched into my soul.
I remember laughing then, too. I don’t know why, but something visceral cracked inside me that day, and I became the monster she knew I always was.
Wind batters my white knuckles as I rev the bike, faster and harder, leaning around the curves.
“You sick, fucking monster.”
It plays on repeat in my mind; it drives me crazy. But now all instead of my mother’s lifeless body, I see the look in Maddison’s eyes. The way they fluttered closed, ready for my bullet to find her.
“FUCK!” I scream, the word swallowed by the harsh wind. “FUCK, FUCK, FUCK!” My voice cracks as I let go of one of the handlebars and rub at my aching chest. The pressure is too much.
I ride until the sun begins to set over the mountains, and I keep riding. I ride until my thoughts become a blur of rumbling engines and pain, until my eyes sting and my lips are chapped.
When I finally pull into the club's parking lot, exhaustion sits heavy on my shoulders. I feel like I could sleep for weeks. But I can’t. I have a war to prepare for. A war that should have been my soul purpose all along, not fawning over some girl who doesn’t belong.
Some girl.
I know deep down she isn’t just some girl. She’s the girl. The one who glows so bright, the darkness around me doesn’t seem so endless. The one who calms the wild beast clawing inside of me. The one who is so pure, her touch melts away the blood coating my hands.
I’ll never be good enough to deserve her light.
The familiar sounds and smells of the club envelope me as I step inside, and it all feels so empty and lifeless without the blonde head of hair and those sparkling eyes.
“Where the fuck is he?”
The snarl snaps me out of my head. My head lifts, eyes locking onto Kaleb as he strides towards me. His usually blank face is fractured, rage and something worse flickering through his black eyes.
Fear.
The room quiets instantly. Tension stretches tight between the walls.
I lift a brow in question. “Excuse me?”
Kaleb never swears at me. He never raises his voice. Not to me. Not in front of my men. The fact that he just did sits wrong in my gut.
He’s vibrating with it now, rage barely leashed, hands fisted at his sides, muscles drawn tight beneath his shirt.
“Kai,” he grits out through clenched teeth, each word a rasp from his throat. “Where. The. Fuck. Is he?”
I feel the blood rush out of head and dizziness hits me fast. Because Kai… is meant to be with my angel.
I storm into my office, and Kaleb follows, as well as Griff, Leon, and Matt, slamming the door shut behind them. My hands dive into my hair, pulling the strands until I feel a sharp sting on my scalp.
“Speak!” I bark, hearing the unhinged twinge in my voice. I’m spiralling. “Tell me everything, now.”
It sounds fuzzy when Kaleb speaks, the words dancing in my head like some cruel cosmic joke. “His bike is at the Dally building, along with her car, but they are nowhere to be found. Kai wouldn’t ever leave Shadow like that, not ever.”
“Fuck!” I roar, clearing the table off with a swipe of my hand.
My mind twists in every worst-case scenario possible, the most gut-wrenching of them all being that they are both already gone. That I left when they both needed me the most.
That the last thing I did, before whatever has happened to my angel, was pull my gun out and aim it at her stunning face.
She can’t be dead. She just can’t be.
Because if she is, then I’m done pretending this wrold deserves mercy.
I’ll reduce it to smoke, bone, and ruin until there’s nothing left to mourn.
And Kai. Knowing his love for Shadow, his bike, I know deep in my gut he would never leave her. Ever. And he knows what Maddison means to me; I know he’d give up his life for her... for me.
My goddamn brother. If I lost them both... there’d be nothing left of me. There won’t be anything human left to salvage.
“No, no, no,” I mutter, pacing the length of the office like a caged animal.
My boots slam against the floorboards, and my breath comes ragged and uneven. My hands are shaking, clenching into fists so hard the veins stand out like ropes. I feel Kaleb’s eyes on me, feel all of them watching me unravel, but I can’t stop.
The monster inside me is clawing to the surface, begging for blood.
“They were taken,” Griff says angrily, but the words don’t sound real. They scrape down my spine like nails on glass. “They didn’t leave. Someone has them.”
“Someone?” I snarl, whirling on him, my teeth bared. “Who the fuck is bold enough to put their hands on what’s mine?” My voice cracks, echoing too loudly in the room, too wild to be controlled.
I’m pacing like a wild animal, hands clawing at my hair, muttering to myself. Every wall, every chair, every object in this office is screaming at me. I can’t stop. I can’t focus. Kaleb steps forward, voice low but urgent. “Ash…look at me. Stop.”
I spin on him, eyes wild, teeth bared, and he flinches... but he doesn’t step back. “Don’t tell me to stop, Kaleb. You don’t get it!” I roar, slamming my fist into the desk, splinters biting my skin. My chest heaves.
Then Kaleb moves. He grabs my shoulders, trying to steady me, but I thrash.
He can’t hold me. So he does the only thing that might make me listen.
A sharp, precise punch to my jaw. The crack of knuckles against bone is deafening in my head.
Pain blooms, white-hot and immediate, and for the first time today, the hurricane inside me pauses.
I laugh, ragged and broken, blood dripping onto my hands. “Again,” I mutter, not even realizing the words are out loud. Kaleb’s glare burns through me.
Maybe he thinks I’ve completely lost it. Maybe he’s right. But the pain steadies me. It’s a tether, pulling me back from the edge of my own madness. The world sharpens. My thoughts, which were scattering like ash in a windstorm, snap into focus.
Clarity dawns as I swipe the blood dripping out of my mouth and pick my laptop off the mess on the floor. I pull up the feeds I set up in my angel’s office, car, and house, confirming she isn’t at either.
“It’s him,” Griff mutters, his voice thick with frustration. “It has to be him.”
I nod because if they are in fact alive, that is where they’ll be. With Zeke. My heart twists in my chest, knowing the best-case scenario is that Zeke has kept them alive. The kind of torture he’d be inflicting on them at this very moment.
And I don’t have to imagine it for long. A notification pops up, and I click it, bringing up a video link.
There she is, alive.
And for the first time, I wished she wasn’t.
There she is.
My angel.
Ropes cut into her wrists, her ankles, her throat; cruel lines against skin that was never meant to be marked. Blood paints her mouth and trails down her chin in dark streaks, staining what’s left of her dress. Bruises bloom across her face, ugly and wrong and entirely undeserved.
Her head hangs low and heavy, swaying softly.
Then she lifts it.
And fuck. Even swollen. Even rimmed red from crying. Even broken and shaking. Her eyes still glow that faint, stubborn hazel.
It shatters something inside me.
The room around me disappears. The club. The men. The war. None of it exists. Just her.
Zeke steps into frame, and my vision tunnels instantly to his hand, split knuckles and a raw, open wound that drips blood.
She bit him.
A twisted, vicious pride coils in my chest. That’s my girl.
And then she lifts her chin at him, defiant, even like this, and pride turns into dread so sharp it makes my hands tremble.
Because I know Zeke.
I know what he does when someone challenges him.
The scream that tears from her hits me like a blade.
Shock and pain splintering her voice as I watch the man I despise plunge a blade into her thigh.
I feel the pain as my own; blood bubbling from the wound.
Something breaks in my throat, a sound that’s half snarl, half something dangerously close to a sob.
The men behind me go rigid, but I don’t look at them. I can’t.
My gaze is nailed to the screen. Forced to watch the only good thing in my life suffer. Because of me.
Because my darkness reached out and dragged her into it. Because my bad, is so bad, it ruined the best person I know.
I should have let her walk away the first night she stepped into my world. Should have pushed her out the door and locked it behind her. Instead, I pulled her closer. And now she’s paying for it.
Kai comes into view, strung up, blood running down his arms. His body sags under its own weight.
My brother.
He’s watching her with a fury I recognise. A helplessness I feel down in the marrow of my bones. The shame radiates from him through the screen. He would die before letting this happen, and yet, here we are.
Her sobs bleed through the speakers, thin, broken sounds that scrape against my ribs until I swear I can feel my heart cracking open.