Chapter 6 Go Viral #2
“The Devil Lancer MC is always thorough when the fucking Riot MC is involved. This shit has to be believable,” Ghost said in a firm tone.
“What’s going on?” I asked, looking up at Prime.
He never answered.
Ghost clocked him in the head, knocking him to the ground.
I screamed, but Ghost cut it short by clamping his hand around my neck and squeezing. Hard.
“You’re a hot piece of ass. Sucks I have to kill you, but that’s what happens when you get caught in the middle of an MC feud. Best part is that blond asshole cares so much about you, it’ll be even better when we frame him for your murder.”
He was crushing my throat, and I could only gargle in response. The moment he let go, he hit me in the face. I’d never been hit like that. The pain was multifaceted - stinging and hot. The heavy rings he wore made it a hundred times worse.
I reached for his arm to stop any more blows.
He shoved me viciously.
I lost my footing and fell on my ass with a sharp yell. My yell wasn’t very loud so soon after his choke hold. He dropped to his knees and a fresh, new fear flooded my brain.
Was he going to rape me too?
I scuttled back, scraping my palms on the asphalt. He cocked his right arm back and punched me again. Then his left fist flew toward my temple, and I blacked out.
Unfortunately, I came to for a brief moment. White hot pain radiated from my side, and it hurt to breathe. My vision was blurry, but I heard Prime groaning.
“Jesus, Ghost, I can’t get up. Iggy wouldn’t have hit me that fuckin’ hard, asshole.”
“Iggy’s dead because of the Riot MC, so I don’t fuckin’ care what he would’ve done,” Ghost said.
Fool that I was, I squirmed beneath Ghost. My vision hadn’t fully cleared, but I saw his head swing my way and he hit me in the eye.
Then I saw stars, before everything went dark.
Punc
The sound of the office door slamming followed by the back door banging open put Punc on alert.
He rushed to the back and collided with Beast. “What the fuck is going on?”
“Somebody fucked with the security monitors. Prime’s on the ground in the lot and some asshole’s beaten Ava.”
Anger filled him at the idea that someone would beat a woman. This anger felt different though - an all-consuming rage he’d never felt before. He knew Savannah… no, Ava. Who the hell would beat a woman as sweet as her?
He moved forward and Beast stopped him with a hand on Punc’s shoulder. “You stay here. Cops are on the way.”
“Cops? We need to take care of this motherfucker ourselves.”
Beast shook his head. “We can’t, Punc. She’s got to be rushed to the hospital, and we don’t know who the hell’s fucked with the monitors. That’s an inside job.”
The way Beast stared at Punc sent a chill down his spine. “Are you accusing me? I’ve been on the fucking floor all goddamned night!”
Beast nodded slowly. “I know that, but you can’t go out there.”
“She needs someone with her, Beast. That should be me.”
Beast’s eyes widened and he reared his head back. “Why should it be you?”
She’s mine and I’m her man, sat on the tip of his tongue, but he wasn’t her man. He hesitated a beat longer. “I know her. Leave it at that.”
Tundra stormed around the corner. “Cops are here. So is the ambulance.”
Punc called his sister, but since it was three-thirty in the morning, it went to voicemail. He tried her husband, Michael, with the same result.
“Fuckin’ ‘Do not disturb’ mode,” he muttered.
For a fleeting moment, he considered calling Savannah’s dad, but he was such a piece of shit, he bordered on being a waste of space.
He didn’t want to call Catalina… this had to be done in person and Alanis was much more compassionate than him. He tried his sister twice more, with no answer, so he had no choice.
He slung a leg over his bike and rode to their house.
The ride to the Oakleaf neighborhood didn’t take half as long in the middle of the night. He pulled his bike up next to the cleaning company car Savannah drove earlier in the week. Before he shut down the bike, he revved the engine once to hopefully wake Catalina.
At the front entry, he rang the bell and pounded on the door. It wasn’t ideal since Catalina would be alarmed, but she’d know something was wrong regardless.
A dog barked inside the house. On the one hand, he liked that it was a deep, throaty bark that likely indicated a large dog, but on the other hand, he didn’t need a German Shepherd attacking him either.
Then he wondered where the dog had been when he was there Tuesday and Wednesday.
The front windows lit and he heard Catalina mutter behind the door, “Ted?”
“Yeah, Cat. Open the door, but make sure you can control your beast first.”
“Right. Hang on,” she said.
He listened to her cajole the dog away from the door. A minute later, she opened it. “Savannah isn’t home yet.”
He slipped past her and sat on the couch. “Can you sit down?”
She blinked and her eyes became guarded and annoyed. “No. I’m done sitting down for bad news. Where’s Savannah?”
He stood. If she wasn’t going to sit, he wasn’t either. “She’s been hurt and taken to Baptist Hospital. I can take you to her, but it’ll be on my bike - or if you got keys for her Buick, we’ll swing by Platinum’s and I can drive you in that.”
The way her expression shifted, it was like watching a set of armor come over her. “I need to change.”
Then he noticed her pajamas. The sleep shorts were cotton-candy pink with pictures of Pusheen the cat from social media all over them.
Her matching short-sleeved shirt had a large picture of Pusheen laying on his belly and the words ‘So lazy…Can’t move’ written around him.
The whole ensemble reminded him of when Alanis had been a teen… and Savannah would sleep over.
“Hurry up, then,” he said, shaking off the memories.
“It’s that bad?” she asked, her voice cracking once.
He took both her hands in his. “Cat, I don’t know, but it sure as hell isn’t very good. If you pray, now’s a good time to start.”
Her eyes got shiny. She pressed her lips together and nodded. “I’ll hurry, and let’s take the Buick.”
As much as Punc hated small talk, he hated the idea of Catalina worrying about her sister even more. While he drove the Buick downtown, he put in the effort to break the silence.
“School goin’ all right?”
She blew out a breath. “Yeah… school’s good, but I doubt I’m going to class tomorrow… or I guess later today, really.”
“Yeah,” he whispered.
“How about we skip to where you tell me what happened to Savannah?”
He clenched his jaw. “That’s the fuck of it. I don’t have the whole story. She danced… hell, she fucking crushed it tonight. We walk all the dancers to their cars.”
“All of them?”
“Yeah, and—”
“Why? That seems like overkill if the club shuts down at two in the morning.”
“There have been issues a month or two ago. It’s just a precaution.”
“Was another woman beaten two months ago?” Cat asked.
He shot a quick look her way. There was no sugarcoating this, not that he would. She deserved all the honesty right now. “She was robbed. None of the dancers have been hurt since.”
“Two months ago, and then nothing.”
He hesitated. It still embarrassed him that someone got the drop on him last month. “I got cold cocked last month, left in the parking lot during a heavy rain.”
“So, you’re lucky you didn’t drown,” she murmured.
“I wouldn’t go that far, Catalina.”
From the corner of his eye, he saw her lean toward him. “You can drown in an inch of water, Ted. If you were left in a parking lot during a ‘heavy rain,’ they probably wanted you dead.”
“If they’d wanted me dead, they’d have killed me, Cat. They had the advantage - which still shits me, so they left me alive for some fucked-up reason.”
“Okay. You said you don’t have the whole story on Savannah. What do you know?”
He focused on the interchange at I-10 and I-95. “Someone knocked out Prime - the brother who walked her to her car…” He trailed off as his gut clenched. “Then they started beating Savannah. Yak and Turk ran after the asshole, but didn’t catch him before he scaled a fence.”
She sighed. “And the cops couldn’t find him either?”
“No. Or not without a police helicopter, which takes time.”
“How bad is it? Don’t try to protect me, Ted. I need the truth. It’s been hard as hell losing Mom, but Savannah normally gives everything to me straight now.”
He reached over and gave her hand a squeeze. “It’s pretty bad, honey. The EMTs didn’t tell us much, but I caught them exchanging looks. I don’t want to make you worry more, but I meant it earlier. It’s a good time to start praying.”
Inside the hospital, they learned Ava had been taken to the Intensive Care Unit. They went to the ICU waiting room, and a nurse called for a physician assistant for the neurologist.
Five minutes later, a man in green scrubs came out and shook Catalina’s hand. “Your sister has been put into a medically induced coma to get her brain swelling down. Once the swelling subsides, we’ll know more.”
“Can I see her?” Catalina asked.
The P.A. grimaced. “Visiting hours don’t resume until eight, but since you’re her sister, I’ll take you to her for a moment. Brace yourself, though. She doesn’t look good.”
Punc paced the waiting room until Catalina came back out. She looked pale and stunned. He went to her and put his hands on her shoulders.
She looked up at him. “You don’t have to hold my hand, Ted.”
“Cat, it’s four in the morning and no fucking way, I’m leaving you here alone.”
She stared at him, her face blank, but he caught the tremble of her lower lip.
“Come here. It’s gonna be okay.”
She didn’t move.
He wrapped his arms around her. After a beat, she grabbed the edge of his cut.
“You don’t know that,” she whispered.
He couldn’t argue with her. Any time in the ICU had to be bad, but he had to believe Savannah would pull through. From their phone conversations, and the way she responded to him Wednesday evening, she was a fighter. Not just a fighter, she was feisty and he didn’t believe she’d give up.
“I can’t lose her, too,” Catalina sniffled.
“You won’t,” he whispered, rubbing her back.
She pulled away. “I’m gonna go to the bathroom.”
He nodded and took his cell phone from his back pocket. While she was gone, he sent a group text to Volt, Yak, and Turk updating them on Ava’s condition.
His phone rang, Volt’s name on display. ‘Yeah, Volt.”
“Stay there for now.”
He shook his head. “Why? Aren’t we doing something about this?”
“In time. We won’t let this go unanswered, but we aren’t certain who did this.”
“It had to be a Devil Lancer,” Punc said.
“A Devil Lancer wouldn’t have access to our security monitors.”
His jaw clenched. Yak believed they had a traitor and Punc wondered if any of the brothers suspected him. The thought of that made his gut sour.
“Fine, I’ll stay here, but I want in on getting vengeance for Ava.”
“You care about our dancers that much?” Volt asked.
He explained his connection to Ava, surprised Beast hadn’t shared.
Volt sighed. “You should have shared your connection to her sooner. Keep us posted, Punc.”
“Later, Volt.”
Catalina came back, her eyes puffy.
“You want a coffee? Red Bull?”
“No, I think I’ll wait. Do you have her phone or any of her stuff? Or did she get robbed, too?”
“Her things are at the club. She didn’t get robbed. We held her money because she made so much.”
Catalina looked around. “Guess she’ll need it. Spending tonight in ICU will wipe it all out and more.”
“Riot will cover her medical bills,” Punc said - even if the brothers didn’t know it yet. He’d fight every one of them if they balked. No woman deserved what Ava got, and she damn sure didn’t need to foot the bill to boot.
“Riot?” Catalina asked.
“The motorcycle club that owns Platinum’s. She won’t have to worry about the bills.”
Two hours later, there was no change in Savannah’s status. Punc had got through to Michael, and Alanis was on her way downtown.
He heard Catalina murmuring, and he noticed she had her phone to her ear.
When she ended the call, he asked, “Did you call a friend?”
She shook her head. “Rita, her boss… at her day job, I guess. I didn’t want her to think Savannah flaked. Especially since she has one of the company cars.”
He nodded. “Good thinking.”
“She said she’s coming down here, but I really wish she wouldn’t.”
“Why not?”
“I only got to see her for a minute, but I don’t think Savannah would want Rita to see her that way.”
He squeezed her hand. “I think she needs all the support and good vibes she can get, Cat.”
“Teddy,” Alanis called from the end of the corridor.
He stood and hugged his sister.
“Oh my God! I’m turning off my do-not-disturb settings immediately.”
He gave her a firm squeeze. “There wasn’t anything you could have done.”
She stepped back and shook her head. “I don’t understand. How did you find out about this first?”
His sister’s question gave him a bad feeling in his gut.
“I thought she told you. Hell, I told her to tell you—”
“Tell me what?” Alanis demanded, her voice rising.
“I’m here first because it happened at Platinum’s. She told me she’d tell you she was dancing.”
His sister’s mouth dropped open a touch and her eyes widened before she shook her head.
“Dammit. I’m so mad. Why did she lie to me?
I told her not to do anything like dancing and she told me she wouldn’t.
She’s never lied to me,” She paused as realization dawned and fury suffused her features.
He caught her fist before she punched him in the chest. “And you! How could you let her up on that stage?”
His brows furrowed. “I couldn’t stop her if I’d wanted to, sis.”
“She had a TikTok go viral, too,” Catalina muttered.
Alanis whipped her gaze to Catalina. “Oh, sweetie! I didn’t even realize you were right there. Ugh. How are you holding up?” She moved to the seat next to Cat and gave her a sideways hug.
Punc caught sight of Blood getting off the elevator. He met him halfway down the corridor.
“Nothing’s changed.”
Blood’s lips set in a thin line. “Didn’t think so. I’m your ride.”
“Are we having church?”
“Tomorrow.”
“What?” Punc fought to keep his voice down.
“Nothing’s gonna change even if she wakes up. Prime has a concussion, and he said it was a random asshole.”
Punc couldn’t even think about Prime without wanting to pummel him. “I told Cat, Ava’s sister, that we’re picking up her hospital bills.”
Blood stared past him and sighed. “Yeah. There shouldn’t be any pushback on that, but don’t promise shit like that again.”
“Like this will happen again.”
“Don’t invite more trouble, Punc.”