Chapter 10
TEN
Orla
My head was aching even though my eyes were closed, and I felt my body hurt in a way it shouldn’t. I tried to call out, but my mouth felt like it was dry, and no sound issued from it.
The sound of footsteps had my body tensing, despite the pain it elicited through my muscles. I kept my eyes closed, listening for whatever I could hear.
Had it been a dream? Was I still in Italy?
No, there’s no way I would have felt what I felt had it been a dream. The sounds of footsteps came closer, before they scuttled away. A door opened and closed and then silence.
I wouldn’t hear footsteps if I was home with Bear. The carpets made sure of that. There’d been so many times he had snuck up behind me and taken me hard and fast, shocking me to the core.
I throbbed at the memory.
Trying to think back to remember anything that could have brought me somewhere other than in his arms, I came up empty. My head was hurting, throbbing with pain, a migraine lingering behind my eyes somehow, ringing in my ears from the pain.
The door opened again, and closed behind whoever it was coming closer to where I was. I was laying, that was all I knew. My hands were tied, judging by the rough pain when I tried to move my wrists, and they were tight.
“You can stop pretending,” I heard the chilling voice of someone I didn’t expect to hear. “I know you’re awake, Orla.”
Slowly, I opened my eyes, the blinding light from a window almost sending them closed again. He stepped in the path of the window and shielded me from the pain, as I looked up at my best friend’s tormentor.
Neal.
“Good,” he said. “Now that you’re finally awake, we can get down to brass tacks, shall we?”
“If you close the goddamn blinds, maybe.”
He made a movement and suddenly the light left, only a small crack bleeding in to give enough illumination that I could see Neal standing there, and another man leaving the room, closing it behind him.
“They let you out,” I said, a deflated sigh escaping.
“In one way or another, I suppose that is true,” he replied, dragging a chair over to face me. I looked down at the bed I was on, it was just a cot, similar to what you would see in a prison, which I found a little funny considering who I was talking to. “What are you laughing about?”
“Nothing,” I replied, looking him cold in the eyes. He scared me before, but I knew he was a weak little man who relied on others to help him get his way. He had no pull in this city anymore, and I knew it. “How’d you escape?”
“I never told you I escaped,” he said, surprised.
“You didn’t have to,” I countered. “The way you responded told me all I needed to know.”
He sighed. “Ah, there’s the intellectual wit I remember.
It’s a shame you bury it in your desire to feel as many cocks between your legs as possible.
”I winced at the insinuation. I’d gone through a very rough period where I needed to be satiated at every moment I felt alive.
A bad influence friend, as Neal had put it to Sheridan.
We’d had to sneak around for months just to hang out.
I’d never once seen the bruises she’d covered up in that time and felt like a horrible friend. How had I missed that she needed me?
“Why am I here?”
“It wasn’t my intention to grab you,” he admitted, crossing one leg over his knee and sitting back in the chair.
If ever a chair was to fail, now would be the chance to do it.
“But when I noticed the punk biker bitch grabbing my girls and Sheridan, I knew I had to act fast. There’s only one person Sheridan would save aside from my daughters, and that’s you. ”
Fear shot through me. She’d tried to save me back in Italy and it had ended with her in another room and Wolf being tortured. I’d heard the sounds of grunts, electricity and slapping from where I cowered in my room.
Fuck, I hadn’t even gone to visit Wolf since I’d been back, I’d been too wrapped up in Bear.
Oh shit.
Bear.
Would he have thought I’d run off again? It had been his fear when I left for work.
That’s when the memory came flooding back. I’d been on my way to the boot to get my gear in the carpark when I’d been taken. I didn’t remember anything else, other than darkness and then waking up. Had he drugged me?
“You see, Orla, you’re the only person aside from those girls that Sheridan would risk life and limb for,” Neal continued. “I need her away from that prick Cooper Malone so I can get her back to my side. I need my wife back, and you’re going to be the one to help me do it.”
Was he delusional? He thought she would go back to him after everything he’d done?
“Like fucking hell,” I spat at him, acid in my throat. “I’ll never help you.”
“Yeah, Orla, you will,” he said, sighing, and getting up to straighten his suit jacket. “You want to know why?”
I didn’t speak, but I desperately wanted to know how he could think I’d ever help him. He hovered close to me. I slunk back against the bed, as his mouth hovered close to mine. Fear laced through my chest at the thought of what he could do with my hands tied.
“It’s in your best interest to help me get my wife back,” he said in a whisper, his breath skating over my face, making my skin crawl.
“That clubhouse is going down anyway, they won’t be a problem anymore.
Don’t worry though, I know you’ll miss the dick on tap, but I have you covered.
My men are going to enjoy every morsel of you until Sheridan is back in my arms.”
Disgust rolled through me as I realised what he meant. His tongue made its way to my cheek and he licked a path up to my eye. I slammed it closed as he moaned, tasting my salty tears.
“If only Sheridan wouldn’t be upset for taking you myself, I may be inclined to sample the goods right now. It’s been a few months without pussy for me.”
“I thought you’d be more of an ass man,” I spat back at him. He pulled back, his dark eyes glowering before his smirk appeared. “Being locked up in prison for so long and all. I’m sure they couldn’t wait to make you their bitch.”
I didn’t have time to react as I felt his hand come down across my cheek, sending my face snapping to the side. Pain radiated from my cheek as the burn of his slap seeped into my face. I didn’t dare move as I heard him leaving.
“Don’t worry, Orla, you’ll be satisfied…and if not, my men will be, and that’ll secure their loyalty to me.”
I felt the shudder come just as I heard someone come in, exchanging a few words with Neal before he left. I felt the other man in the room, his footsteps coming to a stop next to the bed.
Slowly, I turned over to look the man up in the face. He didn’t hold a smile, or a leer, but the way he looked at me had me shivering.
My men.
The words tumbled around in my head as I realised this guy was just the first of many I would be subjected to.
I closed my eyes, pushing back the sobs and hating how my lip trembled, showing my fear. I thought of Bear and all the things I never got to say to him, all the things I never got to tell him about before.
I’d probably never see him again.
And if he knew what they’d do to me, he would rip them apart for daring and then he’d leave, unable to cope with what I surely would become.
An empty shell of someone he once loved.
Regret shot through me like a blade as I wondered why I hadn’t let Bear fuck me one last time before I went to work. I was always going to regret that.
Forever.
As I looked up at the face, recognition sparked, but I knew I’d never seen him before. Why did he feel so familiar to me?
Bear
“Who the fuck was it, Shae?” I grunted, my fists slamming down on the bar. Everyone jumped, including Shona. I felt bad for a single moment before I looked back at the woman who was about to make me a murderer. “I want to know who told you what was going down.”
“I can’t tell you, Bear,” she said. “I would but he could get in trouble, and he’s the only one who can help us right now.”
“Shae,” Ace tried. “Come on, please, this is Orla. She’s one of us, she’s Bear’s. You need to tell us where she is.”
The sound of Ace confirming Orla as mine did things in my chest, things I ought not to feel and yet I knew the second I had taken it upon myself to lock her up in my house, she was mine.
“Ace, you know I would never defy you like this unless it meant something to me to keep it,” Shae said. “Please.”
“With me,” Ace said. “You only.”
I looked to one of my oldest friends as he kept me from finding out where she was. I’d never felt so betrayed in my entire life. I felt Hawk’s hand on my shoulder.
“Don’t worry man, we’ll find her. You know we’ll tear this entire fucking place apart until we do.”
“And if it’s too late because your ex thinks she’s going to garner more importance by being the VIP here right now?”
Hawk backed up, but he didn’t dispute it. He thought the situation was fucked up too, but he would never defy Ace. I thought I wouldn’t either once upon a time but right now, as he stands between me and the woman who could help me find Orla, I knew my loyalty was being tested.
“I need a fucking smoke,” I said, trudging out of the clubhouse which was entirely too busy with the lockdown and sat on the side of the wraparound porch, pulling a pack from a nearby table and lighting up.
The first pull of the cigarette had me feeling relief for a brief moment before I thought of Orla being tortured for information.
“Mind if I bum one?”
I looked up at Sheridan, her eyes red and puffy from tears, her voice strangled from emotion. I flipped her the pack and she sat down next to me, pulling one from the pack and lighting up.
“Didn’t think you smoked anymore,” I said.
“I don’t,” she replied. “But in times of extreme stress, it helps.”
I nodded, knowing exactly what she meant. We sat there in silence, smoking and hating that we couldn’t do a damn thing to help Orla.
“I wish Shae had grabbed her before me,” she said softly. “If she had, this wouldn’t have happened.”