16. Chapter 16
BLUE
I was carting two garbage bags filled with the broken detritus from the bar brawl down the back hall when I heard a ruckus above the usual bar cacophony of loud music, louder voices, the clatter of boots and heels on the floor, and dishes in the small kitchen.
A noise like something slamming into the wall behind the bar.
I hesitated, straining to listen but unable to hear much beyond the country rock band’s throbbing bass and drums.
After a moment, I continued toward the back door, easing it open to peer through the crack into the poorly lit back lot.
Chaos reigned.
The White Raiders had not gone home with their tail between their legs.
And the original four had been joined by four more.
Eight Raiders to four Fallen brothers and Tempest.
Only it was obvious the Raiders had got the jump on The Fallen because Axe-Man had a knife in one shoulder even as he fought someone and Bat…
Bat was on the ground slumped halfway behind the dumpster for protection because he had a bullet in one thigh.
Tempest stood in front of him like a guard dog, a huge silver gun in her hands steady and trained on the action as if she planned to shoot anyone who stood still for long enough to get a good shot.
Aaron was on the ground under Oscar who was two hundred and sixty pounds of muscle and lard. I winced as his meaty fist landed in Aaron’s face, his nose blooming with blood at the contact.
Without thinking, eyes trained on my man as he was hit again and again, I shoved the door open so hard it banged against the opposite wall loud enough to pop off like a gunshot.
“Hey now, what’s going on here?” I yelled loud enough to pause the fight.
Loud enough, hopefully for Eugene to hear inside the bar.
Geyser used the moment of stillness to fling himself away from Axe-Man and land next to his gun, where it’d been kicked into the dirt. He trained it on the closest target.
Aaron.
Geyser turned his head to sneer at me. “Get the fuck back inside, Faith.”
No.
No, no, no.
Every self-preservation instinct I had fell away to focus on someone other than myself.
All the bravery and boldness I’d been shoring up inside myself surged forth.
There was no way I would let him hurt Aaron.
None.
Consequences could get fucked .
I turned my head slightly to catch Tempest’s eye, relieved she was looking at me even though her gun was still raised and ready.
Please , I tried to convey with my eyes.
And then, I used every single ounce of my strength to throw the bags of glass and broken wood right at Geyser’s head.
Tempest followed my cue and shot Geyser just as he staggered under the weight of the bags.
Right in the arm holding the gun at Aaron.
It fell to the ground with a dull thud, and The Fallen surged into action.
It would have been amazing to watch, the way Axe-Man pulled a man’s arm straight, turned his back on him with it still in his grip and broke it in two over his shoulder. How Dane stepped up to the man straddling Aaron and snapped his neck with a single, easy twist of two hands on his head. While the man slumped to the side of him, Aaron reached for the bloody, discarded gun and shot Tyre in the knee before he could attack Wrath from behind like he’d clearly been aiming to do. Wrath was preoccupied by pounding in Gauntlet’s face.
It would have been amazing to watch if Macho hadn’t made a grab for me.
“Fuckin’ bitch,” he growled as he carted me into his arms, ignoring the way I struggled. “Let’s see what your old man thinks about you interferin’ in club shit, huh?”
He started jogging with me over his shoulder toward the gleam of bikes in the dark just as Eugene’s shotgun boomed through the air again, and he shouted for everyone to stop where they fuckin’ were.
Macho didn’t listen.
He swung a leg over the bike and settled me over his lap facing him. “You make me crash, I’ll kill you and bury your body. Tell Rooster you ran away again.”
Behind me, boots pounded against the earth as the Raiders, those who could, ran from Eugene and The Fallen.
“I didn’t do anything,” I protested. “You just startled me while I was taking out the garbage––”
“Shut the fuck up, bitch,” he growled before biting my ear so savagely I cried out, and a moment later, the warmth of blood slid down my neck. “You can explain yourself to fuckin’ Rooster.”
My heart dropped into my belly, churning in acid.
Because I knew what Rooster would do if he thought I’d turned on him, especially for The Fallen.
He’d kill me.
Macho dragged me off the back of his bike by the hair. I fell to my knees in the dirt and tried to find my feet as he pulled me forward across the lot and up the shallow stairs of the porch. Instead of opening the screen door, he threw me through the warped mesh, so I fell straight through the door and landed on the jagged screen, the edges cutting into my forearms.
“Found her,” he hollered, pounding his chest as he released some kind of war cry. “Found her for you.”
I didn’t mention that Rooster knew where I was––that he’d sent me to work there. It wouldn’t do any good. But I hoped he would put an end to the violence, turning the air to static, because I knew I’d be at its pinnacle.
Instead, the boots that thudded heavily––unevenly––over the floor were not the black motorcycle boots embossed with roosters on either side like my father’s.
They were a cracked leather brown cowboy boots attached to black jeans that covered one wiry leg and one amputated at the knee, a prosthetic replacing the calf and foot he’d lost to a roadside bomb overseas.
Hazard was back.
I looked up with my heart lodged in my throat, throbbing so hard I gagged as my eyes locked with his pale grey ones.
“If it isn’t my wife,” he drawled in that prairie accent. “On her knees where she belongs once again.”
Time had been unfairly good to Hazard. He had always been thin but strong, a corded rope of steel leaning forward at the hips like he was walking into a perpetual wind, but age had put some more meat on his bones, filling out the wide shoulders and long arms. His hair was mostly grey, underlaid with black so it looked almost metallic and complemented the cold grey of his eyes. Even though there were harsh lines beside his eyes and mouth, he was still handsome enough to pull women whenever he wanted.
Including the one pressed to his side, his arm wrapped around her waist with his fingertips stuck down the front of her jean shorts.
The face of evil never had an ugly face to match, and it was one of life’s greatest injustices.
“She fuckin’ threw a bag’a garbage at Geyser,” one of the men behind me tattled with serious glee.
“Protectin’ The Fallen bastards,” another, Meatloaf, added.
They were rabid dogs slavering at the mouth for blood.
“I wasn’t,” I said quickly, pulling myself to my knees and then trying to stand before Macho’s foot planted between my shoulders and sent me sprawling. “My boss sent me outside to take out the garbage. When I saw people fighting, I panicked. I don’t know what half the club even looks like!”
“Bullshit,” Macho spat, planting his foot in my back so I couldn’t get up.
“Tyre got shot in the fuckin’ leg, Geyser in the arm, and one’a them killed Oscar.”
“Someone go to the bar, get Oscar’s body if they didn’t take it with ’em,” Hazard ordered. “Where’s Tyre?”
“Denny took him to the hospital.”
“Where’s Rooster?” someone asked. “He’ll want to punish her.”
“Rooster had to make a trip to Alberta, but he left me in charge,” Hazard said, stepping closer so his boot nudged my nose. “And this is my wife, in case any’a you forgot that and thought to touch her.”
There was a vibrating pause where every man tried to stay as still as possible to avoid Hazard’s wrath and scrutiny.
“Were you a bad girl, Faith?” he asked me in that sinuous voice that coiled around me like a hissing cobra, choking my neck.
My mind fell back eight years when I was sixteen again, begging him not to hurt me, obsessing over being meek and quiet enough to avoid his ire.
It hadn’t worked well, but it was my only tactic.
I had spent the last near decade trying to grow through the cracks in the foundation Hazard and Rooster had poured over my soul, and suddenly, it was all for nothing.
Because here I was on the ground beneath a boot, being ridiculed and abused as if it was my destiny.
And the thought of Aaron, his dark eyes bright with humour like a star-filled night sky, his quick smile and unfailing kindness, felt like a great cosmic joke. Cruelty so painful it cracked my bones into pieces beneath my skin.
“I don’t care what she did at the bar,” Hazard declared into the silence as the toe of his boot lifted off the ground and resettled over my hand. “Everything else pales in comparison to the true betrayal. You left me, Faith. Without a word. Do you think I can let that slide?”
“Hazard,” Cedar’s said. Hope sparked briefly like the flame from a broken lighter. “Rooster won’t be happy if you damage his daughter too badly.”
Hazard’s laughter was jagged and rusty. “Rooster’s not here, and she’ll heal. She always does.”
“Still––”
“Shut up,” he snapped as he dropped slowly into a crouch. It had to hurt his knee, he’d always avoided the position when I was with him, but he clearly wanted to make a point.
And it was made the second the cold edge of a knife skimmed my cheek and pushed my hair away from my face. Fear sluiced through me like frigid water, freezing every inch of me until even my heart seemed to cease beating.
He leaned closer, the hot breath of his voice against my cold cheek.
“I heard you’re a workin’ girl now. You know I don’t like my woman doin’ anythin’ but servin’ my needs, so you’ll be stoppin’ that right… now .”
The crack and crunch of bone registered a curious moment before the pain flared lava-hot beneath my skin. A scream ripped from my lungs as pain brutalized my hand, shooting up my arm into my chest and throat.
Hazard’s boot was crushing my hand, breaking the bones in at least three fingers, though the hurt encompassed so much more than that.
Neon colours burst behind my eyes, splashes of bright pain painting the inside of my brain. It did something to short-circuit my brain, transmuting that broken, frail teenage girl into the woman I’d strived hard to become in her absence.
As I writhed, pinned to the floor like a bug, agony collapsing my chest in that long, brutalized scream, I resolved that this was it.
This was the last fucking time they hurt me.
The last time they took something precious from me.
Because without my hand, even my left one, I couldn’t do hair or nails or even makeup. I couldn’t do any of the things that brought me joy, any of the talents I’d worked so hard to learn, any of the things that made me me .
“Fuck you,” I shouted through the pain.
“Fuck me?” he hissed, grinding down so hard I thought I might black out from the pain.
“You’re a fucking monster!” I screamed, loosening the door on the years of hatred buried inside my heart.
I thought of the sign Aaron made Cleo.
Fuck the monsters.
“Fuck you, fuck you,” I screamed as his hand wrapped in my hair, and he dragged me to my feet before bringing his elbow down hard on the side of my temple.
I was out before I could fall to the ground.
And when I came to, in the bathtub of all places, I wished I was still unconscious.
Because Hazard was cutting into my face with his knife.
When he noticed my eyes and the scream building behind the tape over my mouth, he grinned.
“No one will want you when you’re this ugly,” he said almost conversationally as he dragged the knife in a line of fire from my ear to the corner of my taped mouth. “No one but me, Faithy. You got real pretty over the years, so I figured I should bring all that ugly inside you back to the surface.”
I passed out before he could do the other side.