Chapter Ten
Nano
Three days. Three motherfucking days of this bitch testing every ounce of control I had.
Seventy-two hours of her screaming, fighting, spitting venom like she had any fucking right to resist what was coming.
Like she hadn’t stolen seventy-five million dollars and thought she could just disappear.
I had broken hardened criminals faster than Alexandra Jones.
The first night, she screamed until her voice cracked.
Called me every name she could think of.
Her face purple with rage, spit flying from her mouth.
She kicked the back of my seat so many times that I finally reached back, grabbed her ankle and squeezed until she whimpered.
The sound, that small, pathetic whimper, scraped at something deep inside me, a raw nerve I long thought cauterized.
It reminded me of...
Fuck, Foley, don’t go there.
The second day, she tried to run away at a gas station in Nebraska.
Made it fifteen feet before Scythe caught her by her hair, then dragged her back across the pavement.
Her knees left blood smears on the concrete.
He had thrown her in the back seat, and when she tried to bite him, he backhanded her hard enough to split her lip.
I watched it happen as my gut twisted.
Scythe was a tool, efficient and brutal, but seeing her broken like that, the raw fear in her eyes.
.. a cold dread settled in my chest. I told myself she deserved it, that she was nothing more than a thief, that she stole the club’s money.
But watching her bleed, watching her flinch when Scythe so much as looked at her, felt like a violation.
Not of her, but of myself. This was becoming a slippery slope, and I was already losing my footing.
“Feisty little cunt.” He smirked, licking the blood off his knuckles.
I watched her in the rearview mirror, cataloging the way she curled into herself, the way her hands shook as she touched her bleeding mouth, and an insidious thought entered my head.
Look at her. Fear looks good on her. Makes her seem smaller. More manageable.
By the third day, she had gone silent. Just stared out the window with those defiant eyes, refusing food, refusing water, refusing to acknowledge we existed.
Her silence was dangerous. Because a girl smart enough to steal from the Brotherhood and disappear for weeks was planning something when she went quiet.
She was calculating. Looking for weaknesses.
I had been watching for them, too. The way she flinched when I moved too fast. The way her breathing changed when Scythe got too close.
The way she pressed herself against the door like she could phase through it if she tried hard enough.
All the useful information I cataloged and hid away as the clubhouse came into view through the trees.
It was time to deliver the merchandise.
I pulled into the lot and killed the engine. Behind us, Scythe and Garrote pulled up in the second vehicle.
“End of the line, sweetheart,” I said, my voice rougher than I intended, a stark contrast to the unwelcome tremor in my gut.
I didn’t look at her. Couldn’t. The knot of self-loathing tightened in my gut with every breath as I got out of the vehicle.
The crunch of gravel under my boots echoed the hollowness inside me.
I walked around to her side; the worn leather of the passenger seat was a silent accusation as I yanked the door open.
She was pressed against the opposite door, as far from me as the confined space allowed, her eyes wide with a fear that mirrored the sickness churning within me.
“Get out,” I commanded. A part of me, the one that still believed in decency, screamed at me to soften my words, to offer a hand, anything but this brutal finality.
“Fuck you.”
There it was. That mouth. That defiance. The same spark that had drawn me in initially, now a dangerous ember threatening to consume us both. I knew this path. I had walked it before, always with a gnawing guilt that festered like an untreated wound.
It was the easy way, the brutal way, but at what cost?
I reached in and grabbed her upper arm, my fingers digging into her soft flesh.
The immediate surge of regret was almost overwhelming.
I felt the sharp give, the heat of her skin under my calloused hand, as a wave of nausea washed over me.
I swore I wouldn’t do this again. Not like this.
Not this visceral, almost predatory act.
She gasped, a sharp, pained sound that felt like a knife twisting in my own chest, as I hauled her out of the SUV.
She stumbled, her legs weak from three days of sitting, a testament to her resilience and my prolonged brutality. I didn’t give her time to catch her balance. My own balance was precarious, teetering on the edge of who I wanted to be and who I was forced to become.
I started dragging her toward the clubhouse, each step a battle against the screaming voice in my head begging me to stop, to apologize. She dug her heels in, tried to resist, as I felt the satisfying give of her body weight against my grip.
Satisfying? The word tasted foul. It was a hollow victory, a confirmation of my own weakness, my inability to find another way.
She was nothing. A hundred and ten pounds of defiance that meant fuck-all when I outweighed her by a hundred pounds of muscle.
But that muscle, that power, felt like a cage, trapping me in this role, forcing me to act in ways that chipped away at the very core of who I believed myself to be.
This was the choice I was making, a bad choice, one that would haunt me long after this moment faded.
And I knew, with a certainty that chilled me to the bone, that I would regret this.
“Let go of me!”
“Not happening, thief.”
She twisted, trying to wrench free, and when that didn’t work, she started kicking.
Her boot connected with my shin. A pathetic attempt that barely registered.
But something else did. My cock stirred.
Just a twitch at first, but it was unmistakable.
The feel of her struggling against me, the desperation in her movements, the way she fought even though she had to know it was useless, sent blood rushing south.
God, what is wrong with me? I hated this part.
This visceral, predatory surge that always seemed to kick in when I had someone, anyone, completely at my mercy.
I built my life on control, on discipline, on never letting my baser instincts win.
But here it was, clawing its way up, a shameful, unwanted fire.
It felt like a betrayal of everything I had worked for, of the man I told myself I was.
I stopped walking. Grabbing her other arm, I spun her around to face me. The raw fear in her eyes was something I refused to acknowledge, a twisted sort of triumph.
“You want to fight?” I said, my voice low and cold. I didn’t want to scare her, not really. I just wanted her to stop. I wanted her to stop making me feel this way. But my words were out, and my coldness was a shield, a necessary evil to contain the heat that was building inside. “Go ahead. Fight.”
Her eyes went wide. She opened her mouth, probably to scream as I started walking again, faster this time, dragging her forward.
Her boots scraped against the gravel, her body twisting as she tried to keep up, tried to stay upright.
She couldn’t. Her knee hit the ground first. Then her hip.
But I kept walking, dragging her through the parking lot like a sack of garbage, her jeans tearing on the rough surface, her hands scrabbling for purchase.
And my cock got harder.
No. Stop it. This is wrong. This is exactly what you swore you would never be.
My physical arousal felt like a sickness, a vile reaction to her suffering.
It made me sick to my stomach, and yet I couldn’t stop the physical response.
It was a vile testament to my own weakness, my own inherent ugliness that I fought so hard to suppress.
I was supposed to be better than this. I was supposed to be above it.
But in this moment, I was utterly failing myself.
I had to make her stop, not for my own pleasure, but to stop this disgusting internal battle, to stop feeling like a monster.
But the only way I knew how to make her stop was to keep going, and that was the worst choice of all.
I cursed myself for the powerlessness I felt, trapped by my own biology and my own past. This was the failure I feared most, the one that promised a regret that would fester for years.
Fuck.
I hadn’t felt this in years. Not since I was younger, not since before I learned to control myself.
This raw, primal response to someone’s suffering.
Her whimpers, those small, pitiful sounds escaping her throat, her desperate attempts to break free from the restraints, the way her body scraped and dragged across the sharp gravel, leaving trails of torn fabric and scraped skin.
It was doing something to me. Something dark and hungry and twisted that I thought I had long buried.
Something I had convinced myself was gone, dead, excised from my psyche through years of discipline and denial.
But here it was again, rising up from whatever depths I had shoved it down into, demanding to be acknowledged, demanding to be fed.