Chapter 21
BLAIZE
Ishould have kicked Hawke in the balls instead of allowing this girl to stay in my town.
Her snarky attitude was going to make me commit accidental murder, and then we’d really have a problem.
Hunter was still having trouble finding out who she was, which meant she was hiding something.
I needed to know what the hell it was before she brought it to my town and my club.
If this girl and her secrets hurt anyone here, I would do much worse to her, and it wouldn’t be pretty.
I watched her from the shadows as Annika showed her around.
She was jumpy and didn’t necessarily like the attention her body drew from the men in the club.
Nothing would happen to her here, even if there was something about her that I didn’t like.
I wanted to know her secrets. She said she had demons, but so did I.
She had shadows in her eyes, but she tried to hide it with her attitude and a smile.
What did she do in her life to get so many at a young age?
She was a beautiful curiosity, one I was going to figure out.
I’d learned to read people and find their intentions through facial expressions and their voice.
It was a skill I learned by watching my father.
The seedy bastard made me who I was today.
My mother was a beautiful woman, getting her beauty from my grandmother.
The Portuguese in her made her desirable and my father ran to her, marrying her quickly and trapping her with me.
When I hit puberty, I started filling in and my father used it to his advantage since I wanted to be a part of his schemes.
I didn’t care that the bastard was sexualizing a teenager.
I wanted power, money, and rank. From fourteen to seventeen, I watched, learned, and played the game.
I learned every trick in the book and used it to my advantage.
The problem with men in power was they wanted more and more until they finally fell off their thrones.
It was how I took over here. Elijah West was a greedy bastard who used the pain of others to fuel his operations.
He liked invoking fear into people, and that was how he stayed at the top.
He didn’t expect me to show up here out of the blue and burn his shit to the ground, though.
I found his weaknesses, and it was the men who trusted him.
Little did they know he was taking their female relatives and using them.
When I revealed to his people that the girls in sex trade were their family members, they joined me.
He had a few who didn’t care and stood by his side, but a lot of people hated rape in my territories.
Drugs and weapons were the only way to make money for most of the men.
He kidnapped and tortured me until Hawke found me.
Elijah thought I would break, but I wasn’t as weak as he thought I was.
Did it hurt like a bitch, and did he make me scream?
Absofuckinglutley. He thought if he cut my skin, showed my naked body to his men, and taunted me I would fall to my knees and submit because women were supposed to fear men.
“Blaize, Blaize, Blaize,” Elijah taunted, twirling the dagger in his hand before stabbing my left thigh. I gritted my teeth together, hearing them crack as searing pain shot through me. “You don’t fucking listen!”
I scowled at him, bitter words on the edge of spilling, but unfortunately, he was the one with the knife, and I was strung up like a Thanksgiving turkey.
His death was going to be painful, his blood painting the streets as a new reign took over.
Elijah West would be a pest forgotten when I was free.
“Tell me,” I started, knowing I was going to regret it, but I was a stubborn bitch. “Is forcing yourself on a woman the only way your dick gets hard?” His eyes narrowed, his jaw clenching tight as his fists grasped the handle, turning his fingers white.
“Women are fucking whores, only useful for one thing.”
“Did your mommy hurt you? Or did your dad hurt your mom and fuck you up as a kid?” The blade dug into my hip bone, hellacious pain radiating up my spine.
“Women are mouthy whores.” He ripped my top, buttons flying across the room before he unbuttoned my jeans and yanked the bloody fabric down my thighs.
Goosebumps kissed my skin as I sneered at him.
My breasts were free, the chilly warehouse causing my nipples to pebble.
The tip of the dagger slipped between my thong, shredding the fabric and leaving me exposed.
Did he think this fear tactic would work? Was I supposed to quiver because he stripped me down? I laughed bitterly. “What are you going to do? Rape me? Scare me? Do you think your flaccid dick can do anything to me? I’ve used my body to get everything I need in life.”
His eyes flashed in anger, earning a backhand to my face.
I tasted blood, looking at him before spitting at him, my bloody spittle hitting his cheek as I grinned maniacally.
Cocking my head to the side, I watched him, waiting to see what he was going to do.
I already knew he was going to continue his torture, but he was not going to kill me. He was too much of a pussy for that.
“I’m going to have fun making you scream.”
When he was satisfied with his handiwork, he strung me up by my wrists, dangling from the ceiling and bleeding out.
Sometime after he left, Hawke found me. When I healed, I blew up his biggest shipment of the year.
He lost half-a-million dollars in cocaine and PCP.
Elijah was furious, and that was when it started going downhill.
When his defenses started to fall, he got scared.
And what do scared men do? They go after the weak.
He killed my daughter and raped my wife before shooting her.
Olivia bled out, holding our daughter’s body until I got there.
When she died, so did I. She and my daughter were the only good piece that was left in my stone-cold heart.
Hunter walked up to me with a smirk and a glass of whiskey in her hand.
She followed my view and saw the pretty little deer caught in my line of sight.
I took the whiskey from her and threw it back, the amber liquid not fazing me one bit.
Hunter rolled her eyes and stood next to me in silence for a moment.
She was going to ruin my moment of peace by opening her fucking mouth, and it was going to piss me off even more than I already was.
“I heard you saw her tits already,” Hunter stated, and now I was really going to kill Hawke.
I never should have let her give me that lap dance.
Hawke already pissed me off with his choice of lingerie—or maybe that was Fallon’s choice.
Fallon was a pesky woman who liked to torment me.
Either fucking way, the emerald-green beauty looked phenomenal.
All her fucking curves and her full breasts on display.
I had more self-control when I saw a pair of boobs, but I wanted to grab her by the throat and slam her back into my desk, taking her nipples into my mouth.
I wanted to drag my tongue down her body until her thighs were wrapped around my head and I showed her who was in charge.
“Do we have any word from Cinder on the shipments?”
“She’ll come here in a month with Melisa to pick everything up.” I narrowed my eyes on Hunter. Melisa was Cinder’s cop girlfriend, even if she didn’t put a label on it because she didn’t tell her sister. “Melisa isn’t a cop when she comes here, remember that,” Hunter said.
“Cinder better be lucky I like her or I would stab her.”
Hunter laughed, closing her iPad. “Yeah, and then you’ll have a slew of pissed off Vipers knocking on your door. You know she’s giving you good business.”
“And grey hair.”
“Ehh, it’s already grey, babe.”