Chapter 2
Fuse
In a sickening twist, the crowd went wild.
Apparently overjoyed that a woman would be sold today.
Men were laughing, shoving each other to get to the stage, and pulling out their cell phones to check their bank accounts.
Meanwhile a sick feeling twisted in my gut.
I never would have thought that so many men would be up for something like this.
Sure, I liked a good time as much as any man, and I knew my club didn’t always play by the rules, but we had standards. No hurting women or kids and no trafficking.
Two assholes from Vulture’s Pride MC elbowed their way to the front of the stage to leer at the woman doing a bang-up job of not freakin’ the fuck out.
My shock quickly morphed into anger as they started crunching numbers on how much they could make trafficking her in three months and used that as the absolute limit of how far they would bid.
Meanwhile, the woman’s bottom lip began to tremble.
She took an involuntary step back when a horde of men surged forward to get a look at her.
She was being surrounded by the worst of us, and it was clear from her anxious expression and generalized jumpiness that she was hanging onto her sanity by a thread.
Without looking back at my club brothers, I called out to my Prez, “Storm!” It came out stressed and louder than I intended.
He glanced over his shoulder and caught my eye. “We’re workin’ on it. Give us a fuckin’ minute.”
He was huddled with a group of my club brothers. They were locked in a heated discussion and waving their arms around. I should have probably been over there with them, helping brainstorm solutions. But I was too focused on the innocent woman with the blonde curls and bruised face.
Viper lifted the microphone to his mouth again and spoke, “Gather around, brothers. Our club is auctioning off our most valuable asset today. And all you lucky dogs are at the right time and place to buy a twenty-one-year-old piece of heaven. Sweet and innocent and never been kissed. As long as you train her right, it don’t matter whether you keep her for yourself, share her with your club brothers, or rent her out, she’s not gonna disappoint. ”
His voice reverberated through my very soul. Suddenly, my whole body went rigid and my nostrils were flaring because whatever had been building in my gut had sparked into a fire that was threatening to consume me.
“Strip her so we can see what we’re buying!” The shout came from the audience and was answered by a chorus of cheers.
Vulture, the unimaginatively named president of Vulture’s Pride MC, whipped his head around. “Fuck that,” he growled. “If you wanna have a look, you can pay for the privilege like everyone else, once she’s ours.”
Viper chuckled. “I can see you’re gonna be the man to beat in this auction. I just might pay you to have a little look myself.”
“And you’d be welcome,” the older man said with a grin.
I glanced around at the crowd. All the one percenters who earned dirty money were front and center. They were energized as fuck, leering and making crude jokes, like she wasn’t standing right there on the stage listenin’ to it all.
The other clubs, the ones with their heads screwed on straight, were nowhere to be found. I caught sight of Sons of Rage, Molten Horse, and Savage Legion members. They were standing all the way back, with their club presidents standing together, lookin’ none too happy at this latest turn of events.
Viper tapped his microphone to get everyone’s attention. “Gentlemen, this lady is top shelf. We’re gonna call her Betty, ‘cause her old man loved to bet and had to use her to pay off his debts.”
After the raucous laughter died down, he continued.
“We picked her up clean. She went straight from her daddy’s hands to mine.
I made damn sure none of my crew laid a hand on her.
Sure, she’s got a bruise or two but that’s only because she ran her mouth.
I’m sure you know, but that just means she has spirit.
But that’s no problem for men like us, right? ”
Laughter from the men in front of the stage stoked my anger. She was a human being, not an object. How could these men act like this?
Suddenly Celt’s Irish accent cut through the air. “This is some crazy ass shite, cousin. Get the feck off me, you cretin.”
I looked over my shoulder to see that Storm had Celt face down in the dirt and had him pinned with a knee between his shoulders.
Celt was more protective of women than anyone in our club.
Our club president was literally holding him back from pulling her off that stage and burning it to the fuckin’ ground.
That’s how I knew whatever they were talking about didn’t pan out.
I took one last look at Celt’s furious expression and decided to take matters into my own hands.
When I refocused on the auction, they were already bidding.
“Five grand,” someone called out from the crowd.
Dog, the Vulture’s Pride sergeant-at-arms, grinned.
“Only five thousand to start?” he said. “That’s low. She’s easily worth twice that.”
Viper lifted the mic. “We’ve got an opening bid of five thousand. Do I hear more?”
My jaw locked. Five thousand for a woman wearing nice clothes and a busted lip. A woman who had been given away to pay off debts, then dragged in front of bikers to be auctioned off to the highest bidder.
“Six,” another voice called from the crowd. I did not recognize the voice. But his cut was from another small club, with a reputation for being stupid and heartless.
“Eight,” Dog shouted.
“Ten,” someone else yelled.
Then the numbers climbed in jumps. Twelve.
Fifteen. Seventeen. Dog kept bidding, even when his club brothers started to look annoyed.
Viper just kept asking for more bids and the brothers kept answering.
It was like a feeding frenzy that didn’t make any sense.
Women weren’t particularly hard to come by in the MC world.
Hell, I’ve had them chase me before, but nothing in my life could ever compare to this.
I kept trying to think of what to say to make it all stop.
Bidding was out of the question. Storm had drilled into us that no meant no and our club doesn’t traffic women.
Not that any of us needed to hear him say what we already knew.
The Dark Slayers’ patch stood for something.
We were one percent because we claimed property and lived by our own rules.
Not because we ran drugs, took hits, or bought and sold women like cattle.
I prospected because their values matched my own.
None of that high and mighty shit would help this woman.
Not if the Vulture’s Pride MC walked away with her.
She would disappear into the kind of life a woman like her couldn’t hope to survive.
At some point in the future stories would reach my ears of how the Vultures got a hold of a virgin, used her until she couldn’t take any more, and finally broke her for good.
I was dragged from my internal thoughts by another bid.
Then Viper shouted gleefully, “We’ve got a bid of thirty thousand with the Vulture’s Pride.”
The crowd fell silent.
Viper shouted into the mic, “Going once. No more bids? Going twice.”
This was all going so fuckin’ fast. If I was going to save her, I only had one play, and it was the last thing in the world I wanted to do.
Crossing this line would cost me everything, including my patch.
It would bankrupt me and shame me before my club brothers.
Still, if I did nothing, I wouldn’t be able to look at myself in the damn mirror.
Some things were worth risking everything for and this was one of them.
I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t turned my cheek a time or two in my life.
I’d told myself it was not my business. That I couldn’t police the world or fix everyone’s problem.
But not this time. I could do this one thing, this one time and maybe it would make up for the times I minded my own business when I should have acted.
When Viper opened his mouth to say ‘sold’, I shouted. “One hundred thousand.”
My voice carried across the crowd, louder than I expected because they were all quietly listening to the bidding.
Dog turned to me and spat out, “What the fuck, Slayer?”
I swallowed, my throat dry. “I said one hundred thousand dollars. That’s my bid. Either match it or shut the fuck up.” Yeah, I was aggravated with the fucker and didn’t care who knew it.
A slow smile spread over Viper’s face. “So, the Slayers aren’t the straight arrows you pretend to be.” I wanted to slap that smug expression right off his face, but I wanted to save the girl more.
Storm’s head snapped towards me so fast his neck might have complained later. Thunder stared. Renegade’s eyes went wide. Celt actually muttered “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Thank fuck one of us had some balls.” under his breath.
“I’m Fuse and yeah, I’m a Dark Slayer. I just bid a hundred grand all on my own. This ain’t club business.”
I did not have one hundred thousand. I did not have even half of that. My savings were thin. I had some tucked away but nothing near that amount. I knew that even as the words left my mouth, and I said them anyway.
“And you can cover that?” Viper asked.
I opened my mouth to answer but then noticed that his gaze was locked on Storm, not me. Of course it was. At PATCH, the club rules say every MC is responsible for the conduct of their members. I guess that includes reckless bids by brothers like me.
For a heartbeat I thought Storm would say no.
I worried that he might tell them I got excited and say I was on my own.
Or tell Viper that I didn’t have that kind of money and to give her to the last bidder.
That would have been the smart play, particularly after I’d gone rogue in front of half the outlaw scene in California.