Chapter 51
Vienna
My eyes opened as I heard the door to Gabriella’s room crack open. The light spilled onto the floor, and as I focused on the gap, I saw Dante looming there, his face tight.
“Come with me, brother,” he said quietly. “Urgently.”
I looked at Gabriella sleeping next to me, her face so calm and serene in her sleep, and gently rolled her away so I could slip out of bed unnoticed.
I pulled on my jeans and my cut, not bothering with a shirt underneath, and slipped out of the door, careful not to wake her up.
“What’s up?” I asked, not liking the grim look on Dante’s face.
“We’ve had a report of a body.”
“Another one?” I asked with a flinch.
We had been getting reports of more and more bodies as of late. All of them women, all of them showing evidence of sexual assault and violent murder.
All of them pointing to Nico as the culprit.
He wasn’t exactly subtle, considering each of them had a message. It had taken us a while to find the first one—it had only been found in the morgue when she was being examined. Nico had shoved a note inside her genitals, essentially blaming Gabriella for leaving her behind.
After that, we made sure we checked each and every one of them, and it was always the same message.
One was stuffed inside the victim’s mouth. Another carved into her stomach. One had it written on her stomach in blood. But the message was always blaming Gabriella for having not saved them.
“Yeah, another one,” Dante said.
“So why does it need me?”
Dante looked at me, and I already knew what he was going to say.
“We think it’s Michelle.”
I swore under my breath.
“It gets worse,” Dante said, his jaw tight.
“Of course it does.” I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Hit me.”
“He’s left her in the park.”
“Which park?” I demanded, once again already knowing the answer.
“The neutral one. Where we met Gabriella for the first time.”
“Of fucking course,” I sighed.
Nico was making this more and more personal every fucking day.
“Shit,” I hissed as we pulled into the park and saw the state of the body waiting for us.
Thank fuck it was night, because this would traumatise the hardest of men, never mind fucking kids.
“That’s one fucked up biker,” Ant agreed, his face greening at the edges.
This park was in neutral territory, so there was no concern about us all being here. We could focus on the matter at hand, rather than concerning ourselves with territorial matters.
And focus we were, because Nico had made sure that Michelle’s body was centre stage.
Her arms were attached to the monkey bars, as wide as he could stretch them. Her head was flopped onto her chest, a lump in her neck clearly showing that it was broken.
“He ain’t no biker,” Doc spat. “He’s a cunt that rides. No biker would do this to a woman. It ain’t our way.”
Shaking my head, I left my brothers behind and approached the body, noting everything I had missed from a distance.
Her legs were curled underneath her, almost like she was kneeling.
Her chest had been completely carved out, the wounds so deep her rib cage was showing.
Her stomach had been sliced, not deep enough to spill any organs, but deep enough that bugs had crawled inside her, covering themselves in her guts.
“Is that—”
“Yep,” I said tightly, not needing Dante to finish his sentence.
She was wearing my cut. The same one I had given to Gabriella when she’d snuck over to the clubhouse a few weeks back. The item that had kick-started this entire shit show.
“You know there’s a punishment for giving your cut away,” Dante told me.
“I think Michelle paid a high enough price, don’t you?” I replied, my lip curling in disgust at the state of her.
Dante reached forward, opening the folds of the cut and revealing the rest of Michelle’s upper body to us.
Her arms had clearly snapped somewhere along the way, her shoulders hanging out of the sockets at an unnatural angle, and there were long, thick slices down the length of them.
Which was the same with her legs. They were covered in knife wounds, deep enough that I could see the muscles in her thighs.
Dante used his foot to nudge her knees open. Not that he particularly wanted to, but because we knew based on the other bodies that there would be a message somewhere.
And, lo and behold, as he parted her knees, we saw it.
A knife buried deep inside her genitals with chunks of flesh dried to the handle.
“That’s fucked up,” Doc gagged, turning his head to be sick.
Dante half scoffed, half laughed under his breath and then looked at me with his eyebrows raised.
“Don’t,” I said with a small shake of my head and then gesturing in the direction of the rest of the lads. They knew what had happened with Gabriella and Nico the other day, but not all the details. We kept the worst of it between ourselves to protect her dignity.
They didn’t need to know that Nico had threatened to fuck her with a knife, and now we were looking at her mother in the same position. It was bad enough with her mother alone.
“Boss,” Hacksaw said, his voice coming from behind Michelle.
“What’s up?”
His lips twisted as he stood up. “Look under the cut.”
“For fuck’s sake,” I muttered under my breath. Dante walked around and crouched next to Michelle’s body, raising the leather.
“Forever mine, princess,” he read. “Carved in there pretty deep as well.”
“Yep. Sounds about right,” I sighed.
I’d reached the point where this was becoming white noise. It should have been horrific. I should have been disgusted.
But I was becoming numb to it all.
“Just… just cut her down,” I said. “Let’s at least try to give her some dignity.”
Dante pulled out his knife, ready to cut through the ropes securing her wrists to the metal bars, just at the same time as my phone started ringing.
“Withheld,” I said, holding the screen up. “Wanna take a bet on who this is?”
I brought the phone to my ear.
“Let me guess—you’re watching all of this?”
Nico didn’t answer. Shuffling filled the line, followed by his heavy, angry breathing.
“All of this is wholly unnecessary, Nico. You could just show yourself right now and we can get this over and done with. You and me, one on one, the way it’s supposed to be.”
More shuffling.
And then, a click.
“Nico, please stop,” Gabriella begged.
And my heart immediately froze.
“Nico!” she screamed, her voice almost drowning out his sickening laughs.
“Take me instead. Stop hurting her!” Gabriella begged.
“You want me to fuck you, princess?” Nico sneered. “Are you going to be a good girl and get on all fours and let me fuck you like the bitch you are?”
“Ye-yes,” Gabriella sobbed. “But get my mother s-some m-medical a-attention first. P-please.”
“She’ll see a doctor when I’m finished with you. The quicker you’re on your knees, the sooner that will happen.”
I heard Gabriella gasp, and then her heart-wrenching yelp of pain, followed by the sounds of skin slapping against skin.
One by one, phones started pinging. My brothers pulled them out, looking down at the screen.
“That fucking son of a bitch!” Dante roared, snatching Ant’s phone out of his hands. “Nobody fucking answer. Drop your phones right now. Right fucking now! I want every pair of hands in the air this second!”
My brothers dropped their phones, raising their arms to show their empty hands.
“Tell my princess I’ll be seeing her real fucking soon,” Nico chuckled in my ear, disconnecting the call immediately afterwards.
“What is it?” I demanded, looking right at Dante.
“I’m guessing the footage to what you were just listening to—Vienna, don’t,” he warned as I bent down to pick up Ant’s phone.
And there she was.
On her knees, with Nico pounding into her from behind over and over. She had a glassy look in her eyes, letting me know she had disappeared somewhere in her mind, somewhere he couldn’t reach her.
“I’ll trace the footage,” Hacksaw said, gently plucking the phone from my fingers and ending the recording. “I’ll find where it was sent from, brother. I promise.”
“You better,” I said, my voice low and hollow. “Help me get this place cleaned up and let’s get the fuck out of here.”