Chapter 18
Maverick
Dane,
I’m sorry. I can’t even begin to fathom how much you’re going to hate me for this, but I’ve had to do it.
This world…the bikes…the club…it’s all too much.
I had to make sure I’m giving my all to Van.
I can’t keep putting him through these changes, through danger.
You’re a dad. You made that call once before too.
I wish things were different. I wish he were your son, not his, but he’s not.
I need to run. Need to get away before he takes my son from me, before he destroys everything good about me.
By the time you read this, I will be long gone. Hidden away. Safe.
Be good to yourself. Goodbye.
Octavia Bainbridge
Reading over the handwritten note didn’t get any easier. I’d thought after clearing everything with Mari and the kids that everything was going to be fine. We were locking down that night. We were safe.
But she’d left, without a word and now I was here, drowning in the bottom of my bottle of bourbon as the club partied around us. Prospects and our enforcers were outside, keeping us safe, Reaper was enjoying his time with Rowan, unencumbered, and I was here, hating everything about my life.
At least Mari was happy. And the kids. They had a deluxe cabin out the back. Safety.
“Answers can’t be found at the bottom of a bottle, Mav.” Shadow slid up beside me, sitting down at the stool as if I’d invited him to join my pity party. I couldn’t think of anything worse right now.
“Then don’t ask any questions of me.”
“Come on…she was scared, she left. This life isn’t for everyone.”
I wanted to believe that. I did. But the pain of losing her was almost too much to bear. I hadn’t realised how much you could love someone after only knowing them a short while.
Then again, I’d always known…hadn’t I?
She was tattooed on my body because I’d fallen for her five years ago. This time, it hurt more, because I knew I loved her.
And Van.
Both were gone, and I didn’t have any way to leave the compound to ride it out, to search for them.
“What did you find out on your little fact finding mission, Shadow?”
“All seems calm for now, but there’s something brewing. I know it, you know it.”
“Heard from Mannix?”
“I’m not the port of call for him,” Shadow explained. “Want me to reach out? See if she’s with him?”
“Of course she is,” I bit back. “Where else would she be?”
“I can track her, Mav. Tell me to, and I will.”
I tossed back the last of my drink and shrugged it off. “Nah, she chose this. She doesn’t want to be here, fuck her.”
Moving off my stool, I left the empty bottle on the bar and headed down the hall to the room I crashed in when I was here. I could still smell her shampoo on my pillows, still remember Van sleeping on the bed, on my side, almost like he knew it was mine and it was safe.
Fuck.
I slammed my door shut and crumpled behind it, my knees unable to take my drunken weight anymore and landed on my ass. I hit the back of my head against the door a few times, trying to shake the last remnants of what it felt like to have her in bed, in my room.
Safe.
Prez wouldn’t let me leave, wouldn’t let me look for her. “She made the choice to leave, we can’t do anything about it”.
We could. I could tell him she was mine. My ol’ lady, and then the gates of Hell would open and we’d ride out to track her down.
Something had stopped me.
Perhaps it was because I hadn’t told him the full truth, I hadn’t told him who she was.
I still didn’t know why. I wanted to. I wanted to tell him how dangerous it was for her out there, alone, unprotected.
Everything inside of me was screaming to go and find her, drag her back, put Van into the cabin with Mari and to lay claim to my woman, over and over again until she believed she was mine.
But that’s what he’d done.
He’d done that to her, taken her against her will, scared her, threatened her.
I couldn’t do that. I wanted her to choose me.
That’s what it came down to and now, I knew she hadn’t.
Tavi
My body shook, a natural reaction to being hosed down with a high pressure, cold water hose, while naked. I refused to let him break me though. I hadn’t made a protest, or a sound of despair since I willingly walked back into the mansion to my abuser.
He was mad when I was without Van, as I suspected, but he sobered quickly. “That’s fine, you can hide him, Octavia, but that won’t stop me from using that body again to give me another heir.”
I recoiled. That had been my second mistake. The first was walking back in without telling anyone where I was going. Van was safe. I knew he was, and if something happened to me, there were measures in place to keep him safe.
“So strong, darling wife,” he sneered, as he circled me like a shark would its prey. “He’s not coming. Why would he? You were nothing but a piece of pussy. That’s what these men do. They use and then they move on when you’re no good to them. Aren’t you lucky I’m willing to take you back?”
I could barely contain the disgust, my bile rising in my throat, burning in my mouth. I wasn’t prepared for the slap to force my head to the side. One side of my cheek burning with pain from the hit. Slowly, I turned my head back, holding back the sob gathering in my chest.
He didn’t deserve my tears.
“Then again…you are used up…maybe I don’t want you now. Maybe you’re not enough for me.”
I never was.
It was why he had whores in and out of here. I’d never been good enough to fulfil his dark desires. Maverick had made me feel like I was enough.
I had been enough for him.
And I left.
The silent tears skating down my face were for him, for what I lost, for Van.
Not for this piece of shit who thought he owned me.
Even if he did right now.
“I do have other uses for you, don’t worry. Lots of men who would pay for a piece of Thomas Charman’s daughter, maybe they’ll share you around.”
I suppressed the need to shudder. It wasn’t an empty threat.
Van was safe.
That was the only thing I could be worried about, but I knew he was safe, and eventually he would forget the mama who couldn’t be strong enough to save herself.
The door opened behind him, and I turned my head to see a woman I recognised moving toward us. She wore a tiny bodycon dress that accentuated every curve of her body.
“Here, baby,” she crooned at my husband. She handed him a large brush you would clean your car with, with an elongated stick and firm bristles. “How much longer? I miss you.”
“Fuck off, Carmen,” he said, without sparing her a glance.
She’d been the woman I’d see him bring home and fuck all over our furniture without a care in the world that we had a toddler in the house.
Carmen pouted and moved out of the room, just as he connected the brush to the end of the hose.
Dread curled tight in my chest, unsure of what he had planned, but already knowing I was going to hate whatever he had in store for me.
“Now, I have to make sure you’re clean of biker diseases,” he said, a smirk laying into his tone. “Wouldn’t want to give those buying your services anything to complain about, now would we?”
I wanted to spit in his face, to tell him he was repulsive, that I knew Maverick would come for me and would burn down the entire corporation he ran.
But that was a lie I was telling myself.
He wasn’t coming.
No one would save me.
I was doomed.
As he turned the hose back on, I saw the soap foaming on the brush bristles and I knew what he was going to do.
My body shook with the knowledge of what was coming.
Hardy moved behind me, bending me over, so I couldn’t see what was coming, before I felt the rough bristles on my bare back.
He scrubbed with force, burning my skin with the brush as he “washed” me clean.
I could hear his grunts of pressure as he scrubbed for a reaction, but I gave none, feeling my skin be rubbed raw.
I bit down on my lip, stopping the scream from erupting from my throat.
Hardy grunted as he continued, lathering my skin, sore and I was sure red raw, and spraying the suds off.
He moved down my thighs, scrubbing hard on the sensitive flesh there, almost eliciting a cry but I bit it back, enduring the pain yet again.
I could tell it was pissing him off. He wanted me to cry, to scream, to beg.
I refused to.
He turned the brush upside down, and I almost copped a mouthful of soapy suds as he started to scrub my body from underneath. My breasts, my tummy, and my arms.
My body was weakening, my knees threatening to give way, but I held strong, not wanting to give him the satisfaction.
Eventually, the scrubbing stopped, and I was still standing, on shaky legs, but they were holding strong.
I could hear him panting from his efforts to break me, annoyed that I hadn’t. Then. I felt the brush on my ass, between my cheeks.
“Missed a spot.”
My eyes widened as he turned the hose part on and squirted it directly into my asshole, then lower. I grunted from biting down on my lip, tasting blood, before I felt him scrub harder over my ass cheeks and down lower, essentially scrubbing all memory of Maverick from my body.
Now that…was what broke me.