9. Chapter Nine
Chapter Nine
Two weeks later
SHERIDAN
M y head was throbbing, as if I’d taken a fall. I recognised the pain from my many years of being with an abusive prick. I’d hit my head. Slowly, I felt my eyes creep open and I looked around. My vision was blurry as I tried to blink to see straight. My surroundings weren’t what I expected. I wasn’t at the clubhouse anymore. My throat was dry, and my body ached.
Where was I?
“There she is,” I heard the familiar and very unwelcoming voice say from close by. “I was wondering if I’d hit you too hard this time, wife.”
I looked up at his blurry form from where I was on my hands and knees on a cement floor.
“Neal, what the hell have you done?”
“Oh nothing,” he said, his tone entirely too cheerful. “It’s taken a few weeks for that mongrel to take his eyes off you long enough to grab you, but here we are.”
“What have you done?”
Fear laced through me as I imagined what had become of Cooper. It had taken me weeks to get him to trust me enough to let me go out on my own.
Why the hell had I pushed him to let me?
“Since you have hidden my children from me, I’ve had to take matters into my own hands. You see there’s a debt I’d accrued over the years. I need to make good on that. Twin teenage, virgin daughters were going to get me out of that debt but since that’s not an option right now, I’ve decided that I’ll give them someone who knows how to please a man, someone who opens her holes when told to, and someone who can handle being knocked around a few times.”
My body shuddered, realising what he was alluding to. Cooper would never find me in time. I knew Neal had been into bad shit, but the people he knew…they could make me disappear overnight. My eyes watered, tears running down my cheeks soundlessly, as my future came into clear focus.
I’d probably never see Cooper or my girls again.
He would keep them safe, I knew he would even if I wasn’t around. If I had to do this to take the pressure off my girls, I would gladly take their place.
“No snarky come back, my love?” Neal asked, kneeling in front of me with that sick, twisted smile of his that told me I was screwed. “If you think your little biker boyfriend is going to find you before I have you out of Ireland, think again. He doesn’t even know you’re gone.”
I knew that. I’d begged him to let me go and visit Orla at work for lunch. He hadn’t wanted me to, but nothing had been happening for weeks. His sources told him that Neal was out of the country. How fucking stupid had I been?
I’d always been stupid. I’d had a lifetime of bad choices that I could look back on and regret. This would probably be the last choice I could make for myself. Neal knew bad people, really bad people, and I always knew how dangerous it was to be with him but nothing had landed on our doorstep. Ever.
Not until I left him.
That had been the biggest fuck you and for that, he’d kept my daughters in his house and only allowed me to see them once a fortnight.
“Don’t worry, I won’t be touching your poisoned snatch before I sell you off to the highest bidder,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to taint the merchandise.”
A deep sob echoed throughout my chest and erupted out of my mouth, my lungs seizing, wanting to stop oxygen so I could die before anything happened to me. I fell to my hands, my body not wanting to kneel anymore as my reality came crashing in, hot and hard.
ACE
Bear and Hawk were arguing over the game of pool that had ended with an early sinking of the black 8 ball. I could barely contain my laughter as Chains and Razor stepped in to break up what I could only imagine would be a brawl.
The door to the clubhouse opened and I looked up to see Orla in a tiny midriff top and short denim jeans, her usual attire, but today it felt like she was really taking it up a notch.
“Whatever sexual positions you’ve been trying lately, Cooper Malone, I don’t give a shit. My best friend not texting me back all fucking day when I’m in the middle of a fucking crisis is just not fucking on.”
Orla was steamed, but my chest fell when I realised she was being serious. Hawk and Bear, done with their brawl, came over to us, realising something was up.
“What’s going on?” Bear asked, looking from Orla to me and back at Orla.
“I know it’s been like two decades since you kids never quite hooked up and you got a lot to catch up on, but a girl needs her bestie. Where is she?”
“Orla,” I said, carefully, fear driving me to grab onto the bar and squeeze with everything I had. “Are you telling me you haven’t seen Sheridan today?”
“Of course not, why else would I come in here shouting from the rooftops.”
Shona rounded the bar from the kitchen, followed by the nurse Morena who had been a constant around here, and I was pretty sure it was because of Hawk. He had that effect on people.
“Babe,” Shona came over to Orla. “She went to surprise you for lunch. Are you saying she didn’t come to the shop today?”
“She doesn’t surprise me for lunch…not anymore anyway.”
“I helped her pack a picnic with a bottle of Jack, cheese, crackers and candy. Not exactly my kind of picnic, but she giggled when she told me that’s all she needed.”
Orla smiled, but it didn’t help the panic rising in my chest right now.
I slammed my fist down on the bar. Everyone looked over at me. “Someone tell me they have eyes or even know where the fuck Sheridan is right now.”
The clubhouse fell silent.
“Fuck!”
Hawk jumped to action, ordering everyone to do whatever the hell he said. The blood was rushing through my ears so I couldn’t form any thoughts from the fear running through me. Bear grabbed Orla and Shona and marched them outside to the van to go look at places she usually goes. Hawk was talking to Morena who was nodding quickly before he came back to me.
He shoved me so I hit the back of the bar and suddenly I was mad.
“That’s better,” he said. “Wake up, Coop, I need you at 100% right now. Where do we go?”
“I don’t know, Casey, fuck!”
“She was going to see Orla, right?” Morena’s sweet voice piped up from the end of the bar.
I nodded.
“Check the CCTV at the mall. If she made it there, then you can see what happened next. The cameras around that mall are next level because they want evidence to tear it down.”
She was right.
Hawk thanked her and dragged me outside. Chains, Razor and Savage were waiting on their bikes when we got down to the gate and mounted up. We tore out of the compound and raced down the road to the old part of Kilkenny, to the mall where Orla still worked. The parking lot was near empty, but I saw her car parked at the far edge of the lot. We stopped at the car, got off our bikes and headed inside. Hawk and I headed into the security office, kicking down the door and startling the guys sitting at the monitors. We drew our guns and pointed them at the officers. One of them shook with fear as they looked from me to Hawk and back at me.
“Pull up your cameras for the parking lot earlier today, around lunch time.”
He nodded, moving his hands over his keyboard and bringing up the grainy footage. I was losing my patience as he tried to rewind back to the lunch break.
“Do an hour before that too,” Hawk added, putting his hand on my shoulder to calm me down. “The far end of the lot.”
Soon, I saw the spot where her car is parked, but it’s empty up until 11.40am. Then she pulls in, and sits in her car for a few minutes. I realised as I waited that was when she texted me that she was thinking about coming back to the clubhouse for another round in bed. I’d told her to go and hang with Orla before that spicy bitch came for my balls.
Fuck. I should have tempted her back.
She was safe at this point.
I watched as someone knocked on her window and then an arm raised and punched down into the window. A few seconds later, she was pulled from the car and dragged into a waiting van. Her body limp.
The officer panicked and tried to back up. My arm had fallen to the side of my body, the gun feeling heavy as everything in me drained from my body.
“It’s Neal,” Hawk said. “I recognise the car.”
“He’s not in Ireland. We checked.”
“Looks like he’s back, brother,” Hawk said. “Come on.”
We left the security office and ran back down to our bikes. Chains and Razor were going through her car, but there was nothing there. The picnic basket sat in the back of the car, untouched.
“Have Bear come and pick up the car,” I ordered. “Chains with me. Razor, Savage, get back to the clubhouse and get Killian to look for Neal”
They nodded and jumped on their bikes. I turned to Hawk.
“How the fuck did he get past our eyes on him?” I asked. “He was fucking gone.”
“Call Percy,” Hawk said. A fresh wave of dread washed over me.
“Why?”
“He’s going to be the one who finds out about what’s happening. Neal is a bad dude. He took her because he couldn’t get the girls. He’s going to use her. Percy knows bad shit, he knows the circles who buy women. Call him. Get him to find out what Neal is up to.”
As much as I didn’t want to think that was going to happen, that she would kick his ass and come home to me, I knew. I knew Neal was too powerful. He’d pulled her down for years, and if he used those girls against her, she would sacrifice herself.
Any good mother would, and she was the best. She called those girls every day and asked them about their day even if they didn’t want to talk to her.
“You’re right,” I said finally, pulling my phone out and finding Percy’s name. He was a friend from way back, someone who sacrificed his life for the greater good, saving girls from being sold into Europe, never to be seen again. He rescued them, gave them a life to live, all while staying under the radar.
“Yeah?”
“Percy, it’s Ace,” I said. “I need to know if you’ve heard any chatter about a woman coming from Ireland.”
He paused for a moment. “Not that I know. What’s going on?”
“Ever heard of Neal Foley?”
The change in Percy’s tone told me he had. “Yes. How do you know him?”
“He’s got my girl,” I said, feeling the emotions rise to the surface. I wanted to punch something. “He’s her ex-husband, an abusive prick. He wanted to sell his daughters, but I’ve got them protected. Now he’s got her.”
“I’ll call all my contacts. What’s her name? And send me a picture.”
“Will do.”
I hung up before I broke.
“Send a photo of Sheridan to Percy. I need to ride.”
Hawk put his hand on my shoulder. “Come back to the clubhouse, brother.”
“Go back and make sure everything is in order. I’ll be there soon.”
Hawk didn’t want to let me go, but he knew I was going to go anyway. I had to. I couldn’t breathe from the anger, from the frustration. I needed to have her back.
I jumped on my bike and took off, leaving him standing there watching me speed away, out of the older section of Kilkenny to run off my anger, my distress.
I found myself turning into the upper class section of Kilkenny, and down the road that they lived on when they were married. There were no cars in the driveway, no lights on in the house, but I knew I could be walking into a trap. I turned my engine off and got off my bike just as the sound of a bike pulled up right behind me. How’d I know he would follow me?
I turned to see Hawk getting off his bike.
“Always behind you, brother,” he said.
I didn’t respond, but I appreciated the backup. We moved to the door and I kicked up at the lock, the door bursting in, shattering apart. I looked around the house, photos on the wall of happier times when they were married. I pulled my gun out of my holster and shot at the large family portrait, right between his eyes. Moving up the stairs, I looked around the house Sheridan had endured all her pain in. The first room on the left was the girls’ room. Twin double beds sat in the middle of the room with two desks on the wall filled with schoolwork, cork boards on the wall filled with photos and notes from friends. If you didn’t know what had happened with their dad, you’d think they’d had a good childhood, filled with friends and fun.
“They only got one room?” Hawk asked me. “This place has to have a few rooms to spare, surely.”
“Sheridan told me they stayed together because they didn’t want anything bad to happen if they were alone.”
“Fucking prick,” Hawk said under his breath. “I’m going to enjoy watching the light disappear from his eyes.”
“You and me both.”
I moved out of the room, leaving it the way I found it, and to the next room. It was a spare room with very little detail in it. I continued down the hall to the room with double doors and opened it. Photos of Sheridan and Neal were on the chest of drawers to the side. A large King sized bed with a large headboard sat in the middle of the room, twin bedside tables next to each side of the bed. This is where she slept…with him.
It was so over the top that I knew she was never happy here. I could barely contain my anger when I took my gun out and shot into the pillows, watching as the feathers inside erupted into the air from the pressure. I moved over to the chest of drawers and swiped my arm across the photo frames, jewelry and shit that was dumped there. The sound of crashing frames and crap was music to my ears.
Hawk took my hint and started ripping the room apart. I gripped my blade, ripping it through the quilts and pillows, ripping it through the mattress and generally fucking the room up as much as I could. When I was hard of breath from the amount of crap I’d done, I moved out of the room and down the hall, fucking up every room that looked like it had something with him in it. Hawk had called Chains to bring some of the boys to come and help out. By the time I was done with it, I sat down at the dining table, carving my name and Sheridan’s into the table like I was in high school.
“Let’s go,” Hawk called out to me. “Chains lost his temper and started burning shit.”
The boys all filed out of the house. We waited for Chains to come down and get on his bike before we rode out, back to the clubhouse.
I felt better.
It’d come back to fuck me, but I didn’t care.
Neal Foley was going to fucking pay.