Rough Ride (Chaos)

Prologue

Hurt

Rosalie

He spit on me.

I felt it land on the side of my chin and slide down.

I didn’t move to wipe it away.

I couldn’t.

Lying on my side, curled into a ball, the pain screamed

through me. All of it—and there was a lot of it—demanding attention, I couldn’t

concentrate, couldn’t think, couldn’t move in case it got worse. I couldn’t do

anything but lie there and pray that it was over.

It wasn’t.

He bent over me, grabbed my hair, yanked it back, and I felt

his hot breath hit my face.

“See if he wants you now, you stupid bitch,” he hissed.

He let my hair go and I felt him retreat, but he still

wasn’t done.

He kicked me so hard with his foot in its heavy motorcycle

boot, my body slid across the cement.

I was too far gone even to grunt.

I felt something bounce off my hip, clatter to the floor,

and then his voice came back, this time from further away.

“There you go, baby,” he drawled. “Your line to Chaos. We’re

done with you. I’m done with you. Now they can have you.”

I heard boots on cement, more than just his, his Bounty

brothers in the club. I sustained a couple more kicks as they passed. One of

them grabbed the underside of my jaw and shoved my head back into the cement,

also spitting, his hitting my neck.

And then they were gone.

I lay there, my focus on breathing and continuing to do it

even though each breath was not only an effort but an agony. The fear I’d felt

early when he took me, how he’d taken me, the way he’d handled me and I knew

he’d figured it out, had dissipated as pain took its place. Now, the fear was

returning that they’d come back and dish out more.

He’d come back.

Throttle.

No, to me he was Beck. My boyfriend. Gerard Beck. He hated

the first name Gerard so everyone called him Beck. All his life. Or since he

could demand that happen and not allow anything but that. Even his mother

called him Beck.

Until he got his club name, Throttle. All his brothers

called him that. When I was with him when he was with his brothers, I also

called him that.

But when we were alone, at home, he was Beck.

My Beck.

My man. My lover. My protector. My future.

The man who’d just spit on me and kicked me.

But he’d done more before that.

He’d grabbed me from work and delivered me right to them,

right to where I was right then. Even starting it, choking me until I thought

I’d blank out, then clocking me in the temple, then on the jaw, then on my

cheekbone.

Throttle.

That name was given to him for a reason but not the reason

he’d now become Throttle to me.

I shut my eyes tight, opened them, reached to the phone he’d

tossed at me and endured the immense pain that scoured through me, leaving me

feeling even more raw, which if my brain had room to process anything further,

I would have thought unimaginable.

My fingers closed around the phone and I huffed out little

breaths, which were hard to take since each one sent fire through my

midsection. So I tried deep breaths, and those were worse because the fire

lasted even longer.

Dread intermingled with all the rest as I tried to focus on

moving my thumb to open the phone, but I saw the black creeping in at the sides

of my eyes.

I couldn’t pass out.

I had to call for help.

I had to get out of there.

My body had different ideas, sending the message to my brain

that this was too much, it couldn’t take more.

So I passed out.

I came to woozy and disoriented.

The pain, the stench of the room, the feel of the cement

beneath me brought it all slamming back, along with the panic.

Having no idea how long I was out, feeling the phone resting

in my hand, I actually grunted with the effort of sliding it up, wrapping my

fingers around it, using my thumb to flip it open.

An old-style flip phone.

A burner.

We’d joked about it, Snap and me. He’d called me Scully. He

had a burner too, so there’d be no caller ID when he phoned me. So I’d called

him Mulder.

I was going to call him.

Not because I was working for Chaos anymore. I wasn’t. That

officially ended on that cement. Definitely not because I was protecting

Bounty. I’d tell the police. Absolutely, I’d tell the police my boyfriend’s

motorcycle club beat the snot out of me. It didn’t matter that I broke the

code, and knew it. It didn’t matter that I’d betrayed my man, and done it

deliberately.

I was trying to save him. Save his brothers. Save his club.

Save everyone.

I closed my eyes tight, my thumb moving over the phone from

memory, knowing the way on its own, I called him so often. That was why I was

calling him now rather than 911. I knew how to get to him. To Snapper. And the

effort would be less. I could dial the digits to get him up on speed dial in my

sleep, so I could do it lying on a cement floor, beat to hell and practically

unable to move.

I couldn’t lift the phone to my ear so I just shoved it

across the floor closer to my face, listening to it ring.

“Rosie?” Snap answered.

I closed my eyes tighter as understanding hit me with a blow

almost as brutal as every strike I’d just taken.

God.

I hadn’t done it to save Beck. To save his brothers, his

club…everybody.

At first, I’d done it to make Beck into Shy.

And then I’d done it to make him be Snapper.

And last, I’d done it to make his club Chaos.

“Rosie?” Snap’s Eddie Vedder baritone got sharper.

Oh no.

No.

The black was creeping in again.

“Sss…” was all I could get out.

“Rosalie,” he bit out, curt, alert, alarmed.

“Hurt,” I whispered.

And then, again, I blacked out.

I’d come to and gone out, managed to drag myself a

few feet toward the door, hearing the burner ring, then stop, ring again, stop,

drifting in and out before I heard him.

“Jesus, fuck, Jesus, fuck.”

Snapper.

“Ambulance or call a brother?”

Roscoe.

“Rosie, honey, you with us?”

Snap, close to me, pulling my hair out of my face gently.

“Fuck,” growled from Roscoe. “Those motherfuckers spit on

her.”

“Rosie, babe, darlin’, you with us?”

Snap, tighter, letting the anger rise through the concern.

My eyelids fluttered.

“Good, honey, good, stay with us,” Snapper ordered.

“Am-am…bu—” I tried.

“Okay, baby, okay, good,” Snap cut me off, not making me

expend more effort. Then to Roscoe, “Call an ambulance, man.”

I felt hands on me, careful but not hesitant, swift and

searching. Moans coasted out, little twitches when he’d hit a bad spot that

sent new aches, stings, or fire through me.

“Gotta check, honey,” Snap murmured apologetically while

Roscoe talked on the phone somewhere else. “Stay awake, Rosie. Stay with me,

yeah?”

I said nothing until I moaned again when I felt him gently

lift my head then rest it on something that was a lot softer than cement.

It smelled of leather.

His Club cut.

I was lying on Chaos.

I swallowed.

It hurt.

Thankfully, Snapper quit his body injury survey and started

stroking my hair.

That hurt too.

Roscoe came back. “Called emergency. Called Tack. Where we

at with Rosalie?”

“Ribs, definitely. Right wrist is bad,” Snapper told him,

still stroking my hair.

“Face is a definite too,” Roscoe said in an infuriated

mutter.

Face too.

Oh yes.

They definitely took care of my face.

“Someone choked the fuck outta her,” Roscoe kept up the

tally, the fury in his voice escalating.

That wasn’t a “they.” That was only Beck.

“Was it Bounty?” Roscoe asked.

“Of course it was Bounty,” Snapper stated tersely.

“We gotta know, brother,” Roscoe

returned quietly.

I felt his hand leave my hair, which was a relief, but then

his fingers curled around mine, which made me wince.

Eightball had bent them so far back, it was a wonder they

didn’t snap off as he was holding me when he was hitting me.

“Squeeze once, it was Bounty, Rosie,” Snap said.

I wasn’t going to squeeze. It was easier to speak.

“Yeah,” I pushed out.

“’Kay, babe, ’kay,” he crooned, thankfully his fingers

leaving mine, but they went back to my hair. “We got it now. You’re good. Gonna take care of you.”

No they weren’t.

He wasn’t.

No one was going to take care of me.

But me.

Not anymore.

They were supposed to do that before.

And now I was on a cement floor, beat to hell.

But I was going to be.

Good that was.

Yes, I was going to be.

Finally.

And it was going to be me that made me that too.

I turned my face into Snap’s cut as an indication he

shouldn’t stroke my hair anymore, as a way to tell him to get the heck away

from me, to leave me to the ambulance, to leave me alone, to get out of my

hair, out of there, out of my life.

But the fabric snagged my swollen nose and a whimper slid

from me.

“Baby,” he whispered, feeling close, seemingly all around

me, “just hang tight. Don’t move. Help will be here soon.”

Help would be there soon.

I’d be in an ambulance.

Then I’d be in a hospital.

While there, I’d talk to the police.

Eventually, I’d go home and live in fear of what my

boyfriend’s motorcycle club would do to me after I pressed charges against them

for beating the crap out of me.

What could be worse than this?

I didn’t know.

I didn’t want to find out.

But there was a good possibility I would.

I couldn’t think of that.

So instead I thought about the fact that I actually couldn’t

go home. I had to move out of the home I shared with Beck, but I could only do

that after I figured out where the hell I’d go.

It was too much. The pain. The humiliation. The nausea that

was beginning to edge in. The thoughts crashing through my brain, fighting for

supremacy. The tear slid out of my eye, soaking into the lining of Snap’s cut.

The next slid over the bridge of my nose on the same

trajectory.

I felt something of him brush my shoulder.

His chest, I guessed, because then I felt his forehead

pressed lightly against the side of my head and I heard his lips at my ear,

that deep voice of his low and solemn, promising, “Got you now, baby. I got

you. Nothing will ever hurt you again. Nothing, Rosie. Won’t let it. Nothing,

baby. Not a thing.”