Chapter 10
Leena
As I ride behind Wraith, dressed in my own clothes—a t-shirt and a pair of jeans—my arms wrapped around his lean waist, my cheek pressed into his leather clad back, all I can envision is the myriad of scars that lie below that leather and cotton.
This man. A stranger with dark secrets, a life lived that I know nothing about, is now my husband. No matter the circumstances, we’re now bound together by law, but there’s something else. That mystifying string that knots around my insides, pulling me to him, wrapping us up together.
Chemistry. I blame it on that and that alone.
A surge of anger rises in my gut when I think about those scars, raised and white.
I want to blame the tears leaking out of the corners of my eyes on the wind, since neither of us bothered with helmets because we were in such a hurry to leave, but I know I can’t.
No matter what he said about how he dealt with whoever harmed him, I find the force of violence twisting my stomach astounding.
I’ve never wanted to hurt anyone in my life, but I want to find whoever put those marks on him and make them suffer.
All I can do is let the impotent rage boil inside of me. I have no more control over it than I do over whatever is happening. I don’t know what’s waiting for us at the clubhouse, or why Wraith’s face was so closed off when he told me to get dressed and come with him.
I can feel the tension in his body radiating into me as he rides. He controls the huge growling beast between his legs with ease, even if he’s completely rigid.
Something terrible has happened and since I don’t know what it is, I can only try and brace myself.
My nerves are shredded and raw after the trials of the day before, my march down the aisle to a man who is so far from the vision of Prince Charming that I thought one day I’d marry.
The whole day was nothing like the wedding I’d dreamed of, foolishly and girlishly, my entire life.
As we come to a halt in front of a squat building with a chain link fence surrounding a gravel compound, I push down the strangely tangled emotions warring inside my chest. The absurd but fierce protectiveness compressing my chest, the apprehension gnawing at my stomach, the fear I have towards an uncertain future, the lingering rage I still feel towards my father for selling me off and my brothers for letting him.
I force my face into a carefully blank mask, a look I’ve perfected over the years, as Wraith helps me off his bike.
He takes my elbow, his fingers biting into my skin, but I don’t let out a sound of complaint as he marches me into the building behind the two other men who rode ahead of us.
One of them has a snake tattooed on his neck, it disappears into the collar of his t-shirt and reappears wrapping around his arm, and the other man, who looks like he could be a model, I recognize from the wedding.
Their VP, the man who had been seated in the front row of the hall beside their Prez, Steel.
His daughter is this man’s old lady, if I’m not mistaken.
We enter through a metal door, then I’m escorted down a narrow hall.
The lighting overhead blinks and flickers, the industrial kind of fluorescent tubes that always make that strange buzzing sound.
The walls are whitewashed concrete blocks, the floor white tile, the kind of thing that’s old, but stands up to the test of time, the stuff found in office buildings and businesses.
“We don’t usually allow outsiders back here,” their VP says as he turns around to study me then turns to Wraith. “Take her down to the hall. Third door on the right, then join us in the meeting room. Steel’s called church.”
Church. The bikers’ official meetings. I wonder what’s happened that Steel has woken everyone up so early on a Sunday morning.
Wraith’s hand on my arm tightens, his fingers digging in deeper, and I bite the inside of my cheek to keep from making a sound as he leads me down the hall. My steps get heavier, dread growing inside of me with every passing second.
When he opens the door and it swings in, we both take in the lone figure sitting on the edge of someone’s bed.
It’s neatly made up, the room so stark that it has to be some kind of a spare.
I only spare a second’s glance for the furnishings, because the figure on the bed unbends from the way she’s folded in on herself, like a broken puzzle piece that is never going to be set fully right again.
“Ami!” I tear away from Wraith and rush to my sister.
She hangs her head, as though she can’t bear the weight of my gaze as I stop short at the bed, afraid to touch her, afraid that if I do, I’ll cause her pain.
Wraith curses from behind me, but then the door shuts hard, and we’re left alone.
I gently reach out and even though my hand is shaking, I guide it to her chin and tilt her face up. “Ami, what happened?” I keep my voice gentle and even. Hiding my true emotions is second nature, in a home where someone was always waiting to exploit any weakness.
Her face is battered, purple welts formed over one cheekbone, an ugly yellow band of bruises around her throat.
Her one eye is black, swollen shut. Dried blood cakes her lower lip, where it’s been split down the middle.
When I drop my stunned gaze to her wrists, I find ugly welts there too, like someone held her down.
“What happened?” I repeat, when she stays ominously silent.
Her lower lip trembles and tears leak out of her good eye.
She reaches up and brushes them away. I can’t help it.
I sit down hard on the edge of the bed and reach out, folding my older sister into my arms. She comes willingly, collapsing against my chest. I cradle her ruined face as gently as I can.
“It’s alright,” I soothe her. “It’s going to be okay. These men, your husband, they’ll punish whoever did this. They’ll keep us safe. I promise.”
Ami rips herself away, shocking me. Her face screws up and when she laughs, it’s all wrong, broken and bitter. I’ve never heard my sister, so normally full of life, of happiness and schemes and wit, of real laughter, so hollow sounding.
“Who do you think did this to me?” she chokes. “It’s my husband that I need protecting from.” She spits that word, husband, like it’s vile in her mouth, like she needs to cleanse herself of it.
“N-no,” I stammer, unable to comprehend it. I picture her husband, the dark haired, Gage. He’s a big man, but the softness in his eyes spoke of a gentle nature most people might not guess at. “I saw him last night,” I continue, shock making me stupid. “He was nearly passed out at the table.”
“Yes, well, he came to. It might come as a surprise to you, little sister, since I know you haven’t experienced much of the world, but when men drink, sometimes they turn into monsters who like to use their fists to make a point.”
I bite my tongue against the words that spring to it. I want to refute what she’s saying, but how can I? She has no reason to lie.
I’m still trying to find something, anything, to say, when the door creaks open off to the side and Steph steps into the room.
Her eyes go wide when they land on us and, lips trembling, she rushes to us.
I open my arms to her and Ami does the same and she steps into us, a triangle of women standing together, supporting each other, clinging to one another, because it’s our only hope of survival.
I think back to yesterday, when we clung to each other, a knotted mass adrift in a white cap swollen sea. It seems so long ago, it’s hard to believe that it’s only been half a day.
When Steph pulls away, I take a second to study her.
Her windswept hair, her brightly flushed cheeks, her sparkling eyes, her lips—fuller and thicker than normal.
A flush rides high on her pale skin. She looks like she’s glowing and I’m not na?ve enough not to understand why, especially after I saw her and her new husband fawning over each other, flirting shyly, the night before.
I want to ask her a thousand questions burning inside of me, if she slept with him, if she enjoyed it, what it’s like, but I bite my tongue hard.
Not just because Ami is sitting right there, used and abused monstrously by the very man who was supposed to protect her, but because my pride stops up my tongue, turning it thick and useless.
I would never ask Steph those questions.
She’s my sister. I love her, but we’ve never lived together.
I’ve never asked another woman, not even my mother, anything so personal.
After Steph is filled in on what happened, in Ami’s clipped tones, she turns to me, horror written all over her beautiful features. I know that despite my effort to hide what I’m feeling, my own face probably looks the same.
“What’s going to happen now?” she asks, so softly that I have to strain to hear her.
My chest threatens to cave in and I can feel my pulse nearly ripping out of my skin. I wish I had some kind of assurance to give her, but I have none at all. “I don’t know.”
My words ring hollow in the room.