Vicious Cycle

When I was finished, Alex slipped on her pajamas. I went about picking a shirt and a pair of jeans I would be willing to throw away as Alex dried her hair. I came out of the closet to find her sitting on the bed with her knees drawn to her chest. Without a word, I went over to the bedroom door and opened it. “Breakneck?” I called.

His footsteps echoed down the hallway from the living room. When he came into the bedroom, Alex eyed him cautiously. “I’m going to give you something to help you sleep. Your body and your mind need uninterrupted rest, and often after a trauma, our minds can’t seem to shut down to let the body rest.”

“You’ll stay with me, won’t you?” Alex asked me.

“Of course,” I lied. The truth was, the moment she was asleep I had business to take care of—business that wouldn’t wait.

She nodded at Breakneck. After digging a syringe out of his bag he stepped over to her. Alex winced as the needle entered her arm. Once it was over, she eased back to lie down in the bed. Her eyes sought out mine, pleading for me to join her.

After I gave Breakneck a grateful pat on the back, I went over to the bed. As soon as I stretched out, Alex burrowed herself against me, laying her head on my chest. I wrapped one of my arms around her, trying to give her the shelter and safety she so desperately needed. “Talk to me,” she whispered.

“About what?”

“Anything. I just want to hear your voice.”

As I racked my brain, trying to think of something to talk about, I finally settled on a story. “The first day I came to live with Preacher Man and Mama Beth was both scary and happy. While it was weird having parents again, it was an entirely different story having two new brothers. …”

When Alex’s labored breaths signaled she had finally fallen asleep, I slowly began to extricate myself from her embrace. Whatever was in the shot that Breakneck had given her had sufficiently knocked her out. She didn’t even stir as I slid off the mattress and stood over her. It felt good to finally see her peaceful. Of course, her face, marred with bruises and cuts, along with the rest of her exposed skin, didn’t appear peaceful. It was the badge of someone who had been through terrible trauma.

A trauma that I was going to ensure was avenged. I opened the door to find Rev and Bishop both standing outside. Just a jerk of my head answered their unasked question. I may have been caring and tender in the last two hours, but now I was ready to go to work. In silence, we walked down the hallway. In the living room, I found Mama Beth and Kim staring expectantly at us. “Can you guys go sit with Alex? I have some things I need to take care of.”

They didn’t bother questioning what kind of business would take me from the bedside of the wounded woman I cared for. They had spent enough time with Raiders men to know what I was about to do. Mama Beth reached up to cup my cheek, tears brimming in her eyes. While she couldn’t condone my actions, I knew she grasped my reasoning. Then she trudged down the hall with Kim behind her.

We headed out into the dark night. Silence hung heavy around us. We were all weighted down with the task ahead of us. Even if Rev and Bishop didn’t lay a hand on Alex’s attacker, they would share in his demise just by witnessing it, and in turn, they would have blood on their hands.

When we got to the clubhouse, members still milled around. At the sight of what had to be my grim, yet determined, expression, they moved out of my way. As I pounded down the basement stairs, the familiar rush of adrenaline began to pump through my veins. Blood pounded hard in my ears, drowning out the sound of my boots on the wooden stairs.

If Willow had been frightened by the basement at Mama Beth’s, she would have pissed her pants at the sight of the one at the roadhouse. Stark white walls that often had to be repainted to cover the blood stains were illuminated by a lone lightbulb that hung on a chain and cast eerie-looking shadows into the four corners of the room. On one of the walls was a rack that resembled something out of a medieval torture chamber. Next to it sat a table filled with tools of torture.

I jerked my chin at Case and Boone before turning my attention back to the task at hand. In the middle of the room, Alex’s attacker was strung up to one of the hooks hanging from the ceiling. His arms, which were covered in multicolored ink, stretched taut over his head, and I knew the position had to hurt like hell after a while. But he deserved it. He deserved every fucking thing I was about to give him.

He was conscious now. He eyeballed me as I strolled up to him with a shit-eating sneer plastered on my face. “What’s this fucker’s name?” I questioned.

“Name on his cut says ‘Crank,’ but his ID says Keith McGuiness,” Mac replied from behind me.

Staring him straight in the eye, I said, “Crank, you fucked with the wrong man.”

He mumbled something at me behind his gag. Cupping my ear, I said, “Sorry. Can’t hear you.”

This time when he screamed it, I could pretty much make out the “fuck you!” but I still reached forward to one side and yanked off the gag. The force was so hard that two of his teeth popped out and clattered onto the floor. “Sorry about that. But you won’t be needing those when I’m through with you.”

Crank’s reply was to spit a stream of blood, which spattered onto my boots. For the moment, I chose to ignore it. “Sigel sent you to rough up my girl. Thought it would draw me out for his revenge, right?”

Crank didn’t respond. Holding out my hand, I waited for one of the brothers to hand me a tool. A set of pliers was placed into my palm. “You gonna answer me?”

When he continued to ignore me, I brought the pliers up to his hands. In rapid-fire succession, I cracked and broke the knuckles on one of his hands. Trying not to give me the satisfaction of his pain, he sucked in breath and panted it out, refusing to scream. Once I did the other hand, he did cry out as his hands, searing with pain, jerked and convulsed against his bindings.

“I’ll ask you again. Didn’t Sigel sic you on Alex so he could draw me out to get revenge?”

Once again, he only stared me down with pure venom boiling in his eyes. Over the years, I’d come across men like Crank—tough nuts to crack. Well, unless you actually cracked their nuts, and then they’d start singing like canaries. So I went back to work, but this time I replaced the gag.

After using the pliers to pluck off each of his fingernails, I handed the bloodied tool back to Bishop. He then handed me a crowbar. With almost the same stance as a golfer, I leaned back before putting all my strength into landing a solid blow into his right kneecap. A muffled scream broke through the gag, but I ignored it. Instead, I launched the crowbar into the left kneecap, shattering it on impact.