Page 32 of Bad Luck, Hard Love (Heaven’s Rejects MC #6)

CHARLOTTE

Pain detonates across my face, violently yanking me from the abyss of darkness into the harsh light of reality. My eyes snap open to see Terrance looming ominously over me, his knuckles poised for another brutal blow.

“Finally awake, princess? I was beginning to think I'd hit you too hard.”

I attempt to move, but my wrists are shackled above my head, the metal biting cruelly into my skin. My ankles share the same fate. Panic rises like a wave of bile in my throat as I thrash against the restraints, the metal frame of the bed groaning beneath my futile struggles.

A bed—I'm on a bed.

But it's not mine. Not Thor's. Nothing here is familiar. The room is a sterile prison of windowless dark gray walls, a single bulb hanging above, casting stark and unforgiving shadows across Terrance's face. The air is thick with the stench of mildew and a chemical odor that sears my nostrils.

“Where am I?” I croak, my voice raspy and raw as if I've been screaming for ages. Perhaps I have.

“Somewhere no one will find you.” Terrance straightens, adjusting his cufflinks with a practiced, almost ritualistic precision.

Even now, even in this hell, he is immaculate, clad in a tailored suit with a perfectly knotted tie.

The devil dressed for success. “Somewhere your biker boyfriend will never think to look.”

I try to swallow, but my mouth is parched, as dry as a desert. “People will look for me.”

Terrance laughs, the sound bouncing eerily off the bare walls. “Your biker? He's probably dead by now. Your little bodyguard certainly is.”

V. Oh god. I squeeze my eyes shut, desperately fighting back the tears threatening to spill.

“Look at me when I'm speaking to you,” Terrance snarls, seizing my jaw with such force that I feel the bone creak under the pressure. His fingers dig into the bruises he's already inflicted, sending fresh waves of agony through my skull, forcing me to look at him.

“This is what you get for divorcing me,” he says as his thumb traces my split lip. “For blackmailing me to pay you spousal support.”

His hand slides down my throat, tightening just enough to restrict my breathing. “I built you from nothing, Charlotte. Gave you everything. And how did you repay me? By trying to ruin me.”

“You ruined yourself,” I gasp.

His grip tightens, black spots dancing at the edges of my vision as I try to twist away. His face swims before me, distorted by hatred and something else… Pleasure . He's enjoying this.

“I had such plans for us,” he continues, sitting on the edge of the bed. His weight makes the mattress dip, forcing me closer to him. The proximity makes my skin crawl as memories flood back—his hands around my throat, his fists against my ribs, his words cutting deeper than any blade.

“You could have been perfect,” he coos, fingers tracing the curve of my cheek almost tenderly. “My perfect wife. My perfect partner.”

Then his hand is in my hair, yanking my head back painfully. “Instead, you'll live your life as my merchandise. My whore.”

He yanks harder.

“Did you fuck him?” The question drips from his lips like acid. “That biker. Did you spread your legs for him like the whore you are?”

I say nothing, jaw clenched against the pain. Terrance's hand releases my throat only to trail down my body, stopping at the collar of my shirt.

“Did he touch you here?” His fingers brush across my collarbone, then lower, cupping my breast through the fabric. I flinch, turning my face away as bile rises in my throat. “Did you like it when he put his filthy hands on what belongs to me?”

“I don't belong to you,” I choke out, fighting against the restraints until metal cuts into my wrists.

His palm slides lower, creeping across my stomach until it stops at the waistband of my jeans.

“What about here?” he murmurs, fingers toying with the button. “Did he touch you here, too? Did he get to ruin what was mine?”

His hand dips beneath the denim.

I thrash violently, the restraints cutting deep, the bed frame groaning against the concrete as I kick with everything I have left.

“Don’t touch me!” The scream rips from my throat, torn and feral.

Terrance’s grin widens, a predator delighting in the agony of its prey. “There she is,” he breathes. “There’s my Charlotte. I’ve missed that sound—you, begging me to stop. Like old times.”

“You’re fucking sick,” I spit.

He releases me so suddenly my body collapses against the mattress, lungs heaving as I gasp for air.

Terrance steps back, fixing his tie with slow, deliberate care. As if straightening silk could polish the rot inside him.

“Sick?” he echoes, unbothered. “Maybe. But I’m not the one who’s about to be fucked into obedience and sold like the good little product she was always meant to be.”

From his jacket, he produces a syringe. Glass and steel. Clinical. Cold. The liquid inside glints beneath the overhead bulb, clear as death.

My throat tightens. “What is that?”

“Compliance in a vial,” he says, flicking the syringe like a man about to paint his masterpiece. “Just a little cocktail to keep you pliable during transport. Don’t worry—you won’t feel a thing.” He leans closer, smile razor-sharp. “But they will.”

Panic floods my system so fast it drowns everything else. I buck and twist, wrists tearing against metal cuffs until warmth drips down my arms. Blood. Mine. Again.

“Still fighting. You never did know when to quit.”

He crouches by the bed, breath ghosting over my cheek. “No one’s coming for you, Charlotte. Your biker’s probably decomposing in a ditch. And those new little friends? Oh—they screamed like amateurs. One of them begged.”

A sob claws at my throat, but I swallow it down like poison. I will not give him that.

“Thor will find me,” I rasp, every syllable forged from pain and defiance. “He’ll bury you.”

Terrance tilts his head, as if genuinely intrigued. “You actually believe that.” He smiles like a man watching a child clutch a broken toy. “That’s adorable.”

He grabs my arm, rolls up my sleeve with the same hands he used to bruise me all those years ago. The needle gleams, its tip brushing my skin.

“I’ll make you a deal. If your precious Thor manages to crawl out of whatever grave I left him in and stumbles through that door alive…” He taps the syringe once, twice. “I’ll let him watch me break you before I slit his fucking throat.”

I thrash like a feral thing, teeth bared, wrists shredding against metal restraints, but Terrance barely moves.

His grip is unyielding, forged from years of control and cruelty.

He pins my arm down with one hand, the other lifting the syringe—sleek and silver, trembling with promise. Not mercy. Never mercy. Oblivion.

“I wonder,” he murmurs, almost to himself, “if you’ll still love him when your brain is nothing but static and rot. When you’re drooling and spread for the next bidder, crying because your body remembers pain, but your mind doesn’t know why.”

The needle presses to my skin.

I try to jerk away.

I fail.

The sting is sharp, but the scream that tears from my throat isn’t for the pain—it’s for the helplessness. The violation. The goddamn nightmare he’s dragging me back into with a smile on his face.

The plunger sinks.

I feel the cold first—liquid ice threading through my veins, wrapping around my spine. And then comes the warmth, syrupy and thick, seducing every nerve into surrender. My limbs go slack. My lungs forget how to breathe.

“There we go,” he purrs, sickly sweet as he slides the needle free. “Much better. Now we can start fixing all the little pieces you broke.”

Reality fractures. Light smears across my vision like blood on glass. I blink, and his face splits into three, then two, then one again. A monster in triplicate.

“You won’t get… away with this,” I slur, tongue heavy, numb. “Thor… will find me.”

Terrance chuckles—low and cold, like it’s been aging in the back of his throat. “Let him come. I’ll peel the skin from his fucking bones and make you watch. And you? You’ll smile for me while I do it. Maybe even beg me not to stop.”

“I only need…one man. One man who… loves me more… than he fears you.”

“Oh, princess.” He leans in, lips brushing my ear like a mockery of a kiss. “Still clinging to that bleeding little heart of yours. Still dreaming someone gives a fuck about saving you.”

His breath is humid against my cheek.

“Here’s what you really need to remember,” he hisses, venom lacing every word. “You’re not a woman anymore. You’re a product. And I’m going to make sure you’re my best seller.”

Then he steps back, unbuckling his belt slowly, deliberately, like this is just another business transaction.

“Be a good girl, Charlotte, and spread your fucking legs for your husband.”

The last thing I see is the cold detachment in his eyes—empty, hollow.

And then nothing.

The drugs pull me under, thick and choking, dragging me into the dark.

But even as my mind fractures and my body turns to stone, I cling to one thing like a blade in my fist.

Thor.

He’ll come.

He’ll burn this place to the ground.

And when he does, he won’t stop until there’s nothing left of Terrance but blood and ash.