Page 37 of Bad Luck, Hard Love (Heaven’s Rejects MC #6)

CHARLOTTE

I wake to the taste of my own blood and the sound of Terrance's voice slithering through my drug-induced haze.

“Wake up, Charlotte.” His fingers dig into my jaw, forcing my head up as cold water splashes across my face. “I said, wake up. You have a visitor.”

The world tilts and spins as I struggle to focus, my eyelids feeling impossibly heavy. My body feels distant, disconnected from my mind. I'm still on the bed, still restrained, but someone has propped me against the headboard.

“There she is,” Terrance coos, his face swimming into focus. “I need those pretty eyes open for this.”

I try to speak, but my tongue feels swollen, my lips cracked and bleeding. All I manage is a raspy moan that sounds nothing like the defiance I'm trying to summon.

“Someone's here to see you, darling.” He steps back, giving a better view of what’s behind him.

The door to my prison creaks open, and my heart stops dead in my chest.

Thor.

They drag him in, two men hauling his massive frame between them. His face is a battlefield of bruises and blood, one eye swollen shut, his lip split open. Blood dripping from a wound in his leg.

“Your knight in shining armor. Though he's looking a bit tarnished at the moment.”

He's alive. My foggy brain latches onto that single, precious fact.

“Thor?”

His good eye finds mine across the room, blazing with fury and something else—relief.

Relief that I'm alive, even in this state.

The men throw him to his knees with a sickening thud.

His hands are zip-tied behind his back, shoulders wrenched at an unnatural angle, but he doesn't make a sound.

Just keeps his gaze locked on mine like I'm the only thing in the universe.

“Isn't this touching?” Terrance circles Thor like a vulture, polished shoes clicking against concrete. “The biker who thought he could steal my wife.”

Thor's jaw tightens, a muscle twitching beneath the blood and bruises. “She was never yours to begin with, you sadistic fuck.”

Terrance's response is swift and brutal—a kick to Thor's ribs that sends him sprawling. The sound of bone cracking echoes through the room, but Thor just laughs, a wet, ragged sound as he spits blood onto Terrance's shoe.

“Is that all you've got?” Thor rasps, struggling back to his knees. “No wonder she left you.”

Rage flashes across Terrance's face as he delivers another vicious blow, this time to Thor's face. Thor's head snaps back, fresh blood streaming from his nose.

“You know what I love about this moment?” Terrance says, straightening his cuffs, “The symmetry. You took what was mine, so I took what was yours. Your brothers. Your safety. And now, I'm going to take her right in front of you.”

“Touch her again and I'll tear you apart with my teeth,” Thor growls.

Terrance laughs, the sound bouncing off the concrete walls. “Big words from a man on his knees.” He turns to me. “See what your little rebellion has brought you, Charlotte? This broken man bleeding on my floor? Was it worth it?”

I force my tongue to work, pushing through the chemical fog. “Every...second...away from you...was worth it.”

Something flickers across Thor's face—pride, maybe. Love, definitely. Even now, beaten and bound, he looks at me like I'm something precious.

“Beautiful sentiment,” Terrance sighs, pulling a gun from his waistband. He presses it against Thor's temple. “Shame he won't live to appreciate it.”

“No!” The word tears from my throat, raw and desperate. “Please, Terrance. Don't.”

“Oh? Does my wife have something to bargain with? How delightfully predictable.” Terrance's finger hovers over the trigger, and I can see the sick pleasure in his eyes as he watches me break. “What would you give to keep him alive? What would you do?”

The drugs make my thoughts sluggish, but desperation cuts through the haze like a blade. “Anything. I'll do anything.”

“Anything?” Terrance tilts his head, considering. “Even come home, willingly? Be the obedient wife you never were?”

Thor's eye blazes with fury. “Charlotte, don't?—”

The gun shifts, pressing harder against his skull. “I wasn't talking to you, biker.”

My heart hammers against my ribs as I stare at the man I love, bloodied and broken because of me. Because I ran. Because I thought I could escape the monster I married.

“Yes. I'll come home.”

Terrance's smile spreads like oil across water. “Say it properly. Say you'll be my wife again. My property.”

The words stick in my throat, but Thor's life hangs in the balance. “I'll be your wife again.”

“And?”

“Your...property.”

“Good girl.” Terrance removes the gun from Thor's temple, and I release a breath I didn't know I was holding. “See how easy that was? All it just took was a little motivation.” He turns to Thor with a smirk. “A lesson you should have learned, biker. A woman like Charlotte needs a firm hand.”

Thor's laugh is a broken sound, wet with blood but undeniably defiant.

“You think this is winning? You had to drug her, chain her, and threaten to kill someone to get her to say words she doesn't mean.” His eye locks with mine, blazing with fierce conviction.

“That's not ownership. That's just proving you were never man enough to deserve her.”

Terrance's composure cracks. His perfectly manicured facade splits like glass under pressure as he slams the butt of the gun across Thor's face. Once. Twice. Three times until blood pours freely down Thor's chin and onto the concrete floor.

“Stop it!” I scream, thrashing against my restraints. The metal cuts into my wrists, but the pain is nothing compared to watching Thor take blows meant to break him.

Terrance pauses, breathing heavily. Blood stains his knuckles and the cuff of his pristine white shirt. He looks down at it with disgust before wiping it on Thor.

“You know what's funny?” Terrance says as he adjusts his tie. “I was going to kill you quickly. A bullet to the brain. Merciful, all things considered.” He crouches down to Thor's level, grabbing a fistful of his blood-soaked hair.

“But now? Now I think I'll take my time. Let you watch while I reclaim what's mine. Let you see exactly what she's going back to. As you can see, I’ve already started reclaiming her.”

I follow Terrance’s gaze, my eyes drifting down the length of my own body for the first time since waking.

Horror surges through me. My shirt hangs in tatters, barely clinging to my shoulders.

The jeans I wore are gone—ripped away or discarded—leaving my skin exposed, my thighs littered with bruises blooming like violent flowers.

Bite marks mar my flesh: angry, red, and crusted with dried blood.

“No!” I sob, the word escaping on a broken breath as memories flash in disjointed fragments. Hands on my drugged-up body. Pain registering through the chemical fog. My mind mercifully shutting down while he?—

Thor roars. He lunges forward despite his restraints, despite the guns trained on him, despite everything. One of the guards slams a boot into his wounded leg, driving him back to the floor.

“You like what you see?” Terrance asks him. “Tightest pussy I’ve ever fucked. One of the reasons I put my ring on her finger and gave her my last name.”

Bile rises in my throat. I turn my head just in time to vomit weakly onto the mattress, my body's pitiful rebellion against the violation I can feel but barely remember.

“I'm going to kill you so slowly you'll beg for death.”

Terrance chuckles, running his fingers through my hair with mock tenderness. “Still making threats? How adorable.” He yanks my head back sharply, forcing me to look at Thor. “Tell him, Charlotte. Tell him how you begged me to stop.”

“I didn't—” I start, but the words dissolve into a whimper as fragmented memories surface. His hands. His breath. The taste of blood in my mouth.

“Oh, but you did,” Terrance purrs. “You called his name. Over and over. 'Thor, please help me.' It was almost heartbreaking. Makes my dick hard just thinking about it.”

Thor's face contorts with rage so pure it's terrifying. The zip ties binding his wrists strain against his fury, plastic cutting into flesh until blood drips onto the concrete. “When I get out of these restraints?—”

“You won't.” Terrance straightens, smoothing down his suit jacket. “Because in about ten minutes, you'll be dead. And Charlotte will be on a plane to somewhere very far away, where she'll learn to be grateful for what I give her.”

“The club will come,” Thor rasps, spitting blood. “Raze will tear this place apart looking for us.”

“Your club?” Terrance laughs, the sound echoing off the walls. “They’re dropping like flies. The rest won't get here in time.” He snaps his fingers at the men holding Thor. “Keep him on his knees. I want him to see this.”

Terror floods through me as Terrance turns toward me. The drugs in my system have started to fade just enough for panic to slice through the fog. I'm suddenly, horrifically aware.

“No. No. No.” I try to shrink away as he approaches the bed. My restraints bite into my wrists, metal cutting deeper into already raw skin. “Please, don't.”

“Showtime, baby,” Terrance purrs, loosening his tie with practiced fingers. The silk slides through his collar with a soft hiss that turns my blood to ice. “I think it's time we give your boyfriend a proper demonstration of what marriage looks like.”

Thor thrashes against his captors, a strangled roar tearing from his throat. “I'll fucking kill you!”

One of the men slams a fist into Thor's kidney, doubling him over. The other forces his head up, making him watch.

“Now, now,” Terrance says, placing his tie neatly across the foot of the bed. “A good audience stays quiet during the performance.”