Page 4 of Fang (Underground Vengeance MC, NOLA Chapter #3)

Consciousness returns like a slap—sudden, unwelcome, and accompanied by a skull-splitting headache that makes my teeth ache.

The darkness is absolute, so black, so complete it feels solid against my eyelids.

I blink hard, then again, but nothing changes.

The air tastes of stale concrete and something metallic that makes my tongue curl in disgust.

My body feels wrong, like someone folded me into a box too small for my limbs. Sweat has soaked through my clothes, the fabric clinging to my skin in ways that make me want to crawl out of it entirely. Every breath comes ragged and shallow, as if the darkness itself is pressing against my chest.

I push myself up on trembling arms, my palms meeting rough concrete that scrapes like sandpaper.

The floor beneath me is unforgiving, cold despite the oppressive heat that seems to radiate from every surface.

My fingers explore outward, mapping the space around me in careful sweeps.

Three feet. Four. Then my knuckles hit something solid and unyielding.

A wall.

I press my fingertips against it, feeling the texture of poured concrete, slightly damp with condensation. The surface is seamless, professional—not some hastily constructed prison but something built to last. Built to hold people like me.

“ Did he seriously lock me in his dungeon?” I growl, breaking the silence.

Using the wall as a guide, I work my way to standing, my legs shaking like a newborn colt. The movement sends fresh waves of nausea through me, but I grit my teeth and push through it. I need to understand this space. I need to find a way out.

The wall stretches above my head, beyond my reach even when I stand on my toes. I follow it with my palms, step by careful step, feeling for any variation in the surface. A crack. A loose section. Anything that might give me leverage or hope.

My circuit brings me to a corner, then another wall identical to the first. The space is small—maybe eight feet by ten—but in the absolute darkness, it feels both cramped and infinite. Each step echoes strangely, the sound swallowed almost immediately by the oppressive silence.

Then my searching hands find something different. Metal. Heavy and cold, with rivets that bite into my palm when I press against them. A door. But as my fingers race along its edges, mapping every inch, my heart sinks further into my stomach.

No handle on this side. No keyhole. No evident hinges.

I’m trapped.

The realization hits like ice water in my veins, but I force myself to keep searching.

There has to be something. Some flaw in construction, some oversight by whoever built this place.

My fingernails scrape against the seams where the door meets its frame, probing for weakness.

The metal is thick, industrial—the kind of barrier designed to keep people in, not out.

I drop to my knees, running my hands along the bottom edge of the door. A thin gap, maybe half an inch, allows the faintest breath of air to seep through. It carries scents that make my stomach clench: motor oil, leather, and something else. Something that smells like power and violence.

“ Motherfucker,” I snarl, reaching into my hoodie.

Gun ’ s gone. Flash drive too. He definitely did this.

“ Hey, asshole!” I slam my palm on the door. “ I have to pee, and I need water. Open the fucking door.”

Based on the smells coming from the other side of the door, and the fact that the last thing I remember is Fang ’ s face, I must be at Underground Vengeance’s new compound.

I heard all about how the cartel burnt their old clubhouse to the ground.

Big mistake. That clubhouse was a piece of shit in the 9 th Ward.

This one is a fortress. I may have hacked the schematics and taken a little peek when I was poking around Fang ’ s network.

This isn ’ t good. I have no idea what happened between here and West Texas.

He must have thrown me in the back of a car or something.

There’s no way he draped me over the bike and rode nine hundred miles without someone noticing.

But none of that really matters. I’m here now, and I’ve got to figure out my next steps.

He clearly doesn ’ t trust me, and why should he?

I work for the enemy. He doesn ’ t know exactly why I had to make a deal with the cartel, but the less he finds out about me, the better.

If he discovers what the cartel has, then what would stop Fang from using that knowledge as leverage against me?

I ’ d be stuck in the exact same position as I am now.

The only difference would be the name of the organization forcing me to work for them.

I know all about UVMC—the club that operates in the shadows of New Orleans, claiming to fight human trafficking while using methods that made the police look like choirboys. Clearly that ’ s true. Why else would they have a dedicated torture room?

The heat is becoming unbearable. It radiates from the walls and floor, and even the air itself seems to pulse with it.

My mouth feels like it’s been stuffed with cotton, my throat so dry that swallowing has become an exercise in futility.

When did I last drink water? The memory is another casualty of whatever he used to knock me out.

Nothing hurts, so I doubt he hit me. Must have drugged me. Jerk.

I stumble back to the door, pressing my ear against the metal. Nothing. No footsteps, no voices, no mechanical sounds that might give me a clue about where I am on the compound or how long I’ve been here. The silence is complete, oppressive in its totality.

Panic starts as a flutter in my chest, then grows with each shallow breath. The walls seem to be moving closer, the ceiling pressing down like the lid of a coffin. I know it’s impossible, know it’s just my mind playing tricks, but knowing doesn’t make it stop.

I force myself to move, to keep exploring. My hands search every inch of the walls again, more desperately now, looking for anything I might have missed. A hidden switch. A miracle.

But concrete doesn’t yield to desperation, and metal doesn’t bend to hope.

The reality of my situation settles over me like a burial shroud.

I’m in an Underground Vengeance holding cell, probably in some basement where no one will hear me scream.

They took me for a reason, which means they want something more from me.

They already have my gun and the flash drive packed with cartel information. What else could they possibly want?

I sink back against the wall. My clothes stick to me like a second skin, salt from dried sweat making everything itch. The darkness presses in from all sides, patient and implacable.

Somewhere beyond these walls, New Orleans continues its ancient dance of light and shadow, music and violence. But here, in this concrete tomb, there’s only silence and the steady rhythm of my heart beating against my ribs like a caged bird.

I close my eyes, though it makes no difference in the absolute dark, and try to prepare myself for whatever comes next.

The first lock clicks with the precision of expensive machinery.

Then another. And another. Each metallic snap echoes through my concrete tomb like a countdown to an execution.

I scramble to press my back against the far wall, heart hammering against my ribs so hard I’m sure whoever ’ s coming for me can hear it.

The door swings inward, and light explodes into my world like a physical blow.

I throw my hands up to shield my eyes, but the brightness sears through my fingers anyway, sending lightning bolts of pain straight into my skull.

After hours—days?—of absolute darkness, even dim illumination feels like staring into the sun.

Through the nuclear glare, a silhouette fills the doorway.

Broad shoulders seem to span the entire frame.

The suggestion of impressive height. But it’s the stillness that unsettles me most—the way he stands there, patient as a predator, while I squint and blink like some cave-dwelling creature dragged into daylight.

My vision gradually adjusts, details emerging from the burning white like a photograph developing in slow motion.

The first thing I notice is the contradiction—massive arms and chest that strain against a graphic tee featuring what looks like a vintage computer terminal.

The graphic says, “ My Code Works. (I Have No Idea Why)” The shirt is completely at odds with the intimidating physique beneath it, like finding a kitten wearing a wolf’s hide.

Then I see his face, and my breath catches in my throat.

Thick, black-rimmed glasses frame eyes the color of emerald fire, intelligent and calculating in ways that make my skin even hotter.

His features are sharp, almost severe, but there’s something undeniably attractive about the contrast between his obvious physical power and the nerdy aesthetics.

Clark Kent vibes for sure. It’s like someone dressed an underwear model up as a computer programmer for Halloween.

He steps into the room, and I catch a glimpse of cargo shorts and black boots before my gaze is drawn back to those unsettling green eyes.

Everything about him screams contradiction—the body of a fighter wearing the uniform of a tech geek, the careful control of his movements suggesting both martial arts training and countless hours hunched over keyboards.

In his hands, he carries a simple metal tray.

The sight of it makes my stomach clench with desperate hunger, even as my mind recoils from the implications.

Plain bread, crusty and torn into rough chunks.

A plastic cup filled with what I hope is water, though the liquid looks suspiciously murky in the harsh light spilling through the doorway.

He sets the tray down just inside the door, the metal clanking against concrete with a sound that seems unnaturally loud in the cramped space. When he straightens, his eyes find mine through those thick lenses, and I feel pinned like an insect on a collector’s board.

“I want to know everything about the cartel,” he says, his voice carrying the flat, emotionless cadence of someone reading lines of code.

“Their operations, their security systems, their personnel.” Each word is delivered with mechanical precision, as if he’s running through a checklist. “You’re not leaving until you tell me everything. ”

I push myself up from the floor, my legs shaking, but holding my weight. The movement brings me closer to him, close enough to see the reflection of the harsh light in his glasses, close enough to smell motor oil and electronic components clinging to his clothes like a technological cologne.

“Go to hell,” I spit, my voice raw from thirst but steady with fury. “ I already gave you the drive that, mind you, you didn’t even know about ahead of time. Wasn ’ t that enough?”

For a moment, something flickers behind those green eyes.

Surprise, maybe. Or respect. It’s gone so quickly I might have imagined it, but the silence stretches between us like a wire pulled taut.

He studies me with the same intensity I imagine he brings to debugging code or cracking encrypted files.

Then he nods, just once, as if I’ve confirmed something he already suspected.

“No,” he says, and there’s no anger in his voice, no frustration. Just the same mechanical acceptance, like I’m a variable in an equation he’s still working to solve. “ You must know more than what ’ s on that drive.”

“ What do you mean?”

“ I only found a dozen files.”

“ That ’ s impossible!”

“ I scanned the drive. There ’ s nothing else on it.”

“ What?” My stomach drops. “ Let me see it. Bring me a laptop.”

“ No. You lied. If you want to stay alive, tell us everything you know.”

“ I already gave you—I mean—you took the data. Everything I had on them.”

“ This will go a lot easier when you decide to cooperate.” He turns away, stepping back through the doorway with the same measured pace he used to enter.

The tray remains behind, the bread and water sitting just close enough to torment me with their proximity, just far enough to require crawling to reach them.

The door swings shut with a finality that echoes through my bones. Lock after lock engages. Each click drives home the reality of my situation with surgical precision. The light vanishes, plunging me back into the absolute darkness that has become my world.

But something has changed. The darkness feels different now—not just an absence of light, but a presence unto itself. It presses against me with weight and substance, carrying whispers of doubt that my bravado can’t quite silence.

What if he doesn’t come back?

Or worse, what if he does and he refuses to believe me?

A flurry of questions surface from the depths of my mind like bubbles of poison gas, contaminating every breath I take. What if my defiance was the wrong choice? What if he decides I’m more trouble than I’m worth and simply… forgets about me?

And then it hits me.

If I disappear, or the cartel thinks I died in the explosion, then what would happen to Rory?

Suddenly, I can ’ t breathe.

Gasping and trembling, I slide down the wall until I’m sitting on the concrete, my knees drawn up to my chest. The smell of bread drifts through the darkness, making my empty stomach cramp with need. But reaching for it feels like a betrayal.

When I burned the warehouse to the ground, I fucked up. I may have inadvertently given the cartel a good reason to kill Rory. And if he dies, everything I’ve been through over the last ten years means nothing.

“ Fang!” I scream, scrambling to my feet and running toward the door. “ Come back!”