Page 2

Two

vengeance

chapter-seperator

I ’d gone through this scenario a million times in my head, each version ending in blood. Had I accounted for every possible reaction? Contingencies were hard-learned by me, drilled into my ass over the months and years since I’d last set foot in this place. The scars made sure I’d never forget the lessons.

I don’t know how I fucking survived until now—to have this chance, this opportunity that’d been ignored or outright denied for far too long.

Sometimes it takes the heart and the mind years to come to the same conclusion, to finally meld in the truth. To accept that survival and vengeance are the same thing.

I grew stagnant in the trash they tossed me into, believed I had no value—but my holes did. Men like them made sure of that. The biggest gaping wound, even after all the years of rape and sodomy, after every brutal violation, will always be in my soul. They took more than my body—they carved out any chance of self-worth I might’ve scraped together by now, if only things were different.

But fuck all that melancholy, strychnine-flavored cocktail. The ifs, the maybes, the somedays are poison. Apathy is death in slow motion, and I’m done dying slowly.

I’d recorded a confession on my phone, in case one of them shot me in the head before I could speak. My last words preserved in digital clarity—a final fuck you to their brotherhood of lies.

As the seconds ticked away on the remaining minutes of my miserable life, literally with my back to the wall, I had an epiphany. Alcoholics called it a moment of clarity. This was the dumbest idea to ever sift through my drug-damaged brain. But even the biggest fools stay the course, because once you cross the threshold where turning back’s no longer a viable option, it’s full thrusters ahead, Scotty. The chaos that inevitably ensues after that point is just collateral damage.

That fucking bastard, more commonly known as Jason French, was in there—behind those sealed wooden doors—having church. That suited me just fine because I came here to testify. My body remembered every mark he’d left on my heart, every scar that whispered his name.

Truth is just one of those things people claim to want—hell, they even demand it—but they’ll seldom thank you for it. One reason: it fucking hurts. But not as bad as a vengeful bullet or an innocent knife to the gut. Sometimes, it even kills.

Turns out, love isn’t the villain. It’s the monsters we become because of it.

Although that’d also be true for my life. I learned to love the darkness I was thrust into. I love it in me, even now. I slithered at the bottom, swimming in the cesspool with sharks, surviving on the carnage and the fragments of those devoured. Their violence became my air.

I love what I hate.

I hate what I used to love.

After I said my piece, I’d send both of us straight to hell. It was time he had a taste of what he turned my life into. He threw me away like garbage—treated everyone like that—getting away with it because his daddy, Luke, was boss of this little corner of backwoods bayou. Now it was his turn to be discarded.

I had a moment of doubt, imagined the door might be locked. It wasn’t. I wouldn’t let the fear control me—the fear of not knowing what’d happen next. That’d been my life for so long, you’d think I’d be used to it, but fuck no. Fear never gets easier; you just learn to wear it like a second skin.

So I barged inside the cheap, wood-paneled den of misogynistic evil and slammed the door behind me. My heart decided it’d be cool to pound clear through my ribcage in that moment. I was surprised not to see it waltz across the raggedy floor, leaving bloody footprints in its wake.

Being in the same room with that many outlaw bikers sent ice through my veins, the familiar stench of leather and testosterone making my skin crawl. But like hell it’d stop me, because they weren’t the Jackals. They hadn’t earned that level of fear.

Not yet.

Guilt by association, motherfuckers.

I recognized Edge first. He was furthest away, at the end of the table. He looked so much older than I remembered. It’s weird, the tricks my mind played—I still pictured him the way he was… long ago… with her. Before everything went to hell and stayed there.

At the end of the table, in the seat reserved for their outlaw leader, was Jace.

They’d made him president?

WTF?

Did they have so little loyalty for the senior French who used to sit there? The thought made bile rise in my throat.

Not that Luke was any better. He was the reason that sorry excuse for a man even existed. He created a monster, utterly clueless in his fatherly devotion to a son who deserved none of it. Like father, like son—both of them masters at destroying lives.

A hug from Jason French was simply him looking for the best place to stick a knife. Nobody was safe around him, yet there he was, surrounded by fools who had no idea what he was truly capable of.

But I did.

I carried the proof etched into my flesh.

It was time to clue them all in.

A litany of curses hit my ears like a dull drone. I stood firm, like a statue of pissed-off.

“You lost, darlin’?”

“The fun doesn’t start till after the meeting.”

“Get this bitch outta here.”

“I don’t remember ordering junkie gash to be delivered.”

“Yo, earth to crazy cunt, what planet are you on right now?”

There was snickering too. Nothing I didn’t expect or hadn’t heard before. Men are so predictable—these types of men, particularly so. Their words were nothing compared to what I’d survived.

But Jace turned a shade paler than tan, like he’d seen a ghost in those few seconds. That made sense—I looked like death even now. I stared at the man who’d taken my life along with another, more precious than my own, as I pulled my pistol out and aimed it at him. The metal felt cold against my palm, familiar as an old lover.

I expected, in the next moment, to hear a loud BANG—then lights out.

When I was still alive a moment later, I focused my attention solely on the source of my fury and bitterness. I wouldn’t miss—not this close. I’d practiced for just shy of a year. But then it truly felt like every moment that’d passed since I last saw his face was practice for this moment. It’d taken me that long to work up the guts—and sobriety—needed to face him one last time.

This was a day of reckoning for both of us. Judgment day comes for everyone eventually.

Then I heard several guns cock all at once. I don’t know how I didn’t shit myself. But it wasn’t the first time guns had been pointed at me—just the last.

“You got shit for brains, coming into our home and drawing down on our prez,” a gruff voice said behind me.

“Nobody fires,” I recognized Edge’s voice—calm, deep, tinged with a cruelty that wouldn’t soon vanish. “Hey, look at me. You got a beef with Jace, you won’t be the first, but you can’t come in here acting like one of those psycho cunts.”

I glanced at him. He was so close to Jace that it didn’t split my focus. “You don’t understand, Paul. This is the sanest thing I’ve done in fifteen years. It only seems crazy to you because you don’t know what I do.”

He blinked, and the air in the room shifted because I knew his real name—and that wasn’t common knowledge. Plus, only one person ever got away with calling him that, and she was the reason I was here. Everything I was about to do was for her, because whoever I might’ve become died years ago in that bayou.

My adrenaline amped so high I was shaking from it. I thought I might pass out if not for the vodka I’d drunk before to calm my nerves. It enabled me to enter another MC clubhouse. The burn in my throat kept me present—kept me focused on what needed to be done.

Jace hadn’t spoken a word, but his hand twitched toward the inside of his cut. That worn-out piece of denim, with its misguided patch of loyalty, was a mockery on a man like him. A man who’d never been loyal to anything but his own demons.

“I will fucking shoot you, motherfucker!” This wasn’t how I expected it to go, but I needed them to hear me—needed them to understand what kind of monster they’d crowned king.

Then, for a single moment in time, I entertained the thought that they wouldn’t care—it wouldn’t matter—and Jace would come out on top like he’d always done. Like he had that night when he—

He froze, glancing down the table at his brothers. “You got less than two seconds to haul your skinny ass out those doors.”

“Every man in their seats. Right now. Guns on the table, or I pull the trigger. You can all kill me after I say my piece.” I’d never meant any words more than those. Death was an old friend by now.

Silence echoed loudly, but in my head, I always heard the screaming—not just mine.

“Do you remember me?” I asked him, tasting copper on my tongue.

He looked at me with utter distaste. “I think I’d remember a skank like you. You want money, dope, whatever—but you’re gonna stop pointing that gun at MY DAMN HEAD. What you fail to register is that we don’t give a flying fuck what you have to say.”

He was clean—I could tell. He’d somehow gotten past the demons he forced on me. Maybe he didn’t remember any of the things he did back then, in his crank-fueled deliriums.

How fucking convenient for him.

How heavenly would that be, since I was doomed never to forget them? The memories were carved too deep to ever fade.

“Why didn’t you report her missing?” I directed my question at Edge.

“Who in the fuck are you?” He pushed back in his chair, the legs scraping against wood like nails on a chalkboard.

“I used to be her shadow,” I told him. That’s what he referred to me as back in the day.

His eyes widened in shock. “Naomi?” The room began to stir. No doubt some of the older members remembered my mother and me. No doubt they also presumed me dead a long time ago—that is, if anyone thought of me at all. My bet would be on the nope for that, after my mother drank herself to an early grave, having lost her only daughter and her old man going to prison for the rest of his natural life. Mom never was very strong—not a survivor. She floated through life, subsisting on the men she thought she needed to feel complete.

“I haven’t been Naomi Weston since that day fifteen years ago, when your president right there traded me to the Jackals for a bag of meth because I knew too much.”

Jace looked like an animal, his face the harshest scowl. “You lying cunt, you’re dead.” He charged at my aimed gun as I stepped back into the wall.

Hesitating…

I nearly pissed myself. He scared the fuck out of me. I had no friends there. I had no friends, period—but that was beside the point.

My hands shook as I squeezed the trigger.

Click.

How could I miss at that close range?

“You forgot the safety, bitch. Here, let me show you,” he snarled, his pistol emerging as he grabbed my throat, the barrel pressed against my forehead. He cocked the hammer back, the fury in his eyes replaced by shock, then horror, as he realized I wasn’t lying about who I was.

But it was too late to turn back now.

It was too late years ago.

Maybe it was too late when we were born onto this rotten earth, destined to crash into one another until one or both of us were obliterated and no more.

The bullet was already leaving the chamber on a dead man’s path towards my—