Page 20 of Stripping Keys (Devil’s Riot MC Tennessee #6)

Slamming the drawer closed, I grip the back of the dresser and slam it forward. I didn’t have to look in the rest of the drawers to know what they held. It would be everything that could and would have been used on me. Pills. Oils. Condoms. Straps. You name it. It was in this room.

Tearing the room apart, I shout and rage, letting it consume me. Letting it out. All the pain I felt at the hands of those in this very room, I release.

Releasing a ragged breath, my chest heavy, hands stinging, knuckles red and bleeding. Looking around the room, I take in the damage I caused. No longer did it look like a memory frozen in time. It was destroyed.

I step out of the room and start down the hall to head back downstairs.

The door to my old room catches my eye once again, and instead of heading downstairs, I go back to my childhood room.

I move to the dresser under the barred window.

Squatting down, I reach beneath the dresser and grab the items I always hidden beneath.

Sitting down on the musty carpet, I don’t let the smell bother me as I look at the notebook. Age had changed it. I’d forgotten about it until now. I hadn’t thought about it and its contents in so long.

Opening to the middle, I pull out the picture. It was of a man I knew. I hadn’t thought about it then. Hadn’t thought about it ever, to be honest. But I knew the man in the picture. He’d never really been in my life. Not until . . . I never even really thought about it before.

Why?

Did he know?

Is that why he invited me?

The one thing I always knew about this picture was that he was the man my mother picked to become pregnant by. I don’t know what she planned after that, but it hadn’t worked in her favor. It’s why she hated me as she had.

As much as I wanted to hate the man in the picture, I couldn’t. He . . .

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

Moving to the page behind it, I read the words.

She won’t stop ranting. Saying she’s going to make him pay.

Pay for what he did to her. She came into my room and gave me another pill.

I don’t like it when she does that. It makes me feel funny.

I end up doing things. None of them I like doing.

They’re supposed to be grown-up things. But I can’t stop when it starts.

The feeling takes forever to go away. All I want to do is bad things.

Why can’t she be a normal Mom?

Instead, she makes me do bad things with men and women. She takes money for it and gives it away. All to satisfy herself.

There are other women here who do the same. I see them. They walk around in nothing but robes. Sometimes nothing at all. I at least get to wear sweatpants.

I have a single pair of clothes she buys every time I grow. Just for those times she has to take me out. It’s rare that happens. She likes to keep me locked away.

The pill is starting to work. I feel it. My body, my cock, that’s what she called it, hardens. Means I’ll go to the other room soon.

I wish my life were different, that he’d come for me and take me away from here. Save me from this life. Instead, he left me here. It didn’t matter that he doesn’t know I exist.

I don’t remember writing this, but I remember this notebook and the items within its pages. The drawings. The pictures I’d stolen from her. It even contained dollar bills. I had the idea to sneak money where I could. I planned to use it to start a new life.

“Brother.”

I jerk my head up to find Blow, Nines, Lucky, Shiner, and Sniper standing in the doorway.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Nines asks, coming closer, his gaze looking around. “What are you doing here?”

“You said you were never coming back here,” Shiner adds.

I blink and stare at them all.

“When did I say that?” I never said that. I would have remembered if I had.

Blow comes to me and squats down, takes the picture from the notebook, and looks at it.

“You told us about this place about four months after coming to the clubhouse. Remember when the four of us,” he motions to him, Nines, Lucky, Shiner, then me, “we got shit-faced drunk. You were fucked up We knew you weren’t going to remember what you said that night.

But we did. Kept it between us. Sniper had been there as well.

He heard. So had Baller. It confirmed what Baller suspected.

“Baller knew?” That couldn’t be true.

“He hadn’t known the night he saw you walkin’, but he had a gut feeling,” Sniper remarks, his voice filled with anger. The anger was written all over his face.

“I knew the truth from then.” Nines grunts. “But Baller told me to keep it to myself. Said your life was fucked enough. You were home. Safe and had brothers. No reason to fuck with your head more.”

Baller had treated me like any other member of the club. Though, I hadn’t been around him long before he passed. A couple years at most.

“So, all this time you all have known about my past?” I still didn’t believe it.

“Keys, you’d been fucked out of your mind that night, you didn’t tell us details, but it was enough,” Blow answers.

“What made you come back here?” Nines asks, taking the notebook from me. His eyes scanned over the words, flashing with rage.

Sucking in a breath, I glance between them. Shiner hadn’t said anything yet, but he didn’t have to, his face said it for him. He was pissed.

Finally, I answer Nines. “Marla told me Griz and Marley were having a kid, and then she asked if I wanted kids. I didn’t answer, just left. Ended up here.”

“Place looks like it was closed up and no one has lived here in years.”

“That’s because they haven’t,” Sniper growls and punches the drywall.

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“After your drunken gut spill and not remembering any of it, Baller and I came out here, shut the place down. The bitch thought it was funny that he would come to defend you when she’d done what she’d done.

Baller killed her. Right in the living room downstairs.

We shut this place down, kicked the rest of the bitches out, and left it,” Sniper explains.

I get to my feet, shaking my head. This is all more than I thought. They’d known. All this time, someone knew my secrets.

Clearing my throat, I look between my brothers, needing to change the subject. “You said on the phone they made a move, what did they do?”

“They called Olive.” Shiner growls. “They told her that she’d be their toy again. Just as all the women will be. Including Marla.”

Rage pours back into my veins at the mention of Marla’s name. “They know.”

“Yeah.” Nines sneers. “They fuckin’ know. Now, we need to get back to the clubhouse and get this shit handled once and for all. No one is taking my Meadow from me.”

“No one is taking her from you,” I tell him, and look to Shiner. “Olive okay?” After the ordeal she went through at the hands of these men, I’m sure it’s fucking with her head.

“She’s freaked the fuck out. I had to calm her ass down enough to keep her from losing it.

Kept saying she’d die before letting them get her again.

Thankfully, Milo was at Sniper and Rain’s place.

Now, he’s back with her and keeping her grounded.

Kid doesn’t even know it, but he’s saving her sanity and keeping the light in her without realizing it. ”

Fucking hate that for him.

“Come on, let’s get the fuck out of here,” Blow snaps

“Wait a minute,” Nines says, his eyes still on my notebook.

“What?” I ask.

“You wrote ‘The Crimson Blood Clan’ in this thing?” he says.

“I did?” My brows furrow, and I take the notebook from him and stare at the page he’d turned to. Fuck me, I had written the name. “Must have been who my mom worked for at the time.”

“This shit goes back further than we even thought.” Shiner snarls.

“Could be when it started. They could have been pissed Baller interfered in their work,” Nines growls.

“Makes sense.” I nod. “She had an office on the first floor right beneath this room. I used to be able to hear her through the air vents whenever she was in there.”

I make my way out of the room, a new purpose in my step.

My mind is racing. Memories I hadn’t thought about in years were flooding in.

Me lying on the floor, ear to the vent listening.

Me scattering away, knowing she was coming for me.

Me listening to her getting fucked. Me hearing her laughter as her bosses took turns with me.

Fuck.

I hadn’t thought about those moments in years, not since the beginning.

A new thought pops into my head, and I realize something else. My mom was still winning. Even in death, she was winning because I refused to have what I want.

I can’t let that continue. Marla is mine. Not just mine, but Mine . I was claiming her. Claiming her in every way possible. I was gonna put a ring on her finger. She was gonna wear my property cut. She was gonna carry my kid.