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Chapter Thirty-Six

Black Valley Psycho

P sycho holds the door open for Dax as they walk into a rundown restaurant named Sanford's, and they see Ryan sitting at a table alone.

“How'd you get him here?” Dax asks, his voice low.

“Sent a message from Ivan's phone,” Psycho says, and he knows he wears a menacing smirk.

They walk around and sit across from Ryan, his face covered with prison ink and a few missing teeth. It takes him a few moments before he recognizes Psycho, and he leans back, crossing his arms over his chest. “Carson Todd. Why am I not surprised? Come to welcome me home? Open arms and all that?”

“Oh, yeah, the family misses you. They want you to join them real soon for dinner.”

“Considering you killed our family, I assume this means you came here to kill me?”

“Meeting someone, Ryan?”

Shaking his head, he just smiles, his eyes never leaving Psycho's. He's one of the few people who could potentially give him a run for his money in the sick and twisted torture department. “Nope. Just stopped in for a drink.”

Psycho laughs and looks around the room. “You know, this is the fullest I've ever seen this place.”

“Really?” Dax asks. “Not many people come in here?”

He shakes his head. “No, it's a dump. Which tells me Ryan's lying. He's here to meet someone. Could it be Ivan?”

“I don't know anyone by that name,” Ryan says.

“Really?” he asks, pulling out Ivan's cell phone. He calls the number he texted the day before, and it rings on the table with Ivan's name on the screen. “Looks like you have a man you've never heard of saved in your phone.”

“So, it was you who reached out. And what? You think I'm going to tell you about how much I miss our time together in the compound?”

Dax narrows his eyes. “Was he this stupid when you knew him before?”

“Believe it or not, he was dumber. I think prison knocked some sense into him. Not much, though.”

“I'm dumb?” Ryan asks with a laugh. “I'm not the one who left my club for a fucking bitch. That was stupid.”

Reaching over, Psycho rests a hand on Dax's shoulder. “Dude, you had your ex who dumped you almost two decades ago kidnapped and her death faked.”

“For revenge.”

“Love and hate are two sides of the same coin, so if what I did was stupid, so is what you did, motherfucker.”

“I have my own club I put together and ran from behind bars. What do you have to show for yourself besides being a follower yet again, Carson?”

He knows Ryan just wants to get a rise out of him. It would work, too, but Psycho knows he's the one about to get the world's biggest surprise.

“I have a club in Black Valley. I'm the President, actually. A well-known and very feared club.”

“The Deranged Drifters. Yeah, you got patched over. Big accomplishment! Who the fuck is your butt buddy here who keeps mean mugging me?”

Pointing his thumb at Dax, Psycho laughs. “Him? Oh, he's just the man who fell in love with and married Dani.”

Ryan laughs loudly, his head falling back to showcase just how many teeth he's lost during his prison stay. “You married that stupid bitch? I guess I did you a favor, making you believe she was dead for a couple of years, huh? Need a break to get some real pussy? I never loved her, but no one dumps me. Well, they don't do it and live, anyway.”

“Didn't you hear?” Psycho asks. “She's very alive. And you should have looked into two things with the Drifters. First, you should really have looked into the history of Lex Nichols. Sending only two men over to her house to take Dani was just stupid. Really fucking stupid. She's got bigger balls than you've ever had.”

“Attractive.”

“And the second is how we react when someone harms our women,” Dax says.

Psycho nods his head, and all the patrons stand and pull boards from the booths, quickly placing them over the windows and hammering them up.

“What the fuck?” Ryan asks, his eyes narrowed but still not coming across too concerned.

“We don't want anyone to see what's about to happen in here,” Psycho says, and all the men turn with guns aimed right at Ryan. “But we have one more surprise for you before we kill you. Because there's no chance you'll walk out of here.”

Standing up, Dax grinds his teeth as he changes all seven televisions to the input Brock talked him through to livestream the Kingsmen clubhouse.

“I have to say, you're not very original. You would build something that looks just like our compound.”

“You mean, the one that was your birthright? I don't get why everyone thinks you're so fucking tough. You're not that big and bad. In fact, I fucked bigger guys in the joint.”

Psycho laughs. “I don't believe that for a second. You're definitely the one who gets fucked. It's the only way you'd be as angry as you are. I have to admit, though, it was my mistake not to look into whether anyone was missing when I took out the Outlaws. If I had, you never would've seen another birthday.”

“Watch, it's about to get good,” Dax says.

“What are we watching? Some satellite map? Oh, so exciting,” Ryan says with a fake yawn.

Psycho smirks as the drone pulls away from the clubhouse. It explodes with debris and men flying everywhere as whatever's left standing bursts into flames. The drone then flies over various houses, all with the same explosion after explosion after explosion.

“I don't know how you got cops on your payroll, but they're not really going to be around to help you anymore, either,” Psycho says.

“You son of a bitch!” Ryan shouts, jumping up and punching Psycho's jaw.

The hit barely registers, but he pushes back his chair and stands with a large smile. Rather than hitting him back, he continues to move away from him because this is for Dax, not Psycho. Ryan ordered the abuse on Dani, and Psycho needs him to feel pain before he dies.

Dax lunges and knocks Ryan to the ground, straddling his chest. His fists hit his face repeatedly while Ryan tries to deflect every one. He fails miserably, and the anger of losing three years with his wife sends Dax into overdrive. Psycho's not sure he's ever seen a rage like this on many others before, and he just sits down on a stool, nodding to the other men to lower their guns.

Standing, Dax reaches up to grab the rope they hung before everyone showed up, and he slips the noose around Ryan's head. Psycho helps him lift Ryan by his arms and sets him on a chair, his face bleeding and swelling.

Psycho grabs the other end of the rope and holds it to keep it tight, the man standing upright and spitting blood and what few teeth he had left on the ground.

“What are you going to do? Hang me?”

“That's up to you,” Dax says, his chest heaving.

He laughs. “At some point, you're going to have to explain a lot to a shit ton of people. Like to the owners of this shithole. They probably want to know why the windows are all boarded up with blood everywhere.”

“Nah, that won't be a problem,” Psycho says and pulls his gun from his holster. Cocking it, he hands it to Dax. “For you.”

“Thanks,” he says and aims it towards the hanging man.

The barrel moves from his head to his groin, and a sadistic smile spreads across Dax's face. He pulls the trigger, and the highest pitch scream Psycho's ever heard comes from Ryan, his hands cupping where his dick should be as blood gushes.

“You just shot my dick off!”

“It's not like you need it anyway. Have you even gotten a chance to use it on a woman in the past twenty years? You come across as the catcher, not the pitcher, so I doubt it saw anything more than your fist beating it off in the slammer.”

Ryan continues to try and stop the bleeding while also checking to make sure it's still somewhat attached, but he can't look to see with the rope around his neck. His face pales as he looks with wide eyes. “Jesus fucking Christ, it's gone!”

“From what Dani says, there really wasn't much there to begin with. It's a good thing I'm a damn good shot. With that size, there was a solid chance I'd miss it without being closer than I care to be,” Dax says.

“You'd need a .50 caliber or at least three shots to take mine off,” Psycho says. “Maybe four. Unlike Ryan here, I have girth.”

“You fucking shot my dick off! I think we're fucking even now. Let me down before I lose too much blood.”

Sticking his bottom lip out in a mock pout, Dax looks at him. “Oh, that's cute. He doesn't think he's dying today.”

“What?”

“This is going to be a great story to tell everyone. Death by loss of dick. Most people forget how easy it is to bleed out from wounds down there. Arteries, I think. Or maybe they're veins. I'm not a fucking doctor, but it sounds like a terrible way to die,” Psycho says.

“How are you planning to explain this to the owner?” Dax asks him. “Huh?”

Looking around, Psycho finds a mirror and walks up to it. “Hey, guy, I hope you don't mind, but we had to kill a dude in here. That cool? Oh, yeah, totally fine. We gotta remodel anyway. We'll explain the blood as a poor attempt at a DIY. Sounds good.”

“You're kidding,” Dax says. “You bought this place?”

“Bought it yesterday. Club has a restaurant now. Thought a diner would fit with our trucking company. Now, if you get a bar, we'll be all set.”

“Carson,” Ryan gasps. “I'm starting to fade here, man. You're really going to let me die here? We're family.”

He rolls his eyes. “First of all, you're a cousin from my father's side. We both know the only way I'd even consider letting you live is if you were from blood related to my mom. Second, you tried to kill Lacey. Fuck you.”

“Wait, you're actually related to him?” Dax asks, his eyes wide. “Not just a brothers from the same club kind of thing?”

“No, we're blood cousins. Seems he didn't inherit the big cock from Dad's side, though. Serves him right.” He walks up to Ryan and looks into his eyes. “And the name's Psycho. There's only one person who's allowed to call me Carson. Well, maybe two now that Dani's in our club, but you ain't either of them.”

Ryan opens his mouth to speak, but he falls limp instead, his head hanging from the noose, his knees bending forward.

“He seemed so tough when we first walked in here. But it's hard to fake being tough that long.”

“Should we put him out of his misery?” Dax asks.

“Up to you. I'm cool letting him hang out and bleed to death like a fucking deer. I got nowhere else I need to be right now.”

They take a seat, Psycho still holding the rope, and they make small talk while the rest of the men from Diego's crew grab the alcohol they brought and start drinking.