Page 4 of Tempting Fate

The muscle in Zeke’s jaw works as he stops himself from saying what he really thinks to settle for placating me. “I’ll—” Slash makes a rumbling sound that vibrates his chest and Toker matches it with one of his own from the other side of Zeke. “—we’ll respect it, sweet thing, doesn’t mean we agree with it.”

“I wouldn’t expect anything less.”

“For the rape of Miss Lilianna Scarlett Mayberry.” As the justice continues speaking, we all face forward. “The offender is sentenced to imprisonment for a term of five years and seven months. The non-parole period is one of two years and four months and will include all time served as of this date.”

“Holy fuck!” Sander exclaims as Alex’s side recoils in shock at the sentence. “He’s actually goin’ to prison, not a psych ward?”

“Keep calm,” Crystal chides. She lays a hand on my shoulder and everyone sitting around me pretends to ignore the way I startle at her light touch. I swallow hard, biting my tongue so I don’t scream at her to get away from me while my skin crawls beneath the pressure of her fingers. “The second charge is the big one.”

“Not sure how beatin’ someone half to death is worse than rapin’ them half to death,” Nadia mutters. “Fucking men and their bullshit laws.”

Crystal grumbles something under her breath that sounds like agreement.

“For the aggravated grievous bodily harm of Lilianna Scarlett Mayberry, the offender is sentenced to imprisonment for a term of eight years and one month. Due to the mitigating factors presented by the defence, I have used the guidelines provided to offer a special dispensation for good behaviour and the completion of an appropriate mental health program whilst determining the non-parole period. In due course, the non-parole period for this sentence is no less than five years and eleven months. This will be served concurrently with the previous sentence, however time already served will not count.”

“Less than six years,” I murmur under my breath. “Six years until he comes back for me.”

“He won’t get within spittin’ distance of you ever again,” Zeke promises.

I want to agree with him, but I can’t.

Alex is a monster.

Evil personified.

And everyone knows that evil monsters don’t just fade into the darkness in the face of defeat. Monsters can’t quit. They don’t have the capacity to accept defeat. Instead, they bide their time, lick their wounds while they plot and plan, grow more devious by the day, until they invade the light and drag their obsession back into hell with them.

My monster will come back for me.

When he returns, I need to be strong enough to defeat him.

1

LILY

Four and a half years later

I’m reaching the point in my cross-stitch where I want to throw in the towel. With my propensity to skip around the pattern to stitch the same colour all at once, I always find that I’ve miscounted when I go back to fill in the more unique colours. My sloppiness irritates me, the need to rework parts feels like an indictment of my incompetence. Of course, it doesn’t help that I can hear Serena’s voice in my head, chiding me for my impatience, every time I have to redo a section.

Serena Abaddon is the oldest club princess from the Black Shamrocks MC Philadelphia chapter, and after her visit to Australia for my eighteenth birthday, we fell into the habit of sending each other pieces of handcrafted, one-of-a-kind, adult art.

And by adult art, I mean cocks.

Embroidered cocks.

Watercolour cocks.

Knitted cocks.

Clay cocks.

My mother started the Moscato and Monet club for the old ladies back before I was born, and I kept it going after she died. When I introduced the American old ladies to the club during their Australian trip, we stuck to watercolour, paint-by-number pieces that I sourced from an online adult superstore. Serena is the one who took the original incarnation of the old ladies’ club global and started the competition to see who could create the most unique piece of cock art.

She won our last battle with a hand-painted ceramic tea kettle that had a, shall we say, unusually decorated, spout. It was a housewarming present sent to Zeke and me, one that had us laughing at six in the morning when I poured a cup of tea without realising what the pattern looked like when it was tipped on an angle until it was too late.

My creation is a collage of dicks—circumcised and uncircumcised; flaccid, hard, and ejaculating. The design is being stitched to a piece of satin that another club princess, Ziva, is going to glue to Serena’s graduation cap for me. They will film the presentation of the mortarboard for me, so I can revel in my win, even though Serena is likely to wear it with pride, since that’s just the type of girl she is.

Totally unflappable.

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