Page 27 of A Love So Hard

“What? Was I supposed to spare them?”

“No, I guess not. Just didn’t think they’d get a death sentence for the bit part they played,” he admitted.

“I wasn’t about to ask if either of them fucked me while I was unconscious. Even if they didn’t, they most likely led Luce to believe they had since they spoke to her. Besides, I almost got a death sentence for the game they played. Hell, I fuckin’ did get a death sentence. No one can find my woman. Her father is missing in action too. That only means he’s setting her up somewhere she won’t be found. Might as well eat lead myself.”

“No the fuck you won’t!” Merc yelled in my face as he jacked my body up against the nearest wall. “You will fuckin’ do what you have to do with Stiff, get your shit together, and then I will help you track down your woman. You fuckin’ hear me?”

I heard him. That didn’t mean my head wasn’t completely fucked over the events of the past 48 hours. Just when I thought my life was headed to the perfect place with the perfect woman it all got ripped out from under me. My mother’s warning came back to haunt me. “Charles, if you stay with that club it will doom you too,” she’d said to me. “That club took every ounce of my happiness from me. It even took you from me for a while. If you’re smart, you’ll leave before you turn into the man your father was.”

I should have listened. The club cost me everything, and now, as my mom had predicted it was all I had remaining of the life I’d been dreaming about. I left the room where the two dead whores were leaking blood and other bits all over the concrete floor and I went in search of the other room where Stiff was being kept.

“It’s about time someone came to get me,” he started to say as he stood from the little makeshift bed pallet he’d created using his kutte. I sneered at the mess he’d made of his club colors and he reflexively jerked back.

“Oh, you have that all wrong. No one is coming to get you. You set me up.”

“The fuck I did!” His shouted denial meant nothing.

“Three fucking whores all had the same story to tell, Johnny.” He flinched at my use of his given name. It was the height of disrespect to call him by his birth name while talking club business.

“It’s Stiff,” he corrected.

I tilted my head to the side. “No, I don’t think it is. It will be soon enough though. You see, when you fuck over your club, betray a brother, and nearly kill him in the process you lose any respect you may have gained from the other brothers. You lose a bit more than respect too.”

“I didn’t do shit. Those whores are lying little cunts.”

“Maybe, but you came to me. We had a drink together.”

“Right, we both drank,” he mentioned.

I laughed. “Funny thing, that. It’s really easy to make it appear as though you’re drinking when you’re really not.” I shook my head and then raised the gun in my hand up to it, tapping the metal against the side of my skull. “See, the thing is, I remember drinking, and I remember someone telling me nighty, night, and that someone was most definitely you.”

He glanced behind me toward the door and noticed Merc standing there. “You gonna let him do this? I didn’t have shit to do with this whole thing.”

“We all know you’re full of shit, man. Timeless was having trouble with someone stealing crap from the kitchen. He installed one of those nanny cams to check on things. Guess what it picked up?” That was a straight bluff on Merc’s part, because we definitely didn’t have a camera of any kind in the kitchen of the clubhouse. Shit, that would be a liability in case anything went down there that we wouldn’t want evidence of. That didn’t matter though because Stiff fell for the bluff.

“Shit,” he muttered under his breath.

“I don’t even have to ask why. You obviously still have a thing for Lucy.”

“Fuck Lucy!” He yelled. “I wouldn’t touch her now that she’s tainted herself with you. I just didn’t want to keep seeing her here. Couldn’t stand watching you two looking so fucking happy together. She should have kept her ass in Florida.” He sneered in my direction. “At least she’s gone now.”

I grinned for him then. “She’s not gone. She’s upstairs waiting on me to finish up here,” I told him. Another lie. Another bluff. This was one I wish I could feed myself, but for the sake of my own personal revenge, I made myself believe it for a moment as the words came out of my mouth.

“Bullshit, I watched her run out of here in tears last night.”

“Yeah, and you didn’t see PeeWee go and collect her and take her to the hospital to see what really happened did you?” I cocked my head to the side again, grinning widely at him as my words sunk in. “She heard the doctor talk about how I was under the influence of a dangerous cocktail of drugs that not only made it possible for me to be raped, but that nearly killed me when I couldn’t breathe on my own. She knows what you did,” I informed him. “Not that she wanted anything to do with you after the bullshit you pulled before, but now…” I offered up my most sinister smile. “Now, she gave her blessing for me to have no mercy with you.” I put my gun away and pulled a large Bowie knife from where I had it sheathed at my side. “Yeah, see, I allowed the whores mercy since they were nothing more than stupid gash. They were your pawns. You are the one that set this whole thing in motion though. You, I am going to take my time with. I’m going to enjoy every tiny little nick in your skin that I make bleed, and I am really going to enjoy stripping that club ink from your body since I never thought you deserved to have it in the first place.” I laughed then, giving him a once over. “I’m just glad you decided to get so much of it. It’ll make this process that much better for you.”

I took my time over the next two days carving out the club tats Johnny had inked on his skin since he’d been a member. There were four of them with Aces Insignia on his body. Each one was sliced off with precision cuts so that I could show him the flayed skin. Once he saw it I cauterized the wound with a hot iron so he wouldn’t bleed too much. Each time he ended up passing out like the little bitch he was. I thought about letting him go after that. Then I remembered this wasn’t his first offense. This wasn’t the first time he’d cost me Lucy. Last time he cost me almost three years with her. This time, there was no telling. No one had seen or heard from her. Lucy’s mom claimed not to know where she was. She wasn’t panicking and filing a missing person report for her daughter either though.

At the end of day two I made 987 little cuts on Johnny’s body and I watched them all bleed. “There are 987, one for each day you cost me with Lucy when you pulled that first stunt.” I couldn’t tell him that the tats cut out of his skin were for the moments I was missing with her now because I didn’t want him to know that she wasn’t around. It was worse torture for him to think he was going through all this for nothing because he would die thinking his plan had failed.

The door to the room popped open as I was watching the blood drip down his body in rivulets. “You have a visitor,” Crow stated coolly.

“I’m busy,” I informed him.

“It’s Ja,” he didn’t finish getting the name out before he reached out and sliced straight through Johnny’s jugular. There was only a slight arterial spray since he was already bleeding out from all of his other wounds. Then it just kept pumping in slowly weakening streams to the beat of his heart until that too slowed way down. Just as he took his last breath the door to the room burst open and Jack Carter, followed by Timeless, came barreling into the room.

“What have you done?” Carter asked.

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