Page 59 of Out for Blood

“Of course I like it,” I said. “When did you get it?”

His smile disappeared and he hesitated before he said, “About a week after I left.”

I placed a kiss on it, realising that we’d been destined to be since we were kids. Why hadn’t I had the strength to tell him back then?

“We’re together now,” he said, almost as if he were reading my mind. “Soon, your ex will be a distant memory. You, Ryleigh and Shauna will be happy, and safe, and we’ll live as if it was but a minor blip in history.”

I cuddled into his side, feeling safer than I had ever been in my entire life.

Chapter Nine

Two weeks later

SHERIDAN

My head was throbbing, as if I’d taken a fall. I recognised the pain from my many years of being with an abusive prick. I’d hit my head. Slowly, I felt my eyes creep open and I looked around. My vision was blurry as I tried to blink to see straight. My surroundings weren’t what I expected. I wasn’t at the clubhouse anymore. My throat was dry, and my body ached.

Where was I?

“There she is,” I heard the familiar and very unwelcoming voice say from close by. “I was wondering if I’d hit you too hard this time, wife.”

I looked up at his blurry form from where I was on my hands and knees on a cement floor.

“Neal, what the hell have you done?”

“Oh nothing,” he said, his tone entirely too cheerful. “It’s taken a few weeks for that mongrel to take his eyes off you long enough to grab you, but here we are.”

“What have you done?”

Fear laced through me as I imagined what had become of Cooper. It had taken me weeks to get him to trust me enough to let me go out on my own.

Why the hell had I pushed him to let me?

“Since you have hidden my children from me, I’ve had to take matters into my own hands. You see there’s a debt I’d accrued over the years. I need to make good on that. Twin teenage, virgin daughters were going to get me out of that debt but since that’s not an option right now, I’ve decided that I’ll give them someone who knows how to please a man, someone who opens her holes when told to, and someone who can handle being knocked around a few times.”

My body shuddered, realising what he was alluding to. Cooper would never find me in time. I knew Neal had been into bad shit, but the people he knew…they could make me disappear overnight. My eyes watered, tears running down my cheeks soundlessly, as my future came into clear focus.

I’d probably never see Cooper or my girls again.

He would keep them safe, I knew he would even if I wasn’t around. If I had to do this to take the pressure off my girls, I would gladly take their place.

“No snarky come back, my love?” Neal asked, kneeling in front of me with that sick, twisted smile of his that told me I was screwed. “If you think your little biker boyfriend is going to find you before I have you out of Ireland, think again. He doesn’t even know you’re gone.”

I knew that. I’d begged him to let me go and visit Orla at work for lunch. He hadn’t wanted me to, but nothing had been happening for weeks. His sources told him that Neal was out of the country. How fucking stupid had I been?

I’d always been stupid. I’d had a lifetime of bad choices that I could look back on and regret. This would probably be the last choice I could make for myself. Neal knew bad people, really bad people, and I always knew how dangerous it was to be with him but nothing had landed on our doorstep. Ever.

Not until I left him.

That had been the biggest fuck you and for that, he’d kept my daughters in his house and only allowed me to see them once a fortnight.

“Don’t worry, I won’t be touching your poisoned snatch before I sell you off to the highest bidder,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to taint the merchandise.”

A deep sob echoed throughout my chest and erupted out of my mouth, my lungs seizing, wanting to stop oxygen so I could die before anything happened to me. I fell to my hands, my body not wanting to kneel anymore as my reality came crashing in, hot and hard.

ACE

Bear and Hawk were arguing over the game of pool that had ended with an early sinking of the black 8 ball. I could barelycontain my laughter as Chains and Razor stepped in to break up what I could only imagine would be a brawl.

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