Page 7 of Cocked Hammer

“No problem,” I said without hesitation, although I expected it to be a dead end. She hadn’t been anywhere to be found when we’d made the deal with Alek, Dimitri, and Viktor. There was just something in the pit of my gut that told me Ghoul was barking up the wrong tree. I didn’t open my damned mouth to argue the fact since spending time with her was already on my agenda. Only now, I would be doing it for my club, too. Everyone was happy with where I would be. When you were in a motorcycle club, sometimes it was fucking absurd trying to have a personal life outside of the club. In my opinion, it was why so many brothers’ relationships failed. Well, that and the amount of temptation in the form of easy ass there was running around the club. It was also the fucking reason why condoms were invented, if you asked me.

“Tin Man, Wily, Sac, Sleeper, and Sledge, I want that place watched. I don’t want those mother fuckers doing their three morning S’s without one of us knowing.” He glanced at Sac when his head leaned to the side in confusion.

“Shit. Shower. Shave, fuckstick,” Wily clarified, his fingernails mindlessly running back and forth through his eyebrow.

“Spider’s right. We should pay a visit to our old friend Monty Cat, too.” Ghoul laughed and winked at Sac. “Your President is an asshole,” he stopped to take a drink of his whiskey, “but there’s no way in hell I’m sending you down there without a buffer. I’d hate to kill the weasel for mutilating your balls like filet mignon.”

My nose crinkled, and my stomach turned just thinking about it. “That’s a fucking nasty mental image.”

“Eh. I’ve seen worse.” Ghoul waved me off, and if I didn’t know our President, I would think he was full of shit. He probably hadn’t seen a man’s sack cut up like that, but there was no doubt in my mind he had seen something equally disgusting. Hell, he’d probably done something similar to someone back when he was the club’s Enforcer. He moved into the President position of our chapter not too long ago, and Wily took over the Enforcer rank.

“I appreciate that, Ghoul.” Sac nodded, trying to play it cool. He wasn’t fooling anyone; his knee had not stopped bouncing since Monty Cat was mentioned.

“You got it. Just try to keep your elephant balls to yourself this time.”

The room erupted in laughter, making the mood a bit lighter than the actual heaviness of the conversation. Ghoul was a crazy fucker, and in the time that I’d known him, I’d watched our President’s body count rise well into the thirties. He wasn’t someone anyone wanted to cross. Then again, none of us Bastards were. Each of us had something equally lethal and unique that we brought to the table. We worked well together and made one hell of a brotherhood.

6

Lina

“Viktor, you promised!” I yelled, pulling the slide backward and pointing the gun at his chest.

“Little girl, you would do best to remember your place.” The hair on the back of my neck stood on end as his nickname for me passed his lips. “Never once did we say you were relieved from your other duties when we gave you the pet shop,” my Uncle Viktor clarified, sucking on his teeth and didn’t flinch in the slightest with fear as I stepped closer. I wanted to scream that he was wrong, but he wasn’t.

I hung my head in defeat once again, lowering my gun. He was notorious for omitting key facts, and although I wanted to argue, there was no use. A debt was a debt, and I would see it through no matter how repulsive. I was an adult and had been one for some time now, but age didn’t give a person the right to do as they pleased when they carried as many demons as I did.

“Good girl,” Dimitri praised me in a condescending tone, catching my hand as I passed him, and pulled it to his mouth. His other hand gripped my crotch through the jeans I wore. I wished more than anything they were made of impenetrable steel, so neither of them could ever touch me inappropriately again. Alek never had, but he never stopped it either.To me, that was almost as bad as actually doing it. If someone was present when a person was killed but did nothing to stop it, most laws would consider them an accessory to murder. I was simply holding him accountable for what he didn’t stop and could have.

I kept telling myself one more year, and the deal I’d made when I was young and dumb would be over. One didn’t simply get into bed with Russian mobsters, so to speak, and climb up from the mattress squeaky fucking clean. Their stench was mine now. If I tried to run, I might as well slit my own throat and save them the effort of sending me to hell. I hadn’t figured out the details, but if they didn’t honor their end of the deal once all of it was said and done, I would figure out a way to get away from them.

My hand smacked his away from my body, and I instantly regretted my decision. Dimitri was fast to get to his feet, and I took off running across our living room. When I zoomed past Viktor, he stretched his leg out, making my body plunge forward, jarring my gun from my hands with the impact of the fall.

“Stupid little girl. Will you never learn?”

“Fuck you both!” I sneered when Dimitri fisted my hair and yanked my neck backward. This was a normal Tuesday in the Angeloff house. His big hands seemed to swallow my small shoulders when he palmed them and forced my body to flip beneath him.

“Fuck us both?” Dimitri sadistically grinned, and I immediately hated my choice of words.

“Save her for the party tonight. Alek said they were snooping around last week,” Viktor nonchalantly breathed out, smoke billowing from his lips as he did. I thought his bored tone was one of the worst parts of him. At least with Dimitri, I was able to gauge how he might react; however, with Viktor, I never knew. My eyelids closed while I prayed for a tornado to rid the world of all of us.

“You’re damned lucky we need your sweet pussy for someone else tonight,” Dimitri barked, and my lungs pulled in a huge breath of relief. When he didn’t climb off my frozen body, I opened my eyes in curiosity. Sharp tinging pain shot through my face as he backhanded me, his huge gold ring catching my cheekbone.

“Dimitri!” Alek growled as he strolled into the room, acting as if he wasn’t in the next room over and fully aware of what was happening. The way he turned the other cheek was almost as bad, but once he’d turned eighteen, they’d left him alone, and he didn’t want to have the microscope turned back on him. I’d never admit it, but I would have sacrificed him if it meant saving myself. “They’re going to know we’re onto them.” Alek exhaled through his pursed lips as his eyes narrowed with disapproval.

“Get yourself cleaned up and call the other girls,” Viktor instructed, and I nodded, scrambling to get off the floor and away from Dimitri.

My legs felt like Jell-O when I got to my feet, and my body trembled. So much adrenaline was rushing aimlessly through my body that it had to go somewhere. I should have driven a bullet into all three of their skulls, but I refused. Timing was everything, and right now,he wasn’t safe. One wrong move on my part, and it would cause a chain reaction of events that would eventually lead to his murder. I was okay with me dying. I’d come to terms with death long ago and thought of it as welcoming.

What I wasn’t okay with was dying while knowing Stefan would die, too. He was the only one who ever tried to protect me from the world. I would die doing the same for him if I had to. Right now, he was in prison on false accusations. He took the fall for Viktor and Dimitri, and if I didn’t do as they wished, they would have him shivved to death. Their reach was bigger than I ever imagined. The last time I went against them, Stefan laid in the infirmary employee bathroom for six hours after the guards beat him. Luckily for him, the night shift nurse used the stall on occasion to dislodge contraband from her ass and found him.

My eyes glossed over as they became unfocused. The small space in the car spun around me, and my stomach churned. This wasn’t the first time my body was used as a bargaining chip in someone else’s deal. When it happened, sometimes I completely lost myself. Up until this point, I was preparing myself mentally to shut down tonight and lock the memories in a deep dark crevice of my mind.

“Be good to them,” Dimitri warned, both of us more than aware why he said it. The last time they made medo my part,I sank my teeth as deep as I could into a man’s shoulder. I was going for blood and got it.

I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. The reason wasn’t the obvious one—that I was about to be paraded around as a common whore. No, it was because of our location. The Royal Bastards Motorcycle Club.

As ridiculous as it seemed, I’d clung to the day Sledgehammer and I met for some time now, hoping to see him again. Well, I got my wish, unfortunately. Just like anything else in my life, it was impure. Tonight, I would completely die in my mind. It wasn’t logical, and it would suffocate what little part of myself still held humanity, but if this had to happen, I wanted it to be him who ruined me.

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