Page 53 of Ravaged and Ruined
Idiots.
I crouch over another guy still breathing. His face is hamburger, broken nose, lips split, one eye already swollen shut. He’s barely conscious, but I make sure he hears me.
“Supplier and buyer. I want names.”
He hacks blood onto the pavement. “Fuck you.”
I nod once. “Wrong answer.”
I drag the edge of my knife along his ribs. Not deep. Just enough to peel skin from bone. He howls and thrashes, but his arms are pinned by two of my brothers. His eyes shine with panic now.
“Who are you working for?” I grind the question out, my voice raw.
He grits his teeth. “I don’t know names.”
His lips smirk, like he thinks the answer is enough. That I’ll let him go if he plays dumb. That I’ve got rules.
I wedge the knife under his fingernail and lift. He screams. It cuts through the night, and I feel it uncoiling in me, something darker than anger, hungrier than revenge. I jab the knife deeper.
“I don’t know who they are!” the guy wails. “Cholla gets a call when a delivery is made. We pick it up and drop it off for whatever buyers they have lined up!”
Disgust coils in my gut. This guy doesn’t know shit. I bury the blade in his thigh and stand up.
“Kill him,” I say.
Grizzly doesn’t hesitate. Just one clean shot.
I wipe the blood off my hands onto one of their cuts. My brothers move around me with the efficiency of men born for this kind of hell. Efficient. Cold. Relentless. No mercy. No hesitation.
We leave no one breathing. Their blood is in the floorboards, in the dirt, its scent in the smoke curling into the sky.
Grizzly starts rifling through the pockets of one of the corpses, flipping him over like dead weight.
“They have to have something,” he mutters.
Crank follows suit, dragging another by the collar and patting him down roughly. Padre yanks a thick leather wallet from the back pocket of a guy whose throat he just slit.
“Got something,” he grunts, tossing it to Hashtag. Another wallet hits the ground.
“Bingo,” Hashtag growls, thumbing through the wallets and retrieving several chipped ID badges.“These will get us through the front door without lighting the place up first.”
I snatch one of the badges from his hand, studying it closely. “Perfect,” I say. “We gut them from the inside out.”
We didn’t get all the answers tonight. But we razed their home. Stripped their power.
They’ll know now. They fucked with the wrong club and we’re coming, blade in hand, and soaked in their blood. And next time, I won’t leave any of those assholes breathing.
We ride home bloody and seething, leaving scorched earth in our wake. The wind cuts through the night like a blade. My engine roars beneath me, the only sound louder than the blood in my ears.
By the time we reach the clubhouse, the sun’s cracking the sky again, mocking me with its golden light. Another day beginning while I’m still dragging the wreckage of the night before behind me. Only this time Lacey’s not here. Not in my bed, not in my arms, not where I can pretend for a few damn hours that this life doesn’t hollow me out. And after the way I treated her, she probably won’t ever be.
We park and dismount without a word. Each of us stained with blood, skin torn, knuckles split. Our adrenaline hasn’t even begun to wear off. What we did tonight, it wasn’t vengeance. Not yet. That part’s still coming. This was an execution plan and simple.
We stomp through the clubhouse doors just as the sun threatens to crest over the skyline. Inside, it’s dim with the blinds still drawn, low lights flickering. The silence hits too hard.
Midge is wiping the same spot on the bar like she’s been waiting there all night. Emery looks up from where she’s curled on the couch with a blanket around her shoulders. She sees me and her jaw tightens like she knows something inside me broke tonight and it ain’t getting fixed anytime soon.
I go straight for the bar. The whiskey bites the second it hits my throat but it’s not enough. I pour another before the firsteven settles. The wood creaks as I lean forward, both hands braced against it like it’s the only thing keeping me standing.
