Page 3 of Vendetta
It took Tank a minute to figure out if he was still alive.The world was silent and felt distant, like he was floating just beneath the surface of a dark lake.There was no pain at first.Just a cold, creeping numbness that sank deep into his bones.He couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe.For a second, he thought maybe he was done.But some deep, primal instinct had him clawing back.Awareness returned to him slowly.He could hear rustling leaves around him, feel the wind.He tasted blood, sharp and metallic on his tongue.The pain eventually drifted back in, dragging his awareness along with it.
He should’ve died.But somehow, he hadn’t.
The crushing weight of silence and the burn of rope biting into his throat, cutting off air, thought, and hope was all he knew outside the pain.It was quiet.No voices.No shuffling boots or revving engines.They left him there.Whether they were too cowardly to watch, or something spooked them, he didn’t know.But the stillness wrapped around him like an eerie shroud, and somehow, it made the betrayal so much worse.Tank’s world narrowed to pressure and panic, the rope squeezing the life out of him.The noose held firm, digging deeper by the second, and his body convulsed against it, desperate for air.Stars burst behind his eyes.His body became numb, and he felt his mind begin to drift.
Then out of nowhere there was a snap.An unexpected, jarring fall.His body slammed into the cold ground and the gasp ripped from his chest, air burning like fire as it sucked into his starving lungs.Maybe the branch cracked.Maybe someone had a shred of humanity and cut him down after the rest walked away.He’d never know.And he didn’t fucking care.All he knew was the taste of blood and dirt in his mouth and the agony of that first breath.
His body was broken and everything hurt.Every breath felt like a razor in his chest.His wrists screamed from where the chains had bitten into them, slick with his blood.He wasn’t sure how they’d come loose.Had it happened in the fall?Somehow, they’d given way.The metal still clinked with every move he made, dragging behind him.
But he moved slowly, with intention.Crawling through the cold dirt and winter’s dead leaves.Blood dripped from his face and his muscles shook with each inch forward.Dragging his body over the forest floor was pure agony, his fingers bleeding now as he clawed at the ground.Still, he pushed himself on.Instinct urged him to drag himself out of that patch of woods.Rage and the will to survive fueled every single motion.
He didn’t know where he was going.He only knew that if he managed to survive this, he couldn’t stayhere.He wouldn’t fucking die like that.Not by their hands.Not discarded in the woods like a piece of garbage they were done with.He would never be just another secret buried in the dirt behind their clubhouse.Every inch he crawled was a solemn vow.You failed.You should’ve made sure I was dead.
Tankwasdead.He left that name in the dirt beneath the hanging tree, with the blood they’d spilled and the brotherhood they’d shattered.That man had believed in loyalty and brotherhood.
That man was gone.He buried the name.
And from the ashes, Vendetta rose, scarred, silent, and born of vengeance.
Chapter One
Vendetta
The sun was barely visible on the horizon when Vendetta rolled into Oak Grove in his courier van.It was early enough that the roads were still quiet and held little traffic, but late enough that the night’s shadows still clung to the edges of buildings and businesses.It was a typical small Southern town, and it honestly hadn’t changed much in the months since he was last here.
Oak Grove wore the ghost of its better days like an old, threadbare coat.There were hints that it had once thrived.Maybe a couple of decades back when the factories still ran and every porch on Main Street was filled with families and the elderly in the grace of their retirement.There were no newer buildings that he could see as he drove down its main street.The small collection of buildings that made up the town were weather-beaten and worn, with paint peeling off brick like old skin.Half the storefronts were tagged with graffiti, and the windows that weren’t busted out were fogged from the inside with neglect.The people he saw starting their day just looked older and tired.Some walked with hunched shoulders and hollow eyes, some with faces aged beyond their years.It was like everyone in Oak Grove had seen too much.They’d stopped looking for hope long ago.
He didn’t have to be here.He could have moved on and tried to put his life back together in another town like Oak Grove, under another name.It would have been easier.Most people, if told what had happened to him here just a few short months ago, wouldn’t have blamed him if that had been his choice.
What happened to Tank?The story the Oak Grove Cottonmouths fed the Abingdon chapter was clean and quiet.They said Tank didn’t agree with the club’s new direction and hit the road and went nomad.Just like that.
And Abingdon bought it.No questions or pushback.They accepted the lie like it was gospel, like Tank walking away without a word made any damn sense.Maybe they believed it.Maybe they were too afraid to challenge Oak Grove.Either way, no one came looking.No one checked on him.
It was a second betrayal, colder than the first.They buried him without a body, without even realizing it.And that, more than the noose or the chain, was the wound that never stopped bleeding.
The new name fit him like armor.Vendetta.He was no longer Tank.No longer the man who believed in doing the right thing and expected others to feel the same way.No longer the man who believed brotherhood still meant something.For now, he kept his scars hidden beneath the ordinary clothes he wore as a delivery driver.The long scar around his neck still ached in the cold, a chilling reminder of how close he’d come to death.He wore hoodies, jackets, and bandanas and left his hair down when he could to hide it.
What gnawed at him in his quiet moments, the ones that hit hardest late at night, was this: no one ever found a body.That made their story believable.Tank had just disappeared, gone nomad.But what if hehadn’tsurvived that night?What if his heart had stopped out there under the trees, lungs crushed, neck broken?
Would they have come back for him?Would they have buried him?Or just left him there to rot like nothing?And if theyhadcome back for the body and found it missing… That meant he could still be alive.
Did Eli suspect he was alive?Was he haunted by the possibility that his ghost still walked?He hoped so.He liked the idea of that.The fear creeping in, the doubt festering.Let Eli feel hunted for once.
He’d been doing his homework.The criminal organization that had infected the Oak Grove Cottonmouths used the name Sinister Skin Holdings.They’d tried really hard to infiltrate Mercy too, a neighboring county, awhile back.The Hounds kicked them out, protecting the town and its people from the corruption and filth that Eli Crizer and his followers welcomed.For now.It wasn’t nearly as easy as it sounded to be rid of the fuckers, so he waited.
When the word went out on certain channels that they were looking for a Hound out of Mercy traveling with a young woman, Vendetta had set out to find them and he did.Knowing what they were up against, and to gather a little intel, he’d helped Outcast and his girl Anya escape the assholes.The fact that the woman had been the captive of Sebastian Six, one of Sinister Skin Holdings’ top dogs, made it all the sweeter for him.He helped get them back to Mercy in one piece when the odds were stacked against them.Someone had to.
There was a final showdown, and Vendetta had been there for it, helping the Hounds with their common enemy.Watching Outcast shoot Six in the face had given Vendetta back his fire, his need to make things right.When they parted ways that night, Outcast had looked him in the eye and said, “If you ever need us, you call.We’ll come.”A nod from their president, Razor, confirmed it.
Vendetta hadn’t called in that favor yet.But he would.When the time came, and the reckoning hit Oak Grove like a bullet hitting bone, he’d want the Hounds at his back.
Until then, Vendetta would be just another shadow.He’d scored himself a job working for a delivery service in and around Oak Grove, and that would have its uses.He found himself staying in a rundown motel at the edge of town, cash only, no questions asked.It smelled like bad sex, mildew, and cigarettes, but the lock on the door was solid and the window faced the lot.It was all he needed.
Sinister Skin Holdings had failed to root in Mercy, but they’d found fresh soil here.Eli Crizer had let the fuckers in.The Oak Grove Cottonmouths had sold out for blood money, dirty deals, and human cargo.They’d taken the offer the Hounds solidly rejected.
He promised himself it wouldn’t last long.Vendetta would move through Oak Grove like smoke.He would watch everything.After all, he knew how they operated and where they trafficked.Vendetta even knew who they leaned on and all the locations where product was moved and stored.If he could control the fury that clawed inside his chest whenever he thought about it, he could find a way to end them and their entire fucking operation.
That was his mission now.
