Page 69 of Harper's Song

“Respect?” I ask. “Don’t make me laugh.”

I will not be one of those shrieking women who go out screaming and crying and begging to be spared. Dying well has its own honor. All the Devils know this. Hunter, Chance and Jax used to be obsessed with the notion when we were younger and it doesn’t have to apply just to fighting and killing. It can apply to getting raped and defiled when you can do nothing about it. Like when you’re chained to a wall, for example.

Trixie taught me that. The things she’d been through I don’t want to even imagine. Yet she was still able to hold her head high and love and look anyone in the eyes. It didn’t break her and it won’t break me. And the last thing I’m going to do is grovel before this psycho who has been a plague on my family for so long.

He comes at me, grabs my arm and tosses me on the bed, the chain tugging on my arm painfully. His knife is in his hand and then I don’t see it anymore because it’s pressed against my cheek.

This is it.

Goodbye.

At least I went out true to myself.

“Wait, Reggie,” Snake says and grabs his arm, the one holding the knife. “The bitch has a mouth on her, I’ll give you that, but she’s still more useful to us whole for now.”

“I won’t be told what to do,” Reggie froths, spittle from his mouth hitting my face. He jerks his hand out of Snake’s grip, the tip of the knife narrowly missing my eye in the process.

“Let’s tie her up, get her ready for the guys,” Snake says. “No one’s gonna wanna fuck her if she’s all cut up and bloody. Save that for the final humiliation.”

My head is spinning because I’m trying so hard not to imagine all these things he’s suggesting, trying to force what I’m hearing to not paint the pictures in my head vividly. But the fear that it’s all gonna be my reality pretty damn soon is stronger and I already see it all. Reggie’s hate-filled, scary forest eyes fixed on mine have a lot to do with that too.

“Come on, Reggie,” Snake says in an even more calming voice. “This was your plan. Stick to it.”

Reggie’s grins his eyes turning a few shades darker and scarier. But he takes away the knife and stands up.

“You’re right,” he says then turns to me. “We are gonna give you back, you see, that’s why the whore and the old man have no reason to worry. You’re just not gonna be as pretty as when we found you anymore.”

They both laugh at that. I’m racking my brain for something to say, something to throw at them and wound them, but the fear still has me in its ice-cold grip and nothing’s coming to me. Maybe for the best. Before I’m raped, before I’m cut up, before I’m dead, I still have a chance to escape. After, I won’t. No use pissing Reggie off and making it all happen faster. Jax says that sometimes it’s better to be quiet and think your own thoughts. And I think that applies here.

They huff and puff as they maneuver me around the bed so they can attach the last chains to my other wrist and ankles. I don’t cooperate, give them a hard time, until at one point Snake just sits on my chest, almost crushing my rib cage in the process.

I’m still trying to catch my breath as Reggie rips open my dress, sending the buttons flying and clinking against the hardwood floor.

Snake whistles appreciatively as he gazes at my near nakedness, his gaze like something cold slithering across my skin. “She’s a fine woman, I’ll give you that. A rare beauty.”

“If you want first dibs, she’s all yours,” Reggie says and chuckles darkly.

I feel like someone’s sitting on my chest again, preventing me from breathing. But thankfully Snake shakes his head.

“Later. Right now, I’m just gonna take a few snaps to show that motherfucker Jax who thinks he’s smarter than all of us,” he says and grins at Reggie. “You know, for after they catch him. Which they will.”

The flash of his camera blinds me, and for a while after they leave I see nothing past the red splotches in my vision that it caused.

I can barely move, my arms and legs are already beginning to ache from being pulled in opposite directions by the chains and my heart is still racing in my chest and my ears, but I’m no longer upset, no longer frightened, no longer stuck in a hopeless situation.

If Jax got free, he will stay free. And he will find me and save me. He always does. He always comes to me when I need him the most. No matter how impossible it might appear at first glance, it never is.

24

Jax

The bed I’m in is shaking, I’m shaking with it and I can’t for the life of me open my eyes. Maybe I’m in an earthquake and the concrete box of a room I’m stuck in is caving in on itself, caving in on me. But it’s not just me. Harper’s with me too. And I can’t hear her voice. I can’t feel her touch. I can’t hear her breathing.

“Jax, wake up! Now! Damn it.”

The voice has to repeat itself a few times before I finally realize what’s happening. And who is talking.

I open my eyes to see Chance’s very blurry face staring at me.

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