Page 5 of Fury

“Stashed you?”

“Yeah. He had his own family. I stayed at the MC clubhouse, grew up there. You grow up here?”

“No, no, no. With my grandmother. She looked out for me while my mom worked. My dad joined the Marines and didn’t come back.”

“Sorry.”

“No, I mean he came back alive, but not to us. He found himself a new family he liked better.”

He let out a grunt. “Yeah, gotcha.”

Silence. The chains scraped the floor.

“See that?”

My back stiffened. “What? A rat?”

“No. You weren’t so nervous once you got to talking.”

I settled back on my legs and let out a tiny breath, wiping my damp hair back from my face. “I guess.”

“How’d you get here from Grandmaland?”

“I went to a club party one night. I was dating this guy, Jimmy, who wanted to prospect for the Demon Seeds.”

“The Seeds in Montana?”

“Yep, I’m from Montana. There was a party at their clubhouse, and I went with him.”

“Shouldn’t have gone.”

I snorted. “I didn’t know that then. Neither did he. Jimmy thought I was the bomb. He thought bringing me on his arm would score him some points with his brothers-to-be.”

Kid didn’t say anything. He just stared at me, his eyes hard. He knew what was coming.

“I got noticed by a member of a visiting club. I didn’t know who he was. He’d covered up his colors, his patch. I was having a good ol’ time, laughing, talking. He kept getting me drinks and flirting with me. I got up to find Jimmy, to leave. I thanked him for the drinks and everything, and suddenly he got all serious. People were looking at me funny. He grabbed my arm and said, ‘This is how it’s gonna go down, baby.’

I hadn’t thought about these details, the details that got me here, in a long time. I’d quit stretching and snapping them like rubber bands in my brain after the second month. Now, an odd relief washed through me as I released the words and Kid listened.

“I tried to explain that I was with another man from the Demon Seeds. All he said was ‘You come willingly or little Jimmy gets a beat down.’

“He’d targeted you, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“And good ol’ Jimmy?”

“Jimmy said nothing. Did nothing. Only slunk into the crowd. I’ll never forget that look on his face. A mix of fear and powerlessness. Giving in.”

My shoulders bunched together. Jimmy had slunk into the crowd that night the same way my dad had slunk away and never returned. The same way my mom would slink out the door every afternoon after sleeping all day, preferring to be at the bar she owned than at home in the grind of real life. Maybe that’s why it hadn’t shocked me that much when Jimmy had left me in the frying pan. I’d been upset, but not so surprised.

“Fuck,” said Kid.

“Even though Jimmy and I both gave in, he got beat down by the other club anyway. They made me watch while I got groped, then we took off. We did a lot of traveling those first few months. I’d either be locked up in a motel room or locked in a closet, always being told it was to protect me from the other men.”

“Probably true, but...shit.”

“We finally settled here. He kept me like his doll, I guess is the best way to describe it. He’d show me off. Do me the way he wanted whenever he wanted. Once, a couple of his pals thought I was the club toy and tried to play with me. One got his eye gouged out for touching me.”

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