Page 75 of Running on Empty

“Brother, I do like this change in you,” Ronan said.

“I can also give you a matching knife wound, to even shit up.”

Jax yanked his knife free with his spare hand, and that’s when Blaine really acknowledged it. His eyes rolled up, searching Jax’s face, his gaze begging, pleading for some kind of mercy.

Pity I’d had my fill of that in the alleyway.

“Where’s the money?” I said. “Where’s the drugs?”

Jax twisted the knife slightly when Blaine hesitated.

“Red swipe card. That room.” He nodded sharply to the door we’d passed on our way in. “Passcode is—”

“6666?” I said, suddenly feeling inspired.

“How did—?” Blaine stammered.

“No more questions now.” Jax’s tone was absolute. “Grab that card, beautiful.”

I did exactly as he said, snatching it up and walking over to the door, but my hand hovered over the reader.

“Worried about a booby trap, love?” Blue asked. “That’s a reasonable expectation, but seems to me that this pampered bunch of fucks has been playing at being the bad guys, not actually mixing with some of the real bad ones. I’ll open the door if—”

“No.” I swiped the card through, then a light flashed on a small keypad, prompting me to input the code. I tapped it in and then the door popped open.

Chapter45

"Well, well, look what we have in here.”

Rusty’s voice was all dark amusement as we stepped inside. The place was clinical, neat and climate controlled, with steel shelving set up on the right hand side, each one groaning with bags of bright red pills.

“This…” Rusty looked at me. “This will buy you a lot of goodwill with the MCs,” he told me, grabbing one and then opening it, taking a sniff. “You’d have your own private army, for a time.”

“And the sale of Rush would spread far further than anything the Spencers have done,” Ash countered. He grabbed the bag from his father’s hands and tossed it back on the shelves. “Every hustler on every street corner would be selling the shit and for what? The MCs might not want to use it as a date rape drug, but you couldn’t say that of anyone else.” He turned to face me then, something softer, almost placating in his eyes. “I’ll back you whatever you decide, Stevie, you know that.”

But I didn’t. I really didn’t.

“I will follow this need for revenge right back to the root, be with you every step of the way, but this?” He jerked his thumb at the drugs. “Not this. If we do this, we’ll see more Stevie’s, countless other men and women who experience the same shit you have and for what? I can’t… I can’t lay down in my bed every night knowing I was the instigator.”

I heard all of his words, but seemed only able to process some of them, because they seemed to echo around and around in my head. A guttural groan from the office let me know Jax was having to take matters into his own hands to keep Blaine under control, but that sound mutated, growing larger and larger, screening everything else out, his animalistic grunts reminding me of something else.

Blaine’s hands on my skin, his body thrusting rabbit fast as he chased his pleasure, not needing mine. His frantic little pants as he got close, the way he ground into me, trying to force me to take his knot. My cunt clamped down though, even through the chemical haze, not wanting to let him in, which made his fingers bite down harder. I screamed, the sound muffled as someone forced my mouth open and a cock was shoved down my throat when—

I stared at Ash, knowing that he was the only one who saw it, really. I could imagine riding up to the Spencer estate on the back of a rumbly Harley, a thousand big, burly bikers at my back. I’d stop being a scared little girl and become instead a fucking general at the head of a savage army. Part of me wanted, needed that so much and the dads, they nodded, seeming to sense just that.

But then there was this.

The Spencers would have been able to hurt me without Rush, but they wouldn’t have made me complicit in my own abuse without it. I’d give the power of that to other men, other alphas, if I let the MCs have the stockpile. Then there was that woman, Riley. I saw her tear stained face in my mind’s eye just then, the guilt and the regret at what had seemed like a straightforward scientific discovery and somehow she seemed to feel more pain over what had happened to me than I did.

Probably because she could afford the luxury of allowing herself to feel it.

“That’s the safe?” I asked, looking at a square door inset into the wall. “Let's open it up and see what’s inside.”

The safe shouldn’t have the same passcode as the one on the door. Only someone very stupid or very pampered would be that dumb and yet here we were. Ash inputted the code and then pulled the door open, brows drawing down in a frown. It insulted the security expert in him, having such lax measures, but I guess the Spencers never expected this. No one got into this room without the requisite permissions. No one got anywhere near any of this if they weren’t a Spencer.

Except for us.

“How about this then?” Ash pulled out two massive stacks of cash, and behind him we could all see so many more. “The MCs might want Rush, but would they settle for cold, hard cash?”

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