Chains Read online

  “She hates the rain. Storms, she loves, but the quiet rain gives her terrible anxiety. I once found her in the shower mumbling that she couldn’t control the weather. I didn’t ask her about it, I just picked her up and carried her to bed with me. She calmed down and slept all night on my chest without another worry.”

  “You saved her from herself,” Fi stood up and walked to get her cigarettes before coming back to sit at the table with me.

  “Why’d she leave? Did I do something?” I asked because for the entire week out on the road I had this horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach that I had crossed one of her triggers without meaning to and I didn’t want to lose her.

  “It’s not you, per se,” she gave me a crooked fake smile. “It’s your penis. Scorpetto.”

  Coffee came out of my mouth with a cough as I choked on the liquid and her words.

  “That’s for waking me up for something you are too blind to see,” Fi snapped as she got a paper towel to clean up my mess.

  “I know you haven’t seen one in a while, but they are called cocks when they belong to men, and his name is not Scorpetto, it’s Scorpio.”

  “What you have is a tree stump, and my friend wants to sit on it.”

  “Stop bullshitting a bullshitter,” I demanded. It really was too early in the morning for the back-and-forth banter that we’d become accustomed to.

  “Okay,” Fi sighed as she threw away the wet paper towels and sat down. “You want to know what you did to make her leave?”

  “Please.”

  “You were you,” she replied, and then took out a cigarette and lit it.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I’m not sure you should peek behind the curtain, but I’m gonna tell you, anyway. I had this whole plan to help her, to get her away from her husband before he killed her. I knew with a little money she could escape without him noticing money missing from his account. I knew the guys would dispose of the car and keep her hidden, and that if I sweet-talked Medic, he would fix her up and get Ty and the guys to look out for her brother in prison while she was with us so her bastard of a husband couldn’t hurt him to hurt her, but even with all of that I needed someone I could trust, someone that I knew wouldn’t hurt her, and that’s when I came to you.

  “I know I made it seem like it was a last-minute decision to stay with you, but it wasn’t. Truthfully, deciding she would be comfortable with you was the easiest out of all of this because you know her.”

  “What are you talking about Fi?”

  “I knew you wouldn’t recognize her, not with the way that asshole made her change herself. Plastic surgery here and there would ensure she would look like what he wanted and not who you would remember. I knew that after the horrific trauma she had been through and your new name, that she would never realize that you are the same Freddy that carried her books in school. You see, it was all part of my master plan to let her envision a life outside of abuse and show her it could happen with someone I knew she could feel safe with.”

  “So, what the fuck went wrong?” I balled up my fist as she slowly took a drag off the cigarette.

  “She realized the morning you were leaving that she was worried about you.”

  “Fiona, what the hell are you talking about?”

  “She came to you for comfort and found it in your arms. She stayed with you to feel safe and found it when you held her. She needed time to heal, and while she did that, she fell for you. But she’s damaged. Once she realized how strongly she felt, she wanted to put an ocean between you so that her husband would never hurt you.”

  “I’m not worried about that tool bag,” I scoffed, thinking over what she said. “So, she left me because she has feelings for me?”

  “That’s right.” Fiona put her cigarette out and leaned on the chair she was sitting in. Her exhaustion was showing.

  “That makes no sense,” I bellowed. “She leaves the one man she cares for and believes can protect her, to save me from having to protect myself?”

  “I didn’t call it logical; I just know she cares about you more than herself right now. She loves you, she always has, even if she doesn’t remember you.”

  “What was her name in school?” I question, trying to remember who she might have been.

  “Laney. She went by Laney back then,” Fiona answered.

  I could see it. Her features had changed, she definitely had a different nose, but I didn’t care. When I stepped back and thought about it, I could see it all. I could see her falling for me at the same time I had already fallen for her.

  “Her first day here, I called her a liar when she said her name was Laney,” I chuckled at the humility of it.

  “She goes by Ellie now,” Fi stated with a firm voice. “She was Laney to him, and she never wants to be again.”

  I understood why she was worried about her ex. The club lawyer had received back her divorce papers again with more changes, Ellie just wanted her freedom, and he went back and forth with himself over what she would get because she never challenged a word of it. She just wanted out.

  “I remember her, she’s the girl who moved away before I could man up and ask her to the spring formal,” I mumbled out loud and Fi gave me a knowing smile as the sun began to pierce the sky and light came through her window.

  “Valentine’s Day is next week, right?”

  “Yes, but if you need more relationship advice, I am gonna start charging $49.95 per session up to thirty minutes,” Fi smirked.

  “I have an idea, sort of a plan,” I confess.

  “Hey! That’s my job,” she whined, but then listened to every word I had to say. She knew her role in it, and when her dad Flex woke up to see what all the commotion was, we enlisted him as well.

  Chapter Six

  Chains

  “I’m looking for Jeb Gleason,” I spoke to a butler that had opened the stone trimmed door at the address where Ellie’s divorce papers kept going.

  “Do you have an appointment?”

  “No, but we are friends of his wife’s,” Flex growled. “He will want to see us since we know where she is.”

  “Wait here in the foyer.” The elderly butler motioned for us to come inside and sit in the chairs by the front door. I looked around the house with the dark cherry wood and gold accents. There was no way I could ever give Ellie everything she had here, but I could give her a life with love and protection from people like him.

  “Sir?” A maid stuck her head around the corner while on all fours, pretending to be cleaning something off the floor. “Is she okay?”

  I gave her a nod.

  “Please don’t tell him where she is.” Flex cocked his head to the side in question as she looked around to see if anyone was with us. “When he takes you to the office, look at the railing, second step from the top, on the right-hand side. He had us leave everything as is to remind her...” she quickly quietened and stared at the floor.

  “This way gentlemen,” the butler said, coming out of nowhere and ordered us up the stairs. I turned back and looked at the maid who pointed furiously at the railing. Flex moved in front of me as my pace slowed and I saw what she was talking about. There were broken posts covered in blood. The cherry dark wood helped to hide it, but it was there, along with her hair that had fallen off the edging and gotten stuck.

  When we got to the top of the stairs, I turned back and looked down, and even with the help of his staff, I could see where Ellie had been thrown down the stairs. A wood fracture here, discoloration in the carpet there, and then at the end of it all, the entryway table legs were sitting on broken marble tile.

  Rage flooded my veins. I hadn’t come to hurt him; I came to bargain her freedom with him, but everything in me wanted to tear him apart at this very moment. I was ready for his blood to spill, to cascade like a waterfall down each one of these steps. I turned with balled fists and continued down the hallway until we stepped into his office where my rightly placed anger took a back seat to the shock I
felt when I saw a police detective snorting coke off a side table.

  “Yes, of course, Senator, I would definitely invest,” a man with his back to me said into a phone.

  I saw in this office exactly why Ellie came to me so broken, why all her hopes were placed in a bunch of unruly bikers. There was no one else out there that would help her. She needed a demon to beat the devil.

  “I hear you know where my bitch of a wife is,” this skinny pale pencil pusher looking man stated as he hung up the phone and turned around. I noticed the bodyguards eyeing us cautiously and then out of the corner of my eye I saw the detective sit back in a chair and wipe the remnants off his nose.

  “Not exactly,” Flex was the first to speak. “We are here on her behalf.”

  “We came to make whatever deal needs to be made to get the divorce papers signed,” I answered as I observed and made a mental note of all the cameras in the room.

  “When my wife has suffered as much as I have in this marriage, she can leave it,” Jeb blew us off, but I sat down and didn’t budge. Flex nudged me, I knew he was saying to leave because of the cop in the room, but I didn’t care.

  “How did you suffer?” I questioned without hesitation. He had the money, the power, and her, all he had to do was treat her right.

  “Do you have any idea how painful it was to pretend to care about her? She wanted the most ridiculous things…”

  “Like?” Flex waved his hand for the man to keep talking. He was as invested as I was in finding out what exactly she could have done to him.

  “She wanted me to hold her hand in public, she wanted dinner and dancing, she wanted all the things you do when you are dating, but after she married me, she should’ve known that when we walk into a room she’s behind me, not beside me. She understood that in order for me to take her anywhere, she had to be and stay no bigger than a size two. She once, told me she went on birth control because she was scared of me, I laughed. She doesn’t get to decide when I get a son to leave my legacy to. She was the worst wife, giving the chef the night off so she could cook for me, just terrible.”

  Flex and I could only look at each other. He wasn’t a big scary man. The wind could blow and he would fall over. But I understood why she was scared.

  “Did you ever throw her down the stairs?” Flex questioned as I sat and waited for my turn. I wanted to kill him.

  “You know, I used to let Marco,” he pointed to a big burly guard. “Knock her around for me, but he grew a conscious and said she couldn’t handle it anymore. The last night she was here I took her to the top of the stairs, I held her on the edge of the step, feeling the thrill at the way she was looking and pleading with me. I was her master, the controller over her life and death. It was intoxicating. I wouldn’t have let her go, but she stopped fighting me, she surrendered. Once they stop fighting, they are of no use to me, so I let go. I had hoped she would die, but she slithered out the door all broken and bruised. That’s why I need her back.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “I need to finish what I started. She’s a loose end, a frayed thread, that needs to be torn off or burned.”

  “That’s not going to happen,” I growled.

  His bodyguards got defensive.

  “Is my wife sucking your cock?” He sneered, and Flex elbowed me as he stood up, reminding me we had a purpose here and it wasn’t for the blood shed.

  “She is just someone I know. Now, either you and I can make a deal here and give her the freedom she wants, or you can go into court and explain why there is a detective snorting coke with you. Why her blood and hair are on your banister and posts. Admitting publicly that she was your punching bag, so you lose that status you hold so dearly, or you can make a deal here and now and your vices stay your secret. Your choice.”

  “You’re just some drug-riddled biker yourself, no one would believe you,” he scoffed.

  Flex sat down. He knew we were no longer leaving without something from this asshole.

  “Your mom’s a judge and your dad’s a senator, right?” I inquire.

  He nods.

  “What would mommy and daddy think if they got you back in pieces?”

  “Are you threatening me?”

  “No, I’m asking a question. You see, we are with the Soulless Savages a couple of towns over, and we control what comes in and out of our town and what comes near our town. If someone here is selling you drugs, then it’s our job to ensure that the dealers are no longer able to sell, and they will know how we found out about them. Besides, I know my boss has been looking to expand, maybe this is the town for us, the one you eliminated crime in, or maybe I should just beat the hell out of you like you did your wife and send you back in pieces, the same way you left her.”

  “This is extortion,” the detective said. He was a moron.

  “Sit down, Sir. You are too high to be involved in this conversation, Detective…”

  “Harkness, I’m Detective Harkness.”

  “Nice to meet you, they call me Chains. This here is Flex,” I made a point of making sure Jeb knew my name, a name I would make sure he would never forget. Every time he thought about Ellie, he would remember I was in his way.

  “What kind of stupid names are those?” Jeb sat back in his chair, putting his feet up.

  “The kind you get when you road-haul someone for hurting their wife,” my voice echoed as my tone dropped, as it normally did when I was furious.

  “I’m not signing anything. She said a vow, she’s with me until death do us part.”

  “Okay,” I said the single word and stood up, Flex was confused, but followed suit.

  “Okay?” Jeb questioned.

  “Yeah, I know where you stand. You know where I stand, and since we are at an impasse, I’m gonna go. Watch your back, though, I suspect bikers will move into your crime-free town at any minute.”

  Then we walked down the stairs and started out the door when I was greeted by a shaking gun, held by the woman who didn’t know she was mine yet.

  “What?” Her hand shook a little more. “You’re with him…”

  “No,” I tried to explain, but his voice calling her name behind me shattered any chance of explaining.

  “Laney, are you going to shoot the bikers you sent to me?” he questioned. “The ones who came to get your divorce?”

  “What? No,” her eyes welled up and her hand tensed as he got closer. I watched as everything that gave her life, that lifted her spirit, diminished under his shadow.

  “Tell him why you’re here,” I whispered as her eyes jumped back and forth between me and him.

  “I want out, I want you to feel what I feel every time it rains. I want you to bleed all over the carpet and tell the staff not to clean it up that well so you can always see where you lost your strength, your spine, your dignity.”

  “But, my dear, you won’t pull the trigger. You don’t have to stomach for it,” he continued berating her, and I listened to all I could take. I snatched the gun from her hand and turned around.

  “She won’t, but I will.”

  I tossed the folder, Doris, the club lawyer, had given us at him and kept aim as I tucked Ellie in behind me.

  “Sign them and we walk away,” I offered him an out, but instead, he shouted a lot of profanities and charged at us. I let him hit me one time, which hurt him more than me, and then I fired the gun.

  I hit him in the shoulder. My plans for him didn’t include death, at least not yet, but he could definitely stand to be wounded.

  He cried out as his body fell back, the detective who had been getting high stared with eyes as large as saucers stood behind him making noises, but not actual words. The bodyguards stepped between me and Jeb.

  “The way I see it you have two choices, leave and stay out of this or stay, and go down with him,” I left it their choice and like most would have done, they left. Marco stopped on his way past me and looked at Ellie.

  “I’m sorry,” he allowed the words to leave his lips,
but instead of forgiving him, my beautiful girl wrapped herself around the side of me so he couldn’t touch her without going through me.

  “Kick him,” Flex’s words carried over the cries coming from Jeb. He screamed about how Flex was going to go to jail, Ellie was going to pay, and that they would never find my body. “Now’s your chance,” Flex stepped up beside her.

  “He won’t hurt you again,” I assure her as she steps away from me and walks toward him. Flex stayed on her right side as she looked down on Jeb.

  “Stupid bitch,” he sneered and she lifted her leg back to kick him when he kicked upward and hit her in the chest. Without a second thought, I pounced on him and knocked him unconscious. I turned to her to see Flex showing her how to breathe after the wind was knocked out of her sails.

  “Do you want him dead?” I questioned Ellie, now was the time if she wanted it done.

  “Sir,” the maid came out and took in the situation. “This is from that day and today.”

  She handed me a couple of flash drives and then she went over to Ellie and ensured she was okay.

  “It’s not snitching it we tape these to him and leave it for the police,” I stated out loud as if reassuring myself since I didn’t have permission from Mad Dog to handle this. “It wouldn’t come back on us in any way.”

  “Ellie,” Flex calmly stated her name. “Do you want us to finish this?” She shook her head and asked the maid to call the police.

  “He is finished,” she whispered as she walked over and stood over him as he laid bleeding on his porch. I took the gun she had and passed it to Flex who quickly rode off to dispose of it since I could only assume it was a club gun. I took a step toward her and watched as she kicked Jeb once. Then I stepped closer and she did it over and over again.

  I picked her up and held her tightly to me as she fought to get free. I envisioned her killing him, but knowing her I knew she couldn’t live with the guilt, even if he was a bastard.

  “I’ve got you, pretty girl,” I said the same thing I had told her the first time I had to hold her still. I gave her the same reassurances that I wouldn’t hurt her. I held her as she collapsed on my shoulder and sobbed. Finally, she realized she was free of him, and her tension melted away.