A hazy memory started to make its way to the forefront of her mind. Rusty hovering over her naked body, whispering something in her ear. Normally she squashed those memories like the cockroaches they were, but this time she allowed them to come. She’d been eighteen at the time and had been at a club party earlier that night. Copper’s eyes had tracked her from the moment she walked in the door to the second she left. And it hadn’t escaped Rusty’s notice.
One day, I’m going to be fucking you like this, pounding you in this bed, and he’s gonna walk in and see me with my dick in you. Or hell, maybe he’ll find me with my cock buried down your throat. Yeah, that’d be fucking sweet. Can you imagine the look on his face? It would destroy him. That’s my fucking dream Shell. To destroy him. To have him look at this bed and know I’m the one who fucked you in it. I got here first. I ruined his perfect little MC princess.
Shell shoved whoever was standing in front of her aside and moved into the circle around Viper. “What’s today’s date?” she asked, tone panicked.
“March twenty-second, babe, why?” Viper asked.
Her mother was out of town. On a ten-day cruise.
“Holy shit! I know where he is,” she said, then spun and sprinted for the exit.
“Goddammit, Shell, fucking wait!” Zach’s voice chased her, but she didn’t slow.
She had to get to Copper. There was no time to explain.
They could follow.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
COPPER WAS NO stranger to pain. He’d had his ass beat more than a time or two back in his younger days when he was far more hot-headed and hadn’t learned to lock down his temper. Back in Ireland, his pop was in an outlaw MC. The old guy had been involved in some shady shit. Drugs, weapons trafficking, prostitution, even some murder-for-hire, and he hadn’t been afraid to drag his sons into whatever was going on. Copper’d been stabbed by the time he was fifteen. Drug deal gone bad. That was part of the reason he’d pulled the Handlers out of that shit when he took control. He had first-hand knowledge of the havoc that lifestyle could wreak.
The pain of the past day, however, was unlike anything he’d yet to experience. He woke to a burning hot sensation combined with tearing agony. Goddamn, he hoped it was the worst he’d ever feel because it fucking hurt.
“Welcome back, brother,” Rusty said as he dragged the tip of a knife up Copper’s exposed thigh, way too fucking close to his balls. A thin stream of blood immediately flowed everywhere the knife sliced.
Copper hissed out a breath, nostrils flaring and teeth clenched to keep the growl of white-hot pain at bay. “The fuck am I?” Clad in nothing but his boxer-briefs, he was on a bed with his arms extended and cuffed to the posts. He gave his one functioning leg a wiggle.
Ankles were bound, too.
This was pretty much how the past day went. Copper would wake to some kind of agony, demanded to know where he was, endured more pain, then drifted off to a fitful sleep without any answers. Although he had a sickening suspicion he knew where he was being held.
“We’re in one of my favorite places.”
Guess Rusty was finally willing to chat. Probably feeling pretty damn good about himself, having kidnapped and beaten his brother. The first few times he’d woken, it’d been to the whack of a baseball bat on various parts of his body. A baseball bat that looked suspiciously like Louie.
Zach was gonna flip his shit.
Hell, his enforcer would probably be happier to find Louie than his own president.
After Rusty removed the knife from Copper’s skin, he flicked a Zippo open, then stuck the tip of the steak knife in the flame. As he rotated the blade in the flame, Rusty stared at the glowing point.
Fuck.
No wonder that shit hurt. A searing hot knife slicing the fuck out of his skin. Glancing down, he noticed two jagged lines identical in size running from his knee to his groin. Shallow cuts, thank fuck because they were right along an artery that could take him out in minutes. He must have been dead to the world to remain unconscious through the first slash.
“Man, the memories I made in this bed. Shell was a damn wildcat back then. She still like that?” Rust removed the knife and tested the burning tip against his finger. “Shit.” He shook out his hand with a gleeful smirk then flipped the lighter open again. This time, he picked up a glass pipe from the bed and held the bowl over his flame. Copper watched the smoke swirl up the tube. The smell of burning plastic filled the air. After a few seconds, Rusty lifted the pipe to his lips and inhaled the smoke deep into his lungs. His eyes closed for one second then popped back open, smirk present once again.