My limbs feltheavy when I woke up, my head even more so. My tongue was stuck to the roof of my mouth, and I felt a bit sick.
Where the hell was I?
And what the fuck had I been injected with?
I blinked up at the dark roof above me. It was cold in the room, and a slight breeze was brushing over my bare body. My clothes were gone. I was fuckingnaked. I didn’t feel different down there, so I hadn’t been raped—at least, not yet. I knew it was a damn good possibility that I would be soon, though. Why else did you remove a woman’s clothes from her body? No other scenario made sense to me.
Fear swirled throughout my chest, settling deep in the pit of my stomach.
This couldn’t be happening again, could it? What were the chances of a woman like me getting rapedthreefucking times? I’d run from my mom and stepdad because of it. It had happened again with Gregory. Surely, God wasn’t cruel enough to put me through this a third fucking time. I wasn’t sure if I was strong enough to survive it.
And what about the Fathers of Mayhem? How did this shit happen on their watchagain? Why was I the only one taking beatings for this fucking club? I wasn’t even an old lady! Right now, I was basically a goddamn club bunny. What the fuck could they want with me?
I swallowed vomit just as the door to the side of me opened. “Ooh, she’s awake,” a man sang in a cheery voice. A light flickered on right above my face. I cursed and squinted, the light blinding me after being in the dark. When I opened them again, colorful spots dotted my vision. I tried moving my arms to shield my face, and that was when I realized I was bound to the gurney they had me on.
Bound.
I was fucking trapped. My heart raced in my chest so fast it fucking hurt. I hadn’t been able to tell before. I’d felt so goddamn heavy, but now that the drug was wearing off, I could feel binds around my ankles, too.
“We need you to pass on a message to the Fathers of Mayhem for us, sweetheart. Can you do that for us?”
My lips trembled. They weren’t looking for an old lady. They just wanted someone important to the club, and I’d been there long enough and got treated differently enough from the other women for anyone looking in to know that I was a ticket to getting them what they wanted.
I licked my dry lips, forcing my brain to connect with my mouth. “What message?” I managed to ask.
The man standing over the gurney grinned down at me. If he didn’t look so maniacal, he’d be handsome. Dark hair hung over his forehead, covering bluish-gray eyes. He was of a lankier build, but his muscles flexed as he leaned over me. But it was the wild look in his eyes—that slightly crazed expression—that made me terrified of him. He wasn’t afraid to hurt me. He wasn’t afraid to make me bleed. And he wanted to do both things; of that, I was sure.
“That we’ll mark every single one of their women until we get what we want.”
If I had thought I’d been afraid before, that was nothing compared to now. I knew what marking me meant.
They would put their brand on my body, wherever they pleased. And if I survived, I would be lucky as fuck. But maybe not so lucky, too. This could get me sent packing—or worse, killed. And cutting it into my skin would make it permanent. Even if I managed to get it covered one day, I knew if you looked closely enough, you would still see their brand.
“Wh—what do you want?” I managed.
“I want my nephew, dear Reina. I want Axel.”
Axel? Why the fuck did they want Axel? Adelaide and River had legally adopted him when he was born. He wastheirs. I didn’t understand why these men suddenly wanted him now—years later.
I screeched when four men suddenly appeared out of the darkness and began to unbind me. I was still too weak to do much fighting, and they easily flipped me onto my belly before fastening the straps back around me. I sobbed, praying for a miracle.
But I knew there wasn’t going to be one. Miracles didn’t happen for women like me. I’d been through enough shit in my life to know that.
Miracles didn’t happen. This was real life, and in real life, you were on your own.
But nothing could have prepared me for that knife slicing through my back. Nothing could have prepared me for the all-consuming pain. I vomited. I screamed. I cried. I pleaded for fucking death.
And every time I blacked out, cold water was thrown over me to wake me back up. They wanted me to feel this because this wasn’t just about Axel. I knew that. They wanted to cause me pain, too, all because I was part of the Fathers of Mayhem.
I hitthe gravel lot with a scream of pain, my back slamming painfully onto the rocks. Blood coated my skin, pooling beneath me. I rolled to my stomach with a moan of pain, hot tears sliding down my cheek. I could still taste vomit in my mouth, knew it was in my hair and on my face. The smell of it combined with the metallic smell of my blood had my empty stomach churning all over again.
Shivers wracked my body when a breeze blew. I was cold and wet, making this so much harder to deal with.
The clubhouse gates opened as the van screeched off, flying down the road. I managed to lift my head enough to see one of the prospects standing there, a horrified look on his face. He was our newest prospect—hadn’t even been here a week yet.
What a fucking way for him to find out what could happen to him, too, by being a member of this club, by even being affiliated with it.
“Oh fuck, Reina,” Tommy whispered, horror tingeing his words. “Oh, God.”