He was shaking with emotion, and without warning, Shasta reached out for him, and he didn’t even hesitate to take her from Clash. He embraced her whole heartedly, clutching her with both possession and worry.
Fuck, my suspicions aren’t as far off as I thought.
Everyone scattered, and within ten minutes I had all of Shasta’s shit. Her clothes, shoes, everything. I even grabbed her makeup and shampoo. I had no idea where they planned on taking her, but I knew they were doing exactly as Sabbath requested—making her disappear.
But the disappearance of Shasta Hall wasn’t because of an order from our Prez, it was because Clash and Snyder seemed like they were willing to go to war over her—a war that looked like it was aimed right for our Prez.
I handed Clash the bags so he could put them in the back of a cage Shasta was already in, then I climbed onto my bike, starting it as Snyder pulled up right beside me.
“This shit needs to end,” he growled. Throwing on his lid and attaching it beneath his chin. “Sabbath needs to fucking die!”
The sheer finality of his words hit me hard. On one hand, he was threatening our Prez, a man all of us would take a bullet for. The man we swore to ride behind and beside in whatever battle came our way.
But he was also the man that gambled away the club’s money. The man who had hit his Ol’ Lady so fucking hard she passed out and gave her a black eye. The man who looked like he was possessed by the Devil and enjoyed every damn minute of it. He was also the man who impregnated Nina and was now riding off with her like some fucked up Bonnie and Clyde.
Did Sabbath deserve to die?
I didn’t know.
But I was determined to find out, which is exactly why I was pulling onto the road behind my other brothers, taking Shasta somewhere safe for her to disappear.
Chapter Six
Shasta
The car was eerily silent. Clash kept clutching the wheel like he was trying to strangle it, and every once in a while I’d feel the strength of his gaze as his eyes moved to look at me.
I was nothing more than a defeated slump against the window, trying to process why those venomous words were so easy to say, and how I even got the strength to say them? It wasn’t like me to talk back. Not like that. But I knew if I said what I did, it would hurt him. And that’s all I wanted. For Sabbath to hurt and pay for everything he’d done to me so far.
And hurt him I did…
But in the process, he hurt me.
My eye was swelling like crazy, and there was a thumping throb pulsing through it. The tears that wouldn’t stop falling blurred my vision.
“I’m sorry,” Clash whispered, still strangling the steering wheel like it was Sabbath’s neck.
“For what?”
He shook his head. A frustrated breath followed. “For not talking to you the last few weeks… for not coming to the hospital to see you… for not being there when that happened… for not being there when everything else happened.”
“It’s not your fault. I don’t blame you for abandoning me. I’m damaged goods.”
The words sat heavy in my mind as well as on my tongue. I felt each of them in the very depths of my soul.
I’d been used, abused, violated, and ripped apart. What was left of me was nothing but scraps and discarded waste.
His hand moved over the center console, his fingers curling around mine.
“Nothing about you is damaged, Shasta. You’re perfect in every way, and that bastard doesn’t fucking deserve you. He’s going to pay for hitting you the way he did.”
I shrunk into myself, remembering the way his eyes looked right before it happened, the demonic vacancy that took over as his brown irises grew into two black holes of rage. “I deserved it. I mouthed off and said stuff I knew would piss him off. I provoked him.”
He squeezed my hand, and the force of it made me lift my head. “Don’t you ever fucking say that, you hear me? I don’t give a fuck what a woman says. No man has the right to hit a woman, especially one who is recovering from being beaten and raped. You, more than anyone, deserve more than that.”
“Thank you,” I whispered. “I wish I could believe that, though.” Deep down, I felt like I deserved every bit of what Sabbath was dishing out. Maybe in my subconscious I wanted this to happen? Or maybe I attracted violence and made men want to hurt me?
Another tear slipped down my cheek as Clash pulled into the driveway of a small condo.