I’d been looking forward to fucking him when he got home, to worshipping him like a soldier returned from war, only now he was comatose somewhere with that slut, Laken, and I was watching another man defend me.
A man, I realized as I clued back into the fight, that was suddenly losing.
“Fuck,” Wrath roared as Grease landed a malicious punch right to the left side of his gut, his skin opening up under it as if he’d been cut through with a hot blade.
Blood spilled down his side and into the sloshing mud at their feet.
Wrath retaliated by lunging at Grease, locking him in one arm and delivering two quick blows to his head.
But Grease was close enough to hit short, sharp punches to Wrath’s stomach that bloomed again and again into gaping wounds.
What the fuck was happening?
Wrath released him with a pained grunt, his hand going to a particularly gruesome cut.
Something caught and winked at me in the lights, something affixed to Grease’s hand.
Wicked looking brass knuckles, curved at the ends into short blades.
I gasped and looked immediately to Reaper who wasn’t looking into the ring at the fight, but at me, my mother tucked under his arm and a massive grin on his face.
“Weapons aren’t allowed in The Fight,” I accused.
Reaper’s eyes glimmered with wet satisfaction. “Think you forget this is my club and I’m the one makes the rules here. I want weapons, I’ll put guns in my motherfuckin’ soldiers’ hands and no one will say fuckin’ shit ’bout it.”
“I’m saying shit about it,” I spat.
“Yeah, you are,” my mother added with a sly smile. “Why do you think this is happening, sweet pea?”
I gaped at them.
“You wanna be Berserker now, girl, you gotta be christened with Berserker style, anointed with the cum of my brothers,” Reaper declared.
A shiver caught my spine and wrenched it backwards. “No.”
“Loyalty is everythin’, princess,” he told me as Wrath let out another low growl of pain in the ring. “The brothers prove it with blood in that ring and the women prove it by takin’ care’a ’em when they’re done.”
“That’s so fucked up,” I shouted over the roar of celebratory shouts as Wrath staggered and nearly fell to his knees. “Mum, you can’t seriously be okay with this?”
“Okay with it?” she asked, her face so similar to mine creased in shock. “Harleigh baby, it was my idea.”
The crowd screamed again, pulling my gaze to the mud where Wrath had fallen to his knees, swaying but still, somehow upright. His eyes, one already swelling shut, red with blood from a cut in his forehead, found mine and they were filled with agony. Not only for him but for me.
“It’s over motherfucker,” Grease crowed, then landed one last brutal blow to Wrath’s left cheek.
And Goliath crumbled.
“No,” I screamed, so long and loud I was thrown back to the day my dad had been shot in the chest, only this time I didn’t have Danner to shield me from the truth.
Grease had won The Fight. And I was his prize if he wanted me.
Immediately, I turned away on my heel and sprinted from the circle.
I made it ten feet before Grease caught me, his arms slippery with mud and blood but unyielding around my torso as he lugged me up the stairs into the house yelling, “Got me my prize!”
I was still screaming, kicking and wailing and scratching deep welts into his arms as he carted me to the living room and dropped me on the couch.
Twiz appeared above me and locked down my wrists, Pink Eye at the foot of the couch holding my kicking boots. Grease sneered down at me as he straddled me then bent farther to whisper in my ear.
“This is how you smoke out a rat.”
I hesitated for one brief second.
What the fuck?
And then pandemonium broke loose.
Danner was suddenly there, still filthy from the fight, his face a black mask of rage as he let out a roar, one so mighty it shook the walls and launched forward to attack Grease.
This time, quickly, he gained the upper hand, dragging the older man to the ground so he could land punch after punch to his manically laughing face.
Then Wrath was there, pulling Twiz and Pink Eye off me even as he bled all across the floor from his wounds.
“Mine,” he grunted to them, then smacked his chest. “Fuckin’ mine.”
I took the opportunity to jump up and deliver a kick to Pink Eye’s inner thigh, just above the knee that had him howling and dropping to the floor.
I’d just torn his ACL.
“ENOUGH,” Reaper bellowed from the mouth of the hall, his gun raised at us all.
Everyone stopped, but Danner who landed one more blow to Grease’s pulpy face.
“You’re done here,” Reaper said in a voice like a gavel strike. “Turn in your cut and get the fuck out of this clubhouse.”
Danner glared at him over Grease’s gurgling body. “This shit is fucked, Prez. Doesn’t mean I can’t do my part for the club.”
“That’s exactly what it fuckin’ means, you fuckin’ pussy,” Reaper spat. “You deny your brothers ’cause ’a woman? One who ain’t even yours? Fuckin’ disgusts me. Brothers before all else, that’s the fuckin’ motto ’ere and you’ve proved again you can’t swallow it. So, get the motherfuckin’ fuck out ’fore I get Hendrix to drag you outta ’ere.”
I made to step forward, to say something to rectify the situation before the last three years of Danner’s work went down the drain, but Wrath stilled me with a careful hand and subtly shook his head.
Danner got up slowly, his eyes locked with Reaper’s even when he hocked a wad of spit onto Grease’s body and then still when he said, “Came here for a fuckin’ brotherhood and freedom. Not for more fucked up rules forced on me.”
Reaper sneered at him. “Out.”
He didn’t look at me, but I knew he wanted to as he stalked out the front doors and into the night.
Reaper turned his gun on Wrath, squinting one eye in focus. “You do somethin’ like that again, Wrath brother, I’ll not only excommunicate your ass, I’ll put a fuckin’ bullet in it, ya hear?”
Wrath grunted.
“And you,” he told me, cocking his gun between me and the hall behind him. “I got another way to prove you’re loyal, you’re too prude to take a fuckin’ cock. Get to my office.”
He turned on his heel without waiting for me to follow.
I didn’t want to, I wanted to go to Danner’s and make sure he was alright, ask him what the fuck we were going to do next, because at this point, there was nothing I wouldn’t do to take these fuckers down.
“Go,” Wrath ordered me quietly. “You want’a bullet to the brain? Fuckin’ go.”
So, I did.
But first, I kicked Grease in his prone belly and added my spit to his face.
Reaper was waiting in his office, door open, stroking his gun where it lay on his desktop.
“Close the door, girl.”
I did, then moved into the room to sit at one of the chairs on the other side of the desk from him. Anger coursed so swiftly through my veins, I was worried I wouldn’t be able to dam the flow of it from my mouth if he asked me to speak.