Prologue
Hurt
Rosalie
He spit on me.
I felt it land on the side of my chin and slide down.
I didn’t move to wipe it away.
I couldn’t.
Lying on my side, curled into a ball, the pain screamed through me. All of it—and there was a lot of it—demanding attention, I couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t think, couldn’t move in case it got worse. I couldn’t do anything but lie there and pray that it was over.
It wasn’t.
He bent over me, grabbed my hair, yanked it back, and I felt his hot breath hit my face.
“See if he wants you now, you stupid bitch,” he hissed.
He let my hair go and I felt him retreat, but he still wasn’t done.
He kicked me so hard with his foot in its heavy motorcycle boot, my body slid across the cement.
I was too far gone even to grunt.
I felt something bounce off my hip, clatter to the floor, and then his voice came back, this time from further away.
“There you go, baby,” he drawled. “Your line to Chaos. We’re done with you. I’m done with you. Now they can have you.”
I heard boots on cement, more than just his, his Bounty brothers in the club. I sustained a couple more kicks as they passed. One of them grabbed the underside of my jaw and shoved my head back into the cement, also spitting, his hitting my neck.
And then they were gone.
I lay there, my focus on breathing and continuing to do it even though each breath was not only an effort but an agony. The fear I’d felt early when he took me, how he’d taken me, the way he’d handled me and I knew he’d figured it out, had dissipated as pain took its place. Now, the fear was returning that they’d come back and dish out more.
He’d come back.
Throttle.
No, to me he was Beck. My boyfriend. Gerard Beck. He hated the first name Gerard so everyone called him Beck. All his life. Or since he could demand that happen and not allow anything but that. Even his mother called him Beck.
Until he got his club name, Throttle. All his brothers called him that. When I was with him when he was with his brothers, I also called him that.
But when we were alone, at home, he was Beck.
My Beck.
My man. My lover. My protector. My future.
The man who’d just spit on me and kicked me.
But he’d done more before that.
He’d grabbed me from work and delivered me right to them, right to where I was right then. Even starting it, choking me until I thought I’d blank out, then clocking me in the temple, then on the jaw, then on my cheekbone.
Throttle.
That name was given to him for a reason but not the reason he’d now become Throttle to me.
I shut my eyes tight, opened them, reached to the phone he’d tossed at me and endured the immense pain that scoured through me, leaving me feeling even more raw, which if my brain had room to process anything further, I would have thought unimaginable.
My fingers closed around the phone and I huffed out little breaths, which were hard to take since each one sent fire through my midsection. So I tried deep breaths, and those were worse because the fire lasted even longer.
Dread intermingled with all the rest as I tried to focus on moving my thumb to open the phone, but I saw the black creeping in at the sides of my eyes.
I couldn’t pass out.
I had to call for help.
I had to get out of there.
My body had different ideas, sending the message to my brain that this was too much, it couldn’t take more.
So I passed out.
* * * * *
I came to woozy and disoriented.
The pain, the stench of the room, the feel of the cement beneath me brought it all slamming back, along with the panic.
Having no idea how long I was out, feeling the phone resting in my hand, I actually grunted with the effort of sliding it up, wrapping my fingers around it, using my thumb to flip it open.
An old-style flip phone.
A burner.
We’d joked about it, Snap and me. He’d called me Scully. He had a burner too, so there’d be no caller ID when he phoned me. So I’d called him Mulder.
I was going to call him.
Not because I was working for Chaos anymore. I wasn’t. That officially ended on that cement. Definitely not because I was protecting Bounty. I’d tell the police. Absolutely, I’d tell the police my boyfriend’s motorcycle club beat the snot out of me. It didn’t matter that I broke the code, and knew it. It didn’t matter that I’d betrayed my man, and done it deliberately.
I was trying to save him. Save his brothers. Save his club. Save everyone.
I closed my eyes tight, my thumb moving over the phone from memory, knowing the way on its own, I called him so often. That was why I was calling him now rather than 911. I knew how to get to him. To Snapper. And the effort would be less. I could dial the digits to get him up on speed dial in my sleep, so I could do it lying on a cement floor, beat to hell and practically unable to move.
I couldn’t lift the phone to my ear so I just shoved it across the floor closer to my face, listening to it ring.
“Rosie?” Snap answered.
I closed my eyes tighter as understanding hit me with a blow almost as brutal as every strike I’d just taken.
God.
I hadn’t done it to save Beck. To save his brothers, his club…everybody.
At first, I’d done it to make Beck into Shy.
And then I’d done it to make him be Snapper.
And last, I’d done it to make his club Chaos.
“Rosie?” Snap’s Eddie Vedder baritone got sharper.
Oh no.
No.
The black was creeping in again.
“Sss…” was all I could get out.
“Rosalie,” he bit out, curt, alert, alarmed.
“Hurt,” I whispered.
And then, again, I blacked out.
* * * * *
I’d come to and gone out, managed to drag myself a few feet toward the door, hearing the burner ring, then stop, ring again, stop, drifting in and out before I heard him.
“Jesus, fuck, Jesus, fuck.”
Snapper.
“Ambulance or call a brother?”
Roscoe.
“Rosie, honey, you with us?”
Snap, close to me, pulling my hair out of my face gently.
“Fuck,” growled from Roscoe. “Those motherfuckers spit on her.”
“Rosie, babe, darlin’, you with us?”
Snap, tighter, letting the anger rise through the concern.
My eyelids fluttered.
“Good, honey, good, stay with us,” Snapper ordered.
“Am-am…bu—” I tried.
“Okay, baby, okay, good,” Snap cut me off, not making me expend more effort. Then to Roscoe, “Call an ambulance, man.”
I felt hands on me, careful but not hesitant, swift and searching. Moans coasted out, little twitches when he’d hit a bad spot that sent new aches, stings, or fire through me.
“Gotta check, honey,” Snap murmured apologetically while Roscoe talked on the phone somewhere else. “Stay awake, Rosie. Stay with me, yeah?”
I said nothing until I moaned again when I felt him gently lift my head then rest it on something that was a lot softer than cement.