I stretched my neck back to the yard and caught sight of a blacked-out Ford van. No plates. No distinguishing features. Nothing for me to locate it with.
Mae was in the back, unconscious, and I couldn’t move. I couldn’t move to save my woman.
“Styx.”
Hearing my name, I turned my attention back to Rider, who had moved ’round and now stood before me. The fucker looked relieved… like he’d finally won.
“She caused this by choosing you, y’know.” My jaw clenched and I tasted my own blood as my gums began to bleed with the pressure. “I mean, what the hell does she see in you? The way she watches you. The way she’s obsessed with you. It’s completely alien to me.”
I almost couldn’t breathe as he talked about my woman. Shit. She did want me. Hell, she loved me, and this asshole couldn’t take it.
Rider punched me in the face, my head blowing to the side as a result. The brother had one hell of a right hook. “It’s time for you to listen, brother.” My eyes narrowed.
“For years I’ve had to put up with a shitload of sinful acts and the pure evil poison of this brotherhood: the brothers fucking anything that moved, killing for kicks, drinking, turning against the Lord. I earned your friendship, your trust. All the time, I despised you and the rest of the sinners in this chapter. What you didn’t see is that The Order acquired a lucrative contract several years ago. A contract for a whole lotta guns, guns to give us revenue to expand our… commune. It was gonna take a few years to set up. But that was good. We needed a few years to scope the market, get to know our competitors. We shipped weapons in from Gaza, top-grade shit. But someone was already on our turf: you.
“The plan was real simple: infiltrate the Hangmen, move through the ranks, and shoot the intel back to Prophet David and the elders. And I did. Did it to damn near perfection. It was us who undercut the Russian deal—I told them the details—began to phase the Hangmen outta the gun game. We got better guns. Russians had no complaints. Your old man going to the boatman was just the icing on the cake. I mean, his young kid, a mute bastard, taking the gavel? Putty in our fuckin’ hands.
“It was us who put the bid on your head with the Nazis. Pit eventually took the fall. It weren’t too hard to make you think the prospect was corrupt—like taking candy from a baby. But then Mae turned up, bleeding out. Everything changed for me. The whole fuckin’ game changed.”
Rider stroked his brown beard and a smirk appeared on his lips. I made a silent promise to myself to cut off Rider’s head and mount it on my wall, a trophy to smirk back at every day for the rest of my life. I’d never wanted to maim and kill a motherfucker so much. I wanted him to feel pain… lots of pain, so much pain that’d he’d beg me to end him.
“I didn’t know who Mae was at first.” He continued.
I tried my best to refocus. Anything he said could be useful. I needed to listen to every damn word out of this traitor’s brainwashed mouth.
“I’d never seen her before. I was kept away from the commune, kept away to study The Order’s leadership, study our teachings… study medicine, and learn how to heal. I was to be secluded until called upon to ascend. Things changed, though, and I was given a different mission: to infiltrate the Hangmen. I’d lived outside of commune, knew about life. I was the obvious choice to fit in with an outlaw MC.
“I’d heard of the four ‘Cursed Sisters’ of the commune, of course; the famed four beauties of The Order. We all had—Salome, her two sisters, and one other, Delilah. We, the brothers, were warned to stay away from them. They could tempt any man, cause them to fall. Salome was rumored to be the most beautiful of them all, but fuck, the rumors of her beauty were underestimated—that hair, those eyes… that sinful body. It wasn’t until I saw the tattoo on her wrist and the marks on her skin that I knew she was one of my own. I just couldn’t understand how she’d escaped. Then I got word from Gabriel that Salome had run away on her wedding day and I knew who you’d just taken in—one of the Cursed… the prophesized seventh wife of Prophet David. Taken her in and set out to make her your own. You turned her into your whore. Swayed her from The Order’s path of righteousness.”
Rider suddenly snarled and rushed me, slamming his fist into my stomach. The blow almost had me puking. I sucked up the pain. This asswipe would never break me. My hatred of him and his brothers was keeping me numb from pain.
“I wanted nothing to do with Mae. I had to let The Order know where she was, to organize the pick-up, and never get too close to risk all my work. She is Prophet David’s. But then you go and push her on me! You made me want her! Made me obsess about her!” He gripped my cheeks in his hand. “You ruined me! And now I have to deliver Mae back to him. My time’s up, keeping her away. I have to give her back!”
My lips curled over my teeth. Breathe. Swallow. Speak.
Fuckin’ speak! I ordered my throat.
But no words.
Yet again.
Fuck!
Rider laughed. “Still nothing to say, Prez?” he stepped back. “You’re pathetic. You couldn’t even grow a pair and speak to your woman when she was calling for you… crying for you. You never deserved her.”
I jerked so far forward off the gate my limbs bent too far. I felt my shoulder pop, probably dislocated, but I welcomed the pain. It would drive me. Fuel me on the path to revenge.
Rider edged in to say quietly, “I ain’t gonna kill you. No, it’d be too easy, and I don’t need no more blood on my hands. I’ve sinned too much for this club as it is.” The rat’s face fell at that, but then it immediately hardened the fuck back up. “I want you alive, Styx, knowing Mae is out there, knowing you ain’t gonna see her again. See how you like living the hell I’ve been through over these past few months. And don’t bother looking. You’ll never find us. No one ever does.”