Making Choices (Black Shamrocks MC Book 2) (10 page)

Sliding backward on the bed until her back touches the wall, she leans against it. Pulling the elastic from her dishevelled hair, she runs her fingers through it as she gathers it into a knot and secures it again. Once she’s fixed her hair, she starts examining her nails.

The Princess has dismissed me, it would seem.

“Well, thanks for that. You basically answered nothing.”

Giving up, I sit down on the side of the bed that I’ve mentally claimed as my own. I can understand having faith in the Shamrocks because they’ve always struck me as very dangerous, yet capable. What I don’t understand is her blind conviction that we should just sit here and wait for them. We don’t even know if they know we’re missing yet. We should be trying to find a way out so that we can contact the police and have these maniacs dealt with.

Ordinary people do not kidnap others over a vendetta caused by
problems
, just like ordinary people do not sit around waiting for an outlaw Motorcycle Club to rescue them.

Regarding Maddi as she leans back against the wall with her eyes shut, the ill-feeling I felt toward her last night begins to trickle back into my consciousness. Of all the people in the world I could’ve found myself in this shitty situation with, it
had
to be her.

Little Miss Perfect.

The beautiful, smart lawyer.

The woman who manages to wrap every man she comes into contact with around her little finger.

The woman who the man I have feelings for is in love with.

The universe is having a gigantic laugh at my expense. I’ve never been good enough for my own family, and now I have this goddess to compete with in my love life.

A small laugh escapes from me at the thought of my love life and I close my eyes, copying Maddi by resting against the wall.

What love life?

Am I seriously entertaining the notion of pursuing anything with Lucas after I’ve been kidnapped because of his Club?

I’d kick my own ass for being so stupid if I could.

We are over.

Done.

Finito.

“I was repeatedly raped and beaten by my first boyfriend. He blackmailed me into keeping quiet about it. He nearly killed me before Mik rescued me from him.”

My eyes fly open with shock, and I raise my head to look at her.

Maddi hasn’t moved or even opened her eyes, but her hands are fisted at her sides as she keeps speaking. The pain she exudes takes my breath away, even though I’m certain that I’m only hearing the bare essentials of her story.

“He went to jail for some of what he did to me, and I got on with life as much as I could. Mik and Timber looked after me the best they were able, but they couldn’t do much because there was only a handful of people who knew what’d happened to me, and that was the way I wanted to keep it. Dad and Wendy didn’t know, neither did my younger brothers or the Club.”

An image of Beast losing his temper and Maddi’s stepmother Wendy trying to calm him flits through my mind. I’ve seen him in action at a couple of parties. He’s a scary, bad-tempered man. I imagine what he would have done if he’d known what had happened to his only daughter.

Exhaling loudly, Maddi opens her eyes and faces me.

Her expression is somber and her eyes are filled with tears that she’s refusing to let fall, but she radiates a strength and worldliness that makes me feel like a toddler.

Our life experiences are miles apart.

My problems feel small in comparison.

“This is between us. I’m not kidding, JJ. Nobody outside the Club is supposed to know.”

I nod at her vehement words. Lucas has explained to me a million times about the Club and its “what happens at the Club, stays at the Club” policy.

Not that I’ve heard anything interesting yet.

“My ex tried to organise a hostile takeover of the Club when he was released from jail, using Connor and Sherri’s Old Man to organize it from the inside, and another Club to attack us from the outside. He had me kidnapped and after I escaped him, he had Joel tortured and almost killed as a way of getting me to go back to him. It didn’t work because Mik and Timber messed up their plans. In the end, my ex ended up dead, but so did one of our senior brothers. Sherri’s Old Man was killed as well, but Sherri and Connor disappeared.”

“Shit,” I mutter as what she’s telling me sinks in.

I’m caught in the middle of a war between two outlaw Motorcycle Clubs.

A war that’s already killed people.

“Yeah, shit,” Maddi agrees. Scooting across the bed, she grabs my hand in hers. “So now you know the details, do you understand why I want you to sit tight and wait for our men? They’re the only people capable of ending this. Not the police. Not us. No one but Mik, Timber, and the Club can end this.” 

I heed her pleas with a small incline of my head.

I’m not completely sold on the wisdom of waiting for her Club, but that’s not an argument we need to have at the moment. We don’t exactly have a variety of other options at our disposal to argue about.

“So you think Connor and Sherri had both of us kidnapped because of what Mad Dog and Lucas did back then? This is revenge?”

“That’d be the million dollar question, JJ. I can’t work out why they’ve decided to head down this path now. The two of them versus the Shamrocks doesn’t make sense, even if they’ve got those two other idiots helping them. Something else is going on, and we need to keep our heads until I can work it out.”

Our discussion is aborted when the lock on the door starts jangling, the door swinging open seconds later. Connor strides in, evil intent written on his face. The two men from earlier follow him.

Holding a hand out to Maddi, he motions for her to stand with a jerk of his head. She ignores him, holding my hand tighter and offering me a small smile of comfort.

I return her effort. It’s half-hearted at best because I’m scared witless.

“Get up, bitch,” he barks at her.

When she doesn’t listen, he smiles as if her stubbornness pleases him.

Closing the distance between us, he backhands her across the face, sending her flying into the wall behind us. My heart starts pounding in my chest when he stares at me.

Grabbing a handful of my hair, he jerks my head back, and I let out a small whimper as my scalp stings in response to his manhandling.

“Now, Princess, we can do this the easy way or the hard way.” The words that were said to me last night fill me with unease, and it registers that he was the one who rendered me unconscious. “You can be a good
baby girl
and come with us now, or we can have some fun with your little friend to give you some fucking incentive.”

I whimper again when he pulls my head closer to his. Sucking my bottom lip into his mouth, he bites down on it. I taste blood after he breaks the skin. Holding my head still in an effort to minimize any further damage, I sob when he bites harder. I shove my hands against his shoulders to push him away from me. Spitting my lip out of his mouth, he laughs at my futile efforts before jamming his free hand between my legs and rubbing my vagina roughly. I squirm away from him as much as his hold in my hair will allow.

He falls away when Maddi launches herself onto his back, and wrestles him off of me. She lands on top of him on the floor, and lands two good punches to his face before the other men grab her by her arms, and lift her off Connor.

She’s a wildcat, twisting wildly and scratching at them until Connor picks himself up from the concrete floor and punches her in the stomach, and then in the face. She falls still with a pained groan. My heart reaches out to her as I watch her trying to regain her breath and ride out the pain he’s inflicted, but I don’t move to help her.

Shit just got real, and I’m scared.

Frozen stiff with fear.

Nobody pays any further attention to me as they concentrate on dragging a now subdued Maddi from the room and lock the door.

I push myself into my corner of the bed, and wrap my arms around my knees as tears stream down my face.

I want to go home
.

LUCAS

Present Day

F
uck this shit.

Standing in the waiting room of the emergency department at the hospital, I swallow down my pathetic wish that JJ will stumble across us so I can spend some time with her without breaking my stipulations from last night.

I feel like a pussy, but I need to lean on someone right now.

One of my brothers was hit by a fucking car this morning, and Princess was snatched.

Again.

Sal’s one of our most respected brothers, so the waiting area is crowded with patches and families as we wait to hear whether he’s gonna survive.

Surrounding us are cops and the fucking media.

The cops are involved because bystanders called them after the shit went down and Maddi was wrestled against her will into a car in broad fucking daylight. The media are here since they crawl out of the woodwork like fucking cockroaches when it comes to a good outlaw biker story nowadays.

Their presence is pissing the entire Club off. The atmosphere is tense, a powder keg of frustration and resentment looking for a place to explode. Since scrutiny is the last thing we need with the interest directed at the Club recently, a delicate balance of menace and calm is being maintained.

For the moment.

We’re all stuck here, having been ordered by Beast to stay put and wait for the cops to lose interest so we can start digging into what happened properly. We have scouts out—lower-ranking brothers who the cops don’t know as well—asking questions, but we’ve made the presence of the Club’s officers at the hospital known to the cops.

Beast has decided—without consultation—that it’ll make them back off quicker.

Our relationship with the authorities has taken a nosedive since Maddi’s fucked-up ex went
missing,
and his politician father pointed fingers at the Black Shamrocks. It’s all smoke and mirrors and will amount to absolutely fucking nothing since they’ll never find the rapist cunt—his body was fed to the pigs on Beast’s farm months ago, mere hours after Maddi shot and killed him after he raped and beat her again.

Kid, our Information Officer, walks up to me, nudging me with his shoulder.

“You keeping an eye on Mad Dog? Looks like he’s about to blow.”

Gazing over the assembled crowd, I spot Mad Dog sitting in one of the chairs closest to the exit. His phone’s in his hands. I watch him press the green call button before raising it to his ear, a scowl covering his face when he doesn’t get an answer. He stabs at the screen and repeats the same process three more times.

With each unanswered call, his body shakes harder, and his right leg bounces faster.

“I’m on it.” I tilt my head toward Beast. “Keep him out of our fucking way.”

Mad Dog and Beast haven’t seen eye to eye for months, not since the reemergence of Maddi’s ex, and the fallout that followed with the attempted hostile patch over by the Mavericks of Mayhem. As far as I’m concerned, the problem comes down to Beast and his irrational need to put the blame for everything that went wrong on Mad Dog.

I’m firmly in the expanding anti-Beast camp.

So far, we’ve managed to keep it from tainting the mood of our brotherhood too much. But I know unless the problem is rectified soon, the fallout is fucking inevitable.

A Club can’t function with the President and Vice President at each other’s throats.

And I know who I’m backing if it comes to a head.

My path to Mad Dog is blocked by a slightly chubby, red-faced woman in scrubs. I attempt to walk around her, but she grabs my wrist, tugging me to a stop.

I try to yank my arm from her hold, and she digs her nails in to stop me.

“What the fuck?” I glare at her.

She shrivels underneath my gaze, her face becoming brighter as she pulls her sharp talons from my skin.

“I’m Gwen,” she states in a voice designed not to be overheard. Expectation lighting her eyes.

I don’t know who the fuck she is.

“So?”

“I work with JJ.”

“And?”

I haven’t been introduced to any of JJ’s colleagues, her family, or her friends. It’s been one of our ongoing arguments, so I haven’t a clue why this woman’s trying to talk to me now like she knows about me.

“She didn’t come to work today. I thought she might be with you?”

Knowing JJ’s desire to keep whatever the fuck it is between us on the down-low, I shrug at the annoying woman in front of me.

She smiles at me. “I know about you two. She’s told me everything, Lucas.”

The twinkle in her eyes as she runs them over my face and down to my cock makes it clear what’s she’s referring to. The wink she gives me when her gaze returns to my face is fucking overkill.

Obviously, I’m wrong. JJ’s told someone about us.

“Okay, Gwen. That’s fucking peachy for you. But why the fuck are you chasing me down to find out where JJ is? I haven’t seen her since last night, and I won’t be seeing her until the end of the week.”

“She’s not answering her phone, and her father’s on the warpath because she missed a meeting with him this morning. JJ has had, like, one day off in the six years I’ve known her.”