Twisted Rose: Motorcycle Dark Romance 3 (The Darkness Trilogy) (6 page)

Josh! He was back!

She hastily wrapped a towel around her body and ran out to the kitchen.

“Josh,” she cried as the door opened.

But it wasn’t Josh. It was Jac.

“Oh,” Rose said as he came in through the door.

“Rose. Salut. Ça va?”

“Oui, ça va,” Rose said.

She tried not to seem emotional but a flood of tears seemed to rise up out of nowhere and before she knew it she was crying.

“What is it?” Jac said in his gruff voice. “What is the matter?”

“Nothing.”

“It’s something,” he said.

“Josh. He’s gone.”

Jac looked at her and then nodded.

“Did he speak to you?” Rose said. “Before he left? Did you know he was going?”

Jac went over to the sink and washed his hands. He put water on to boil.

“We spoke,” he said after a minute. “I tried to talk him out of it but he was desperate to leave.”

The words hit Rose like arrows. Was she really that bad? Had she really been that horrible that he was so desperate to get away from her?

“Why?” she said.

Jac shrugged. “Because of you,” he said.

It
was
her. He must have really hated her to want to get away from her so quickly. She wanted to ask Jac what it was that had made Josh so desperate to leave her but she was too ashamed. What could he say? If it wasn’t obvious to her by now, she’d never know.

How could she have even thought a man like Josh would fall for her? She was damaged goods. She was as damaged as a woman could be. She’d been raped so many times she couldn’t even count them. She’d been a whore in the most literal meaning of the term. She’d been whipped and beaten and degraded. Josh had been sympathetic. He’d been kind to her. He’d risked his life to rescue her. But he couldn’t love her. She knew that now.

She looked up at Jac and couldn’t face him. It was too humiliating. What did men see when they looked at her? What was Jac seeing right now? Did they look at her and see some kind of disgusting victim who’d been soiled and sullied by so many other men? She knew men were territorial. They didn’t like other men’s things. They didn’t want to touch a woman who’d been used by so many men before them. Why would they? Why have leftovers when you could have your own meal? That’s what she was. She was leftovers. She was sloppy seconds. She was disgusting and any man who looked at her and knew her past would see it.

She turned around and ran back into the bedroom. She slammed the door shut behind her.

Jac was right behind her.

“Rose,” he said, entering the room. “Don’t worry. He’ll be back. I’m sure of it.”

Rose shook her head. She felt embarrassed that she was crying in front of Jac. People would start thinking she was nothing but an emotional mess.

“Why would he ever come back?” she said. “What would any man want with a used up old whore like me? I understand why he left. I don’t blame him.”

“Rose,” Jac said. “What are you saying? Do you think Josh left you? You think he abandoned you?”

Rose looked up at him.

“Well,” she said. “Didn’t he?”

“Rose, Josh would never leave you. That boy’s in love with you.”

“Then where is he?”

“He’s gone to help you.”

“To help me? But I’m right here.”

“He said you needed justice so he’s gone to get it.”

Rose was floored. She was so stunned she couldn’t even speak. Josh loved her. He hadn’t left her. And then almost as quickly as the relief, came the fear.

“Justice?” she said. “What is he going to do?”

XII

“T
HEY’RE GOING TO KILL HIM.”
That was the only thing she could think about. Josh was going back to Val-d’Or and he was going to get himself killed. “I have to go after him,” she said.

Jac looked down at her.

“Rose,” he said, “that’s even crazier than Josh going. I told him he was going to get himself killed. He said he didn’t care. He had to do it for you. And what could I say to that. If a man wants to die for the woman he loves that’s between him and his maker.”

“But I can’t do the same thing?” Rose said indignantly.

“Rose. It makes no sense. You’ll get yourself captured again. You’ll put yourself right back into the hands of the DRMC. Josh risked so much to get you away from those men and you’d be putting all that at risk if you go back there. You’re safe here. You’re free of them. You don’t want to go back looking for trouble.”

“Jac,” Rose said, pulling herself together as much as she could. “You said that Josh risked his life to rescue me from the DRMC, and that’s true. You say now that he’s risking his life to find justice for me, and that’s true. But let me tell you something else that’s true. I couldn’t live if something happened to Josh and I wasn’t there. I just couldn’t live with myself. I couldn’t stand knowing that he was out there in Val-d’Or while I was safe here, waiting for him. You say you let him go back without me. Well now I’m asking for your help. Help me to go after him.”

Jac looked at her for a long time and said nothing. He was shaking his head, muttering a few curses to himself in French, but Rose held his gaze. She meant every word she’d said. If Josh could risk his life for her then why couldn’t she do the same? She needed Jac’s help. She didn’t have a bike of her own and she would need him to lend her his, but she was determined.

“How can I?” Jac said. “What if something happens to you, Rose? What if Josh comes back and I have to tell him that I let you go down there after him?”

“That’s the risk we have to take,” Rose said. “You let him go and risk himself for me. Now let me do the same.”

Jac was thinking about it but Rose didn’t have the time to wait for him to make up his mind. She got up from the bed and started putting on her racing suit. She had a gun in her bag and she checked to see it was loaded. She wasn’t used to using a gun but she knew she could if she had to.

Jac watched her get ready. He seemed impressed, like she knew what she was doing.

“Will you lend me your bike, Jac?”

He didn’t say anything but he reached into his pocket and threw her the key.

“I’ll bring it back.”

“Keep it,” he said. “Just promise me one thing,” he said.

She looked at him.

“Don’t get yourself killed.”

*

A
FEW MINUTES LATER AND
Rose was riding Jac’s FXST along the dirt track that led back to the highway. It was just a few days since she’d come this way with Josh for the first time and already it all seemed different to her. That night she hadn’t known where she was or where she was going. Now she felt more sure of herself, more certain. She’d been devastated when she’d thought Josh had abandoned her, but now that she knew he was still fighting for her it gave her a new surge of life. If he hadn’t given up on her, then she wasn’t going to give up on herself either. It wasn’t too late for her. It wasn’t too late to take back the reins in her life, to take control and do the things she needed to do to redeem herself. She’d allowed the men of the DRMC to have their way with her. She’d allowed them to rob her of her dignity. But now she was going to take it back.

As the sun rose up over the tree-line she felt that a new day was dawning for her too. She reached the frozen river and eyed it warily. She prayed the ice hadn’t melted in the few days since she and Josh had crossed over. She lowered the heavy soft-tail bike down onto the ice slowly and listened for any sounds of cracking. The ice creaked but stayed solid beneath her.

She took a deep breath as she let the weight of the bike onto it. She revved the engine and it pulled forward and before she knew it she was climbing up the opposite bank. She felt strong and confident, like she could take on the world. She felt ready for what had to be done. She had no plan other than to find Josh in Val-d’Or before something bad happened to him.

She wanted to tell him that it wasn’t necessary for him to go up against the DRMC. He didn’t need to die trying to avenge her honor. That was senseless. It was too much of a risk, too much of a waste. She and him could make a life together without any more violence. They could find some place where the DRMC would never find them and they could live peacefully and happily.

She was touched that he wanted to fight for her, that he wanted to get the guys who had hurt her, but it wasn’t necessary. She’d seen too much of what that sort of violence achieved. People got killed. Her father and all his friends in the Sioux Rangers had been killed. She didn’t want that for Josh. She didn’t want to go through all that again. She didn’t want to be alone again.

She wanted Josh back in one piece. She didn’t want justice, not if it meant Josh risking his life. She wanted happiness. As she reached the highway and built up speed on the open road she had one thought in mind. She had to get to Josh before he did something crazy, something that he wouldn’t be able to undo.

XIII

J
OSH PULLED HIS BIKE DOWN
an alley off of Rue Lévis close to the main street of Val-d’Or. A dawn breeze came in over the town and he tightened his jacket and collar against it. The DRMC clubhouse was on the main street and he went to the end of the alley where he could overlook it.

The clubhouse was a squat, concrete building. He took a packet of cigarettes from his pocket and opened it. There wasn’t any traffic on the street yet. He looked at his watch. It was just after six. He lit his cigarette and took a long draw. It helped calm his nerves.

He wasn’t sure why he was feeling so jumpy. He wasn’t afraid of anyone in the clubhouse. They were mean men, dangerous men, but Josh had long ago purged himself of fear for men like that. He’d been a biker all his life. He’d come up against his share of tough guys back in New York as a child. The Black Rodeo, his father’s old club, had its share. Then the Montreal prison system had shown him what it was really like to have his back against the wall. He’d seen it all. He’d been beaten up. He’d had a knife to his throat. He’d had guns pulled on him.

He wasn’t scared of the DRMC. He wasn’t even scared of Serge Gauthier and the infamous Deuce, the Val-d’Or chapter president. He wasn’t afraid of being hurt or even of being killed. He’d lived most of his life waiting for death and it didn’t frighten him now. At least, he didn’t think it did.

There was something different, though, about the way he felt now. He wasn’t the man he’d been. Before he met Rose he had nothing to live for. Now he did. And that meant he had something to lose. It would hurt to lose the chance of a life with Rose but it was a pain he was willing to suffer if it meant reclaiming her dignity. These were the men who’d raped and abused her and they deserved justice. Rose deserved justice.

He took another drag on his cigarette and watched the clubhouse. It looked empty but Josh knew there was probably someone sleeping inside. The DRMC was the biggest club in Quebec but they still had a lot of enemies. They’d singlehandedly wiped out all the other gangs in the province and that created a lot of enemies. Their enemies might be weak, there weren’t any MC’s left to oppose the DRMC, but they existed. Josh knew they did. They were lone wolves like himself, guys who the DRMC hadn’t managed to kill or didn’t even know existed. Guys who remembered what the DRMC had done. And so, they rarely left a clubhouse undefended even if only by a guy or two who slept there at night.

Josh set himself up for a wait. He needed to know who was in the clubhouse and who wasn’t. He knew who he wanted to get. The names he’d heard from Rose were Serge Gauthier and Fat Boy. He’d had a chance to kill Serge back at the Cat and he’d missed it. He hadn’t had any taste for revenge that day. He’d been too distracted by the prospect of freeing Rose. He could have shot Serge and a few of his friends right then and there but he’d failed. Now he had to come back to finish the job.

He thought about that. Why hadn’t he killed Serge when he had the chance?

He’d known Serge was responsible for Rose’s capture. But what he hadn’t known was just how much he’d damaged Rose. He hadn’t realized how important it would be for her to see that these men found justice. Plus, if he was being absolutely truthful to himself, he hadn’t had a taste for it. He’d already killed Rex Savage, the man who’d arranged for Rose’s kidnapping, and that had given him some sense of vengeance. But there was more to it. He’d known that vengeance wasn’t really all it was cracked up to be. It was a hollow victory, like winning a game that no one was watching. There was no joy in taking revenge, only a lonely sense of finality.

He’d wanted to kill Rex for ten years for killing his father and that hunger for vengeance had kept him going for many years. But once he’d done it he’d realized how empty it was. It hadn’t made him feel any different. It hadn’t brought his father back. He’d avenged his father’s death and he knew that was important, but it hadn’t felt the way he’d imagined it would feel.

He’d imagined that killing his father’s killer would have given him a sense of closure. He’d thought it would end that chapter in his life, that dark history he carried around like a burden. And to an extent it had. But it had also left him with a strange, empty feeling.

He knew that some men got pleasure from killing. He’d seen it with his own eyes. He’d seen men who looked like they’d orgasmed after killing someone. It gave them that same sense of satisfaction that sex did. But to Josh, killing another man was a difficult, painful job. He didn’t relish it. He didn’t relish the fact that he was going to do it again. He didn’t want to kill anyone.

If he could, he was going to kill all the men who’d wronged Rose. For her, he would do it. If that meant causing himself some pain, so be it. He’d get Serge and he’d get Fat Boy. They were the two most important. But if he could he’d also get Deuce. Deuce was president of the chapter and ultimately responsible for everything that had happened to Rose. And he knew that the old man out at the Cat, Murdoch, was also responsible. All of them had a price to pay. They’d played a mean game, and that game carried a mean price.

XIV

J
OSH CHAIN-SMOKED AS HE
watched the clubhouse. He sat there for more than two hours until the first bike pulled up out front. There were two other bikes already parked there and this was the third. That meant three men were inside. The guy who got off the bike looked young. He wasn’t Serge. Josh could see enough to see that much. He wasn’t Fat Boy either. Josh had never seen Fat Boy but this guy was too thin for a name like that.