I froze, as did Harper. She leaned closer to me and whispered, “Where in the fuck did that come from?”
“I’m in the cell over here, you twits,” the voice said. They had another prisoner down here? Who the hell was this?
I shakily asked, “And you are?”
He scoffed. “Like you don’t know.”
Harper and I inched closer to his cell, all the while the bitch was still singing about Nemo coming. When we got close enough to see inside the cell, I almost lost the contents of my stomach. A severely malnourished man with overgrown facial hair was sitting in the corner of the cell, covered from head to toe in bruises, blood, and general filth. He was holding one arm against his chest and it appeared to be at an odd angle. I croaked, “I really don’t.”
He scoffed again, “I’m Octavius Jones.”
I stumbled back and fell on my ass, taking Harper down with me. I wanted to scream, but I couldn’t seem to get any air into my lungs. We needed to get out of there, immediately. I thought he was dead. They said he died over a year ago, he killed himself. He’d been here the whole time? Realization brutally slammed into me. That’s why Duke stopped on the stairs the other night, so he could make sure I wouldn’t see Octavius. “We need to get out of here, Harper. Now!”
“Okay, okay. Let’s go.” She stood and reached out to give me a hand. Once I was on my feet, we wasted no time sprinting up the stairs. When we reached the top, the door swung open and we were met with three furious bikers. Duke, Carbon, and Phoenix. Fucking A, man.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Duke
When I got back to the clubhouse, I found Ember in our room with James. She explained that Reese was helping Harper dye her hair and didn’t want the baby around the fumes. I checked everywhere I could think of, but couldn’t find the girls anywhere. The more I looked, the more suspicious I became. Harper wasn’t one to make sudden or drastic changes to her hair.
I found Carbon in the common room and asked if he knew where the girls were. He didn’t, but got up to help me look. By this time, we had attracted Phoenix’s attention and he joined our search party. We walked down the back hallway to check, even though they had no business being back that way.
I think I noticed it first. “Motherfucker,” I cursed and pointed at what I saw. The damn door to the underground cells was slightly ajar. “You don’t think they went down there do you?”
Carbon stomped ahead. “Have you met Reese? Of course she went down there. Harper, too.” I could see Reese doing something like that, but not Harper. She was too timid to be doing things like breaking rules and confronting dangerous criminals.
As soon as we reached the door, it swung open, revealing two frantic and terrified girls. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” I roared at both of them.
“Me?” Reese shrieked. “Me? You’re the one that has a living corpse down there! Now unless you want me to vomit all over your pants and shoes, get the fuck out of my way.” She shoved her way through the three of us and ran toward our room like her ass was on fire, Harper not even two steps behind her.
“Oh, hell no. The second she’s finished puking, she’s talking,” I stated, stomping my way down the hall behind them.
We followed them into my room and Reese emerged from the bathroom a few minutes later, looking quite green. That’s what she gets for doing things she knows she has no business doing. I didn’t feel a bit sorry for her.
Ember was sitting on the bed with James in her arms looking back and forth between the two very clearly divided parties in the room. “Should I take James out to the common room or maybe to Dash’s room?” she hesitantly asked.
“Do you mind taking him to Dash’s room for a few minutes?” Reese asked. “Duke or I will come to get him soon.”
Once they were gone, Phoenix started, “Just what in the hell did the two of you think you were doing?”
Reese took the lead. Brave little shit that she was, stood tall and said, “I’m sorry for picking the lock and going down to the cells, but I’m not going to apologize for trying to speed this along. I want this over just as much as everyone else does. So, I went downstairs to have a chat with Melissa.”
“You had no right to do that!” Phoenix roared.
“Let’s call a spade a spade, all right? You aren’t really all that pissed off about me being down there to talk to her, because you’ve already let me have a go at her in the basement. What you’re really pissed off about is what else I saw while I was there, am I right?” Reese asked, voice steadier than I would have thought possible.
“No, I’m pissed off because you showed blatant disrespect for me and my club by going down there without permission.”
Reese swallowed, but kept her eyes on Phoenix. “To be fair, Phoenix, you never told me I wasn’t allowed to go down to the cells. You said I had to stay in the clubhouse and ask an officer to accompany me if I wanted to go outside. You didn’t mention that certain parts of the clubhouse were off limits.”
Phoenix’s jaw clenched. “The locked door should have tipped you off.”
“Not really, I’ve been picking locks since I was a child. People lock doors out of habit, by mistake, to keep people in, for all kinds of reasons other than keeping someone out,” Reese explained, continuing to defend her position.
“You should probably stop now, Reese,” Carbon advised, nodding to Phoenix who was getting angrier by the second.
“Okay, fine,” she huffed. “While technically, I’m right that you didn’t say it was off limits, I did know that I wasn’t meant to be in the basement. I didn’t do it out of disrespect or anything like that. I was just trying to help. I knew she couldn’t hurt me and I honestly had no idea you still had Octavius as a prisoner.”
