“Is this the she you are referring to?” he asked. “Don’t mind the tape…the shlyukha wouldn’t shut up.”
I clenched my fists at my sides, biding my time to find a way to get her out of his arms.
“What do you want?” I asked him.
“Isn’t it obvious, son? I’ve been looking for you for over twenty years. It’s time to be done with this and come home to take your rightful place.”
He had to be crazy if he thought I wasn’t going to ruin him for this but if I played along, I could get Shona to safety.
“You just want me to come with you? That’s it?”
“Well yes, you need to be raised in the business,” he said as if it were obvious. “I would have preferred if I could have trained you as a child, but your shlyukha mother ran off with you.”
Bide your anger, I repeated to myself. The first time he called my woman a slut, and now my mother. I was furious, but I couldn’t play that hand…not yet.
“I come with you and you let her go,” I bargained with him. Her eyes widened and she shook her head. She was trying to tell me something.
“Of course…in due time. I’m not an idiot, son. I know you will simply escape from me once we return, so she’ll be coming with us. You make your choice,Alexei. You come to Rome of your own free will and train with me, and when I am satisfied with your progress, she will be allowed to go free.”
Viper was close to them. I could see him edging toward the guys who held her, but they moved outof the doorway with her kicking and flailing about. Boris aimed his gun at Viper in warning. Viper stayed where he was, but I could see the anger rolling over him.
“Be seeing you soon,son.”
He chuckled as he moved out of the clubhouse. Viper and I both ran after him, our guns at the ready, but he was holding the gun to Shona’s head as they drove away.
She’d been so close, and I hadn’t been able to rescue her.
“Church, now!” Ace bellowed. Viper dragged me back inside and shoved me in the door.
I’d failed her.
I moved out of the chapel and in a daze walked outside, unsure of what to do. I needed to hit something, to rid myself of the unused rage building inside of me.
“Come.”
Viper’s voice broke me from my daze. I turned to see him coming down the stairs of the clubhouse. He led me to the shed where Neal was now strapped to a chair. His face was healing, but he had welts on his bare thighs from where one of the boys had whipped him.
“What are we doing here?” I asked.
“You know I know you better than anyone, and I know what I’m about to ask you is something I wouldn’t do unless it was absolutely necessary.”
“What is it?”
“You’re at a level two right about now, more lost to the sensation of sadness than anger…I need you to ramp it up to a level ten.”
“You want me to bring out the beast?” I asked him. He’d never asked me to do that. It took too much to rein it back in, and he knew that.
“The only way we are going to get Shona back is if you accept that Niall isn’t going to do it…Savage is. We need him to come to the surface, and the only way we can do that is if you fully accept who you are.”
He looked past me at the wounded piece of shit and back at me before he handed me my knuckle dusters. I slid them over my fingers and turned to look at the man who had destroyed so many in our club. The man who betrayed my President’s wife and daughters.
He knew it too.
He tried to pull from his bindings, his eyes widening in fear as I approached. Viper was right. I was no good as Niall. I had to be Savage to save my woman, and the only way to unleash the beast was to satisfy its need for bloodshed.
I approached him with calm intent before I circled him like a shark did its prey. Viper watched on as I laid into his ribs with the knucks, eliciting painful yelps and screams from the loser. With every scream, I felt myself become a little more of the monster everyone feared. Neal slumped in the chair, his breathing laboured, his body bloodied and I pulled my knucks off, noticing how bloody my hands had become.
Viper smirked over at me. “There he is.”
