Fester.
Gash.
Dice
Nasty.
48.
Axle.
Echo.
Those men lived in our hearts. In the club’s hearts. They’d sacrificed their lives for us at one time or another. They wereourfallen heroes. All of our names would go onto these benches one day. I wondered when the day would be for me to follow in their footsteps.
“You okay, brother?” Dom asked, coming to stand next to me.
Shooter put a hand on my shoulder and pain emanated from my skin, reminding me that I was very nearly one of these names.
“He would have fucking hated this,” Shooter chuckled, and I knew he was talking about Echo.
“Yeah, he would have,” I agreed, swiping a hand down my face.
Echo.
My brother.
Myfallenbrother.
It was all suddenly too much. I couldn’t breathe. My throat was too tight, the air was too thick. I dropped to a crouch as I tried to suck the air in to my lungs, vaguely aware that people were talking to me, but it wasn’t until my hands came away from my face wet that I realized that I was crying.
“Jesus,” I mumbled, trying to stop the tears from falling. I’d never cried in my life. Not when my mother left me to starve night after night, not when she brought boyfriends home to taunt and tease me, not when I killed her sorry ass, not when I was being tortured, and not even when I was lying in that hospital in agony and I remembered that Echo was dead. But I cried now, and once I started, I couldn’t stop.
The tears flowed hot down my face, and the more I tried to stop them the faster they flowed. Arms wrapped around my shoulders, the smell of leather and cigarette smoke and whispered agreements enclosing me in their safe embrace.
Thiswas family.
This wasmyfamily.
And I wasn’t going to let anything hurt it ever again.
Because anything or anyone that tried to…I was going to kill.
Chapter Twelve
~ Belle ~
I was a wreck.
A total, complete 110% wreck.
I ached between my thighs and it hurt to walk. I’d gotten home and found Lorenzo parked outside again, waiting for me. I’d already known, from his dark expression, that there was no point in arguing that I was too tired to go out. He’d taken me back to his restaurant and it had started off nice. We’d eaten, we’d drunk some wine. It was relaxed and I’d begun to think the monster he’d been in the car last week had been a one-off. But then we’d gone upstairs and everything had changed.
As soon as the door had shut, his hands were on me. He was brutal and unforgiving, my whimpers and pleads turning him on more. I should have said no, but I didn’t. And looking back now, I wasn’t sure why I hadn’t said no.
Maybe it was because I was afraid of what would happen if he had stopped. What other type of punishment he would find to take out on me.
Instead, I’d let him use my body as his plaything and I’d woken up sore and alone, with a note on his nightstand to grab an Uber home because he had a business meeting.
