Not only had Daniel never done anything to deserve my wrath, but I was already in deep shit. Jeffers and his woman, Liv, had wanted that pretty boy Wildcat had belonged to. Needed him, actually. There weren’t a lot of men left who could fight like he could, and now he was as good as dead. Marcus had done him in with a slice-and-dice straight through the liver, and a little extra twist to be certain. Wouldn’t be a quick death, and it wasn’t going to feel good, that was for sure. I gave him a few hours at most before he bled out entirely.
A group of men rushed past me cursing, armed with tools to fix the mangled gate. Off in the distance, I could already hear Liv’s shrill voice screeching away, tearing into Jeffers. Little pink-haired slut was a demon in bed, but out of bed, it was if the devil himself had gone and possessed a pink-haired, skinny little bitch with a mouth the size of Texas.
As for Jeffers,fuck him. The man was useless now, entirely pussy-whipped by her. He used to be worth a damn, several actually, but now all he was good for was doing her bidding, while I was left to do her bedding.
I found them both waiting for me at the edge of the lot, just beyond the newest set of vehicles I’d helped tow in last week, all of them waiting to be chopped for parts. Other people surrounded them, people I recognized but never had cared enough to meet, let alone learn their names.
When I reached them, Liv was staring at me, her eyes narrowed into venomous slits, her too-thin body vibrating with palpable anger. Everyone else was silent, their eyes on anything other than me. Smart people ... whoever they were.
“Are you even fucking listening to me?” Liv stepped forward and jabbed a bony finger into my chest. “Your little act just cost us big-time, asshole.”
It never ceased to amaze me how fearless she could be, especially as small as she was. She was scared of nothing and no one, not even me. I wasn’t too sure on the specifics of her story or how she’d come to be here, but whatever kind of hell she’d gone through, it must have been some fucked-up shit. Either that, or she’d just been born one seriously crazy-ass bitch.
Grabbing her finger, I pushed her hard enough that she stumbled backward. She glanced at Jeffers, looking for a reaction, but we both knew Jeffers wasn’t going to do a damn thing.
When his eyes finally did rise, his gaze was hard, the way it used to be, the way it had been when we’d first put this place together. From the ground up, just he and I and a small group of survivors had made this place what it was today. Then Liv had come along and took him, his balls, and any last shred of testosterone he’d had, and wrapped it all up in a pretty pink bow around her little finger.
“You let them go!” Liv screamed. “A fighter and two decent pieces of ass! And for what? Because youlikedone of them? I had plans for them all!”
I shrugged. “I’ll fight back what I owe you for the fence.”
“Nobody wants to fight you!” Throwing her arms up in the air, she spun away and turned to stomp off. But not before sending her fist into Jeffers’s gut and hissing, “Do something!”
With a sigh and a roll of his eyes, Jeffers took a step forward.
Smirking, I held up my hand, cutting off whatever nonsense he’d been about to spew my way. “Don’t you dare lecture me on letting pussy go to my head, you goddamn hypocrite. Not when that bitch has your balls locked up tight inside her skank hole. All I’m gonna say to you is, I know I fucked up, and I’ll pay you back for that gate.”
Without waiting for a response, I pushed past him. I was headed for the Cave, the local bar and brothel, in need of a drink or three and a nice hard fuck to put all this bullshit behind me.
When I entered the dimly lit building, I found Dori in the back. Caretaker of the girls and this place, she was seated by the bar as usual. Spotting me, she waved happily, a smile curving her lips. She was a striking woman, or at least she had been before the rotters had gotten to her, forcing our sham of a doctor to take her legs. He was a quack, thinking he could save people with his herb-and-spice concoctions, but Dori was still alive and infection-free, and that was more than most people who’d been bitten could say.
Taking a seat, I held up two fingers, signaling for the man behind the bar to bring me my usual—Dori’s homemade concoction. Smelled like shit, tasted even worse, but it did its job in taking me from point A to point B. And I couldn’t ever seem to reach point B on my own anymore.
Once the dirty glass was in my grip, I tossed its contents back and swallowed in one gulp, enjoying the burn it ignited inside me, the warmth that swelled in my stomach. I signaled for another, still aware of Dori’s eyes on me. She was waiting for me to tell her what happened this morning, to give her all the dirty details of what had gone down and why the camp was in an uproar.
When I didn’t play into her games, she changed tactics. Rolling her wheelchair across the floor, she parked it next to my seat and placed her hand on my arm. My skin twitched beneath the unwanted contact.
“The wildcat?” she asked, her voice soft and husky.
“Gone,” I replied before downing my second drink. Raising my fingers, I signaled for another.
“For good?”
Snorting, I nodded my head. Of course she was gone for good. Even after her man died, which he would, there was no way she was going to come back here—to me. And two women out there alone, with no man to protect them ... They’d be eaten up and spat back out before the next nightfall. By rotters, or whoever else happened on them. They were done for.
And it was my fucking fault.
“I don’t know,” I ground out, hating the guilt I was feeling. Part of me wondered if I should have gone after them and dragged them back here to safety. But the other part of me, the part of me that liked hearing women cry, the part of me that liked watching my fist obliterate the face of my opponent, the part of me that got off being a king in this cold, dead world ... that part of me knew she’d fight me tooth and nail, if not outright kill me, before she’d ever come back.
“E.” Dori’s voice was hesitant. “I know you liked her. I know you wanted her to stay, and I did too. She would have been good currency around here. The mousy one too. God knows the men around here love that innocent act.”
It was the wrong thing to say to me in that moment. Finally facing Dori, I took her slender jaw in my hand and squeezed until she yelped in pain. I yanked her forward until it was only my grip keeping her from falling out of her chair, and then lowered my face to hers. I was fully aware of the several men in the room who were now staring at us, waiting to see what was going to happen and probably wondering if they should help Dori. But I already knew none of them would say a word, let alone make a move against me. They weren’t that stupid.
“You don’t know shit, woman,” I spat. “And that wildcat would have been my property. No way would my property have been working in a shithole like this. As for that other one, she’s about as innocent as they come these days. Why do you think they wanted to leave? Nobody worth a damn wants to live their lives in a shit pit like this, around people like you.”
And me, I added silently.
Beneath my fingers, her chin trembled, and her eyes filled with tears. The sight of her, so weak and pitiful, only worsened my mood. My upper lip curling with disgust, I released her face with a hard shove, sending her back into her chair.
