Page 5 of Her Angel: Elias

Our previous visit had uncovered a traitor within the MC, someone we’d thought was selling the club’s darkest secrets, their vulnerabilities, and embezzling funds from the MC. At the time, we hadn’t been sure if they were feeding the intel to dirty Feds, the local cartel, or someone else. All the prez had wanted was for us to find out who it was and handle it for the club. It wasn’t the first time we’d been called in to handle a situation like this. Internal issues sometimes needed an external problem-solver.

At the time, we’d assumed we’d taken care of it. We found the mole, where the missing funds had been transferred to, and disposed of the traitor. Problem solved. Only, we’d left with heavy hearts, something not fully sitting right with any of us. It had been too simple, too clean.

We should have trusted our instincts and questioned why it had been so easy to find the traitor and the money trail. But that had been part of the long game the real culprits had been planning all along. Not only had Bronco, the Obsidian Souls’ VP, plotted to overthrow the current Obsidian throne, but he and his soldiers planned to expand all the way to Creswell Springs and take over Angel’s Halo’s territory.

They couldn’t do that without intel, though. Our MC was double in size, compared to the Obsidians. We had contracts with the Vituccis, although the Obsidian bastards didn’t understand how we’d gotten those lucrative, exclusive deals. The current VP and his cohorts were too new to their club to remember that Ryan Vitucci was married to Nova, who was an Angel’s Halo princess. And they sure as fuck weren’t aware that my own wife was Samara Vitucci.

That was a little nugget of information we’d all purposely kept quiet. Most of our allies weren’t even privy to the fact that I was married. We kept our professional lives as far away from our personal relationships as possible. Of the brothers who had been called in for this job—Jack, Kingston, Chance, Reid, Max, and me—the Obsidians only knew that Max was married with kids. And honestly, no one had imagined that there was anyone stupid enough to use that against the Angel’s Halo MC president.

Only an idiot with a death wish would even think twice about speaking Delaney’s name in front of Max Reid.

Bronco, however, was apparently both because he’d taunted Max with Delaney, Ronan, and Phoenix from the moment they’d fought him down onto the metal table. It had taken ten men to get Max up there, and even that wouldn’t have been possible if someone hadn’t stabbed him with a shot of Versed in the neck.

Although everyone in the room could feel the tension radiating off Max, he hadn’t cracked in the time he’d been on the torture table. He hadn’t shit-talked our captors like Reid and Chance had. There had been no warning or promises of the painful deaths Bronco and his men would receive in the near future. Not a whimper when they started to slice him up or a groan as they used a cattle prod on him.

Max had always been an intense, scary motherfucker. Seeing him not react to anything done or said to him was more terrifying than any of the Obsidian brothers could imagine being. All that was left of the other MC now was Bronco and any of the club members who had followed him. Everyone else, including their prez, was dead.

Since the ambush upon our arrival, we’d all spent time on that same table where Max was slowly bleeding out. They’d started with me, assuming that I was the weakest link. When they couldn’t get information past my lips, other than my telling them to go fuck themselves while they’d beat me with a barbed-wire-wrapped baseball bat, they’d turned to my brother next.

After they’d tried the same shit on Reid, they’d thrown him back into the cell, where he’d dropped his head back and closed his eyes. He hadn’t opened them since. More than once, I’d looked over to where he was chained up, worried he was dead. Thankfully, I could see his chest moving.

Obviously, these motherfuckers had forgotten who our father was. More than forty years ago, Tanner Reid had been held hostage for weeks—beaten, burned, one of his pinkies cut off. He’d withstood it all, and he was probably home with his granddaughter right that minute, without a reason to suspect his sons were living through what he’d once survived. Thoughts of his wife and daughter, safe under the protection of our father, were most likely what played through my brother’s head.

Kingston had been taken next, and then Chance, who had run his mouth so much, they’d brutalized him to the point of unconsciousness. When they were done with him, they’d chained his arms above his head on a hook and left him hanging outside the cell. His chest was a mess. Bronco had torn Chance’s nipple rings out with pliers. Twin trails of blood flowed down over his abdomen, pooling in the waistband of the black boxer briefs, which was the only piece of clothing he still wore.

Unchained but lying in the cell with the rest of us, Jack was unconscious and bleeding badly; there wasn’t a part of his body that hadn’t been beaten or carved up. Throughout the entire beating, Jack hadn’t made a sound, just like Max, not even to back-talk the pricks. It frustrated Bronco that he couldn’t get even a small reaction out of the blond giant, and he’d knocked Jack out with a metal pipe to his temple.

Between the throb in my body, the struggle to breathe, and the smells of blood and other bodily fluids, I attempted to zone it all out. Sammy’s face filled my mind, her mischievous smile, her hungry gaze, her manic laugh. Those memories play on a loop in my head, keeping me sane while the Obsidian bastards tried to break us.

Two days since I’d seen my wife, my heart, my baby girl. Forty-eight hours of not hearing her voice or reading her texts.

Of not knowing what she was doing, what kind of trouble she was causing, who might end up triggering her and sending her into a tailspin.

Two entire days of her looking at the apps on her phone, checking my location, my heart rate, my oxygen levels, and fuck knew what else.

Which day did she realize I was in trouble?

At what point did she lose her mind?

And when would she unleash her psychotic mayhem on the motherfuckers who thought they could take what they hadn’t earned?

Elias

Leaving Max unconscious on the table, Bronco’s muscle opened the cell and smirked at me. Heavy lived up to his name, not just with his three-hundred-plus-pound weight, but his ham-hock fists that felt like being hit by an anvil every time they connected. He’d been with the Obsidian Souls for about three years now. I’d met him twice during that time frame, but other than his size and his grotesque smile that was in serious need of dental intervention, he hadn’t stood out much.

Now, he wore an enforcer patch on his cut. His smugness was mildly amusing. This dumb motherfucker had no clue what kind of war he and his club brothers had started.

Producing a key, he unlocked my shackles from the bar on the floor and dragged me to my feet. Pain exploded throughout my entire body, primarily in my chest where I had at least two broken ribs, which had come at Heavy’s hands during my first round.

Apparently, they were cycling through the rotation, and it was my turn again.

Fuck.

Sammy’s apps were going to go haywire.

As Heavy dragged me out of the cell and over to another hook, where he hung the chains holding my wrists together, I tried to block out the pain in hopes it would control my heart rate a little better.

Once the chain was secure, three other men pulled on the long cable the hook was anchored to, lifting me off the floor. My agonized groan filled the room, making the Obsidians bark with laughter at finally getting a sign of weakness from one of us. From the cell, Reid’s head snapped up, violence flashing in his blue eyes.