Page 3 of Vandal Unbound
“Let’s take him and question him when he comes around,” I hear a voice say.
I’m gonna be a footnote in history that will be erased over time, like I never existed at all.
“Comes around?” I ask, wondering why he’s saying that given I’m conscious.
Then Alvarez raises the bat again.
The second blow is a direct hit, my neck snapping backwards as every part of me mentally screams at me to run, but my physical system is incapable of responding.
And the third makes the world go black.
1
VANDAL
FOUR WEEKS LATER
“Fuck,” I gasp, inhaling air like I’m dying as I sit up on the clubhouse sofa, my hands scratching and clawing against the leather as I try to outrun the nightmare. Sweat pools beneath my armpits, over my lip, on my forehead, and I rub a hand over my face as I try to ground myself back in the bar.
The unfamiliar lines of my face remind me why I’m having the dreams I’m having. The healing wounds over my brow and eye and cheek have lumps of scar tissue beneath them. And as I run my hand through my hair, I feel the one-inch-thick band of hair that’s only just started growing back from one ear to the other over the top of my head.
“You okay?” Havoc asks from his spot at the other end of the sofa. His hand is beneath Steffi’s skirt, and her head is thrown back. I give him another five minutes before he takes her back to his room and fucks her senseless. Thirty minutes tops, and then he’ll return to drink with us all.
“Yeah. I’m good,” I say as I look away. The last thing I need to see on a good day is Havoc getting down with a club girl. Evenworse when he’s looking at me with that pathetic pity on his face ever since the…I don’t know what to call it.
Accident? Beating? Assault?
But sleep deprivation is fucking with me. So are the dreams. It’s why I’m in the bar rather than my room, trying to force myself to stay awake. But right now, I don’t want to have to deal with this ridiculous party.
If you’d asked me six weeks ago what my definition of a perfect life was, it would be this. The clubhouse is pulsing wall-to-wall with bikers. Sunny, the club’s clueless, pretty-boy tail gunner, and Ridge, our grace-under-fire road captain, are mocking each other’s plays at the pool table.
Reaper, the club medic, is currently pretending to give Lock, our treasurer, a lap dance, much to everyone’s amusement except mine.
And Knox, our club president, the longest-serving one in Outlaws history, is currently slow dancing with Maren, the woman he just made his old lady. There’s history between their families. Her sheriff father killed his brother, but somehow the two of them found common ground when they sheltered from a hurricane together.
I sayfound common ground, but I guess everyone knows that’s code for getting down and dirty with each other.
I heard about the concept of magical unicorn pussy. The kind that turns the firmest of bachelors into family men. But I didn’t see it coming with Knox. The guy is in his mid-forties.
I should be happy for my president.
Intellectually, I’m not so stupid that I don’t know getting an old lady and finding out you’re gonna be a father is a happy thing.
But something inside me is…gone.
Ever since Alvarez’s men beat me to within an inch of my life, I’ve felt broken, like a switch got flipped. They took me from thatroadside unconscious. When I came to, I had been hoisted up by a rope. The torture went on for two hours.
Two fucking hours of hell.
Of inhumane cruelty, half of which I’ll never speak of ever again.
During the day, I don’t feel anything.
Certainly not the pain from all the surgeries I’ve had to endure, because I numb it with whiskey and the painkillers I skim from the medical room when Reaper isn’t looking.
Certainly not happiness. Conversely, not anger either. Not even the restlessness that usually has me chasing a fight or a woman. It’s all been replaced with an itch beneath my skin. One I can’t stop from spreading. It’s like ants in my veins. I need an out of the relentlessness of it before I do the stupid thing I keep thinking about.
I’m fucked.
