Page 2 of Ace

A garbled moan escaped the victim’s lips. “Please, man.”

Maybe the bastard thought it would coax Ace into offering mercy but it only enraged him further.

Fuck mercy. This was for Angela.

The guy’s face was starting to look like hamburger so Ace moved on to his stomach, landing a half a dozen punches straight into his gut.

“Fuck, Dude. What is your problem?” His victim struggled from Ace’s grip and managed to stumble into the middle of the alley, lunging for Ace only to get tackled to the ground.

“What? You thought this was going to be a fair fight? Did Angela have a fair fight? Did she? Hell no, she didn’t, so you don’t get one either.” His knuckles now bloody, Ace stood above the man, and lifted his boot, crushing several of the guy’s ribs with one kick.

“Ace! Ace! Stop! That’s enough!”

He heard the yelling in the distance, but it took a minute to register. In the meantime, he got in one more good stomp to the guy’s kidney.

“Ace! Stop!” Footsteps rushed down the alley, and Ace looked over his shoulder, fully expecting to see Angela or her mother.

Instead he saw Lizzie, the buxom twenty-something who, for years, had done the liquor deliveries to King’s Tavern—their old biker hangout before it was burnt down in an act of revenge.

“Lizzie! What… what are you doing here? Get out of here. This isn’t anything a lady needs to see.”

She ignored him, advancing toward them, and looked down at the groaning, writhing man on the ground. “Jeez. You weren’t fucking around.”

“He deserves it,” Ace grunted.

“I know. I know. But Ace, you can’t help Angela or other victims if you’re behind bars. The cops will be here soon. Someone will hear the commotion and call it in if they haven’t already.”

“Oh well.” He kicked the bastard’s side with steel-toed boots, watching as he recoiled.

“Ace!” Lizzie begged. “Come on. We need to go.”

“So go.” Ace was trembling with rage. He wasn’t ready to let the asshole up. He hadn’t even taken a crack at the family jewels yet, and they were the crux of the problem.

Rectifying that immediately, he landed one good kick before he heard the sirens wailing in the distance.

“Come on,” Lizzie urged, running to his bike.

Scowling down at the crumpled heap of a man on the pavement, Ace curled his lips in a snarl. “If you ever even look at Angela again, I’ll be back to finish the job.”

The only answer was a weak moan, and the sirens were getting closer. Ace knew Lizzie was right. There wouldn’t be a lot he could do to help kids like Angela from behind bars, but it all felt so hopeless sometimes.

Shaking his knuckles, he mounted his bike, looking back in confusion when Lizzie hopped on behind him.

“What are you doing?”

“I chased you here from the courthouse. On foot. I’m not staying behind to be a witness when the cops get here. Let’s go.” She slapped his shoulder.

“You don’t have a helmet,” he growled.

She muttered something that sounded a lot like “you can spank me for it later” and smacked his shoulder again. “Ace! Come on! Let’s go! We need to go! We can argue about this later.”

With a shake of his head, and his bloody knuckles, Ace revved the engine on his souped-up Harley Davidson Low Rider and tore down the alley with one last glance over his shoulder. The bastard might not be in jail, but he hadn’t gotten away with it. Of course, getting to give the guy a bloody face and some cracked ribs was a small consolation for having spent the day in court watching the loser lie through his teeth. For having to watch his victim, a fourteen-year-old girl, the sister of one of his former students, suffer through the worst moments of her life all over again, retelling them on the stand for a room full of strangers who in the end didn’t give a damn anyway.

The look of horror on the little girl’s face when the jury had read the not guilty verdict was one of those moments that would forever be ingrained in his brain until the day he died. That look had been the only thing on his mind when he’d chased the guy down the street after the trial. He should have stayed with the family, and been there for them, but instead he’d had to get revenge.

The truth was these trials were always hell, and he’d always wanted to do that. His job as a high school science teacher had been the only thing stopping him for many years. But he’d lost that job a few months ago, and although he’d immediately gotten a cool new job and a place to live, the rage had been building inside of him for months.

As he steered the Harley down The Strip, he remembered his passenger. Lizzie was a friendly acquaintance, someone he trusted on a surface level. Not someone he wanted to take to his new home at Utopia, a lifestyle resort for Bigs and Littles.