Broken (Soldiers of Darkness MC Book 1) (28 page)

‘’I’m fucking right here, asshole. Don’t talk to me like I don’t even exist, you’re in
my
fucking clubhouse so you talk to
me
. I mean, what the hell are you even doing here?’

The expression on his face is so cold I almost feel a physical chill.

‘I’m here to answer some questions, Mack. I’m here to tell you the truth.’

Izzi

He’s going to tell him? Here? He sacrificed
me
because he suddenly wants Mack to know the truth? Now?

‘You let him go?’

Sam turns his attention away from Mack, back to me. ‘We’ve already done this, Izzi. It’s over.’

‘Because you say so, huh?’

‘Because I say so.’ He stares at me, and I know I can’t win this one. And that crushing realization almost rips me in two, and it’s only Zeb’s hand on my stomach that prevents me from doubling over as grief consumes me all over again.

‘It’s OK,’ Zeb murmurs, and his other hand slips into mine and squeezes it gently. ‘I’ll make it OK, you got that, baby?’

I don’t react, I don’t nod, I don’t even move. But I believe him. In his own warped and twisted way he’ll make everything feel like it’s OK, even if it isn’t. He’ll do that, because he can. It’s what he does. And I’ll probably let him. I can fight it as much as I like but when I’m with him I allow him to control me, because that’s how I forget what will continue to eat me up inside. He takes away the pain. He makes me strong, and it’s only when I’m away from him that I weaken. He’s the fuel I need to survive. Without him I allow too much of what still hurts me through, and now I fear I’m going to need him even more than I did before. He created me. He made me. I need him to move forward. So, yeah, I believe that he’ll try and make it OK.

‘Are we done now, Izzi?’

Sam’s voice is calm and steady as his eyes lock on mine.

‘Why, Sam?’

‘Killing someone wasn’t going to help.’

‘Wasn’t it? So, why did we do all that shit for all those months, huh? Why did you put me through all that…’

‘You’re not a murderer.’

I stare at him. I’m confused, and I feel the anger burning through me once again, a pain in the pit of my stomach so real and so raw it’s taking my breath away.

‘That’s not your decision to make, Sam. You took away the only thing that was enabling me to move on with my life. You took that away, and now I don’t know if I…’

‘Your life will move on just fine, Izzi. You didn’t need to kill a man in order to prove anything…’

‘I wasn’t trying to prove anything to anybody. They ripped my fucking life apart, they turned me into this, and you think I can just carry on like it never happened? You saw me when I came to you; the state I was in. You knew what I needed to do…’ I shake my head, and I let the rage rise to the surface; let the hate and the anger spill out. ‘You think this is over? This is
not
fucking over. You think I went through all of that for nothing? I erased everything I ever was to get the revenge I needed, and you took that away from me, so this is
not
over…’

‘Calm her down, Zeb.’

I push back against Zeb as his arm circles my waist, but he isn’t letting go of me, and that just fuels my anger more. ‘I’ll find him, Sam, with or without your help so that promise you made to him about me not being a problem anymore? You just lied. You don’t speak for me, you don’t fucking own me, so I am gonna be his worst fucking nightmare, you hear me…?’

‘Zeb. Calm-her-down.’

‘Come on, Izzi.’

I dig my nails into his hand but he’s one tough bastard, and he just retaliates by raising his hand to my neck, resting it against the side as he pushes me back against him. ‘I fucking hate you,’ I hiss, and his hand presses that little bit harder.

‘Yeah. Sure you do, princess. Right now I’m not exactly in love with you, either.’

‘Get her out of here, Zeb.’

I glare at Sam, but he’s giving me nothing. He isn’t taking my shit but I meant it when I said this wasn’t over. I didn’t do all of this, become who I am now; I didn’t go through fucking hell to just walk away, not when I was this close.

My breathing’s all over the place, and I only just realize that as Zeb loosens his grip on my neck and takes my hand, and I stop struggling. It’s pointless. For now, it’s over. For now.

‘You can let go of me. I’m not gonna go anywhere.’

‘I ain’t taking no chances, darlin’. State you’re in now, you could do anything.’

I laugh, and I know that winds him up slightly, he hates it when I do that, but I don’t fucking care now.

He kicks open the back door and drags me outside, slamming me back against the wall, and I stare at him, and I smile, and that just winds him up even more.

‘What the fuck are you doing, Izzi?’

‘He lied to me, Zeb.’

‘He never made you any promises.’

‘Fuck you!’

It’s his turn to laugh as he slams a hand up against the wall beside my head, moving in closer to me. ‘Y’know, when you talk like that it just gets me hard.’

‘Fuck
you
!’

He laughs again, and then he kisses me, and I bury my fingers in his hair and push myself against him as he drags my skirt up over my thighs and rips my panties off, he literally tears them away from me, plunging his fingers inside me before I have a chance to protest. But I’m not going to. This is how he calms me down. This is how we work. I kick off, he fucks me. This is how he controls me, and I let him, because I love the way he feels; the pain he causes to tear through my body as he literally pulls that anger out of me and injects me with his own dangerous poison.

‘Everything’s gonna be OK, princess. You’re just gonna have to trust me.’

‘Why should I trust you, huh?’ I feel his fingers slide between mine as his other hand continues to invade me and I widen my stance slightly, an invitation for him to push that little bit deeper. ‘After what just happened in there.’

‘That was on Sam, not me.’

‘I’m still gonna kill him, Zeb. Viper. He’s mine now. And I’m gonna end his sorry fucking life…’

His mouth crashes down onto mine and I let go of his hand and unzip him. He’s hard and ready and he pulls his fingers out of me and lifts me up, lowering me down onto his cock and I wind my legs around his hips as he begins thrusting into me hard and fast. I need this. Hot, heavy, violent sex, I need it. My fingers dig into his flesh, and I’m crying out in pain and pleasure but I need him inside me. He’s calming me down. It’s starting to work, and a part of me hates myself for allowing him to be so much in control of me, but at the same time it’s the only way I can survive now. I need him to rein me in, to hold me back; I need him to help me. I’m a mess. And I need him.

I wind my fingers back into his hair as he thrusts into me harder and faster, each thrust slamming me back into the wall, and then he slows down, and his forehead rests against mine and he smiles. His breathing’s shallow and ragged; mine’s hardly steady itself, and I think we both need this to stop, just for a second.

‘I’ll make it OK, baby,’ he whispers, and his thumb gently brushes over my cheek and I inhale a long, deep breath as he touches me. ‘I promise. Sam wouldn’t have done this to hurt you, Izzi. He’s done it to protect you.’

‘I don’t need protecting,’ I breathe, and he kisses me again, and I press myself against him as his mouth moves on mine, his tongue searching and probing and I feel myself burning up, and I like it.

‘I think you do,’ he murmurs.

I rest my mouth against his and I smile, running my fingers back through his hair as I feel him start to move again inside me. ‘My hero, huh?’

‘Your knight on a Harley fucking Davidson, baby.’

I laugh and lock my legs tighter around him, and it takes just a few more beautiful thrusts before he comes, and I throw back my head and feel his lips on my throat as quick, harsh spasms take over his body. His cries are loud and raw, his fingers digging into me until he’s done, and only then does he loosen his grip; only then do I loosen mine.

He lowers me to the ground and sinks to his haunches, sliding my skirt back up over my thighs and I move my feet further apart and splay my hands out against the wall behind me as he touches me. I close my eyes as his fingers slide across my slit, and I moan quietly as he finds that place within me that makes me forget everything bad that ever happened to me. And that moan grows longer and deeper as I feel his breath on my skin, his mouth touching me, but only briefly. In a heartbeat he’s back up in front of me, but his fingers stay where they were. He’s still touching me, and his eyes burn into mine and I’m beginning to forget about Viper and Mack and Sam…

‘You ready, Izzi?’

‘For what?’ I ask, flinching slightly as he gently slips two fingers inside me.

‘For what’s coming next.’

I look at him, this older, handsome man with the dark, dark soul who I really know nothing about. Yet, I know everything. I know he makes me feel safe in a dangerous world. I know every action I’ve undertaken on this uncertain journey leads back to him. But I don’t know if I’m ready for what’s coming next. I just don’t think I have much of a choice.

‘Izzi?’

‘I’m ready.’

I’m lying.

And he kisses me, and I don’t care. I don’t. I don’t care about anything, not anymore, not after tonight. I thought I could. I thought I did. I’d started to care about Mack Slayer. But now I know I can’t do that. Everything’s still one huge, hot mess and I don’t think that’s ever going to change. So I don’t care.

I belong to Zeb now.

He can take me and make me whoever he wants me to be, I’m done.

My life as I knew it, that’s over.

A new one’s about to begin…

Chapter Twenty-Five

Mack

‘You wanna tell me what the fuck’s going on now?’

I close the chapel door behind us, although I don’t know why I’m bothering. The place is empty now. Izzi and her asshole bodyguard are outside, and there’s just me and Sam here in the clubhouse.

I keep my eyes on my uninvited guest as he scans the room, and his calm exterior is starting to irritate the fuck outta me.

‘Excuse me… Hey! Over here. Is someone gonna give me some fucking answers?’

His head snaps back to look at me, and there’s no shift in his impassive expression. Nothing. I can’t read this guy, he’s like a wiped-clean slate. Empty. Devoid of any emotion.

‘Do you want to sit down?’

‘No, I don’t wanna sit down, I want fucking answers. I want someone to tell me what the fuck is going on here,
that’s
what I want.’

‘I’m your father, Mack.’

The kick to my gut is real, man, I felt that like he’d just physically dealt it out himself. ‘You’re fucking
what?
’ I ain’t buying this crazy shit. And he don’t get to stand here, in
my
clubhouse, and tell me crap like this.

‘I’m your father.’

I swear to God, I am gonna lay him out if he keeps saying that. ‘Get the fuck outta here, I’m done with this shit. I don’t know who you are…’

‘I’m your father, Mack. I’m the man who left you here on the steps of this clubhouse thirty-eight years ago. I’m the man who hoped you’d have a better future here within the confines of
this
family than anything I could have offered you.’

Am I actually awake? I mean, is this shit really happening? I lean back against the table, and my eyes stay fixed on his because I need to believe this. If this is true, if this man standing here in my chapel, if he really is who he says he is then I need to believe him. And right now, I just ain’t sure.

‘And you thought a life here, being brought up as part of an outlaw motorcycle club would be a better future?’

‘I knew people in this club. I knew they’d be able to help. Cooper was a good man, and Laney – she was one of the best, from what I was told. A strong woman with a big heart. I knew they’d love you.’

I don’t want to feel angry; I don’t want to feel anything, this night’s been a big enough mind-fuck without this adding to it. But that anger is growing, it’s there, inside me, and if he keeps talking I don’t know what I’m gonna do. ‘So why just leave me, huh? Why’d you dump me like a sack of fucking garbage?’

‘I was seventeen years old, Mack. I was a kid…’

‘You’re using that as an excuse?’

His expression remains impassive; he doesn’t even offer up a twitch of nerves or regret or apology for what he did to me. And I don’t know what the fuck to do. I’m freakin’ lost.

‘Your mother, she was killed. Two days after you were born. We got caught up in a fight, in a bar out on the main street. She was trying to get away, I’d told her to run, to get out, but she didn’t look where she was going and she… she ran into the road. The car, it had no chance of seeing her.’

For the first time I start to notice some real emotion in his eyes; a sadness, almost.
Shit!
There really must be a human being under there somewhere.

‘She was killed instantly. And I couldn’t cope with a baby, not on my own. You weren’t planned, we were just kids, but once you arrived…’

There it is again. Emotion. And I don’t know whether he intended to show any but it’s there, I’m seeing it, but it don’t change this fucked-up situation any.

‘Once we saw you, we wanted you. Both of us did. And you have to believe that. But I couldn’t cope alone. My own mother, she was dying – lung cancer. She couldn’t help. And I had no one else, or I thought I didn’t, at the time. So I left you where I thought you’d be looked after. I’d grown up within an MC, Mack. Back in California. We’d moved here when my dad, God rest his messed-up soul, was made President of the North Carolina chapter…’ He bows his head, and I wait until he raises his gaze, never letting my eyes leave his, not even for a second. ‘It was shut down, in time. My father’s MC. A whole lot of trouble went on there, and I guess some of that must’ve rubbed off on me, because once I knew you’d been taken in, once I knew you were safe, I went back to that life. I became a prospect in a club not all that far from here, and I threw myself into everything that could help me forget what I’d done. But I never forgot
you
, Mack.’

‘Didn’t you? It never crossed your mind to, y’know, maybe, come looking for me? Or did you never really grow up, huh? I mean, if I wasn’t
that
far away…’

‘I was sent down, when I was twenty-one. For a long time. I spent almost two decades locked away…’

‘What the fuck did you do?’

‘I killed a man. Two, actually, although the second wasn’t supposed to be a target. He got in the way. And I didn’t cover my tracks well enough. The police, they got to me before anybody could protect me... I was a bad man, Mack. But the one thing I didn’t want for my own son was for
him
to turn out like me.’

‘Bad luck.’ I shrug and pull a cigarette from my cut pocket. ‘He did.’

‘Your life wasn’t a good one, Mack?’

I narrow my eyes as I continue to stare at him. ‘Laney and Cooper treat me like their own. They were good to me. They cared about me. This club, yeah, it was –
is
my family. But it didn’t exactly teach me right from wrong.’

He smiles and chuckles quietly, but I’ve yet to see a funny side to any of this.

‘You’ve been out of prison a while now I’m guessing. Right?’

‘Almost fourteen years.’

‘And you never thought to try looking me up again? Y’know, see how your son was doing?’

‘I did exactly that.’

I frown. What the fuck’s he mean by that?

‘I found out I had a brother, when I was in prison. Spending hours on your own for days, months, years on end… you have a lot of time to – well, let’s just say you start thinking about things that may not have become all that important on the outside. I contacted him, and he visited me on many occasions, as did his son. My nephew. Your cousin.’

I narrow my eyes even further as I take a long draw on my cigarette, and then the penny drops, and I don’t know whether to feel sick or angry or whether I should just fucking kill the bastard. ‘That freakin’ idiot out there’s my
cousin
?’

‘I had Zeb watch you, Mack…’

‘
Watch
me? What d’you fucking mean, you had him watch me?’

‘I never stopped thinking about you, Mack. I may have given up my rights as a father but it didn’t stop me thinking like one. I wanted to know you were OK. I wanted to know how you were doing…’

‘So you got prick of the freakin’ century to spy on me?’

All right. I’m angry. That’s the emotion I’m giving in to. I’m fucking angry.

‘Zeb is a good man, deep down.’

‘Is he? Because he don’t strike me as one.’

‘He looks after Izzi. He’s kept her safe.’

‘How long’s he been watching me, huh?’

‘Years. Almost a decade now.’

‘Jesus fucking Christ…’ For the first time I break the stare, stubbing my cigarette out on the table as I pull away and start pacing the floor. My head’s fucking spinning, this is crazy. ‘
Christ!
What the fuck
is
it with you, huh?’ I turn back to face him, raking my hands back and forth over my hair as I try to focus; try to calm the frustration that’s rising and rising and I can’t batter it down. ‘You just like playing games or something? What happened to just wanting to meet me? What happened to shit like that, y’know, normality?’

‘We don’t live in a normal world, Mack. You know that.’

‘And Izzi, what’s
she
got to do with any of this? Where the fuck does
she
come into it?’

‘Izzi was a coincidence.’

I can’t fucking do this. This is so screwed-up… man, I need some fucking air.

‘It’s complicated, Mack. Izzi needed me, and I offered to help her.’

‘From what I saw out there you shafted her, big time.’

‘She isn’t a murderer.’

‘So why make her one? Why bring her to this point and then order her to pull back? Why do that?’

‘Would you have preferred I let her kill him? Would that have been better for you?’

I don’t answer that, I don’t need to, he knows my reply.

‘Izzi came to me, and I in turn sent her to you. And she thinks I sent her to you because you could help her, too. But in reality, she was there for me.’

‘For
you
?’

I resume my position against the table and fold my arms, my eyes back locked on his.

‘She was there to allow me to see whether you really could be the kind of man I could never be.’

I’m losing patience here. And the pain in my shoulder, it’s fucking adding to the irritation.

‘Would you like me to see to that for you?’

‘What I’d like you to do is tell me what the fuck you’re talking about.’

He steps back and slips his hands into his pockets but he never once shifts his gaze from me. ‘You’re not me, Mack. You must have more of your mother in you, and that’s good. Despite everything I caused to happen to you, you’re a good man, deep down. You can love, Izzi proved that.’

‘I don’t love her.’

‘You’re lying.’

‘I don’t love her.’

He laughs, and that probably irritates me more than anything. ‘OK. You
cared
about her. Or you were starting to.’

I drop my gaze, and then wish I hadn’t because that gesture tells him he’s right. And he is. He’s right. I cared about her. I still do.

‘Why else would you have tried to stop her back there. You care about what happens to her, Mack.’

‘You care about her too.’ I raise my head and my eyes once more meet his. ‘You stopped her from firing that gun, so how does that make us any different?’

‘Over the years I’ve seen – I’ve been told of the things you’ve done. The people you’ve helped. You run an outlaw MC yet you find time, every now and again, to help others.’

‘It’s a front, for Christ’s sake. Make the sheriff and the police department think we’re helping out the community…’

‘Do you
want
to be a good man?’

‘Not really. I’m happy as I am.’

‘Are you?’

‘Where the fuck do you get off interrogating me? You don’t fucking know me, you’ve just had that asshole out there spy on me for years. What the fuck kinda shit he been reporting back to you, huh?’

‘Enough for me to know you turned out better than I’d hoped.’

‘I’ll take that as a compliment.’

He says nothing for a second, he just looks at me and I try to keep my expression stoic. ‘You couldn’t have her, Mack. She was never yours to take.’