Raw: The Ultimate Mc Collection (26 page)

“She met Monty in a hotel bar, late at night, after a fundraiser in the ballroom. He wasn’t the mayor yet. She charmed him with tales of her young, beautiful, obedient sixteen year-old daughter, the ‘young’ part appealing to him the most.  He asked to meet me, and then, well, hell…she just flat out sold me to him.  He paid her ten grand for me, and I never saw or heard from her again. She just left me there in a downtown Seattle hotel with him, turning me over like an unwanted dog.”

“Unfuckingbelievable,” Riot whispered, his voice seething with anger.

“Yeah…anyway, Monty made his money back, in spades.  He charged his rich friends fifteen grand to spend a few hours alone with me.  Most of them had weird fetishes that they wouldn’t dare utter to someone in their real life.  I was the fantasy girl that they could ask anything of.  I protested the first few times, but after Monty beat me, well…let’s just say that I learned quickly that going along with whatever his freaky friends wanted was a lot easier than enduring Monty’s wrath.”

“I am so sorry all of that happened to you, Lacey,” Grace said.  Her eyes were shining with tears, and mine were bone dry.  I was re-telling the horrors of my life, and while a perfect stranger was being deeply affected by my words, I felt nothing.  I was dead inside.  It was as if I was talking about someone else. 

“Listen, it was awful, for sure.  But Monty gave me a nice apartment, he bought me clothes, food, paid the bills.  He wasn’t nice, he was a prick, he tortured me.  But most of the guys he sold me to were just middle aged, perverted men.  They never laid a finger on me, not violently, I mean.  Monty was the angry one, the violent one.  And I fucked up.  I got tempted by an offer a man on the street gave me, and I got in his car.  I knew Monty would be pissed, but I honestly thought, in my naive mind, that I could take this man’s money and use it to run away.  Turns out, he was a cop, and all he did was give me a trip to jail.”

Grace shook her head, and anger rose in her eyes.

“That’s when I met your friend, Alex.  When she gave me the card.  But Monty bailed me out and I was back in my apartment with him within hours. That was last night. He beat me. Hard. And he was about to rape me…but…um,” my voice trembled and my hands began shaking as I remembered what I had done.  “I don’t know…I snapped, I guess.  I had never fought back before. But I just couldn’t take one more night enduring his cruelty…and I started fighting back.  Before I knew it, I was standing over him and stabbing him over and over with my broken shoe. I guess I passed out.  Next thing I know, I woke up covered in blood and Monty was dead.  I took a shower, and I called you.  And here I am.”

Riot sat beside me, and the anger pulsed off his body.  His fists clenched and unclenched over and over as I told my story.   It was unnerving, and yet…the fact that he was so obviously angry at all the shit I had endured was comforting in a very deep and satisfying way.

Nobody had ever protected me from anything in my life.  I didn’t know what that was supposed to feel like.  If this was it, then I liked it.

“Lacey,” Grace said, catching my eye.  “Listen very carefully to me, okay?”

I nodded.

“All that shit you went through, with your Mom, with Monty, with all those men…none of that was your fault.  You didn’t deserve any of that.  Nobody deserves that.  You were a victim.  You had no choice but to go along with it, in order to survive.  Don’t for a second think you did anything wrong.  You mother was supposed to protect you, to keep you safe, to nurture you, and she failed miserably.  But here’s what I’ve learned as I’ve gotten older.  All that shit that happened to both of us, it only made us stronger.  You’ve survived things that people your age can’t even imagine.  You’re a warrior, Lacey.  Remember that.  You’ve gone through hell, and look - you’re here now, you’re safe, you are finally out of that hell.  You’ve won, Lacey.”

The tears were streaming down my face before I could stop them.  I nodded, unable to speak.   Grace’s words penetrated deeply, into my brain, into my heart, and I let them take up residence there.  I wanted to remember them.  I wanted to feel them.  I wanted all of that to be true, as much as everything I had learned about myself wanted to argue against it.  I wanted to believe her.

“Everything’s going to be alright, Lacey,” Riot said, his huge, warm hand softly stroking my back, as he whispered in my ear.  

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Riot

It took all my strength not to storm out of the room.  It was so hard to sit and listen to Lacey’s story and not be overwhelmed with rage.  Rage for everything women had to go through, just because they were perceived as the weaker sex, the more attractive sex, the sex that had to endure the horrors of what a man could dish out. They weren’t weak at all, not in my eyes. 

Nobody deserved to go through that shit, and listening to her story made me want to go and kill everyone who had ever hurt her.

When we first started Solid Ground, I hadn’t realized I would be so effected by the stories I heard.  But each one was worse than the one before, and Lacey’s was absolutely horrific.  She never had a fucking chance.  It just wasn’t fair.

Life wasn’t fair, though.  I had learned that a long time ago.  The hard way.

“This is going to be a very high profile case,” Ryder said.  We were sitting around the table in the war room, filling Lacey in on what would happen next, after she had finally stopped crying.  She was tough, that much was clear.  But she was so obviously overwhelmed with the situation she was in now, that she was having trouble keeping her shit together.

I could relate.  There was something about killing someone for the first time that unraveled you.  Especially if you never expected to be that person.  I shook off my own fucked-up past, and listened as Ryder continued talking.

“Every cop in Oregon and Washington are going to be looking for you.  We’ll keep you hidden here until things die down just a little.  We’ll get you a new name, a new identity, change your appearance as much as possible, and set you up in a new city with a new life.  It’s drastic, but this is a drastic situation.  The main thing we need to focus on right now is keeping you safe.”

“And we can do that,” Grace said, picking up when Ryder paused.  “All you have to do is lay low and do exactly as we say, Lacey, and even though it might take some time, everything will be okay.  In the meantime, you’re safe here.”

“How do you know?” Lacey asked, looking up at me with such worry in her eyes that my heart swelled with protectiveness.

“Because nobody in their right mind would come snooping around here,” I answered.  I wanted to throw my arms around her, and carry her off to the safety of my room and lock her away from the fucked up world she had been living in.  Unfortunately, cavemen weren’t too popular these days, so I restrained myself.

“Okay,” she replied, taking a deep breath and jutting her chin out in that way that had quickly become adorable to me.  “I’ve got no choice but to trust you guys. I can’t tell you enough how grateful I am to each of you.”

God, she was breaking my fucking heart.

“Trust us, darlin’,” Slade said, winking at her across the table.  “It’s our pleasure, and you really couldn’t be in a safer place.”

If Slade didn’t stop winking at her, I was going to knock his face off.  The last thing this poor woman needed was a little fucker like him sniffing around her.  I made a mental note to set him straight once I got him alone.  The glaring looks I had been giving him all day obviously weren’t getting through.

“So, what now?” Lacey asked, turning her attention away from Slade and looking at Grace.

“Now, you relax.  We’ll take care of everything behind the scenes.  There’s not much for you to do at all, except enjoy the tranquility of the Tillamook woods and start the slow process of recovering. Make yourself at home here. I’ll show you to your room, and you can set your own pace, take it easy.  The clubhouse can get a little rowdy at night, but everyone is friendly, and if you need something, just ask.  The kitchen is stocked, feel free to help yourself.  We all have a big group dinner together every night.  I’ll keep you posted as we go along, okay?  You’ll probably be here a week or two.”

“Oh.  That long.  Okay, thank you,” Lacey replied, looking like a sad, lost kitten that was trying to act tough.  I wished like hell there was something I could do to ease her pain.  She was so fucking beautiful, with such a sweet demeanor, I couldn’t help but feel tender towards her.

My eyes trailed down her body, pausing at the soft swell of her breasts, and I felt my cock begin to twitch in my pants.

No
, I thought.
Stop it.
 My confused cock had nothing to do with this.  I shifted in my seat, and was thankful when Grace stood up and led Lacey away to show her to her room.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Lacey

“This used to be Ryder’s room,” Grace said, throwing open the door at the end of the hallway.  “After I moved in, we built a little cabin in a meadow just through the woods to the South of here.  We can hear you if you holler, we are that close.”

Grace was so sweet.  It was hard to imagine her as a cop.  It was also hard to imagine someone had gone through as much as she had and was still so kind and open-hearted.  I had closed my heart down a long time ago.  If it had ever even been open in the first place.

Barricades and brick walls.  Those were things I imagined every time the pain tried to creep in.  Nothing could get through, as long as I stacked the bricks high enough around my heart.  My mom, Monty, all those other men, they could do whatever they wanted to my body, but they were locked out of my heart.  After awhile, I found I had locked myself out, too.

Grace wasn’t like me. She still had access to her heart.

“If you need anything at all, don’t hesitate to ask, okay?  The bathroom is stocked, feel free to use anything you find.”  She peered closer to my face, wincing as she saw the bruising. “He got you pretty good there.”

“Yeah,” I replied.  I imagined myself stacking my brick wall higher every time Monty’s face appeared in my head. “He got it worse.”

“Indeed he did,” Grace nodded. “And he got what he deserved.”  She looked into my eyes. “Lacey, I hope you don’t feel one ounce of remorse for what you did.  Monty was a monster, what he did to you was unforgivable.  You did the only thing you could to defend yourself.  If I thought it would be good for you, I’d even encourage you to go to the police with your story.  No jury in their right mind would convict you.  But, you need more than that.  If you had a family you cared about, maybe it would be a different story.  But I honestly think the best thing for you is a whole new story, a new life, a new you.  Away from the circus that this whole thing is going to stir up.”

I nodded.

“You’re so right.  Thank you, Grace.”  She hugged me, her warmth once again doing what nobody else seemed to be able to - seeping under the bricks and soothing my soul like a calming stream.

“Just be patient, that’s the most important thing, sweetheart,” she whispered, as she held me in front of her.  “And believe you deserve a new start, Lacey.  Because you do.”

I nodded, trying hard to let her words sink into the space  behind those bricks, to let them touch my heart and heal it just a tiny little bit.

“You must be exhausted.”  She was right, I was.  “There’s a plate of fresh fruit, cheese and crackers there, and the bed is freshly made up and ready for you to crawl in it.  I’ll leave you alone now, you should rest.  You need it, trust me.  Make sure you eat just a little first, okay?  Like I said, dinner is a big event around here, but if you don’t feel like joining us, or you want to keep sleeping, that’s completely fine.  You just let us know.  It’s all up to you.”

It’s all up to me,
I thought.  Her words ran through my head over and over as I drifted off later, warm and safe under the thick quilts and soft sheets of the lumpiest bed I had ever slept in.

I felt like a queen, and I slept like a baby.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Riot

The Gods swarmed around Lacey like vultures.  Slade, especially, was pissing me off.  He wouldn’t quit.  I watched from the sidelines as he waited hand and foot on her during dinner.

Since Grace and Ryder had moved into their new cabin, they made it a point to make a big deal out of dinner every night, in an attempt to maintain the sense of family that we were all used to.  It had worked.  In fact, it had made it us all closer. 

But tonight, it was irritating the fuck out of me.  I was afraid it might be too much for Lacey, but I had to admit, she was holding her own just fine.  She didn’t seem to be buying into Slade’s bullshit, and I was glad to see it.

Slade’s bed was a revolving door, and if he thought Lacey was going to be another notch in his belt, then he was sorely mistaken.  I was going to have to take a personal interest in watching out for Lacey, I had already decided.  She wasn’t going to get too far out of my sight, not if I could help it.