Ruthless (Dark MC Romance) Read online

“Do you want to get better? Are you really willing to leave that world behind?”

  My mouth opened and closed. Forever?

  I thought about never drinking again, never touching a cue, or smoking a joint, or doing coke, ever again. Perhaps I would never even sit on a motorcycle again. A profound sense of loss made me sink into the cushions.

  Instead, I would have children with Bryan and play house with him—cook and clean, and look after the children and the pets. Occasionally, I would go to yoga classes with my girlfriends, who had the same lifestyle. I jerked in the chair and met Dr. Morish’s hard gaze.

  She knows me better than my husband. I saw myself climbing in a cherry-red convertible and speeding away from it all.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Then I can’t help you.” She stood up suddenly and turned her back to me, walking to her desk and sitting behind it.

  Dr. Morish gestured towards the door.

  Anger rustled in my chest at being dismissed “Wait, you’re just going to throw me out?”

  “Julia, I can’t help you if you don’t want to change your life. I don’t judge you for wanting to go back to that lifestyle, but therapy is a waste of time if you’re not willing to change.”

  I always hated coming here, but for some reason I felt compelled to fight her. Perhaps I finally pushed her too far. “But—”

  “Call me when you’ve figured things out.”

  She looked down at the paperwork on her desk as if I already left, so I swept out of the office without another word.

  * * *

  “It’s your turn!”

  Damn, already? I looked up from playing a stupid game on my cell phone to a spunky, short woman in her thirties dressed in a pleated skirt with a matching white headband. Taking the tennis racquet she gave me, I mournfully dropped my cigarette to the ground. Christine, my husband’s coworker’s wife, pursed her lips.

  People here are so fucking uptight about littering.

  I crushed it with my tennis shoe, pretending I couldn’t see the haughty disapproval shining on her face. Sighing, I held up my racquet and approached my opponent. It was useless. I sucked at tennis and I hated the sport. Bryan made me go. Resentment rustled in my chest briefly, squashed almost immediately by guilt.

  He’s done so much for me. The least I can do is humor him.

  Maggie served the ball over the tennis net and I halfheartedly chased it, swiping my racquet over air.

  “No, you’re swinging it wrong! Here, I’ll help you.”

  I pretended to care as Christine jogged over and helped me with my form. Both women had an hour of tennis practice every week. Twice a week. Wednesdays and Fridays were reserved for yoga, and when they had time, they volunteered at charity events. Usually at church.

  I did their whole routine for a week and decided after the second day that I couldn’t stand it. I hadn’t yet been able to worm out of tennis practice, which mostly consisted of me sitting under an umbrella or a bench and watching them play. I’d rather stay home and fantasize about doing coke.

  We left an hour later, Maggie and Christine walking together back to the locker rooms while I trailed behind. That was how it always was. I was too different to be allowed in their circle.

  Frankly, I didn’t have anything in common with most women. When I was growing up I had no one to show me how to be a girl—what clothes to wear and what makeup to use and how to do one’s hair. My grandmother was old-fashioned. She refused to buy my makeup, so I had to learn everything on my own.

  I wasn’t meek. I lacked grace and swore like a sailor. I was rejected by those women who had been taught by their mothers, those perfect, feminine women. They would graciously allow me to attend their yoga classes with them, but I would never be accepted by them. It stung.

  After we washed what little sweat we accumulated on our bodies, we went inside the country club for lunch. The conversation invariably settled on babies, and how both of them were so excited to start trying and, what color they ought to paint their nursery, and whether attachment parenting was the best and breastfeeding and on, and on. I wanted to get the hell out of there.

  I’m so bored.

  “What about you, Julia?” Christine whipped her dark head around to stare directly at me.

  I had no idea what they were talking about. My attention was lost. Were they talking about baby names or baby showers?

  “Sorry, what?”

  She uttered an impatient sigh. “How many kids do you want?”

  None. I looked at their wide, excited faces and considered telling them the truth. “

  I don’t really like kids.” Maybe I was a little pissed off at them for boring me to death all day, because it wasn’t exactly true. I said it because I knew it would grate their nerves.

  Both of them looked like I just slapped them. Their faces were rosy almost as if I struck their faces.

  Christine’s brown eyes widened and her mouth hung open. “Why not?”

  They smell. They’re stupid and they scream. Thank you for bringing me to that volunteer daycare center. That made me realize I never wanted to be a mother.

  I shrugged. “I just never really liked them.”

  “But when it’s your own baby, it’s different,” Maggie gushed, clearly desperate to bring the conversation back to normalcy.

  “You’ll change your mind.”

  I doubted it. At twenty-seven I was still vehemently opposed to them. I was already married. A child would mean that my freedom was gone. All of it. I already cut out so much of my soul, I couldn’t take cutting away yet another piece.

  “Some people aren’t fit to be mothers. Like mine. She was a prostitute.”

  They both blinked at me like, looking remarkably like gaping fish. An uncomfortable silence followed as they both stared at each other and tried to act as though what I said didn’t bother them. I just wanted them to experience, for a moment, the grittiness of real life. I wanted to burst their perfect, pink bubbles and shake their shoulders. They didn’t even seem human to me.

  Then I just felt small.

  I felt a dash of guilt as I watched them struggle. Who was I to destroy their fantasy? They wanted to live in a world where pink was for girls and blue was for boys. Where I came from, everyone wore black.

  * * *

  A burning cigarette hung from my lips as I mopped the already gleaming floors, wishing that something would crash all over the surface so that I wouldn’t be so fucking bored. Bryan moved around the kitchen as he got ready for work, and gave me a brilliant smile whenever I caught his gaze. The brown puddle around the ring of the coffee mug made me frown and the spilled flour on the countertop reminded me of cocaine.

  God, what I would give for a gram right now.

  I shut that voice out and twisted the ring around my raw finger. Bryan bought the wrong size, but we had an appointment over the weekend to visit the jeweler to get it fitted. My heart throbbed suddenly. My new life didn’t really feel real until I signed the certificate on the altar, a heavy hesitation making my hand waver in the air. And now I was slowly nailing in the coffin, buying furniture for the house and adjusting my ring and planning parties for Bryan’s work friends.

  I signed away my life for the four-bedroom, beautiful house in the safest neighborhood I could ever imagine. A house that would be filled with our children. I stood for a moment and waited for the desire to grip me, like it had for every single woman in my life. I could almost see myself holding a baby, but I couldn’t picture my face. Was I happy? Sad? Resigned?

  But I’ll do it anyways to make him happy. Maybe it won’t be so bad.

  The wad of money I won yesterday was tucked in my purse, which sat on the kitchen counter, open. I was proud of it.

  I’ve still got it. All he had to do was look inside and then he’d find out. And then maybe he would free me from all this.

  “Baby, stop cleaning. It’s seven. Why don’t you just relax?”

  A sting of irritation zapped up my arm
. “I can’t stop thinking about coke.”

  Bryan’s hands smoothed my arms and my fingers bit into the wooden handle of the mop. I hadn’t meant to say that out loud. Slowly, he turned me around, his young, round face anxious.

  “What do you have planned for today?”

  I shrugged.

  “Aren’t you going to yoga with Maggie and Christine?”

  Oh, right. Bryan didn’t know that I blew off the last two weeks. The women who Bryan introduced me to insisted that it was “great exercise” and I wondered if they ever did anything to break into a sweat.

  Lying on a blue mat and contorting my body into awkward positions didn’t exactly raise my heartbeat. It was nothing compared to the throttle of a motorcycle under my thighs, or the rush I’d get from one bump—just one bump of coke.

  “Julia, I know you don’t like them—”

  “We have nothing in common,” I said, staring at my husband’s worried eyes. “They’re perfectly nice, it’s just that I find them boring.”

  “It would do you some good to get out of the house.”

  He leaned in to kiss me and my kiss was like an automatic reply.

  “Maybe.”

  Bryan pulled back, beaming at me as I took another drag of my cigarette. A warm glow in my chest gently heated my skin. Not many men would tolerate a girl with a drug problem.

  Bryan literally took me in off the streets, cleaned me up, sent me off the rehab, and paid for therapy. After helping me glue my life back together, how could I not accept his marriage proposal?

  He made me feel safe for the first time in years, but often I prayed by my bedside for God to please, please make me love him as much as he loved me. Perfect, sweet Bryan was far better to me than Ace ever was.

  The motorcycle club’s violent lifestyle drove me out, not before I royally fucked them over by stealing tens of thousands of dollars. It only took a few months for me to blow it all on coke. Bryan was good for me.

  He kissed my neck, his hands circling around my waist as I felt the bump on his waist digging into my hip.

  Not right now. Heart hammering, I pulled away from him, shocked by the swift wave of revulsion through my body.

  Bryan’s face, still flushed, looked at me with a quizzical expression. “What’s wrong?”

  I’m not attracted to you.

  We were almost the same height, but Bryan was, on all accounts, a hunk. He was broad shouldered and tanned with a masculine face and strong jaw. Although he was fit, a layer of fat began to smooth the abdominal muscles ever since he started working at Chevron. It had nothing to do with his appearance, though. It was just—he was just not my type. Why didn’t I want him? What was wrong with me?

  It crashed into me like a semi. Was I doomed to a life of unhappiness?

  Suddenly dizzy, I turned my back to him and crushed the cigarette in the ashtray, staring out of the kitchen window at the rolling, brown hills. I shuddered as his hands snaked around me and slid the waistband of my jeans down. His bare palm slid around my abdomen and stayed there.

  “Someday, there’ll be a baby in there. Amazing to think about, isn’t it?”

  My chest froze as his fingers moved down, stroking the small amount of wetness that gathered between my legs. I didn’t even want to think about children. I knew it was expected of me, knew that Bryan wouldn’t be happy without them, yet whenever I thought about pregnancy and childbirth my mind froze in a blind panic and I shoved the thoughts aside.

  I closed my eyes as I heard his pants fall and winced as his cock found my too-dry entrance. The harsh sound of motorcycles roaring across the highway made tears thicken in my throat. Thinking of the man and life I left behind, a sad moan left my throat as Bryan thrust his hips.

  * * *

  The fear that followed me everywhere was heightened today. I couldn’t shake it off all day, starting from the moment I saw a biker sitting outside the grocery store, his shades hiding his eyes. He could have been staring at me. I thought I saw a diamond-shaped tattoo on his arm. Is he from the Dragons? Did they find me? I almost dropped the bags of groceries.

  He could just be a Hells Angel. Maybe he isn’t in a club.

  But my mind burned with the image of the diamond-shaped tattoo and the large, spiky 1% inside it.

  The groceries stayed in my car all day in the hot sun. I didn’t want to go home yet. Something—I don’t know what it was—dread, perhaps, told me not to go home. Bryan had no idea that I took birth control pills everyday. In truth, he had no idea who I was. I was a fucking mess.

  I drove through the smog filled valley of Los Angeles, driving all the way out to the Hollywood Hills to park my car near the sign. All I needed was a little release. Chain-smoking, I sat on the roof of my van, oblivious to the groceries quietly rotting away in my car. It was a quiet afternoon, but the orange line of smog that lay across Los Angeles created a haze, giving the impression that it was later in the day.

  A rumbling sound made me sit bolt upright. I dropped the cigarette and listened hard, willing that it was just a figment of my imagination. Another growl rumbled in my ears and I scrambled off the car, slamming the keys into the ignition to get the hell out of there.

  The car peeled down the dirt road and I stared ahead, fully prepared to run them over. I could almost see the chrome blinding my eyes as it throttled up the hill. You won’t fucking take me. My eyes darted at any movement on the road, but all I saw was the wind rustling the shrubbery. There was no motorcycle. I wondered what the hell was wrong with me. Why am I hearing things?

  On the way home, I spotted the pool hall I visited yesterday and felt a rush of excitement, along with sickening fear. Maybe they heard about it.

  My hands slipped on the steering wheel and I briefly debated going back to the grocery store, because the meat was starting to smell.

  He could still be there. He could be following me right now.

  I glanced into the rear view mirror, watching carefully when I changed lanes to see if I had a tail. Red lights blazed in front of me and I slammed the brakes.

  You’re going to get yourself killed.

  My hand shot into the glove compartment to pop open the bottle of Xanax and in my shaking hand I spilled half the bottle on the car seat. Then the lights turned green. I let the cars behind me honk as I grabbed two of them and swallowed. I jerked the steering wheel to turn right randomly, to throw off the imaginary tails behind me. I sped down the streets, making another hard turn, and it went on until gradually my arms lost their compulsion to jerk the steering wheel. The pressure on the gas pedal lessened, but then I would think about that biker and my heart would start back up again.

  I drove back to our house in Santa Monica, choosing speed over safety at ever juncture. It was almost four and I had nothing prepared for dinner. He would walk in, exhausted from a full day’s work, and his eyes would lower in disappointment when he realized nothing was ready for him. Guilt throbbed inside me.

  All Bryan wanted from me was a clean house and food ready for him when he got home from work. And every week, I somehow managed to fuck it up. What’ll it be like when we have kids?

  My stomach turned when I saw Bryan’s car already pulled into the driveway. He’s early. Shit. I parked the car next to his and grabbed the spoiled groceries. It was a short trip across our perfect, green lawn, I stabbed the keys inside the lock to turn, but the door pushed open without resistance. My mind sluggish on the Xanax, I stepped over the threshold, the groceries jostling a bit.

  “Bryan?”

  My voice echoed in the too large house, bouncing off the cream-colored porcelain tiles only to be swallowed by the equally neutral walls.

  He’s in the backyard, probably.

  Somehow, the house seemed too quiet. Usually, I kept something on all the time just to hear noise. I didn’t feel so alone with the radio or TV on, feeding me a constant barrage of human voices and sounds, so that I wouldn’t have to think about anything.

  My mind sensed that there we
re more than a few male bodies sharing the kitchen. The air felt shared, somehow, but the pills numbed all instinctual thought and I blundered inside.

  Three men in familiar leather cuts surrounded my husband, who was duct-taped to a kitchen chair, his eyes begging me for—what?

  They found me.

  The milk shattered on the floor as I turned around into a stiff, male body whose angry fingers grabbed my arms and squeezed. I kicked and screamed, feeling no panic, but knowing that I needed to make as much noise as possible. His hand over my mouth smothered my screams, so I bit and spat his palm. Pain. I needed to cause pain.

  He released me with a grunt of pain and his fist crunched against the side of my face. I fell like a stone as pain exploded over my jaw.

  “Crazy fucking bitch.”

  A series of low laughs followed his comment and despite the calm in my brain, my heart hammered like mad—it knew that I was about to die.

  From the floor I saw Bryan’s trembling legs. The milk spilled around my body like blood and for a wild moment I thought I was injured. He grabbed a fistful of my blonde hair and wrenched me upright, my brain pounding.

  The bald man who stood beside Bryan gnashed his yellowed teeth in a frightening grimace. He held a gun against Bryan’s head.

  “So where the fuck is it?” The man who held me up yanked on my hair.

  I knew what they were talking about. They tracked me down to recover the thousands of dollars I stole. My mind was blank, the strange calm provided by the Xanax giving me no ideas.

  “I didn’t—I don’t have it anymore. Please don’t hurt him.”

  They laughed at the calm in my voice and Bryan flinched against the noise.

  “You don’t sound very convincing.”

  I couldn’t see the man behind me, but there was frustration in his voice. “Do we look like we’re fucking around? Where’s the fucking money?”

  Bryan’s eyes stared back at me hopelessly and a sob shook my throat. He had no idea what was happening. He looked like a dog that was about to be put down. They’re going to kill him. And me.

  “Maybe she’ll start talking if we start fucking her tight little pussy. Maybe that will open her up.”