Beyond the Cut (Sinner's Tribe Motorcycle Club #2)(21)
Still, it had taken years to push aside the childish teenage fantasy, break the emotional bond, and gather up the courage and enough money to leave him. And in the end, she’d done it for her girls. Not for herself. Caught in an endless cycle of abuse, she’d lost her sense of self-worth. Her mama bear instincts had saved her as much as she’d saved her children and taught her an important lesson: She was a fighter and a survivor, and she would never let anyone take that away.
“I’ll find a way to get them back.” Her heart thundered so hard she thought she might break a rib. She was intimately familiar with Jimmy’s moods. Her safety had depended on reading him correctly and responding accordingly. And right now, she read danger with a capital D. He wasn’t just angry; he was enraged, and his control would slip the longer they dragged out the conversation.
Jimmy gave a bitter laugh, tightening his grip on her forearm. “You’ve tried for a year and what do you have to show for it? Nothing. Shelly-Ann has you over a barrel and now I’m gonna have you back in my bed. I lost the last election ’cause the brothers thought I was too weak to control my woman. But there’s a new election coming up and I’ve let this stupid little game go on long enough. You’re mine until I let you go. Until death do us part. Nobody leaves Jimmy, especially not you, and never for a Sinner.”
“Wrong.” She tugged the unloaded .22 from the pocket of her jacket and Jimmy released her with a jerk, his hands flying up in a defensive gesture.
“You don’t want to that, love. Think about the kids. You’d go to jail for life. They would have no one but Shelly-Ann.”
Love. The term of endearment made her feel sick inside. He’d called her “love” from the day he took her back to the clubhouse. New name for a new life, he’d said. Now she associated that name with only one thing: Pain.
“Drop the gun and stop playing games.” His grin turned feral. “I know you. And I know it’s not loaded.”
For a split second, Dawn wondered what she would have done if there had been a bullet in the gun. But he’d called her bluff, just as Banks had. Now she had only one option.
Run.
Turning quickly, she raced across the street. In the distance, the headlights of the bus glowed warm in the night. It would all come down to timing.
“Fuck.” Jimmy’s voice echoed in the darkness, and the thud of his shoes on the pavement sent her heart into overdrive.
But although she was fast, Jimmy was faster. Just as she reached the bus shelter, he grabbed her hair and yanked her head back. Using her momentum, he slammed her face into the glass. Pain shot through her skull and she shuddered beneath his grip.
“Wrong. Fucking. Decision.” Jimmy pressed his lips to her ear and growled, “Looks like someone needs to be reminded of her lessons.”
Well conditioned to what usually followed those particular words, Dawn froze. Jimmy had rules, and every lesson she’d learned after breaking one of his rules resulted in a trip to the hospital.
The growl of an engine shattered the silence. Light flooded the shelter and the bus slowed to a stop. In the distance the bar door slammed and she heard Banks curse.
“Let me go or I’ll scream.” She mumbled the words against the glass, unable to move an inch with his body pressed hard against her. “They have armed security on the night bus, and my manager is coming.”
Her gamble that Jimmy knew nothing about buses or the limited resources they had to run at night—resources that most certainly didn’t include salaries for security guards—paid off. With a last smash of her forehead against the glass, he released her and backed into the shadows.
“We’re not done, love.” His words sliced through the darkness, piercing her heart. “Not even close.”
*
“Son of a bitch.” Cade slammed his fist on the chipped Formica table, and the six customers seated at the counter of Table Tops diner on the corner of Fourth and Pine stilled.
“Would you like coffee with that?” Dawn tried to keep her voice steady and willed everyone to go back to their respective conversations. Anything but watch the drama unfolding in the corner booth of the cheap restaurant where she worked six mornings a week, remarkable only for the fact there was absolutely nothing notable about it. Brown vinyl booths lined the walls across from the curved counter; a plastic palm tree, its leaves heavy with dust, took up an empty corner; and a newspaper stand filled with day-olds perched in the corner. The kitchen was partially open, filling the restaurant with scents of grease and coffee, and the walls were decorated with pictures of cats. Lots of cats.
“What the f*ck happened to your face?” Cade stared at her aghast.
“Cream and sugar, sir?”
Conversation resumed around them, slowly rising to a gentle murmur, and Dawn’s tension eased. Hopefully her boss, Stan, had missed Cade’s outburst.
“I had a run-in with a bus shelter.” She kept her voice low and her eyes on her notepad. There seemed little point lying to him. Although she’d done her best to cover up the bruises with makeup, she couldn’t hide the swelling around her eye.
Cade’s lips pressed into a rigid line, a far cry from his warm, affable expression of only moments ago. “It was Mad Dog, wasn’t it? I’m going to f*cking kill him.”
She caught a flash of red out of the corner of her eye and saw Stan standing by the door to the kitchen in his Table Tops uniform: black pants, red polo shirt, and white apron. Dawn wore a skirt instead of pants and instead of the word MANAGER stitched across the top left corner of her uniform, her shirt read WAITRESS. As if people wouldn’t know when she took their orders.