Chaos Bound (Sinner's Tribe Motorcycle Club #4)(69)
“Let what go? You never told me what happened. What did Viper do to you?”
She’d never told anyone except Ally. Not even Maurice. She didn’t want anyone to treat her differently, like she was made of glass, or, worse, in need of sympathy. She’d become adept at hiding her lack of arousal, so the issue never came up. And Maurice had never asked. Looking back, she realized that should have been a warning something wasn’t right with their relationship, but at the time she’d been happy not to feel pressured.
Holt was different. He was live to her issues even though he didn’t know why. Now he wanted to know. And she wanted to tell him.
“He raped me,” she said into his chest. “I was fifteen, alone on my birthday. Arianne’s brother Jeff invited me to the Black Jack clubhouse where they were having a party. I knew better, and if I hadn’t been feeling sorry for myself I wouldn’t have gone, but Jeff had always been kind and he said he’d look out for me. But he was high when I got there, totally out of it. I was about to leave when Viper started talking to me. I was awed and flattered he even noticed me. He spiked my drink and touched me. He was gentle. Seductive. He said sweet things. I let my guard down and went with him to his office. The minute the door closed, everything changed. I don’t remember that much about what he did to me. I’d never … It was my first time and he knew it.”
“Son of a bitch,” Holt muttered. “Son of a f*cking bitch.”
She stumbled over her words, not wanting to tell him that she remembered a lot more than she was letting on: terror, horror, torn clothes, hard desk, frantic pleas, begging, screaming, crying, slaps and punches, pain—so much pain, the sting of the blade on her skin, the burn of the tattoo gun on her arm, disgust, humiliation and utter despair. But worse had been waking naked, cold, and alone on his office floor, marked, discarded, and filled with self-loathing for her innocence and stupidity.
“My mom was at the party.” Her voice wavered. “She saw him with me. She knew what he wanted. She never stopped him. Never came into the office when I screamed. And afterward, when I went to her apartment for help, she told me to go back to him or he’d take out his anger on her. I refused, so she threw me out. I had nowhere to go, no one to turn to. They owned the cops and social services. They owned everyone in Devil’s Hills.”
“I got no words, darlin’.” Holt hugged her tight.
Warm in his embrace, she found the strength to go on. “After a couple of weeks on the streets, I hit rock bottom. I used the last of my cash to buy a gun to kill Viper. My grandmother’s priest saw me at a crosswalk. He must have seen something in my face because he convinced me to go the rectory with him. I told him everything and he got me out of town, found me a place to live with a family in Missoula where I could babysit in exchange for rent and food. They were good people. They encouraged me to finish high school and when I got my first job, I paid the priest back … every cent. He saved me, not just from Viper, but from myself.”
Holt let loose a string of curses, his body going rigid. “Goddamn bastard is gonna f*cking pay for everything he did to you. I’m not going to kill him easy. I’m gonna drag it out. Make him suffer the way I suffered, the way you suffered. I’m gonna make him wish for death, and it won’t happen until there’s nothing left to kill.”
“Do it for yourself,” she said. “I’m done with it. I’ll never forgive him for what he did, but I don’t want blood. I’ve worked too hard to make a new life for myself. I don’t want to dredge up all those old memories. What he did affected me, but it didn’t destroy me like killing him would have. If I’d gone down that road, I don’t think I would have come back.”
“You saying I shouldn’t go after him?”
Naiya shook her head. “I’m saying it’s not the right thing for me, but it’s taken me seven years to get to move on and accept I am not the same person anymore, even though I didn’t pull the trigger. I had to settle in my skin, see the world through different eyes. Now I just want to live my life in peace.”
“Do you?” Holt held her lightly, sighed. “You aren’t living, darlin’; you’re hiding, and until he’s dead you’ll always be hiding, looking over your shoulder, waiting for the next time he comes for you. And he will come unless you make him pay. Justice is for civilians. Revenge is for bikers, and you got biker blood in you. I saw it when we were in that dungeon and you were pounding on the door and cursing the living daylights out of Viper. I saw it when you kept your cool when we were escaping and when you f*cking drugged my sorry ass. I saw it in the bar when you didn’t back down from the ATF agent on the hunt. And I’ll bet the brothers saw it when you walked alone into a one-percenter biker bar wearing your pretty pink sweater and looking like you just stepped out of a Good Home magazine.”
“So I should just join the club and have my revenge?” Her voice rose in pitch. Secretly she’d always wanted Viper to pay for what he’d done. But more than that she wanted to know he would never hurt her again. It was wrong to want a man dead; wrong to condone violence, yet hearing Holt voice her secret desire sent a thrill through her veins. “As what? A club whore, like my mother?”
“Nah. You got too much class to be a club whore,” he said, entirely missing the sarcasm in her tone or the point she was trying to make. “You could be a house mama or someone’s old lady.”