Vengeance Road Read online

  Breezy shot her a smile. She wasn’t the person to ask. She didn’t know about a good relationship any more than Lana or Steele did. She’d grown up in the Swords, and apparently they weren’t even like other clubs. “I don’t know much about that, having only had it with Steele, but I do remember feeling safer when his friends were close. It’s always intimate with Steele.” She was surprised that it was true. She did feel safer with members of Torpedo Ink close.

  She stood in the middle of the living room, hands on her hips. “They really made a mess, didn’t they?”

  Lana toed a broken chair with the end of her boot. “This was deliberate, honey. They were sending you a message if you came back here.”

  “I got the message when they took Zane.”

  “Let’s get your things and get out of here,” Lana said. “You can rest at the motel.”

  Breezy agreed. She wanted out of there as fast as possible. “The photographs are in my bedroom in the top drawer along with his birth certificate,” she said and led the way.

  TWELVE

  Bruiser was a screamer. He was the one Steele was certain was going to break first. Dart’s eyes were all over the place, but he was fairly stoic. That wouldn’t last. Steele was far too good at his job. He had begun to study anatomy and the human body when his trainers had first discovered that he was exceptional when it came to healing. It hadn’t bought him any favors. Not one.

  His training as a killer had begun when he was four years old. He had been given to both male and female pedophiles at the same age. He was beaten and brutalized. He was raped and tortured. At seven his sexual training began, mostly to please women. Then men. Then they discovered he retained all information and was good at healing. He’d been given to his first doctor, a close friend of Sorbacov, who shared him. The man happened to have a problem he couldn’t solve, and Steele had solved it for him. At seven.

  After that, the doctor was a regular who wanted to talk as much as he wanted to fuck up a child. He was the first to educate him as a doctor. By ten he had outgrown the doctor and needed someone with more knowledge. At his friend’s request, Sorbacov shared him with another doctor.

  Through it all, Steele continued to learn how to kill. He mastered weapons and hand-to-hand combat. He was good with poisons because he retained any information given to him. He knew what common household cleaners would cause the most pain when he poured them down throats or splashed them on skin. They were in a warehouse used essentially as a torture house for interrogation, and that meant, with all the tools and car shit around, he had easy access to even worse chemicals.

  He knew where, on the human body, he could inflict the most pain and still keep someone alive. He had no problem visiting that on either of the two men. Bruiser had made the mistake of taunting him, just as he knew the idiot would. They were so predictable. Screams didn’t bother him. He barely paid attention to the sound, just enough to hear a breaking point. If it wasn’t there, and no questions were answered, he took it up a notch. If they were at a breaking point, he took it down.

  “This isn’t going to stop for you. I can keep it up all night, all day and all week. I don’t give a shit. If I get tired, which I doubt, one of the brothers will take over while I lie right there and take a nap.” He indicated the long table where a carburetor had been laid out. “Paid two weeks on the place.”

  His tone never changed. It wouldn’t. His pulse wouldn’t change either. He’d buried his emotions deep. These men were part of the club that had taken his two-year-old son. He’d kill them all, one by one, until he got his boy back. That would start next if they couldn’t get to Bridges.

  Torpedo Ink was good at what they did. They’d acted as assassins for their country and Sorbacov for well over twenty years. Most had been sent out as teenagers. Most had started killing, striking back at the men and women who’d abused them, when they’d not even been ten. They knew killing and they were comfortable with it. Far too comfortable, and all of them knew it. This was their element. What they knew best.

  He’d been at them for going on three hours now. He sent a deliberate grin to Maestro. “I hope the Guns and Skull club used really good soundproofing. It’s going to get a lot louder in here as the day goes on.”

  Bruiser squeaked and shook his head so hard it looked as if he might break his neck. Steele let the smile slip as he turned back to the two men hanging from the chains. Both were naked. There was water right beneath them, their bare feet in it, but it did nothing to blot out the smell of urine.

  “Would you like to tell me again what you planned to do with my son? Or my woman? I’m really interested in knowing. Since you don’t want to tell me Zane’s location, entertain me with your plans for them both. I’ve forgotten what you said. What was that, Bruiser? Dart? You remember?”

  Steele picked up the cattle prod. “Not as effective as the battery Mechanic is hooking up for me. I’m getting tired of this little thing.”

  Bruiser screamed and screamed, the sounds of agony filling the wide warehouse the Guns and Skull club had made into a garage just in case law enforcement questioned them. Few did, and Steele hoped they kept it that way. He hadn’t even gotten started. A cattle prod was nothing in his arsenal of tools.

  “Let’s start again.”

  He was patient. He’d learned patience in a hard school. While he’d been with any of the four doctors/surgeons he’d trained under, he had tried developing ways to combat infection. He had stolen antibiotics and done everything in his power to save the children in that prison of a school he’d lived in.

  Their lessons weren’t about etiquette like the other schools. They didn’t learn manners and what kinds of rules society cared about. They learned languages, so they could be sent out to kill. They learned sex, so they could be sent out to kill. He’d learned to become a doctor, so he could be sent out to kill. Everything they did was for that one purpose—their only purpose. No one expected that any of them would survive, let alone go free.

  Sorbacov knew they were killing their instructors, the pedophiles who were there to commit whatever atrocity they chose without fear of retaliation. He knew what the children were doing, but he didn’t know how. He set up cameras throughout the school, so that every room was covered. He’d done so with the intent to blackmail any participant that might later oppose his chosen candidate. Films of them as children being raped still circulated among child predators, but Sorbacov had never caught any of them on film killing their wardens.

  That was all Czar. His brains. His plans. He had slowly recruited those children he believed wouldn’t betray the others—and they hadn’t. All of them had been interrogated at one time or another, and those sessions had been pure torture. None of them had broken.

  “I don’t know where the kid is. Bridges took him. He’s in the wind,” Bruiser sobbed. “You have to believe me. I’m telling the truth.”

  Steele shook his head slowly. “The thing is, Bruiser, I don’t have to believe you. You told me that you were going to personally take my son and sell him to a guy you know who loves little kids. You told me you would then go after Breezy and do all sorts of things to her—some, by the way, I’m not certain you could actually do. So, no, I don’t believe you when you tell me you don’t know where Zane is. We’re just going to have to keep going.”

  “No. No. Really, I didn’t have anything to do with it,” Bruiser sobbed. “You can’t blame us. We weren’t going to help him.”

  “Didn’t you just tell me you were going to shove your dick down my woman’s throat until she choked on it? Didn’t you say that to me?”

  Bruiser opened his mouth and the cattle prod was pushed inside. Dart’s body shook as he watched his friend’s face contort. As he watched the body nearly seize with shock as Bruiser took the prod to the back of his throat.

  “Steele, for God’s sake, he doesn’t know shit. He was talking crap, that’s all. Bridges was
higher than a kite when he came back to the clubhouse with Breezy’s kid in tow. He acted like he won the lottery. Ever since Habit’s been gone, we’ve had to lick his boots. He told Lizard to get Candy and bring her to the clubhouse. While he waited he told us that he had you by the balls and he was forcing Breezy to kill you and Czar both. He kept laughing and doing lines of coke. That boy made a sound, and Bridges lambasted him across the face. Even Junk didn’t go near Bridges, he was so fucked up.”

  Steele could hear the ring of truth in Dart’s voice. It didn’t shock him that Dart told the truth about Bridges. He couldn’t imagine how anyone would want to back a man who put himself before his brothers. Habit had run a trafficking ring, but he’d put his brothers first. Bridges had no idea how to do that. He was too far gone on booze and drugs. Had Czar gone that route, any one of the Torpedo Ink members would have put him down. They would have forced him to dry out first to see if it worked, but if it didn’t he would be dead.

  “Not our fault,” Bruiser sobbed when he could find his voice. “We didn’t have nothing to do with it.”

  “You were sitting on a stakeout waiting for my woman to come back to her apartment, or for one of us to show up. You planned on killing Master, didn’t you? You had your gun out.” Steele kept his tone mild.

  Maestro handed him a bottle of water, and Steele opened it and drank. Both prisoners stared at the water, unable to take their eyes from the bottle with the condensation on it. Bruiser’s tongue lolled, and Dart’s touched his dry, cracked lips.

  Dart heaved a sigh. “We were following orders. We had no choice.”

  “Bruiser here told me all about how he planned on raping her. The details were very well-thought-out. Seemed to me he was fixating on her and what he could do to her,” Steele said as he applied the cattle prod to the man’s most precious part. He was casual about it, as if he wasn’t in the least bit even thinking about it.

  Bruiser’s screams hit a note Steele had never heard before. He circled around behind the shrieking man. “Seems to me, Bruiser, you thought you were going to put your filthy dick in my woman. I don’t take kindly to that shit, do I, Maestro?”

  “No, Steele, you don’t,” Maestro replied.

  “You said you were going to put your dick up her ass, didn’t you, Bruiser?”

  Bruiser began screaming before the cattle prod even touched him, let alone was applied to any area he’d been threatening on Breezy.

  A couple of the other Torpedo Ink members snickered. “Breezy’s been off-limits since Steele laid eyes on her,” Keys said. “Isn’t that right, Ink? You notice any man touched her even before she was with him, that man got the holy hell beat out of him, cuz I noticed that shit. But I got a healthy dose of self-preservation that’s clearly missing in these two.”

  “Everyone knew, even then, you didn’t touch Breezy,” Mechanic agreed.

  “Guess they must have missed that memo,” Maestro said. “You get that now, Bruiser? Maybe a little late for you, but hopefully you get it now.”

  Bruiser was sobbing and nodding his head up and down.

  “I been thinking on this for a little while now,” Keys said. “Wondering about how a man that protective of his woman might feel about someone taking his boy. His son. If it was me, I’d walk through hell to get that man. Follow him right down into flames so I could fuck him up. That about right, Steele?”

  “The minute Lizard walked in with Candy, Bridges grabbed her by the hair, shoved the kid into her arms and went out, barking orders at everyone,” Dart said. “He didn’t tell any of us where he was going, but once he had Candy in the truck with Junk, he came back and told Bruiser and I to come here and if Breezy came back, to teach her a lesson. A hard lesson.”

  “Where was Donk? He’s never far from Bridges.” Steele’s voice was mild. Deceptively so. The thought of Dart and Bruiser teaching his woman a lesson of any kind made the monster in him show his teeth.

  “He was still in the clubhouse. He’d been drinking with Bridges and snorting cocaine. The two talked in whispers and then Bridges left. Lizard jumped up and ran to his truck, probably worried Bridges would kill Candy he was so far gone. Donk was still there. I think he was waiting for Riddle and Favor.”

  Just the names of the three men who had raped Breezy when she was fourteen made the monster emerge even more. He felt cold inside. Cold outside. Just plain ice. There were no compassionate feelings in him at all, as if his personality had split and this one had come forward to allow him to do everything necessary to survive. He remembered his monster. He had needed him, the block of ice that couldn’t be stopped.

  “Did Donk follow Bridges?”

  “We left. I gathered my shit and got out of there. Donk was getting crazy with the cocaine and I don’t like being around when he’s like that. Bruiser and I headed out.”

  “Have you heard from Bridges?”

  Dart hesitated just that fraction of a second too long and retaliation was swift and brutal. Steele wasn’t playing around. He was on the move now, Code gathering intel his way and Steele taking it forcibly. One of these two men would put him on the right road to finding Zane.

  When Dart stopped screaming, Steele looked at him impassively. “My son, Dart. He’s out there somewhere scared and alone without his mother. He’s with a man who beat the shit out of his daughter daily and gave her to three of his friends to be raped when she was only fourteen years old. I don’t know about you, but that’s not a man I want my son with. Not even for a minute or two, let alone this long. So, if I were you, I’d just tell me whatever I want to know and get it over, cuz this isn’t going to stop.”

  Dart coughed and spat blood and then shook his head. “I got no call to love Bridges. If I knew something worthwhile, I’d tell you. He called me a time or two looking to see if Breezy showed up. When I told him no, he cussed me out and hung up.”

  Steele glanced at Mechanic, who quickly picked up the two cell phones and walked away where he had a quieter space to get into them.

  “Need your passcode,” Steele said to Dart.

  Dart gave it immediately.

  Steele called the code out to Mechanic and waited for the man to nod his acknowledgment that it was correct.

  Steele touched Bruiser with the cattle prod without triggering it. Bruiser’s entire body shuddered. “Need yours as well.”

  Bruiser broke into another sob. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”

  “I don’t give a fuck, just give me your code.”

  Bruiser turned his head to look at Dart, his eyes wild. “I’m sorry, man, I had to do it.”

  “Do what?” Dart asked. Involuntarily he moved his body to try to ease the strain of the chains he hung in, but it only hurt more, and he couldn’t stop the groan that slipped out.

  “The fucking code, Bruiser. You don’t give it to me now, I’m going to slit your belly open and watch your coward’s intestines slither all over the floor.” Again, Steele’s voice was low and mild, completely at odds with his words, but that only made it worse.

  Bruiser called the passcode out loudly and then burst into loud sobs. Steele ignored him and wandered back toward Mechanic, who was moving quickly through Bruiser’s phone. He scowled down at the text messages he was reading, and then handed it to Steele.

  Steele took the phone and walked back to stand in front of the two men. “This is very interesting, Bruiser. Seems you had a very special arrangement with Bridges. You two were buddies, who knew?” He nudged Dart. “You know that, Dart? You know that Bruiser here, your best friend, had a close relationship with Bridges?”

  Dart frowned but he didn’t say anything, instead waited to see where Steele was going with it.

  “Bruiser here says to Bridges he’s willing to do whatever it takes as long as Bridges gives him Breezy. You really wanted my woman, didn’t you, Bruiser? Seems Breezy pissed you off by choosing me instead of
you. Bridges promised her to you, way back then?”

  “He did.” Bruiser nodded over and over. “I did everything he asked, and he still gave her to you. He said when you were tired of her, I could have her.”

  Dart glared at him. “What the fuck were you doing for him?”

  Bruiser shook his head, sobbing, trying to squirm out of the chains.

  “He was skimming drugs and money from the club, giving what he took to Bridges,” Steele said. “He stupidly admits it right here in his texts, throwing it in Bridges’s face as a threat. Bridges comes back saying he had nothing to do with skimming, and the club would cut off Bruiser’s balls if they found out.”

  “No fucking way,” Dart said, but the shock on his face confirmed that he knew Steele wasn’t making it up.

  Using the cattle prod, Steele pushed at the two spheres hanging between Bruiser’s legs. “Not very big, but still there. You really are a dumb ass, aren’t you? But that’s not the interesting part. Bruiser, what did you tell Bridges you’d do to get my woman?”

  Bruiser swung his body in a complete rejection of admission.

  Steele shook his head. “This is the most fucked-up club I’ve ever come across.” He showed the phone to Dart. “I’m reading this shit. I couldn’t make it up if I tried. Bridges tells Bruiser if he wants Breezy, he has to kill you, Dart, because you’re becoming a pain in the ass with your continual opposition to Bridges’s lifestyle and presidency. Apparently, if you question your president or call for another election, that makes you treasonous and it’s okay to put out a hit on you.”

  Steele pulled the phone out from under Dart’s nose and switched his attention to Bruiser. “You agree with that? You think because Dart questioned Bridges’s sanity, that he deserved killing?”