Page 12 of Savior
I just couldn’t come up with anything that made sense.
He grinned. “You still want to believe that what happened to you was a random attack, something completely unplanned. Sure, you got a little suspicious when we wiped out the Serpents—which, you’re welcome for that—”
“That’s where shit goes off the rails for me,” I drawled, fighting against a sudden wave of dizziness. I needed water but refused to beg my captor for a goddamn thing.
“Which part? The fact that your enemy took out another rival club, or that you saw my kutte and immediately assumed you’d found me? Speaking of, I’m going to want that back.”
With a heavy sigh, he snagged a small black bag off the table beside him. “Look. Let’s start over, yeah? What do we have here? Camels? Nice choice.”
I watched through narrowed eyes, fighting to figure him out as he walked over and tossed the pack next to my foot. For the longest time, my enemy had been a faceless entity.
Not anymore.
If I wanted to make it out alive, I needed to learn everything I could from Cobra.
When I made no move to grab it, he rolled his eyes and bent to tap one from the pack. “And… nothing. C’mon, Grey. I’m feeling generous tonight; you might consider taking advantage of it while it lasts.”
He offered the cigarette to me, and this time, I took it. My shoulders screamed their protests as I brought it up to my mouth and leaned toward the lighter in his hand. The urge to numb myself by filling my lungs with smoke outweighed any of the risks associated with him holding an open flame near my face.
Once it was lit, he calmly stood and walked back over to the chair, leaving me more confused than ever. If he was trying to convince me that he was a nice guy, he was barking up the wrong tree.
I’d seen what he’d done to my girl.
Fuck, I’d seen what he’d done with a rifle and decent aim.
“Why the fuck are you doin’ this? Tryin’ to earn brownie points with your boss?”
“Told you,” he replied, crossing one leg over the other again like he was on the cover of a fucking fashion magazine. “I was feeling generous. Plus, the story I’m about to tell required something a bit stronger. From what I understand, you don’t drink. That’s something we have in common. So, we find other ways to kill ourselves.”
I took a long, desperate drag before leaning back against the wall to let my shoulders rest, hating that he made sense when nothing else did. “Fair enough.”
“Haven’t ridden with the Serpents in years. That’s something you would’ve known had you actually bothered to look into the club, or, I don’t know, call a meeting with them. They wanted to hold on to the old-school way of thinking and weren’t big on me going after your family to get to you. It didn’t matter. With the money we took from Celia, I had enough to start over with more… like-minded individuals. Remind me, what is it we call brothers who turn their backs on us?”
“Enemies,” I answered, blowing a stream of smoke in his direction. We weren’t friends by any stretch of the imagination. The closest I could come to describing us was death row inmate and jailer, but damn, if it wasn’t nice to have some company.
Even if I was considering all the ways in which I wanted to send him to the Reaper.
“Exactly. I didn’t have the stomach for a long, drawn-out death, even if it was exactly what they all deserved. Their new Pres, Viper, was a different story though. He’d been the one to rat me out, claiming that my actions had started a war. When the fuck did that happen? When did bikers get soft? Back then, we loved nothing more than a good fight…” his voice trailed off, and he puffed on his cigar in silence, reminiscing about the early days.
He wasn’t wrong.
When I’d patched in, it seemed there was always another club to go up against; someone else that needed to be reminded of who we were and what we were capable of doing.
Death had been my first love, replaced only by Celia.
Maybe it was as simple as that. We’d all gotten older and realized that there was more to life than getting bloody.
“You’re thinking about her again,” he said with an unreadable expression. “I can tell. Your face changes. Is that why we all became pussies in the end, Grey? Because finding a nice warm cunt to sink our dicks into was suddenly more important than keeping a stranglehold over our territory? You know, you might’ve just solved the entire goddamn mystery. We let our dicks do the thinking.”
The vein in my forehead throbbed steadily as I bit out, “And what would you know about that?”
He laughed softly. “The club whores are all the same after a while; more concerned with their next fix. They don’t care what you do to them as long as you fill their veins with something nice afterward. No, it’s better when the woman has a certain look in her eyes like maybe you’re the only man who’s ever gotten her. She hands over her trust, knowing you’ll keep her safe. You could fuck countless women, but you’ll never have that kind of loyalty.”
In a fucked-up way, I understood.
“I’d never experienced anything quite like it until Celia,” he mused. “It didn’t matter what I did to her body, she still believed I was going to hold true to my word and keep her girls safe. I told her I was going to let her live, so she trusted me completely. Fuck, I’m getting off-track. You didn’t come here to hear about my love life—”
“I’m gonna force-feed you your own cock and watch you choke on it, you piece of shit motherfucker!” I roared, rattling the chains on my arms as I reached for him, losing my cigarette to the concrete floor.
