Page 19 of Pain

“And you brought her here,” Tinker noted, driving me right back into the story.

“I brought her here,” I agreed. “Couldn’t exactly leave her there for Devil, could I? He was going to kill her, Tinker.”

He cocked his head at me. “Kill her for what? Falling out of a truck?”

I snorted. “Did you miss the part where she was handcuffed and blindfolded, and being driven around in a box truck by one of the prospects? She didn’t know where she was or who she’d been with, and she damn sure didn’t want to go back to Devil. And when we got her here, I saw exactly why.”

I told them about the bruises. The breaks and the barely healed cuts. The old wounds Mandy had noted. And Saraya’s refusal to talk about them until I’d gone back in there.

“He was beating her, and he was allowing his crew to beat her,” I ground out, the thought of it still burning me from the inside out. “Abusing her at every chance and never giving her a reason for it. I wasn’t going to let her go back to that. Period.”

Tinker and Brock both reared back, the scowls on their faces dropping into blank, surprised stares.

“Beating her?” Tinker asked. “Why?”

“Because he’s insane,” Broke answered for me. “Anyone with eyes in their heads can see that much.”

“Insane and dangerous,” I agreed. “And I’m not letting him get to her again.”

At that, Tinker’s mouth twitched in barely suppressed amusement. “And what, dear president, do you mean to do about it? You can’t keep her here if she wants to go back to him.”

“She doesn’t. She already told me so. And if he comes after her, he’s going to find a whole lot more trouble than he’s expecting. Devil’s wanted a war with us for a long time. If he comes around now, if he so much as dares to suggest that he should get her back, he’ll get what he’s looking for.”

Tinker barely missed a beat, but when he answered, his voice was deadly serious. “A war? Over a girl?”

“War,” I confirmed.

And yeah, war over a girl.

Because I hated the man. Hated his fucking guts and wanted to kill him for what he’d done to me. But I’d been holding off on going to war with him, simply because it would cut into the club’s manpower, ammunition, and funds.

Turned out all I’d needed was a reason. And that reason had a name.

Saraya Post.

***

BY THE TIME WE FINISHED our impromptu meeting, we’d settled on a couple of things. First, Tinker and Brock were going to have my back on this. The thought of Saraya Post in the middle of our clubhouse made them nervous, but the stories I’d told them about her injuries had them convinced that she couldn’t go back to Devil.

Especially if she’d asked for our protection.

Every MC had a code, and our world functioned on a couple very important principles, starting with how we treated our women. Sure, not every woman was afforded the respect or personal space she might need, but we protected our women, and that was that. Devil had broken that particular code, and he needed to know that it wasn’t acceptable.

Tinker and Brock also pointed out something I hadn’t truly considered yet.

“There’s no guarantee that he knows we have her,” Tinker said quietly. “If he’s taken to treating her the way you say he is...”

I stared at him, my mind quickly rearranging all the pieces it had been trying to put together. He was right. Of course he was right. He obviously didn’t respect—or maybe even love—Saraya anymore, and though I had no doubt about his assumption that she was his property, he might not have been tracking her as closely as he’d once done.

Unless the prospect had run back to their HQ and told Devil that he lost Saraya, Devil might not know yet. And I couldn’t imagine the prospect doing something that stupid.

I felt the grin growing on my face, cold and very, very vindictive. “If he doesn’t know, we’ll need to find a way to tell him. A creative way. I want him to know I’ve got his old lady, and that I’m not giving her back. I want him to know I’ve got something he wants.”

Tinker’s grin grew to match my own. “War, then.”

“As we’ve already agreed,” I noted.

At that moment, I heard a sound to my right and turned to see Saraya opening the door into the shop and sliding through, her eyes wide and her mouth pursed like she was about to say something. She saw me, and her eyes lit up, her face brightening in a way I didn’t know how to handle, and her mouth opened on a word before...