Page 42 of Freeing Souls

The lights above us suddenly turn off, and the entire room falls dark as the doors on each end open and shut. Loud locks can be heard sliding into place. Sitting up again, I glance around, but just like the last room, I can’t see anything.

“What’s your name?” someone whispers from the cage next to me—I think the girl who held her finger up and told me not to speak earlier.

“Harley.”

“I’m Nicole. You’re new, right?”

“Yes,” I murmur back.

“Behave. Do what they ask of you. The better you are, the better you get treated. If you get in trouble, you will be beaten and humiliated and won’t get any special treatment. Just do asthey say, and things will be easier. Crying is okay, but don’t scream.”

I ask the one question that has been on my mind. “Who is the girl, Zero, who helped me in here earlier?”

“Don’t talk about her,” she hisses. “When lights go out, they guard from outside the room so we can speak quietly, but during the day, do not speak to anyone. You will get in trouble.”

“How long have you been here?” I ask her.

“At this place? A month. But I’ve been transferred around prior to that. I was sold when I was young by my family.”

I suck in a breath. “That’s awful.”

“Most of the stories here are. Don’t get close to anyone. It makes you care about them more so when they get in trouble or taken, you may risk acting out. That wouldn’t be good for anyone, trust me.”

I want to give her some kind of hope, but I can only imagine how little that would actually help, so instead, I stay quiet and take everything in. I need to lay low as much as possible, which I have a feeling won’t be easy to do.

The door closest to me opens, and someone in all black comes in, heading straight for my cage. Ripping the door open, he bends down and grabs me by my braid, yanking me out of the cage, pulling me out of the room and down a long hall. He moves so fast, my feet can barely keep up, and I don’t get a chance to look around, my eyes having adjusted to the light before I am shoved into another room and the door is locked behind me.

I feel a presence behind me before an arm wraps around my waist, a hand around my throat before I even have a chance to react.

His voice is deep and raspy as he whispers in my ear, “Did you miss me, fighter?” Using the hand he had wrapped around my throat, he grips my chin and turns my head to the side so he can inhale against my skin and then run his tongue down the scaron my face. I try to cringe away, but he has a tight hold on my face. “Mmm, I am so glad you had this beautiful scar for all these years to remember me by.”

A tear leaks out of the corner of my eye before I can stop it at the memories of his men brutally raping my mother as I watched.

Her terrified voice yelling for me to fight, to run, the pain of the knife slicing my face before I ran for my life and left her to die.

My knees give out, and he lets me fall onto the ground but comes down after me, straddling my thighs as he laughs. I let my eyes fall shut and try to remember to breathe.

Tamara (Tammy) Wilson

After receiving the call that Harley and Rage had been taken, I knew it was time to reach out to Killer. I knew he wasn’t dead; luckily, I had connections with all sorts of people including some of Killer’s trusted men and one of them let me know he was back but going underground.

I wasn’t worried about him until David killed Lilian and Harley landed in my lap. Then, Killer reached out to me and made a deal for Harley. He had a buyer, but she needed to be educated, which meant I had to get the little bitch caught up in school. I never expected her to have the balls to run, but she is Lilian’s child, so I guess I should’ve known better.

After showing myself to Harley and letting her know she lost everything, I leave the disgusting cage room and find Killer waiting by the main door to the building he owns. “We are even now,” he tells me.

I scoff. “Only because you forced me to back out and lose my part of the earnings.”

A small smirk forms on his lips, “You failed to begin with, Tamara. You lost Harley and we almost lost this opportunity. I should kill you for it.”

A shiver works down my spine, “But you won’t.” I push as much confidence into my voice as I can, even as I tremble inside. He could kill me. It’s why we ran the second I realized Killer was back. I lost us a huge deal and now he has been able to get it back since he got his hands on Harley.

“No. But don’t push it. Fuck up one more time, and I won’t care about my respect for Richard’s father. I will chop your head off and mount it on the fucking wall.”

Keeping my head held high, I leave without another word to our stolen car, where Richard waits in the driver seat.

“Everything good?” he asks.

“He made me back out of our part of the deal since it’s our fault Harley got away to begin with. What are we going to do? That was a large amount of money, Richard. Taking down the club is going to take a lot of work, and we will need all we can get.”

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