Page 12 of Kick

“Door’s locked, sweetheart,” I say and fold my arms over my chest again. This is sort of a defence mechanism when my dad’s around. I’ve done it since I was a kid, and try as I might, I’ve never been able to stop.

Juke chuckles at the club whore—or maybe he’s chuckling at me. I don’t know. I don’t fucking care. My father pulls the whore at my door towards him, mauling the face off of the bitch I just fucked. He’s such a fucktard. Everything is a goddamned competition with him, and he bests me every fucking time. He makes sure of it.

When he pulls away, the bitch is gasping for breath. Her nipples are hard and her eyes are hungry, not for me, but for my old man. My stomach roils.

“Go wait in my room, Clara. Get that pussy warmed up and ready for me, baby. I’m gonna pull out all the shit I didn’t teach junior, here.” Juke smacks her arse and she giggles as she traipses down the hall.Fuckin’ trollop.

My father turns to me with a smug smile. If I could bury my fingers in his eye sockets and still keep my kidneys intact, I would, but attacking another member unprovoked and without a club vote is suicide.

“So what’s the prez need help with now? Wiping his fuckin’ arse?”

Juke sucker punches me, right in the gut, no holds barred. The fucker hits me as hard as he would anyone. I bend double, coughing up my guts as he towers over me. “Show some fuckin’ respect.”

“Fuck you,” I wheeze, squeezing my eyes tightly closed in preparation for a knee to the face. It doesn’t come, and when I’m done hacking up my insides I straighten.

“What the fuck is taking you two so long?” Prez’s voice rings out from the end of the hall. Juke and I both turn to him.

“Just teaching the boy some manners, Prez.”

Prez smirks. “Seems like he should be old enough to have that shit down already. Now come the fuck on, I got a job for you.”

“You need me, Prez?” Daddy douche asks. I don’t know how my dad got his road name. I don’t much care either, but mine is a constant source of embarrassment for him. A kid with bikes in his blood, a third generation Angel who couldn’t remember to put up the fucking kickstand before taking off in front of a couple of insanely hot chicks is as much of an embarrassment to my old man as if I’d been born mongoloid, or black, or gay.

Dear old dad is a raving racist, homophobic bigot.

“You got someplace else you need to be?” Prez asks.

“Yeah, eatin’ out my sloppy seconds,” I say to Prez with a smirk. The next thing I know I’m shoved up against the wall, Juke has his hand wrapped around my throat and oxygen is in very limited supply. He tightens his grasp and gets all up in my face as I claw and buck against his hands. I might be half his age but my father is stronger than me; he makes sure of it. He’s stronger in every way, and he never misses a chance to make sure I know it, either.

“Put the kid down.”

Juke doesn’t listen. Instead, he squeezes harder. His gaze is unrelenting and intent. If he thought he could get away with squeezing the life out of me right here in front of our prez, he would. I can see it written all over his face. I’ve felt it since the day I was born.

“That’s a fucking order, Juke.” My father drops me and I slide down the wall, gasping for each precious breath. I shoot daggers up at him, but it makes no difference. Juke Johnson has never been afraid of a bug he could squash so easily under his boot.

“Round up the rest of the brothers and head on up to church. I need Kick’s help on something.”

“You do?” Juke asks, his brow pinched tightly with unease.

“I just said I did, didn’t I? Now get the fuck outta here.”

Juke shoots me a black look and wanders off up the hall, slamming his fist against every bedroom door on the way and calling the brothers to church.

“You alright?” Prez asks, holding out a hand and helping me to my feet.

“Yeah, nothing I haven’t seen, heard, and felt before,” I mutter. I follow Prez down the empty hall in the opposite direction from my father. Unease pricks at my skin as we walk out of the back entrance and down a flight of stairs that lead to a locked door. My heart pounds as he punches in a key code and we enter the dimly lit room. It’s a small entryway, barely big enough for the two of us, but it’s not the confined space that has the hair standing on the back of my head—it’s what the dark hallway beckoning before us represents. All four rooms have their doors closed, but only one has its light on. I can see through the crack beneath the door. I throw Prez a panicked look over my shoulder. I’ve seen these rooms only one other time, when Ethan’s dad Tiny betrayed the club. He was trussed up like a fucking Christmas ham, had his Angels tat burnt clean off of his back. And then he was gutted like an animal, his stomach and intestines spilling out over the concrete floor as he writhed and gasped like a fish on the hook. It was brutal, by far the worst thing I’ve ever witnessed, and when you grow up inside the MC you know brutal, inside out and back to fucking front.

He knows.

He knows I betrayed the brotherhood. He knows I shot Rocker in the back to save Ethan.

I take a step back and barrel into him, but his arms wrap around me like a vice. “Hey, hey, hey, where you goin’, kid?”

He’s going to kill me, though it wouldn’t be a quick and painless death. The president of the Angels doesn’t do quick and painless. No. He likes to stretch that shit out, savour his revenge. My heart pounds against my chest, seeking a way out of its meat and bone cage.

“Start walkin’,” Prez commands. For a moment I just stand there, anticipating his next move, marking mine. And then slowly I take a step forward, and another, and another until I’m standing before the closed door of the only room in this underground torture chamber to not be sitting in complete darkness.

In the past when a brother has betrayed us, the entire club has been present. They stand guard and watch on stone-faced as the brother is stripped of their patch, their tattoos, and their dignity.

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