Page 121 of Savage

“Shh, Daddy’s here,” he says, and he buries his face in my groin.

???

When it’s complete, he wets the washcloth in a bowl sitting nearby. Blood taints the water, creating swirling patterns, like the licking flames from a bonfire warring with the first few drops of rain before a downpour.

My skin is on fire. My body is on fire, and I’m spent from both pain and fear.

He unties my hands, and I shoot up from the chair, adrenaline bursting through my bloodstream. I lash out at him, but I make it three steps on shaking legs before my head swims and I hit the floor, hard. He stoops over and lifts me, as though I weigh nothing, and then he carries me to the bed and lays me down. My father ties the rope around my neck as I struggle, yanking it so tight that he cuts off my air supply, and my efforts turn from fighting him to fighting for breath, clawing at the rope with slick bloodied hands that do nothing.

“When you can behave, I’ll remove the rope,” he snaps, and when I still he loosens it a fraction. Not enough to get out of, but enough so that I can breathe again, and then the thing that occurs to me—as he ties it off in several knots and then leaves the room without another word—is that I could have ended all of this. Right then and there. I could have fought harder, and he might have choked the life right out of me. I would have been free.

But I didn’t. My instincts kicked in. I fought to survive.

And I hate myself for it.

I think of Tank, and I know that he’d be proud of me.But for what?For staying, surviving? Chained up down here like a dog?

I wonder what Tank will do when he finds the gory signs of our struggle. When he finds that Butch was another casualty of my father’s determination to get me back. I wonder if he will come looking for me, or if he’ll simply decide that he’s better off. That last thought twists my stomach.Will he look for me? Will he avenge me?I don’t know. But I know without a doubt that I won’t be walking out that door again.

When I was little, my father worked as a courier, though from the muffled snippets of conversation I’d overheard through the floorboards above my head, I’d suspected for a long time that he’d gone from delivering packages to a much more expensive and precious form of cargo.

The first time I’d escaped I was fourteen. He’d been called away on a job and left me alone for two days. It had taken me a good twelve hours to bust the lock and flee this room. I’d stuffed my face with as much food as I could find in the house and then I’d climbed out the window of my old bedroom upstairs because the rooms downstairs had security screens and the front and back doors were dead bolted and locked with a key I didn’t have. Lochie had found me and hid me in his tree house.

I should have run. I should have stolen someone’s purse and taken a bus to anywhere. But I was scared and alone, and Lochie had seemed to think that no one would find me there.

Lochie was wrong.

Hefound me.

And he’d dragged me home and locked me in the basement again, this time ripping down the boards and the soundproofing foam covering the roller door of what used to be our garage and walling it up from floor to roof with grey cinderblocks. He’d replaced the door I’d broken with a new one, and added more locks, sealing me in my prison. Ensuring I couldn’t escape again.

Lochie had been found in his tree house days later, surrounded by the contents of his stomach, an empty box of paracetamol lying beside him. He’d died from a drug overdose. My father had told me this. He’d found delight in my tears as he told me how he’d waited until Lochie’s parents weren’t home, and he’d climbed into that tree house, finding the boy with a set of binoculars pressed tight to his face as he looked across the street at my empty room. My father had laughed when he’d told me how he’d held a knife to Lochie’s throat, handed my friend—the only friend I’d ever had—the pills and forced him to eat them all. He’d watched as Lochie had foamed at the mouth, and his body had convulsed, and eventually his brain had switched off.That was the price of getting too close to me.

The last time I’d escaped I was just two months’ shy of my eighteenth birthday. This time, I had stolen someone’s wallet. And I had hopped on a bus to Sydney. I’d turned tricks for money, I’d lived on the streets, and then I’d found Gwen. She’d made living under a bridge bearable. Gwen and heroin were good friends, and she’d been kind enough to reintroduce me.

A couple of months after that, I’d met Tank. Even then, he’d been a gentleman. Sure, he’d had me suck him off, and he’d fucked me over the back of his bike a handful of times, but he was the first guy to bring me food and pay me well for my services. You’d think he was handing me the keys to a fucking Lamborghini what with the way that Gwen had raved about him, and I’d given her shit about her crush on him, but inside I’d been dreaming of the fairy tale right alongside her. It wasn’t so much Tank that I’d fantasised about—it was what he represented, what the cut he wore represented.Protection. If I could get him to see a future with me, more than just having me suck him off once a week, I’d be safe from my father. I’d be protected not just by Tank, but by his club too.

Only he’d stopped coming, and my future had looked more and more bleak every day. So I’d taken matters into my own hands. I’d worked my arse off—literally—turning tricks every day for months, and then I’d gone and bought some new boobs, had my hair done, and got myself a nice new tattoo, and I’d strutted into that MC as if I belonged there.

I’d made a deal with the Prez. I’d make myself available to him and his men if he let me stay there and gave me his protection. Jett had agreed, though he’d wanted proof he wasn’t getting the raw end of the deal. He’d fucked me all night and well into the early hours of the morning. And over time, he’d begun to trust me. He was good to me. I liked Jett. I liked the rest of the club brothers, too. I remember thinking that being a club whore was something that I’d have to endure to stay safe, but I hadn’t counted on liking it. I hadn’t counted on enjoying being used by these men, and I certainly hadn’t counted on falling in love with any of them.

But I had, and now … what did it matter? I knew I was never getting out of here. Because my father always finds me, he always brings me home. And this time he isn’t ever going to let me go.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

TANK

TWELVE HOURS AGO

The last thing I expected when I walked into the clubhouse this morning was to be called out on a fucking job that would have me sitting in a blacked-out van parked on the side of the road as I watched another fucking miserable warehouse.

I have déjà vu all over again, but this time instead of listening to Kick blabbering on about Ivy, I have some dumbarse shithead flicking a fucking Zippo lighter over and over again. I snatch the lighter from Crazy and toss it out the goddamn window. He glares at me. “Dude, what the fuck? I need that fuckin’ lighter.”

“Bullshit. You got so many of those fuckin’ things you change them more than your goddamned clothes. Remind me to beat Prez’s head in for pairing you up with me. Woulda been better comin’ alone.”

“Hey, I resent that, man,” Crazy says, and he turns, raking his hands over his jeans repeatedly.

“You fuck this job up, and you’re gonna resent more than a few harsh words, you got me?”

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