Page 133 of Savage

EPILOGUE

IVY

THREE WEEKS LATER

The wind picks up as I place white roses beneath the headstone. It’s not a real headstone, of course. Just a cross crudely fashioned from two large sticks and twine, and shoved into the ground in a clearing where Tank’s yard meets the scrub.

I press a kiss to my fingertips and lay it against the cross while tears spill from my eyes and slide down my cheeks unchecked.

It’s funny what you get used to, and what time will do to the grieving heart. I’ve never had a place in which to grieve my mother; I never even had time to mourn before moving on. I was told the nighthemurdered her to forget she ever existed. He bred the fear into me from the second I saw her head roll across the concrete floor of our garage. When he could no longer trust me to be silent about his secrets, he transformed that garage into a prison cell, called it a room, and locked me in it. The MC had burned that house of horrors to the ground, with my father and his axe inside, and though the bones of my mother were never recovered and likely never would be, at least now I had a place to mourn her.

I watch the sun dip below the clouds and turn on my heel, wiping away the last of my tears, and something in the window catches my eye. Tank. He stands with his forehead pressed against the pane of glass. Below his hand is splayed against it too—or as splayed as he can make it when his thumbs are still in casts.

He hates not being able to follow me down here, but the wound in his side is still far too fragile, and so is the gash in his leg. It was such a small thing I hadn’t even noticed it when I’d pulled him up the stairs. The wound in his abdomen was so much bigger and far more frightening. Despite the hospital staff sluicing it every day with saline and pumping him full of drugs, the cut on his leg got infected. He ended up with septicaemia and we nearly lost him, not from the gaping hole in his side that the surgeons had expertly sewn back together, or from the skinned hand that’d needed some kind of micro surgery to reattach his blood vessels and flesh, but to the five-inch gash in his right thigh.

The doctors had threatened to amputate it if he didn’t quit trying to flee the hospital room. Every time he attempted to escape, he wound up flat on the floor with his arse hanging out of the hospital gown, and it took three male nurses to get him back into bed again.

Bastard never did do what he was told.

Technically he had died on the operating table, and I’m told the team of surgeons worked miracles on him to save his life. Prez hadn’t let me anywhere near the hospital. Not when Tank was first admitted. I’d been stark naked, dressed only in a gown of blood. I wasn’t even sure whose, but by the time the boys had arrived and piled Tank into the van I’d lost all sense of reality. I’d wigged out in a way I never had when I was coming down, and Raine was the only one who’d been able to calm me once Jett had taken me back to the clubhouse. It’d been Raine who had jumped into the shower with me, fully clothed, who’d cleaned me up and held me when the shock set in and my body shook so hard you could almost hear my bones rattling together. And it had been Raine who had insisted that Prez call the Butcher.

I’d been clothed, had my abdomen stitched, been force-fed both with an IV drip and soup that Raine had made, and had fallen asleep from sheer exhaustion with food still in my mouth. Hours later, I’d woken in a blind panic and marched into Crazy’s room, demanding that he take me to the hospital.

The Russians hadn’t taken him, and the Feds hadn’t found the club van because Crazy had woken up in a pool of his own blood in some rich person’s driveway and had driven himself to the hospital while his guts were spilling out. The van had been towed—he’d parked it in an ambulance bay—and it had been three days before Crazy was fit enough to climb out of bed and find a payphone so he could tell Prez what had happened. He’d told me all this on the way to the hospital, as if the whole ordeal had been my fault, and not that of my psychopathic father. It stung, because a part of me knew it was true.

Jett had been at the hospital when we arrived, and Kick too—fresh from his own crisis, reeking of petrol and blood and looking more haunted than I’d ever seen him.

“You okay, darlin’?” he’d asked me, and I hadn’t even bothered to answer. My heart didn’t beat faster for him anymore. I felt nothing for him at all when I looked at him now. It was the man in the ICU who’d just made it through a twelve-hour surgery, and who the nurses said was in a stable but tentative condition, who had my whole heart. And if he’d died, I would never have forgiven him, or myself.

Thankfully, he hadn’t died … again … and two weeks later, he was home, though not that much happier about being an invalid. He couldn’t ride, and wouldn’t be able to for some time. And I felt guilty about that, but I also revelled in it. Being unable to ride or hold a gun meant he couldn’t do his job as the club’s hitman, and though I knew it drove him crazy to have idle hands, every day that he was home meant he wasn’t off risking his life to settle a score. And that suited me just fine. I knew it wouldn’t be a reprieve for long, and that in a few short months he’d be back to old tricks, but for now, I’ll take what I can get.

Despite the melancholy I feel, I wink up at him and blow him a kiss, and a half-smile forms on his face. I head for the house, and by the time I make it to the side door off the lounge room, Tank is shuffling in from the hallway.

“You should be in bed,” I tease because nothing gets his back up like me ordering him around.

“Don’t fuckin’ start with me, bitch.”

“Oh come on, you’re so much fun to start with,” I say, and walk the extra few steps, so he won’t have to. I throw my arms around his neck, and he nuzzles into mine as best he can without hurting himself.

“You okay?” he says.

“I should be asking you that,” I say, and lean back to see his face. “You are the invalid, after all.”

“You love to push my buttons don’t ya, Princess?”

“Someone has to keep you on your toes.” I wink. Turning to the fridge, I open the door and bend at the waist to peruse the contents. Because of the things my father told us about the Russian mob boss being interested in Tank, Jett has stationed two men here at all times.There was a score to settle, after all. Tank had raved and rallied like a complete lunatic about it until Jett had mentioned that it was for my protection as well. He’d muttered something about being able to protect me just fine, but he hadn’t pushed the case, because though he would do anything to keep me safe, right now he knew he couldn’t. I was more than happy to go along with Prez’s plan. We’d both seen enough violence these last few weeks to tide us over for a lifetime. Still, extra boys meant extra mouths, and unfortunately, they weren’t so good at topping up the contents of the fridge.

“You hungry?” I ask.

“Only for you,” he whispers, and a thrill runs through me, sharper and more electric than a live wire. Tank’s pinkie and ring fingers slide over the seam of my jeans, toying with my arse, and I close the fridge when I see nothing inside that I want more than him.

“Come on, you big broken lug. Let’s get you back to bed.”

“I don’t wanna go to bed. I’m fuckin’ done with sleepin’, and if I have to lay there staring up at that fuckin’ ceiling again, I’m gonna lose my shit and blow my own fuckin’ brains out.”

“Who said anything about sleeping?” I gently take his forearm and lead him into the bedroom. I walk slowly and try my best not to rush him, even though all I want to do is throw him to the ground and ride him like a damn pony. His injuries wouldn’t thank me for that, and he’d certainly be feeling a tad resentful if it caused him to bust open those stitches he keeps pawing at like a wounded puppy.

“Lie back, and I’ll make it all better,” I say, and he eases onto the nest of pillows surrounding the headboard. Carefully, I work his pants down his hips, mindful of his leg wound, and a devilish smile turns my mouth up at the corners when I see how hard he is for me. I remove my own clothes and crawl up the bed towards him.

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