Page 74 of Savage

“Fucking do what you’re told next time, bitch.” He spits on her, but she doesn’t move as he stares down with his hideous dark blue monster eyes. She doesn’t move or make a sound. Eventually, he walks away, stomping to the front door, and then he leaves, slamming it behind him.

I crawl across the floor to Mamma. Her face is broken; it’s all bloody and swollen up like a puffer fish. Pushed out of shape.

“Mamma,” I whimper. She reaches towards me, and I place her soft, pretty hands in my small ones.

“I’m okay, baby,” she whispers. “Mummy’s okay.”

“Mamma.” Snot runs from my nose. My tummy still hurts from where he hit me, but I stop my crying because the Monster says men don’t cry, and I don’t want him to come back and hurt us again. “You need me to call Aunt Jackie?”

“No!” she says sharply. “No. Baby, Mummy’s okay; it’s just a few cuts and bruises.”

“But Mamma …” I begin. She pats my hand to keep me quiet.

“Shh, just let me stay here a minute longer, puddin’.”

“Okay,” I whisper. Reaching out my hand, I stroke her hair when she begins to cry. “Mamma, you’re still the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen.”

She cries harder, rolling onto her back, and pressing her broken face into her hands.

I didn’t mean to make her cry.

I didn’t mean to hurt her the way he does.

I never want to be like him.

A monster.

CHAPTER ONE

IVY

I’m dying.

Or at least, that’s how it feels.

I don’t know how long I’ve been here. Days turn to night, and I’m still just as miserable as I was when Tank brought me here from the hospital before I could run. Despite the restlessness in my legs, the agitation in my body, I couldn’t run now if I tried.

My teeth ache. My hair aches. My blood aches. It feels as though my flesh is crawling, pulled too tight, suffocating me. I twitch and shake. I vomit all over myself, and then I still beg and plead for the drugs that have been slowly killing me. Like a lowly, mewling thing, I crawl on the floor and clutch at his legs and beg him to do something. Kill me or let me go. Inject me—give me something, anything. A hit, an orgasm, a fucking gun to aim at my head.

He does none of those things. He just sits and waits and watches.

Sometimes when I’m asleep, my feverish brow is tempered with a cool cloth, and I want to kiss him in appreciation, but I don’t move for fear that he might take it away. He gives me water to drink, spoon-feeds me soup and other liquids that I have no desire to swallow, and occasionally—if I behave and don’t abuse him verbally or beat my weakened, tiny fists upon his chest—he rolls a joint and lets me smoke half of it. I know he doesn’t even want me having that, but he’s not completely heartless. I think he knows that without it, without that one little thing that makes it okay, even for just thirty minutes before the sharp fingers of pain come to clutch me within their excruciating grasp again, it’s something.

The second I start to feel better, I’ll run. I can’t go back to the clubhouse; Prez will have wiped his hands clean, Kick has deserted me for some other pathetic bitch, and the only thing keeping me there was the knowledge that I was safe. But there are other clubs. Other bikers who need a warm body in their beds and other drugs to lose myself in.

Tank wants to take those drugs away from me; he wants to take my escape away from me, and I can’t let that happen, because running from that nightmare is the only thing that keeps me going. It’s the only thing keeping me safe fromhim.

When I feel better, I’ll leave. It’s the only way to keep us safe.

I glance over at him. His eyes are closed, and the dark circles underneath are just as deeply etched as my own. However long I’ve been in this room, he’s been here with me, keeping watch, replacing the soiled bucket with a fresh one, and losing just as much sleep to my illness as I do. He doesn’t flinch when I lash out with bitter words fuelled by my hatred and the chemical imbalance in my brain. He doesn’t throw me out when I threaten to shoot him with his own gun, and he doesn’t say a thing when my vitriol is directed at him, and not myself, or the man who fed my addiction for years.

He doesn’t say a thing at all.

He hasn’t said a word in days other than to bark basic commands likeget up,eatordrink, as though I was a disobedient dog he’d failed to train.

No, he’s not completely heartless, but sometimes it feels like it.

CHAPTER TWO

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