Keeping the club shrouded in darkness at night when everyone was kicking out Z’s. It was the shadows going under his door that alerted him to unwelcome visitors. It was that split-second warning he took as gospel that shit was going on within his own walls and if he waited one minute to check it out he’d be a dead man.
He always listened to gut instinct. Always.
Without taking the time to grab his guns from the safe, or pocket a bundle of money, all that Hades knew was he had to get out.
Without a thought to the girl who was around somewhere, he’d barely given her any attention in the last few weeks, she’d become a nuisance, a bore and his torment of her no longer brought him joy, though, he couldn’t let her go, she belonged to him and would be his forever. His men didn’t warrant a second thought either, he waited for the shadows to move on by, saw Hawk, that crazy dipshit, creep into the room next door, a second later there was a chuckle.
Hades, waited for the optimum time, and then creaked open the office door with care, using the momentum of hearing grunts of death in every other occupied room, he slid sightless down the pitch-dark corridors, knowing the quickest way to exit, assuming Rider had the well-known exits guarded, he took to the basement, but not before he caught a stray bullet in his top thigh. With the strength of fucking Samson, he didn’t flicker a sound of pain or let it slow him down, though his leg was burning, the rush of blood poured down to his boots, he kept right on moving through the basement layout knowing it like the back of his hand, out through the steps that led him out into the night by a underground door.
The only certainty was he knew wasn’t dying tonight.
He’d sacrifice every man and whore in his building.
And that’s what Hades did.
Without a hesitation of who he was leaving behind, the girl he’d obsessed over and mentally tortured for three years, his loyal men, he left all of them to be slaughtered, the sound of death on his heels, he made it up into the mountains before the need to stop forced him to sag to the forest floor. Agony piercing his leg, breathless, sweat pouring out of Hades, he felt his vision checking in and out as his body dealt with the new invasion, he tore open his pants leg, warm sticky blood met his fingers, he flinched and tried to dig out the bullet with his fingertips.
Pain made the roar inside his head turn nuclear.
Those cocksuckers were going to pay.
Rest in pieces.
His club motto.
There was going to be no rest for anySoulsmember, not after Hades got done ripping them apart.
It might have been hours, long after he’d observed his building burn to the ground with the untameable flames licking into the night sky, he stood as best as his leg would support him and watched the billows of thick, acrid smoke reach up and up, the sense of loss in his chest was immense. He wanted to scream.
His place. His club. All gone.
Hearing bikes of his enemies roar off in the distance and he knew, his legacy just like that was gone.
If Rider and his crew had allowed any of his men to live it would be a miracle.
And once again Hades was alone.
The time creeped along, he had to think, to plan, but the pain was fogging his mind, making him throw up time and again until the inside of his stomach lining felt raw.
There was no one to turn to.
For a man who trusted only himself, he was in the unfortunate position of having not a person to help him.
The lone monster was alone left to howl at the moon.
His only company in the next hours in front of him was formulating ways in which to hurt Rider Marinos. So many ways he’d kill that man.
With his back to a tree trunk, pain the only companion for miles, Hades went a little mad over the next hours, as night drifted to day and back to darkness. A fever dogging his breathing, sweat coursing out of his cold skin he recited passages from the bible like he had his sadistic bastard of a creator sitting on his shoulder whispering the evil in which he longed to exact, just to keep himself awake.
The fucking apple didn’t fall far from the tree.
He couldn’t believe his club was gone, after everything he’d done to build it into the corrupt business. The Russian’s money had been inside, if not stolen, then it was ash now, he could no longer pay them. If the stolen women he’d been storing to transport the night after weren’t crispy fried, then he had no use of them now either.
And the drugs would be all gone.
He was fucking screwed and left with nothing whichever way he looked at it. Rider had not only taken the first place Hades ever called his own, but more importantly cut off his means to make money just like that.
Anger rose in him. It bubbled inside his mind, coloring him so goddamn angry his teeth clenched, so when he heard a racket in the distance he was very prepared to kill anyone with his bare hands.