Page 61 of Surrender
The long, skinny room was lined with vanities. Each girl had their own, and they were all decorated and personalized with a little individual flair. Roxie was the main act in the club, so her vanity was at the end of the room with bright lights, feather boas, and a bad attitude.
“I didn’t start the fight,” she protested, spinning around in her chair with her arms folded across her chest.
I walked in, shaking my head. “But you ended it, right?”
She grinned, but instantly flinched, pressing her fingers to her split lip. “Damn right,” she mumbled, turning back around to face the mirror. “Bastard backhanded me, and now he’s not going to be able to have children.”
“Um… he was bleeding from his head,” I said with a frown.
“Yeah, I kicked him in the balls, and when he keeled over, I caught him in the head with an unopened bottle of Patrón,” she explained casually, tugging a wet wipe from the packet in front of her and swiping at her makeup.
I scoffed. “You couldn’t have assaulted him with something alittle cheaper?” She shot me a dark glare through the mirror, and my hands shot up. “All right, fine.” I looked back at Match, who was clearly amused. “Give us a minute?”
He instantly nodded and backed away.
Roxie was hard to deal with at the best of times because of how well she played her character’s part. Getting any kind of honest emotions out of her was a struggle, but it seemed like just recently, I’d been able to crack through that mask a little.
Stepping into the room, I pushed the door shut behind me. “You manage to come out of it with just the split lip?” I asked, moving across the room.
She met my eyes again in the mirror. “You wanna kiss it better?”
The sarcasm was thick, but I wasn’t here to fuck around. “Look. I left Darcy in bed back at the clubhouse to come down here and make sure you and everyone else were okay,” I said sternly, folding my arms across my chest. “I’m not fucking around, Rox. I need to know what happened.”
“Miss One-That-Got-Away?” she questioned, her eyes brightening with genuine curiosity and surprise. “Well, that’s fucking cute. When do I get to meet—”
“Roxie, I swear…”
She swiveled her chair to face me, rolling her eyes. But it was when her shoulders slumped and she let out an exhausted sigh that I knew I was finally through the theatrics.
“One of them was the same guy who had been here asking about the club again,” she admitted, twisting the wet wipe in her fingers. “This time, though, the girls said they were really aggressive. Like, they were trying to get thrown out.”
“But they had been before?”
She nodded. “Trying to offer money and shit. This time, straight up angry and hands-on.”
Maybe because they didn’t get what they wanted with theunderhanded, subtle approach, and decided to up the stakes a little. Try to force it out of the girls with threats of violence and abuse.
They had to know, though, that it would be the boys who dealt with that kind of bullshit, not the cops. No one here called the red and blues.
Unless…
The bastards called the cops themselves.
Maybe an excuse to get the club to close up shop for the night.
But why?
“Ah, I’m so glad my favorite biker is here!” The sound of Carrington’s voice made me want to stab at my ear with a fork, but everything suddenly made sense. “Oh good, Roxie is here too. I heard you haven’t had a great night.”
Roxie leaped from her chair with her eyes narrowed on the grimy bastard. I caught her around the waist, dragging her back before she could claw his eyes out with her nails.
If anyone was going to maim this motherfucker, it was going to be me.
“You wanna tell me what happened?” he continued, raising his eyebrow like he was unbothered.
“I donot,” she spat at Carrington, and I tugged her back behind me.
His face seemed to light up a little at her feisty nature, and it honestly made me fucking sick, especially after Darcy had mentioned him getting turned on by her being drugged and helpless. He definitely seemed like the kind of asshole who got off by pulling a defiant woman into line.
