Pain has a rhythm if you listen hard enough.
Not music. Nothing that nice. Nothing with bass and lights and bodies moving like they believe the night forgives them. This rhythm is uglier. Tires thumping over bad pavement. Metal rattling somewhere behind my head. My wrists burning every time the van takes a turn too hard and the plastic zip tie bites deeper into skin.
Thump.
Rattle.
Burn.
Breathe.
I count it because counting is better than screaming.
Screaming is what they want.
I learned young that fear feeds the wrong men, and I have starved worse monsters than these.
So I don’t scream.
I breathe through my nose and taste blood at the back of my throat.
The van smells like old cigarettes, wet carpet, gun oil, and flowers. That last part almost makes me laugh. It would if my mouth didn’t hurt.
Flowers.
White roses, probably. Pretty little death flags from biker trash who want to be poetic about being pieces of shit. Shady once told me white roses were not romance in his world. They were a calling card.
My cheek is pressed against ribbed rubber flooring. It vibrates under me with every mile, shaking pain up through my jaw. One of my earrings is gone. Fuck. They cost a fortune. Not mine. A gift from the kind of man I dated before Shady. I feel the naked tug of my earlobe and hate that I notice something so stupid. My hair is all over my face, curls sticking to my lip where it is split. My hands are tied behind my back, nails probably broken too. My ankles are bound, body curled awkwardly because they shoved me in here like luggage they didn’t care about scratching.
Somebody in the front seat laughs.
“Road captain looked pissed.”
Another voice answers, rougher. “He’s supposed to. That’s the point.”
“He almost took your boy’s head off.”
“Yeah, and now we got his girl.”
His girl.
The words hit wrong. I know just what they will want to do to his girl. I squeeze my eyes shut, and the garage flashes behind my lids. Smoke. Concrete. Gunshots. Shady’s voiceripping through it all when he screamed my name. His blood on his shirt. His face when he saw Cherry come out of that elevator.
Cherry.
My stomach twists harder than the van’s next turn.
Ask Shady who Cherry is.
Whoever sent that text knew exactly where to cut. They knew the name. Knew the timing. Knew the kind of woman I had become to survive attention and how fast I would turn insult into armor if someone handed me the right weapon.
I hate that it hurt.
I hate more that Shady saw it hurt.
The van swerves and my shoulder slams into the side panel. Pain bursts white behind my eyes, but I swallow the sound. My teeth clamp down so hard my jaw aches.
“Careful,” a third man snaps from somewhere near my feet. “They said don’t fuck up her face.”
