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“What if I told you, you didn’t miss everything?” He spoke against the skin of her palm.
“Hmm?” Shivers originated wherever his mouth met her skin, traveling up her arm. Wait. What did he just say? “I didn’t miss everything? What are you talking about?”
He lowered their joined hands but didn’t let go. “King. The fuckstick who dragged you in and cuffed you to the table,” he said.
He was totally in the dark as to how well she actually knew King. She went to his wife’s Pampered Chef party, for Christ’s sake. Maybe Agent Rey had some kind of mental breakdown. Maybe that’s what fueled his departure from everything he believed in.
“Yes? What about him?”
“He’s alive.”
The world stopped spinning. That was the only explanation for the complete loss of equilibrium.
“Whoa. Easy there.” A strong arm looped around her waist. “You good now?”
Stephanie nodded, though it couldn’t be further from the truth. He was alive? He could rat her out at any time. “Yes, sorry. Just took me by surprise. Do you know where he is?” Would he tell them who she was? Who he was? Up to now, the MC had treated her like family, disarming her natural suspicion, but what would they do to her if King ratted her out?
They’d kill her for sure.
She needed to remember where she was and who she was with. They may play her friends now, but they wouldn’t hesitate to end her if necessary.
Mav nodded. “We have him. I was about to go…pay him a visit. You deserve to be there. Come with me.”
The wheels in her head started turning so fast she felt like an out of shape hamster about to keel over. Part of her wanted to run away, her fingers plugging her ears, begging Maverick not to share any more incriminating evidence with her. Another part knew it was her duty to follow him to the basement and report back to her superiors. Report all the illegal activities that would tear this entire MC, this family, apart. And find out why Agent Rey flipped.
And a third part wanted to follow him down to that basement with her head held high and watch with a smile on her face as someone beat the shit out of King. That part of her wanted him to experience the fear, the helplessness, and the pain that she’d felt. That Maverick had endured for her.
That part of her had never surfaced before.
And it scared the shit out of her.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
MAVERICK CLASPED STEPHANIE’S tiny hand tightly as he guided her the quarter mile through the woods. Uncertainty had been clearly written all over her face, ever since he made the offer to accompany him to King. Stephanie wasn’t from his world. In her universe, people didn’t make their way to dark basements serving as makeshift prison cells and sometimes torture chambers. They didn’t take revenge in violent ways.
Hell, she’d probably never even imagined violence and fear like she’d experienced at King’s hand. And she sure as hell wouldn’t have envisioned herself about to help beat and torture a man who was destined for death within the next hour.
But the path of life was winding and fraught with complications. Some of those complications changed a person.
Forever.
Maverick knew all about nightmare experiences that affected someone so profoundly, he swore it changed the make-up of a person’s cells. His demons were in the past, but Steph’s were present and waiting just fifteen feet below the ground.
“This is The Box,” he said, leading her to what looked like a trapdoor in the middle of the woods. “It’s used for club business of a sensitive nature.”
Her eyes widened as his meaning sunk in. “Oh,” she said, her throat rising and falling with the force of her swallow.
“Last chance to change your mind, sweetheart. Not trying to be a dick, but once you walk down those steps, you can’t unsee and unexperience it. You’ll be part of it, and it will be part of you.”
The wariness in her eyes was almost enough for him to pull the plug. If she didn’t answer in the next five seconds, he’d turn around and hobble back to the clubhouse with her before returning alone. Maybe he’d been mistaken and she wasn’t cut out for brutal payback, but he’d sworn he’d seen something in her. Something that called to him on a deep, dark level. The need to release the grip of what she witnessed and endured. And what better way to release that beast than to kill it fucking dead?
Steph inhaled a sharp breath, then the damnedest thing happened. The five-foot-three waif of a woman squared her shoulders, steeled her spine, and narrowed her eyes. “Lemme at him.”
She’d rallied. Pride surged through Maverick. There was the woman he’d nicknamed wildcat. Despite her misgivings and fear, she’d march down every one of those steps and confront the piece of shit that terrorized her.
