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Skipping the steps, I leaped onto the porch and threw open the door. The front room was crammed with angry-looking men who wore either a cut or full leather with the 1.AZUSA.3 emblem across the shoulders. Several had tattoos up their necks and onto their faces. One even had AZUSA tattooed on the back of his shaved head. Like him, most were bald or near bald and they sported mustaches or goatees, but very few sported beards like the riders in Park Ridge.
I didn’t see anyone I knew.
Two men about my height closed in on either side, pinning me between them. Their eyes roamed my body from head to toe. As their hungry gazes lifted, they settled on my chest rather than my face. One shot me an evil, yellow-toothed grin. His breath reeked of cigarette smoke. I tried to pull away, but they latched onto each arm.
I called out, “Celt!”
The voice that replied didn’t belong to my brother. It was low and husky, but feminine. “What’s the commotion?”
From the kitchen, I heard a couple of grunts—my brother’s strangled voice. My breath hitched in my throat and my heart began to pound.
The owner of the female voice appeared in the kitchen doorway, a stout older woman, black hair with silver streaks pulled back into a knot at the back of her head. She had AX3 tattooed under one eye and wore heavy eye makeup with dark purple on her thin lips. “Bring her in here,” she snapped at the men holding me. “Tie her up with him.”
As the men dragged me into the kitchen, the woman took a place behind the island counter as if she were in charge and holding court. Cook leaned up against the stove wearing an expression I couldn’t read, but his gaze jerked over slightly—a tip-off—before his mask settled right back into place. I followed his shifty gaze to see my brother, standing with his hands bound behind his back.
Celt was a head taller than the men who held him at gunpoint. A dirty, bloody cloth gagged his mouth. His blue eyes shot me all sorts of warnings and a shit ton of worry. Dried blood crusted under his broken nose, over his chin, down his neck. His white tank was stained red with blood that was starting to dry and turn brown around the edges of the stains.
I railed against the men holding me, but their hands just dug tighter into my upper arms.
“Ow, fuck!” I hissed. “Who are you, and what the fuck are you doing in my house?” I hadn’t lived here for a long time, but this house would always be my home. It was where I grew up and where my father took his last breath. And these good-for-shit assholes were invading it. Anger quickly replaced the fear in my chest.
“Oohhh little Bou...”
The voice—the God-forsaken voice I’d heard say those words in exactly that same tone once before—slithered over my skin. Flashes hit my mind of being grabbed from behind, of being blindfolded and violently ripped apart, of the time before Luke. I was standing in the same room as my first rapist. The one I thought I hadn’t fucking known.
I fell, hanging limply in the grip of the two men at either side as my rapist, toothpick between his lips, smirked at me with his bare tatted arms crossed over his leather vest.
The motherfucker’s lips curled with vicious intent as he drawled, “Pretty little Boudicca Murray.”
It was the Prez of The Ridge MC. Fucking Rex. I should have known. I never saw his face as he’d raped me, but I should have recognized the slime in his voice. I couldn’t recall a single conversation I had ever shared with the man, but I’d heard him speak before. Although, he’d only said the words he’d just uttered to me once before, and the tone he used now was also unique to that lowest point in my life.
I’d been present when he told Celt about my father being shot. Maybe I was just too stunned at the thought of Pops’ death that I hadn’t connected the dots, but now, as he said my name, I knew. The way he said it was like slugs crawling and sliding down my spine in a trail of their own slime. That he’d used my given name also made my stomach churn. Boudicca was the name my mother had given me after learning about some ancient Celtic queen who revolted against the Roman Empire, but no one had fucking called me that since she’d left when I was a child. And I wanted to keep it that way. That name belonged to my mother, and her alone.
Rex took the first couple of slow, sauntering steps toward me. Celt thrashed against his bonds, earning a heavy punch that doubled him over and dropped him to his knees.
I twisted a bit, testing how tightly I was bound. No luck. “Celt,” I said, trying and failing to make my voice strong. “Don’t.”
My brother wheezed, groaned through the pain, and breathed hard around the gag as they pulled him back to his feet.
I looked up at Rex as he approached, desperately trying to will strength into my muscles.
Rex looked down at me with a bored, almost exacerbated expression. “What have you been up to, Boudicca?” He tilted his head.
“It’s Bou,” I said, biting down so hard I thought a tooth might crack.
Lips pursed, Rex nodded. “Nah... I don’t think so.” He brandished a knife, an ugly serrated thing with an arched backside, and scratched it against my cheek so that I just felt the sharpness, but it didn’t quite cut my skin. “I think you should answer my question, Boudicca.”
“You first, asshole.” I glanced over to the woman, then back to Rex, holding his gaze evenly and fighting my trembling thighs for strength. “Who the fuck are these people and why are they in my house?”
Rex flitted his eyes toward one of the men holding me.
A fist shot into my gut.
I couldn’t breathe past the pain and pressure that had forced the air from my body. I wheezed like my brother had before as I tried desperately to force oxygen back into my lungs.
“That’s Paola.” Rex smiled but it looked more like a grimace, and his voice oozed through his tobacco-stained teeth. Despite the predatory expression on his face, a nonchalance colored his words like he was bored to be here.
I craned my neck from my bent position to keep an eye on his face, but my muscles wouldn’t unlock no matter how hard I tried to stand.
