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I’ve never been a stranger to pain.
In all reality, I don’t know who I am without it. That constant sting inside my heart, those shadows in my soul, the incessant soliloquy inside my brain, that’s what I’m used to. Without it, I’m just … Gidget, an outlaw’s daughter, a broken girl with no hope for a future.
So when I wake up in agony, I’m not surprised. After all, I flipped Crown’s bike and smashed it into a mafia-owned Cadillac. Good for me. Hope I killed one of the bastards in the process.
With a groan, I try to turn on my side, and find that I’m already sitting up. I’m not in a bed, like I first thought. Instead, I’m strapped to a chair inside a dark room with stained-glass windows and a ceiling that’s easily fifty feet high, rafters decorated with pigeons. Their dark eyes watch me as I come to, blinking away cobwebs of memory.
“Good morning,” a feminine voice calls out, drawing my attention over to a dark-haired woman in a red velvet chair, her long legs crossed at the knee, her eyes sparkling as she takes me in. “You must be Gidget Kesselring.” She stands up, her black dress slit all the way up to the hip, her long, elegant fingers dressed in glittering rings. Who the fuck is this? I wonder, searching my brain for memories of those pictures that Cat showed me, an entire catalogue of the Grey Wolfe Mafia. There were no women in that list. Then again, from what I know of organized crime, the wives are usually just as involved though not in any official capacity.
I don’t bother to respond or ask where I am, or what’s going to happen to me.
I know what’s going to happen to me.
My heart thunders and cold chills take over my skin. I am so fucked, even more so than I’d have been at home. Cat might’ve put a bullet through my brain, but … I’m looking at a long session of torture and death here, probably rape, too. The wounds I sustained in the accident haven’t been tended, and I can taste dried blood on my mouth when I run my tongue across my lips. My right shoulder, the one that absorbed most of the impact from the fall, is completely numb. Dislocated, probably, considering that I can’t move the fingers of my right hand.
It takes me three tries to make words happen; my mouth is dry, and I don’t recognize the sound of my own voice. It’s breathy, broken, and far too quiet. There is, however, a characteristic bite to my words that seems to give my glamorous captor pause.
“Did they send you in to talk to me?” I ask, lifting my heavy head up to meet her eyes. It takes a lot of effort, but I’m proud of myself for managing it. One of my lids is swollen so bad I can’t quite see out of it, focusing on the woman with my left eye instead. “Because I don’t have anything to tell you. If you know anything about club culture, you’ll know I’m not privy to shit.”
The woman smiles, her lipstick as red as the blood leaking from my leg. I must’ve been out for a while because the wound in my thigh looks … infected. Like maybe I’ve been passed out here for days. Feels like I just blinked and ended up here, whisked out of the rain and off the road into this sanctuary, wherever it is.
The club might know, depending on how much information they managed to wrangle out of Grey.
“Giulia Wolfe,” the woman says, touching her fingers to her chest in introduction.
Ah. The Don’s wife. This should be fun.
“This is for Kian.” Those words interrupt my thoughts, and I almost choke, wondering how the hell things got to this point, how the world could go from bad to worse in an instant. My life was never perfect, but it was mine, and I may not have had loving parents, but I had my sisters. That was just as good. No, it was better. And now … now Queenie’s sacrifice is going down the fucking toilet. I won’t be walking out of this room, mark my words.
“How can I help you, Giulia?” I ask, the tiniest spark of my anger in those words. There’s not a lot left in me, but it’s also not in me to give up, no matter how impossible the odds. I’ll fight to the last moment, scream through the last breath, hope and dream and wish until it’s all over. What good does giving up ever do?
With a sigh, the Don’s wife looks down at me, eyes darkening for a moment.
“I wanted to ask you about my son,” she says, and my heart contracts. I don’t know anything about Kian, I think, nothing except that my sister loved him enough to immortalize their feelings with a knife. “Grey is …” she continues, pausing again and looking over my shoulder. I realize then that I can hear breathing behind me, harsh and ragged but steady. “He’s always been rebellious, but after Kian was murdered”—there’s a harsh pause here, and we both know the unspoken words she’s not saying—“it got so much worse. And now, I hear that he’s a snitch.”
She circles around me, presumably to look at her son.
They’ve stuck us in here together, their own child with their enemy’s.
How messed up is that?
“I didn’t rat anyone out, Mom,” Grey coughs, his voice ragged but much better than it was when I pulled him out of the cabin. I wonder if this is all a scare tactic for him, if the mafia is actually treating his injuries? That’d be something Cat would do, leave me in a torture chamber just to teach me a lesson. Guess it depends on how much they love Grey … or if they love him at all. “I already told you: Gidget and I knew each other from before, when Kian and Queenie were together.” He coughs again, and when he starts speaking, his voice is dark with determination. “We fell in love, just like they did. I’ve explained this a hundred times.”
My heart thunders in my chest, but I’m not stupid enough to say a word.
Instead, I sit there with my eyes closed, hating how the feeling in my body is returning slowly, in little slices of agony. Look at how much that toe hurts, and that one. I can’t wait to feel my legs again. Getting skinned alive by high-speed pavement, not a good thing. When I open my eyes again, I can barely stand to look at the pink fleshy patches.
“In love?” Giulia asks, her voice soft and pleasant, but threaded with steel. This is not a woman who’s easily manipulated. “You expect me to believe that?”
“Gidget and I were hiding out in a cabin when they found us. I was only with the club for a few days, and I don’t break that easily.” Grey holds onto this story of his, and I listen carefully. He’s giving me details that I need to memorize. My life depends on it.
If the Grey Wolfe Mafia thinks I helped spring their heir, I might not die here today.
“Why haven’t we seen a doctor yet?” I ask, trying to play the part. “Grey needs one.”
“He’s seen a doctor,” Giulia continues, still circling us, studying our faces and trying to determine what, exactly, it is that’s going on here. “But we don’t generally waste time on prisoners. You think you’re worthy of care?”
“I love your son,” I lie, my voice thick with conviction, “and I risked my own life to save him. The club will kill me when they find me.” There’s a tremor of fear in my voice that I don’t bother to hide, that I don’t need to fake. That, that’s one hundred percent the truth.