Wolf.e: A Dark MC Romance
Wolf.e: Chapter 53

I’ve been hit by shrapnel, I’ve been shot, I’ve seen a lot of men die. I’ve seen my own death at least a dozen times. The reason I always survive is because I anticipate the enemy’s next move. But how do you anticipate an enemy’s next move when you don’t even know they fucking exist?

I’m in and out of consciousness, I don’t know how much time has passed. Has it been an hour? Six? I have no idea. I woke up here after Jake hit me. I hang from the center of the room, my arms outstretched and aching. I can feel dried blood on my face and the throb in my head where Jake hit me with a fucking pipe. The tops of my feet graze the floor and they’re zip-tied together, I think.

Jake. My brother, by all accounts.

Now, he stands in front of me with Marco fucking Foxx and I know for the first time in my life, my enemy has the better of me.

Subconsciously, I hear parts of the conversation like a fever dream. It brings me right back to the sounds of the almost dead men screaming. I can hear them so clearly. I’m back in that cave. I know I need to fight. I know I need to replace my way out, to save anyone who can be saved but I can’t do anything except listen in horror as I see her face in my mind’s eye.

I let the darkness take me.

Icy water hits my face, and my eyes surge open, cloudy with the forced influx of water and my own blood. I shake my head and raise it. Yep, definitely bleeding. Pretty sure I’m bleeding from quite a few places, actually.

I have no idea how much time has passed since they dragged me in here, but it’s enough that I’ve faded in and out like this at least three times. A few hours? Longer?

“We’re gonna do this one more time.”

I look up at Jake, my jaw set. At least that’s not broken yet.

In my periphery, I see Marco snort two lines of coke off the table.

“I don’t want to make this more painful than it needs to be, man. Fuck,” Jake says, his eyes pleading.

Mistake number one: Never go weak with your victim.

“Just give me the accounts and this’ll be quick.” He holds a gun to my face for the fifth time tonight. I didn’t give him my personal bank account info any of those other four times, so I have no idea why he’d think this time would be any different.

I’ll sit through another hundred days of this before I ever let the fucker in the corner snort away the $1.3 million I’ve managed to personally save.

“Fuck!” Jake yells. “This is all your fault.” He makes his way to the table and nervously carves out a bump of his own. I don’t know how much powdered courage it takes to betray someone who’s been like a brother to you, who’s always been good to you, someone who’s always given you way too much fucking grace.

I’ve been asleep for half of this, but my guess is a lot.

“It was supposed to be me. Not you. He always compared every fucking thing I did to you!” He bends down, keeping his gun on me and snuffs some more of that false courage up his nose.

Marco stands and smacks Jake in the back of the head. “Stop fucking rehashing history to a dead man.”

He stalks toward me, and I know when I make it out of this, I’m going to separate every limb from his body and keep him alive long enough to watch me put them through the wood chipper out back.

A lead pipe comes down on my knee. I grunt out a strangled sound as my head falls back. That’s feeling pretty fucking close to broken now.

“Did you know that you’ve been fucked from the start? Your VP here told us all about your meets, your latest clinics. He even let us onto your property so we could take that truck out as a warning.” His grin pulls back over his yellowing teeth.

I think back to the night before the wedding when Jake disappeared. I thought he was hooking up. Motherfucker was letting that prospect in.

“You aren’t letting the club do the right kind of business. We’re fucking outlaws. Do you know how much money we could make if we mule in the real stuff?” Jake asks as he fidgets.

I instantly know he’s already got deals set up in the event of my untimely demise. I don’t wonder how long he’s been planning this. I don’t give a fuck. He’s dead to me.

“You aren’t getting out of here alive, so give us the fucking accounts,” Marco snarls.

I spit blood at him. I force myself to grin and say nothing.

This time, the pipe hit comes down on my head and the darkness descends again.

“You should’ve said no when he nominated you. It was my place. I lived under his shadow my whole fucking life. Now I live under yours. No more. That gavel is mine.”

I’ve been listening to Jake drone on since I came to again ten minutes ago, but my eyes are still closed as he paces back and forth in front of me. I have no idea where Marco is right now.

This little prick is whining, and I haven’t been able to feel my arms for a fuck of a long time. I act as out of it as I can, groaning and moaning. But with as much clarity as possible, I search the room for my opportunity when he isn’t looking. Right now, I don’t see one, but I can wait. I will not die at the hands of this traitorous piece of shit.

“…You’ve limited our earning. Every opportunity we’ve had for big money, you turn down. You just focus on these fucking clinics. You know the big money is on the street. We could be earning three times as much.”

I open my eyes and focus on him with a grin, deciding that without Marco here I may get him to fuck up.

Jake never knows when to stop talking. It’s what’s gotten him into shit his whole fucking life.

“But then we’re just like every other piece of shit gang. We earn plenty from the clinics. Clearly, since you want everything I’ve earned. What I’ve worked for.”

“Fuck you! You and your fucking honor. It’s time this club started taking more, earning big money.”

“You’ll never get the others to agree.”

“They’ll agree when they start seeing dollars,” Jake says, sniffing and brushing at his nose.

I raise my head enough to analyze him. He’s spinning out, nervous, which is when he starts to panic. His plan is going to shit, and he knows by the look in my eye that I’ll never give him what he wants. My money is protected if anything happens to me.

Because unlike him, I’m fucking smart.

“Your father wanted the club to earn and live outside the fucking ridiculous laws of this country without killing people needlessly. He never wanted it to be blood money. That’s why he chose me.”

“But you’ve fucked up! You’ve made it too easy. DOS was coming for you and you’ve been distracted by her. Someone has to take over, someone has to bring us into big money before DOS takes us out. I saw the opportunity. DOS is gonna work with us. You left me no choice.”

I start to laugh, then spit the blood that’s oozing in my mouth onto the floor.

“If I don’t gut you, Mason will. He’ll never work with DOS; you don’t think things through. There’s always a choice, you just never make the right one, and now you’ll die because of it,” I bite out to him.

“I’ve had enough of this shit,” Marco says, coming through the door, he’s obviously been outside listening to us. “Your plan of talking to him isn’t working. He needs more motivation.” Marco wanders to the table and puts on a glove, a cut resistant one, then picks up a two-foot-long piece of barbed wire off the table. He grins evilly as he moves toward me.

“Fuck! Fuck!” Jake grunts out as he paces more. “Just fucking tell us the fucking account information!” he yells.

“I’m gonna carve you up like dinner, son, and then I’m gonna carve her up next. When you die tonight, picture her face on the end of my dick before I gut her like a fucking fish.”

The deepest kind of rage seeps from my body as I struggle with everything I have against the chains holding me before the barbed wire is wrapped tightly around my chest and dragged downward.

I bite down on my lower lip as I feel my skin being ripped open. I hope the bloodcurdling roar that leaves me is loud enough to demand the pits of hell to open and swallow him whole.

I will not give in. I will not give up. I will get out of this, so no one hurts her.