Bocca: A Steel Paragons MC Novel Page 5

Shit. Jessica had left the club. She was out there somewhere, unprotected. I could only hope that he didn’t know enough about the club to know that. If we’d never been on his radar then how would he? I believed that it couldn’t have been anyone that I really knew, that I had some kind of connection to.

  Then it hit me like a thousand pound sledgehammer.

  The girl.

  Number fifteen.

  And sure enough, being drug in by her hair kicking and snarling, was number fifteen.

  It looked like he didn’t kill all the girls in that fire. And I had no doubt that she was saved specifically to torture me.

  I knew how this would end, and it killed me that there was nothing I could do.

  “You seemed quite taken with this one. Though, I would guess not for reasons like all the other men around you there.”

  I swallowed down the thick saliva that had filled my mouth. The kind that tasted of acid and it was all I could do to keep it from coming back up.

  It was excruciating to watch as they pushed her down to the ground and stepped on her. If I said anything or showed even a flicker of emotion I knew he would take that and run with it. He was the kind of sadistic fuck that thrived off of that. The kind of person that kicked a dog over and over just to get it to snap and then killed it for that very reaction. So no, I wasn’t going to give him what he wanted. No matter how much I felt it suffocating my soul to sit there and watch.

  She didn’t stop. Didn’t give up the fight. Her body jerking and flailing, her dirty, mangled fingers clawing at anything within reach.

  The guard’s boot pressed so hard on her back that I heard things start to pop and snap. Her snarling turned into a squeak and he continued to lean more weight on the leg that had her pinned down.

  I wanted to yell at them to stop. I was going to kill them all.

  “You wanted to save them?” he asked but wasn’t really looking for an answer. “And you failed.”

  I clenched my jaw so that I wouldn’t open my mouth and make things worse.

  “That must make you feel pathetic.”

  Pathetic. Angry. Regretful. Sure, anything along those lines would work.

  Without warning, the guard that had been crushing her let off only to grab a fist full of her hair and slam her face into the ground. I watched as it bounced from the force and when she looked up again, her forehead was split open and blood dripped down her face.

  I could stop this.

  Only, I knew I wouldn’t.

  “This is your chance to save one of them. The only one left. You should take it.” His voice was cold and menacing.

  I knew that no matter what I did, there was no saving her. I turned my head away and I felt like a coward.

  “Look at her,” he demanded and grabbed my hair, forcing me to watch.

  Again and again, the guard beat her head into the ground, the sounds of her skull hitting the hard floor started to echo with the wet splatter of her blood.

  He pulled her head back, a river ran down her entire face and dripped onto the floor, mingling with the spot that was already there. She was still alive, I could tell. Her body still moved with each breath, but only faintly, and her eyes were still open and moving around wildly. But it was clear that she wouldn’t live through this, and it probably wouldn’t be much longer.

  “Anything?” he asked right beside my ear.

  “You’re a piece of shit,” I ground out through gritted teeth.

  “Maybe you and I are not so different.”

  I was nothing like him. Never would I be. I was going to kill him slowly.

  “I think she deserves one last ride.”

  No. No. I could not watch this. What the fuck was wrong with these people? Really, I knew better than to ask that question. But I couldn’t help but wonder where it all went wrong for them. How had they gotten to this point? Was it really all about money and power? That couldn’t have been it. There had to have been some deep seeded darkness there, or some seriously crossed wires.

  Guard two undid his pants and pulled her up onto her knees. With a grunt, he pushed his way into her and I had to close my eyes, but I couldn’t block out the sound. Even though I couldn’t see what was happening, the images put themselves into my mind. How had I gotten into this nightmare?

  “Mislav has some issues. He’s cost me a good amount of money, but he is one of the best men I have. So, I let it slide every now and then.”

  I didn’t want to know what kind of issues he was referring to. Though I couldn’t help but let my mind go there, and I knew right away.

  A guttural scream filled the room and I couldn’t stop my eyes from popping open. The scene that was in front of me was more gruesome than anything I’d ever seen. Worse than that unexpected shit that I’d come across in my searches. Something that I’d never be able to scrub from my mind. And maybe I didn’t deserve to even if I could have.

  He was raping her, I already knew that, but now he was stabbing and slicing up her back. Deep gashes soon covered her entire back, so wide that the skin almost appeared to be peeling back. Over and over, he pushed into her and carved into her flesh.

  I lost it then, ripping my head away from the hand that had been gripping my hair. My body fell forward, straining against the bindings that held me in place as the bile rose up my throat and out of my mouth, covering the floor between my feet.

  Mislav’s grunt echoed through the room and I knew it was over, in more ways than one. Her body hit the floor with a thick thud and I didn’t have to look to know that it was lifeless.

  “You could have stopped this,” he said as he walked around me and out the door. The guards followed behind, dragging her body out by her ankles like it was nothing more than a bag of garbage.

  His words reverberated in my head as the room went suddenly too silent.

  I could have stopped this.

  I should have. I made a choice and for the first time in a long time, I felt that I had chosen wrong.

  I sat in that room, staring at the bloody, messy trail, wishing for my own death. Wishing for a way out. A chance to stop all of this. A way to end them all.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Loch

  “Shouldn’t have let him go alone,” I said as I sat there in front of Cal.

  I’d just gotten back from South Carolina. The whirlwind trip down there left no time for sleep and I was ready to get back home. Though I hadn’t been away but a little over twenty-four hours, I missed my woman and my little baby girl.

  However, the moment I stepped foot into Cal’s office I knew I wouldn’t be getting home anytime soon. The fear and anxiety hung thick in the air as he told me that Bocca hadn’t returned. Bocca hadn’t even checked in. Cal didn’t have to say it for me to get that it wasn’t good. Bocca should have been back first thing this morning at the latest.

  It wouldn’t have done any good for me to voice the feelings I had about the whole situation. I had been uneasy about this thing from the get-go. But I could see the desperate need in Bocca’s eyes telling me that he couldn’t walk away from this. Not that I could blame him, I felt the same way too. Maybe we had our priorities all wrong. No, I was starting to feel certain that we did.

  That was the thing, we’d taken on all of this so that we could have some sort of control, to know that the artillery that came in didn’t fall into the hands of people that intended to do harm to innocent people. Then again, maybe that was being a bit naïve. I kept myself—and maybe the club as well—in this pit of denial, convinced that it was better for us to be the ones in charge and oversee everything rather than let someone like, well, Savage get their hands on something like that.

  Fuck knew we didn’t need another one of him to get the power.

  Even as I thought those things, I knew it wasn’t that simple. It wasn’t like a dinner date where we could just call and apologetically cancel. If we did it would set a ripple in motion. It would raise concern and with that, people would start to get unsure. We’d worked too hard se
tting up new contacts. The trust wasn’t just for us to gain, we had to earn it from them too. If it didn’t feel like they had, then there was something obviously wrong. So as hard as it was, Cal had made the best call for the situation.

  His office was quiet. The prez sat there, face looking about ten years older than it did yesterday. This was hard on all of us. I didn’t have to look over at Diesel and Axe to know that they were feeling it too.

  Bocca. He’d been gone over a day. It shouldn’t have taken this long and I had no clue where he was.

  When he came to us about this side job that Lucy asked for help with, there was too much going on for us to be able to send someone trustworthy with him. I saw the disappointment flicker in his eyes, but then he came up with a new plan right there on the spot. A plan that had a lot less action and maybe less risk. It wouldn’t be the take-down that he’d hoped for, but it had potential to lead to ending the operation and rescue of the innocent lives that had gotten trapped into this web.

  So there was Bocca, swearing up and down that it was a simple job and he was just going to do some recon. That he could handle it no problem. He hadn’t had plans to make any moves. He was supposed to go in, remain unseen, and come back to us so that we could formulate a plan on where to go from there.

  I couldn’t help but feel that something had gone wrong. I was smart enough to know that more than likely we weren’t lucky enough that he was just hunkered down somewhere hiding until the heat passed. If that were the case, I knew he would have found some way to get a message to us.

  Right then, nothing else mattered. Fuck it all. We could mend bridges with whoever we pissed off later. We had to get him back. Cal was kicking himself the same as I was. We should have never fucking let him go alone.

  The problem with Bocca being gone, we didn’t have the first clue how to find him. Yeah, he was our hacker and tracker. He knew how to do all that shit and none of us had the first clue where to begin.

  Then there was Lucy. I trusted her completely. After all, she knew shit about the club that she shouldn’t have. But Bocca had said she was headed out of the country and would be unreachable. This shit sucked. We could have reached out to other chapters but I had a feeling Cal wanted to keep this contained for right now.

  It wasn’t a good time. Sure the new chapter was doing good, but there was still a lot of energy and time going into getting everything set up. Having control over the docks meant more merchandise coming in. More runs. More trade-offs. And more buyers. We were stretched a little thin at the moment, trying to find new routes and new clubs to work with. That required a lot because we weren’t going to trust just anyone. It took time to make connections and establish relationships, especially ones that were worthwhile. It took men and resources.

  “Diesel, try Clean. Get that he’s probably out, but if we can get to him then we can get to Lucy. Hate to do it, but don’t got a choice,” Cal said, his tone grim like he already knew it was going to be useless. “That don’t work, then Axe you have your old lady try to reach out to Lucy. We gotta try. But I don’t want the girls knowing that somethin’ is up, if we can help it. Let’s try to keep this as quiet as possible for now.”

  Axe and Diesel nodded and headed out. Cal waited until the door was closed behind them before he spoke again.

  “We need someone outside the club that we can trust. This is beyond what we can do. Search Bocca’s room. Find me somethin’ to work with here.”

  I got to my feet and left.

  It should have felt strange going into his room, like a total invasion of privacy, but it didn’t. We didn’t have secrets here in the MC and I knew Bocca was as open as they came. When it came to his own life, anyway. When it came to all the things that he knew about everyone else, he tucked it away like it didn’t even exist. Some might have said that he ran his mouth too fucking much, but it was never anything of great importance. I had picked up on that after a few years.

  See it was no secret that Bocca knew pretty much everything about everyone, especially when we first vetted you for the club. Bocca could find out just about everything. Real name. Birthday. First speeding ticket. And that was just the small stuff. Not only could he work his finger magic to find things you might try to hide, but he could weave a map to things that might not have even been there in plain sight.

  Bocca was smart, in the oddest sort of way. I never tried to explain it. Never wanted to define it. And maybe most of the time I just took it for granted. It was that strange intelligence that helped him to continuously hide behind his shield without anyone realizing that he was. Letting little snippets of non-classified information slip here and there threw people off to how much he really did hold in.

  I didn’t know how many people noticed it, but I saw it. And I not only had deep respect for the guy, but also completely and totally trusted him.

  The search of his room came up empty. I didn’t dare touch his computer shit. Even if I did, I wouldn’t have had the first clue what to do with it. I realized that this was a huge problem. We relied on Bocca for so much and without him, we were completely at a loss. I hoped he knew how valuable he was to us, and that because of that we were so grateful for him.

  As a club, we were great at communication as far as club shit went. But as men, we were just a bunch of grunting, nodding Neanderthals most of the time. We said things, just not with words. Shared emotions, just subtly and at a distance. Now, I was starting to wonder if that was enough.

  It hit me like a fucking ram to the chest, I might not have the chance to ever tell him how much he meant to not only the club, but me as well.

  I shook the negative thoughts away. There wasn’t time for that and it wouldn’t do any good to let that kind of darkness seep in. We were going to find him. Pull every string and cash in every favor to make that happen. There was simply no other option other than getting him back.

  “We got nothin’ other than what he gave us,” I said the moment I closed the door to Cal’s office behind me.

  Cal nodded like he already expected to hear that very thing.

  We looked over the info Bocca left with us again. Not a damn thing that would help us. Not a location. Not even a street name.

  “This shouldn’t have fuckin’ happened,” Cal said and I could see his strong façade slipping.

  “It did. It’s is happenin’. There’s not a thing that we can do about it other than get him back. So let’s do that.”

  I tried to bring him back even if I was feeling the same thing that he was.

  “Called Hunter. He’ll be here shortly,” Cal said.

  Thank God. We needed something and I couldn’t believe that I hadn’t thought of it before. Hunt would find him. If anyone could, it would be him.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Bocca

  “Time to wake up, pretty boy.”

  This was day two of torture. I knew it was only going to get worse. Their patience running thinner the more the seconds ticked on.

  Everything was stiff and there were points of burning pain throughout my body. But I wasn’t going to crack. Never. At this point, it was just a waiting game. Waiting for what? If I were the hopeful kind, then I would have said freedom. But I was a realist. So at this point, death was the only answer. I still hadn’t given up on trying to escape but the more damage my body took, the weaker I grew. It was a matter of time before I wouldn’t even be able to move, let alone get myself out of this situation. That said, I wasn’t going down without a fight. They couldn’t break me—I wouldn’t let them.

  “Is it a new day already?” I asked and my voice sounded raw and strained. I smiled the best I could. My busted lip throbbed as the cut opened and I could feel the fresh blood make its way past the dried scab. “I need a well-balanced meal and coffee. Never start a day off without it.”

  That earned me a punch to the gut. The air rushed out of my lungs at such a fast rate that it burned my throat. A coughing fit followed and I tried hard to grasp onto some fresh air to fill m
y lungs. I knew better than to taunt them, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself.

  “This will all be over if you tell me what I need to know,” he said and I could tell he was trying his best to hold back his anger.

  My head flopped back and I cut my eyes up to look at him.

  “This will all be over if you just kill me.”

  Then he was in my face, his thick hand grabbing a fistful of my hair and yanking my head back so far it caused tears to sting the back of my eyes.

  “I’ve been too easy on you. That ends today,” he seethed and this time he couldn’t control how much I was getting to him. “I will strip you down until you have nothing left.”

  Yeah, okay. Still wasn’t going to get me to unlock my box of secrets.

  “Get him up. Strip him.”

  He took a step back and the three other men in the room stepped up. Ties and tape were cut. I was hauled up, my head having a hard time staying upright. With a deep breath in, I mustered up all the strength I had left. I ripped my arm free from the one on my right, swinging and hitting the one on my left square in the nose. The crunch sound that filled the room enough to let me know I’d broken it. My elbow went back catching the one on my right in the throat and making him stumble back before he could regain his grip on me.

  However, my victory didn’t last long. The cold, sharp blade sliced through my side making my body want to drop instantly.

  I was held down and my clothes stripped off.

  “The fuck is that?” The one that I hadn’t managed to get a hit on grunted out in disgusted confusion.

  I looked down and shrugged. I wasn’t going to tell him that he didn’t know what he was missing. Those things might not have looked like much but they were comfortable as fuck. Enough fabric to keep my junk from flopping about but made so that I could still feel the breeze on my ass. Yeah, maybe some people wouldn’t understand, but I didn’t give a fuck.

  “Shut up. Chain him up,” the leader barked, clearly unamused by my choice of underwear.