How the fuck had his life turned to this? His chest felt like it’d been through the fucking crusher. He stared on in the darkness, and all he could see was her face. Why did she do it? Why… Why did she walk away? What did he do that was so wrong? He rubbed his face and shut his burning eyes.

He shouldn’t have left her that night. He should have stayed and he should have shut his fucking mouth and let her have her raging fit so long as it meant he could hold her. He shouldn’t have pushed her, shouldn’t have demanded her to talk, shouldn’t have goaded her…

His body shuddered as he fought to suppress the ache. He shouldn’t have left. If he’d stayed… Somehow he knew none of this would have happened if he’d just fucking stayed!

Now look at him; a pathetic nobody clinging onto a girl that hadn’t bothered to check on him once, and yet he was still using her as a form of strength to get out of this goddamn forsaken dump of a place.

“Have you heard from her?” he’d asked Lucinda in the visiting room.

Lucinda shook her head. “No, Jaxon. I haven’t.”

She watched his fists clench together hard with a troubled look on her face. “Are you going to tell me what happened?”

Suppressing the ache, he shook his head. “I don’t even know what happened, Mom. I don’t even fucking know. She’d been acting strange the last few months. Was going on and on about being independent and shit. I was suddenly always in her way, and then she’d started accusing me of shit, like she didn’t trust me. I tried, Mom. I really fucking tried.”

Lucinda didn’t respond for a few moments. She suddenly looked weighed down by something; a memory perhaps.

“If you hear from her,” Jaxon said, sounding more desperate than he intended, “Please, Mom, let me know. Tell her to come to me. Please.”

“Of course I will, Jaxon. Of course.”

But his mother always returned with no word of her and a shake of her head that had his heart scrambling for safety. It was falling into a bottomless pit. He’d never felt so hopeless locked away when he could have been out there searching for her. Had something happened to her? Fuck. That was the worst thought he could think of.

He had to focus on the now and what needed to be done in these walls. He had to act fast. They were piranhas and they were going to feast on him.

He was virtually powerless and had tried every single day to keep to himself. Unfortunately, for the good looking fish, being left alone was not something the convicts were interested in. Day one and he had his face smashed so bad he couldn’t see out of his right eye for six days, and the worst part was he didn’t know who had done it. He’d been jumped from behind in the tank room where the densely populated crowd of inmates did nothing but try and start a riot.

He knew early on that to survive this he needed to be part of a gang. They were everywhere and they stood for something he was desperate for: power and protection.

But before he could even be looked at, he needed to prove himself. And having had the childhood he did where fights were the norm, he knew the only way to come out alive was to instil the same harsh attitude for violence.

He had to be a fighter.

Seven

I spent two days locked up in Remy’s room sleeping and idly staring at the fascinating ceiling when I wasn’t. Couldn’t eat, either, which drove Remy up the wall. He was constantly placing trays of food on the night table, but I couldn’t for the life of me swallow a bite.

After my two days of solitude, I emerged like a groundhog out of its hole and into the daylight. The bikers had conglomerated around the bar area chatting up a storm about cars and the “scamming locals” that needed sorting out.

Remy was in the back, silently observing with a petit blonde by his side. She was saying something to him and he was staring down at her, vaguely looking interested. I knew this look. It was the I-really-don’t-give-a-fuck-about-what-you’re-saying-but-I’m-too-nice-to-say-that-to-your-face look. Remy was a sweet guy when he wasn’t staring bullet holes into your head.

I liked how quickly he perked up when he noticed me approaching him. I was hesitant at first, not wanting to be intrusive. I didn’t know my boundaries. Was free roaming okay? Judging by the happy surprise in him, I’d say it was. He nodded at me to come to him and I did, stopping right before him. The petit blonde was rattling on about how her car tyres’ treading wasn’t up to par and then stopped abruptly when she noticed me.

“You’re out of your cave,” Remy stated with a ghost of a smile on his face.

I shrugged. “The ceiling was getting boring to watch.”

“Probably watched the plaster right off of it, huh?”

I smiled timidly and looked nervously down at my fingers. Why was being around him in a social circle suddenly so strange? I’d been so used to having him in private that this kind of interaction was unsettling.

“You gonna introduce me or what, Reaper?” piped the blonde.

Remy sighed in annoyance. “Sara, this is Darcy. Darcy this is Sara. Darcy is Prez’s niece and Barge’s old lady.”

I awkwardly extended my hand. Do old ladies shake as a greeting? She ignored my hand and hugged me instead. The hug took me off guard, and I looked like a terrified child petting a lion.

“You’re Felix’s granddaughter. One of us. It’s so good to have you here, Sara,” she said into my hair.

“Thanks, Darcy.”

The hug had quieted the room down, and when she pulled away, I noted that all the men had turned to look at us.

“Introduce the rest of us, Reap,” said an attractive blonde haired man.

Remy did, and they got up front and personal about it, looming around me during introductions with unconcealed curiosity.

It would take me a couple weeks to learn their names. There was Fritz and Logan. Fritz was a thirty something year old man with long dark hair and an unkempt beard; he stunk of alcohol and probably lived off of it. Logan was a gorgeous blonde man with piercing green eyes and almost as solidly built as Remy. These two I would later learn were the Sergeants at Arms in the club and Remy’s closest friends.

The next to be introduced was Barge, and he was a sloppy looking fat man with a heavy beard and beady dark eyes. He was the Treasurer in the club, and he was also petit Darcy’s husband. Talk about shocker with that one…

A shaggy red-haired old man by the name of Wilson was next up. He was the secretary of the club, answering calls, setting up meetings and reporting to the President. You never saw him without a cigar in his hand, and if it wasn’t in his mouth, he was usually telling the most crude, sexually explicit jokes that disgusted even the men.