Asher (Inked Brotherhood 1)

“Yes.” The word comes out strangled. “Zane... The cops, they talked as if they think Ash might have killed his dad.”

“They’re fucking with you. Ash would never kill his dad. He wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he did.”

I shake my head. “I guess.”

“But I would,” Zane whispers.

I’m not sure I heard him right. “What?”

“You wanna know the missing pieces in Ash’s life story? Have you seen the scars on his back? Do you know how long his dad, that piece of shit, has been hurting him? Fucking with Ash’s head, making him believe everything, every blow, is his fault. If Jake Devlin was in front of me right now, I’d kill him myself.”

Chapter Eighteen

Asher

I wake up to pounding on the door. It matches the pounding in my head. Where am I?

Slitting one eye—my only good eye—open, I take stock of the situation. I lie face-down on a hard mattress, drooling on a stained pillow. As I shift, various aches, some sharper and some duller, come to life all over my body. My jaw throbs, which explains the headache from hell, and the whole left side of my body burns with pain.

What the fuck happened? I can’t think straight.

The pounding on the door resumes and I groan, dropping my head back on the pillow. “What?”

“It’s midday. You need to vacate the room.”

“Really.” I sit up, grimacing as abused muscles stretch. “Shit.”

“You need to clear out—”

“Yeah, heard you the first time. Give me five minutes.” I swing my legs off the bed and stare at them. I’m still wearing my combat boots. I slept fully dressed. “I thought check-out at midday was a hotel kinda thing.”

The room is a dank, cold hole with mold stains on walls that used to be white. The carpet has cigarette burns and brown spots that look suspiciously like blood. Is it mine?

The left side of my face feels oddly heavy. I touch my fingers to it and find it covered in dried blood.

Ugh. I stand up, swaying crazily, and look around for the bathroom. Right. There isn’t one. There’s a sink, though, and I stumble to it. A mirror hangs on the wall above and I take a look at myself.

I wince. The Band-Aid above my eye is soaked through, and dark streaks of dried blood run down my face and neck into my gray T-shirt. The same side of my face, in fact, that’s bruised blue-black and swollen.

Lifting my bloody T-shirt, I trace the deep bruising. Then I bend awkwardly to check my throbbing leg and find more bruises there. Fuck.

I clean the blood from my face best I can. Then, hobbling like an old man, I grab my duffel and leave the room.

Midday, huh. Nobody’s there as I make my slow way down the stairs. Whatever was in those pills Johnny gave me, it has to be good stuff to knock me out like that.

My stomach growls like a caged tiger, so I walk around the neighborhood, looking for a cheap place to eat. Snow clouds are hanging low. The day is drab and gray. It matches my mood.

I find a mom-and-pop diner where I slide into a dark booth and eat a greasy burger and fries. The hot coffee warms me up, clears my head some.

I lost the third fight last night. Johnny said something about me fighting too clean. I should work on that. I need to win, need more money. The little cash I have won’t take me far; it’s not enough to rent a place, which would be cheaper in the long term. Safer.

Normal.

If I fight for a few weeks, save money to start anew, I can do this. But god, I ache all over.

‘Don’t be a pussy,’ my dad’s voice rings inside my head. ‘You can take a little pain.’

I hunch over. I’ll do this. And afterward maybe, I’ll tell Audrey about the fighting—when it’s all over and I’m not doing it anymore, when I’m not involved in illegal stuff. When I have a place of my own and a steady job.