He’d hit on me on the first night I came to the club. Well, all of the men had. I was a new face, fair game. Likely competition for them as soon as it became apparent I was handing out rejections. He’d almost tempted me, with his smooth voice, his jarring beauty. He had engaging conversation that hadn’t started with, “hey baby, wanna fuck?” which had been many of his brother’s opening lines, or variations of the same.
But this was not the man from the clubhouse party hitting on a woman. No, I wasn’t a woman to him now, I was a traitor.
I wondered if that man was an act, or if this one was. I had a strong feeling it was the former.
I closed my book, standing. “I’m assuming you’re not here to ask me to dinner?” I asked dryly.
His jaw clenched. His eye twitched. The hatred for me was painfully obvious. “You wanna see what we do. What we are? For your story?”
He didn’t wait for me to speak, he just snatched my arm and dragged me. His grip was tight. Violent. Painful.
I didn’t struggle. It wouldn’t make a difference.
There was something in his eyes that told me he might like it if I struggled.
So I didn’t.
And I did want to see who they were. But not for the story.
For my sorry, broken and tortured soul. Because I hadn’t put it through enough already, obviously.
We moved through the back end of the clubhouse, past the doors that housed a lot of the members—since most of them were new transplants and didn’t have a home in the town yet—we went further than I’d gone. Further than I thought the building had within its walls, it didn’t betray this size when looked at from the outside, which I guessed was the point. We stopped at a door at the end of a hallway, separated from anything else.
It had four locks on it.
Something moved in my stomach at the sight of the seemingly innocuous door. Something that slithered up my spine, to the base of my throat.
Swiss stared at me, daring me to say something, anything. His grip tightened on my arm.
“Are you going to show me what you seem intent on showing me, or we just gonna stare longingly into each other’s eyes?” I asked, my voice betraying none of the dread or fear that that door awakened inside me.
Something moved around, mingling with the empty cruelty in his eyes. Something more human. But something I was coming to discover with the Sons of Templar was that every man here was a monster, but they were also a human. Not wholly one or the other. Swiss was closer to monster than most but still human.
His grip loosened slightly as if it were a sign of respect.
But it was only to unlock the door, it tightened once again as he opened it and dragged me down.
Down into the bowels of the clubhouse.
The underbelly of the Sons of Templar.
Where the story lay.
Where the humans disappeared, and the monsters came out.
The basement stank.
Of sweet. Blood. Tobacco. Metal. Mold.
It didn’t smell of death. I didn’t agree with some of the greatest writers and poets of our time. Death didn’t have a smell. A sound. Death was silent. It had no odor. No signifier. Only a feeling. A bone-deep knowing that every human has. That only comes seconds before you see it, too late for you to run, avert your eyes.
That was the point.
I didn’t avert my eyes at the dead body hanging from a hook on the ceiling.
I merely ran them over the man curiously. He was shirtless, wearing only tattered and stained jeans. Though he wore mostly blood.
It pooled underneath him.
Another man sat bound in a chair.
He was alive.
Claw jerked up from where he had been sitting smoking on a small stool to the left of the room. In his other hand, he still held a bloody knife.
“Dude, what in the fuck are you doing?” he hissed at Swiss, advancing on us. “You can’t bring her in here. This is club business.”
Swiss’ grip on me tightened as if he were expecting Claw to snatch me away from him. I was nothing but an object right now, to be tugged and bruised. I’d been treated worse for lesser stories, so I didn’t protest.
Not just because I wanted the story. Because I needed it. I needed to be sickened by these men, by the life Liam had chosen, in order to be sickened by him, in order to stop wanting him so much.
“Yeah, and she’s here to learn about the club business,” Swiss said to Claw when it became apparent he wasn’t going to tug at my other arm. “She’s here to write her story. Hansen gave her permission.”
Claw glared. “Yeah, permission to tend the fuckin’ bar, watch some idiots get roughed up, watch Blake get too drunk and fall off his bike, see a fuckin’ orgy. Not a felony!”