Shane (Mallick Brothers 1)

Lea’s ex, yeah, he seemed like a real fuckin’ prince.

Angry, blood-boiling angry, at both the fact that she had been attached to such a dick and that she had obviously gotten the email recently and hadn’t shared with me, I came on a little strong when I confronted her.

When I backed off and let her give me the gory details, yeah, it took about every bit of self-control I had, which was an admittedly small amount, to stay on that bed and not start smashing shit.

He’d fucking raped her. Repeatedly. For years. And her piece of shit pussy family had let it happen. She had been alone and trapped and abused. And, in my book, knowing abuse was going on and not doing anything to put an end to it, yeah, that made you just as guilty as the abuser. Her brother deserved to be fucking gutted for letting that happen. And she was feeling guilty about it happening.

That shit wouldn’t stand.

I got that she and I, we were new. We were still getting to know each other. But that didn’t mean shit. She was mine and I took care of my people. I sure as fuck wasn’t going to be a bitch and sit there and rub her back and tell her it was going to be okay. Promises were shit without actions to back them up. And me, well, I was an action-oriented kinda guy.

I held her until she fell asleep. I let her kick off me, as she always did. Then I got up, got dressed, and plugged the address into my GPS. It was forty-one hour and some change a drive straight through. If I stopped to catch a couple hours of sleep here and there, I would make it there in three days, tops. That was if I could even settle down enough to sleep. And, judging by the way my blood boiled as I crossed out of Jersey, I doubted I would.

Flying was a choice, a better one time wise. But it also left a pretty clear trail. Cars were a bit harder to track state to state. I had change for the tolls, no electronic thing that could let the cops follow my trail if they ever did suspect me.

She would know too. As soon as she woke up, I had no doubt that she would know exactly where I had gone.

What she would do from there, I honestly wasn’t sure.

Maybe she would follow. But she would be so far behind me that she would be way too late.

Lea didn’t exactly seem like the kind of woman to pace the floors and worry when she could figure out what was going on.

Chances were, she would eventually make the choice to come offer herself up, thinking I was in over my head. Hell, maybe I was. It was an MC. If I wasn’t careful, I could bring the whole lot of them down on me. I didn’t know dick about East coast bike gangs, but it didn’t take much imagination to guess that their ranks were well into the double digits.

But if I could catch him alone, if it could be just me him and me. Maybe he was an evil bastard, but I had the advantage of being really good at violence. I also had the motivation of bone-deep anger to go along with my violent nature. If it came down to him and me, he would be having a nice closed casket service. No way was that bitch getting the better of me.

The thing about men in power is, sometimes they forget that there are men out there more powerful than them. So used to being bowed and kowtowed to, they can’t fathom the fact that they aren’t the biggest, baddest mother fucker out there. Sure, her ex was a bully. He picked on people beneath him, his men, his women. But I had a lot of fucking experience with bullies in my life. I had a perfect track record for coming out on top.

My parents, for all their hardassery, taught us morals.

When wrong was being done, especially to someone who couldn’t fix it themselves, it was our obligation to step in. Kids at school, the nerdy ones with the glasses and Star Wars lunch boxes with matching thermoses, we didn’t sit by and let them get pushed around. We handled it. We bullied the bullies. We kept shit fair.

Nothing about what happened to Lea was fair.

I was righting the wrongs.

I was bullying the bully.

And there was no way I wasn’t getting back to my woman when all was said and done.

Covered in her exes blood if there was any justice in the world.SIXTEENLeaReally, what choice did I have?

I couldn’t go by myself. It would be a suicide mission. I would only make it worse. And my contacts in Navesink Bank were limited.