The Fall of V (The Henchmen MC 13)

"Oh, my God," Peyton hissed as she jumped off of Sugar's lap, knowing I needed him.

I needed everyone.

I needed fucking everyone, but even that was no guarantee of anything.

"I'm calling the Mallicks," Sugar announced.

"I got the Grassis," Duke added.

"Breaker and Alex," Edison added, going for his phone.

"Sawyer and Barrett," Reeve jumped in.

"Anyone else?" I asked, not seeming able to think straight, not ready to break this news to poor fucking Summer.

"Luce," Wolf growled, pointing to the phone at his ear.

"I'll call Baird too," Cyrus added. "Longshot, but anything is better than nothing."

"Yo," Cash said at my side, voice calmer than it should have been, but that fuck always had a knack for staying calm in the worst of situations. "Abruzzo."

"That motherfucker," I agreed, storming out of the compound toward my bike, finding Lo's guys had forced the T-bird out of the way, and had Vance, Iggy, and Heather out, getting stories from the frantic guy and hysterical girls.

"Call Lloyd," I demanded of Roderick who had followed at my heels, stopping beside me while I got on my bike. If there was ever a time to get the law involved in my business, it was when my little girl was in the fucking trunk of a car, waiting for me to save her.

I had to fucking save her.

I couldn't let them hurt her.

I couldn't let them put marks on her like Summer had, like Janie had, and Lo, and countless other women who knew the angry touch of men using their power in a way the world never intended.

Not my daughter, damnit, not my fucking daughter too.

She knows how to fight, I reminded myself.

Unlike Summer, unlike Janie, when they got caught by people meaning to hurt them. She knew how to fight, to defend herself, to give it all she got.

I don't want my daughter to ever feel as helpless as I was made to.

That was what Summer had told me one night when Ferryn had gotten a pretty bad shiner, prompting me to suggest that maybe we should dial it back a bit with the training.

Thank fucking God that my woman was stubborn about somethings.

Ferryn had eleven years of martial arts under her belt, even at times besting Lo, Janie, and even some of the men - Cy, Edison, Pagan, and Laz - who she'd trained with to learn different fighting styles and how to work against them.

Though, if this was V, there would be an army. She'd had one once upon a time. She'd had men in her pockets to kidnap and torture Reeve a bit back.

Sure, she'd went into hiding after.

But while V was an elusive creature, evil to a degree that it made it hard to even understand what her motivators were anymore, there wasn't a single doubt in my mind that she was rebuilding her army. From what Marco Abruzzo said, she still had contacts, she had plans to utilize them, rebuild her inhuman trafficking operation, building stacks of money made on the foundations of slavery and rape.

The word made a pit shoot out of my stomach and lodge in my throat.

Rape.

There had been rules when she'd had Summer - orders for her men not to step over that line.

But, well, when you employed the lowest human specimens the world had to offer, they often got twisted little ideas in their heads. The kind of ideas that had Summer on her knees contemplating suicide to avoid the seemingly inevitable since she knew there was no way out even if she took down one attacker; there were dozens more. Who knew what fate could have been worse than suicide inside the walls of V's compound?

And with Summer's escape, then years inside a cell to mull things over, she had likely found ways to ensure a repeat could never happen again.

Which didn't fare well for Ferryn.

She was a smart girl, though.

It was something you knew about her even as a toddler - those eyes of hers were always watching, taking things in. Her mouth always asking questions, demanding answers.

If there was any possible way to escape, she would find it.

If there wasn't, well, I would just have to find her. Whatever it took. However many people needed to be tortured, no matter how much blood had to stain my hands, no matter how many doors I had to knock down, deals I had to make.

Whatever it took, I would see my daughter again. Sitting at the dinner table, animatedly telling us about some school drama, on the couch, nose buried in a book about ancient torture, the Salem Witch Trials, the Vikings, Romans, Greeks, philosophy, poetry, in the doorway of her room as she folded her arms and unleashed her own version of hell on me or Summer for some thing or another, at Christmas, beaming when she realized we had paid attention, had gotten her what she wanted, hell, even in the goddamn front seat of that kid's car in the driveway.