“What?” Edge asked.
“I just took the sandwich down to Leah. She met her mother a couple of hours ago. Fucking whore tried to sell her years ago. She ended up in foster care. She went looking for her mother, and the bitch sold her again. Get this, she wants Leah to prove herself to us.”
“How?”
“Making us all fall for her and stealing the dope from us.”
“And how did you learn this?”
“I just talked to her.”
Edge got to his feet, and Junior followed him, aware of Dig and Trick doing the same thing.
They all walked down to the dungeon.
Leah was nibbling on the food he’d sent her. He saw she’d pulled out the ham he’d placed inside, and left it. Everything else was being eaten.
That was good. He was happy to see her eating something. Anything.
Taking a deep breath, he put his hands on his hips and waited.
“What game are you playing?” Edge asked.
“I’m not playing any game. I’m just telling you the truth. You want to hurt me to get back at my mom, but I’m not the best material. She doesn’t know me. Doesn’t want to know me.”
“As a kid who grew up in the system, you look a little too innocent for me,” he said.
She snorted. “So because I wouldn’t let anyone mess with me, I look too innocent. I screamed my lungs out the first time one of my stepfathers tried to attack me. He had a wife who beat the shit out of him. I can protect myself if I have to.” She reached down and removed the cuff. “I also learned to pick locks, and to escape most problems.”
“You think you can walk out of here?” Edge asked.
Junior was even more turned on.
She had this vulnerability about her, but she was also able to take care of herself. What wasn’t to love?
“Mom’s got a lot more dealers heading her way. If I’m with you guys, I’ve got a chance of making it back home alive.”
****
Leah had her virginity, but she wasn’t innocent. She’d had a lot of men in the past ten years—and even though she was only twenty, it had been ten—tell her how special her innocence was.
She had learned early in life to take care of herself and to realize men were only after one thing, her pussy. Staring at the four men in front of her, she ate her sandwich. She really disliked ham, which was why she had pulled that off.
Edge was the President of the Broken Devils MC. She had never met an MC before, but these men were different. From what she’d seen on a television show, there were usually a lot more than five men, unless they were hiding a whole bunch of guys.
This wasn’t the way she’d planned to lose her virginity. She had hoped for romance, love, flowers, the forever after kind of setting.
Not to be used for drug payment and demanded to find more drugs and to hurt these men. She didn’t know them.
“You think this is going to make me trust you?” Edge asked, pointing down at her ankle.
“I’m not trying to make you trust me. I don’t like being chained up.” She wasn’t about to tell them at one of her foster homes, for screaming at one of the female caretakers, she had locked Leah in a closet for the entire weekend, chained her to the wall, and treated her worse than she would an animal.
No one had come to her rescue; they were all afraid of what the foster mother would do.
Leah hadn’t lasted long there. She had gone to the school and told them all about the closet. The foster mother had ended up in prison for abusing her charges. Leah had smiled at her as she was escorted away.
She wouldn’t be used or hurt in any way. As she got older, it became easier to keep her mouth shut just so she could count down the days to getting out.
On her eighteenth birthday, she had some money stored away from the odd jobs she’d been doing. She had rented a place, worked, studied, and worked some more, before finally becoming desperate enough to look for her mother.
The biggest mistake of her life.
“I don’t imagine many people do.”
“What do you want?” Edge asked.
“What do you mean?”
“You’re not with your mom, and we don’t fucking know you. Tell me what your game is?”
“I want to be protected. My mom seems to have a habit of selling me, in case you can’t tell.”
“I can tell.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t want to be sold again, so I was hoping you’d protect me. The way I see it, I’ve still been sold to you guys. I can cook and clean. I have nowhere else to go.” She’d been let go from her other job because they couldn’t afford to keep her, even though they had felt she was an amazing worker. With no job, and her rent due, she’d packed her few belongings and gone hunting for her mother as a last resort.