Ruthless Read online

  Ruthless

  By

  Tory Richards

  Smashwords Edition

  Copyright © 2018 Tory Richards

  All Rights Reserved.

  Published by Tory Richards

  Tory Richards: http://www.toryrichards.com

  Email: [email protected]

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  Editor: Alisha Corsi

  Cover Artist: Madelene Martin

  ‘Author’s note: All characters depicted in this work of fiction are 18 years of age or older.’

  Chapter 1

  Rebel

  Past

  “Prove your fuckin’ loyalty to me. Fuck her.”

  I’d known it was coming. I’d heard about the sick and twisted initiation ritual that Wildman required in order to get into his MC. But did the girl have to be so fucking young? He pushed her into the room, where she stumbled to a halt next to the bed. My eyes took her in, beginning with her long, ratty hair, which was hanging down into her face. She was a tiny thing—well, short anyway—but the shape of her was all woman, at least what I could see outlined by her dirty clothes. They were a little baggie, as if they weren’t hers. With her head bent, it was hard to see her face and eyes.

  I knew he wouldn’t care, but I said it anyway. “I don’t do minors.”

  I glared up at Wildman where he stood sneering in the doorway, schooling my expression not to reveal the revulsion that was swimming around like acid in my gut. He was a sick fuck. I’d known what I was getting into when I’d taken the undercover assignment for my MC, Dark Menace, but that didn’t mean that I had to like it. If I wanted in all the way, I’d have to do what Wildman demanded.

  “She’s legal,” he snapped back.

  My gaze snapped to the girl. I was certain that she had to be underage, she didn’t look sixteen. “Are you?” I demanded gruffly, causing her to jump. The slightest nod of her head was my answer. Christ, I didn’t want to do this. “It might take me a little while to get it up again.” I gave him a smirk, pulling back the covers to show him the club whore sleeping beneath the sheet next to me. In truth, she hadn’t done much to stimulate my libido. I’d let her blow me, and then had promptly fallen asleep. But for appearance’s sake, I had to play the game.

  Wildman’s eyes narrowed on the naked woman in my bed. “I don’t give a fuck how long it takes, just as long as you know what you have to do. This bitch comes out of this room a virgin and you’re both dead, and don’t think we’re not gonna check. That means there better be some fucking blood on your sheets when it’s over. There better be blood and jizz on her thighs, and blood on your dick. If I’m not satisfied with the results, I’ll let my men pull a train on her before we kill you both.”

  Jesus, the man was a sadistic freak, and so were the men who followed him. All of the things that I’d heard about him were true, and I was stuck here at his mercy. The girl hadn’t moved or shown any reaction to Wildman’s words, but I was sure that she had to be terrified. Still, I had a job to do, and part of it was to be just as dirty and malicious as he was.

  “I didn’t sign up for this shit,” I began, indifferent to the pissed-off look that was spreading across Wildman’s face. “You think I fucking care if your men pull a train on her?” I snarled. The girl’s head moved, and I knew that she was looking at me through the curtain of her hair. “You bring a dirty little bitch in here and expect me to fuck her? I have standards.” I knew that I was pushing him, but a man like Wildman would expect some push back. I’d learned early on that he liked putting his brothers in their place; he liked the power it gave him. I’d tested him more than once, still trying to figure out how far I could go before it was too far.

  With him you never knew. He was unpredictable, and he never reacted to the same type of situation in the same way. That’s what made him dangerous.

  Just as I’d expected, Wildman threw back his head and roared with the mad kind of laughter one might hear in an asylum, but there was little humor in his eyes when he put them back on me. I felt the woman next to me stir, but I ignored her, knowing that only a fool would take their eyes off Wildman. I’d seen him attack a man when he’d least expected it.

  “So give her a shower before you fuck her, I don’t give a shit. But until you bloody that little virgin pussy, your place in the Red Devils stays on the table.” He pulled the door shut on his way out.

  Sick fuck. I couldn’t wait for my club to end him. If Stone didn’t do it, I would, and with fucking pleasure.

  “Baby?”

  I felt a hand moving under the sheet, and the next thing I knew, the club whore that had been sleeping in the bed was groping my dick and balls. She was apparently oblivious to what had just occurred, still hung over. I could smell the stench of her sour breath. I pulled the covers back, took her hand, and threw it back at her, then left the bed. “Get the fuck out.”

  The girl that Wildman had brought in hadn’t moved from her spot. I went to her and pushed back the curtain of flaxen hair that covered her face. She kept her eyes lowered as I took in her delicate features, noting the bruises, and the blood at the corner of her lip. Even through the abuse I could see how stunningly beautiful she was, all over, but it was her full, Angelina Jolie lips that caused my dick to take notice.

  “Look at me,” I demanded softly, keeping my hands on either side of her face where I held her hair. When she ignored me, I gave her a little shake. Finally, she raised her gaze to mine, and a pair of the brightest, bluest eyes I’d ever seen looked into mine. “How old are you?” There was no way that she was legal.

  She swallowed before answering, “Twenty-one.” Her voice was so small that I had a hard time hearing her.

  There was no fucking way! I narrowed my eyes, searching for the truth. “And you’re still a virgin?” I had a hard time believing that a woman who looked like her hadn’t been touched. She nodded, and I gave her a little shake. “I want the words when I ask you a question.”

  “Y-yes!” she responded, her bottom lip trembling.

  “Who the hell are you?” I scowled.

  She wet her lips before replying softly, “Ginger Pruitt.”

  I snorted. I could care less about last names. “How did you come to be here?” I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing when I should have just fucked her and got on with the program. My job had been to infiltrate the Red Devils, which I’d done. Now I had to go through Wildman’s sick demands to stay in the club, or weeks of shit-work would all be for nothing. Stone would not be happy if I screwed this up now. Hell, more than just Dark Menace wanted the Red Devils gone.

  “Answer me!” I knew that I shouldn’t care, but my gut told me that she wasn’t a hang around or any other kind of MC groupie looking to take a walk on the wild side. The fact that she’d been abused led me to believe that she’d been taken against her will.

  “I was walking home from work when two men in a van forced me to get inside. I-I fought them.” My lips quirked at that, and then she surprised me by adding with sudden grit, “I’m going to fight you, too.”

  I laughed gruffly and turned toward the bed, only to see that the whore had fallen back to sleep. I stared down at her for a minute, taking in her snarly blonde hair and black roots, and the smear of makeup surrounding her eyes and lips. She wasn’t as attractive this morning as she’d been the night be
fore, after I’d downed a bottle of whiskey. In fact, she was drooling. Her ass was nicer than her tits—I never had liked the things women did to them when they added too much of that silicone shit.

  I reached for my jeans and gave the snoring woman a hard slap on the ass. She jumped awake, bitching and scowling, her hand flying back to the abused area. “Get out!”

  “What the fuck!” She left the bed mumbling. “You said you were going to do me this morning.”

  I snorted, slipping into my pants. Do her nasty snatch? I’d seen her fucking several brothers before she’d come with me to my room. I’d gotten what I’d wanted. “Why would I do you when I can have this fresh little virgin?” I zipped up my pants, but left the snap undone.

  The whore, who’d been in the process of searching for the only piece of clothing she’d been wearing the night before—a thong—stopped to look up. Her gaze ran over Ginger with disdain. She half laughed, half snorted. “I was her once. Wildman’s initiation, right?” She giggled like a mad woman, finally locating her thong. “He makes all his men do it.” She walked around the bed and stopped in front of Ginger. “A word of advice, honey: when it’s over, you’ll be given a choice—become a club whore, or go home.” She snorted before continuing. “It’s a stupid choice. They want you to say that you want to go home so they have a reason to pull a train on you and then kill you.”

  They could do that anyway, I thought.

  She left my room stark naked. Ginger’s gaze came back to me, and I could see the horror in her eyes. I had no doubt that what the whore had said was true.

  “What is a train?”

  Her innocence was starting to piss me off. She shouldn’t be there. She shouldn’t have put herself in a situation where she could be snatched up off the street. Christ, she wasn’t a kid. She should have been protecting herself better. As far as I was concerned, it was her fault that she was in this mess. “A train is where all the men in the club line up and take turns fucking you.” With each word, her eyes grew bigger.

  “All of them?”

  I could see her mind working as if she was trying to figure out how many men that might be. She wouldn’t survive it. There were too many of them, and they were ruthless, cruel bastards. She’d be ripped apart and would probably die on the table. Jesus, this whole fucking mess was starting to get to me. I was in a one percent MC, and we did shit for the club in order to survive and to take care of our families. We didn’t involve innocents or civilians just for the thrill of it. This whole club, and everyone in it, needed to die.

  When I saw tears fill her blue eyes, I lost patience. “For fuck’s sake, don’t start crying! It won’t solve anything.” I knew I was being insensitive, but if she was going to survive this she needed to suck it up, and I didn’t know how she was going to do that if I coddled her. It was a fact that anger had a way of turning weakness into strength, frustration into determination, and fear into perseverance.

  I knew what I had to do, and by the time I was done with little miss innocent Ginger she was going to hate me enough to survive.

  Chapter 2

  Ginger

  Present

  God, I was tired. Five straight days of working a double shift were taking a toll on my sleep deprived brain, and my body was holding up little better than that. I should have remembered what Bike Week had been like last year and moved on before this one. But the tips were more than worth it in the end. I was finally able to get ahead on the bills and actually squirrel away some decent money. I thought about the coffee can in my cupboard and the roll of bills that was hidden beneath the grains of coffee.

  The truth was that I was tired of moving on. I liked the area, I liked being near the beach, and for the first time in years I felt that I may have finally found a place that I could put down roots. After three years of being on what I considered to be the run, looking behind my back, always afraid that one of Wildman’s Devils would catch up to me, nothing had happened. But I was still afraid that the moment I let my guard down would be the moment that danger would strike.

  “Just two more hours,” Della said in an exhausted voice, all but collapsing onto the bar. She’d been working right alongside me all week. One of the first people I’d met when arriving in Daytona Beach, we’d become fast and best friends. We lived in the same shitty apartment complex. She put a hand at the small of her back and arched with a loud groan. “I’m getting too old for this,” she joked.

  I laughed, because we were only twenty-four, but I could sympathize with her. At the moment I felt twice that. “I suggest that once this week is over we treat ourselves to a spa day.”

  “I like your way of thinking,” she groaned.

  I frowned, giving her a curious look. Her color seemed a little off, and I’d noticed that as the evening had gone on her usual pep had waned. “Are you feeling okay, honey? You look a little pale.”

  She shrugged, brushing it off. “Probably just overtired.”

  That was probably true.

  “Smiles, girls!” We both rolled our eyes and pasted on our fake smiles for Vinny, the owner of Pirate’s Cove. Thank God he wasn’t out front very often and stayed in his back office. He insisted that we keep smiles on our faces for the customers. As if they cared if we were smiling or not. All they wanted was fast service and the chance to cop a feel without getting shot down.

  “I can’t stand that jerk,” Della snarled in a low tone. “’Smiles, girls,’” she mimicked.

  I knew that she didn’t mean it. Vinny was a decent boss, it’s just that we were so tired and cranky with the grueling schedule we kept, and he seemed blissfully oblivious, which came off as being insensitive. More than once I’d wished that we could slap a pair of stilettos on his oversized, caveman-like feet and make him work an eight-hour shift in them.

  I immediately looked around to make sure that Della hadn’t been heard, though. The only eavesdropper that we really had to worry about was Vinny’s girlfriend, Stevie, who also happened to be one of the bartenders that were working that night. But a quick glance revealed that she was busy at the furthest end of the bar filling drink orders. The place was packed, as usual, and it didn’t show any signs of emptying out as it grew closer to quitting time. It was a bad sign when Vinny showed up out front before closing and he saw how full the bar was. He was money-hungry, and we were waiting for the day when he insisted that we stay open until the last customer left.

  “Damn.” I saw a hand go up at one of my fuller tables where a biker club from Georgia, and their women, were seated. Thank God they were staying at the hotel across the street and wouldn’t be driving after they left. They were drunk and rowdy and had kept me hopping.

  “Want me to help you, honey?” Della asked with a genuine smile.

  I shook my head. “No, you need a break too, enjoy it.” I made my way to their table in a kind of dance-like series of moves between tables, chairs, and dancers. I was laughing at myself by the time I reached them. “What can I get ya’ll?” I prepared myself for the rapid-fire orders that I knew from experience were coming. But to my surprise, it suddenly got quiet.

  “Nothing, sweetheart,” one of the men said with a grin, catching me by surprise. “We’ve kept you dancing all night and you done good. You deserve this.”

  I looked down at the bills that he was holding out, certain that sheer exhaustion was causing me to see triple. I blinked and refocused my eyes on his hand. Nope. Still there. Three one hundred dollar bills. My gaze flew up to his, and then gradually moved around the table, taking in all the smiles. I felt the burn of tears in my eyes and clenched my teeth to hold them back.

  One of the women that were closest to me grabbed the money out of his hand and then turned to me. “Take it. I do what you do back home, so we know how hard you work, especially during events.”

  I took the money from her slowly. “I … I … thank you so much!” I’d never gotten a tip so big, and was suddenly feeling overwhelmed. It had to be because I was so freaking tired. I too
k a deep breath, and quickly wiped at the tear threatening to spill.

  “We’ll be leaving now. Maybe we’ll see you next year when we return.” As their president, according to the patch on his cut, scooted back his chair, the others followed.

  “You just might,” I responded, stepping back with a smile. “I hope ya’ll have a safe trip home.”

  My good wishes were met with murmurs and nods, and I watched them leave. Once we’d exchanged the last wave as they plowed through the door to the outside, I swung around to go back to the bar. I tucked the money into my pocket.

  “Baby, you g-get that kind of mon-money from m-me, you better get d-down on your kne-knees.”

  Talk about a glass of cold water in the face!

  I was halted by the feel of a hand curling around my arm. Gasping at his crudeness, I glanced down into the man’s face. His red, droopy eyes revealed that he was beyond drunk. His friends were all laughing at his comment, but I didn’t find a thing funny about it. I’d had enough of sloppy drunks that week, and I was at the end of my tolerance. “Why, did you drop it on the floor?” I glanced down as if that were a possibility.

  He threw his head back and snorted, along with his inebriated friends. They were part of the usual weekend crowd who frequented the bar so I’d seen them around before. “No, it’s in-in my pants!” He leaned back in his chair and thrust his hips up suggestively.

  I glanced at the bar, watching Della shake her head and roll her eyes at me. She realized that I was about to let him have it and was reminding me in her way not to get myself into trouble. I reined in the urge to pick up the guy’s half-empty beer and dump it over his head. I looked at his crotch, then back up to his cloudy eyes. “It can’t be in your pants,” I smiled, pulling my arm away. “The bulge is too tiny.”

  His face instantly turned red, scrunching up with anger as a chorus of laughter and gaffs erupted around us. His friends weren’t the only ones who’d overheard our conversation. I swung back toward Della, shooting her a wink.