Don Vidal

Welcome to book 7 in the Snakes Henchmen MC series! This book will include subjects that can be upsetting to some, but there will be trigger warnings when and if needed. The book will be free to read, and all I ask in return is that you leave comments :) I hope you enjoy Draven and Marnie's story! Marnie Yelling, punching, screaming. Vile words. Name-calling. Did I really expect anything else? It’s been the same thing for the past five years. Why did I stay that long? Sometimes I wonder. I’m not sitting here thinking, ‘Poor me, my husband beats the s**t out of me nonstop, I’m so afraid, and I wish I could disappear.’ Not that I haven’t thought that more than once. However, as the years passed, I realized I couldn’t change anything, so why worry about it? My husband would beat me whether I was scared out of my mind or not. The man hasn’t touched me sexuall.y in six months. He gets that elsewhere. Not that I care at all about what he does. That might make me stupid; he’s my husband. But if he’s getting it elsewhere, it means he’s not coming to me for se.x. Paul denies it when I call him out on it, of course, but you’d have to be completely fuckin.g stupid not to see the signs. Whenever I ask him if he’s sleeping with someone else, he laughs in my face. He tells me that it’s my fault. I’m fat, I’m ugly, I’m worthless, and I make no effort to look good for him. The usual shi.t men spit at women to make them feel like nothing, and even though I don’t care where he gets se.x from, I hope his fuckin.g c**k drops off anyway. I am worth so much more than this life. I know that I am. So, why haven’t I left him before now? Because I have the parents from hell, my father would have never allowed me to leave Paul, my husband. My father arranged our marriage because he wanted to teach me a lesson. I’d just gone through something awful, losing the three people I loved most in the world, and all because the man I loved was Italian. My father is the most racist man I have ever met. He told me that merely speaking to someone outside of my own species – yes, that’s precisely how he thinks – was beyond betrayal to our race. I have never thought like that, but I was a coward and didn’t argue with him either. He wasn’t a man you could argue with. Three weeks after my ordeal, I was forced to marry Paul Simpson, white and what my father calls pure bloodied. I didn’t even have a say in the matter. I didn’t even fight him on it; I just walked down that aisle and did what was expected of me. I married a man who would soon become the worst mistake of my life. It took two years for Paul to realize something was wrong with us. He couldn’t get me pregnant and needed a son to carry on his legacy, or so he said. He dragged me to the hospital for tests to see why I was, in his words, barren. He had no damn clue that I’d been on the contraceptive injection since the very beginning of our marriage. Why on this earth would I want a child with him? I would rather stick pins in my eyes than have a child with a racist pig like Paul. It turned out that I’m not the barren one, he is. I didn’t mean to gloat or laugh, but I couldn’t stop myself. All the months he’d been vile to me about not being able to have a child hurt me. He had no idea of what I hid from him, what painful secret I could tell no one about. Of course, he beat the shi.t out of me for it, but it was worth it in my mind. I didn’t need the injection after that. Why would I when he’d never get me pregnant, and I wasn’t a cheat? I’ve been having a hard time with things these past few months. I found out that my baby sister, Brooke, two years my junior, had been seeing a man from a motorcycle club. It turns out that this man was black. Well, his grandfather was black, his mother mixed race, his father white. My sister was so in love with him that she even wore his leather jacket, stating that she was his property. That was a little odd for me; no woman should brand herself as anyone's property, but that was Brooke's choice, and I respected it. Brooke didn’t tell our family that she was dating Hawk; she knew what would happen if she did. Of course, my father found out, beat the crap out of Brooke, forced her away from Hawk, and made sure she stayed the hell away from him. A few months later, my sister gave birth to a little boy. Our father planned to have the child illegally adopted the very next day for a price; of course, he even called a woman to come to collect the child. It must have been three minutes after giving birth that my father dragged Brooke to her feet and beat the hell out of her. It took Brooke until our parents were asleep to pick up her baby and walk miles to Hawk’s clubhouse. She’s been there with him and their son ever since. Not that that stopped my father from kidnapping Brooke. He wanted her home where he believed she belonged. He didn’t even care that her baby was still breastfeeding. He beat my sister almost to death. Hawk and some of the men belonging to his club found her pretty quickly. I still, to this day, don’t know all of what happened, but I do know that Hank Webster died from a fatal gunshot wound to the stomach. He’d been beaten the crap out of. But the report claimed that Hank had been in a bar fight, gone home, and drunkenly shot himself. I don’t believe that’s what happened; I know in my heart that Hawk had something to do with it. Probably pulled the trigger. I managed to get away from Paul long enough to see Brooke in the hospital. I held her to me as we cried. We cried because we were free of Hank, but not one tear was for him. Our tears were of relief. The thought that I could have lost her was so painful. The thought she could have lost the innocent baby inside of her or that Gabe could have lost his mother was almost too much to bear. Hawk promised he’d never let anything happen to Brooke again. I believed him because I knew how much he loved Brooke. I knew he’d do anything for her, and I thought that now Hank was gone, it meant I could leave Paul. I was wrong. All five of my brothers made damn sure I knew what they’d do to me if I left Paul. It meant his money would no longer be family money. Yes, Paul and his family are loaded. Not that it ever bothered me, but he plows a ton of money into the Webster family ranch each year. Without it, the farm would have to go. Besides, my brothers are just as racist as my father was, just as violent, and even without him, they needed the money. My brother also threatened to go after Brooke if I left. I couldn’t have borne anything else happening to my sister, so I stayed. I had kept in secret contact with my baby sister for months after she left the ranch to be with her man and son. I’d driven to the clubhouse and asked to speak with her; I wanted Brooke to know that I was proud of her and that I had no problems with her being with a man of color. I held her close to me as she thanked me for loving her enough to try. I held her little boy close to me, kissing his head and telling him how much Aunt Marnie loved him. Because I did, instantly. I was invited to Brooke and Hawk’s wedding. Brooke asked me to be her bridesmaid; of course, I was going to say yes. Paul forbade me from going. I had no choice but to ask his permission. I had no other excuse I could come up with for where I would be. Paul told me what he would do to me if he found out I’d snuck over there. I didn’t care; I went regardless because I don’t take orders from racist assholes. Brooke looked so beautiful and so happy that day. I envied her so much. Hawk, or Dante as Brooke sometimes calls him because it’s his real name, proved just how much he loves my sister. How much he loves Gabriel. I don’t think I’d ever seen a man look at a woman the way he looked at Brooke as they said their vow, and it brought me to tears. What more could I have asked for?