Twisted Devil: Vicious Vipers MC 4

1. Dasia

1

Dasia

I jolted awake with a gasp, the memory of rope around my wrists and ankles biting my tender flesh still lingering as I took in the dimly lit bedroom around me.

Soft mattress, I told myself as my heart thrummed with enough force to power the Infinity Gauntlet. Clean sheets that smell like a spring day.

A double guest bed with its pink fluffy comforter, a chest of drawers, and one bed stand stuffed into the small guest room along with me, and I was safe.

For now.

Sucking in oxygen, I forced myself to relax by focusing on filling my lungs and slowly emptying them. I had escaped my captors three days earlier and found refuge with my old case worker, Pia, and her badass biker boyfriend, Ryker.

At seventeen, I was still a ward of the state and should have been tossed back into another foster home, but Pia had promised me the night before she would do no such thing. I’d been in one shitty home after another for which she had always apologized for, begging me to hang in there until she could find me something better.

My final foster father had creeped me the hell out from day one, and he ended up being the thief of my innocence I’d been saving. I’d hoped to find that one man someday, my knight in shining armor fate had waiting for me.

Curling in on myself, arms around my knees, I fought against the despair that any good man would want someone broken by r**e. My throat tightened, but I refused to allow that man to do more damage than he already had.

I’d run away even as the asshole had begged forgiveness for his demons. The sick f**k. Rather than run to my social worker, Miss Pia, I’d taken to the streets, dancing at some seedy joint in South Boston for fists full of dollars seven nights a week.

That’s where Ivan had found me. If that was even his real name.

Sexy Russian accent and super sweet, like a boy next door wanting nothing but my company, he knew how to weasel his way past my walls, using all those words a hurting soul needs to hear.

He’d turned out to be an asshole, too.

I closed my eyes against the morning sunlight peeking around the blinds with their lacey valances and let out a heavy exhale, trying to calm myself. Ridding my mind of what I’d been through in the previous few months would take some doing. And time. I held onto that hope like a piece of driftwood while bobbing up and down in the sea of life. A few weeks from becoming an adult in the state’s sight, and I floundered already.

Lost. Alone in my pain, my fears.

Miss Pia had asked dozens of questions before telling me to get some rest, but I hadn’t shared half of what had transpired since I’d last seen her weeks earlier. She felt guilty for my predicament, claiming if she’d taken me out of the Griffey’s home the first time I told her about his wandering hands...

I refused to hear it, though. Miss Pia had never been anything but kind, motherly in a way none of my foster mothers had ever been. The pain on her face while tucking me in had set a heaviness in my chest. I’d never been as cared for. Never felt so looked after.

Perhaps I didn’t have to be alone after all. Maybe she and her scary biker boyfriend would let me stay until my birthday.

Grasping desperately at that idea and breathing deeply, I noted the scents of cinnamon and bacon—and coffee.

I popped my eyelids open again as my stomach made its protest from the lack of food the previous week or so. Pia had fed me after I’d showered the night before, but the sandwich hadn’t begun to fill the void inside my stomach.

A soft knock sounded, jerking my focus toward the door.

I grasped the comforter beneath my chin. “Yeah?”

“It’s me, Dasia.”

A rush of air escaped me at Miss Pia’s voice. “Come on in.”

I relaxed my hold on the blanket as she came in, a steaming mug in her hand.

“Still like your coffee with extra cream and sugar?”

An ache spread up my throat at her remembering, and I nodded while sitting to prop against the headboard. “Thanks,” I managed to rasp as she handed the mug to me and sat on the bed’s edge. I hadn’t had my morning coffee for close to two weeks.

“How’d you sleep?”

“Like a rock—until a messed up early morning nightmare.” Frowning, I sipped the coffee, and my brow eased at the perfection of the sugary deliciousness burning its way straight to my stomach. “So good.”

“Want to talk about it?”

I sipped again, the scalding heat a welcome distraction from the images still flashing through my head. I’d told Miss Pia some of what had happened—more the what, not the details that were enough to churn my guts half to death. Did I want to talk about it?

“Not really,” I finally answered her, “but maybe spewing out all the s**t of the last two weeks or so would be good, huh?” God knows I’d spent enough time with therapists over the years to know getting the words past tight lips helped out a bit.

“I think it would.” Her kind smile—and the good night’s rest—made spilling easier, and once I started from the point of the r**e and running away, the story spewed from my lips without hesitation, fear she might be disgusted by my bad choices, without embarrassment those choices had led me to hell.

Ivan had talked me into going out for coffee one night after work—and he clocked me upside the head before we even pulled out of the parking lot. I’d woken, bound and gagged in a basement-like room with no windows.

Cold and alone. Scared shitless and hungry as hell.

My clothes had been askew when I came to—no panties beneath my skirt—but no sting, no blood, no throbbing ache between my thighs lingered like when my foster father had taken what didn’t belong to him.

Attacking Ivan, once let free of my restraints, that first day in my prison had only landed me on my a*s, head ringing, and body bruised. Coldness had replaced his flirty, suave smile. A frigid demeanor ruled his face, and silenced his vocal cords. I’d asked—screamed—a thousand and one questions, begging for answers whenever he visited with a daily tray of food, but he refused to speak a word to me.

At least he’d provided a bucket and toilet paper. But after a few days, with nothing but a dirty floor to sleep on and no other amenities to speak of, my hopes of ever seeing the light of day faded.

What seemed like years later, even though I’d counted ten daily food trays, I once more found myself bound with biting ropes, a pillowcase over my head, and carried up a flight of stairs by Ivan and two men I’d never seen before that day. They grunted to each other in Russian, before tossing me into a vehicle, none-too gently. Ages had passed before the forward motion stopped. Cool air licked at my feverish skin as snot and tears dirtied my already filthy face beneath the pillow case taped tight around my neck.

I was a nobody, worthless even to whomever had spawned my a*s, so I knew my k********g had nothing to do with a ransom.

My fears over a future I couldn’t control became known for sure when Ivan and his two buddies locked me up in a metal container, one where twenty other young women huddled together against the far end.

Sex s*****y, I told Miss Pia. I’d had no doubt.

A life of submission and servitude—and probably physical a***e beyond the s****l I would be powerless to stop once sold. But we hadn’t been sold within that first hour or so, and I’d decided I would escape—or die trying.

For two days, we weren’t fed or let out to use a bathroom. Thirst set in to combat our mind’s obsession with fear, but I held onto my sanity as others whimpered and cried, their hope already gone before I’d even arrived.

I refused to accept my reality—and I talked all but two of the oldest women to go berserk once the door opened again. While I certainly wasn’t a born leader, someone had needed to step up to the plate if we wanted to fight for our future. Three strong men appeared in the light spilling through the door, but we out-numbered them by seventeen. Surely, a bunch of wild, eye-ball scratching, biting, and screaming women stood a chance.

“I’m not sure how many of us actually made it off the docks,” I whispered to Miss Pia, the girls’ screams still in my ears. “There were two other men beyond those three—and only a handful of other girls even made it outside the container.”

“Where were you?”

“Down near the harbor—I doubt I would even remember if I saw the place again. I was so freaked out, so desperate, I managed to focus on one hiding spot after another, once even jumping into the water to escape them.”

Face pale, Miss Pia studied me with a stare that had always rooted out my thoughts and feelings.

“Would you be able to pick Ivan out of a group of men?”

I nodded without hesitation. “Definitely.”

“And the others?”

I shrugged, tightening my grip on the empty mug still clasped in my hands. “Not sure—probably not.”

Miss Pia let out a heavy exhale and patted my knee through the comforter. “I’m not going to inform my old boss that you’re here, Dasia. You’ll be eighteen in less than three weeks. This room is yours for as long as you want.”

Tears sprang to my eyes, and I found myself slumping against the headboard, not having realized my entire body had tensed tight from my tale. “Seriously?”

Lips in a thin line, she nodded. “While it’s not right in the eyes of the law, I’m coming to not care about that fact as much as I used to.”

I swiped the back of my hand over my cheek to stop the leaking tears as I considered the scowling biker who owned the house we sat in—and probably the influence behind her change of heart. I’ll admit to being slightly spooked by the dude. “Isn’t this Ryker’s place? What does he think about my staying?”

The severity of her face eased up a bit, a small smile lighting her blue-green eyes. “He’ll do whatever I want because he loves me.”

Damn. My throat tightened up again. To be loved like that. Number one in someone’s life...

“I’ve got baked French toast in the oven and he’s making bacon,” Miss Pia said, patting my knee again. “Why don’t you come down and have some breakfast with us? You’ll need to tell Ryker the jist of what happened, so we can decide on what to do next.”

“Got any more of this coffee? It’s wicked good.”

She laughed lightly while standing. “Plenty of it. Take your time, though. No rush.”

Once she shut the bedroom door softly behind her, I eyed the leggings and sweatshirt she’d given me the night before, folded at the foot of the bed. I grabbed the leggings and pulled them on, but paused while considering the sweatshirt.

The zippered hoodie Ryker’s friend had given me the night before—Devil, both Pia and Ryker had called him—lay atop the chest of drawers. I padded over the cool hardwood flooring and snatched it up, lifting it to my nose.

The sweet scent of licorice and an underlying musk of absolute deliciousness flooded my senses.

Damn.

I sniffed again, remembering his firm yet tender grip on my arms after he’d told me to put it on the night before as I’d stood shivering outside the Vicious Vipers’ club. He had a raspy, sexy as hell voice, enough so that just the memory of the low timbre sent tingles throughout my entire body.

Frowning, I reminded myself men couldn’t be trusted, I shoved my arms into the sleeves, zippering the too-big sweatshirt up to my chin like my own vibranium shield against the world.

Going through s**t might break a person down, but in the movies, they usually rose from the ashes. While I wasn’t anywhere near ready to sprout wings, I lifted my chin and strode out into the hallway like my shoulder blades tingled.

I’d managed to escape a life of s****l s*****y, surely I would be able to face down my kidnappers some day and tell the tale that would get their asses locked up.

I might have been broken, but maybe someday, I would find what Miss Pia had—a happily ever after.