A Sinful Vow: Inked Angels MC (14 page)

Lobo turned his mouth to Luke’s ear and hissed, “Admit you are a liar. Admit it now.”

Luke’s head was wrenched back, cutting off most of his air flow, so that the only thing he could emit was a guttural “Unnhh.” The sound was sickening.

“Admit it!” shrieked Lobo. He shook Luke like a rag doll, surprisingly strong for a man of his size. “Tell it to your precious sister’s face!” Luke could only moan.

With a vicious tug, Lobo pulled the knife across Luke’s forehead. Blood flowed down over my brother’s eyes like a crimson curtain as his scalp began to separate from the skin of his face. Lobo dropped his limp frame, and he collapsed to the floor in a heap.

Disgusted, Lobo threw the knife clattering to the floor. He clucked distastefully and held out his hand to one of his men. The henchman handed over a black rag, which Lobo used to wipe the grime from his gloves. He smoothed his hair back into place and breathed heavily, trying to resume control.

Once his breath had calmed, he opened his eyes and focused them back on me. My throat was horse from screaming and my wrists were raw and bleeding from my attempts to pull them free of the nylon rope. But I was just as trapped as I had been before.

He cooed to me as he came back over and sat down across from me once again. “Shh, shh,” he said, raising a finger to his lips. “
Lo siento
, I do not mean to frighten you. Violence is ugly to me. I do not like to use it unless I must.”

“You’re a bastard,” I spat at him. “You’re an animal.”

Lobo shook his head sadly. “A bastard, perhaps. An animal, most certainly.” He paused for a second, lips pursed, considering me. “Perhaps it would help if you knew where I came from. Let me tell you a story, señora.”

He circled behind me again and laid his gloved hands on my shoulders. I flinched at his voice right next to my ear.

Lobo pointed one finger at where Luke lay curled and bleeding as he started to speak. “Look at him,
princesa,
” he said. “Once, I was like that. I was
joven
,
young, perhaps twelve or thirteen. My father did it to me. He was what we call
un borracho
, a drunk. All day and all night, he was drinking, always, always. And he would get very angry when he drank. He used to hit my mother and me on the nights he was very drunk. And my father wore many rings, so that when he hit us…” I could feel Lobo shake his head as if the memory still pained him. “It hurt very badly.”

His breath was hot on my ear. “One night, my father came home, drunk and angry, as usual. He asked my mother for his dinner. But my father, you see, always used our money to buy his drinks. So we had no money to buy food, and without food, there was no dinner for him. This made him angry, too. He hit my mother.”

Lobo’s hands pressed down harder on my shoulders as his intensity grew. Across from us, I could hear Luke whimpering in pain. The blood continued to flow down his face. “I tried to stop my father, but he was much bigger and stronger than me. He hurt me badly, just like I have hurt your brother here.” He pointed at Luke again. “It is not a good thing, this violence. It is ugly. I do not like it.

“When my father hurt me, I decided that something must be done. It took me a long time to recover, but while I lay in the hospital, I came up with a plan. The night I returned home, I stole enough food from the market to make my father a feast. He came home drunk, and I gave him the food. He ate and ate and ate. He left none for my mother and me, though we had not eaten anything and were very hungry.

“My father ate until he was full, and then he fell asleep. I waited until my mother had gone to sleep, too, for it is not good for women to see violence. When she was gone, I took the syringe I had taken from the hospital and stabbed it in my father’s eye.”

I was shivering in fear. Lobo’s story was appalling. I wanted so badly for Blaze to be here. He would know what to do, how to fight back. But he was gone and couldn’t possibly know how much danger I was in, trapped down here with this madman.

“Do you know what it sounded like when I stabbed my father?” Lobo asked me. “He howled. He howled like a wolf as he died. And that is why I am called Lobo. Because I am the noise that precedes your death. The howling. Just like my father.” Lobo’s hands had tightened into vices on my shoulders, squeezing with immense strength.

Everything was reeling. I felt nauseous.

This was what happened when you danced with the devil.

The water kept dripping from the ceiling. Lobo’s men had not moved or even blinked during his story. Luke had not moved either. The sounds coming from him had stopped. I could not even tell if he was breathing anymore. For all I knew, he was dead, and I was alone.

“I do not want to hurt you,” Lobo said to me. “But I need you to tell me where the guns are that I was promised. That is all that I want. Once I have the guns, I will leave. I will kill your brother, of course, for planning to steal my drugs from me and take all the riches for himself. But I will leave you alone. All you have to do is tell me where the guns are.”

Lobo’s voice was brimming with tenderness. It was a sickly sweet tone, like a kind uncle who wanted only a simple favor.

But I had seen what he did to my brother. I had seen the demons lurking in him. He was a monster.

More importantly, I had no idea where the weapons were hidden. The Inked Angels had a thousand different stash spots scattered across the city, and they could have kept the items they had promised to Lobo in any one of them. There was no way for me to know where to look.

“Where are the guns?” he said softly, looking straight at me. Those eyes were hideous—all black, colorless, barely human. “Tell me where they are, and everything will be okay.”

“I don’t know,” I whispered.

It felt like he was staring into my soul. Those eyes pierced right through me. I was pure fear. Cold sweat slid down my face. Water dripped from the pipes.

A clanking sound rang out from somewhere behind me. I tried to turn my head to see what it was, but I could not move enough in the chair. Lobo looked up, and a broad grin broke out across his face.

“
Perfecto
,” he said happily. “Right on time.”

I heard footsteps shuffling forward, and the rustle of several large objects sliding across the ground. My pulse quickened.

Then I saw what it was.

Several more men dressed in all black were dragging the bound and gagged members of the Austin Inked Angels charter. They had been badly beaten. Bruises covered their faces and arms, and what little was left of their tattered clothing could barely conceal the deep cuts on their torsos and legs.

The Diablos pulled the men around into a messy half-circle in front of Lobo and me. I saw them all—Skull, Chain, Cannon, Grimace, so many others—men who had watched me grow up and guarded over me. My brother’s men.

Our only hope of rescue was gone.

The men were groaning in pain as the Diablos tossed them onto the wet concrete floor. I looked over to Luke. He had struggled into a seated position, and as he saw his soldiers being brought in, trussed up like wild game, his eyes bulged wide.

“No!” I heard him scream. “Not my men!”

I felt like my heart would explode. Sheer panic overwhelmed every inch of me. This was it—this was the end of everything. I would watch my brother and his men be murdered here, and then Lobo would kill me, too. He would do it slowly. He was a man who liked playing with his food.

Lobo walked slowly along the line of Inked Angels. He ran his fingertips along their faces and brought it to his nose. He inhaled deeply, like the scent of their sweat, their blood, and their fear was a precious perfume to him.

I had no doubt he savored this. Where did evil men like him come from? I thought back to his story and another shiver tore down my spine.

“Now,
mi amigo
,” he said to Luke, “I will kill your
compadres, uno a uno,
until you tell me where my guns are.
Entiendes?
”

Luke screamed again. I couldn’t cry out, couldn’t even move. All I could do was sit still and let fear consume me.

Lobo turned and paced back down the line. He seemed to be considering the men like they were livestock for sale, one hand stroking his chin. He murmured to himself as he walked.

“No, not this one. Perhaps him? No, no. Ah, yes.” He stopped in front of Skull. “I think we begin here,
mis amigos.
”

Luke’s eyes were wide in fear. The veins in his neck and forehead stood out like tension cables. He screamed, over and over, until his voice was too hoarse to make another noise. Tears streamed down his face.

As long as I could remember, Luke had cared for his friends. He was a leader—strong and confident, unafraid to take charge. The men who were his patch brothers respected him, because they knew he would always do right by them. This was the ultimate torture for my brother. He could handle pain, but to watch the men who trusted him be killed withcold precision—that would be too much to bear.

It was heart-wrenching to watch his face and body contort. He would have done anything to save them, but the bindings on his wrists and ankles prevented him from moving. The two goons standing at attention on either side of him watched him warily, ready to beat him to a pulp if he did manage to break loose of the ropes.

Lobo snapped his fingers and pointed at Skull. A pair of the men who had first dragged the captives inside jumped to attention.

“String him up,” Lobo ordered. They sprang into action, hauling Skull by his armpits over to where several chains dangled from the pipes above.

I watched as they fastened the chains around Skull’s body. Once the links were secured, they pulled down on the loose ends, so that Skull hung upside down from his ankles a full five feet above the floor. Blood leaked from the wounds that crisscrossed his body, but the worst was yet to come.

Lobo did slow laps around the suspended man. Skull’s face turned red as the flow of what little blood remained in his veins rushed to his head. He was starting to struggle to breathe.

Just like he had done with me, Lobo ran a fingertip down Skull’s cheek. It was like he was touching a steak to ensure it had been properly cooked. The same callousness, the same carelessness, the same lip-licking, eternally unsatisfied hunger was painted across his face.

“I will begin the easy way,” Lobo announced. “Where are the guns I was promised?”

Skull spit straight in Lobo’s face.

I almost wanted to laugh. Skull had been around me ever since I could remember. He had joined the Inked Angels at the same time as my brother. I couldn’t even count the number of times I had seen them come limping up the driveway, bleeding and bruised after a fight at the bars, but still laughing with their arms around each other. Luke and he were best friends. They had been through war together, never letting anything come in between them.

And now Luke would have to watch him die.

I couldn’t bear to look at my brother. It was bad enough to hear his wailing. “Not Skull! You motherfucker, don’t you dare touch him!” Luke wept. “Please, God, don’t touch him.”

Lobo reached up and gently wiped the saliva from his face. He grimaced and reached out for the rag from one of his men. As he cleaned off where Skull had spit, he spoke.

“That was very rude, my friend,” he said.

“I ain’t your fuckin’ friend,” Skull sneered. It was becoming harder for him to talk as more blood kept rushing to his head.

“No, I suppose not,” said Lobo. “Pity.” In a sudden blaze of motion, he whipped a knife out from his boot, spun, and slashed across Skull’s throat. Blood foamed and jetted. I could hear Skull gurgling as the life slipped from his eyes.