I looked around the surveillance room. The file cabinets and safes in the back against the wall caught my attention. I tip toed to them and tried opening a few drawers. The file cabinets required a key, and the safes needed a code.

Well, this was a fucking bust.

I glumly turned around and jumped at the sight of Prez standing casually against the wall beside the door with his arms crossed. Looking at me.

Heart in my throat, I gave him a weak smile and walked over to him. I tried to hide the nerves by playing it cool, but tremors ran up and down my spine. I’d just been caught. Red-fucking-handed.

“You alright?” he asked, and the simple question seemed weighted, as if there was another question in there.

I nodded quickly. “Yeah, I was just looking for Remy.”

He studied me, and he wasn’t hiding the fact he was studying me either. His eyes roamed around my reddened cheeks and down to my shaking hands. Fuckity-fuck.

I headed for the door as nonchalantly as I could. He, not so nonchalantly, stood in front of it, blocking my way. The man was huge and wide, and though he had a bit of a beer belly, his heavily tattooed arms, straining against the sleeves of his white shirt with muscle, made up for the fat he carried. His shimmering blue eyes chilled me. They were threatening and uninviting. This man could snap my neck in a heartbeat, and that didn’t seem like an impossible outcome standing in the midst of him in my obviously terrified state after being caught snooping.

“Did Remy never tell ya this room is off-limits, even to old ladies?”

I shook my head. “N-No. He-He never told me that.” That was the truth, too. If he had, I’d have gladly told him because lying to the President of the Jackals was not something I intended to die from. No, I preferred to live another sixty or so years.

“Well, it’s fuckin’ off-limits, especially to prying little girls who know better than to try openin’ locked cabinets in a room they know they ain’t allowed in. Got it?”

I nodded wholeheartedly at his words. I was sweating from the fear. This wasn’t like a detention at the Principal’s office. Even Norman at his worst paled next to this guy.

“What, are you mute? Answer.”

“I understand.”

Prez moved to the side - his way of dismissing me - and I gladly obliged. I opened the door and hurried out of there like my ass was on fire. I didn’t stop running until I was back in my room, and then I felt stupid as hell because Prez would have seen my running ass on every frame on those screens.

*****

I shook when I heard Remy at the door. Surely Prez had told him what he’d caught me doing. Oh, fuck. This was going to be bad. So, so bad. The kind of bad you don’t ever walk away unscathed from.

He opened the door and, just like I predicted, his face was dark and void of emotion. Void of emotion on Remy was even worse than angry Remy. It meant he was over the top enraged on the inside.

And it was aimed at me.

Oh, fuck times a million.

I didn’t disguise my horror. I shamefully brought my knees to my chest and waited for his verbal assault. What did it say in their outlaw books to do to a woman who’s caught rifling through the club’s privacy? Was this crime punishable by death? I’m sure Remy loved me and all, but if the whole club wanted me six feet in the ground, I didn’t think he could protect me.

He coolly regarded me, shutting the door behind him in his usual calm grace. He tugged his vest off and threw it on the dresser, and then he walked to me. Okay, okay, be cool. Apologize immediately.

“I’m sorry–”

“Shut up,” he sharply cut in.

I nodded immediately. Why, yes, I’ll gladly shut up. I’ll do whatever you want, just have some fucking mercy!

“Take your clothes off,” he demanded chillingly.

I widened my eyes. “What–”

“Take them off!” he shouted, the veins in his neck protruding now.

I didn’t. I pleaded with my eyes, begging him not to do something irreversible.

He went around the bed and grabbed me by the arm. He hauled me to his chest and shouted again into my ear. “Take! Them! Off!”

When he let go, I hurriedly threw my top off and then my jeans. I was crying sloppily, watching him from my peripheral undo his belt. Oh, god, what was he doing? What the fuck? What the fuck? What the… My fingers trembled around the clasp of my bra. I miraculously undid it and then peeled my underwear off.

“Lay on your stomach right now.”

I did as I was told and lay flat with my head to my side away from him, crying harder into the sheets. I heard his jeans come off and then the sinking of the bed behind me.  Pain erupted once again when he grabbed me by the hair this time and rested his full body behind mine. He twisted my hair so that my face turned as far to my right as I could go. His face came into view above my shoulder, and there was thunder in those dark eyes. It was the most frighteningly ominous look I’d ever witnessed in him before. I was staring at the man everybody had feared and I was suddenly afraid for my life. I thought this was it, I was a goner.

He was going to kill me.

“I will rape you, choke you to death, and burn every limb in your body if you lie to me right now,” he gruffly told me. “Is that understood?”

My unstopping tears no longer troubled him. He looked at me not as his Birdy, but as a traitor worthy of pain. I couldn’t turn my face away when all I wanted to do was escape those eyes and sob into the sheets beneath me. However frightened I was, I was more frightened at what he might do if I didn’t answer. So I nodded my head and stuttered, “Y-yes.”

His hand tightened and my scalp ached from the pull. “Who did you see at the park today?”

Of course he knew. The man was omniscient; nothing escaped him.

“No one,” I said. It was like a basic human need to protect Jaxon.

I screamed in agony as he pulled even harder at my hair. I felt strands tear from my scalp, numbing my forehead as it stretched the skin upwards.

“Who did you see?” His other hand went under me and around my neck. Oh, my God. He was going to do it. Oh, my God. The man I’d come to trust and love…

“N-No one!” I hollered, staring straight into his eyes with as much hatred I could allow, no longer caring for the outcome of this fucked up game. If he was going to kill me, be done with it already! I wasn’t going to deceive Jaxon, and if that cost me my life, so fucking be it.