My mother screams. I want to tell her I’m okay, but I can’t move. I can’t do anything but rock and clutch my tummy because it hurts so badly. Daddy rolls her over and she hits him, kicking and screaming the way I sometimes do when she says I can’t have a lolly at the shops, but eventually he wins. Mamma cries as he hurts her over and over. When he’s done, he draws back his fist and hits her again, right in the eye, and I scream as her head lolls on the floor.

“Fucking do what you’re told next time, bitch.” He spits on her, but she doesn’t move as he stares down with his hideous dark blue monster eyes. She doesn’t move or make a sound. Eventually he walks away, stomping to the front door, and then he leaves, slamming it behind him.

I crawl across the floor to Mamma. Her face is broken; it’s all bloody and swollen up like a puffer fish. Pushed out of shape.

“Mamma,” I whimper. She reaches towards me and I place her soft, pretty hands in my small ones.

“I’m okay, baby,” she whispers. “Mummy’s okay.”

“Mamma.” Snot runs from my nose. My tummy still hurts from where he hit me, but I stop my crying because the Monster says men don’t cry, and I don’t want him to come back and hurt us again. “You need me to call Aunt Jackie?”

“No!” she says sharply. “No. Baby, Mummy’s okay; it’s just a few cuts and bruises.”

“But Mamma …” I begin. She pats my hand to keep me quiet.

“Shh, just let me stay here a minute longer, Puddin’.”

“Okay,” I whisper. Reaching out my hand, I stroke her hair when she begins to cry. “Mamma, you’re still the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen.”

She cries harder, rolling onto her back, and pressing her broken face into her hands.

I didn’t mean to make her cry.

I didn’t mean to hurt her the way he does.

I never want to be like him.

A monster.

I’m dying.

Or at least, that’s how it feels.

I don’t know how long I’ve been here. Days turn to night and I’m still just as miserable as I was when Tank brought me here from the hospital before I could run. Despite the restlessness in my legs, the agitation in my body, I couldn’t run now if I tried.

My teeth ache. My hair aches. My blood aches. It feels as though my flesh is crawling, pulled too tight, suffocating me. I twitch and shake. I vomit all over myself, and then I still beg and plead for the drugs that have been slowly killing me. Like a lowly, mewling thing, I crawl on the floor and clutch at his legs and beg him to do something. Kill me or let me go. Inject me—give me something, anything. A hit, an orgasm, a fucking gun to aim at my head.

He does none of those things. He just sits and waits and watches.

Sometimes when I’m asleep, my feverish brow is tempered with a cool cloth and I want to kiss him in appreciation, but I don’t move for fear that he might take it away. He gives me water to drink, spoon-feeds me soup and other liquids that I have no desire to swallow, and occasionally—if I behave and don’t abuse him verbally or beat my weakened, tiny fists upon his chest—he rolls a joint and lets me smoke half of it. I know he doesn’t even want me having that, but he’s not completely heartless, and I think he knows that without it, without that one little thing that makes it okay, even for just thirty minutes before the sharp fingers of pain come to clutch me within their excruciating grasp again, it’s something.

The second I start to feel better, I’ll run. I can’t go back to the clubhouse; Prez will have wiped his hands clean, Kick has deserted me for some other pathetic bitch, and the only thing keeping me there was the knowledge that I was safe. But there are other clubs. Other bikers who need a warm body in their beds, and other drugs to lose myself in.

Tank wants to take those drugs away from me; he wants to take my escape away from me, and I can’t let that happen, because running from that nightmare is the only thing that keeps me going. It’s the only thing keeping me safe from him.

When I feel better, I’ll leave. It’s the only way to keep us safe.

I glance over at him. His eyes are closed and the dark circles underneath are just as deeply etched as my own. However long I’ve been in this room, he’s been here with me, keeping watch, replacing the soiled bucket with a fresh one, and losing just as much sleep to my illness as I do. He doesn’t flinch when I lash out with bitter words fuelled by my hatred and the chemical imbalance in my brain, he doesn’t throw me out when I threaten to shoot him with his own gun, and he doesn’t say a thing when my vitriol is directed at him, and not myself, or the man who fed my addiction for years.

He doesn’t say a thing at all.

He hasn’t said a word in days other than to bark basic commands like get up, eat or drink, as though I was a disobedient dog he’d failed to train.

No, he’s not completely heartless, but sometimes it feels like it.

Soaked with sweat, I throw the covers back and run a hand through my hair, wiping the perspiration from my brow. I get up and splash water on my face from the bathroom sink, and then I stare at myself in the mirror. His eyes glare back. The monster. The man whose DNA I share. The same cold blue eyes set in the same face, with the same thick neck, square jaw, and full lips. A wide nose with a bump on the bridge from being broken too many times, hard cheekbones, and the same thick black brows as my father.

No matter how many times I stare at my reflection, the truth of it never changes: I am my father’s son. And though I’ve tried for years to pretend otherwise, I’m cut with the same cloth.

Heartless, cold, corrupt.

I pat my face dry and head back to bed, but a noise from the kitchen draws my attention. Ivy. I wander through the cabin. It’s dark, and the only light this far out comes from the moon shining in through the floor-to-ceiling windows. I find her in the kitchen, opening drawers and cupboards, tearing the place apart like a tornado, searching for her next fix.

I sigh, and flip on the light switch. She blinks and stares, caught like a deer in headlights. Her hair is limp and mussed from spending days being strung out. Black circles shadow her eyes, a combination of old eye makeup and a lack of sleep from detoxing. Ivy’s lips curl up in a sneer and then she lunges at me.

“Give it to me, Tank,” she shouts. “I know you have more. Give it to me.”

“No,” I say, my voice devoid of any emotion, though I’m certainly not devoid of anything but sense when it comes to this fuckin’ infuriating bitch. I hate the drug that’s eating her from the inside. I hate how desperate it makes her.

“Please?” she begs. “I’ll do whatever you want. I’ll let you fuck me again.” She claws at my bare chest. It hurts like a motherfucker. I raise my brows at her. She hasn’t let me touch her like that for days, and suddenly she’s willing to whore herself out? I close my eyes, because I want so badly to sink inside her. I want to fuck the shit out of her the way I used to at the club, before I dragged her arse up to the mountains to get her clean. I want that so bad my balls ache.

Her tiny hands fly to the string-tie on my pants. She yanks it and slips her hand inside the waistband. She doesn’t bother removing them, just wraps her hand around my thickening cock and strokes. Her movements are jerky and rough, but it’s fuckin’ hot all the same. I groan and slide my hand up her waist, squeezing her tits hard. She moans, a sound halfway between a whimper and a cry of approval.

“I want you inside me, Tank,” she whispers. I look down into her eyes, and then I stiffen. She doesn’t want me; she wants me to cave and hand over her next dosage of pot. I close my eyes and grip her wrist, yanking it out from my pants. My cock bobs and presses painfully against the fabric.