Tuck Read online

  Katie knew Daniel was about to say more, but Claudia, one of the nicer Executives, walked up. She was a sweet lady but had a tendency to blurt out whatever was on her mind, something Katie really like about her, the others in the room not so much.

  “Hey, Katie, so sorry to hear you’ll be leaving us. I had really thought you would make Lexington General your new home.”

  “Thank you, Claudia, but sadly no, Lexington was just a stop on my way.” Feeling like she needed to add more, she said, “But I’ve loved my time here, I’ve learned so much from all the doctors and nurses. Wherever I decide to land, Lexington General will always have a special place in my heart.” It was a little over the top, but Claudia was a company girl, and it made her smile. Daniel, on the other hand, was standing next to Katie, now, with his arms crossed over his chest, tapping his foot. The situation was so ridiculous, Katie laughed which was apparently not the right move.

  “You find this situation funny, Ms. Dodge? Lexington General has devoted untold amounts of resources and time in your training, and all you can say is it has been a stop along the way for you? Very disappointing. We expected more from you, Ms. Dodge. Had the hospital known this, I’m sure your scholarship would have been denied,” Daniel admonished.

  Claudia noticed the tension between her and Daniel and started talking a mile a minute even repeating the same question in a different way.

  “Do you know what you’re going to do next? Have a hot man waiting for you somewhere? Do you have any plans for what you’re going to do next? I didn’t get any requests to forward your information.” The poor woman was so uncomfortable, she was starting to fidget. Katie felt sorry for her, but she was done playing with Daniel.

  “Dr. Fitzgerald, Lexington General was fully aware of my plans to do my Residency here and moving on afterward. It was discussed at length, just not with you. Now, if you will excuse me, I believe my time here has officially come to an end.” Katie turned slightly and addressed Claudia, completely blocking Daniel out.

  “Claudia, it has been a pleasure working with you the last couple of years, you are a true asset to the hospital. I hope we can keep in touch.” Katie gave Claudia a small hug, meaning the words she spoke. Katie did like Claudia, but she needed to leave now, politically correct or not. Daniel was just getting started, and she wasn’t going to let him this time, she had heard it all before.

  He never once let her forget she was less than, that her medical degree wasn’t from an Ivy League school, and her background or lack of money made her a charity case as far as he and the other upper echelon people at the hospital were concerned. Katie hated it. She had worked her ass off, first becoming a nurse, then going on to medical school—working tirelessly to achieve her goals. For people like him, it didn’t matter she was top of her class, or she earned everything she had. He would never see the value in that for him and others, they only looked at breeding and money. Katie had money, her father had made sure of that, but this asshole had no clue what was in her bank account. All he knew and cared about was she had gotten to this hospital on a scholarship. What a douche. In the next few minutes, she could wash herself clean of Dr. Daniel Fitzgerald and the others like him, at least for a little while.

  For the next month, she was going to enjoy the crystal clear blue waters of Northern Michigan. Her friend Sky had a place up there and had arranged for her to have a cabin right on the water. Besides the occasional girl’s night with Sky and her friends, she was going to be completely, blissfully alone. She’d had a hard time convincing the Club she didn’t need to be watched. Sky’s husband worked in security, so she had finally managed to convince them. For the first time in her life, she would just be Katie, not a biker princess or a nurse, doctor, or anything, just Katie, and she couldn’t wait.

  Katie had just made it to the hall and was walking toward the elevator when her arm was grabbed roughly from behind, causing her to spin around. Facing Daniel, she wasn’t surprised he had the nerve to put his hands on her.

  “What?” Katie said through gritted teeth, yanking her arm out of his hold. This was the other side of Daniel, the one who tried to use his looks to get what he wanted. He would get a lustful look in his eyes and puff himself up, leaning close and whisper sweet nothings. It sickened Katie.

  “Enough, Daniel, you aren’t going to win this time. I’m leaving, and there isn’t a damn thing you can do about it,” Katie said harshly, hoping he would finally get the point.

  “Katherine, honey you know this is the right move for you. Just take a little time on your vacation and think about it. We could have so much together.” Daniel tried coaxing her, but it was all about what he wanted. He had decided she fit some kind of ideal partner mold for him. He had even spoken to her about it, in detail. How she would work for another year or two until she popped out a couple of kids and became a true country club wife. Even going as far as to tell her that her “family” would need to be taken care of, that they were not the type of image they needed to project for their future together. The truth was he wouldn’t be pursuing her so hard had his parents not taken an instant liking to Katie.

  She had met them at one of the many dinners she had been forced to attend. Not -knowing at first they were related to Daniel, she had liked them. They seemed pretty down-to-earth, talked lively about the causes they coveted, and asked her questions, tons of questions. She should have known better, but she had just come off a double shift that was full moon crazy and was enjoying herself with a couple of glasses of good sweet wine. Those dinners made her grow up really quick. There were sharks everywhere—give a little, and they took a lot.

  The MC had sheltered her, and he who shall not be named had warned her, told her how naïve she was, but Katie had refused to believe it. She had grown up a lot since then.

  “Listen! I’m done with this and with you and your advances and plans. I have not once encouraged you or led you to believe we were anything other than colleagues. But it seems like you can’t take a hint, so let me spell it out for you. I Will Not be coming back to Lexington! I Will Not have anything further to do with you! And I Will Not change my mind, Ever! Do you understand now!” Katie knew she was getting loud—they were getting an audience. Something Daniel wouldn’t like.

  When he stepped back and put his hands up saying some shit about a misunderstanding, Katie just turned around and hit the down button on the elevator repeatedly until the door opened.

  “You’re going to regret this, Katherine,” he whispered, right before she stepped inside. She turned around, hit the button for the bottom floor, just as the doors were closing.

  “Not even a little bit, Daniel, but don’t worry, the new residents should start in about a week. I’m sure you can find someone else to set your sights on. I’m sure you can find another charity case to impress your family in no time. Asshole.”

  Katie rushed out of the hospital, not wanting to risk another confrontation with Daniel. She hit the parking garage and saw her yellow Volkswagen Beetle and made a beeline for it, not paying attention to anything or anyone one around her. That was her first mistake. Her second was not taking her keys out of her pocket—her damn keys with the miniature bottle of pepper spray attached. It took all of two seconds. A man asked, “Are you Dr. Dodge?” When she said yes and started to turn around, Katie was hit with volts of electricity, knocking her to the ground. Her body seized and convulsed, and she was rendered useless. She couldn’t move, she couldn’t speak, damn, she could barely swallow, and the pain was unlike anything she’d ever felt before.

  She felt her body being lifted and thrown but was helpless to do anything about it. She got a brief glimpse of a leather cut and a shit load of badly done tattoos before she was hit again with the electricity and blacked out.

  Chapter Three

  Fuck! Tuck was in pain. It had been months, at least that’s what he thought—he had absolutely no gauge of time anymore, after about the first week, he had given up trying. The one thing Tuck was surprised
about, he was still alive. The Vultures had done everything they could think of to torture him. Electricity, cuts, chemicals, and hits, nothing was off limits except death. They just kept coming, every single fucking day until one of them made a mistake and stabbed his ass. That laid him up to where he was now. They had left him alone for about a week now, and he was slowly gaining his strength, another thing the fuckers would know nothing about. The Vultures wanted him alive, they needed information and thought that Tuck had it, but he didn’t. That didn’t mean he was going to tell them that, hell fucking no. He would get that information if he ever got out of this fucking place, and he would use it to finally take these assholes down.

  This was a new place they had brought him to, some kind of renovated office building from what he could figure out. He had no idea where he was but could tell by the sounds coming from outside it was in a city of some sort. There was almost constant traffic. The walls were cheaply built and thin, so he had to be careful how much and when he did things. Like right now, he had to piss like a mother fucking racehorse but couldn’t risk getting up while the vermin were circling.

  The head vermin had just left his room, leaving behind the little whore. Tuck wasn’t much for calling women names, but this one deserved every bad one he could think of. He should have done more than just banish her when she fucked with Cathy and Crank. But he had done what the RBMC always did with women, step lightly. What a fucking mistake.

  Misty was the worst kind of woman—pretty on the outside, rotten on the inside. Tuck had never personally messed with her, didn’t like her from the start, but a few of the brothers had vouched for her, and she kept them entertained, so he allowed her into their Club. Now that Bender was gone and she was alone with him, she took liberties with his body. Grabbing his dick and balls more than a few times and roughly ripping at the bandages she was supposed to have changed two or three days ago. Mumbling the whole time how she could have made it good for him, would have made him a good Old Lady, and how he deserved what he was getting now. The shit just kept going, on and on. Tuck laid there, acting the part of a helpless victim. Hell, in a sick way, her presence and lack of intelligence had helped him out.

  She didn’t have a clue how to take a person’s pulse, and Tuck knew several tricks to slow his heart rate, just to throw her off if she got lucky and actually found the right spot. But this shit was getting old, he only needed a few more days to gain more strength, then he was fucking out of there. He would have done it a while ago, but the fuckers always had him chained and cuffed. This was the first time he wasn’t tethered to anything, and he planned on taking advantage of it, soon.

  Damn, he should have known better, knew turning himself over was a fucking mistake from the beginning. But when that asshole showed him a picture of his little girl, tied up with tears streaking down her cheeks, all his training went out the fucking window, and at that moment, he would have agreed to anything. But they fucked up. These boys liked to talk, and he knew for a fact they didn’t have his daughter, at least, not anymore.

  From the sounds of all the bitching he heard, his boys had done a number on the gang the Vultures had paid to take Maddie and the members they sent along to pick her up. That shit did Tuck proud. His boys had pulled through even when he wasn’t there. He knew they would have Maddie’s back until he could get there to take over and knowing that made him feel just a bit better.

  Misty had done her version of cleaning him up and was finally out of the room. He needed to clean up, piss, and fix the bad patch job she’d done on his wounds. Thankfully, the room was completely stocked with medical supplies but no sharps of any sort, so nothing of use as a weapon but enough to get him through another day. Gingerly getting out of the rank bed, Tuck first went to the door and made sure that the ditz had locked it. Sometimes, she forgot. When he found it was locked, he gathered a few supplies and went to the attached bathroom.

  Relieving himself in the sink—he couldn’t take the risk flushing the damn toilet and let any of those fuckers know he was up—he quickly finished, then rinsed out the basin with alcohol and water. It was the best he could come up with at the time. He was still so fucking weak, he had to sit down on the toilet while he redid the shoddy bandage job, making sure to use the betadine and ointment to clean his wounds. They weren’t looking good. He had two stab wounds to the stomach and another one in his thigh, each angry red, oozing puss. He knew damn well he was going to need some antibiotics soon. Otherwise, even his best efforts weren’t going to save him.

  Completely worn out, sweating like a fucking pig, Tuck forced his body to move back into the room. Once he got to the bed, he flipped the top sheet—hoping it was at least a little cleaner, grabbed a blanket—even though he was too fucking hot for it, and placed it over his groin—needing something to cover his vulnerability after Misty’s unwanted touch. During his time in the service, he had slept in worse places, but this fucking dump was starting to rate in his top ten of ultimate hellholes. Usually, he would try to do a few pushups, squats, or laps around the room, but he was just too damn weak for it today. Laying down on the bed, he did manage a few stretches, it would just have to be enough for now.

  Now he was stuck, laying in that damn bed with nothing to do but make plans and examine his fucking life. He had done a lot of that lately—plan, then another obstacle would be put in his path, so he would re-plan. He could deal with that shit, it was innate in him to do that, he had been trained to do that shit. What he wasn’t equipped to deal with was examining his fucking life and realizing how many fucking regrets he had.

  He regretted not letting his brothers help him with his kid, keeping them at arm’s length when he should have been bringing them closer. It was bullshit and his damn pride that kept him going at it alone. He didn’t want his brothers to know how badly he had fucked up and how many screws Maize had put to him over the years. Hell, the truth was he didn’t want to admit some fucking barfly had gotten the better of him. They would lose their respect for him, at least, that’s what he told himself. Now, he doubted it was true.

  Shit, he regretted not checking back in with Maize after he fucked her and the condom broke. He had gone to the doctor and got himself tested, but he never once thought about going back and checking on her, taking the bitch at her word she was on the pill. Then there was Tessa, one of his biggest fucking regrets. He had treated her so badly for so long, he didn’t see a time or place when they could make it back to where they once had been. Then his ultimate regret, Katie. Shit, he had forced her to choose between the Club and her career. Technically, him or her career although he never put it in those words. He had never wanted her to choose him, she was destined for better things than he could ever offer, and he wanted her to have those chances.

  She might have been born into the biker lifestyle, but Tuck had decided she needed to be out and made it happen. If her dad were still alive, he would have kicked Tuck's ass. Major lived and breathed the RBMC, so did Tuck, but at least this way, she was safe. He had allowed himself one small taste of her lips before he ordered the prospects to load her car up and walked away from her, forever. That was another regret because that small taste made him want more.

  She would always be the one woman he would never allow himself to have. Tuck had been a young man, fresh in the military when his Dad and stepmother died. At one time, he had blamed that death on his sister. Their aunt had led him and Caine to believe she had wanted to go to a party and whined until she got her way. He had never once looked into it further, didn’t even bother to take leave long enough to come back and bury them. In some way, he realized it was just easier to believe the line of bullshit his Aunt had been feeding him, turning his back on his family and focusing on his career.

  It wasn’t until he got medically discharged from the Military and joined up with the RBMC, he started to realize he might have been in the wrong. He had come out of the military, mean, single-minded, and needing an outlet. The RBMC served that purpose well. He prospe
cted and eventually rose in the ranks. When the Mother Chapter President offered him his own Club, he jumped at the chance. The one piece of advice, the one that stuck with him the most was, Your brothers make you strong. Family involving a woman and kids made you weak and vulnerable. Make them weak and vulnerable. For the longest time, Tuck believed that and lived his life in just that way, no attachments beyond the RBMC.

  Seeing the other brothers pair up hadn’t changed his mind until he saw what Cathy and Crank went through and realized that without Cathy, Crank was weak. With her, he could do anything. Tuck had asked him about it once, and Crank just laughed.

  “I knew the minute I laid eyes on her, she needed to be mine. The shit we went through—her getting hurt, almost leaving me—almost killed me faster than any bullet ever could. When you find a woman who makes you whole, you keep her close and never let her go. Life isn’t worth it otherwise.”

  Tuck still didn’t get it. What he saw was his position in the Club, and the nature of the business they did could get any woman he hooked up with killed or worse to get back at him. Hell, even his daughter didn’t stand a chance of not being sucked into his world, and she was just a little kid. He was seriously considering, if he ever got out of this mess, asking if Cathy and Crank would just take off with her, keep her safe and away from him and the Club. He knew they would do it—Crank would put up a fuss, but Cathy would win out in the end.

  Every time he thought of it, he could see Katie shaking her head, telling him there was another way—shit he could almost hear her voice. It was like she was in the room censuring him for even having those thoughts saying, “Oh my God, what have you done!” He wanted to open his damn eyes and scream back he hadn’t done anything yet, but he would. She needed to stay the fuck out of his damn head, she didn’t belong there! Why couldn’t she just leave him alone? Why did the smallest thought of her make him regret and question so damn much?