Halfheartedly, he rolled his body over and swung his legs off the bed. As his boots hit the floor, he made a concerted effort to sit up. No go. He tried again; palming the mattress, he was able to shove himself into a standing position.
He was standing. Sweet.
Tequila – 0, Ripper – 1.
Now if only he could master the intricate art of walking.
And thus commenced his one-man stumbling circus show.
Tequila – 1, Ripper – 1.
When he finally managed to find his bathroom—which shouldn’t have been as hard as it had been in his meager nine-by-ten bedroom—and locate the toilet as well, he decided he was too drunk to piss standing up. Then he, a self-proclaimed drunken, gun-wielding, biker extraordinaire, plopped his ass down on the seat, tucked his dick between his legs, and pissed like a girl.
Tequila – 1, Ripper – 1.5.
Now he had to stand up. Again.
Surprisingly, he made it to his feet but when the need for walking arose he fell forward, unable to bear his own weight, and went stumbling into the sink.
Gripping the edge of the counter, Ripper stared blurrily at his fucked-up reflection. Stared at the gaping hole where his right eye had been, the seven slashes across his right cheek, his mangled right arm, and . . .
“Why couldn’t you have just let me die?” he whispered to a god that obviously didn’t give two fucks about him.
He’d been ready to die.
But God hadn’t granted him peace; the fucker had given him hell on earth instead. And the face of a demon to match.
Ripper gasped as Frankie swiped his blade across his chest, tearing open his skin. Again.
Naked. Hog-tied on the floor of an old warehouse, bleeding from too many wounds to count, Ripper knew he was going to die and silently, albeit a little angrily, made his peace with God.
“Not lookin’ so pretty anymore, Horseman,” Frankie said, laughing. “Lookin’ pretty fuckin’ fucked-up.”
He blinked, trying to see through the blood and tears. “Fuck you,” he rasped. “Fuck you.”
“Sorry, fuckwad, you ain’t my type. But I’ll make a deal with you. You tell me what fuckin’ deal Deuce worked out with Bannon’s crew, how much profit he’s skimmin’, and I’ll let you jerk off before I slit yer fuckin’ throat.”
He choked back a sob. He didn’t want to die and he definitely didn’t want to die like this, at the hands of a madman who got off making people bleed and scream before he did them in. But there was no way in hell he would ever give up his club or his prez. No fucking way.
“Do your fuckin’ worst, you cock-suckin’ piece of shit,” he choked out, cringing as he said it. You don’t tell a man like Franklin “Crazy Frankie” Deluva to do his worst and then expect anything but his absolute worst and Frankie’s worst was . . .
Ripper screamed as Frankie’s blade pierced his eyeball.
Sitting on top of his bound body, stopping him from thrashing, Frankie slowly twisted his blade.
Pure.
Scalding.
Fire.
He screamed and sobbed until, thankfully, his brain chose that moment to shut the fuck down and he passed out cold.
It wasn’t as if he didn’t deserve what Frankie had done to him; he knew he did. When you’d taken as many lives as he had taken over the years, inflicted as much pain as he had, without giving what he’d been doing so much as a second thought . . . well then, you didn’t have a right to be surprised when God decided to let karma fuck you up the ass with a pitchfork.
But that didn’t mean he was happy about it.
In fact, with each passing year he was growing angrier, more and more miserable, unable to forget but desperately trying. He was drinking more, tapping into shit he shouldn’t, doing whatever or whoever he felt like because . . . really . . . who gave a fuck what he did?
Ripper didn’t have any family left, didn’t have a girlfriend he gave two fucks about, and if his brothers knew what had really happened with Frankie, the real reason he’d been able to get away, they’d lose all respect for him.
So, yeah, that amounted to him having a whole lot of jack-fucking-shit.
And now he could add Danny to the long list of fuckups he’d made in his life.
Danny.
Deuce’s fucking daughter.
He’d fucked Deuce’s fucking daughter.
He was fucked.
He was so fucking fucked.
Maybe this was how his miserable life was finally going to end: death by pussy.
Which, when he thought about it, made sense. It was because of pussy that you came screaming into this world; might as well be pussy that took you out of it.
Staring at his reflection, Ripper started laughing, because, what the fuck, this shit wasn’t real. This couldn’t be his life.