Ryker by Jeneveir Evans

Chapter 3

Being tolerant does not mean acquiescing to the intolerable; it does not mean covering up disrespect; it does not mean coddling the aggressor or disguising aggression. Tolerance is the virtue that teaches us to live with the different. It teaches us to learn from and respect the different.

~Paulo Friere~

Mad Dog

September 20th, 1999

My phone buzzed letting me know I had a text. I lifted it off my desk and checked the message. Mav let me know that Cece had arrived.

“They here?” Vip asked.

“Yeah.”

“Want to talk to Clair afterward?”

I sighed. “Yeah, we might as well. We need to get something figured out. Rather do it now than wait till the last minute. Gonna send her a text.”

He jerked his chin at my answer.

Me: My office 1 hr.

Clair: Sure thing, Boss Man.

“Brother, we’ll make it work so she stays with us.”

I blew out a long breath of air. “I hope. She’s made a world of difference to the club, Vip. I know you saw a few months of how it was but, Brother, it wasn’t anywhere near as good as it is now. Mel and Fawn tried but the guys were nowhere near as happy.”

“Understand that, Dog. Thing is, this is her home now. She’s not going to want to leave. She’s happy here, she wasn’t happy being alone. Have an idea that might work. I’ll let you know after we talk to the girls.”

“Alright, Vip.”

I knew he heard them coming down the hall, otherwise, he’d have kept talking about his idea. Cece stopped in front of the open door.

“Y’all come on in and take a seat at the table.”

After offering drinks and getting what they wanted, I sat down at the table.

“Cece, you want to introduce us to the girls?” I requested.

“Sure, Dog. The girl on my immediate right is Leah Wright, the girl next to her is Sage Horton.”

“Nice to meet you, Leah and Sage. I’m Mad Dog, the President of the MC. Y’all can call me Dog. The man to my left is Viper. He’s the VP of the club. I asked Cece to bring both of you today because Vip and I wanted to get a feel for what you are thinking you might want to do.”

“Are you the ones who saved us?” inquired Leah. Her gaze kept going back and forth between Vip and me.

“No, we’re not,” I responded. There wasn’t any way I would let her know that Viper had been one of the men who rescued her. “I won’t tell you who it was. What I will tell you is that we help out the team of men who rescued y’all by providing a safe way home or helping if you don’t have anywhere else to go.”

“Why would you do that?” she looked puzzled at my response.

“Why wouldn’t we?”

“I mean this is a motorcycle club, right?”

“It is.”

“I thought men that were in MCs were bad men.”

“Not all men in MCs are bad, Leah. We love children. We hate that there are bad men out there who kidnap and brutalize women and children then sell them. We don’t stand for that and one way of doing our part is providing what I mentioned. Do either of you have any idea what you want to do?”

Both of them shook their heads. I frowned. Something had to be figured out for these girls. They couldn’t just sit in the house all day and not do anything. One of them was eighteen, the other nineteen.

Viper spoke up, “Leah, you indicated you were taken from the streets. Can you tell us why you were homeless?”

“Do I have to?” she muttered sullenly.

“Not if you don’t want to, no. But it could help us in determining what we can do for you.”

“I really don’t want to say,” she snapped.

“Alright. Your choice. Sage, can you tell me how you were caught by the traffickers?”

“Yeah, I will, but first I’d like to say thank you for all the things you and the men who rescued us have done.”

She sighed heavily before she began her story. “I’d been sleeping on different friends’ couches for over a year and a half. The area I was from, rent was really high and I couldn’t afford to get a place on my own. I kept hoping one of my friends’ roommates would move out so I could take their spot. The last place I stayed was at my friend Ivy’s apartment.

“I usually got in from work when she was leaving to go to work. She’s a waitress and works nights. The night I was taken her boyfriend had come over. He said he was going to wait on her to get home from her shift. He’d done this before so I didn’t think anything about it.

“He went into the kitchen to get a drink. He hollered and asked if I wanted something and I told him sure. The last thing I remember is drinking the rum and Coke he brought me. I woke up in the back of a van.”

“Bastard used a date rape drug on you,” Viper growled.

“Yeah, that’s what I think.”

“Sage, why were you floating between friends? Don’t you have parents that would let you live with them?”

She grimaced. “I left home as soon as I graduated. I lived with my dad and my step-mom until then.”

She stopped talking, looked down at the table and ran her finger back and forth across it.

“Sage, if you don’t want to tell us why you left, it’s okay,” he said softly.

She raised her head and there were tears in her eyes. “My dad never wanted me. He hated me. My mom left when I was five. I can still remember it. She told my dad that she hated her life. She wanted to have fun, travel, and party. She didn’t want to be tied down to one man and she didn’t want to be a mom anymore. One day she got into this van with a group of people in it and they left. I never saw her again.

“My dad looked at me and said, ‘What the fuck am I going to do with you? I can’t even stand to look at you because you look just like your bitch of a mom.’ He basically ignored me from that point on. Within a year he had a new girlfriend. She had two little girls. She and my dad ended up having a couple kids together, boys.

“The entire time I was growing up, all my siblings got pretty much whatever they wanted. I didn’t. I asked my step-mom once why they treated them better than me. She told me it was because my brothers and her daughters were wanted. I wasn’t. As I got older, it got really bad and I couldn’t take it any longer. I kept telling myself I needed to stay until I graduated. So that’s what I did.”

‘Fucking hell,’ I thought as I watched tears run down this girl’s face. This shit never got easier. How in the hell were there that many bad parents? Had I been living in a dream world my entire life? I didn’t think I had. Oh, I knew there were some kids with bad home lives, but I never realized it was to this magnitude. I glanced at Viper to see him swallowing hard.

~*~

Viper

It hurt to hear this fucking shit. I couldn’t understand why kids were forced to endure this type of hell. My damn heart bled knowing this girl had spent her entire life feeling unwanted and unloved. She reminded me so much of Brenna.

It was hard to look into her eyes and see the pain in them. This girl wasn’t trying to con us. She was only nineteen, there was no way in hell she was a good enough actress to be able to express the level of anguish that her watery eyes showed.

After learning we had three older teens with nowhere to go, I’d had Zane look into the girls further. He’d dug deep into each of the girls’ lives. I’d had an idea and I wanted to know if any of these girls would work for what I had in mind.

Dee beat me to one little girl. I was praying that one of the other two would work. Leah had a chip on her shoulder a mile wide. I wasn’t sure if we would ever be able to help her. She didn’t trust anyone. There was no way we could have her on the compound with the attitude she had. That left Sage. After reviewing what Zane had found out, she was the one I was interested in for my plan.

Hearing what her bastard of a father and her bitch of a step-mom had done to her, I’d like to pay each of them a visit. I wouldn’t, but I’d love to. I’d pound some fucking home truths into their heads about how parents should treat their children.

“Sage, it hurts me that you had to endure that type of hell at home. There is no excuse in the world good enough for a parent to do what your dad and step-mom did to you,” I held her gaze as I told her that. She needed to know that she didn’t deserve what had been done to her.

“Sage, before you were taken, where were you working?”

“I was working in a daycare. That’s why I hung on to graduate. I knew I wasn’t ever going to college but the school had a program where I could get certified to work in a daycare. I love kids, babies especially.”

“I’m not sure how you managed to keep the love of children alive with what you went through,” I commented.

“It wasn’t my siblings’ fault that my parents treated me like they did. The kids weren’t horrible to me. They were just…” She shrugged.

“I have a couple ideas about how we can help you out. I don’t want to go into either of them right now. I need to talk with Dog about it. Do you have everything you need for now?”

“Yeah, I’m good. Y’all have provided for everything.”

“Why didn’t you ask me that,” snipped Leah.

I turned my gaze to her. At my look, she sat back in her chair a little. Yeah, she could tell I wasn’t happy with the way she had just spoken to me. She had a mutinous glare on her face. She was giving off a go-to-hell vibe. I might love kids, but they were not going to disrespect me. I wasn’t down with that shit. I already knew that there wasn’t going to be anything we could do that would make this girl happy.

“You want the truth?”

“Yeah.”

“Your attitude sucks. You come in here being rude and disrespectful. Your entire behavior suggests that you don’t want help. You’re not coming into our home and acting like that. Not now, not ever. So you tell me why I should waste my time on someone who doesn’t want help?” I growled at her.

“Maybe I don’t want to be here,” she spit at me.

“Where do you want to be?” It wasn’t often a kid could push my buttons, but this one was doing it.

“I want to go home.”

“Consider it done.”

Her eyes widened. “What?”

I knew my answer had shocked her. She really didn’t have anything to go back to. We would have done whatever we could to help her out, while she might claim to want it, she didn’t, not really. There was too much anger and bitterness in her right now. Maybe one day she would be open to help, but it wasn’t going to be anytime soon.

“You want to go back from where you came? We’ll have Cece drive you to the bus station and buy your ass a ticket. I wish you well.”

“But, but…”

“But nothing. Cece, you still have the card Dog gave you?”

“I do.”

“Then take her ass to the bus station and buy her a ticket to wherever the hell she wants to go. When people don’t want to be helped, there’s nothing you can do for them. Hopefully one day she’ll learn, if not, she’ll be dead,” I commented frankly. Maybe this girl would hear the wisdom in my words, but I doubted it.

I watched as Dog pulled his billfold out of his back pocket. He opened it and pulled out five one hundred dollar bills. He slid them across the table.

“That should more than cover food for you on your return trip home.”

Leah huffed and snatched the money. I looked at Cece and saw the concern on her face.

“Cece. We can’t force her to stay. You have to let this go. She’s not going to accept anything we try to do for her. She’s eighteen. Legally an adult, let her do what she wants. If she has anything at the house you want her to take, then stop and get that but, otherwise, get her on a bus today.”

Cece looked at me and nodded sadly. I glanced back to Sage to see how she was reacting to what she had observed. She was looking at Leah like she was crazy.

“Sage, you good to wait until later this evening before we get back with you about what we have in mind?”

“Yeah, I’m totally okay with that.”

Dog and I watched as Cece and the girls left.

“That was rough, Brother,” he muttered.

“You think I handled it wrong?” I inquired.

“Hell, no. You were nicer to her than I would have been.”

I ran my hands through my hair. I hated what had just happened. Yet I’d seen in Leah’s eyes that she wasn’t going to accept any help. If I’d seen any sign of hope, I would have done all I could for her. There hadn’t been one. Unfortunately, I’d learned a long time ago that sometimes you had to cut your losses and move on. If not, that shit would drag you down.

~***~