Madeline Sheehan - Unbeautifully

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.

And then he had to look away, because what grown fucking man wanted to watch himself cry.

Deuce leaned forward on his handlebars, scanning the park playground until he found what he was looking for. Standing beside Kami, near the sandbox Ivy was playing in, was Eva.

Cox was about twenty feet away, tossing a ball around with Devin and Mary Catherine, looking every inch the devoted father to both his daughter and the son he hadn’t known he’d had up until…Jesus, had it been two years already?

Deuce had never been a devoted father.

He’d been a shit father.

Never home, always losing his temper, not giving a shit about what their bitch of a mother was doing, never knowing what the fuck was going on in either Cage or Danny’s lives.

He’d promised himself it was going to be different with Ivy, with Eva. And it had been. Shit had been real good.

And then…

In his peripheral vision, Deuce saw Frankie get up on his knees and lift Eva’s hips. Frankie’s hand snaked around her waist and dipped between her thighs. Eva lost her battle. Her breath caught, her eyes rolled back, even as tears streamed down her face. Her legs quaking, she went face first into the pillow, crying out softly through her orgasm. Frankie followed her down, groaning loudly, his body jerking. Then Frankie turned to him. And grinned.

Deuce’s chest went tight. Fuck him, he couldn’t even think about it without wanting to kill someone. He’d been helpless. Him. Frankie had taken what was his, right in front of him. And laughed about it. And Eva, goddamned motherfucking Eva, had gotten off with another man’s cock inside her. Raping her. In front of him.

The whole fucking shebang made him sick to his stomach.

He couldn’t get past it.

He couldn’t forget it.

He’d stayed by Eva’s side through all her bullshit. Grieving Frankie, blaming herself, then shock had set in, followed by depression the likes of which he’d never seen before. For a while he thought she’d never shake herself out of it, and he was scared shitless because of it. Because, fuck him, he’d never loved a woman like he loved this woman, and the thought of losing her was unthinkable to him.

But he’d lost her.

She was right there. Maybe fifty feet away from him, but he’d lost her.

He’d lost her the moment she’d tried to kiss him, touch him, be with him again, and he couldn’t.

He couldn’t because he couldn’t look at her without seeing Frankie. Without wanting to throw up. Without wanting to strangle Eva because, goddamn her, she’d fucking gotten off on it.

Kami saw him first. She nudged Eva, said something, and jerked her chin in his direction.

Eva didn’t turn right away; instead she looked down at the grass and her shoulders sagged, and he felt that shit all the way to his bones. She didn’t want to see him.

It was slow going as she dragged her feet toward him. She stopped a good five feet away from him but it felt like a mile, and his chest ached fiercely because of it.

He wanted to tell her that he didn’t blame her, that he was going to get over this shit. He wanted to tell her a whole shitload of things, none of which he ever said because he honestly didn’t know if any of them were true anymore.

He knew he loved her. But he’d never told her that either.

He should tell her, he could tell her. All he had to do was open his mouth and say three little words, and maybe shit could start moving forward instead of backpedaling into the ugly cycle the two of them always seemed to get caught up in.

It was on the tip of his tongue, he was going to tell her…

But then he found himself wondering why she had so much makeup on and why her sundress was so damn short and where the fuck she’d been spending her nights. So instead of telling her he loved her, he opened up his mouth and an angry, “Where the fuck you been?” came out instead.

“Kami’s,” she said softly.

He watched her eyes, waiting for some sort of sign that she was lying. But she kept those big gray soul-suckers trained on him, didn’t so much as blink, and he knew she was telling the truth. Which, for some ungodly reason, pissed him off even more.

“You give a fuck about Danny bein’ home all alone?” he continued, wishing the words back the moment they’d spewed out of his mouth.