Saving marvel satans dev.., p.3
Saving Marvel (Satan's Devils MC Second Generation Book 4), page 3
I glance at him curiously. “What do you mean, not of your own? Have you got a big family?”
He gives a low snort. “Nah, but most of my MC brothers hooked up and bred a whole damn platoon.” His eyes glaze slightly. “Now their kids have grown and started spitting out brats of their own. Just when I thought I could enter the clubhouse without falling over toys or stepping on Legos, it’s started up with a whole new generation. So yeah, I know a bit about kids.” He dips his head in my direction. “Same question to you.”
I’d be rude if I didn’t answer it. “No children. But I was married.” I grit my teeth. “For twenty years.”
His brow creases, then his face fills with sympathy as he asks, “Your husband, did he…”
“Die?” I complete his sentence. No, but I wish he had. “We’re divorced.”
“I’m sorry,” he says, automatically.
“Don’t be,” I snap. “I wish I’d never married him.”
My outburst, while necessarily quieter than it otherwise would have been, causes him to glance at me out of the side of his eye. But he doesn’t ask what went wrong in my marriage. I presume it’s a pretty standard reply when people who weren’t really meant to be together split up. My situation, though, is very far from normal.
“No kids,” he muses. “By choice, or wasn’t nature willing to play?”
He’s being super nosy, but I suppose he’s just passing the time. At least he hasn’t dug into why my marriage ended. He can’t know how painful this topic is for me. Once he does and why, well, that will end all conversation. Even if he isn’t repulsed, not many people know what to say.
“My ex didn’t want them.” And as it turns out, that was a blessing in disguise. “I thought what we had was enough.” I’d been so fucking wrong. As it turns out, we didn’t have very much of anything at all.
I’ve told him enough. It’s his turn now. “Why were you never married?”
His head again turns to me fast as though I’ve overstepped the mark. It enables me to look at him properly. It can’t be as no one would have him. His looks, though muted, aren’t jaded by age. Unlike many men his age, he’s got no beer belly and has kept himself in shape. I can only imagine how attractive he’d have been when he was younger. His temperament? Well, I’ve already found out he rarely, if ever, cracks a smile. Maybe he’s not the most affable person, and that’s why nobody wanted him.
For a moment, I don’t think he’s going to answer. The baby’s cries start up again, as well as a loud shouting once more instructing the mother to shut it up.
I startle, jerking, and a muted cry comes from my mouth. Our conversation had taken away some of the reality of the situation, and now, the sounds have brought it all back.
Whether it’s to try to get my mind off what’s happening, or whether he’s decided to let down his guard, Marvel does share something of himself with me.
“I nearly got married once.” He glances sideways, then seems to find a mark on the floor more interesting and focuses on that. “In some ways, it was a blessing we hadn’t tied the knot, in others…” his jaw clenches. “In others, it was a fuckin’ disaster. But we didn’t.” Another quick look in my direction and I see I’m not going to get much more.
That there’s a story there is clear to me, but I doubt he’s going to expand on what went wrong.
I rub at my temples, thinking just what this bank heist will mean to me. Dead or not, it’s going to be known that I was one of the victims. When the press gets hold of the story, my past is going to be raked up all over again.
I want him to keep talking, to keep taking my mind off what’s happening behind that door and worrying whether there’s a bullet with my name on it that will be heading my way.
But if I let him know who I am, he may stop all conversing entirely.
Digging my fingernails into my palms, and my voice tremorous, I decide to take the risk. “My name is Virginia Case,” I remind him. “Formerly Virginia Case-Roberts. Google me.”
Chapter Three
Marvel…
Google her?
My brow furrows as I again look at her, this time trying to see if there’s any recognition there. Her name means fuck all to me, but her suggestion implies there’s a story—she’s famous, or infamous, in some way. A film star who I should recognise? Doubtful, as I’ve never heard of her.
Whoever she is won’t make any difference. She won’t get more attention from me. First, I’m not a man to be manipulated like that, nor impressed by a fancy resume, and secondly, what the fuck more could I be doing?
I’ve no doubt by now, on her own, she’d be going stir-crazy. I’d only started talking to try to stave off her panic attack. Being totally honest, it wasn’t in my plan to die today, and I’d very much like to keep that off my agenda. If she freaks out, it could draw attention to us, and fuck knows how the bank robbers would respond when they found they had two extra people hidden away.
I’ve a gun, and I’m prepared to use it, but only as a last resort. She might have suggested that I do something heroic and rush in guns blazing to save the day, and believe me, I’d do something if I thought it would work. I’m bored as fuck, fed up with this interruption to my life. But as I told her, there are at least two gunmen, and unlike me, they don’t care if bystanders get hurt. It’s far better to bide my time and wait.
She’s staring at my phone, waiting for me to action her suggestion. As it’s at least a way of passing the time, I pick up the phone and type the full name she’d given me into the search bar.
It’s no resume of a film or music star that comes up. What does, however, makes me sit up. My eyes narrow as I read what’s written on the page—first one article, then another. Fuck, every fuckin’ news outlet in the country has had something to say about her. There are videos and television news reports aplenty. It’s probably only that I’m not really interested in anything outside of the MC, or to do with civilians, that it had bypassed me.
The stories aren’t actually about her, not really. She was a byline to the main story. Tracking back to the earlier reports, I notice her name was barely mentioned, only as far as there was a wife. But when her ex had received his justice, she’d become the person whom the headlines had been about.
They’d only echoed what had immediately occurred to me. How the fuck hadn’t she known? The implication from the later reports clearly being that she had to have been aware.
What is clear is that what her husband got arrested for must have fucked up her life and explains the surprise that I hadn’t registered her name, or recognised her face, which at one point had been plastered everywhere.
I can feel tension radiating from her. When I glance at her, her eyes are squeezed shut, and tears leak from the corners.
She’s obviously expecting me to take the same line as the reporters, and assume she was up to her neck in what was going on. She’s got one thing going for her though—me and my history. How I know better than most how you think you can one hundred percent know someone, only to find out you were not just wrong, there was never anything right about them in the first place.
She must sense me putting down my phone. “Ask.” Her shoulders are hunched, her body tense as if braced for an onslaught.
Although her voice is only just above a whisper, I can read the tone. She’s expecting me to be like everyone else. Luckily for her, I usually make a point of not toeing the line. In our church meetings back at the club, if there’s an alternative view, I’ll take it, just to liven things up.
I consider what I’ve read, and what I want to know first. “How did you find out?”
She glances at me fast. “How? Or when?”
I shrug. “I presume the two are linked. But despite the reports that think otherwise, you always stated you were in the dark all along.”
“I was. But no one believes me.” She swallows, scrubs the tears away from her face, and looks at me almost hopefully. “I didn’t know anything until the police came to our house.”
I’d read about that. “When they came and requested a DNA sample from your husband?”
A nod of her head confirms it.
“You’d been married twenty years—”
“And he’d been getting away with it for almost that long.” She brushes her hands down her face, and twin points of red appear on her cheeks, anger probably, at how he hid his activities from her for all those years and used their marriage as respectability to cover his actions.
Eyes glazing, as if lost in the past, she hisses out the words. “We had a normal marriage, Marvel. Just like two people getting to know each other. At first, we couldn’t keep our hands to ourselves. Then, again, just as normal, sex became more routine. Rather than every day, it went down to a couple of times a week. Then, after the first decade, it was only weekly, on a regular day, a regular time, and followed the same old pattern.” She takes in a deep breath. “But we still had sex. Still were having sex. Until…” she waves at the now dark screen of my phone. “Until that came out.”
Her take on it hadn’t been mentioned in the articles. I’d expected her to focus on what her husband had done, not how it affected her. But now she’s mentioned it, it all makes sense. Jesus. She doesn’t have to explain. Any woman would feel betrayed if a man’s dick wasn’t kept for her alone. But under these circumstances? Fuck.
“There were no clues, no signs?”
She shakes her head. “I must have been so fucking blind.”
I don’t think so. “Virginia.” I like the way her name rolls off my tongue. “Hundreds, thousands, fuck, millions of women are cheated on every day, and they never know.” I shrug self-deprecatingly. “Men can be experts at hiding all sorts of shit.”
“This?” Again, she points at my phone as though the articles were still displayed. “This isn’t a normal case of cheating, Marvel. Those were actions of a sick, twisted man. I thought he was normal. I had no fucking idea.” She shudders, and her face twists in pain.
It’s not something I normally do, but I find I’m reaching out my hand to hold hers. I squeeze it, then when she flinches, I take my hand away.
“I’m sorry…” Her eyes fill with horror, but it’s at her actions, not mine. “Since,” again her hand waves toward the blank screen, “I don’t like being touched.”
I suppose I can’t blame her. All I wanted was to give her a gesture of support. My jaw clenches. From the stories I’ve read, no one’s had much sympathy for her before, or not in public, anyway.
“You asked when I knew. Well, it was when the cops came to the door. I let them in, of course.” She rubs her forehead with the back of her fingers, as if it’s possible to wipe memories away. “We were a normal couple. Ralph had picked up a speeding ticket once in his life, but that was on an unfamiliar route, and he’d missed the sign. I thought we were law abiding.” She huffs. “Is it awful to say at that moment I was quite excited? The police couldn’t have come for either of us, but perhaps we could help solve a crime. God, I was so damn stupid.”
That wouldn’t have been my reaction if the cops had turned up, but I can understand it being hers. “And, Ralph, what was his reaction?”
“I thought he felt the same way. He was all over them. ‘What can we do for you officers?’ and stuff like that. He offered to help them in every way.”
“No sign of guilt?”
“He thought he’d gotten away with it.” She rubs her temples again. “He was so sure of himself, so convinced that he was cleverer than anyone else, he didn’t believe he had anything to fear. Until,” her mouth twists, “they asked for a DNA sample.”
I suppress a snort. Yeah, that would have been the clincher. “He refused?”
“He tried. But they had a warrant. I,” she shakes her head. “I couldn’t understand his reluctance. This was my man, the man I thought I knew as well as I knew myself. The man who I’d been married to for twenty years. They wanted his DNA for the process of elimination. It sounded legit to me, but Ralph, well, he didn’t like it.”
“They knew what he’d been doing at that point?”
Her chin dips and she grimaces. “No. They had no idea. It had been a normal case, a sad story, a girl who’d died. But the police had uncovered some extra evidence, meaning they had excavated her body, and they were now investigating a murder. It had been one of the bodies he’d interred, and hence they wanted to be able to exclude his DNA from any other they might find. It seemed reasonable. When he objected, I’d argued that of course he wanted to help the crime to be solved. Between me and them, he had no choice but to let them take a sample…” her voice trails off, and her eyes crease with the remembered pain. “Then they returned and asked him to go to the precinct with them.” She rolls her eyes. “God forgive me, but I believed him even then when he told me it was nothing to worry about. Of course, his DNA would be all over her body. He’d handled her corpse just like any others coming into his care.”
She, as any good wife or old lady should do, had believed in his innocence. No one could blame her for how she’d behaved then.
“What did I know of lawyers?” she poses, then answers herself, “Nothing at all, except when we used them to buy our house. But I was worried that Ralph had been taken away. I’d seen enough crime shows to know how easy it is for the cops to trip innocent people up, so I knew I should probably get one. Without knowing what evidence they had, I was concerned they might lay the murder on him.”
I raise and dip my head, just to encourage her. While she’s been speaking, there’s not been much noise from the lobby. At least this discussion is keeping her mind off our current predicament, even though my curiosity is making her relive her horrors again.
“I googled to find one. Checked reviews, compared costs. I engaged one that day. He sat in on all Ralph’s interviews.” She turns to me, her mouth twisting. “I never saw Ralph again.”
“Your choice or his?”
“Mine.”
Under most circumstances, I’d be annoyed if a woman hadn’t stood by her man or hadn’t at least visited him in jail. But having read the story, I’m not surprised. In her position, I don’t see how anyone could have wanted to preserve that sham of a relationship.
“He was cleared of murder. He didn’t cause anyone’s death. But he was charged with the violation of the teenage girl’s body.” Her eyes close as though in pain. “That’s when they searched the house to find evidence.”
I take hold of her hand again, and this time don’t let go of it. “It’s okay,” I tell her. “I read what happened. You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to go through it again.”
Her head rises, and she sighs, I think with relief as I don’t ask her to explain.
I’m not a fan of news sites. They all seem to want to present stories in their own particular ways, with their own direction of bias. One says a man’s innocent, one says he’s not, and explains the extenuating circumstances. But from the articles I read, this case is black and white, and whatever the political persuasion of the authors, each presented the details in the same way.
See, Ralph Roberts was an undertaker, and he owned his own business. Once he was arrested, as they’re wont to do, the police searched his house, his car, and his business premises. I’ve been on the wrong end of those searches before, well, not personally, but as a member of the club. They’re fucking thorough. Of course, if we want to keep something hidden, they don’t find it, like our armoury beneath the apparently filled-in swimming pool. But for folks not quite as good at hiding shit, they normally find it all.
The police had discovered the teenager hadn’t been raped by her murderer. She’d been abused after her death. The semen sample was linked back to Roberts, which led them to tear his business premises to pieces. They were savvy enough to notice an extra camera, one which wasn’t connected to the normal security feed. That made them look further, and there, behind a fake wall, they found Ralph’s lair. The feed from the camera going straight to a PC, and on that PC was the incriminating evidence.
I’m a man. I’m a biker, and it sours my guts to even think about it. I’ve also seen a lot of kinky shit in my life. There’s often live porn in the clubhouse after the kids have gone to bed. I’ve even participated in some myself and am no stranger to threesomes or foursomes come to that. On one memorable occasion when one of the sweet butts begged for it, I was part of a train, having at her one after another. I still wince at the thought of her poor snatch and how she couldn’t walk straight for a week after. But neither could she stop grinning, so there was that.
But the difference with me is, every woman I’ve fucked has been breathing.
Not so for Ralph. He liked them dead, not yet embalmed. Cold, freshly out of the freezer. He filmed his degradation of each and every one.
He couldn’t deny it was him in the footage. He was easily identified due to an oddly shaped mole on his ass, and, of course, that he was the only one with access or knowledge of the hidden room.
The degradation of people who couldn’t complain about it seems a thousand times worse than even the murder of which he was originally accused.
“He’d come home and make love to me… after he’d defiled them.” She shudders, puts her hand to her mouth as if trying not to vomit, and pales.
“He get the death sentence?” It seems that’s the only likely end. One the Devils would have metered out.
She shakes her head and says through gritted teeth, “I wish he had. But each case was determined to be a class four felony. He had no priors.”
“What did he get?”
“The judge took into account the multiple occurrences and decided he’d be locked up for ten years. He wasn’t considered a danger to society as he hadn’t harmed anyone alive.”
I glance at the woman by my side, and it seems to me, that while her ex would be locked up for a while until he qualified for parole, she, a totally innocent party, had received a full life sentence.
