Tank Read online

  Killer. Criminal. Sociopath.

  All of these words have been used to describe me, and for the longest time I believed that that’s all I was.

  I’m the man you call in to clean up your mess, assuming your mess is a guy who needs a bullet to the head. I’m the man the MC calls when they want their dirty work done.

  I’m the man who doesn’t feel.

  Until now.

  Until her.

  Now my mess is a woman who won’t save herself. I’ll fight like hell to save her, but at what price to the club? And at what cost to me?

  Warning: TANK contains graphic violence, profanity, drug use, and explicit sexual situations that may be a trigger and cause some readers emotional discomfort. Intended for an 18+ audience only. Not intended for pussies.

  “The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places.”

  – Ernest Hemingway

  For any child who has ever been broken.

  For my brothers, thank you for showing me what a brotherhood was.

  Dear Reader,

  So here we are again. When I first sat down to write TANK, I anticipated a little of the darkness we’d waded through with its predecessor, KICK, but I didn’t quite anticipate just how dark it would go, or how torn I would feel while writing it.

  If you haven’t read KICK, I strongly suggest you do so before you continue on with TANK. While each book in the Savage Saints MC series will focus on a different member of the MC, their storylines run parallel to one another, and by reading them out of order you may be missing key elements from the story.

  Now for the warning. TANK was brutal to write and no doubt for some of you it will be the same to read. Ivy and Tank’s story is not a beautiful romance, and this book does contain very graphic scenes of sexual abuse, drug use and violence. None of the scenes in TANK were entered into lightly. In fact, much of this book is very personal to me, and several times I contemplated whether I had the strength to write Ivy’s story at all.

  It’s not a pretty story. It’s not a fluffy biker read. Tank is not the perfect hero, and Ivy is not always a lovable heroine. This is a story of survival, endurance and perseverance that shows there is always beauty to be found in strength.

  Carmen

  xoxo

  Mamma’s screams slice through the night’s silence. I roll over in my bed, pulling the covers up over my head, and press my hands tightly against my ears the way she told me to. It doesn’t help, though. I can still hear her muffled cries and the sounds of glass breaking, and his voice, loud and filled with so much rage.

  “You fuck him, huh? You let him bury his dick in your sweet pussy, Adeline? Did he get you off?”

  “No, I didn’t do anything. Please, you’re hurting me.”

  “Oh, I’ll show you what hurt is, alright.”

  She whimpers, and says, “Wayne, you don’t have to do this. Please? He helped me change a tyre. I don’t know him. I’m not sleeping with other men.”

  He roars, and with a shriek her cries grow quiet.

  I squeeze my eyes shut. I should stay in bed. Mamma hates it when I see the things he does to her, but I can’t ignore the ouchie feeling inside my chest. I throw back my blanket and tiptoe to the door. Our house isn’t very big. There’s only Mamma and Daddy’s room, the lounge room and kitchen, and a toilet outside. I hate using the toilet at night. But wee is filling up my belly like a balloon and I hop from foot to foot as I hold my willy in my hands, squeezing it tightly so the pee won’t come out.

  I peer out around my door. Daddy is bent over Mamma; she’s lying on the kitchen counter and her face scrunches up in pain as she cries. Daddy isn’t wearing pants. He grunts, and his face is smiley for a change. His dark eyes are closed, and he looks happy. I take a step towards them, because I need to pee real bad and my dad’s happy for once, so I bet he won’t mind, but Mamma opens her eyes. They go wide as dinner plates, and she gives me her warning look. The one she uses when Daddy’s car pulls in the drive and we hear him stumble up the path with his buddies. She tells me to go outside then, to go play with the other kids. But the other kids don’t play with me. They tease me—they call me Puddin’ because they overheard Mamma call me that once. She didn’t mean it like they did though—she never said it with hatred in her eyes. Not the way they do.

  Not the same way my daddy is looking at me now.

  His eyes narrow, his face turning angry. Mummy tries to stand up but he presses a big hand against her back and pushes her down. “No, Wayne. Not here. Not in front of my boy.”

  “Why not fucking here? You don’t want him to see how you take my cock like a good little whore? He’s gotta learn sometime, hasn’t he?”

  “Wayne, no!”

  “Don’t fucking ‘no’ me, bitch,” Daddy says, and he pulls on Mamma’s hair, tugging her head back until she screams. He throws her on the floor and she cries as she falls to her knees, sprawling across our chipped kitchen tiles.

  “Mamma,” I cry out, and run towards her.

  My daddy’s voice is loud and booming, like the fireworks we heard on Australia Day, when he says, “Don’t fucking move, you little shit.”

  I freeze. I look between my mummy’s sad eyes and my daddy’s dead ones. And I shake. My willy hurts because I need to pee so badly, and then it hurts a little less because it slowly starts to trickle out, and then I can’t stop it. I look down at my legs. My pyjamas are soaked and my legs are shaking, but it’s not from the cold. I look at Mamma again and she smiles, but it’s not her usual smile. It’s sad, and fresh tears run down her cheeks.

  “I’m sorry, Mamma,” I cry. “I didn’t mean to. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay, baby. Just close your eyes. Everything’s okay.”

  Only she isn’t okay. I know that because her face twists the way it does when she cuts her finger, or when she wakes up after Daddy’s knocked her out.

  “Baby?” Daddy says, and his voice sounds like a roomful of venomous snakes. “Jesus fuckin’ Christ, woman. You ever think maybe the boy acts like a fucking pansy because you treat him like one?”

  Mamma shakes her head but she doesn’t say anything. She just gives me that look that tells me to close my eyes because the worst part is coming. I do, but then my daddy shouts at me to open them. The floor beneath me shakes as he comes towards me. He yanks me up by my arm, dragging me across the tiles as I scream.

  “Watch and learn, you little bastard,” he says, letting me go with a shove. I fall and land on the floor in front of my mamma. He kneels on the floor behind her and his body jerks back and forth as if he’s doing some kind of funny dance.

  Only it isn’t funny, at all.

  I can’t see what he’s doing, but whatever it is, Mamma doesn’t like it. She begs. Claws at the floor. My stomach twists because I know he’s hurting her. I scramble to my feet and lunge for him. I shove him off her, away from my mummy, who is gentle and kind and would never do a thing to hurt another person or living thing. I shove with all my strength and Daddy topples onto the floor. Mamma crawls away from him and he roars like a wild beast as he staggers to his feet. He lifts Mamma by the collar of her nightdress and smacks her across the face. She bounces from the blow. Then he charges for me, ramming his fist into my stomach. He picks me up and throws me across the room. For a second I’m flying, and I feel like superman, but then my back hits the wall. Pain is everywhere.

  My mother screams. I want to tell her I’m okay, but I can’t move. I can’t do anything but rock and clutch my tummy because it hurts so badly. Daddy rolls her over and she hits him, kicking and screaming the way I sometimes do when she says I can’t have a lolly at the shops, but eventually he wins. Mamma cries as he hurts her over and over. When he’s done, he draws back his fist and hits her again, right in the eye, a
nd I scream as her head lolls on the floor.

  “Fucking do what you’re told next time, bitch.” He spits on her, but she doesn’t move as he stares down with his hideous dark blue monster eyes. She doesn’t move or make a sound. Eventually he walks away, stomping to the front door, and then he leaves, slamming it behind him.

  I crawl across the floor to Mamma. Her face is broken; it’s all bloody and swollen up like a puffer fish. Pushed out of shape.

  “Mamma,” I whimper. She reaches towards me and I place her soft, pretty hands in my small ones.

  “I’m okay, baby,” she whispers. “Mummy’s okay.”

  “Mamma.” Snot runs from my nose. My tummy still hurts from where he hit me, but I stop my crying because the Monster says men don’t cry, and I don’t want him to come back and hurt us again. “You need me to call Aunt Jackie?”

  “No!” she says sharply. “No. Baby, Mummy’s okay; it’s just a few cuts and bruises.”

  “But Mamma …” I begin. She pats my hand to keep me quiet.

  “Shh, just let me stay here a minute longer, Puddin’.”

  “Okay,” I whisper. Reaching out my hand, I stroke her hair when she begins to cry. “Mamma, you’re still the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen.”

  She cries harder, rolling onto her back, and pressing her broken face into her hands.

  I didn’t mean to make her cry.

  I didn’t mean to hurt her the way he does.

  I never want to be like him.

  A monster.

  I’m dying.

  Or at least, that’s how it feels.

  I don’t know how long I’ve been here. Days turn to night and I’m still just as miserable as I was when Tank brought me here from the hospital before I could run. Despite the restlessness in my legs, the agitation in my body, I couldn’t run now if I tried.

  My teeth ache. My hair aches. My blood aches. It feels as though my flesh is crawling, pulled too tight, suffocating me. I twitch and shake. I vomit all over myself, and then I still beg and plead for the drugs that have been slowly killing me. Like a lowly, mewling thing, I crawl on the floor and clutch at his legs and beg him to do something. Kill me or let me go. Inject me—give me something, anything. A hit, an orgasm, a fucking gun to aim at my head.

  He does none of those things. He just sits and waits and watches.

  Sometimes when I’m asleep, my feverish brow is tempered with a cool cloth and I want to kiss him in appreciation, but I don’t move for fear that he might take it away. He gives me water to drink, spoon-feeds me soup and other liquids that I have no desire to swallow, and occasionally—if I behave and don’t abuse him verbally or beat my weakened, tiny fists upon his chest—he rolls a joint and lets me smoke half of it. I know he doesn’t even want me having that, but he’s not completely heartless, and I think he knows that without it, without that one little thing that makes it okay, even for just thirty minutes before the sharp fingers of pain come to clutch me within their excruciating grasp again, it’s something.

  The second I start to feel better, I’ll run. I can’t go back to the clubhouse; Prez will have wiped his hands clean, Kick has deserted me for some other pathetic bitch, and the only thing keeping me there was the knowledge that I was safe. But there are other clubs. Other bikers who need a warm body in their beds, and other drugs to lose myself in.

  Tank wants to take those drugs away from me; he wants to take my escape away from me, and I can’t let that happen, because running from that nightmare is the only thing that keeps me going. It’s the only thing keeping me safe from him.

  When I feel better, I’ll leave. It’s the only way to keep us safe.

  I glance over at him. His eyes are closed and the dark circles underneath are just as deeply etched as my own. However long I’ve been in this room, he’s been here with me, keeping watch, replacing the soiled bucket with a fresh one, and losing just as much sleep to my illness as I do. He doesn’t flinch when I lash out with bitter words fuelled by my hatred and the chemical imbalance in my brain, he doesn’t throw me out when I threaten to shoot him with his own gun, and he doesn’t say a thing when my vitriol is directed at him, and not myself, or the man who fed my addiction for years.

  He doesn’t say a thing at all.

  He hasn’t said a word in days other than to bark basic commands like get up, eat or drink, as though I was a disobedient dog he’d failed to train.

  No, he’s not completely heartless, but sometimes it feels like it.

  Soaked with sweat, I throw the covers back and run a hand through my hair, wiping the perspiration from my brow. I get up and splash water on my face from the bathroom sink, and then I stare at myself in the mirror. His eyes glare back. The monster. The man whose DNA I share. The same cold blue eyes set in the same face, with the same thick neck, square jaw, and full lips. A wide nose with a bump on the bridge from being broken too many times, hard cheekbones, and the same thick black brows as my father.

  No matter how many times I stare at my reflection, the truth of it never changes: I am my father’s son. And though I’ve tried for years to pretend otherwise, I’m cut with the same cloth.

  Heartless, cold, corrupt.

  I pat my face dry and head back to bed, but a noise from the kitchen draws my attention. Ivy. I wander through the cabin. It’s dark, and the only light this far out comes from the moon shining in through the floor-to-ceiling windows. I find her in the kitchen, opening drawers and cupboards, tearing the place apart like a tornado, searching for her next fix.

  I sigh, and flip on the light switch. She blinks and stares, caught like a deer in headlights. Her hair is limp and mussed from spending days being strung out. Black circles shadow her eyes, a combination of old eye makeup and a lack of sleep from detoxing. Ivy’s lips curl up in a sneer and then she lunges at me.

  “Give it to me, Tank,” she shouts. “I know you have more. Give it to me.”

  “No,” I say, my voice devoid of any emotion, though I’m certainly not devoid of anything but sense when it comes to this fuckin’ infuriating bitch. I hate the drug that’s eating her from the inside. I hate how desperate it makes her.

  “Please?” she begs. “I’ll do whatever you want. I’ll let you fuck me again.” She claws at my bare chest. It hurts like a motherfucker. I raise my brows at her. She hasn’t let me touch her like that for days, and suddenly she’s willing to whore herself out? I close my eyes, because I want so badly to sink inside her. I want to fuck the shit out of her the way I used to at the club, before I dragged her arse up to the mountains to get her clean. I want that so bad my balls ache.

  Her tiny hands fly to the string-tie on my pants. She yanks it and slips her hand inside the waistband. She doesn’t bother removing them, just wraps her hand around my thickening cock and strokes. Her movements are jerky and rough, but it’s fuckin’ hot all the same. I groan and slide my hand up her waist, squeezing her tits hard. She moans, a sound halfway between a whimper and a cry of approval.

  “I want you inside me, Tank,” she whispers. I look down into her eyes, and then I stiffen. She doesn’t want me; she wants me to cave and hand over her next dosage of pot. I close my eyes and grip her wrist, yanking it out from my pants. My cock bobs and presses painfully against the fabric.

  “No,” I say, releasing her hand and shoving her away from me.

  I walk past and she lunges at me with a scream, latching onto my back and thumping me in the back of the head. I stride over to the couch and dump her onto the worn leather.

  “Fuckin’ knock it off, bitch,” I growl. She launches again, lashing out with nails and biting me, her teeth sinking into my shoulder so hard I’m sure she’s drawn blood. This is the most energetic I’ve seen her in days. Normally she’s holed up in front of the TV, rocking back and forth, and flipping between pissing me off and making me feel sorry for her as she begs and pleads for a hit of something. I don’t think she’d give a shit what I gave her, as long as it took away the aching that the cocaine withdrawa
l has left behind. I make a mental note to put away all the chemicals under the sink because at this point, it wouldn’t surprise me if she guzzles half a bottle of Drain-O just to get a free ride to the hospital where she could zone out on a Morphine drip.

  “Give me my fucking drugs, arsehole.”

  “Sit your arse down and chill the fuck out, Warrior Princess.”

  “Fuck you,” she shouts.

  I laugh. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? My cock inside you, reminding you of all the reasons you whore yourself out to men like me. You’re not getting your fucking drugs, Princess. Go back to bed.”

  “Fuck you. Fuck your shithole of a place, too. I’m leaving; you can’t keep me here.”

  “Where you gonna go, huh? Butch will eat you alive, darlin’. I figure his jaw’s about as big as your head. So good luck getting past him.” She’d have to make it past the alarm first, which means I would know that she’d busted out, and then the dog would be let out of the cage. I’m hoping she doesn’t realise that he’d be more likely to lick her to death than chomp her up. Fucker’s a pussy for chicks. “Even if you could get past the dog, it’s a long fucking walk from here back to civilisation. You’d freeze to death before you made it off the property.”

  “I fucking hate you! I hate you!” she screams.

  I leave her ranting and walk away, flipping off the light on my way back to the bedroom. This isn’t the first time we’ve done this little dance, but it’s sure as shit getting old.

  “Yeah, yeah,” I mutter, and pretend as if that doesn’t sting like a fuckin’ knife to the gut.

  I used to be the man that didn’t feel.

  I used to be able to sit here in my mountain home and wait for Prez to call me to come kill some fucker that deserved a bullet to the brain, or one who didn’t deserve it—I didn’t really give a shit either way, as long as I was being paid. I didn’t give a shit about anyone. The Saints and Kick were my family, but if push came to shove I’d still betray them all to save my own neck.