Free Damaged & Dangerous: The Sacred Hearts MC Book VI by A. J. Downey

father and so on down the line. My grand-père wanted to teach my father, but my father… I
don’t really know what happened there.” Which wasn’t exactly true, it was just
something I really didn’t want to go into, and wasn’t part of this story.
    “Anyways, my grand-père taught me everything he knew and when he died, I inherited all of his tools
and his workshop and everything in it. A few months after Pig-Pen claimed me it
became apparent that I was only going to be kept around until he got bored with
me, and that I had better be of some sort of other value after that point came
or I was going to die or be passed around. I didn’t want either of those things
so I sold a piece of my soul and made a deal with the Devil himself.” I bit my
lips together.
    “No judgments here,
Baby. You did what you had to do.” He said, and that reassuring touch was back.
Hand gripping the top of my foot with a gentle, even pressure, stroking up my
shin halfway to the knee and back down. Up and down, up and down… I closed my
eyes and just let myself enjoy it for a fraction of a second before letting my
breath out slowly.
    “The club had most of
East County hooked on their shit and the more people become addicted, the less
reliable they are with the cash flow… pretty soon people were stealing shit to
pay for their drugs and were trying to barter with everything from electronics
to jewelry. Sparks was livid when some of the younger club members and dealers
started showing up with the jewels. Said that he couldn’t pawn this shit
without it being traced back to the club and it was worthless, and by then Pig
was getting restless with me, so I told him about what I could do.” I looked at
him a little hopelessly.
    “I knew people were
being hurt, that some of the pieces that were showing up were priceless or
family heirlooms… But I was scared, and I didn’t want to die or to disappear, and
I thought it was better the devil you know. You know?” I sniffed and he nodded,
“So I told Pig-Pen that if they gave me the jewelry, that I could take it and
melt it down, make new pieces and reset stones so that it could be sold on the
internet or pawned and no one would be the wiser that it was stolen.”
    It became more than a
means of survival though. It became mine . They didn’t care what I made
as long as it sold, and made the club money. So I could design my own stuff and
it became a way to escape this bullshit for a little while. Something that they
couldn’t touch, that they couldn’t spoil or take away from me.   
    “Pig told Griz, made it
sound like it was all his idea. Griz told Sparks and Sparks liked it, so the
jewelry started coming to me. I’ve been doing it ever since. They don’t really
care what Pig does to me as long as I keep producing. I threatened to stop
once.” I shuddered, “I’ll never do that again.” That had been the one and only
time that Pig-Pen had let the brothers have their turn at me, after I’d said I
would stop, tried to run. I’d made sure to behave ever since, there were no
more brave proclamations. I never wanted to pull a train ever again. It had
been a nightmare and taken me a long time to recover. Truthfully I couldn’t say
on if I were really fully recovered. Some damage couldn’t be repaired.
    Thirteen looked me over
and picked up my hand where it rested on my tray. He pressed the jeweler’s loop
into my hand and said softly, “I’m sorry all of this has happened to you. I
never would have kept it from you, not even teasing, if I’d known.” He sighed a
broken down and weary sigh, and I knew just how he felt.
    “You’re a beautiful
woman, Dani, and you deserve so much better than any of this.” I looked at him
sharply.
    “Don’t you ever let any of them hear you talk like that!” I held my breath and willed him with
all the strength that I had left, to promise me. He stared at me, his
blue-green eyes, more blue right now, searching my face. He’d gone very