RIDING WITH THE BEAST

The Night I Ran

Chapter 1:

Running isn't a choice anymore. It's the only way I know how to breathe.

My lip's split down the middle. My ribs are screaming. There's blood on my chin and blood on the marble and blood in my mouth, and I'm not stopping to deal with any of it.

Because in about ninety seconds, the man in the bedroom upstairs is gonna realize I bit him.

And he is gonna be so mad.

The back hall's a hundred feet of white marble and I cross it barefoot, holding my side. Something's cracked in there. He got me in the kitchen last month and I heard it give, and then he kicked me twice more for crying about it.

"You're so ugly when you cry, Elara. Stop it. I said STOP IT."

So I stopped. I got real good at stopping.

But I didn't stop tonight. Tonight I bit him.

He was dragging me by the hair toward the stairs and I turned my head and sank my teeth into the meat between his thumb and his wrist and held on. I've never heard him make a sound like that.

Then his hand came across my face and my ears rang and I ran.

The dress is ruined. The white one from the ceremony — lace and silk with little pearls sewn on by hand. Ripped down the shoulder. The pearls are popping off as I run, bouncing across the marble like little teeth. I leave them. They're just more things he bought.

The kitchen door's open. Delia leaves it open every night when she clocks out at nine. She knows what happens in this house after dark. She leaves it like a small quiet gift.

Thank you, Delia. I'll owe you forever.

The gravel cuts my feet. I left the heels in the hallway.

My car's the old Honda. The one he's been promising to replace for two years because it doesn't match the house. I keep a spare key in the wheel well because I knew. I knew.

I'm on my knees by the front tire, fingers inside the arch, going deeper, colder —

There. The little magnetic box.

I get the door open. Get in. Put my hand on the ignition and —

The garage door starts going up.

Through the windshield I watch it. That slow, smooth rise. And there's a car on the other side. His car. The Bentley. Headlights off.

He's been sitting in there. The whole time. Waiting.

The window comes down.

He doesn't yell. That's the thing about Marcus. He never yells when he's gonna hurt you. He gets quiet. Gentle, almost. Like he's about to read you a bedtime story.

"Elara. Come back inside. You're embarrassing yourself."

I turn the key. The Honda coughs. Please. Please, baby, start.

"Elara. I'm not going to say it twice."

The engine catches.

I slam it in reverse. Clip the fountain. Spin the wheel. Through the gate.

The gate that's never open.

It's open.

I don't think about why. I just go.

---

The road's a two-lane black strip going through nothing. Trees so tall they close over the top like a tunnel. Rain coming down in that hard flat way that makes the asphalt go blind.

My phone's dead. Been dead since seven. He takes the charger. Says I don't need it.

No phone. No cash. No shoes. Torn wedding dress.

And I've never been more free in my whole life.

I think about my mama. That slow, low, smoky voice that made every man in the room lean in.

"Baby girl. The Sterlings ruin everything they touch. And they smile while they do it. So whatever you do — don't ever let one of them smile at you and call it love."

I married one anyway.

Then a light comes up in my rearview. Headlights. Close.

Green glow on the roof.

A cruiser.

I pull over. Pulling over for a cop is bone-deep — it's in your body before your brain gets a vote.

The flashlight hits the window. I roll it down. My whole arm's shaking.

The cop bends down. Middle-aged. Tired face. "Ma'am. Everything all right tonight?"

"I fell," I say.

He's quiet. Then he tips his head, like he's looking at me from a different angle.

"Ma'am, I'm gonna need you to step out of the vehicle."

And something in me — something that's been shut up in that house for two years — just snaps.

"No," I say.

"Ma'am—"

I put it in drive.

The Honda lurches and the cop jumps back and I'm gone. His lights come on behind me. Red and blue, sweeping across the rain like they're trying to grab me.

Seventy-five. Eighty. Eighty-five. The Honda's screaming. He's behind me with his lights but no siren, like he's not sure he wants to push it.

And then my engine makes a sound.

Not the old dead sound. A new one. A metal one. Like something expensive just gave up.

The dash goes dark. The wipers stop mid-swipe and hang there like dead arms. The wheel goes heavy.

"No. No no no —"

The Honda coasts. Slowing. Rolling on nothing but its own stupid momentum.

And then I see the sign.

BLACKPINE

POP. 800

NO REASON TO STOP

Somebody's spray-painted over the bottom line in red.

GTFO.

I look in the mirror. The cruiser's close now.

I grab my bag, kick the door open, and I'm running before the Honda's even stopped rolling.

---

Gravel bites my feet. Rain hits me sideways. My ribs scream and I don't care.

Behind me a door slams. "Ma'am! MA'AM. Stop!"

I run right under that hanging letter, right past the sign, right into the dark.

The road turns into a street. A laundromat with the lights off. A church with a sign that says GOD LOVES YOU ANYWAY, except somebody knocked two letters off so it says GOD LO ES YOU ANYWAY.

Everything's dark except one building down at the end.

Low brick. A neon sign in the window, red letters buzzing, half of them flickering out and back in like they can't decide.

IRON VIPERS

Six motorcycles out front, lined up side by side like sleeping animals. Fat tires. Black tanks. Rain running off the chrome and pooling in the cracks of the concrete.

Six bikes means six men at least. Probably more inside.

I know what's on the other side of a door like that. I've seen Marcus's friends. I've seen what men with money and power look like at one in the morning when nobody's around to tell them no.

But I've also been in the worst house in this state.

Whatever's behind this door, I've already lived through something worse.

So I push it open.

The bell rings.

---

Everything stops.

The talking. The glasses. The laugh in the corner that was halfway out of somebody's mouth and then just wasn't.

The air hits me thick. Whiskey, burnt tobacco, motor oil, sweat. Underneath all of it, something sharper — heat. Leather and hot metal and men who've been riding all day.

Twenty of them. And every single one has his head up and his eyes on me.

I take them in fast, the way you learn to take in a room when you never know which man is going to stand up first.

Black leather cuts. Patches on the back. A rocker at the top, a rocker at the bottom, a patch in the middle.

IRON VIPERS

And a man at the bar in a leather vest with no sleeves, arms out, watching me over his shoulder. He's got a beard and a tattoo of a snake wrapped around his forearm.

His drink hits the wood without a sound. Ice clicks in the glass.

Another one in the corner booth leans forward. Bald. Scar through his eyebrow. He's got a knife on the table and he hasn't touched it and he doesn't need to.

A third one — younger, maybe twenty-five, patch that's still stiff and new — says, real quiet, "Prez ain't gonna like this."

Nobody answers him.

Nobody says anything. It goes on so long I start to hear the rain outside. I start to hear my own breathing. I start to hear my heart going in my ears.

Twenty men. Twenty sets of eyes. On the torn dress. On the blood on my chin. On my bare feet.

I don't move. I don't flinch. I've spent two years learning exactly how still to be in a room with men who could hurt me.

And then a chair scrapes in the back corner.

The darkest corner. The one I didn't look at. The one where the light doesn't reach.

Somebody's standing up.

He's big. I can tell that from the shape of him, from the way the dark moves around him. He comes out of the corner slow, with a bottle in one hand and nothing in the other, and the whole room shifts to make space for him.

Black leather cut, open over a white t-shirt. Silver stitching on the shoulders. And on the front, over the pocket, a patch that's different from the rest.

PRESIDENT

He's got ink from his wrists to his collar. Wolves and chains and flames that look like they're moving in the neon light. A scar that starts near his eyebrow and cuts down past his eye like somebody tried to take the eye and missed.

He's got dark hair pushed back off his forehead and a jaw that could break a man's hand and eyes so dark they don't look like they've got a bottom.

He stops about ten feet away.

He doesn't look at my chest. He doesn't look at my legs. He doesn't do any of the things I braced for.

He looks at my face.

Then his eyes drop, just slightly. To my neck. To the four fingerprints that are still yellow-purple on my throat.

And something in his face goes very still.

The bottle comes down on the nearest table. Slowly. Carefully. Like he doesn't trust his own hands.

Then he walks toward me.

He stops close enough that I can smell the whiskey on him and the rain in his hair. Close enough that I have to tip my head back to keep looking at him.

"You lost, doll?"

His voice is low and rough, like gravel rolling downhill, and it does something to the back of my neck that I don't have a name for.

I should say yes. I should say I'm sorry, I'll go. That's what a smart woman says to a man like this.

Instead, I hear myself say:

"Not lost. Just out of options."

Something moves in his face. Not a smile. Close to one.

He reaches up — slow, so slow, giving me every chance to move — and his thumb brushes across my chin. It comes away red.

He looks at the blood on his thumb.

Then he looks back at my face, and his jaw works once, and he says, quiet, to the whole room:

"Lock the door."

Chapter 1 Ends.