The Rampage MC #4: Max and Briony

Chapter 4 (Max): Too Little, Too Late

Copyright © 2024 by GroveltoHEA

The brothers left me on the floor of the wet room, as we called it, no one willing to help me up even if they'd been allowed to. And I didn't want them to help. For about ten minutes, I stayed on my hands and knees, just breathing in through my nose and out through my mouth, trying to beat back the pain.

This isn't even close to what Briony felt. You knew what was going to happen to you in this room. She had no clue what was coming into her house. You weren't afraid for your life like she was. She was alone. You weren't.

The chain punishment is brilliant in that it prevents the person receiving it from lying down or even sitting without excruciating pain. The only comfortable position is standing up since your wounds are front and back. As soon as I was able, I pushed off the floor and made my way to the hose we keep in the room for obvious reasons. I rinsed my blood off the cement floor and down the drain and had to keep doing that for a while since the blood was still flowing freely. I had to put my clothes on over the raw wounds because we don't keep a first aid kit in the room...because most people going into the wet room don't come out. They go straight to the pigs. Since that could have easily been my fate, I was grateful for the pain on several levels.

Before he'd left, Beard told me he didn't want to see my face for a week, and then I was to report to the clubhouse to officially begin my year of prospecting, not knowing if, at the end of that year, I'd be able to remain a member of the Rampage. It was, among other things, a test of patience and a year-long mind fuck. A lot of brothers reduced to prospect status began to grumble about having to do shit work, saying they'd been full brothers and shouldn't have to take a punishment like that. That wouldn't be me. The only hope I had of retaining membership was taking the punishment like a man, and I fully intended to. If I had lost Briony, and I most likely had, the brotherhood would be all I had left.

I began the long, five-mile walk back to the compound, concentrating on the physical pain caused by each step because it distracted me from the pain of Briony. Every thought I had about her hurt. Thinking about her being beaten destroyed me, and knowing I was responsible for her pain hurt my heart worse than anything I'd ever felt in my life. I never would have left her had I thought there was a threat that could get to her. Never.

But you did leave her, asshole.

My mind flashed back to seeing her in the hospital room, her face swollen, her lips split open, her eyes blackened. The cast on her wrist and the sling holding her upper arm immobile.

Each wound, every break, every bit of blood on her was my fault.

I'd wanted nothing more than to beg her forgiveness, to promise that I would take care of her in the future as I'd failed to do that night if she'd just let me make it up to her -- but she wouldn't let me. She was right not to. I needed to earn the right to even apologize and then work my ass off to show her that despite what I'd done, despite the decision I'd made, Briony was the one I wanted.

She wouldn't believe me, and I didn't blame her. My actions all spoke to something else entirely, and the fact that they did pissed me off at myself even more. Even the thoughts I'd had of enjoying Wendie on the back of my bike, of missing her on the back of my bike, were a betrayal of the worst kind. I'd felt like I'd been caught between two women, one who was my past, one who was my present. Then the wake up call like no other and I knew.

I'd been back in my house for two hours when the guard called. "You got a visitor. Beard said no more after this, but he cleared this one."

Then he hung up without telling me who it was. My heart leapt, hoping against hope that it was Briony, coming to scream at me, get in my face, hit me, take a baseball bat to my knees -- anything if I could just see her.