Hi! This story is a spin-off of Rivals, but can be read as a standalone. (:  

The image of her pleading, tear-filled eyes haunted Phantom.

"Can you please help? I don't know where else to look for help."

He barely knew her. They had played some games of pool and spent a few evenings chatting about unimportant things. Twice that had led to her following him into his bedroom where he'd shoved his cock down her throat.

Thinking back to that, only stabbed him in the stomach.

Maybe that was it. The fact that she still had gone to him. There was something desperate about it, as if she had no one else to fall back on. A feeling he had been carrying with him for almost half his life. An emptiness and a heaviness at the same time.

And well—maybe he wasn't a complete asshole. He was willing to roll up his sleeves when a young woman was kidnapped. That however didn't explain why he kept seeing the desperation in Lola's eyes. He just wanted to help her. Do something useful.

Phantom had taken it to the table. Cautiously and unsure, since he only had his patch for three months and he'd never brought something up. Before he'd dared to do so, he had listed as many facts as he could find. He'd figured out where the woman had been pulled into a car. He'd tried to follow her as far as he could, but he'd eventually lost sight of her. He had seen something remarkable, though: there had been a witness. A witness who had been handed money.

A witness wearing a police uniform.

It was his only lead. The man's name was Cameron Murray; he was a cop for nine years and lived on the other side of the city.

Opinions at the table had been divided. Alvarez had silently gathered his thoughts. Axle pertinently disagreed with everything Phantom said —except when he would consider to leave the club. Ant —the VP—thought it risky. Lucille believed they should take every opportunity to grab a cop by the balls.

That remark had made Phantom's face flush. Since Raine and Blaise's relationship had become public, lewd and derogatory remarks had become a habit. And even though Phantom believed these words were not meant to be ambiguous, it still felt like a meek reference to his orientation. Even though no one within the club knew about it.

The row of houses in which Murray lived came into view. Only one house still had lights on—and it was not the one where they were heading to. Alvarez had given clear instructions: they were to slip into the house after midnight, ambush the man in his bed, put a gun to his head and demand answers. Without wearing their cuts and in the dark, so it couldn't backfire on the club.

Phantom parked his bike on the side of the road and slipped off.

Before going inside, they waited ten minutes so no one would associate the roar of their Harleys with their little visit.

They didn't say a word to each other.

Phantom hadn't had anything to say to Axle for a long time, and he was annoyed that Alvarez had sent him along with him. Axle's attitude showed that he hated this assignment, but his father hadn't forgotten what he had done a few months back. He had almost ripped off his patch and had since assigned him jobs that a prospect could also do.

He suspected that Alvarez was trying to force trust between them this way since they needed to be able to count on each other. For Phantom, however, it would take a lot to make that happen.

They waited. And waited. Both deliberately looking in different directions.

Finally, ten minutes passed by. Axle walked toward the front door to get started on the lock, while Phantom watched the street. The front yard was a paved rectangle with a few pots here and there, leaving not many hiding places.

For a moment, tension crept into his shoulders as someone with a dog came out of an alley across the street, but they turned left and didn't look at them.

Phantom glanced back. A click sounded, then Axle quietly swung the door open and stepped into the inky black hallway. After looking down the street one more time, Phantom followed him.

It was not an old house —no creaking steps announcing their arrival. They passed three doors before reaching the stairs. Phantom just put his foot on the first step when he heard something.

A soft groan.

Phantom stiffened. He grabbed Axle by the side of his cut to stop him. The latter, however, immediately jerked free.

"What?" he whispered in a vicious tone.

"I hear someone."

They listened to the silence. For a moment, Phantom heard only his breathing and the echo of his pounding heart in his head. Right when he was about to admit to himself that he had imagined it, another sob sounded, followed by a soft whimper.

It was coming from downstairs. From under the stairs.

Something icy crept through Phantom's veins. A memory from long ago tickled his mind. Phantom blocked it violently and stepped down the stairs. "It's coming from below," he said.

"We're just going to get the job done." Axle not only sounded impatient—his voice sounded way too loud as well.

Phantom cast him a dark look. His feelings toward the man grew even darker when the jerk took another step up. Phantom took a step back and opened the door to the basement. Maybe that kidnapper wasn't paying money to keep him silent at all, but did the pig offer a place to hide her temporarily.

With his gun ready in case he got lured into some kind of trap, he descended the narrow staircase leading into the basement. As soon as he reached the ground, he heard shuffling. More smothered sobbing.

He instinctively moved his hand across the wall, looking for a light switch. It was, of course, at the top of the stairs. He looked back. 

Axle had come back and was at the top of the stairs. "What the fuck are you doing?"

"Is there a light switch there? Someone here needs our help. Maybe it's Carla."

Some muttering and suppressed swearing sounded; then the light flashed on. Phantom squinted his eyes against the light. A shock swept through his entire being as he saw the stained mattress in the corner. Someone was lying on it, with a chain around their ankle.

Suddenly it was as if Phantom couldn't breathe. His memories dragged him back to another suffocating basement more than a decade ago. The air smelled of clotted blood and piss, and nausea rippled through him.

His legs felt unsteady as he walked toward the huddled shape that crawled right back. It was a boy, at most twelve years old. His hair hung in front of his eyes. Next to the mattress were two bowls, one filled with water and the other with what looked like dog food.

Before they went here, Phantom had investigated whether they could expect other people in the house. The man was divorced —and he had a son. A ten-year-old son.

An intense rage swept through his body. The memories pounded against his mind, and for a moment he felt himself a teenager too, with a gun in his trembling hands. He saw the bloodied face, the dark eyes. Instead of feeling a shred of regret, he wanted to rip those eyes out and shove them into the man's half-exploded mouth.

"What the fuck." Axle's sudden voice pulled him back to the present. "That's just a kid."

It surprised Phantom that Axle cared. That he had moral values after all and was disgusted by this too.

"His own child," Phantom growled. "The fucking bastard." He yanked his pistol from behind his waistband—just as he had then—and stomped to the stairs.

He felt Axle's fingers graze his shoulder, but pulled free and ran up the next flight of stairs. He could only think of him and all he wanted to do was kill that guy.

That motherfucker who had destroyed everything.

Then. Now. Always.