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.