Forgotten & Found: A Dark & Dirty Sinners' MC Boxset

by Serena Akeroyd

  Link: Where you at, sugar tits?

  My lips curved at the nickname. Why he insisted on calling me that, I really didn’t know, but I was surprised that it didn’t insult me.

  I wanted to cave in. Wanted to pick up my cell and reply to him, get involved in a conversation that would amuse me, turn me on, and take my mind off what I was about to do, but my father would be home in a week, and I should have already finished up on what I’d started here.

  The first time I’d come into the pool house, I’d had to sneak in. Today? I had the freedom of movement that came with my father’s absence.

  So, once more, I sucked it up and got on with shit.

  I clicked into the first file and immediately hit the cross on the video player.

  Bowing my head, I clenched my eyes closed and tried not to see what I’d just seen. But unseeing wasn’t possible.

  My trouble was I had a feeling.

  A gut instinct.

  And my gut usually wasn’t wrong, especially where my family was concerned.

  In this instance, I knew my father was involved somehow with what Luke had been doing. The apple didn’t fall far from the tree, after all. Plus, I knew Luke wasn’t averse to blackmailing him. Even though Father gave Luke everything, to a man like my brother, everything wasn’t always enough. There was always something more, something he might need leverage for.

  Which was what I was looking for.

  Leverage.

  I’d thought that maybe my father might own the land on which this hellhole lay. I thought I’d find some connection that way. I hadn’t imagined that Luke would record what he did to the women. Which, if I was right, meant there might be footage of my father doing stuff too.

  My throat grew thick at the prospect of checking out the thousands of files in the folder, and because I couldn’t bear to watch a woman enduring what that bastard had put them through, I began to look at the file names. Videos were separated into folders by women’s names. Tatána. Sarah. Alessa. Amara. There were more, but Link had told me there were four, and from the footage, I knew there were four cages.

  Cages.

  My God.

  Bile burned in my throat, making me want to puke as I thought about how many lives Luke had taken. Then, eyes watering from the need to sob, I persevered.

  Within each woman’s folder, there was less categorizing, so I had to scan through file names. When I saw a series that had our mother’s birthday as the title, I frowned, taken aback by that.

  When I clicked into it, curious, I almost unclicked when the footage streamed into the pit. It was a weird kind of camera. Not clear, not HD quality, but that grainy green light that told me it was either infrared or something that helped cameras record in poor light. The women’s eyes were black from that coloring, and their bodies were contorted in the cages they were contained in as they tried to get comfortable.

  I couldn’t even imagine what they were thinking, lying there, nude, beaten, starved. Cold. God, just seeing this made me want to wrap them up in blankets and pour hot toddies down their throats.

  And the worst thing was, this was tame. This horror was before anything bad happened to them for the day.

  I sucked in a breath, waiting for whatever Luke had deemed worthy of smearing our mother’s date of birth with, and then…it happened.

  A little explosion of light fucked with the camera, and I figured that meant the opening to wherever this hellhole was had just been breached. The women all froze, and a few whimpers of surprise and fear escaped them before they were quickly contained, and then, the echo of footsteps sounded as a pair of boots appeared on the staircase into the pit.

  Was I surprised when, with each stair descended, my father was revealed?

  Not really.

  I just didn’t understand why Luke had used Mom’s birthday as the code.

  Had he also known that Father had killed her? Would Luke have even cared if Father was behind her murder? I couldn’t imagine it, but who knew how my brother’s warped mind worked?

  A part of me was praying that Father had gone down there to release the women. Stupid, considering I knew the women had only been saved by the MC who Donavan Lancaster deemed unfit to be in the same town as him. So when he stepped toward one of the cages and kicked it, I knew I had enough. Knew he was down there with the same intent as Luke’s.

  I hit stop because I didn’t want to see anymore.

  I’d felt my father’s wrath. I couldn’t cope with seeing more of it.

  As I stared at the file list, I sagged back into my chair and began to sob. Tears poured from my eyes as my emotions ravaged me. For a second, I drowned, suffocated in them, and then, like a ray of light peering through the gloom, I knew what was happening.

  It was the calm before the storm…A calm that was founded in relief.

  I had him.

  I.

  Had.

  Him.

  My phone buzzed again and, a little blindly, I reached for it. Through tear ravaged eyes, instead of reading the text, I connected a call to Link, and the second he said, “Sugar tits?” I started sobbing once more.

  Through a bucket load of snot and more tears, I heard him demand, “Lily? What is it? What the fuck’s going on?” I heard his fear for me. I heard his concern. For me. And that just made me cry even more.

  Nobody other than Tiff had ever really given a shit about me, and even then, I’d never been able to truly bring her into the fold because I was hiding so much from her. Not just because there was so much ugliness to hide in my life either. I had to keep her safe. Had to protect her.

  But Link? He knew the shit I had in my life already.

  He knew the good and the bad, worse, he knew that ugly streak too, and he still cared.

  I could hear him rambling on the other end of the line, and I realized he thought my father had returned and had done something to me, which was what shut me down.

  “Link?” I rasped, my voice sounding unlike my own. “I think I have a way to destroy my father.”

  Silence fell at that.

  Then, “Are you at home?”

  This wasn’t my home. I didn’t have a home. But I merely whispered, “Yeah.”

  “I’m coming to get you.”

  “Do you know someone who’s good with computers?”

  “I know a few someones,” he said gruffly. “I’ll be there soon. Okay?”

  “Okay.” Then I sucked in a breath. “Can you come in a car? Without your cuts? I don’t want anything to stop this from happening. The guards won’t let you in if you look like you’re from the MC.”

  He grunted. “You sure you got something to take him down? Or do you just ‘think’ it?”

  I’d been stupid using that word. “No. I’m positive. This is his end.” And somehow, I thought it would be better than him lying dead at the foot of the stairs.

  “I’ll only ride in a cage for you, babe.”

  My lips curved. “The sacrifice will be worth it.”

  “It’d better be,” he grumbled. “Soon.”

  “Soon,” I whispered back as I cut the call. Blindly, I stared at the screen for a second, then I reached for my other cell, my legit one, and I patched it through to Alix.

  “Ma’am?”

  “I have guests coming over. They’re Tiffany’s friends. She should be over a little later too,” I lied. “Let them in.”

  Alix cleared his throat. “Your father wouldn’t approve of a party, Miss Lily.”

  I knew that better than Alix did, but I appreciated him giving me the heads up. “Can you just not tell him until later?” I murmured. “Please, Alix.”

  He blew out a breath. “If they’re gone before sundown, I’ll just tell him Tiffany came over.”

  Gratitude filled me. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome, Miss.”

  I cut the call and stared at the computer screen.

  My burner cell buzzed once more.

  Link: In a cage. On our way.

&n
bsp; Me: Thank you. Try to look like party guests. Message me when you’re five minutes away. I’ll come and greet you.

  Link: Party guests…Yeah, that’s not going to happen.

  Me: Just try.

  When I received a bucketload of ‘eye roll’ emojis, I just smiled. Yeah, I smiled. After what I’d seen, what I’d just found…I smiled.

  Maybe that was the miracle from today, a miracle that came in the shape of a gruff biker who managed to take away some of my misery and replace it with amusement.

  Maverick

  My gaze switched between Giulia, whose head was on her folded arms, snoring away from her place at the dining table, and Ghost, who was trying, and failing, to eat a sandwich she’d been given forty minutes ago.

  All the women were finding it hard to acclimate to eating regularly, and after being starved, that didn’t come as much of a surprise. In a way, you’d think it would be easier to stuff your face after being denied, but the stomach adapted, and after so long in captivity—not that any of the women knew how long exactly, because they’d had no concept of time where they’d been held—they were simply not used to eating.

  Amara would routinely puke if she ate too much, and Tatána wasn’t even trying all that hard. Ghost, on the other hand, was trying, but she didn’t get very far.

  I had a feeling Ghost tried for my benefit, and I wasn’t about to try to stop her from doing that. Even if she often failed.

  There was a time when my past, present, and future had all blurred into one, and for those moments, I’d had nothing. No one. Not even the family I’d chosen for my own. On a roadside in Benghazi, my body broken, my eyes wet from pain, and the sun and smoke burning them, a part of me had died.

  Only now, when I looked at Ghost, did that part feel like it was alive again.

  I wasn’t sure why.

  She didn’t really talk to me, and when she did, her eyes were always downcast. I preferred to think she was shy rather than scared of me, because if it was the latter then I’d probably feel like blowing my brains out…and I thought about doing that way too much as it was.

  When I looked at her, I felt hope. I felt something. And it was weird. Really weird. Really, very weird because I didn’t know why.

  I hadn’t had sex in so long that my cock didn’t even twitch at all the shit I saw in the clubhouse. I didn’t think about sex, didn’t want it, because my brain was focused on other things. Like the will to carry on. Like the fact I was needed in the clubhouse, by my brothers, my family. Sex wasn’t something I needed because, though my body wasn’t broken, my head was.

  I accepted it, and I thought the broken parts of me were attracted to the broken parts in Ghost.

  Which, when I thought about it, was the most fucking depressing shit I’d heard in like, forever. But it was true.

  I didn’t mean attracted in the regular sense either. Even if I could see she was a beautiful woman when she wasn’t forty pounds underweight.

  I meant ‘attracted’ like with a magnet.

  Something about her pulled me in, reeled me toward her like I was a fish on a line, only death wasn’t in my future when I looked at her. Life was.

  Which was stranger still.

  Who looked at a woman and saw all that?

  I never had before, and I’d been in love once, back before I’d enlisted, and I hadn’t felt that way about Lesley. Although, now that I thought about it, that was probably wise considering the second I had enlisted, she’d gone off the rails during my first deployment.

  “You are thinking very hard.”

  Ghost suited her nickname, even if, with his usual lackadaisical ways, Link had given a woman, near death, the worst name ever. But she was delicate, fragile, and whispered like she was a spirit, so I got it.

  She also had a faint accent, but surprisingly not much of one. Just enough to make her roll a few syllables and to go guttural here and there.

  I studied her wispy blonde hair, the brittle bones that revealed a woman desperately in need of nutrition, and just felt everything inside me sigh.

  “You make me think hard.”

  My honesty had her brows rising. “I do?” She narrowed her eyes at me. “We don’t talk about important things.”

  “Don’t we?” My lips twitched as I curved my hands around the armrest of my wheelchair before I slipped them down to the wheels. I rolled them back and forth in my grip, rocking the seat in place as I eyed her. “I think we talk about important shit.”

  She frowned. “We talk about people in your house.”

  “Clubhouse,” I corrected.

  “Yes, well, those people. We talk about them.”

  “We talk about politics.” I pursed my lips. “As in, should Kendra be allowed to stay when she was pivotal in breaking up Storm and his Old Lady?”

  Ghost tutted. “I do not understand this saying. How is she old when she is younger than me?”

  My lips curved. “It’s just a saying.”

  “As you have told me already, but I still don’t understand it. Why not ‘young lady?’ It is far more complimentary.”

  “It’s just how we roll.”

  She clucked her tongue. “It is still senseless. But then, so is what Kendra did. Such cruelty should not be tolerated, however, she did not make this Storm do the things he did. He is to blame.” She shot me a glare. “But because you are a man, you will side with him.”

  I raised my hands as I grinned at her. “Babe, if you see Kendra and Keira, you’d wonder why the fuck he’d want anyone on his dick other than his woman.” I ignored her pink cheeks. “Storm is an idiot. I just don’t like that Kendra purposely hurt Keira and hasn’t been reprimanded over it.”

  “Who would reprimand someone like this?” Her brow puckered. “How would it be done? Would she be hurt?”

  “Um, nope. This is America, baby. Though we’re hard asses, we don’t beat women.” Well, some of my numbskulls brothers did, and usually Nyx was the one to dole out punishments on that score. But adultery didn’t fall under Nyx’s purview of punishments. More’s the pity. “She’d get tossed out of the MC which, to a woman like her, is pretty painful. They live for this life.”

  She shook her head. “I do not understand this. Why would they enjoy sleeping with so many men all the time?”

  “To each their own.” There’d been a time when I’d been pretty fucking grateful for clubwhores. Now? Not so much. Maybe that was age or my PTSD. Either way, sweetbutts didn’t give me boners anymore.

  Not even with the random shit they did to get our attention.

  “I figured Giulia would start to curb the bunnies’ behavior, but ever since this stuff with Lancaster, things have derailed.”

  Ghost smiled at me faintly. “You mean, ever since we came into the picture.”

  “I do,” I admitted. “I don’t think any of us really expected her to volunteer to do all she has.” I peered at her over my shoulder, unsurprised to see she was still sleeping. “I didn’t think she had it in her.”

  “She is very kind.”

  “Yes, she has been, and that’s what I mean. Giulia isn’t kind. Yet, here she is.”

  “People can surprise us.”

  “That’s true. Giulia has surprised us all. She’s a good mate for Nyx too. Once things get back to normal, she’ll keep the bunnies in line until Rex decides to take that stick out of his ass and—”

  When my cell rang, I grunted as I reached into my jeans pocket and eyed the screen.

  Anyone except for Nyx and Rex, I’d have ignored. Storm included. He might have been the VP, but I only really listened to the Prez and the Enforcer anyway.

  Unfortunately for me, it was Rex.

  Speak of the devil…

  “What?”

  Rex grunted. “So polite.”

  “Didn’t realize I was on your council because I minded my Ps and fucking Qs.”

  Another grunt. “We have something that will bring down the Lancasters.”

  My eyes widened as I glanc
ed at Ghost and saw her watching me with curiosity in her eyes. When she saw me watching her back, her cheeks grew pink and she ducked her head.

  Fuck.

  I wished she didn’t do that.

  She was so pretty, and I liked having her eyes on me.

  “How?” I was a man of few words on the phone. Fucking hated them.

  “Video evidence that Luke and his father used the women.”

  Those words tore into me in a way I knew Rex wouldn’t understand.

  Ghost had been through so much at Luke Lancaster’s hands. That alone was bad enough. But to know that two men had used and abused her?

  I had to blow out a breath to release my anger. It was either that or start throwing shit, and the women were already terrified without me pulling crazy stunts like that.

  “What’s the next move?”

  Rex sighed. “Getting Lancaster’s ass in jail. We’ll be bringing Lily Lancaster into the clubhouse. Can you get Giulia to open up one of the bunkhouses for her?”

  My brow puckered. “She’s resting. Can’t someone else do it?”

  “Steel? Jaxson? See who’s about. I just want somewhere for her to sleep. This score is on her. She found the evidence. I want her nearby for her safety.”

  I whistled under my breath, taking that to mean psychological and physical safety. “Fuck. That’s a nightmare waiting to happen.”

  “Yeah. Link is going to be with her.”

  “Can’t she just stay in his room then?” Everyone knew of Link’s reputation with the ladies. It wasn’t too much of a leap to think he was boning Lily Lancaster too.

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s complicated.”

  I thought about that, thought about how uncomplicated Link was, and came up with a random guess. “He like her?”

  “Loves her. At least, that’s what I’d call it.” Rex sniffed. “But that’s neither here nor there. Just get her somewhere to sleep. It’s only for a couple of nights. Until he’s arraigned.”

  “Okay. I’ll get that done.”

  “Mav?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I know you visit with the women.”