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

by Serena Akeroyd

  He snickered. “Save yourself the trouble.”

  I pouted. “Killjoy.”

  Nudging my shoulder with his, he asked, “You okay?”

  “Yeah. I’m fine. Today was rough is all.”

  “Why?”

  “Tatána was just talking about the journey over here. They were in a truck for eighty hours after they landed in the States. No air, no toilets, no goddamn water.” I blew out a breath. “It was tough to hear. Really hard for Lily as well.”

  “I’m sorry, sweetheart.”

  “No, it’s okay. I needed to hear it, but it was just difficult, you know?” I winced. “Fuck, not as hard as what they endured.”

  “Hey, you don’t need to qualify that. I understand.”

  I leaned into him, silently thanking him for being, well, Sin. To me, he might as well have been called Saint, because he was like the Tiffany Whisperer.

  “How did you earn your road name?”

  He tensed. “Why do you ask?”

  His tension almost made me wish I hadn’t asked. Hissing a little, I muttered, “That bad, huh?”

  “Maybe.”

  I eyeballed his ham sandwich which he had hovering in midair because I’d asked the question when he was about to take a bite. “Just a little hint?”

  “Seven deadly sins,” he mumbled.

  “Huh? What about them?”

  “It was when I got back from my final deployment. They said I was all seven of them.”

  I arched a brow. “Really? That’s it?”

  “Yeah.” His cheeks were red, so I knew I was getting the edited version, but I was okay with that. At least I had an answer. I didn’t need to know about all the sins he’d committed—didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that shit out.

  He wasn’t a scout leader, for Christ’s sake. He was a biker. He traded in blood and secrets.

  What surprised me the most was why that didn’t bother me. It wasn’t like I had a bad moral code or anything. I’d always been law-abiding before, and it wasn’t like he’d corrupted me…

  Had life done that?

  I mean, I’d fallen for him way before my world had collapsed, but I’d seen things along the way. Learned shit. Nothing was as peachy as it seemed. Ever. And being rich? That usually came at someone else’s expense.

  Even Dad had been a dick on his way to the top. I knew the labor unions had been sniffing his ass because they claimed he wasn’t paying his workers enough overtime—and that had been when he’d been constructing Orange Hills, the subdivision in West Orange that would be his final project.

  Life wasn’t black and white, and the blur between wasn’t always gray either. That was too simplistic a view on things.

  “You mad?”

  I snorted. “That you have a past? No.”

  “Why you looking at me like I’ve grown horns then?”

  My lips twitched. “You haven’t. I’m just wondering why it doesn’t bother me. I don’t know the shit you get up to—”

  “And you never will, Tiff. You know that, right? Some shit I just won’t be able to tell you.”

  “I figured that out along the way,” I said wryly.

  “Good. I don’t do it to be a dick. I do it to protect you.”

  Was that the case? Or was it a means of stopping my view of him from being tarnished?

  Maybe it was both.

  “I don’t know what you did that brought you back home, Sin, but I’m glad you did it.”

  His eyes darkened, and not in a way I was used to. Anger spiked those dark chocolate orbs, making me wonder who it was aimed at. “Me too, angel. Me too.”

  I reached for his hand when he dumped his sandwich on his plate. I felt like a real bitch for checking the trajectory, watching the ham tumble out of the bread thanks to the fall, then I muttered, “Didn’t mean to drag up the past.”

  “You didn’t. Just…” He blew out a breath. “Never mind.”

  I wanted to offer to be an open ear for him, but I knew he didn’t want that from me, so I cleared my throat. “Sin?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I know the answer to this but…the Sinners don’t trade women, do they?”

  He snorted. “I’d be mad at you for even thinking to ask me that question if I didn’t know what Tatána had been talking about. It’s only natural you’d ask, but no, we don’t.”

  “I mean, I did know that, but I just wanted to confirm it.”

  He reached over and bopped me on the end of my nose. The move made me sneeze of all things, which had him chuckling like I’d told the best joke in the world.

  Sheepishly, I grinned at him. “I think it was the mustard. You must have some on your finger.” He stuck said digit into his mouth and licked it clean. When he did, this time, his eyes darkened in a way I was totally used to.

  Need unfurled in my belly as I watched him suck on his finger, and within seconds, we were both dealing with one of the deadly sins...

  Lust.

  Twelve

  Tiffany

  Two days later

  As I walked over to the clubhouse, I peered at the Prospect beside me.

  You’d never think he was a glorified errand boy by looking at him, what with the mohawk and all the tats down his throat, but that’s what he was.

  He’d come to tell me that once I was done with the girls, I needed to go speak with the Prez, and because being the messenger wasn’t enough, he was even escorting me to the clubhouse itself.

  So, yeah, I’d settled on ‘girls’ as my collective term for the women back in the small bunkhouse I’d just left behind.

  Why?

  Because I had to give them a name.

  They were so fucking young that they were practically girls anyway, and beyond that, I couldn’t think of them as what they were—captives. Ex-hostages. They were survivors, but as a label? Yeah, that didn’t work.

  Although maybe it should.

  Maybe I could make it a thing.

  Either way, I wanted to get used to a different name, because I wanted the bikers to start calling them that too.

  We needed to help them move on, and letting them rot in the shadows of their past was only going to remind them of what they’d been through.

  So, yeah, girls was what I’d settled on, and it was apt that Rex called me in to speak with him because I needed to talk to him anyway.

  Not only about that, or about what he wanted to discuss, but a few other things too.

  While I was kind of nervous because I knew what the Sinners were capable of and he was their leader—a leader they actually loved, which was always clear to see whenever Sin talked about him and his leadership—so that meant he condoned every single act of violence, every single broken law, and everything that kept the Sinners out of the lines of regular society.

  I knew I’d be a dumb fuck not to remember all that.

  When I made it into the clubhouse, like most of the time in the late morning, it was quiet, because everyone was still starting their day.

  The guys had drifted off to their jobs—I knew because I’d heard the bikes start up and rumble as they left the compound—but the clubwhores? Still sleeping.

  Bitches.

  I hated them.

  And it was a stupid hate, because it was a collective word too.

  Just like captives.

  They were whores for the club, but that was taking away the whole truth of what they were.

  I didn’t like that I hated them. Didn’t like that they got to me so much, but the truth was, hate didn’t have to be sensible.

  I didn’t know them, but I didn’t have to, to know that I disliked what they did.

  Not just because I thought it was shitty how they allowed themselves to be treated, but because they let the guys cheat on their Old Ladies with them.

  I was sure some of them were great—they couldn’t all be bitches, after all. Maybe one had anxiety and another had a really amazing singing voice, but I had no desire to get to know them. Because wh
at they stood for did not gel well with my own personal ideals.

  So, yeah, I sniffed at the thought of the sluts being in bed still, and when we walked past the stairs and I saw one of the doors open, with a quick glimpse showing me Trixie Dixie Lou on her back, naked, with the sheet half off her, snoring away? I wondered whose marriage or relationship she’d ruined that night.

  The Prospect reached around me to shut the door, and when I cocked a brow at him, he didn’t look at me.

  In fact, now that I thought about it, he hadn’t looked at me once.

  Why was that?

  My brow puckered, and I thought about asking him, but we made it down the hall to the end where he knocked on the door.

  When a deep voice called out, “In,” the guy pushed opened the door and wafted me inside.

  All without looking at me.

  I turned to watch him go, saw him trudging down the hall, and shook my head at him.

  “Who the fuck’s there?”

  The low voice growled at me, but I wasn’t scared.

  I mean, I hadn’t dealt with worse criminals, but I’d sure as hell dealt with a lot of important people over the years.

  Lily wasn’t the only one who’d had a semi-public life. I’d dealt with politicians and governors just like she had. Only difference being that Dad hadn’t sent me off to finishing school.

  I knew why too.

  He would have.

  But he loved me.

  He liked me close.

  It was why, when I’d gone off to college, he’d been glad when I dropped out. He liked me to be home.

  I bit my lip at the thought, at the memory which speared me to the quick.

  It was easy to think badly of him now. So easy to think of him leaving us behind to deal with the shit he’d left us in, so easy to think that he’d be that unhappy with my being with Sin that he’d toss me out, but I knew it wouldn’t be forever. He’d do something to help me. He couldn’t have stopped himself.

  He loved me.

  I was a daddy’s girl for a reason.

  He’d always shown me that love, and I actually thought that was why I was so mad, because he had left me when he’d said he’d never do that.

  I’d known it was a promise he couldn’t keep, but death of natural causes and suicide?

  Two different things entirely.

  I sucked in a breath as I stepped into the office, asking, “Do I smell of shit or something?”

  Rex’s head popped up at that. He’d been bowed over a laptop, glaring at the screen, but when his gaze drifted down me, he grumbled, “Fuck, we got ourselves another Giulia.”

  I snorted, because Giulia’s reputation was preceding her. I hadn’t even had that much of a chance to get to know the woman, but it was clear she had an attitude problem she was famous for.

  I didn’t mind being thought of as a Giulia number two, but I didn’t want them to lump me in with her forever.

  I was Tiffany.

  With all my flaws and good sides to my nature too.

  “I might not be willing to take any of your shit, but I’m not Giulia. I’m Tiffany.” I strode over to him, hand stretched out. “Pleasure to meet you.”

  He eyed my hand, then he looked at me before he reached out and cautiously shook mine. Like he was expecting me to pull out a weapon or something.

  Told me how often he shook hands, that was for fucking sure.

  As did his punishing grip which, when I winced, he instantly softened.

  He pulled a face. “Fuck, sorry. “

  “No worries. Guess you’re used to pissing contests when you shake hands, huh?”

  His lips twitched. “Yeah, or something like that.” He tipped his head to the side and offered, “Take a seat.” When I did as he asked, he murmured, “I should have spoken with you the day you first came to speak to the—”

  He cleared his throat, and it was perfect timing actually. Hadn’t I just been thinking that? About how weird it was to think of Ghost, Amara, and Tatána as a collective but not know what to call them?

  “Girls,” I propped.

  His nose wrinkled, and I had to admit, at that moment, he was cute. I mean, I was Sin’s all the way. Sin was sleek, where Rex was rough, but hell, I could appreciate a good-looking man who knew how to fill out a pair of jeans, couldn’t I?

  Wasn’t like I was offering to spread my legs for him.

  The thought almost had me snorting, but instead, I watched him grimace at me, as he asked, “Girls? Really?”

  “What would you prefer we call them?” I countered dryly. “I mean, we have to call them something, and I ran into a similar issue. I think we should get used to that, because then they’ll be able to integrate more.”

  His eyes flared wide at my comment. “You want them to integrate? With us?”

  “Yeah, I don’t see why not. It’s not like they have anyplace else to go.”

  His brow furrowed. “Tiffany, I mean, Tiff? Do you have a preference? Sin calls you Tiff.”

  My lips twitched. “Yeah? He calls me lots of other names too.”

  Rex snickered. “Yeah, I’ll bet. Never thought I’d see a woman who could tame him, but it seems like you have.”

  My back stiffened at that. “He isn’t a house cat.”

  His nostrils flared. “No shit.”

  “You know what I mean. I haven’t done anything—”

  He raised a hand. “Sorry, I didn’t mean it that way. I just meant that his ex did a number on him, and it messed him up.”

  “He told me she cheated on him,” I muttered, knowing it was bad that we were talking about this, but also understanding that Sin probably wouldn’t talk about it himself, so if I could pump Rex, then it would be for the best.

  “Yeah? He told you that?” His surprise was clear.

  “He told me a lot of things. Like that it was during his first deployment.”

  Rex’s brows rose. “He told you he was in the Marines?” He whistled under his breath. “Fuck, he is serious about you.”

  Though it warmed me to think about that, to think that Rex thought that, I just shrugged because the truth was, after a few coming to Jesus moments since his return to Jersey, I knew he was serious, and I didn’t need his Prez to confirm it.

  “Sin’s dad was who she cheated on him with.”

  Rex’s statement had my eyes flaring wide. “Are you kidding me?”

  “Do I look like I’m the kind to kid around about shit like that?”

  “No.” I scowled at him. “No wonder it messed him up.”

  “Yeah, it did. Especially as—” He winced. “I shouldn’t be telling you this stuff, I’m just surprised is all.” His lips twisted. “Surprised and happy.”

  “You are?”

  “Yeah.” He shrugged. “I mean, I want all my brothers to be happy, but Sin has a special place in my heart.”

  He had a heart?

  Jesus.

  Although, that was being mean.

  Hadn’t he brought the girls to the compound? Wasn’t he feeding them after he’d spent a fortune on getting them back to health? Wasn’t he letting them stay, even though they were back on their feet physically?

  I tugged on my bottom lip with my teeth before I asked, “Why?”

  His head tilted to the side, but he smiled. “He didn’t tell you that, though, did he?” His hum was clear. “He’s a secretive shit. Not always a bad thing in a world like ours.” He rocked back in his chair, and the thing creaked under his substantial weight, but once he’d done it a few times, it fell silent, like it knew the score.

  Whether it creaked or not, Rex wasn’t going to stop rocking.

  “You can’t leave it like that,” I complained when he didn’t say anything else.

  “Sure, I can. I’m the Prez. I can do whatever the fuck I want.” His eyes darkened, and I knew that was a threat, but because he didn’t compound it by being physical, I knew he was only telling me to tread carefully. “Sin’s secrets aren’t only his to tell. That’s w
hy he kept his mouth shut.” Rex’s top lip quirked up in a smile. “You just made me happy that he’ll be getting a promotion soon.”

  Utterly confused, I gaped at him. “What?”

  He wafted a hand. “Talk to him about this. Tell him I said it was okay to talk about Grizzly.”

  “Grizzly?” I repeated dumbly, feeling no wiser when he just nodded.

  “Anyway, that isn’t the reason why I brought you here. I wanted to tell you that whatever you see on the compound stays on here, okay? You’re Sin’s, and that gives you some leeway, but if you betray him, if you betray us, that isn’t something you want to do. Do you hear me?”

  The gravel in his tone made such a swift appearance that it had my back straightening, but what was I supposed to do? Argue? Ha. Not going to happen. “Yeah. I understand.”

  He dipped his chin.

  “Did you warn Giulia or Lily like that?” I queried softly.

  “Giulia was raised in the club. She doesn’t need to be told to say shit about the MC to outsiders. Lily’s up to her neck in crap without me telling her to keep her fucking trap shut. You, on the other hand, are different.”

  “I am?” I questioned warily, wondering what shit Lily was in, and why she hadn’t told me about it.

  “Yeah. You are.” He leaned up and scratched his beard. It wasn’t fully grown out, just like straggly stubble, which made me think he’d shaved recently and it was itchy.

  “Why?”

  “How much do you know about your dad’s business practices?”

  “Not a lot.” I sucked in a breath. “I just know that he lost everything. The IRS froze all his assets and—”

  “Sure they did. But I’ve been looking into things, you know, because you’re Sin’s bitch, and because Lily is tight with you. Your daddy’s money wasn’t coming from a clear-cut source, and I’m curious about that.”

  “A clear-cut source?” I repeated, wondering what that even meant.

  “Yeah. We’ve been tracing where Donavan Lancaster was funding shit, and because Lily’s left things open to us, we have a wide avenue of data to maneuver through. He wasn’t funding your father with his own money. Someone else was directing the money through his corporations.”

  “Do you know who?”