What sort of girl falls in love with four outlaws?
What sort of girl plays with fire for the fun of it?
I’m the salvation for the dirty throne of the city’s underworld, the only person who can secure a future for the Death by Daybreak Motorcycle Club. There are few people in this world that I can trust—a mafia brat, a soon-to-be nun, and four lascivious demons—but that’ll have to be enough, or we’ll all burn together in glorious flame. Only, there’s no telling what my father will do now that he knows the truth.
They will always be wrong for me.
But sometimes, the darkness simply chooses you.
These guys … they’ve chosen someone.
They’ve chosen me.
Table of Contents Table of Contents
Front Matter Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Signup for my Newsletter
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Epilogue Part 1
Epilogue Part 2
Epilogue Part 3
Back Matter Throwaway Prince Cover
Alpha Wolves Motorcycle Club Cover
Havoc at Prescott High Cover
Stepbrother Inked Cover
Keep Up With The Fun
More Books By C.M. Stunich
About the Author
I Will Revel in Glory
I Will Revel in Glory © C.M. Stunich 2021
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
The For information address Sarian Royal Indie Publishing, 89365 Old Mohawk Rd, Springfield, OR 97478.
www.cmstunich.com
Cover art and design © Amanda Carroll and Sarian Royal
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, businesses, or locales is coincidental and is not intended by the author.
this book is dedicated to
those brave enough to try this series when there was only one book out.
thank you for believing in Gidget’s story.
thank you for believing in me.
Sign up for an exclusive first look at the hottest new releases, contests, and exclusives from bestselling author C.M. Stunich and get *three free* eBooks as a thank you!
Want to discuss what you've just read? Get exclusive teasers or meet special guest authors? Join my online book club on Facebook!
Nothing beautiful can ever bloom from darkness.
That’s what most people think anyway. But there are entire worlds of shadows where life thrives: in the deepest parts of the ocean, in the coldest caverns, and inside the heart of a girl who only ever wanted to belong.
That was it, all along.
I wasn’t supposed to be a dirty princess with an honor guard.
I was meant to carry a sword into battle; I was meant to fight.
That last moment, the one before Cat pulls the trigger, everything becomes clear. Of course, like with a strike of hot lightning on an ebony night, it’s only crystalline for the briefest span of an instant, and then reality comes crashing down.
And life, as we all know it, is anything but clear-cut.
The lens with which we view the world is hazy, distorted, and oftentimes, obscured by our own bullshit. So, imagine my surprise when my brother’s blood—and not mine—spatters the wall near the office door.
His right foot moves forward, as if he’s about to take another step, and then he just slumps over like a broken doll, collapsing into a twitching heap with his body half-in and half-out of the doorway.
I sag back against the bookcase behind me, my eyes lifting up to find my father’s. He just shot his own son in the back of the head, like George did to Lennie in that shitty old book they made me read in school—Of Mice and Men.
If you really think about it, what dear old dad just did is a kindness in its own way. He made Gaz think he’d won, encouraged him to say his goodbyes to me, and then sent him on his way, none the wiser.
But what about me? Do I deserve even that miniscule speck of generosity from the president of the Death by Daybreak Motorcycle Club?
Is he really going to kill me next, knowing that I know that this is the end?
Cat’s rust-red eyes meet my matching gaze.
I truly believed he was about to shoot me; he was aiming at me. But at the last second, at the last second …
“You killed Gaz,” I whisper, and then my knees just give out and I find myself sitting on the floor. I can’t stop staring at my brother’s body. He was an evil man, there’s no doubt, and he deserved to die for the things he’d done. He murdered a prostitute, beat my dog, and used me as a punching bag.
More important than any of that: he led the mafia to my sisters.
“Don’t tell your mother,” Cat says, his voice distant and cold, as if his only son isn’t lying on the floor with a gunshot to the head. “If she asks where he is, you say that you don’t have a goddamn clue.”
My brain struggles to keep up with his words. What is he saying? Why is he telling me this? Isn’t he going to punish me now? Both of his remaining children were, after all, traitors to the club. It’s a crime punishable only by death.
Cat moves over to where I’m sitting, blood running down the sides of my face, dripping off my chin. My whole body hurts, and my ears are still ringing from the explosion. But my mission remains the same.
I need to find Sin. And Crown. I need to know if Beast and Grainger are still alive.
“You want to tell me what this is?” Cat asks, removing the bottle and the syringe from his pocket. I swallow hard as I look down at the items in his palm and then redirect my attention to his face.
“Gaz and his buddies drugged the kegs; they laced the cocaine with something. I don’t know what that is, only that we have to give anyone who’s been affected by it an injection, or they’ll die.”
He grunts at me, shaking his head and rising to his feet with the items still in hand. I’ve always thought of my father as the devil, the leader of hell’s demons, a creature crafted of cunning and brimstone. I see now that I was right all along, and one of Reba’s oft-quoted Bible verses pops into my head.
Be sober, be watchful: your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.
Me. He wants to devour me.
“Get up.”
Cat turns and leaves the room, stepping over my brother’s body like it isn’t even there. I’m struck by how similar this situation is to the one I found myself in when I woke up and the Don of the Grey Wolfe Mafia was staring at me.
He made me crawl on my hands and knees.
This time, I force my aching body to my feet.
When I get to the doorway, I look down at my brother’s wide back, at the small entry wound in his skull. The exit wound will be much messier, much bloodier, raw and jagged and graphic.
I don’t want to see it.
I stumble over
Gaz, my shoulder slamming into the wall as I struggle to stay on my feet. I’m in shock; my body is brimming over with adrenaline. All I can see when I close my eyes is a memory I thought was long-buried, one where Gaz, Queenie, Posey, and I are playing together in a small yard filled with flowering dandelions and the rusted-out shells of two cars.
Gaz was so much older than me, but I liked that when I was little. He could put me on his shoulders and carry me around. He could reach things on high shelves. He could make Queenie laugh.
Dizziness sweeps over me, but I push it back. I shove with all my might until nostalgia fades into the distance and the blurriness of the real world fills my vision. It’s hard to tell where the floor ends and the walls begin, if there’s even a ceiling, if I’m standing up or sitting down.
“Gidge!”
Loud footsteps precede warm hands on my rib cage, lifting me up, pulling me close.
Suede and violets.
It’s Crown, my father’s vice president and one of the four men in this club that I dare to call my own.
But only if he wants me.
I don’t know if he does, if he can’t have all of me.
“Oh, Gidge,” Crown says, smoothing his hand over my hair and tucking me so tightly against him that I feel like I must be crazy. How could I ever imagine this man didn’t want me when he holds me like this?
“Sin,” I start, trying and failing to prevent another coughing attack. I got hit in the chest hard. That, and the smoke and heat from the blast seem to have irritated my lungs. “Beast. Grainger.”
“I should’ve fucking seen this coming,” Cat says, more to himself than to us. I don’t know what he saw on Gaz’s phone, but I’ll tell you this: the way he looks at me wrapped in Crown’s arms is enough. Seeing us together is enough. Our love—as gritty, as resistant, as hard as it is sometimes—is so potent as to be a smoking gun. It paints us filthy, like traitors, paints us with the bright colors of guilt and betrayal. “Jesus Christ, Crown. I should kill the two of you right now.” My father actually turns around, hefting his gun in his hands. He stares at it like he’s deciding whether or not to execute us both right here, right now.
His loyal demons aren’t so loyal, not when it comes to me. Their greatest sin. Their most holy triumph.
Crown very slowly, very carefully, turns us both around so that he can face Cat, keeping me tucked in his arms. I’m not sure that my feet are even touching the floor or, if they are, I’m not sure they’re holding a single ounce of my own weight.
“I won’t tell you that you’re wrong,” Crown says, his voice steady and even. He’s remarkably calm. I can’t help but wonder where he’s been all this time, what he’s been doing. He isn’t singed from the blast; he isn’t bleeding from any gunshots. “But Prez, give me time to explain the situation.”
The sound that escapes Cat’s lips might be called a laugh in some circles, but only if you believe that sound can be tinged with malice and the promise of future violence. The expression he’s wearing now isn’t much different than the one he held just before he killed his only son.
We’re alive, but only for now.
And Crown has just revealed his hand.
He should’ve left me to flounder on my own beneath Cat’s dark stare.
“Gaz’s body is on the floor of my office; clean it up and keep quiet about it.” My father turns and starts walking away, dropping that nugget of information the way someone else might relay the weather to an acquaintance.
“Fuck,” Crown growls out, squeezing me even more tightly in his strong arms. “We need to get you out of here.” He looks down at me, but I can’t really look back at him. I’m too weak. I was running on pure adrenaline until now; I’m not sure there’s a lot left.
“Where are they?” I whisper, my voice quavering as I dig my fingers into the leather of Crown’s cut. He hesitates then. I don’t like that, not one bit. He takes me by the shoulders and moves me back enough that he can lean down and meet my eyes.
“Don’t worry about that just now,” he tells me, but of course I’m going to worry about that. The only people in the whole world who matter to me are on this compound. “We need to get you some help.” He sighs and flicks his gaze to the side for a moment, running his tongue along his lower lip. “You might also need to run.”
You not we because Crown isn’t the type to run from anything. No, even if it meant his death at Cat’s hands, he’d stay and face the music all alone, leaving me to ride off into the sunset on the back of another man’s bike. That’s just who he is. Disturbingly righteous in his own way.
I shove away from him and stumble, only to fall into someone else’s arms.
My head whips around to find Beast looming over me, his face bloodied and bruised, burns along both of his bare forearms. My new husband is alive. He’s alive. With a small cry that I’ll probably regret making later, I turn and let myself fall against him.
“You’re alive,” I whisper, even though that’s an obvious fact at this point. “You’re alive.”
“I failed you, sugar,” he says, stroking a hand over my hair in a way that isn’t dissimilar to the way that Crown just touched me. “I failed you.”
As if getting knocked down by a bomb blast and shielding me with his body was akin to failure in any way.
“Where’s Grainger?” I ask as Crown moves over to stand beside us.
The two men exchange a look, and fury fills me in a glittering red wave. I shove back from Beast so hard that I stumble again. Only Crown’s hand on my elbow keeps me upright.
“Where. is. Grainger?” I grind out, feeling my body begin to shake. I’m hurt. Not as badly as I was after the motorcycle accident, but I need medical attention, a soft bed, and a bucket of cool water to drink.
“On his way to the hospital, honey,” Beast tells me, but this time, there is no comfort for me in his pretty Southern drawl. I feel sick. Hospitals are a last resort for the club; we treat most all injuries here on the compound. Even me, when I pulled the lace of my original wedding dress down to reveal a gunshot wound to the chest, I was treated here.
For someone in the club to actually go to a hospital is bad news.
“Sin?” I whisper, terrified to hear their answer. Please don’t be dead. Goddamn it, Sin, if you’re dead, I’ll … I’ll find you in the next life and kill you myself. Beast and Crown exchange a look before turning back to me again.
“Also en route,” Beast tells me, his voice far gruffer than I’ve ever heard it, thick with emotion.
“Fuck,” I groan, my body sagging against Crown’s. He keeps me up easily, as if I weigh nothing at all, and my eyes close of their own accord. Blackness creeps in at the edges of my vision, but I won’t allow myself to give into sweet, blissful nothingness. No, I’m stronger than that.
I once compared myself to a resurrection fern. That is, a type of fern that grows on the trunks of mature trees, but without harming them. The reason I felt this was an apt metaphor is that I was trying to explain to Crown how I can exist inside the club’s strict hierarchy without being parasitic. I am my own entity. I exist on my own, with a little help from the trees.
Right now? Here’s what I can say about myself: the resurrection fern can live for a hundred years in a dead state. It can lose up to ninety-seven percent of its water while other plants die with just a ten-percent loss.
That’s me. Living dead for years. Suffering losses that would cripple others.
And even now, here, in one of the worst states I’ve found myself in since my sisters were murdered, I’m going to persevere. My eyes snap open even as Crown tries to lift me to my feet, and I push back against him.
Feelings are luxuries; business comes first.
“We need to make sure Cat administers the antidote,” I murmur, and Crown’s brows draw together in confusion.
“How do you know about that shit?” he asks me, and I look up at him with a huh, what the fuck? sort of expression on my face.
“Uh, aren’t I
the one who should be asking that question?” I grind out, my tongue gritty and my ears still ringing. I’ve got a massive migraine, blood dripping down my face, and a heart that’s being torn into jagged strips with each second we stand here wasting time. “Grey is on the compound.”
The words rush out before I can stop them. Not that I would, but I’m taking a huge risk here. This is me extending trust to these men in a way I never thought I’d be able to. I’m telling them that my friend is here, on this compound, in the middle of this bullshit. If they wanted to kill him, it’d be so easy. They could save face with Cat, bring Death by Daybreak a severed head that the club would absolutely love to stick on a pike outside the gates to the compound.
“He’s what?!” Crown chokes out as a deep, heavy melancholy settles in my bones and I resist the urge to go back and look at my brother’s dead body. Is it possible to wish someone dead and then regret their death all at the same time? I’m not excited by Gaz’s death the way I once thought I’d be. I don’t feel smug at the thought of his passing the way he seemed to when he thought it was me that our father was going to shoot.
He smirked at me. He was an integral part of events that caused Queenie and Posey to die horrible deaths. Yet … I’m still mourning him. I’m mourning him, and I don’t understand my emotions at all. Shades of gray, Gidge. The world is painted in shades of gray. You are as gray as they come, just like your mean old daddy.
“He’s here; we need to find him before it’s too late.” I squeeze my lips into a grim line as I turn to look down the hallway. Problem one: antidote. Problem two: Grey. Problem three … hospital. Fuck. It’s hard to prioritize needs in a crisis, particularly when the men you love might … if they … I can’t go there. I just can’t.
If they’re on their way to the hospital, there’s nothing more I can do for them right now. I need to focus on the things that I can change, the lives that I can save, even if I’d rather be by their sides. They shouldn’t have to die alone if …
I Will Revel in Glory Page 1