by Christa Wick
Ruthless
A Dark & Dirty MC Romance
Christa Wick
C.M. Wick
Contents
Book Description
1. Avery
2. Avery
3. Callan
4. Avery
5. Avery
6. Avery
7. Avery
8. Callan
9. Avery
10. Callan
11. Avery
12. Avery
13. Callan
14. Avery
Epilogue
Also by Christa/C.M. Wick
Thank You For Reading & Reviewing!
About the Author
Copyright © 2020 by Christa Wick
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, this book and any portion thereof may not be reproduced, scanned, reverse-engineered, decompiled, transferred, or distributed in any print or electronic form without the express written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. Participation in any aspect of piracy of copyrighted materials, inclusive of the downloading and obtainment of this book through non-retail or other unauthorized means, is in actionable violation of the author’s rights.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, media, brands, places, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and registered trademark owners of all branded names referenced without TM, SM, or (R) symbols due to formatting constraints, and is not claiming ownership of or collaboration with said trademark brands. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or events is purely coincidental.
Published by Evergreen Books Publishing
Copy edits and line edits by GBI Author Services
Proofreading by Rosa Sharon
Cover design by Violet Duke
Previously published as Callan by Christa Wick (c) 2014.
Book Description
AVERY: Maybe making the call to the cops was a dumb move on my part, but I had to do it. Callan’s life was at stake. Yes, I know we exist in different worlds—his far darker and more dangerous than mine—but I’ve been stupid for him since high school all the same. And now, with that one phone call, my life becomes irrevocably tied to his.
…In that it’s in jeopardy just like his is.
CALLAN: If ever there were an angel here in my hell on earth, it’d be shy, sweet Avery Watkins. She’s always been too good to belong to a biker with a past as ugly as mine. Still, I’ve had a soft spot for her since high school all the same. For years, I’ve kept my distance to keep her safe. But all that changes the moment she risks her life for me.
Because now, she’s mine—mine to watch over, mine to keep.
Previously published as Callan (c) 2014, edited with revised and added content throughout.
1
Avery
Maybe making the 911 call was stupid, but that’s just me—stupid Avery Watkins. My dad will tell you it’s true, only he’s more likely to say I’m a dumb cunt, followed by “just like your mother.” Only she’s a dead dumb cunt and has been for ten years.
My high school teachers and the guidance counselor, Miss Rawley, will back up his opinion, only they prefer to sugarcoat it with nicer wording like “inattentive” and “doesn’t apply herself.” I doubt any of those ladies at Thunder Valley High could have applied themselves any better at school if they had grown up with a drunk dad making them fetch beers and light cigarettes until two in the morning, and then find it impossible to fall asleep because there was no telling if the old man would wake up and light his own smoke before promptly passing out with a burning cigarette hanging from his lips.
I’m doubly sure none of them ever applied themselves after emptying puke buckets for the last three months of their mother’s life as the alcohol abuse finally finished her slow suicide of the last two decades.
But that’s all water under the bridge, more or less. I finished high school on time a good five years ago and I work two jobs in a town were a lot of people can’t even find one. I’m a server three mornings a week at the truck stop by the interstate and I fetch beers and light cigarettes for drunks who aren’t my dad four nights a week at a bar called Freya’s.
Not a lot to lose, is it? Maybe that’s why I thought nothing about making the call when I overheard that the Steel Tide, the local motorcycle gang, were about to kill one of their own members. It didn’t hurt that the soon-to-be dead member was Callan Tilley, someone always one grade up from me since I first noticed him when I was in fifth grade.
I was bringing four beers and a whiskey to the back room at Freya’s when I heard the low-voiced execution order.
“We have to take Callan out. With all this shit going down with the other chapters, he's our weakest link.”
I almost dropped my tray of drinks but somehow managed to round the table like I hadn’t heard a word of what they were saying. The speaker was Little Red, the club’s vice-president. His father, not at the table, was Big Red and had been the club's chapter president since Callan’s father was sent to prison for thirty years on some kind of racketeering charge.
Placing the drinks on the table, I did the mental math. Six years had passed since the cops slapped the cuffs on the elder Tilley. Callan had been a senior in high school and less than three years would pass before he was the last Tilley in Thunder Valley, one brother dead and the other in federal prison for the murder.
Manslaughter, not murder.
A waitress, not a lawyer, I didn’t understand the difference or how the prosecutor had made a case against Lincoln Tilley without a body. But everyone in town seemed to agree that Lincoln had killed his older brother Boone. Everyone but Callan—and maybe me.
Placing the whiskey and beer Little Red had ordered in front of him, I felt the brush of his knuckle against my knee. My stomach lurched to the opposite side of my body. I was damn near invisible to everyone at Freya’s and the rest of Thunder Valley, but Little Red always touched me at the bar. He did it out of sight or in a manner the other club members wouldn’t notice, but then he made a point of catching my gaze to let me know the contact had been intentional.
Little Red downed the whiskey then slammed the shot glass against the table. He wrapped one hand around the beer bottle and pointed it at Weaver, so named because everyone thought he was a basket case. Really, he was a crank monkey, the circuits in his brain fried by years of drug abuse. He was the only other member of the Steel Tide who was Callan’s age, but the two men were worlds apart. Callan, like the rest of the Tilley men, treated his body like a temple. Good food, plenty of activity, no drugs, no hard alcohol, and only the occasional beer as best as I could tell.
“You down with it happening?” Little Red asked Weaver as he continued pointing his bottle at the man.
I couldn’t believe the bikers were continuing the conversation while I was at the table serving their drinks. But if they thought I hadn’t heard the beginning, then they likely figured I wouldn’t put two and two together when Callan wound up dead.
Weaver offered Little Red a dopey smile, whatever drugs he’d taken earlier and the two rounds of alcohol I’d already delivered to the table clearly having an effect on the muscles of Weaver’s face.
“Whatever the club needs, brother.” He tried to tap his bottle against Little Red’s and missed.
Little Red looked at the two other club members at the table. I knew them as Chain and Hash, one because he smoked too much, the other because he supposedly lived on alcohol and h
ash browns.
Both men nodded, their gazes more serious than Weaver could manage.
"That shit down in West Bay," Hash grumbled. "You know who is unaccounted for."
I didn't know who was unaccounted for, but I knew about the "shit" down in West Bay. An entire chapter of the Steel Tide was busted. The chapter president and his wife were in jail awaiting trial for everything from drugs to murders that included win-or-die cage matches.
Little Red reached out and snagged my elbow before I could leave with the tray of empties. As he kept me trapped, he looked at the men.
“I'm glad we're in agreement. Bolo is back from Atlanta tonight.”
My lungs seized in my chest and I had to force myself not to gasp to restart them. Had Red just insinuated that Bolo would kill Callan tonight? I wanted to run from the table, find a quiet corner and whip out my cellphone. Only I didn’t have Callan’s number and Red still gripped my arm.
He brushed his thumb softly against my inner elbow. “Bring us all a round of whiskeys, baby. We’re celebrating.”
Tears threatened to well in my eyes, but I forced them down. Not only did I have to figure out some way to get a message to Callan before Bolo found him, but I also had to figure out this “baby” shit with Red and the way he had openly caressed me. And I had to do both without Red knowing or feeling insulted. I’d seen more than once what happened to women who crossed him or his dad.
Skin crawling from the sustained contact with the biker, I nodded and extracted my arm from his grasp. “Four whiskeys coming up.”
With the bikers at one of the backroom’s three tables, the other two tables were empty. I practically ran from the room and ignored my four stations on the south wall of Freya’s main room. I blew past the pool tables, deaf to the slurred “honey, bring me another,” from one of my regulars. Every patron in the bar could have been yelling drink orders at me and I wouldn’t have heard a single word. My heart beat too heavily, the blood it pushed through my veins pulsing too loudly for other sounds to penetrate.
Down the narrow hall I went to the only refuge a woman could find inside Freya’s—the restroom. After making sure the door latched properly, I pulled my cheap pre-paid cellphone from my waitressing apron. With no Internet on the phone, I went old school and dialed information.
A recorded voice asked me for city and name.
“Thunder Valley, Callan Tilley,” I whispered, my gaze on the sliver of space between the bottom of the bathroom door and the floor to make sure no one had followed me down the hall.
“I’m sorry,” the mechanical voice prompted. “I didn’t get that. Please try again.”
“Thunder Valley, Callan Tilley, ” I said just a little louder.
“I’m sorry...”
I waited, eyes closed, blood continuing to rush past my ears in a thick roar, for the machine to tell me whether I wasn’t loud enough or that Callan had an unlisted number.
“There’s no listing for that number,” the voice finished. “Would you like to try another listing?”
I hung up. My stomach see-sawed from too many emotions rolling through me and the permanent stink of vomit and piss that no amount of bleach or other disinfectants could wash out of the floor and walls of Freya’s bathrooms. Moving toward the sink, I reached up and pushed at the bottom of the rectangle of glass that served as a window. Like those in any other bar, the bathroom window was built high and was too small to crawl out of unless you were a toddler. But if I stood on my tiptoes, I could just catch a whiff of slightly fresher air.
The window faced the back of Freya’s but on the opposite side of where the dumpster and recycling bins were placed. There were a few parking spots for the employees who actually had a car. Patrons were supposed to park out front, but the rules didn’t apply to the Steel Tide.
Little Red could have sat bare-assed on Freya’s face and she wouldn’t have whispered a single complaint. Mostly they parked out front like everyone else, kind of like marking their territory. But sometimes one or more of them parked behind the joint. That usually meant they were lying low, either from the cops, another club or their woman.
So hearing the throttle of a motorcycle behind Freya’s as I stuck my nose to the open window didn’t surprise me. The sputtering cough of that throttle, however, hit me like a knife sinking into my already troubled gut. Only one bike in the Steel Tide's cavalcade sounded that bad—Bolo’s. I knew it by heart, just like I knew the sound of Little Red’s and Callan’s bikes. I knew Bolo’s because, as the club’s sergeant-at-arms and thus its enforcer, he scared the living daylights out of me. I knew Red’s because he made my skin crawl in other ways and I knew Callan’s because…
Well, because I’m stupid for him and have been since my freshman year of high school. Stupid Avery Watkins who can’t keep enough of her tips and wages from her drunken father so that she can move the hell away from Thunder Valley. Stupid Avery Watkins who has one foot on the toilet in Freya’s bathroom so she can peek out at a killer to see if he’s already wiping blood from his hands.
Arms shaking as I hoisted myself just a little higher, I saw Bolo shut down his bike and climb off. It was too dark where he stood to see the state of his clothes, especially whether there were any dark spots that weren’t grease from the bike or his last meal.
I dropped to the floor, my brain running circles inside my skull. I couldn’t call Callan to warn him. I had to find him and do it in person. But I didn’t have a car. And my dad, if he was sober enough to remember, wouldn’t be at Freya’s to pick me up until midnight. Even then, he wouldn’t hand over the keys to his truck when he’d never taught me to drive.
If I wanted to find Callan and warn him, it would be on foot. And I couldn’t start with Little Red at Freya’s, especially not now that he seemed ready to ramp up the attention he threw my way.
Trying to figure out how I was going to make it through the next three hours of my shift, I reached for the door handle. My hand stopped mid-motion as I heard another bike pull in behind the bar. My eyes drifted shut, a tear escaping each as I recognized the smooth running engine of Callan’s bike.
Flipping the bathroom light off, I grabbed hold of the window ledge once more, put a foot on the toilet and pushed up so that I could see both men. My heart froze when I did.
Callan was backing his bike into a spot. Bolo appeared to be waiting for him in a good natured way, one buddy standing by so the two could walk into their favorite bar together. But I knew that wasn’t the case—not just because of what I had overheard but by the way Bolo’s hand kept drifting to his back waistband.
The bottom hem of his black leather vest with its Steel Tide patch lifted, showing me the dull silver flash of metal. A knife maybe, or more likely a gun. Bolo wasn’t stupid or crazy enough to go after the taller, stronger Callan with a knife. Bolo would be eating his own steel if he tried.
“Been looking for you,” Bolo shouted above the open throttle of Callan’s bike. “We need to hit the clubhouse for a talk.”
I felt the blood drain from my face. If Callan went to the clubhouse with Bolo, he was dead.
Revving the engine on his bike, Callan seemed to study the club's enforcer. “Thirsty, need a drink first.”
Callan moved to shut off the engine on his bike, but Bolo stepped forward and put his hand over that of the younger man.
“No drink.” He ordered, his voice taking on the stern tone befitting his rank within the Steel Tide. “Besides, your girl ain’t in tonight.”
Blood rushed back to my face. Callan had a girl? Well, fuck me. Maybe she should be the one spying from the bathroom and trying to figure out how to save his stupid ass from his so-called motorcycle brothers.
“Don’t have a girl,” Callan said and flung Bolo’s hand off his own to give the bike’s motor another rev.
Bolo looked over his shoulder, the angle of his head making me feel like he was staring at the bathroom’s small window with me behind it instead of just the back of Freya’s bar. He g
ave a little shrug but didn’t drop the argument.
“Not what Little Red says.”
“Red needs to worry about his own dick.” Callan moved once more to shut off the bike, only to have Bolo stop him again.
Ninety-nine-point-ninety-nine percent of the time, Callan looked like he wouldn’t hurt a fly despite the outlaw vest and steel-toed boots that could crack a human skull with one kick. But even in the low light behind the bar, I could see anger slow crawling across his features as Bolo blocked him a second time.
“Four brothers inside, including the VP,” Callan said, his voice a tight knot. “If you’re calling Church, seems we’re riding a little light.”
Bolo dropped his hands to his sides for a second before he turned his open palms toward Callan and gave a full-bodied shrug. Seeing the false gesture of peacefulness, I knew I couldn’t wait any longer. Either Bolo was going to sweet talk Callan back to the clubhouse or somewhere along the side of the road where he could kill him without witnesses, or a deadly fight was going to erupt before they left Freya’s parking lot.
I dropped to the floor, pulled out my cell phone and dialed 911 as I crouched down so I wouldn’t be talking near the open window. Cupping my hand around my mouth and the speaker, I waited for dispatch to answer.
“911, what is your emergency?”
“Murder!” The word blurted from me as soon as she finished the question. “Freya’s Bar, out back. The Steel Tide is gonna—”