Iron Will
Lords of Carnage: Ironwood MC
Daphne Loveling
Copyright 2019 Daphne Loveling
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
This book is a work of fiction. Any similarity to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
Contents
Credits
Sign up for my mailing list
Prologue
1. Rourke
2. Laney
3. Rourke
4. Laney
5. Rourke
6. Laney
7. Rourke
8. Laney
9. Rourke
10. Laney
11. Rourke
12. Laney
13. Laney
14. Rourke
15. Laney
16. Laney
17. Laney
18. Rourke
19. Rourke
20. Laney
21. Rourke
22. Laney
23. Laney
24. Rourke
25. Laney
26. Laney
27. Rourke
28. Laney
Epilogue
Daphne Talks Out Her Ass About IRON WILL
Did you like this book?
About Daphne Loveling
Books by Daphne Loveling
Photo by Drazen Vukelic, Shutterstock
Cover design by Coverlüv
One of my favorite things about writing is the relationships I build with readers. I occasionally send newsletters with details on new releases, special offerings, and exclusive bonus material to readers who subscribe to my mailing list.
See the back of this book for details on how to sign up.
To everyone who struggles to keep their heads above water.
The Ironwood is a slow-growing, medium-sized, deciduous hardwood tree. It is the hardest, densest wood in the world — so dense and heavy that it will not even float in water. It's durable and holds up well under pressure and strain.
For all its good qualities, ironwood is tough to work with. Some woodworkers say it is similar to working with stone.
Prologue
The girl is slight of build. Tangled, hay-colored hair. Dirty pink undershirt.
A pediatrician would tell her mother that she is underweight for seven years old — in only the twentieth percentile for her age group. But her mother can’t afford to take her to the pediatrician.
The girl, whose name is Paisley, crouches in the corner, in the small space between the wooden nightstand and the wall. She’s hoping Mickey will forget she’s there. He’s on the phone, angrily shouting, his voice bouncing off the thin walls of the motel room.
The girl’s mother isn’t here. The girl’s mother doesn’t know Mickey has come back. Mom kicked him out last night. But this afternoon, when Paisley got home from school, he was here.
“I told Jimmy not to fuckin’ worry!” he’s yelling. “He… ah, Jesus Christ, Dewey, I ain’t got it right now! Tell him to chill the fuck out. Naw, man… Bethany’s got the car, I ain’t… God damnit, Dewey, what did I tell you? What did I tell you?!”
Paisley doesn’t want to be alone with him when he’s like this. When he gets off the phone he’ll be raging, and she’ll be the only one here. But he won’t let her leave without a good reason.
Desperately, she tries to think of a way to get outside and away from Mickey until he calms down. She looks around the room, casting about for an excuse, when suddenly, an idea comes to her.
Maybe it will work. If she doesn’t get scared and mess up.
Crawling up off the ground as Mickey continues to shout into the phone, Paisley goes to the dresser. She opens the bottom drawer, where her mom keeps the dirty clothes until it’s time to wash them. Paisley finds a couple of plastic shopping bags in there, and stuffs some of her own shirts and jeans inside. There’s a small zippered pouch with quarters in it, and she takes that, too.
At the last second, she turns and grabs the worn chapter book she was reading in her hiding space. She’s read it a dozen times at least, but it doesn’t matter. It’s the only book she owns.
Paisley does all this as quickly and quietly as she can. She shoves her feet into her worn sneakers and moves toward the door. She’s careful not to look at Mickey, hoping he’ll ignore her. He’s still on the phone as she slips by. But when she puts down one of the bags to open the door, a rough hand shoots out. He grabs her roughly by the arm and yanks her toward him. She winces but manages not to cry out. It’s her bruised arm — the same one he grabbed her by last night.
“Where the fuck are you goin’?” he spits at her.
“To do laundry. Mom told me to do it while she was gone,” she lies.
He yanks harder, pulling until her face is inches from his. She can smell his breath, his sweat. She tries not to flinch. She keeps her eyes on the wall, but when he doesn’t let her go, she risks a look at him.
“The fuck are you lookin’ at?”
“Nothing,” she whispers, looking away again.
With a final shake, he lets her go. Barely daring to breathe, she opens the door and scoots through it. She grabs the second plastic bag and pulls it through with her. The bag catches against the latch as the door closes, ripping and spilling the contents on the ground. Hurriedly, she scoops up the clothes and gathers them into her arms.
The girl steps quietly out into the exterior hallway of the motel complex, letting the door slam shut behind her. The room that she, her mother, and Mickey live in is on the second floor. To get to the cold, cement-floored room where the washing machines are, she has to carry the laundry down a flight of rickety stairs.
The quarters make slight ticking noises in her pocket. It reassures her to hear them there.
As she starts down the stairs, she realizes she forgot to look for laundry detergent. She’s afraid to go back inside the room, though, now that she’s escaped once. She decides she’ll try to find some downstairs in the laundry room. Or maybe she can ask to borrow some from somebody. If she can’t find any, maybe she can just wash the clothes in water. But no, there are stains on some of them. And she doesn’t have anything clean to wear tomorrow. If she has to wear dirty clothes, the kids will notice.
Paisley’s face flames hot with shame at the thought. The kids in her school make fun of her enough as it is. They taunt her for her dirty jeans half a size too small, and her scuffed-up discount store shoes. The stinging barbs of her classmates are burned into her mind. Today, Callista, a girl with always-perfect hair and expensive clothes, wrinkled up her nose and told Paisley that she smelled.
Mom and Paisley have never had a lot of money. But now that Mickey’s around, it’s worse. When Mom got mad at Mickey last night and kicked him out, Paisley prayed in her head that he was gone for good. It was better when it was just her and Mom.
God must not have heard her, though.
There’s no one else on the stairs when Paisley starts down them with the clothes in her arms. The mound of laundry is so big that she can’t see her feet, so she has to feel for the next step with her toes. One step down. Then another. She leans against the banister for support. Another step.
Then, the banister, poorly attached to the wall, slips under her weight.
Paisley starts to tumble, her arms letting go of the di
rty clothes as she splays them out and tries to catch herself. She cries out as she falls sideways, down the stairs. Her body instinctively tries to turn itself, but there isn’t time.
She lands on her left side three steps from the bottom, her shoulder making a sickening crunch against one of the wooden steps. Her side falls against the one above it. Her head knocks hard against the ground as she comes to a rest. Searing pain rips a scream from her young throat.
Paisley’s body comes to rest at the bottom. Her whole left side is agony. Her head feels fuzzy and pounds so hard she feels like she might throw up. And then, just as the thought makes itself known, she leans over and vomits onto the pavement.
Upstairs a door opens, then shuts. Someone comes running down, making the stairs shake.
“Oh, shit, you okay?” a teenage girl wearing too much mascara gasps. She peers down at Paisley, her eyes wide.
Paisley starts to cry, but the crying hurts her head. She hurts so bad, and Mickey will be mad and call her stupid and useless. For a second, she thinks maybe she can just get up and it will be okay. But when she tries to move her arm and sit up, she cries out in pain again.
“I’m gonna go get my mom,” the teenager blurts. Her words reach Paisley through a thick fog, barely registering.
A few seconds later, a rotund woman with beady eyes, who must be the teenager’s mom, comes out. As soon as she sees Paisley’s arm, bent unnaturally and already turning colors, she gasps.
“Honey, is your mama around?”
Paisley starts to shake her head, but it hurts so bad that she leans over again and dry heaves. The woman bends down and sits on a step with difficulty, then puts a kind hand on Paisley’s back. Paisley is full-on crying now, trying to stop herself and wiping her nose on her forearm as she hiccups and sniffles.
“We’re gonna get you to the hospital, honey,” the beady-eyed woman says.
Everything someone says to her feels like it’s in another language. Before Paisley can process the woman’s words enough to answer, the manager trots around the corner, followed by the teenager. He takes one look at Paisley and the woman and splays out his hands. “I can’t leave the office!” he stammers.
The woman mutters a curse. “Worthless… Okay, honey. We’re gonna get you to the hospital. Do you think you can stand up for me?”
It’s the hardest thing Paisley has ever done, but she gets up, trying as hard as she can not to move her left side. It hurts so much that it’s hard to breathe, and that, more than anything, makes Paisley finally manage to stop crying.
“Please,” Paisley gasps, “My clothes…”
The woman looks up at the teenager and nods.
The teenager starts picking up the shirts and pants, stuffing them all into the non-ripped bag as well as she can. Paisley, head pounding, limping badly, allows herself to be led by the woman toward her car.
As she lays down in the back seat, trying as hard as she can not to be sick again, she says a silent prayer of thanks that no one ever thought to go get Mickey.
1
Rourke
My knock on the half-open hospital room door is met with a pissed-off grunt.
“Whaddya want?” a voice inside growls.
Turning to Mal, I grin. “Sounds like Bear’s ready for visitors.”
Mal smirks back. “Our little ray of sunshine.”
I push the door open to find Bear sitting up in bed, looking angry as a grizzly. He’s dressed in a hospital gown and has the blanket pulled up to his waist. His white hair is in disarray on top of his head, yanked out of its usual ponytail.
“Nice dress, darlin’,” Mal comments, nodding at the gown as he steps into the room. “The blue really brings out the color of your eyes.”
“You can fuck right off, you asshole,” Bear mutters through his beard. “I ain’t gonna be in this bed forever, and I’m still strong enough to kick your ass.”
I can’t help but burst out laughing. That just makes Bear angrier. “Sorry, brother,” I say between chuckles. “I gotta go with Mal on this one. You look funny as hell in that get-up.”
“Fuckin’ assholes wouldn’t let me keep my street clothes on,” he grouses. “Said the blood on my shirt wasn’t sterile, or some shit.”
“How ya feelin’, anyway?” Mal asks, leaning against the wall. “You lost a fuck of a lot of blood, brother.”
“Eh, I’m okay.” Bear brushes off the question with a frown. He shifts in the bed, wincing as he does. “They got me on some pain meds. Doc said it’s gonna hurt like hell later.”
“I don’t doubt it,” I agree. “But at least you got the satisfaction of knowing the other guy’s probably in a lot more goddamn pain than you are.”
It’s true. The dumb fuck who made the mistake of putting his hands on Bear at the Viking Bar isn’t likely to forget today anytime soon. The beatdown he got as a result is gonna leave some permanent damage to that guy’s face. Not to mention, he’s gonna be walking with a limp for a long, long time. Hell, if that limp-dick hadn’t managed to pull a knife on Bear toward the end and stab him in the gut, they would have had to carry his ass out on a stretcher.
Bear shakes his head in disgust at the memory. “A fuckin’ bar fight takes me down,” he mutters. “I’m gettin’ too old for this shit.”
“You’ll be up and fightin’ again in no time, old man,” Mal grins. “You still got it in ya. Granted,” he concedes, “that beer gut you’re sportin’ helped cushion the blow a little…”
“Did you bring this motherfucker here to cheer me up?” Bear shoots at me. “Because he ain’t cheerin’ me up.”
I don’t answer that. “Hey,” I say instead, “Axel says he’s gonna be by later. He had some business to attend to.”
“Ah…” Bear waves his giant, paw-like hand. “Tell the prez I’m fine. He doesn’t need to do that.” Bear is clearly embarrassed by all this attention. And by the fact that he’s even here in the first place.
I open my mouth to answer him, but a sudden commotion from across the hall interrupts me. A female voice, pitched high with what sounds like fear, reaches my ears.
“Sir, you can’t be here,” the voice says frantically. “You’re scaring her. Sir—”
“The fuck I can’t!” explodes an angry male in response. “She ain’t gotta be here. You already patched up her arm. Ain’t no way she needs to be in that hospital bed. You’re just tryin’ to milk money outta her family.”
I glance over at Mal with a frown. “Hold on a sec,” I grunt to my two brothers. “Gonna go check this out.”
The angry voices continue to ring out as I cross over to the room facing Bear’s and stick my head through the doorway. Inside, a short, compact nurse is trying to prevent a steroid-jacked, aggressive-looking guy with a dark ponytail from grabbing at a tiny figure sitting on the hospital bed.
It’s a little girl, who looks about six years old, with tangled hair and a cast on her arm. Her head is banged up, and her left eye’s got a shiner. The girl is shrinking back against her pillows, clearly sick, and obviously scared. As the man and the nurse continue to argue, she draws her knees up against her chest in a defensive posture, hugging her legs tight to her torso.
“Hey,” I bark out, causing all three of them to jump. “What’s goin’ on here?”
The nurse looks at me apprehensively. The guy arguing with her swivels toward me, his chest puffed out, chin jutting toward me. “You can fuck off, man. This ain’t about you.”
“You can keep that kinda language out of your mouth around the kid,” I say, taking a step inside. “And I can hear your yellin’ across the hall, which makes it my business.”
“Her arm’s just broke,” the man snarls, nodding toward the kid. “Why she gotta be in the hospital for that? She got a cast, don’t she?”
The nurse tries to speak calmly. “The child fell down a flight of stairs. She hit her head and has symptoms consistent with a moderate to severe concussion. We need to keep her here for observation, at least overnigh
t.”
I look down at the little girl. One thing is clear: she does not want to go with this guy. Everything about the way she’s holding her body says she’s afraid of him. Whoever the fuck he is, this situation ain’t good.
“You her father?” I ask him.
He snorts. “Nah,” he says dismissively. “She’s my girlfriend’s.”
“Why ain’t the mom here?”
“She’s at work. Someone at the motel we’re stayin’ at told me the kid got hurt.” His lip curls as he speaks. “I came down here to get her. Her mom don’t need to get money taken outta her paycheck just ‘cause her fuckin’ kid’s clumsy.”
“I warned you about that language,” I say, narrowing my eyes.
“If you aren’t a relative of the girl’s, you can’t take her from the hospital without a parent or guardian’s consent,” the nurse insists.
“You heard the lady,” I say, stepping between him and the bed. “You ain’t got authorization. You need to leave.”
“I ain’t goin’ anywhere,” he retorts, his eyes flashing.
“I’m pretty sure you are.”
The shit for brains takes a step toward me, not realizing that Mal has entered the room behind him. Mal grabs the fucker from behind just as I lean in and give him a solid punch to the gut. He buckles in half and as he does, my other fist meets his jaw in an uppercut. A resounding crack tells me the punch landed the way I wanted it to. His eyes roll back in his head as he slides to the ground.
Iron Will: Lords of Carnage: Ironwood MC Page 1