Burning Road (A Devil's Cartel MC Series Book 1)

by Skyla Madi

  I pull a face. “Manipulating me? I’ve barely spoken to him—”

  “You’re the only leverage they have against me,” Dad cuts in. “They exploit my love for you to get what they want, to break the law and keep control over the town.”

  I throw my hands and slump against my chair. “You’re being paranoid.”

  “Paranoid?” He straightens his spine then snatches his phone off the table. “I’m being paranoid, am I?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  Dad shoves his phone in my face, and the picture on it is too close to make out. I pull my head back, craning my neck to see. When the blurry lines of the image sharpen, my stomach drops into my intestines. I glance at the naked blonde woman on a bed then hiss, slapping my father’s hand away, almost knocking the phone from his hand.

  “Why are you showing me that?” I demand, disgust and embarrassment snaking through my stomach.

  “You didn’t see?” He shoves the phone into my hands. “Look at it.”

  I try to give it back. “No.”

  “I said look at it!” he booms.

  I growl, turning my attention to the screen. Fire burns in my cheeks at the thought of looking at something so explicit in the presence of my father, but it fades quickly when I read the name scrawled down the milky inner thigh of the exposed female.

  Isabelle. My name.

  I frown and hit the info button. The image was originally an attachment from a text message. Was he sent these? The vulnerable woman is similar to me in look, age, and stature… Dad doesn’t think it’s me, does he?

  “That’s not me,” I say, and Dad scoffs.

  “I know it’s not you. It’s Sarah Miller, a twenty-one-year-old flight attendant from Las Vegas, and one of Creed’s rape victims.”

  Rape? Dad tears me in two with a simple sentence. My first instinct is to deny it, to argue that Creed wouldn’t do something so…wrong. But then I remember who he is and how little I know him. I grimace as my stomach twists painfully, winding me. I place the phone face down on the table as sickness spreads through my veins, threatening to upturn the little amount of soup I ate.

  “If he raped her, why isn’t he in prison?”

  “She refuses to speak to authorities,” he replies, turning his phone onto its back. “They’ll kill her if she does.”

  He browses his camera roll again, and a handful of women flick by, all in compromising positions, all similar to me, and all with my name on them. Guilt grinds my bones to dust, and bile rises in my throat. Disgust poisons my lust for James Creed, my desire for him turning to sticky tar in my veins.

  “I don’t need to see any more,” I force out. “I get it—”

  Glass breaks, and I whip my head to the front of the room, where eight large windows face the street. They smash, one after the other, shattered by a shower of bullets that rip apart everything in their wake. Dad shouts over the noise and grabs my shoulders, yanking me out of my chair. I squeal as he throws me to the floor and dives on top of me, shielding my body with his. I squeeze my eyes shut and cover my ears as wood, glass, and food rain down on us. Adrenaline is hot in my veins, and my lungs fail to expand under my father’s weight.

  “It’s them,” he shouts in my ear, and I assume he means the Devil’s Cartel.

  What do they want? Why would they do this? The deafening sound of bullets cease, but a high-pitched ringing remains, piercing my eardrums. Over it, I hear low rumbles of engines and shouts of men getting closer. I cry and tremble, a pathetic mess already surrendering to our fate. Dad can’t fight them, neither can I, and Dad is an anti-gun politician. We don’t own a firearm of any kind. I shudder. Will they kill us? Will Creed kill me? Will he do to me what he did to those women in the photos? Cursing, Dad rolls off me, kneels beside me, and pulls me up to join him.

  I turn my head and gape at the damage, at the mess they’ve made of our otherwise immaculate dining room. It is my favorite room in the house since its large front windows showcase the sole tree in the front yard, the one my late mother used to read to me under.

  “You need to run,” Dad pants, cupping my face, forcing me to look at him.

  I grab his forearms as pieces of glass and chunks of ceramic plates dig into my knees, embedding in my flesh. Run? Where will I go? I open my mouth to speak, but the words don’t come. Where are the police?

  Standing, Dad yanks me to my feet and pulls me across the floor to the hall entrance. If I run straight down it, bypass the kitchen, the maid quarters, and the storeroom, I can run into the backyard and escape into the dense forest behind our home. Bang! Dad roars and crashes to the floor at my feet, blood instantly soaking through the chest area of his shirt.

  “Daddy!” I shriek and drop to my knees, but he swats me away, groaning in pain and gasping for air.

  “Go!” he shouts, clenching his body, bringing his knees to his chest. “Run!”

  I choke on a sob, but I do as I’m told. I force myself to my feet and sprint down the hall on autopilot, bile sitting in the base of my throat, ready to be unleashed the second I stop. Where do I go? What the fuck do I do? Before I realize it, I’m across my yard and halfway over the fence. In the distance, sirens ring, sending a mixed sliver of ease and apprehension through me. I drop over the fence and push through the shrubbery. Sticks whip and slice at my skin, and dried twigs stab into the bottoms of my bare feet, but I keep going. I keep going until the moon no longer seeps through the canopy to light my way. I keep going until I slam into a hard mass.

  “Shit. Izzy?” the voice says.

  Grunting, I stumble back and trip over my own feet. I fall backward and squeeze my eyes shut. I clench all the muscles in my body as I brace for impact, but it doesn’t come. I’m caught by my forearm at the last second by a man with a large hand and a strong grip, a man who smells like leather and rich cologne. He tugs me upright, and I yank my arm free, squinting into the darkness.

  “Don’t touch me,” I snap, tears stinging my eyes.

  “Fucking grab her, Creed,” another man orders, and I backstep away from the large shadow that towers over me, only to press my behind into the hard body of someone else.

  Creed, the shadow in front, steps forward. Dry twigs snap and crunch under his heavy boots, and I hold my hands out, pressing my palms against his firm stomach. He clenches, and I push against him.

  “Let me go,” I plead, silent tears dripping from my nose. “I want to go.”

  “Where you gonna go, Blondie?” the other man asks, and I recognize his voice this time. Damon Judge. “Hm? Back to your house? To the cops?”

  I ignore him, keeping my attention on a shadowed Creed. “James…”

  He snaps forward, grips my shoulders, and jerks me toward him, crushing me against his body, restricting air to my lungs. Even so, I manage to scream. It’s so loud my eardrums threaten to burst as I thrash against him.

  “Jesus-fucking-Christ!” Judge booms, sandwiching me against Creed with his body.

  He covers my mouth, grips my hair, and wrenches my head on an angle, causing my scalp to burn. There’s a sharp pinch against my neck then a quick flush of warmth through my body, weakening my muscles. Panicked, I struggle and shout until my muscles are too fatigued to comply. Blowing air from my nose, I sag in between them and close my eyes, defeated. Lethargic.

  Judge steps away, and my knees give out from underneath me. Cursing, Creed holds me tighter, wrapping his arms around me, his grasp less aggressive now. My consciousness comes and goes in waves. When I open my eyes, blurred circles greet me, and shooting pains kill my neck. I hear leaves crunching and sticks snapping under heavy boots, and my body gently bounces as I’m cradled like a baby. I try to lift my head from its hanging position over the crook of an elbow and fail.

  I faintly hear a male voice crackle over a radio. “Cops have arrived.”

  “Update me on Jonathan,” Judge says, and I groan, a distorted sob at the thought of leaving my father behind. “Dead or alive, I want to know.”
<
br />   “Relax, Blondie,” Creed grumbles, and my lids grow heavy. “You’re safe.”

  He bounces my unmoving body in his big arms like I weigh nothing, righting my head so it rests against his chest. My head swims with thoughts of him, made worse by his smell. The once-appealing wafts of leather, rubber, earth, and man are now unpalatable. The photos I saw earlier assault my incoherent mind. Creed fucked them all—raped them all. He wrote my name on their skin and sent them to my father. Safe? I’m not safe with this man—with any of them.

  “I hate you,” I murmur, my fingers twitching. “Don’t touch me.”

  “What’s she saying?” Judge asks as sticks and dry leaves give way to gravel under their feet.

  “Don’t know. Can’t understand her.”

  I moan, and my head slides back, dropping over the edge of his arm again. A single tear runs into the curve of my eye socket, over my eyebrow, and across my forehead to absorb in my hairline. With another bounce, Creed rights my head again, and I rest my temple against his chest, against his leather vest.

  I part my lips, letting out a loud rush of air. “Don’t hurt me.”

  He holds me closer, tighter, and brushes his thumb along my thigh. Whether he heard me or not, I don’t know. I guess it doesn’t matter. Bad men like him do what they want, and there’s not a whisper in the world that can stop them.

  SIX

  C R E E D

  “What’re you doing, Creed?” Judge asked, and I opened my eyes, lifting my head from the hard wall as he extended a cold beer to me. “You’re gonna sit outside her door all night?”

  I took it, swallowed a mouthful, then rested my forearms on my bent knees. What the fuck was I doing? Our resident doc, Harlei, said Blondie was going to be okay. Might wake up with a killer headache since Judge jabbed her with a dose of ketamine, and the blood wiped from her body exposed superficial scratches from her run through the dense forest. Other than that, she was in perfect health.

  Judge lowered himself to the floor beside me and drank his beer. His movements were sluggish, his hands steady. I suspected he was a few beers deep already. It’d been a stressful day for him. Micky, one of our scouts on the western outskirts of town, reported a group of Twisted Sons entering town limits before lunch. He followed them to a truck stop we allowed other gangs and nomads to use whenever they passed through. If they ate, filled up their tanks, and left decent tips for the staff, we agreed to let them leave our turf unbothered. Micky confirmed they did just that then went on their way. Later, when asked to report what time the intruding gang exited the town, no one could tell us, so Judge and a handful of our men spent the day trying to track them down. They couldn’t. It was as if the Twisted Sons disappeared off the face of the earth. We figured one of the scouts was slacking and didn’t see them leave, so we belted them all, save for Micky, for not doing their jobs.

  At seven-thirty p.m., Ayr reported that the cops were radioing suspect phrases to each other. They mentioned Isabelle’s attendance at our open night, her pissed-off father, a group of vengeful bikers, and her address. It wasn’t much to go off, but we headed in that direction anyway. We made Armi, Rah, and Hawk watch the front of the property while Judge and the rest of us waited in the forest behind her home, ready to breach from the back and catch the assholes who pretended to be us. At eight p.m., the “Devil’s Cartel” were cited over the radio, and all on-duty police officers were ordered to arrive at the Laurent residence at eight-twenty p.m. and not a second earlier. Again, suspect. Not long after, the gunfire started, and calls came across the radio like rapid-fire, our club name repeated over and over. It sounded like a bad script, a fucking set up—and it was. Those Twisted Son bastards were wearing our colors, and it was only a matter of time before the cops came knocking on our door. We needed the clubhouse squeaky clean by the end of the night. Thank fuck for hang arounds and prospects.

  “Any news on the mayor?” I asked Judge.

  Jonathan was home when it happened, that much I knew, but his body held an unrecovered status at the moment. Blondie’s did, too.

  “No. No one knows where he is, whether he’s dead or alive.” Judge frowned. “Doesn’t add up.”

  It didn’t add up. If Jonathan Laurent wanted to frame us, why would he risk his daughter? No doubt she was under the impression we were the ones who shot up her home. She was terrified when she ran into me. Didn’t want me anywhere near her. Whatever her father did or said, it changed her entire outlook on me.

  “Creed!” Harlei shouted from inside Izzy’s room, a large space we turned into an infirmary when our old road captain, Ryx, crashed his bike, earning his broken wings. He didn’t want to go to a hospital, so Harlei did the best she could to fix him up. He succumbed to his injuries a week later, but the infirmary stayed, and Harlei worked her ass off to stock it as good as any hospital for future mishaps. “A little help?”

  I left my beer on the floor, leaped to my feet, and threw open the door. My gaze flew to a terrified Isabelle, who backed herself into a corner, a pair of scissors held out in front of her, warning Harlei away. She looked terrified, her skin whiter than normal, her big, blue eyes wider. Isabelle looked at me, really looked at me, and I watched as disgust and dread twisted through her features. I frowned.

  “Not a good idea, Blondie,” Judge said, amused, as he entered the room behind me. “Harlei will bury you.”

  I glanced at Harlei, who rolled her eyes. “I was applying more antiseptic to the soles of her feet when she came to,” she said, taking off her gloves to sanitize her hands by the sink. “She doesn’t want me anywhere near her. The comedown from the ketamine has made her aggressive. Shouldn’t last long.”

  Harlei tightened her messy bun of blonde and blue hair on the top of her head and smoothed her palms down the front of her tight tee as she sauntered past, smiling wickedly at Judge and me.

  “Good luck,” she added on her way out. “Bitch is crazy.”

  Harlei closed the door behind her, leaving us alone with Blondie.

  “I need to speak to Harlei. You got this? Or do you need my help wrangling her?” Judge said, nudging me with his elbow.

  I didn’t need his help. I didn’t need anyone’s help handling the wild woman in front of me.

  “I got it.”

  Laughing under his breath, he left the room. In the silence, I could’ve sworn I heard the rapid beat of her heart. She was scared of me—terrified—and I hated it. Did she really think it was us who stormed her home? That I’d bring that kind of violence to her doorstep or strike that much fear in her heart? I stepped forward, toward the bed between us. “Iz—”

  “I want to go,” she cut in, the scissors in her hand trembling along with her voice. “Let me go.”

  I frowned, confused. Last night she didn’t want to leave. She held her body firm against mine and asked me to take her home, to stay until morning. She felt safe with me, more than she should’ve.

  “I want to go!” she boomed impatiently, and her voice cracked, her fear seeping onto her face.

  “Where are you gonna go? Bullets ripped your house apart.”

  “Your bullets.”

  “No.” I stepped closer, and she shimmied along the stone wall, lining herself with the door. “They weren’t our bullets. We’re being set up.”

  “Prove it.”

  “Can’t. You’re going to have to take me at my word.”

  Isabelle laughed once, a bitter sound. “Your word means nothing. Y-you’re a criminal.”

  “Not a plot twist. You already know that.”

  She shook her head, her lips quivering, her eyes lambent with tears. “You’re worse than I thought, so much worse.”

  I frowned deeper. What the hell is she talking about? “If you’re referring to your father, we had nothing to do with it. If we were better off with Jonathan dead, he would be already.”

  Isabelle straightened and lowered the scissors an inch. “Is he dead?”

  “I don’t know. No one knows where he is.
”

  She pondered my words for a small eternity, relief that her father might still be alive brightened her features, but it disappeared the second she focused back on my face. “If it wasn’t the Devil’s Cartel, who was it?”

  “That’s club business. Nothing for you to worry your pretty little head about.”

  Isabelle stomped forward a few steps, holding the scissors out, pointing them at my face. I fought the quirk in my lips. She felt bold with the scissors in her hand, like she was in charge. I could disarm her in a second, but I let her play brave. Women outside our club life were all bark and no bite, like chihuahuas. If she were a true biker bitch, she’d have buried those scissors in my flesh already.

  “Pretty?” She flicked her angry blue stare down the length of my body and back up. “You make me sick.”

  Irritation and confusion clashed in my stomach, and sparks flew, heating my blood. I inched closer, leaning forward until the scissors she wielded were an inch from my nose. “What the hell is your problem?”

  “I want to leave.”

  I used the back of my hand against her wrist to push the scissors away from my face. “Too fucking bad. You’re stuck here with me until this mess is sorted out.”

  She seethed, her jaw clenched, her perfect, white teeth bared. “You will let me leave.”

  “Or what?”

  She lifted the scissors to my face again. “Or I’ll cut you.”

  My lips quirked. I wasn’t afraid of pain. “Go ahead, baby, and make it good because you won’t get another chance.”

  Her eyebrows rose then dove into a scowl, and she turned the scissors on her throat. “Then I’ll cut myself.”

  “You don’t have the guts.”

  The skin around the tip of the scissors whitened, and she hissed. A heartbeat later, a small droplet of blood rolled down the column of her throat.

  My nose twitched and my nostrils flared at the sight. “You’re a goddamn brat, you know that?”

  “Get out of my way.”