Rogue
The Black Cobras MC #1
Savannah Rylan
Kasey Krane
Copyright © 2020 by Savannah Rylan & Kasey Krane
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This book was previously released as Bought by the Biker. Several edits and changes have been made.
Created with Vellum
Contents
1. Rogue
2. Carli
3. Rogue
4. Carli
5. Rogue
6. Carli
7. Rogue
8. Carli
9. Rogue
10. Carli
11. Rogue
12. Carli
13. Rogue
14. Carli
15. Rogue
16. Carli
17. Rogue
18. Carli
19. Rogue
20. Carli
21. Rogue
22. Carli
23. Rogue
24. Carli
25. Rogue
26. Carli
27. Rogue
28. Rogue
29. Carli
Epilogue
Epilogue
Sneak Peak at Cash
About Savannah Rylan
About Kasey Krane
More Books by Savannah Rylan
1
Rogue
I set down my drink as I watched my brother finally walk into the bar. I bit back a slight chuckle as I watched some of the people around us gawk at his presence. He was clad in his usual leather cut, his fingers covered with metal rings. He didn’t exactly fit in a bar like this. To them, he looked like a thug out of one of their crime shows, but to me he was just my older brother.
As he walked towards me, I let out slight sigh of relief as I realized he didn’t have any cuts or bruises on him this time. My brother Grimm arrived late to the bar as always, not that it mattered to me anymore. Being the oldest between us, he’d always been the less responsible one. I’d given up hope of him ever arriving anywhere on time. He always had the excuse of being caught up with “something important” every week for our weekly bar meet-ups.
“All right?” I asked, as he crashed down beside me at the bar, sneering at some of the people surrounding us. I knew he hated places like this but by now he’d stopped trying to convince me to meet him at his usual hangout; the dive bar that he and his motorcycle club operated out of.
I’d been there, done that and gotten out years ago with no interest in going back. Grimm hated it, but he respected my decision. Not that he had much of a choice.
“Yeah. You?” he said as the bartender came up and took his usual order of cheap beer.
“Don’t know how you drink that piss,” I commented, as he took his first sip.
“Don’t know how you drink that fancy piss,” he retorted, tipping his head at the glass of neat whisky in my hand.
We were related by blood, but Grimm’s world and mine were far apart and different.
“What’s going on with you?” I asked. Grimm shrugged. He started to slowly tap his beer glass with his fingers. I noticed how his eyes shifted around the room quickly before coming back to me, and I could immediately tell that something was up.
“You tell me what’s going on with you. What happened to that leggy blond you were fucking last week?” he asked, trying to change the subject. He didn’t want to tell me. But I would get it out of him somehow.
I rolled my eyes. “I don’t even remember her name,” I said, and my brother laughed. “How are things going with the club?”
“I thought we didn’t talk about that shit,” he said gruffly. He was right. We didn’t usually talk about it. But the way we he was shifting around on the bar stool made me question if I should be more involved.
“You’re right,” I said. “We don’t. But sometimes I wonder how things are with my old club.”
“Your old club?” he asked a slight bite of anger in his voice. “As I recall, it was never your club. You were happy to leave it behind and work in the corporate world.”
“Come on Grimm,” I said with a sigh. “I may not be involved with the club anymore, but I still care about you.”
“Keep you sentimental bullshit to yourself,” Grimm said with a laugh.
“Fine then, is it about a girl or something?”
He looked over his shoulder toward the door of the bar as if he was expecting someone to turn up.
“When has my life ever been about a woman?” he asked with a smirk and emptied his beer down his throat.
“You’re right, you are too old to get a decent one,” I said with a laugh.
“Hey, I may be your older brother, but I’m not that much older than you.” I chuckled slightly as I took a sip of my drink. He was right. We were pretty close in age. He was 35 and I was 30, but the way he acted most people thought he was in his twenties.
“So, I take it no main girl you have been keeping around then?” I asked.
“Fuck no, I never have a main girl.” Neither of us believed in commitment, or maybe I’d just learnt that from Grimm growing up. He’d always been the kind of guy who fucked a lot of women and made sure none of them got the wrong ideas. I did the same. That could have been the only thing common between the two of us, our allergy toward serious relationships. Families were easily broken. People die. People cheat. People fuck you up. Those were the only kinds of families we knew, and neither of us wanted a slice of that cake.
As we laughed, the door of the bar opened and Grimm looked over his shoulder expectantly again.
“That’s it. What the fuck is going on?” I growled, slamming my glass down on the counter. Grimm was taken aback by my reaction, but when he saw the determination in my eyes, he knew he had no choice but to come clean.
“I think I’m being followed, okay?” I glared at him. “You wanted to know. So, there it fucking is,” he declared.
“What does that mean? Aren’t you followed all the time? I’m pretty sure you’ve made a shit ton of enemies by now, man,” I said with a bitter laugh, but my brother was serious.
“It’s for real this time. Not some squabble over whose wife I fucked,” he said. Grimm stared at me with a look that told me there was more to the story. I clenched my jaw and faced him, ready to hear the real deal.
“What did you do?”
He sighed. “Territory wars. It’s been going on for a few months, but it’s reached a stage where the fuckers want my head.”
I shook my head in disbelief. “Are you fucking serious about this?”
“If they find me, they’re going to kill me, Rogue. That’s how serious I am!” A couple of people around us jumped at the sound of his voice. They quickly moved farther down the bar.
I grunted and ran a hand through my hair in frustration.
“What are you still doing here, man? Leave the city. Take care of it. Do something about it instead of just sitting here waiting for them!” I growled. Grimm shook his head.
“There’s a complication,” he said.
“What fucking complication?”
“I can’t tell you about it right now. Not till I figure this shit out,” he snapped back at me.
We glared at each other. I was frustrated with the life he’d chosen for himself, and he was frustrated because his brother wasn’t on his side.
“What are the odds?” I asked.
“Of me getting shot in the back?”
“
Yeah,” I growled.
“High. Me getting picked up and tortured? Even higher. They might not have the balls to kill me because that would mean war. But they might abduct me and teach me a lesson,” he replied and ordered himself another beer.
“So, what are you going to do?” I asked.
“Keep low and keep out of their way.”
We fell into silence, each of us, thinking. I didn’t understand why he couldn’t just walk a When Grimm breathed in deeply and cleared his throat, I prepared myself for what he’d say next.
“What?” I growled.
“I need to ask you something,” he said, shifting closer to me.
“What the fuck is it, man?” I rubbed a hand over my face.
“If something happens to me…” he began to say, but I turned my face away from him.
“I don’t want to hear this, Grimm, man! I already told you to just fucking leave town.”
“Listen to me, little brother. Rogue, look at me!” He roughly grabbed me by my shoulders and forced me to look at him. “I can’t just leave. But if I disappear or I get shot—whatever—I need you to take over,” he hissed.
“What the fuck!” I yanked myself away from him and jumped off the bar stool. “You serious, man?” I hissed. Grimm stood up too. He brought his face close to me, glaring. Everyone in the bar was staring at us now. I quickly glanced at the bar tender and I could tell he was seconds away from calling the cops. I shoved my hand in my pocket, grabbed my wallet and pulled out a large bill. I threw it on the bar and grabbed Grimm and shoved him towards the back door.
“I need you to do this for me. You hear me? I need you to take over the MC ‘til things tide over.”
“Why the hell are you talking like you are going to be taken?” I hissed as I shoved him outside into the alleyway behind the bar.
“Just let me worry about that,” he said, and I shook my head. “Look,” he continued. “You were a part of it a while ago. You know how this shit operates. And you are the only one I trust to take care of things. Sure, the guys will be pissed, but they will respect my fucking decision.” Grimm said. I glared at him.
“This is fucking bullshit,” I growled.
“Tell me about it!”
Grimm had taken over the MC reigns from our uncle Bobby. He’d been involved with the workings of the MC since he was sixteen years old. I had started as a prospect with Grimm. At the time, we thought we would eventually run the club together. But as the years wore on and the violence became greater, I wanted out. I was sick of my life always being at risk. I told Grimm and my uncle Bobby that I was leaving the life and since I was family, they let me go. Others wouldn’t have been so lucky.
Grimm and I didn’t speak for a while after that. He was pissed that I had left the life, but eventually understood why I had to leave. It definitely wasn’t for everyone.
“The guys are going to be more than pissed,” I protested.
He grabbed me again.
“I fucking need you to do this for me, man!” he raged.
I clenched my jaws and glared at him. He knew that asking me this would piss me off. He knew exactly how I felt about the club.
“This isn’t exactly my area of expertise, Grimm. I haven’t been in the club since I was twenty. And that was a long fucking time ago.”
Grimm grinned at that, then he thumped my back.
“Yeah, I know, we are both getting up there. But this is my life we’re talking about here,” he said and leaned back against the brick wall of the alley. “If they get me and hold me somewhere, you’re the only guy I trust who can find a way to get me back. The club will be like a bunch of headless chickens if I’m gone. They’ll need a strong leader.”
“I’m a businessman no, Grimm. I’m not a gang leader,” I protested, as I leaned back next to him.
He looked at me, with a pleading look on his face.
“Just promise me you’ll do it, little brother. Just do it this time,” he begged. “Like I said, you are the only one I trust to get me back if something does happen.”
I breathed in deeply and then nodded. As much as I disliked the club, I knew he was right. If something happened to him, I would be the one that would find him. “Fine. Hopefully you’ll just keep your ass safe,” I said, and he thumped me on my shoulder.
“Good. I can get some sleep tonight, then,” he said. “Want to grab another beer?”
“Let’s head to another bar,” I said as I started walking down the alley. “I think you scared the shit out of everyone inside there.”
2
Carli
I pushed open the door to our cramped apartment, and tried to block out the feeling of claustrophobia as I walked in. When I first got the place with my sister, Amanda, and my niece Hazel, I had seen this tiny place as cozy. But now, it just felt like the walls were caving in around me.
My stomach grumbled as I headed straight to the kitchen. My eyes glanced at the bills posted up on the door to the fridge, being held up by Hazel’s letter magnets. I tightened my jaw as I realized that they were all past due. I quickly opened up the fridge, hoping to ignore the bills for a moment, but I was met with even more disappointment. The whole fridge was basically empty.
A combination and of anger and annoyance filled my stomach. It was Amanda’s turn this week to stock up the fridge. I sucked in a long breath, and shut the door forcibly, making some of the bills shake under their flimsy magnets.
I loved my sister Amanda, but sometimes she was just a huge pain in the ass. Amanda got knocked up after a one-night stand six years ago, and she was too drunk to even remember who the father was. She knew she was never going to be a great mom. She’d never been able to hold a job down for more than a few weeks. The only way she could give her daughter a halfway decent life was by coming to live with me.
I was four years younger than my sister, and at the time; I had hopes of studying to become a teacher. I was even going to find a way to go to college, but Amanda was pregnant, and she needed my help. I couldn’t turn her away.
So, since then, Amanda, Hazel and I lived together, in a cramped apartment above a Chinese takeout. Amanda tried her best to keep the various part time jobs she got around the city, and I took up the first job that came my way. Our combined earnings were low, probably too low to feed three mouths and give Hazel the lifestyle she deserved—but that was our destiny and I made my peace with it.
I started to walk back to Amanda’s room to give her a piece of my mind about why the fridge was completely empty.
“Amanda?” I called as I walked back. My sister’s hurried footsteps rushed out to our small living room.
“Oh my God, Carli! Thank God you’re here. I don’t know what to do,” she cried. Tears streamed down Amanda’s cheeks, and she looked like she was having a fit.
“What’s going on?” I dropped my bag to the floor and rushed to her. I looked around for Hazel expecting her to be right by Amanda’s side. When I didn’t see her panic started to rise in my chest.
“Where’s Hazel? What happened?”
Amanda clung to me, shaking her head, tears still flowing down.
“I don’t know where she is. Carli, what do we do?”
“What do you mean you don’t know where she is? Hazel!” I screamed. Amanda sputtered and cried.
“She didn’t come back from school.”
“She didn’t…Amanda! Oh my God!”
“I waited for an hour at the bus stop, the school bus didn’t drop her off,” Amanda shrieked.
“What about the school? Did you call the school?” I ran to the phone and Amanda followed me.
“Yes, I did. They said they didn’t notice anything. They claim that she got on the bus as usual. But she never did, Carli…oh my God!” Amanda shrieked again.
I dialed the school’s number and when no one answered, I remembered how late it was and that they obviously wouldn’t be open right now.
“Amanda, just calm down and tell me…when did you last see her?�
�� I asked. She flung herself on me again and I patted her back. This couldn’t be happening. This couldn’t actually be happening to us! How could Hazel have just disappeared?
“This morning, when I walked her to the bus stop,” she mumbled.
“And then in the afternoon, you went back to the bus stop and she wasn’t on the bus?” I asked and she nodded. “I don’t understand. How did nobody see anything? How did she just disappear into thin air between the school gate and the bus?”
Tears brimmed my eyes, too, as I imagined the worst. Amanda covered her face with her hands and shook her head.
“Where’s the police? What are they saying?” I asked.
Amanda slowly dragged her hands down her face to reveal her puffy red eyes. I squinted at her; there was something she wasn’t telling me.
“Please tell me you called the police, Amanda!” I shrieked.
I ran to the phone again and my sister followed me.
“Carli, please, don’t do it!” she said, just as I was about to dial 9-1-1.
“What are you talking about? It’s been hours since Hazel’s gone missing. You should have called them immediately!” I shouted at her.
Amanda snatched the phone from me and walked backwards. Her eyes looked frightfully wild. I always knew Amanda was scared of the police deeming her unfit to be a mother and taking Hazel away. But I never actually imagined that she wouldn’t want their help when she was missing.
“What is going on, Amanda? Why the fuck don’t you want me to call the police?” I yelled.
Rogue: The Black Cobras MC #1 Page 1