Hard as an Outlaw_A Motorcycle Club Romance_Devil’s Fighters MC

by Paula Cox

  Prince shuddered. If he concentrated hard enough, he could still feel the pain from the bruises he had gotten from one of the worst beat-ups of his life. Back then, after two years of fighting, he had confronted Bennie and declared that his father’s debt had to be paid up by then and that he was done.

  “The debt’s paid when I say it’s paid,” Bennie had said afterwards, holding the bloodied mask that had once been Prince’s face between his hands. “And you’re done when I say you’re done. Are we clear?”

  They were clear, and Bennie had never said it. He had never said that the debt was paid or that Prince was done, and Prince had never asked again. Until now.

  “I have to speak to him,” Prince said. “Believe me, I’m not looking forward to it, but I have to.”

  “Why?” Rick asked. “To tell him what?”

  If it were anyone else, Prince would tell them to just back off and mind their own business, but Rick was a whole other story. Rick was his brother.

  And so Prince took a deep breath, and he told his brother the truth. “I have to tell him that I want out.”

  A stunned silence fell—hard, fast, and heavy—over the small table, like a cartoon anvil.

  “Excuse me?” Rick finally hissed under his breath.

  Prince cringed inwardly, but he stood his ground. “You heard me.”

  “I did,” Rick said, “and, please, tell me I heard you wrong.”

  Prince shrugged.

  Rick’s hazel eyes blazed. “Don’t you shrug! Don’t you dare sit there and just shrug at me after what you’ve just said!”

  “Calm down—”

  “Calm down?” Rick repeated, incredulous. “Are you out of your mind?”

  “I’ve never been more lucid,” Prince said, and it was true. Now that his mind was made up, he felt oddly at peace with the world. He felt sharp, focused. For the first time in eight years, he had a purpose, and it made him feel so much stronger. It didn’t matter how his story would end; by taking action, Prince felt that he had already won. “I have to do this.”

  “Why?” Rick half-snapped and half-pleaded. “Why do you suddenly feel like you ‘have’ to do this?” His voice dropped even lower. “What changed, Prince? I thought we were waiting to create the right circumstances.”

  Prince’s face darkened. “There’s no time for that. I can’t wait any longer.”

  “Why?” Rick pressed.

  “Alyssa’s situation has changed. The vet clinic where she works in Vancouver has given her an ultimatum. Either she’s back to work in two weeks, or they fire her. We’re out of time.”

  Rick thought it over for a moment. “No,” he said then, “you’re not. She can go back to Canada, and you can join her later—when the time is right.”

  Prince stared at him. “Come on, Rick,” he said. “You and I both know that if Alyssa goes ahead without me, I’ll lose her again, probably for good this time. We’ve all been fools; the time will never be right.”

  Rick took the words in. “So, what do you want to do then? What’s your plan? Tell Bennie you want out and beg him to let you go?”

  “Pretty much, yes.”

  “It’s suicide,” Rick said bluntly. “He’ll have you killed.”

  “Possibly,” Prince agreed. “But it’s a risk I’ve got to take.”

  Rick shook his head. “You’re crazy,” he said, matter-of-factly. “And what does Alyssa have to say about this brilliant plan of yours?”

  Prince shifted in his chair, feeling suddenly uncomfortable. He looked away briefly. “She doesn’t know,” he muttered.

  “Really!” Rick exclaimed in a mocking tone. “I’m shocked.” Prince glared at him, and Rick sighed heavily. “This is insane, Prince. You’ve got to reconsider.”

  Prince was shaking his head even before his friend had finished the sentence. “It’s the only thing I can do.”

  “It’s suicide,” Rick said again.

  “No,” Prince argued. “It’s my chance to create the right circumstances.”

  Silence came back then, and it was still heavy, but now it was also filled with something else—resignation. Prince felt it radiate off his friend in waves.

  “It’s going to be okay,” he tried to offer. “I’ll be fine.”

  “What about me?” Rick’s voice had gone very quiet, and he was staring gloomily down at the dark wooden surface of the table.

  Prince frowned. “What do you mean?”

  Rick looked up. There was pain shining in his hazel eyes.

  “I said, what about me?” he repeated. “You’re just going to leave me behind in this hell?”

  It was as if someone had just punched him in the stomach. Prince found himself staring dumbfounded at his friend, horrified and out of breath. He could almost feel the color drain from his face.

  Something in Prince’s expression must have hit Rick hard, because he seemed to forcibly shake himself out of it. He sat up straighter, squared is shoulders, and exhaled sharply.

  “Shit,” he said, running a hand over his face. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. Of course you should go. If you have a chance to get out of this hellhole on Earth, you should take it and not look back.” He shook his head, visibly angry at himself. “I’m sorry,” he said again. “Please, forget I’ve said anything.”

  “I can’t,” Prince said, finding his voice with some difficulty. “Do you really think that I would leave you here?”

  Rick frowned. “What are you talking about?”

  “You’re coming with me,” Prince said forcefully. “With us.”

  “No, I’m not,” Rick said. “You know I can’t. Bennie will never let us both go.”

  “You let me handle Bennie.”

  Rick stared at him. “No,” he said after a few moments, sharply. “You are not exposing yourself even further because of me. I’ll be fine here.”

  Prince arched an eyebrow. “Will you?” They both knew he wouldn’t. They both knew that it was a miracle that they were even alive now. It was only a matter of time before the fight killed them.

  Rick looked away. “I’ll be fine,” he said again, and it sounded like he was trying very hard to convince himself.

  “You won’t,” Prince said. There was no malice behind his words, no hurtful intent. He was merely stating a fact they were both painfully aware of. “Please, let me help you.”

  Rick looked back at him then, and the fear and hopelessness written all over his face tore at Prince’s heart.

  “How?” Rick asked. “How are you going to help me? How are you even going to help yourself?” He let out a long, frustrated breath. “I’m sorry, Prince. I hate myself for telling you this, but we’re fucking trapped. We’re going to die in this hellhole of a town.”

  Prince frowned. It wasn’t like Rick to be so bleakly negative. He realized then that those were all the fears and feelings of despairs that his friend had kept buried for over eight years, finally bubbling to the surface and being released in dark, depressing waves. He reached out across the table and grabbed his friend’s forearm.

  “We’re going to be okay,” he said, making sure he had Rick’s undivided attention. “Do you hear me? We’ll be just fine. I’ll make sure of it.”

  Rick was staring at him with a mixture of disbelief and curiosity. It was obvious that he thought Prince had gone completely mad, but he was also clearly intrigued. “How can you be so confident?”

  “Because after eight years of horrors, I think we deserve something good to happen in our lives,” Prince said.

  He sounded confident to his own ears, because that’s how he needed to sound in order to soothe the terror he could still see in the bottom of his friend’s hazel eyes. But the truth was, he wasn’t nearly as sure of himself as he would have liked to be.

  Finally, Rick nodded. “All right,” he said. “You go in there and you do what you need to do. I’ve got your back.”

  Prince knew what that meant. It meant that if things took a turn of the worse, Rick
would be by his side. It meant that if somebody had to die, it would be both of them. He gave a nod in return and squeezed Rick’s forearm one last time before letting go and sitting back in his chair.

  “I’m going back to the bar now,” Rick said, “Johnnie is probably getting suspicious.”

  “Good idea,” Prince agreed. “I’ll stay here just a little longer to try and gather my thoughts, then I’m going in.”

  “Please, don’t get yourself killed.”

  Prince grinned. “I’ll try.”

  He watched as Rick stood up and went back to the bar, settling on one of the tall stools and asking Johnnie for another beer. The man gave them both a suspicious look, but soon he relaxed again.

  On his part, Prince felt anything but relaxed. No matter how confident he tried to appear, his stomach was tied up in knots and his heart was beating a mile a minute in his chest. He had spent the whole morning trying to come up with the words. He could never get anywhere past, “I want out,” which he knew would be the wrong way to start the conversation.

  He hoped there would be a conversation. He hoped Bennie didn’t freak out on him immediately and gun him down on the spot. The thing with Benedict “Bennie” Lenday, one of the founders and the current president of the Devil’s Fighters, was that he was unpredictable. He had killed for way less and spared lives for way more. There was no way to guess his reaction.

  Still, Prince tried. He tried to play it all in his mind, and he came up empty-handed every time. If a reprise of the beating from six years ago were to occur, he was pretty sure he would be able to take Bennie now. The man wasn’t a fighter, at least not in the strict sense of the term; Prince, much to his chagrin, was. But beating up the club’s president was probably the stupidest thing he could do and the fastest way to get himself a death sentence, effective immediately.

  Eventually, he decided that the only way to know what would happen was to knock on the door of the meeting room.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Bennie was cleaning his gun when Prince walked in. It wasn’t a very reassuring sight. He looked up, and already his dark eyes seemed to make a hole in Prince. Bennie knew something was up. He smiled a wolf smile, and Prince shivered inwardly.

  “Ah, my favorite fighter,” he said. He took his hand away from the barrel of his gun long enough to gesture towards the chairs aligned along the vast surface of the meeting room’s tale. “Please, have a seat.”

  Prince swallowed past the fear he could feel mounting inside of him. He hated the power that this man still possessed over him. He was a grown man now, no longer the scrawny, insecure teenager that he had been when he had begun his “career” in the Devils’ fighting rings. And yet, Bennie Lenday still terrified him. He supposed he had his reasons; there was a darkness to the man’s soul that only a fool would not be scared of. Even the gang’s oldest members feared him.

  Prince took a seat a couple of chairs away from the end of the table where Bennie was seated.

  “So,” Bennie said, “what can I do for you?”

  For a split second, Prince panicked. He had absolutely no idea how to bring this up without getting himself—or worse, Alyssa—killed. And then he decided that he would just improvise; there was no other way.

  “I want out.”

  It was exactly what Prince had promised himself not to say. It was exactly the worst thing he could have said. It was exactly the most disastrous start to this conversation he could have ever come up with.

  Bennie did not miss a beat. He didn’t pause; he didn’t start; he didn’t tense up. He continued cleaning his gun and smoking the cigarette he held between his lips as if no one had spoken. It was a chilling sort of non-reaction that instantly put Prince on guard.

  “You do, huh?” His voice was calm, cool, and collected enough to freeze the blood in a man’s veins. “I suppose that’s fair enough; you’ve been in the rings for almost a decade now.”

  Prince watched him warily. All that Bennie had just said was very true, but he was also sure there was no way the man really meant it—or even if it did, it surely did not mean he was free to go.

  Bennie looked up from his gun and straight into Prince’s eyes. It was like looking into a dark pit of hell, the kind of hell that usually awaited Prince. “I’m acknowledging your merits, Prince.”

  “You are,” Prince admitted. “But I can’t figure out why.”

  Bennie laughed. It was a humorless, cold kind of laugh. “Tell me, how do you propose to get out?”

  Prince hesitated. Astonishingly enough, it sounded like an honest question…and he had no idea how to answer it. “Honestly, I didn’t think it was possible.”

  “It is,” Bennie said, surprising him even more.

  Prince stared at him. “Do you mean it?” he asked, trying to keep the hope out of his voice. He tried to sound flat, detached, all business. He wasn’t sure he was succeeding. “Or are you implying that the way out is in a body bag?”

  Bennie chuckled. “How negative of you, Prince.” He let the silence stretch out then, and Prince’s anxious wait with it. Finally, he said, “No, there’s an actual way out. There wouldn’t be for just anyone, admittedly, but you’ve served us very well in the past eight years. I’m willing to give you a chance.”

  Prince understood immediately. Whatever Bennie was talking about, it wouldn’t come without a price. “What do I have to do?”

  Bennie grinned his wolf grin. “You have to fight, of course.”

  Prince began to feel cold inside. He was not surprised, but there was a glint in Bennie’s dark eyes that he didn’t like at all. “Who?” he asked.

  “Taylor Jackman.”

  Prince could actually feel the blood drain from his face. Taylor “The Jack” Jackman was a renowned fighter in the underground rings, but his fame was an ill one. No matter how brutal the fight, it was always implied that both competitors would, if at all possible, walk off the ring alive. Of course, accidents (sometimes orchestrated ones) happened, but—generally speaking—it was an understood rule that it wasn’t a good idea for the fighters to kill each other, and that the people behind the rings needed their men to remain more or less intact.

  This rule did not apply to “The Jack.” The man had a reputation for killing his opponents, and it was hardly ever an accident. Taylor Jackman enjoyed killing with his bare hands, and the only reason why he had not yet been kicked out of the rings was that it was the kind of spectacle that made the most money. He had created a legend that people appreciated.

  It was savagery at its worst.

  “What happens if I say no?” Prince ventured.

  He wasn’t afraid to die, but he felt like he now had too much to live for to just throw away his life like that.

  Bennie shrugged as he went about methodically reassembling his gun. “You never get out.”

  It was that simple, and that cruel.

  Bennie looked up at him, his eyes blacker than hell. “You’re doing this for her, aren’t you? Dr. Kelley’s daughter. You want to be with her.”

  “Yes,” Prince said simply. There was no point in lying.

  “It’s your choice,” Bennie said. “If you accept and you win, you’ll make us enough money that we’ll be grateful to you for eternity. If you don’t fight this fight, you stay with us. Permanently.”

  “So you’re blackmailing me.”

  “No.” Bennie glared at him, and Prince actually had to fight the urge to squirm. “I’m offering you a way out. You know it’s more than I would offer anyone else.”

  Prince had to admit that it was. “If I fight and I win, you’ll let me and Alyssa go? No repercussions?”

  “No repercussions. You have my word.”

  It may not make sense to others, but Bennie’s word was good enough for Prince. Benedict Lenday had many flaws and was undoubtedly a horrible human being, but on the rare occasions that he did give his word, he was known for keeping it.

  “You said if I win this fight against Jackman, I’d ma
ke the Devil’s Fighters a lot of money,” Prince began.

  “A shitload of money, my friend,” Bennie confirmed.

  “Then, I have one more request.”

  Bennie stared at him curiously. “Shoot.”

  “If I win this fight, you let Rick go, too. No repercussions.”

  It was a bold move, but Prince figured it was worth a shot. After all, he didn’t have much to lose; if he lost the fight against Taylor Jackman, he was a dead man.

  Bennie laughed. “You’ve got balls, Wheeler. I don’t necessarily like that in my fighters, but I like it in you.”