The Assassin

by SE Chardou

  Max motioned for me to sit back down. “We’re just testing the waters, honey. Believe me, we don’t think he would send someone like you to infiltrate the club. To be honest, the Knights and the Saints have been on pretty friendly terms lately. At the end of the day, it comes down to money. You know that as much as I do.”

  “So I’m in?” My breath hitched in my throat waiting for either one of them to rescind the offer.

  Mags smiled. “Yes, you’re in. Let’s get you back to the clubhouse so you can meet everyone. Remember—honey, not vinegar. I know your life hasn’t been all peaches and cream but you gotta grow tough skin. No talkin’ back and don’t you dare disrespect the club members. They will save your skinny ass if anything goes wrong. Remember, trust goes both ways.”

  I smirked. “Believe me, you’re not telling me anything I don’t know.”

  Part One

  Preparation

  Chapter One

  Mira

  The first couple of days at the Lucifer’s Saints compound were boring to say the least. A bunch of shit had gone down and the club was on lockdown. I enjoyed my free time in a room I was given on a temporary basis.

  It obviously belonged to a guy but I cleaned it up, washed his clothes and put the carry-on case that kept all my worldly goods in the corner. After giving the bathroom a good scrubbing, I didn’t mind using the facilities. He had an iPod docker stereo that was awesome because I got to blast to my favorites.

  Unfortunately, the day I decided to let my hair dry naturally, I used my brush as a microphone while Amy Winehouse blasted out of the speakers. One of my faves, “You know I’m no good,” played loudly, and all I wore was a skimpy tank top and a pair of Victoria’s Secret cheeky lace panties.

  I could have sworn one of the old ladies—Layla, I think—said the men weren’t due back for at least another day.

  Unlike a lot of women, I wasn’t ashamed of my body, even if I wished I weighed at least another fifteen pounds and the only thing sexy about me wasn’t my tits.

  The song ended, and a resounding applause followed.

  My face heated to a deep crimson; I could feel the burn all the way to my upper chest as I whipped around to face a guy built like a tall brick shithouse, light brown hair with tons of natural blond highlights and ice blue eyes.

  Neither one of us said anything at first, only because his eyes were the same color as mine and we realized it at the same time. It didn’t mean anything, really, but somehow his eyes brought me back to my time with my former family. Most of the Decker family members had ice blue eyes. I didn’t think I’d be facing a pair so soon after I’d fled the nightmare that was my life in Northern Nevada.

  Finally, he cleared his voice and said, “Thanks for picking up my room. It was a fuckin’ disaster area when I left.”

  I struggled into a pair of skinny jeans as I replied, “Really, it’s no problem. I grew up with a lot of brothers and I’m used to picking up. Sorry. I hope I haven’t taken over your room—”

  “We’re not stayin’ here,” he interrupted rudely. “This is just a crash pad. I have a home here in the Aliante community, and you’ll live with me in my home, not the clubhouse.”

  I stepped back as I put two and two together. “You’re Pyro? The guy who is gonna help me get ready to assassinate Fernando Navarro?”

  “Well, at least you’ve got some brains to go with that rack you’re sportin’. Yes, that’s correct. And don’t fuckin’ ask me my real name ‘cause it’s none of your fuckin’ business.”

  I quickly removed my iPod from the docker on his stereo, and stuffed it in my suitcase. “I wasn’t gonna. I grew up in an MC, you know. I kinda know how all this shit works.”

  As expeditiously as I could, I brushed the tangles out of my hair. Although it was my mother’s hair color, I’d been blessed with loose waves that looked like I spent a lot of time futzing around with my flat iron. In fact, I’d done little to my long dark hair except kept it trimmed. The longest I would allow it to grow was mid-back. Any longer than that and it became a pain in the ass to take care of.

  Of course there was another reason I usually wore my hair long. Right between the back of my neck and my shoulder blades was a tattoo drawn in gothic ink with the word, Decker. It wasn’t there as a sign of affection; it was to protect me from my half-brothers, cousins and uncles from fucking me. The only sin worse than “race-mixing” according to the great wisdom of my father—though he wasn’t thinking of his so-called principles when he fucked my mother—was retardation.

  Although Loire had tattooed over the gothic black ink and turned it into a generic tribal design with color that actually turned out really cool, I could still feel the words burned into my skin. They flowed through my body and into my bloodstream whether they were there for the world to see or not.

  As fucked up and backwards as the Decker family appeared to the outside world, we had our codes we lived and died by. The first one being there was never to be any sexual activity between close relatives.

  “What are you thinking about?” Pyro asked after we’d gotten into his 2015 blue F-250. He turned down Octane, which currently played “Two Worlds” by Disturbed.

  I could feel a smile as it crept on my lips. Looks like we would get along just fine. I grew up on Aerosmith, Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix—the only “nigger” who could ever play a fucking guitar according to my dad—Pink Floyd, and The Who. Later on, it was Guns N Roses, Metallica, Def Leppard, and Kiss.

  “Music,” I finally replied as I looked out the window and started to hum, “Blue Jeans.”

  “Well, looks like you’re quite the eclectic. You mean I won’t be stuck with Sam Smith and Adele all day long?” Pyro turned toward me; his ice blue eyes were so intense I quickly looked away. It was like staring into the windows of my own soul.

  “Not really a fan of blue-eyed British soul unless it’s Amy, Joss or Adele. Sorry, I’m kinda picky. You should be more frightened of me playing some old Bobby Womack or Marvin Gaye. Or if I’m depressed, you’ll know because I will play Mylène Farmer and Lana Del Rey non-stop. My favorite bands from yesterday and today are pretty much played on Octane, and a few on mainstream radio. So I think we’ll get along just fine in the music department.”

  Pyro snickered as he turned into an upscale, gated community and pressed a button on his garage door opener. “Well, that’s a relief. Being Nel’s daughter must have been hell for you. The bastard ruled Black Oak with an iron fist. I couldn’t wait to get the fuck outta there.”

  My heart thundered in my chest at this revelation.

  Fuck!

  I really liked this guy. I mean, I knew we would probably never be anything to each than maybe friends with benefits but I drew the line at incest or stepbrother sex to get laid. The fucker had to be related to me because that was just my shitty fucking luck in life.

  “What are we? Cousins? Half-siblings?” I bit out as he pulled into a three-car garage driveway and opened one of the doors.

  “Relax, Mira. My mother is Nel’s second cousin. Which makes him my third cousin and you, my fourth cousin. We don’t share enough blood to even be really related if it makes you feel better.”

  “Yeah but . . . there’s still that bloodline there . . .” I trailed off.

  Pyro laughed as he grabbed my suitcase before he stepped out of his truck and I followed reluctantly behind him. “Listen here, little girl. My dad was Riggs Reynolds’ brother. My legal name is Maarten Hendrik Reynolds, Jr. You know how much shit I caught when I first joined the fuckin’ Marines? Never mind—you don’t wanna know.”

  I followed him through the hallway and into a clean, spacious living room with dark furniture and dark Persian rugs throughout covering tiled flooring. “Anyway, all of my best friends were snipers, and I was an expert shot. Hell, if I’d continued, Clint Eastwood woulda made a movie outta my story but I wasn’t married so . . .”

  I turned toward him and dared to walk closer. “Are you . . . m
arried now or do you have an old lady?”

  Pyro didn’t answer. Instead he sat down on his black leather sofa and said, “I fucked up though. I mean, to so many of the guys out there, it’s like bein’ in our own personal X-Box game. Fuckin’ Grand Theft Auto V meets Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare. You know we all had our own soundtracks for when we were on duty? ‘I Ran’ by A Flock of Seagulls, ‘Eye of the Tiger’ by Survivor, ‘Another One Bites The Dust’ by Queen, ‘Murder Ink’ by Dr. Dre, and my personal favorite, ‘Hit ‘em Up’ by Tupac.”

  I sat down next to him on the sofa and reluctantly placed an arm around his shoulders just in case he shrugged me off. “You don’t have to talk about it—not if you don’t want to.”

  “That’s the problem, Mira. No one wants to hear about what it’s like over there. The brothers—they shrug it off because, hell, they’ve killed before. They know what it’s like to snuff out a human life. The difference is most of the people we get rid of need to be killed. They’re rabid dogs—a blight on humanity. They’ve murdered innocents and don’t even take enough time to even think about what they’ve done.”

  Pyro paused and glanced at me. Our eyes, glued to one another, couldn’t be separated even if I wanted to. “But that one woman . . . we were patrolling fuckin’ poppy fields in the Helmand province. The Lui Tai district is fuckin’ poppy plants as far as the eyes can see. Reminds me of what my granddad used to tell me about his various tours in Vietnam.

  “Anyway, she was covered and in a vehicle with some soldiers. Maybe she coulda been a potential suicide bomber but her belly was so huge and the look of anguish on her face . . . I’d like to think she was going in labor. In that fucking hellhole of a country, can you imagine giving birth? I was a damn good soldier though, and when I was told to take the vehicle out, that’s exactly what I did. I spared her an agonizing death by shootin’ her in the head before I aimed for the gas tank and blew up the vehicle.”

  I wanted to say something—anything—other than stare at this beautiful man who’d managed to grab the cold, bloody beating heart of mine, and fill it with a warmth I’d never known existed. There wasn’t anything insta-lust about it and no part of me wanted to jump his bones but that maternal instinct I never thought I possessed kicked in with a vengeance. I gently sat on his lap before I embraced him, his head buried in my chest.

  Like most proud men, there weren’t any gut-wrenching sobs but I felt the wetness of tears and the shaking of his body all the same. I’d never considered myself all that religious but if telling me what happened to him in Afghanistan made him feel better then I could handle it. I knew what it was like holding on to secrets and how they could fester and become so much worse. It was better for him to forgive himself now then let that shit continue to eat away at him from the inside.

  We separated rather reluctantly as I gently climbed off his lap and walked toward the kitchen. The first place I ventured was the pantry. There were enough ingredients to make a perfect meal of spaghetti Bolognese as long as he had ground beef or even ground turkey meat.

  “What are you doing?”

  I grabbed a package of ground buffalo meat from the freezer and closed the door. “Cooking. What does it look like? Or what? Did you think my only talent was cooking meth?”

  Pyro’s face blanched before I smiled back at him. “It was a joke. You know, ha-ha?”

  “Yeah, I realize that now.”

  “Listen, if we’re gonna be spending a lot of time with each other then I gotta tell you more about my quirks. I cook when I get nervous or edgy. Usually it’s food that can be frozen and you can just warm it up when ever you get tired of fast food or what ever. I do a lot of cooking and I eat very healthy. Usually I stick with extra virgin olive oil but my favorite to cook with is coconut oil.”

  “You one of those Whole Food/Trader Joe’s types?”

  “Yes, and no. I prefer Costco to tell you the truth. You can buy in bulk and it lasts longer. But looks like you already shop there.” I held up the package of ground buffalo meat. “It’s on of my favorites. You get all that rich taste of beef but it’s so much better for you.”

  “You’re remarkable, you know that right?”

  I felt my cheeks burn with embarrassment as I began to cut up red peppers to add to the sauce. “It’s just my way of saying thank you. Loire wanted me to stay with her and become a tattoo artist but I don’t have the skill or the patience. She’s remarkable and the fact that she accepted me—knowing where I came from and who my dad was . . . I couldn’t ask for a better sister.”

  I set the peppers to the side and started on green peppers. “Listen, I may be young. I mean, twenty-four is nowhere near pushing up daisies but I’m not naïve to the way the world works. There’s no guarantee I’ll even get close enough to kill Fernando or that . . . he won’t kill me in the end. Nothing in this life is predetermined or destined however, it’s a chance I’m willing to take to free myself from this cage I’ve felt like I’ve lived in my whole life.”

  Pyro stared at me with a deep, intense look before he laughed out loud. It was full-bellied and full of genuine mirth. “Hell, how old you think I am?”

  “Well, based on your tough as nails attitude, I would easily guess thirty.” I glanced at him as I set the diced green peppers to the side and began dicing yellow peppers. “But I know you’re younger. You’ve only been in the Saints—what—maybe a few years? I wouldn’t put you older than twenty-five. After all, with your four years in the military and as a mercenary, that would have taken up your life until you were twenty-two and then you have to prospect for at least a year—”

  “My prospect period was six months. I knew how to make bombs . . . powerful bombs—precise bombs. The club was impressed despite my dubious ties to the White Knights MC. I didn’t even bother to prospect with them. Not when my first girlfriend was mixed-race. I never got all that racial purity bullshit and I wouldn’t stand for that kind of talk. I always knew I would end up joining the Saints. I had enough Irish blood through both my mom and dad so it was a no brainer,” he explained as he leaned against the countertop.

  I mixed up the diced onions and added them to a large pan and they immediately sizzled with in the coconut oil. “Does Mags know about you? Being her cousin, I mean?”

  “You better make sure you don’t overcook them—you haven’t added the meat yet.”

  I looked at him with cool eyes before I began to chop up onions and grabbed the crushed garlic from the fridge. “They are on low. Anyway, you never answered my question. Does she know or not?”

  Pyro stared at me with haunted blue eyes. “Yes, she does know . . . now. The last year of her life—it’s been hell. She’s had to go up against a lot of bad people and play both ends against the middle. She’s exhausted and she really wants out of the life. She doesn’t mind consulting but the bloodlust . . . it no longer drives her.”

  “I know what that’s like,” I murmured under my breath as I added the diced onions and a huge scoop of garlic into the sautéed peppers.

  “How do you think she knew about you? All these years later, she remembered you. She couldn’t leave you there. Mags isn’t nearly as cold as she seems. She’s got a huge heart. Hell, she worries about me being in the MC. It’s pretty contradictory considering what they do for some of the baddest badasses in the country but . . . she’s a caretaker.”

  I finally added the meat after it’d defrosted courtesy of a powerful microwave. “Well then riddle me this, Pyro, why did she choose me for this specific job? She knows what my childhood was like and I can’t even pretend to be as strong as she is. I’m not weak but I’m not Magnolia Reynolds-Gillespie—bad ass chick.”

  He smiled though this time his expression seemed neutral, almost cold. “She didn’t choose you to do this assignment. I did.”

  I whipped around in surprise and glared at Pyro before I shook my head. “I should have fucking known.”

  Chapter Two

  Mira

  “What’s that
supposed to mean?”

  I ignored Pyro for as long as I could while I stirred the meat into the sautéed vegetables. I added a pinch of cinnamon, sea salt and a teaspoon of sugar in the raw.

  “I don’t forget a name or a face. I remember you before you shipped out. My dad held this huge party for you though he’s always thought the government was bullshit. Then, he offered you a going away present, a virgin. That girl happened to be me.” The inflection in my tone never changed—I might as well have been discussing he weather with him.

  “Mira, I never forget a face, and although I was pretty drunk, I remember us stumbling into bed together but if memory serves me correctly, I didn’t fuck you.” He walked past me and grabbed a Heineken from the fridge, flipped off the top, and swigged half the beer in two long swallows.

  I cleared my throat. “That’s true. You didn’t lay a hand on me but I wished you had. Afterwards, I had to sleep with some less than savory characters that belong to my dad’s MC. Jake protected me as much as he could but he wasn’t always around. The old ladies didn’t have a voice except my loud-mouthed evil step-mother, and she hated me anyway.”

  I didn’t realize how close he’d stepped to me until I could feel the warmth of his body and the faint scent of lager on his breath. “Who did it? What I should have done?”

  I tucked my hair behind my ear and remained silent for a long time before I murmured, “That’s one subject I can’t address or talk about at all. Hell, if it were possible, I’d bleach my brain just to rid myself of the memory. It’s sick and twisted but the person involved isn’t exactly a model citizen so let’s just leave it that, okay? I was never passed around but my evil stepmother had me ‘entertain’ certain Knights members from out of town. After my dad found out about it, no one touched me. I’ve been with exactly four men, sexually—including my rapist but . . . you can’t ever know about that. No one can. The others were barely consensual sex but I guess it still counts, right? I couldn’t tell you their names even if I wanted to because I honestly don’t remember.”