RITE OF PASSAGE – EXTENDED CUT
(A SATAN’S KNIGHTS NOVEL)
Copyright © 2019 by Janine Infante Bosco.
All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations em- bodied in critical articles or reviews.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Published by Janine Infante Bosco
ISBN: 9781689248679
Edited/formatted by: Jennifer Bosco
Cover Design by:
JB’s Book Cover Obsession Design
Cover Model: Charlie “Dex” Alexander
Photographer: RplusMphoto
Edited/Proofread by: Back2TheWall Editing
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Other Books by Janine Infante Bosco
About the Author
Prologue
Then
T he latex snaps against my wrist and I wiggle my fingers inside the gloves before turning to the rolling tool chest that has been transformed into an ink station. It’s not ideal but then again, nothing about this situation has been. Grabbing the gauze, I pour some alcohol onto the swatch and rub it generously over Jack Parrish’s shoulder and the name of his predecessor that’s been inked to his skin since he left this dark and ugly world.
His jaw clenches as he lifts a bottle of whiskey to his lips and takes a swig. The man is going to bleed like a stuck pig, but there’s no use in trying to convince him to go easy on the booze. To be fair, if I was in shoes, I’d probably do worse damage. Afterall, it ain’t every day you find out the man you looked up to most in this world was a vile piece of shit.
For years Jack held Cain in the highest regard and called him his mentor. On occasion he was also Jack’s savior. I suppose that’s because there aren’t too many people who would back a mentally deranged man and advocate for him to take the throne of an outlaw motorcycle club. Cain put the gavel in Jack’s hand and for the last twenty years, Jack thought his predecessor believed in him, that he saw past the crazy. That he didn’t see him as a liability.
But what doesn’t come out in the wash, comes out in the rinse. Not only was Cain full of shit, he set Jack up to fail. He used his illness against him and conspired with scum to wipe the Satan’s Knights off the map. The cocksucker would’ve succeeded too if we didn’t uncover his secret and destroy his partner, Vladimir. Now, the destiny of the Satan’s Knights is uncertain and I’m blacking out the tribute of Cain inked to Jack’s body.
“You sure about this?” I ask him.
“Just fucking do it,” he growls, taking another swig. I grab my tattoo gun from the tool chest and glance around the garage at the room full of men, all who wear somber expressions on their faces. My gaze drifts to Riggs, and the light in his hand.
“Hold it high,” I tell him. He gives me a curt nod and I press my boot against the pedal. The gun buzzes to life and with a steady hand I start to black out the tattoo.
Jack doesn’t flinch.
He doesn’t even fucking grunt.
He takes one more swig of the bottle and I pause for more ink. Before I go back to work, he turns his head and glances down at the blackness covering his shoulder.
“Every story has room for a different ending, kid,” he mutters, lifting his bloodshot eyes to mine. “This is just another rite of passage.”
I nod silently.
I wonder how many of those we get in a lifetime.
With the way my life is going, I’ve probably used all mine up.
Chapter One
Present Day
I f someone would’ve told me I’d amount to nothing but a struggling outlaw, I might’ve done things differently in life. I might’ve stayed in school, maybe even studied some. Instead, I dropped out halfway through my freshman year of high school and took a part-time job repairing bikes for the town drunk who not only was struggling to hold on to his liver, but his business too. It’s funny how easy it is to quit the things that are good for us, but we can’t quite find it in us to quit the shit that kills us.
I was sixteen when I started riding. Seventeen when I became a prospect. Two years later, I earned my colors and a year after that I crashed. Literally. I was thrown fifty feet off my motorcycle after colliding with a bus. Everyone said I was lucky to be alive, but all I remember is not being able to feel my legs and wishing for death. Things went downhill from there and I got hooked on pain meds. Nothing will end relationships quite like a bad habit and soon I severed ties with everyone I knew and loved.
I eventually got my legs back and as soon as I was able to ride again, I went Nomad. I fucking hightailed it out of Texas and let the wind take me to my next great mistake. I don’t know why I decided to park my bike in Albany, New York. Maybe I was tired of burning rubber from one state to the next or maybe I let my fucking dick decide. Either way, I traded my nomad rocker for one that read Albany and began taking orders from a man who went by the name of Rush.
The Satan’s Knights of Albany had very few legitimate businesses. Aside from the porn studio and the whores they pimped out, they owned and operated a tattoo parlor. I was handy with a pencil and could draw just about anything. But once I became an expert at working a tattoo gun, I was right up there with fucking DaVinci…hence the name Needles.
Every great artist needs a muse and mine came in the form of a sexy fucking redhead. With an ass and tits to die for and hips to hold on to any time I fucked her senseless, Tori’s body became my canvas. I’d like to tell you it was our story that I inked to her pale flesh but truly it was mine. Every hardship, every misfortune and all my regrets told the tale of a man who would never love her.
It’s not that I didn’t want to. In fact, I wanted nothing more after she revealed she was pregnant with my baby, but my heart was a block of ice. A hollow organ incapable of a single emotion. At least until Ashlynn was born. Our daughter thawed my cold heart. Especially after her mother left her like a rag doll at the clubhouse. At first, I did everything in my power to track down Tori but the bitch vanished off the face of the earth. My redheaded siren turned out to be nothing more than a devious cunt and forced me into a role I wasn’t prepared to tackle.
Six years have gone by and I still don’t know what the fuck I’m doing when it comes to Ashlynn. All I’m certain of is that she deserves better than me. So much fucking better.
With that thought weighing heavily on my mind, I reach for my keys. The sound of my daughter’s laughter temporarily paralyzes me, and I strain to listen as she and Ally joke around inside the apartment.
Ally.
That’s another thing I didn’t see coming. Me and my daughter’s babysitter go way back. When I first met Ally, she was just a girl—Rush’s girl to be exact. I didn’t pay her much mind. She was on his dick and when she wasn’t, she was high as a fucking kite. The girl had no self-esteem. No fucking self-worth. A couple of times, when Rush was on the road, she came onto me. It wasn’t so much that she wanted my dick but rather a fix. She thought if she spread her legs, I’d shoot her veins full of poison. I realized then there wasn’t anything she wouldn’t do to be numb. What I s
hould’ve realized was that there was a reason behind her behavior. Maybe if I had paid a little more attention, I would’ve noticed the cry for help.
I only discovered the truth about Ally a couple of years ago when the Satan’s Knights of Brooklyn stormed into the Albany clubhouse. Ally wasn’t just some girl. She was the twin sister of one of their members and soon it was revealed that Rush had bought Ally off some Russian prick. Vladimir Yankovich was a notorious gangster who kidnapped her when she was only fourteen years old. He tortured her in ways she’ll never forget. Stole her fucking life is what he did, but Rush, that bastard fucking tried to steal her future. Not only did he brainwash her, he turned her into a goddamn junkie.
The Brooklyn charter not only made it their business to rescue her but also wiped Rush off the fucking map, taking our charter down with him. I had a daughter relying on me, so me, and another brother, Bas, decided to drag our pipes to Brooklyn. We offered the president at the time, Jack Parrish, a large lump sum for a seat at his table and luckily, he accepted. A lot has changed since then. Jack is no longer the president of the club, and Ally, well, that girl is clean as a whistle. It took some time for her to acclimate to life outside of Rush’s prison and for her to get clean, but once all that happened, she rebuilt the lost relationship with her twin brother and got to know her two nieces. She also found love with one of my brother’s. When she isn’t watching Ashlynn, she and Deuce are tearing up the streets on his Harley, making beautiful fucking memories. The kind of memories a girl like Ally never dreamed possible.
The kind I hope my daughter gets to make one day.
Snapping out of my trance, I open the door and make my way inside the apartment. Until a couple of weeks ago, me and Ashlynn were living in a seedy one bedroom in the projects. The only bad thing about the Brooklyn charter of the Satan’s Knights was their lack of a clubhouse. A little before the whole Ally mess, their clubhouse was blown to smithereens and there was always one drama after another stopping them from rebuilding. Having no place to land wasn’t an issue for most of my newfound brothers because many of them were wifed up and any business we had to tend to, was conducted at Pipe’s garage. Still, Riggs, the Sargent at Arms, took it upon himself to purchase a bar and it now acts as our clubhouse. Upstairs, there are two apartments, one of which me and Ashlynn occupy. Sometimes, Nico, a prospect and also the president’s son, will crash in the vacant apartment but for the most part it’s usually empty.
“Daddy!” Ashlynn boasts as she jumps off the couch and rolls into a somersault. I suppose I should be glad to see the forty dollars a week I spend on a gymnastics class is paying off. Getting back on her feet, Ashlynn runs to her room without so much as giving me a hug or even a wave. She’s not very affectionate and I guess that’s my fault.
Ignoring the pang of guilt, my eyes flit towards Ally and I watch as she pads around the room, collecting her things.
“Sorry, I’m late,” I mutter, shoving my hands into my pockets. We both know I don’t really mean that. I’m always late.
“No problem. We did her homework, and she had dinner. I also gave her a bath, so she’s all ready for bed.”
“Appreciate that,” I reply.
“Another client ran late?”
Once I settled into Brooklyn, I got a part-time gig as a tattoo artist. I loved riding and my new brothers did everything to welcome me into their fold, but they were different from what I was used to. They weren’t about clubhouse parties where the booze flowed and they sure as fuck didn’t indulge in cheap whores. They got their hands dirty and went home to their families. They fucked their wives silly and spent time with their kids. Me, I did everything I could to avoid going home at night. Ally was good with Ashlynn and truth be told; my daughter preferred her company over mine.
That knowledge often kept me at the shop after hours. Sometimes I’d book a client or take a walk-in but most of the time I stayed late to work on new designs. However, tonight I left when my shift was over. I had barely made it to my bike when my phone rang. It was a restricted number, and I made a habit out of not answering those after Tori started calling for money. Imagine the balls on that bitch. I pocketed my cell and straddled my bike but the idea of Tori calling me, asking me for money to stay out of our daughter’s life weighed heavily on my mind. I called Ally and told her I’d be late before hitting up a liquor store. Getting lost in a cheap ass bottle of booze seemed like a fine idea at the time but now with Ally eyeing me like I’m the goddamn devil, not so much.
“Something like that,” I mumble, finally answering her. She continues to stare at me, forcing me to look away.
“She misses you,” she reveals. Those three words cause me to flinch. “I’m guessing the same time tomorrow?”
“That would be great.”
“Needles…”
“Ally, leave it be.”
“No,” she argues, crossing her arms against her chest. “You need to do better.”
“I’m doing the best I can,” I growl in defense. It’s a lie…a big fucking lie.
“That’s bullshit and we both know it,” she fires back. “She’s a good kid. She follows directions, eats whatever I put in front of her. Sure, she asks a lot of questions, but what kid doesn’t? She’s funny too and smart. She got all her sight words down pat tonight.”
“I know she’s a good kid,” I hiss, pulling my hands out of my pockets.
“Do you? Because I don’t think you do. I mean, how could you? You’re never around.”
That’s not entirely true. Just last weekend I took Ashlynn to an impromptu barbeque at Jack’s house and the week before that, I took her to McDonald’s. I tuck her into bed every night and walk her to school every morning. So maybe I’m not around to do homework with her or here to get her ready for bed, that doesn’t mean I don’t know my daughter is amazing. I’m just not sure where she gets it from.
“Of course I do, she’s my fucking kid,” I sneer.
Frustrated with this conversation, I tug the baseball cap off my head and chuck it across the room. I rub my hands over my head and peer back at Ally.
“Look, I appreciate you looking out for her but you’re free to go.”
I reach into my kutte and retrieve a couple of twenties. Shoving them in her face, I tip my chin,
“Thank you,” I add bitterly.
Closing the distance between us, she plucks the bills from my hand and shoves them into her purse, making sure to scowl at me as she does it.
“I’ll be here tomorrow but you should really try to come to her gymnastics meet. It would make her so happy.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” I reply.
Ally rolls her eyes and heads for the door. Without so much as another glance in my direction she leaves, slamming the door behind her. Releasing an exasperated sigh, I rub my hands over my face, tugging at the beard covering my face. Ashlynn’s sweet voice sounds and I quickly pull my hands away.
“Daddy, will you tuck me in?” she calls from her room just as my phone rings inside my pocket.
“Yeah, baby, I’ll be right there,” I reply, swallowing hard against the lump lodged in my throat. I reach inside my kutte to retrieve my phone, but I pause before my fingers can touch the offensive device. Ignoring the call, I shed my leather vest and make my way to my daughter.
Ally’s right.
I need to do better.
I just don’t know if I have it in me.
Chapter Two
“N o, he’s not dead, grandma. He’s breathing,” Ashlynn whispers while poking her little finger against my cheek. Sure I’m fucking dreaming and that my six year old daughter isn’t really talking to my mother at this ungodly hour, I force my eyes open and struggle to focus on the little human hovering over me. I swat her finger from my face and rub the sleep from my eyes as she continues to press my phone to her ear.
“He’s awake, and he’s grumpy, but that’s nothing new,” she says, sticking her tongue out at me to drive her point home.
“Give me that,” I growl, snatching the phone out of her hand. Before I press it to my own ear, I glance at the digital clock on my nightstand to see what time it is. “Shit, you’re going to be late for school. Hurry and go brush your teeth. Did Ally leave out your clothes for today?”
“Ally never leaves out my clothes.”
“Well, then go throw something on…but brush your teeth first.”
“Fine,” she says, scrambling off my bed. With a pout and a stomp of her foot, she makes her way out of my bedroom. A second later the bathroom door slams and I flinch. If she’s like this when she’s six, I’m gonna be fucked when she’s sixteen. It’s a sobering thought and causes me to mutter a curse before lifting the phone to my ear.
“Yeah,” I greet miserably.
There’s a list of things I don’t like dealing with first thing when I wake up and my mother sits high on that list. Things between me and my folks became strained before I left Texas. We didn’t really speak much until after Ashlynn was born and Tori took off. In a moment of weakness, I called my mother and broke down. Learning they had a granddaughter made it easy for my parents to put aside our differences and before I knew it, my mother was on a plane to Albany to meet Ashlynn. That’s when I learned my father’s health had declined and he had suffered a stroke that left him paralyzed on the left side of his body. With him to care for, my mother didn’t stay long and hasn’t seen Ashlynn or I since. She calls once a week to speak to her, though, and always manages to throw a dig, criticizing me as a parent. Usually I take her insults with a grain of salt, but today I’m not in the fucking mood. Especially after Ally handed me my ass not twelve hours ago.
“I’ve been trying to reach you since last night,” she says. To my surprise there isn’t any malice in her tone. If anything, she sounds deflated.
“I don’t have any missed calls from you.”
“You wouldn’t,” she mumbles. “My phone died at the hospital and I used Bess’ to call. God Bless that girl. I don’t know what I would’ve done without her.”
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