Girth (Marked Skulls MC Book 1)

by Savannah Rylan

  It was still strange to hold Lewis’ daughter in my arms, out in the open like that. I could feel the surge of adrenaline in my veins. This would take some getting used to.

  Lila giggled as she looked up at me, and we knocked our foreheads together, just as the doors of the bar were thrown open.

  “Lewis!” a voice shouted and we all turned our heads to see. It was Marcus one of the MC members I had been introduced to before.

  He looked like he had been running. His shoulders were heaving, he was out of breath and his eyes were wild with fear and rage.

  “What’s going on?” Lila exclaimed and my first instinct was to hold her back and stop her from going any closer to the door.

  Marcus was rushing towards Lewis now, who was staring at the man. We were all expecting bad news.

  “It’s Fred. He’s been shot!” Marcus said.

  Lewis walked around the bar counter, glaring at Marcus. He was obviously the kind of man who had a tendency of shooting the messenger.

  “What the fuck happened? Where is Fred?” Lewis growled and Marcus’ eyes darted fishily around the bar.

  “At the front of his house. Hugh got there, to take care of the scene. The Dark Legion did another drive-by shootout, like the one they attempted on Lila,” Marcus said and his eyes sought out Lila in the crowd, who was standing huddled up with me. I could sense her body stiffening with fright.

  “Fuck ‘em. Fuck!” Lewis growled.

  “Where is he shot? Have they taken him to hospital?” Lila was crying now, and I tried to hold her close to me. I knew that Fred was like a father-figure to her, and I respected him too. Marcus turned to us and drew in a deep breath.

  “They got him in the heart. They’re taking him to the morgue,” Marcus said.

  Fred was dead. They’d fucking killed Fred. This was war.

  THE END

  Turn the page for a sneak peak at the next book in the series, Rodeo which releases on June 6th!

  They call me Rodeo, ‘cause I was made for ridin’.

  When a member of our MC turns up dead, I know exactly who did it.

  But when I show up at the witness’s house to confirm my suspicions, she tells me something I don’t wanna hear.

  It wasn’t the MC I thought. It was someone else.

  So now we have two enemies. And I have to keep her safe from both.

  Because she’s beautiful and fragile.

  She needs someone like me to take care of her.

  And I do, all night long.

  Things usually get complicated when I try to rope a girl.

  But this level of complicated?

  This is a whole new thing.

  Chapter 1

  Rodeo

  Fred was dead, and Marcus didn’t know anything else. We were all in shock, but I had charged right at Marcus, pushing him up against the wall of the bar. He had his hands up in defense, and was struggling against my grip on him.

  “I don’t know anything else, man. This is all I know!” he screamed.

  “Fuck! How did this happen?” Lewis was yelling behind us, and I heard Lila burst into tears.

  “Who told you this? What the fuck do you mean he’s dead?” I was barking right at Marcus’ face and he was shaking his head.

  “Little Will. He saw the cops. He said Fred was being carried out on a stretcher!” Marcus yelled back.

  “The cops got there first? Fuck! Fuck!” Abe was growling. I could feel waves of rage washing over me as I kept Marcus pinned to the wall. He had given up struggling to get away from me. He knew I was stronger.

  “Rodeo! Let him go,” Lewis said, in a calm and subdued voice behind me, but I was seeing red.

  “What else do you know? Tell me what else you know!” I barked and some spittle flew out of my mouth and landed on Marcus’ face. He shook his head, his eyes were bloodshot.

  “I don’t know anything else. I know whatever Little Will told me. I swear!” he yelled back.

  “Rodeo!” Lewis called out to me again, and this time, I released the pressure of my hands on Marcus’ arms. He slid away from me the moment he got the chance and I ran a hand through my hair.

  “How is this possible? How did they get Fred?” Abe was pacing around the bar, while Girth had Lila in his arms and he was consoling her.

  Fred had been like a father to us, especially to Lila and me. I had nobody before I had Fred. I didn’t even have the MC before he pulled me out of the life I used to lead. He was the one who introduced me to the Marked Skulls. He changed my life, he saved me; and now he was dead.

  “I’m going to fucking kill him,” I hissed through gritted teeth.

  “Was it the Dark Legion?” Abe asked and Marcus shrugged his shoulders.

  “I don’t know man,” he replied.

  “It has to be!” Lewis roared and when I looked at him, I could see the rage in his eyes too. Lewis and Fred had been best friends. Fred was Lewis’ right-hand-man, the MC’s vice president.

  “When they realized that they can’t get to my daughter,” he continued and swung his head around to look at Lila who was still in Girth’s arms, “they decided to take out one of us.”

  “I’m going to fucking kill him. I’m going to hunt him down and kill him, whoever this motherfucker is,” I growled and Lila burst into another fit of tears.

  “I can’t believe this is happening. I can’t believe Fred is gone,” she blubbered, while Girth held her tightly. Lila was like a sister to me, I cared about her the same way I would have cared about my family if I had one. I was glad that she now had Girth in her life, so I didn’t have to worry about her.

  “Where was he going? Where was he?” Abe asked, turning his heaving shoulders towards Marcus again. Marcus gulped before he spoke. He was clearly getting the wrong end of having to be the messenger.

  “Don’t know. All Little Will said was that he was found on the corner of Shelby Street and 42nd, in front of some apartment building,” he replied, just as the doors of the bar burst open and Hugh Ashland rushed in.

  He was a young beat cop who had long been working with our MC. He looked up to Lewis and Fred and helped cover up any shit that our MC got into. He was breathing hard when he came in and I charged at him next.

  “What the fuck is going on, Hugh? Where have you been?” I growled at him and Hugh clenched his jaws.

  “He got shot. He got shot by a drive-by shooter,” Hugh said, walking in towards us. The color had drained from his face. Fred had left his mark on a lot of people’s lives. He was a calm and composed man full of wisdom, who had seen the best in a couple of street-kids like me. Hugh used to admire him too.

  He looked apologetic now as he came to a stop in the middle of the bar.

  “What else do you know, Hugh?” Lewis asked him and he breathed heavily as he looked at each of us.

  “All I know, all anyone knows at this point is that there was a single gunman on a bike and he got Fred right in the chest as he rode by,” Hugh said and there was another burst of tears from Lila. She was uncontrollable in her shock. A couple of weeks before this, she had been in a similar situation when the Dark Legion were trying to get to her to get to us. They wanted to teach Lewis and the rest of us a lesson for dealing weapons in their territory.

  I clenched my jaws, fisted up the palms of my hands and tried to control the rage that was bubbling up inside me. We were a small MC, smaller than the Dark Legion and any of the other big players in the city but I wasn’t going to sit back and do nothing when Fred had been shot and killed. I wasn’t going to cower away in fear.

  “So, there’s nothing else? We don’t know who exactly shot him?” it was Girth who spoke up now, and Hugh shook his head. Then slowly, he turned to look at me. Everyone knew the relationship I shared with Fred. Hugh narrowed his eyes at me before he spoke.

  “But there is a witness,” he said.

  Want more? Rodeo comes out on June 6th!

  Chapter 1

  Knox

  “The fuck are they doin
’ now?” I asked.

  “They’re knocking on the damn door again, and I don’t like it,” Grave said.

  “What the hell did they think they were gonna be doing? Shoving us out of our own territory?” Mick asked.

  “What do we do from here?” Rock asked. “Anyone got any ideas?”

  The Black Saddles were known for their shitty maneuvers and their pushy tactics. They knew where the territorial boundaries were, but they were startin’ to blur the damn lines. We kept to ourselves and we expected them to do the fuckin’ same, but they weren’t havin’ it. They wanted our territory enough to posture for it, and multiple warning shots had been fired off over the past couple of weeks. We’d chased them out of more alleyways and broken up more fights on our own damn town than we’d ever had to do before, and I was gettin’ damn tired of it all.

  “This supposed to be some kind of damn mission? Or are we pow-wowwin’?” Brewer asked.

  “The Rebel Skulls don’t pow-wow,” I said. “But you’re startin’ to get on my damn nerves.”

  “We’re supposed to be doing surveillance,” Mick said. “So… what do we see?”

  “A bunch of pussy assholes who don’t wanna adhere to boundaries,” I said.

  “So… a bunch of Graves?” Rock asked with a smirk.

  Grave slapped him on the back of the head, almost knockin’ the man off his damn bike.

  “Settle down, kids,” Brewer said. “We don’t wanna get too loud. I see some of them up ahead.”

  We all turned our attention on the assholes walkin’ around in leather cuts with a pin up girl riding on a Harley as their back patch. The called themselves The Black Saddles and they were a newer club in town.

  “The fuck you think they’re doing?” Grave asked.

  “Snoopin’ around, that’s what,” I said. “And we can’t have them doin’ that. Not with so many jobs out right now.”

  Our crew ran and laundered money for a hefty price on whoever wanted to use our channels. We had a monopoly on it on this side of the country. The hot ass desert was the perfect place to do something like this because no one expected tens of thousands of dollars to be filtered through shabby shacks in the fuckin’ dessert. McAllen, Texas was our city, and since it bordered the Chihuahuan Desert, it was the perfect place to conceal our operations.

  But The Black Saddles were threatening to blow that shit sky high.

  The last thing we needed was the feds coming into our damn town because of some nosey, loud ass biker crew and stirring up trouble. And if these fuckers rolled up in here trying to take what was ours, we would fight for it.

  “You guys. Come here. It’s T.J.,” Brewer said.

  We all hopped off our bikes and surrounded Brewer’s body to listen in on the phone call.

  “You guys all there?” T.J. asked.

  “Yup,” Mick said. “Hit us with it.”

  “I got a tip that The Black Saddles are having some dumbass party in the woods on the other side of McAllen.”

  “So the ‘not desert’ part. Got it,” I said.

  “Don’t get smart, Knox. It doesn’t suit you,” T.J. said. “You’re no longer doing surveillance. You’re going to that damn party.”

  “And shooting them dead?” Grave asked.

  “Not today, Grave. Save your bloodlust for later. Make it an informal meeting. Go with beer or whatever the fuck it is those toad-heads wanna drink.”

  “You want us to set formal boundaries,” Brewer said.

  “Yep. And you guys are gonna get it done. Don’t swing the first punch and you sure as hell don’t blow off the first round. But if things get hairy with them, bury ’em in the ground,” T.J. said.

  “I like the sound of that,” Grave said with a grin.

  “And make sure our hot-head doesn’t massacre them,” T.J. said.

  “We’ll make sure he’s locked down,” Rock said.

  “I don’t need a damn babysitter,” Grave said.

  “Nope. Just maybe some meds,” I said.

  “Call me when it’s done,” T.J. said.

  “Will do,” Brewer said.

  We all got on our bikes and headed for the other side of McAllen. The lazy, desolate town was populated pretty well and sat right between two very distinct areas of Texas. One side was desert, the other side flourished with trees and other green shit. We parked our bikes at a gas station and grabbed a case of beer, then set out for the woods. We could already hear them partying up a storm. Loud as fuck with a massive fire raging in the middle of the woods. Like they weren’t risking burning the damn place down altogether. Reckless crews were the worst. Loud as hell, thought their dicks swung to the ground, and had nothing to back up their threats.

  “Well, lookie who we have here.”

  “The fuck they doin’ here?”

  “You guys lookin’ for a fight?”

  “Nope,” Brewer said. “Just came here to talk.”

  “Talk? The hell you guys wanna talk about?”

  Two distinct individuals parted themselves from the group and started for us. One of them had this mass of hair on his head and a crazy look in his eye. The other guy had a leather cut on that didn’t match the rest of the crews.

  Meant he was a prospect.

  The Black Saddles had fuckin’ prospects fighting their damn battles.

  “And you are?” I asked

  “Rex,” the guy with the hair said. “This here’s Blaze.”

  “You a prospect, Blaze?” I asked.

  “The fuck does that matter for?” he asked.

  “Just… wonderin’,” I said, my eyes sizing them both up. If shit hit the fan my guys and I could take them.

  “We come with beer,” Brewer said. “All we wanna do is talk.”

  “‘Bout what?” Rex asked.

  “We want to draw some lines,” Grave said. “We think some wires have gotten crossed as to who owns what in this town.”

  “Naw. Don’t think lines have gotten crossed at all,” Blaze said.

  “With no due respect whatsoever, you’re a prospect. And by the clean shaven look of yours, you haven’t been one for long,” I said. “So let the adults talk while you take care of the beer.”

  Brewer thrust the beer into Blaze’s arms as his eyes grew wide with anger.

  “What boundaries you wanna discuss?” Rex asked.

  “McAllen is ours. All of it,” Rock said. “Including thirty miles into this forestry and thirty miles into the desert on all sides.”

  “And who drew those lines?” Rex asked.

  “We did, when we settled. Eleven years ago,” I said.

  “So, you guys think ya got grandfathered into some place and now you’re scared because ya got company?” Blaze asked.

  My eyes panned over to the prospect as he dropped the beer to the ground.

  “Gas station beer’s the pits,” Blaze said flatly.

  “Better than the swill you’re probably drinking’,” I said.

  “We might be new, but we ain’t new to how this works,” Rex said. “You want your territory, you defend it. Wars have been fought over less in the South. You want it, come and get it.”

  “Fine by me,” I said.

  I took a step towards Blaze and he threw the first punch. Then, all hell broke loose. My men were throwing punches and pulling out guns, poppinh off shots and splintering trees. I cracked my hand against Blaze’s jaw before I felt his fist connect with my stomach. I went stumbling to the ground, hitting my knees as I gasped for air. I watched Blaze’s nasty ass boots scoot underneath my gaze as his hand reached down for my hair, and he pulled my face back to see him as I watched blood trickle down his chin.

  “Ya look good on your knees like that. Reminds me of your sister, Canyon. ‘Cept she’ll be facing away from me when it happens.”

  My vision dripped with red as I balled up my fists. No one knew about my family. No one outside of my immediate crew. Grave, Brewer, Rock, Mick, and T.J. They were my family, so it was only fitting they knew abo
ut mine. No one else outside of them were supposed to know about her.

  And yet, someone did.

  When I got involved with the club, I made myself distant from my family to protect them. My father left us all when I was young, and I watched my mother rise up like the strong woman she was to take care of us. But I pulled away from her when I became a prospect in order to protect her. In order to save her from the life of darkness I was beginning to enjoy.

  Until I had to drop Canyon off with her.

  No one knows the truth about Canyon, and no one ever will. But even this dumbass club knowing I had a sister was too much for me. Her name was to be kept out of their mouths, or I’d break their jaws so they couldn’t keep her name in it. That little girl was precious to me. More precious than anyone could ever imagine.

  Because she wasn’t my sister like I’d told everyone. I lied to keep her safe.

  Canyon was really my daughter.

  I lunged up off my knees and nailed Blaze in his dick. He bent over, grabbing at himself and sinking to his own knees. My leg came up and nailed him in the nose and I felt it crack underneath the pressure.

  That was when he fell to the ground.

  I brought my boot back and kicked Blaze right in his gut. I heard him gasping for air as I reared my leg back, kicking him again as his ribs gave way. I kicked and I kicked, busting ribs and heel stompinh his head into the ground. By the time I was done with that asshole, he was gonna know to keep Canyon’s name out of his fuckin’ mouth. Especially when it came to the vile, filthy bullshit he had just spilled.

  My daughter was ten fuckin’ years old.

  What the hell was wrong with him?

  “Knox! Knox! Shit, man. Come on!”

  I heard Grave’s voice off in the distance as a pair of arms wrapped around my body.

  “Come on. We gotta get out of here,” Grave said. “Shit.”