Heaven Hill Series - Complete Series

by Laramie Briscoe

  Grinning at the older man, Liam made sure his fist connected with Richard’s face. It felt good to cause him pain, felt gratifying as his knuckles cracked over the bones in Richard’s body. “This is where you can take your damn business proposition.”

  For long minutes, the two of them beat the absolute shit out of each other while Tyler freed Denise. She shrieked as Richard landed a blow to Liam’s ribs.

  “Let them go. He’s got it coming to him after this,” he said calmly, holding her back.

  She watched as Liam got the upper hand and then picked up the older man, slamming him face first into a concrete wall. Liam was strong, but she had no idea he was that strong. It was amazing what adrenaline did for someone.

  “Did you get rid of it, or when I rip this shirt off of you are you going to still have it?” Liam spat, breathing heavily, blood spilling from his mouth.

  It struck Denise that they had matching battle wounds. Surely that proved to everyone just how serious she was about this man.

  Richard groaned, rolling his head around on his shoulders. Liam ripped the shirt from his body and showed the rest of the club what Richard hadn’t gotten rid of. He still wore the tattoos of the Heaven Hill MC. The sleeves covered his arms.

  Liam slapped his back, his gloved hands making the sound muted. “Don’t worry, Dickey boy, we’ll take care of you.”

  Tyler handed Denise over to a Prospect. “Get her out of here.”

  “What are they going to do?” she asked the Prospect, Layne she thought was his name.

  “Get back their respect and then take care of the problem,” he told her softly. He had never been present at anything like that, but he knew the code of the club and he knew just how bad of a deal it was that Richard still wore the ink.

  “They’re going to kill him?”

  “Only after he wishes he was already dead,” Layne confirmed, leading her out of the building and to a waiting van so that she wouldn’t see anything.

  He immediately took her back to the clubhouse, where Drew and Mandy stood, their arms wrapped around one another. Tears clogged Denise’s throat as she caught sight of the worry on their faces. She hadn’t meant to cause that worry – had never meant for any of this to happen.

  “Mom,” Mandy screamed as she ran to the van, helping Denise open the door. All Denise could do was open her arms and let the girl fall into them. In his own stoic way, Drew stood to the side, waiting for the emotions of the girls to die down. Much like he had done his whole life, he waited until there was an opening and then he put his arms around the both of them, holding them tightly.

  As she looked at her children, she was excited to know that she would be around to see them grow up. However, at the same time, Denise felt sorrow, but not for the man who had done so many bad things to other people. She felt sorrow because she assumed the identity of Meredith’s rapist died with this man. It hurt her heart that they would never get revenge for her, but she couldn’t say that this man didn’t deserve to die. With him, maybe old hurts and secrets would go too. Maybe now they could all start anew.

  Chapter Thirty

  The sun was just beginning to break the horizon as Liam walked out of the warehouse that Denise had been held in. In his nostrils, he could still smell the burning flesh that had been Richard Joyce. When a member decided not to get rid of his ink after leaving the club, the club did it for him. This particular time, Liam had taken great pleasure in cutting the ink up into sections and then burning it off. He would be lying if he didn’t admit that it had felt good and that’s what worried him.

  For the first time in his life, Liam felt bad about what he had done in the name of his club. He felt as if he wasn’t worthy enough to go home and sleep with the woman who warmed up the other side of his bed. He worried that she would look at him differently. Hell, he knew after this he would look at himself differently. Never before had he felt such euphoria as he had done something so heinous. It scared him in a way – he didn’t want to be that man.

  “You okay?” Tyler asked as he tipped a bottle of water over their hands, trying to clean as much blood off them as they could before the ride back to the clubhouse.

  “Yeah, but I’m feeling some remorse – not for killing him – but how is Denise going to look at me now? And I felt good doing that. What does that say about me?” Liam ran his hands down his jeans, rubbing some of the water off.

  Tyler, intelligent as always, leveled him with a stare. “She knew who you were when she got into this relationship with you.”

  Liam knew that Tyler spoke the truth, but he also knew that it was easy to overlook truths as long as they weren’t staring you in the face. She had been witness to this first hand tonight.

  “I know, but I hated doing that in front of her. I feel like she knows me as one way when I’m with her, but when I’m with you guys I turn into a different person. Things that shouldn’t feel right do, and that’s scary for someone who trusts me with her children. I can’t even say I’m comfortable with the animal that came out of me tonight,” Liam admitted. With Tyler he knew that he could be completely honest without repercussion.

  “None of us felt good about it. At one time he was a friend, a brother, but we have to do what we have to do sometimes. In those hours that we did that, had he admitted to being behind Meredith’s rape, I would have snapped and broken his neck. Without thought. Without a doubt. Without remorse. We are who we are brother, there’s a little bit of warrior in all of us. That makes us who we are.” Tyler always knew what to say, almost like he knew what Liam was going to say before he said it.

  “This is the first time I’ve ever had to worry about what a woman would say. It’s really the first time I’ve worried what anyone would say. I’m trying to keep a part of myself while I try to be what this club needs, but I worry that I’m in a losing battle. I don’t want her to look at me with fear in her eyes. That’s the last thing I want.”

  Tyler put his hand on his friend’s back. “Something tells me that Denise understood this. She saw what Meredith looked like. I think she’s okay with it, and if she’s not then the two of you work on it. A relationship is about checks and balances. It’s about coming to terms with what makes it work for both parties, not just one. I think she’ll surprise you.”

  “Guess we’ll find out won’t we?”

  Denise lay in Liam’s dorm room, waiting for him to come back. She wondered what they would say to each other, if things would be different. The brutality he had used to attack Richard’s body hadn’t surprised her, but it had made her think of him as a different kind of man. Now she thought of him the way she did Tyler. It wasn’t bad – just different.

  The door opened quietly, and she knew by the footfalls that it was Liam. Quickly, she threw her legs over the side of the bed and raced to him. He caught her in his arms and held her tightly to his body, inhaling deeply and moving his hands to her hair, caressing her head and neck softly. The softness of the hands holding her reminded her just how different he was when they were alone and when it was about them.

  “I’m so glad you’re okay,” she whispered, holding him tightly against her, snaking her arms around his neck.

  “I’m okay? Hell, you took fifteen years off my life when I came back and realized you weren’t here,” his voice hoarse with emotion. That was how she knew he was the man she thought he was. Someone callous couldn’t care about her so much it made his voice crack. That wasn’t faked emotion. That was as real as it got.

  With strong hands he picked her up, carrying her over to the bed and sitting her down. Kneeling in front of her, he ran his hands along her body, checking to make sure everything was there and accounted for. Tenderly, he ran the back of his hand along the bruise that had already formed on her cheek. Then he carefully touched the spot where her lip had split from the impact with the gun.

  “I’m good as long as you’re good,” she whispered to him.

  “I’m so far from good right now, but it’s because of what
was done to you. This could have ended up so much differently. You could be where Meredith is right now.” His eyes were red with emotion, and he tried valiantly not to let that emotion spill over.

  “I’m not, thanks to you. You got to me in time. I knew you would. I never doubted that. I had complete faith in you and your ability to not let me end up like Meredith.”

  “Thank God for that,” he breathed, bringing his hand up to the back of her head and holding her tightly against him.

  Quietly, she asked the question he had been dreading. “Did you kill him?”

  “I had to. He disrespected you, and he disrespected the club. There’s certain protocol that has to be followed. He’s lucky I didn’t castrate him before all was said and done. I’ve never felt that kind of anger or rage before,” he told her, moving back so that she could see his eyes. “I’ve always been able to stop myself before I got too far, but seeing him there with you, the blood on your face and knowing that he had done that to you. I couldn’t stop myself.”

  She put her hands up. “You don’t have to explain yourself to me. I wanted to kill him with my bare hands too. I don’t think he’s the one that raped Meredith, but I still think he had something to do with it. I really wanted to at least get that out of him, but he wouldn’t answer me when I asked more questions. I’ll always regret that.”

  “Jesus Christ. You asked him about it? Were you trying to get yourself killed?” His heart beat rapidly as he realized for a second time just how close he had been to losing her. Richard wasn’t a patient man, and he had obviously showed great restraint when it came to her questions.

  She tilted her chin up in defiance. “I was just trying to help a friend. I know she would have done the same for me. We need to know who did this. She shouldn’t have to live in fear. If I can do anything for her, I will. Don’t take away the backbone I seem to have found.”

  “I won’t,” he bit his lip, bringing his hands up to her face. “I love it about you.”

  Her heart stopped and she grinned. “I love you too, Liam.”

  “This may not ever be conventional,” he warned. In fact he never expected it to be, but he still had to warn her.

  “I know, and I’m not expecting it to be. I’ve known that since the beginning.”

  He framed her face with his large hands, bringing their lips together in a kiss meant to ignite every part of her body. He bent to pick her up off the bed, and she wrapped her legs around his body, allowing his hands to support her weight. She brought her hands to his cut and began to remove it when a knock sounded.

  “Fuck,” he swore. “What?”

  Tyler’s deep voice came through the door. “We need our VP to go over the information we just found out about Richard.”

  “Really?” he mumbled. “I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

  She giggled as he buried his face in her neck and sighed, using his tongue to lick a path around to her lips. The hot breath tickled where her hair moved.

  “You go do what you gotta do. I’ll still be here,” she promised.

  “Hopefully this won’t take very long. Besides, before we even get to taking our clothes off we need showers. I’ve got blood all over me and so do you.”

  She looked down, realizing he was speaking the truth. For the first time she felt like his equal, not someone that he had to take care of. She had done a damn good job of taking care of herself until he could come rescue her. The knowledge that she could stand on her own two feet and be strong after everything that had happened to her was the best gift anyone would have given her, and she had Liam to thank for that.

  “Show me what ya got,” William commanded Steele and Jagger Stone as they sat around their large table.

  Steele pulled out a binder full of paper and spread the sheets out in front of him. “It looks like the business that Richard wanted to discuss with us was running guns. He apparently has a contact from Louisville, and they’re running guns down south to the Mexican Cartel.”

  Liam whistled between his teeth. “That’s some big time shit. Is that really something we wanna get involved in? We get caught and that’s Federal time. I’m all for protection runs, but I don’t want our fingerprints on this.”

  “Maybe it’s time to diversify,” Tyler shrugged from where he sat next to Liam.

  “Drugs aren’t what they used to be,” William put his thoughts out there. “Any redneck with an empty double-wide and a package of cold medicine can make meth. We don’t have the monopoly on drugs the way we used to anyway. Hard times are coming, and we need to make sure we can stay solvent.”

  “So what do we do?” Liam asked. “Just tell these people that we killed Richard, and now we want in on it?”

  “Why not?” Jagger asked. He was young and reminded Liam of Meredith because when he wanted something, he went after it without thinking of consequences.

  “He’s got a point,” Steele shrugged. “I mean obviously they need to move this product. There could be some big money in it. Big enough that we could completely move out of drugs.”

  “So we can really become one percenter’s then?”

  “Times are what they are,” William argued. “Let’s put it up for a vote. All in favor of seeing what we can do with these guns?”

  Everyone raised their hands quickly except for Liam. After glancing around at the table, he knew he had to back his brothers on this. Regardless of what he thought, they still had to earn, and they had to do that any way that they could.

  William banged his gavel. “That passed, so we’ll look into it and let you know what’s going on. Steele and Jagger, you two get this off the ground. If you need help, let me or Liam know.”

  This was a bad idea. Liam knew it, but there was nothing he could do about it. It would have to play out however it would play out. The club was changing, and he guessed he would just have to change with it. The mark of a good leader was rolling with punches, and he was beginning to learn to do just that.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  After the meeting adjourned, Liam was trying to make his way back to his dorm room, only to be stopped by the one person he didn’t want to see. Lauren. He averted his eyes, hoping it would show her just how much he didn’t want to talk to her.

  “Liam, I would really love the chance to be able to sit down and talk to you,” she told him softly, reaching out to touch his elbow lightly.

  He pulled his elbow back, almost like her touch burned him. “Right now is not the time,” he bit out as coldly as he could.

  “There’s never a good time for you,” she argued. “All I want is a chance to explain my side of things. There are always two sides to every story, Liam. I think you owe me that much.”

  He finally looked at her, really looked at her, and he felt remorse for the way he was treating the woman had given birth to him. After dealing with Richard, he knew that he could change things in his life. He didn’t have to be a bastard to everyone. He didn’t want to be a bastard to everyone. Maybe this was his chance to alter the way their relationship had been for so long. Being with Denise had changed everything. He would never allow Drew to talk to his mother the way he talked to Lauren. Purposely, he softened his voice.

  “Look, right now seriously isn’t a good time.” Did he tell his mom he was in a hurry to get back to his dorm and get laid? He needed to be with Denise more than he could breathe at this moment, he needed to prove to himself that everything was okay and they were going to make it. “But how about tomorrow or even later on tonight. I promise you, I will make time. We will talk.”

  “That’s all I’m asking for. You can even have that woman you care for so much with you, if you want. If she’s the reason for your change of heart, then I want her there. You’ve changed, and it’s for the better,” she told him, her blue eyes the mirror image of his.

  “We’ll see,” he relented. “I’ll come find you. I promise, Mom.”

  Tears came to her eyes. He hadn’t called her Mom since she’d left. Even as a six-year-o
ld, he’d called her Lauren. “I’ll hold you to that.”

  He took a minute to put his hand in hers and give it a gentle squeeze. Not for false hope, but because he actually did have hope this time. Maybe things would change and they could move on.

  It took him a while, but when he finally got back to his dorm, he opened the door only to find Denise nowhere in sight. He didn’t think she had left, there was still a presence in the room.

  “Denise?” he called out.

  “In here,” he heard her from the bathroom.

  As he got to the bathroom, he heard the shower running. Sick of waiting, he began disrobing. He’d be damned if he would let anyone interrupt them this time. Thinking better of it, he turned around and flipped the lock on the bedroom door before all but running for the bathroom.

  He stepped in the shower behind Denise and circled his arms around her body.

  “I was beginning to think you forgot about me,” she grumbled good-naturedly before turning under the spray so that they could face one another.

  “I’d never forget about this,” he whispered as he leaned in to nip at her lips with his.

  The look on his face was so serious it gave her goose bumps. There was no hint of joking around or taking any of this lightly. Not that there would be any of that this deep in the game, but she still had trouble believing that this was real even after the events from earlier. Their relationship was in the infant stages, and she was learning so much about him. It was hard to recognize the facets of the man in front of her. He was happy-go-lucky at times, chill and laid back at others, but sometimes he was so serious that it scared her. Needing to feel close to him, she shoved her fingers through his hair and pulled his mouth down to hers. His hands came around her backside and cupped her ass, using his leverage to pick her up. On instinct, she wrapped her legs around his waist, moaning as she came into contact with the evidence of his arousal.