by Marie James
Briar must be feeling generous because he doesn’t add anything to the slip. Bless his dark soul, he changes the topic altogether.
“You know that snitch we had trailing Miller?”
“Yeah.”
“He’s gone.”
“Like dead?” I turn my head to look at him. He was a damn decent tracker, but being former military in some covert ops group or some shit before he got hooked on heroin contributed to his skill set.
“Like off the grid. Vanished.”
“No one vanishes,” I mutter, another one of Cowboy’s sayings.
“Some people just don’t want to be found,” Briar quotes. “Regardless, he’s gone, and we have no idea where Miller is either.”
“I need you to get eyes back on that fucker. He’s volatile these days. I don’t want him sneaking up on us.” A cold chill rolls over my skin, remembering the last time Dietrich Miller stepped foot on our property. “As far as the snitch, he wouldn’t be the first one to ghost on us. He’s probably face down, OD’d in an alley somewhere.”
“I have a bad feeling about this one, but I have a couple guys on it,” Briar assures me. “I just wanted you to know.”
My eyes refocus on the sun. It’s bright enough now that looking at it makes a headache begin to form at the base of my skull.
“There’s more,” Briar huffs, and I already know whatever it is, he isn’t happy about. “Professor has a release date.”
A smile begins to take form at the mention of my closest friend, my enforcer, while I was locked away at Cedar Junction.
“You don’t have to look so smug.”
“Your jealousy is showing,” I taunt.
His eyes narrow into tiny blue slits. “I’m not jealous.”
I scoff. Of course, he is. He didn’t understand the quick bond Professor and I made in prison. He’s never been, so he doesn’t have a fucking clue what that life is all about. I wish every day I could forget the things I did, the men I killed, the crew I ran while I was locked away. The only thing I want to remember is Professor and the countless times that man had my back.
“Do you trust him around Molly? Candi?”
My laugh falls from my mouth.
“Exactly,” he mutters.
“Still sound jealous,” I return.
“I’ve been in this club for ten fucking years. I stayed loyal and served under your dad while you were gone for almost two years of that.”
“Thanks for the loyalty, Brother.” What the fuck else does the man want?
“You promised him the VP patch.”
So that’s what this is about.
“I offered it to him before I offered it to you. Told him it was his when he got out.”
“What?”
“He turned it down.” I shrug. Easy fix. “He doesn’t want it.”
“No wonder you can’t see what’s right in front of you,” he seethes as he jumps to his feet. “Candi doesn’t even have a chance with you if you can’t see how fucked up that is.”
He doesn’t say another word as he walks off the porch and disappears toward the garage.
The situation with Professor isn’t fucked up. I promised that man a piece of this club in exchange for his protection, and I never break my promises. It doesn’t matter that I was nineteen, and honestly never saw myself leading the club. I always thought my destiny would stop at the end of my father’s gun, yet, here we are.
Briar understands loyalty. He’s the most loyal man I know, but him being pissed at me is perfect, considering everything else in my life is fucked up.
Chapter 30
Candi
“Trouble in paradise?” Molly asks as she loops her arm through mine on the way into the mall.
The parking lot is nearly empty, only a few cars dotting the pavement. I expect nothing else since it’s a weekday and most people are either in school or at work. Smalls walks behind us, and I know anything I say will be overheard. I’m not one to just spill my guts anyway, but he’s definitely a deterrent.
“Don’t want to talk about it,” I grumble.
“I’m your best friend,” she whines.
“Tell me about Briar,” I challenge.
When she stiffens at my side, I know both subjects will be dropped.
“That’s off-limits, and you know it,” she hisses with her head close to my ear. “You, on the other hand, put your business on display in front of everyone last night.”
You don’t even know the half of it.
She has a point, but the guilt I anticipated settling in my gut, doesn’t weigh me down today.
“Let’s just say I know exactly where I stand with your brother.” In a long line with every other woman at the clubhouse.
“He cares for you. I’ve never seen him with anyone the way he is with you.”
I snort in the most unladylike fashion. “Tell that to the girl I found sucking him off last night right after he fucked me.”
“Oh shit,” she whispers, shock raising her eyebrows high.
“Yeah,” I mutter before changing the subject. “Why are we here again?”
“I busted the screen on my phone.” She holds up the evidence and points to the store a little ways in. “I’m hoping they can fix it for me.”
Smalls grunts behind us, and a smile forms on Molly’s lips as she turns to look at him over her shoulder.
“I know Boston could fix it. I asked him, and he’s out of screens for this model.”
Smalls grunts again. How fucking weird. The guy is massive, a literal wall between us and everything at our backs, but I’ve never heard his voice. I always assumed he was mute, but the grunt tells me something in his throat works. He’s the definition of silent but deadly. His head tilts when I look at him in a questioning gesture.
“I’ve got to pee,” I tell him.
His head nods down the short hall on the other side of the store Molly is heading. I take it as his permission and walk away preparing my speech in my head if the big guy tries to follow me in the restroom. When I look over my shoulder I see him standing, bulky arms crossed over his barrel chest. His eyes are darting between me and the storefront where Molly is. Satisfied that he’ll stay there and not insist on holding my hand while I pee, I pull open the heavy door and enter.
Oddly, the lights are off, and panic sets in as I reach out and try to find the switch. My fear, bubbling up in a fucking mall bathroom, forces a snort out of my nose. Compared to the clubhouse, this place is a sanctuary.
All of that fades away on a shriek when I flip the light and see the masked man standing in front of me. He captures me before I even have the chance to respond. His hand clamps over my mouth just after he spins me around and presses me against the dingy, tiled wall.
“Be quiet,” he orders in my ear.
The familiar snap makes my skin crawl.
“Are you listening to me, Zoe?”
I’ve heard that question over and over for as long as I can remember.
“Dad?” My voice is trembling. He hasn’t spoken to me in several months, and he chooses this moment, this method, to reach out. I know immediately why he’s acting this way.
The Ravens Ruin MC.
“I’m going to release you.” His voice is calmer, less commanding. “Don’t scream.”
Why would I scream? Not for the first time, my heart kicks in my chest as fear wages war on my soul. The one man I’m supposed to be able to trust, the one man who is tasked with caring for me and protecting me is making my skin crawl. I immediately yearn for Lynch when I’m spun around and face the empty eyes of my father. Their darkness doesn’t change when he pulls the ski mask off his head.
“Tell me everything you know about the MC.”
“W-what are you talking about?”
“Tell. Me. Everything.”
My head shakes involuntarily as I take in his disheveled appearance. He looks exhausted, his face marked with wrinkles I haven’t seen before and dark circles under his eyes. His temples, pre
viously salted with a few grey hairs, is covered with them now. He’s aged drastically since I saw him last year.
“I don’t know anything,” I answer honestly.
He shakes me by his hold on my upper arms. I’m going to have bruises before this is all over, but it’s the backward snap of my head hitting the wall that concerns me the most. It throbs, and if I’m not mistaken, a trickle of blood is winding its way through my hair.
“Why are you hurting me?”
He has always terrified me. The boom in his voice when he’s angry has always been enough for me to cower and obey him, but he’s never gotten physical. Only once before have I seen him so angry he had to clench his fist to keep from striking me. Today, he’s past even that point.
His tired eyes search mine for the truth.
“You need to find out everything that you can,” he urges, his tone frenzied as if just saying the words will conjure information I don’t have. “I need something worthwhile, something that will get the fucking DEA off my goddamned back.”
“B-but,” I stammer, confused, “You work for them.”
His eyes dart away, but I recognize his shame before he can school his face. When he looks back at me, he’s murderous.
“What have you done?”
His grip on my arms tightens once more with my question.
“Do you really think I could afford to send you to Andover on my salary?”
My blood runs cold.
“The DEA sent you in to get intel.”
Intel?
His eyes are bloodshot, but his pupils appear normal. My only up-close and personal experience with someone so high they weren’t truly in control of their actions was the night I had to set the fire back at school. My father is desperate, bordering on some type of emotional break, but he doesn’t seem to be under the influence of any mind-altering substances, yet, he’s not making any fucking sense.
“Molly is your friend because we manufactured it. Your position in her life was orchestrated by the Feds.” His sneer is only interrupted by the twitch in his upper lip, a simple interruption that only seems to ramp up his agitation. “We expected you to glean information we could use to bring the club down. Except you turned into a whore. They don’t trust the whores. They don’t talk about important things around the sluts that spread their legs for them. You’re more and more like your mother every single day.”
Those words are familiar, too. He repeated them, yelled them through our home when he found out my mother turned to another man in his absence. I was mad at her for betraying him, angry that she took my part-time dad away. As I got older, however, I understood. He’d be gone for months and months at a time. His time with us was negligible at best. His job took him away, kept him away, starting with the very first day he was sworn in as a federal agent. No relationship can survive that kind of distance. My mom fell in love with another man; the very same man she’s still with now. Yet, in his eyes, she’ll always be a whore.
Just like I am now, apparently.
“You’re risking prison time,” he spits.
I don’t even bother trying to control the tremble that has settled in my body. “I-I haven’t done anything.”
“The fire in Andover started itself then?” He tsks. “How easily you forget I always have eyes on you.”
Does he have eyes on me inside the clubhouse? Does he know about the depraved things I’ve done? I’ve always walked on eggshells around him, but there’s always that little hope that one day the little girl in me will make her daddy proud. Shame washes over me again.
“I haven’t seen anything,” I confess.
I honestly haven’t. All of their business is handled behind closed doors. I’ve heard threats. Lynch has issued enough, but I’ve never seen him lay a finger on anyone. His growl seems to be enough to keep people in line.
“You better hope that changes, and fucking quickly.” He shoves a cell phone into the front pocket of my jeans. “Contact me with that when you have something I can use.”
The lights flip back off, and he shoves me back out the bathroom door.
Smalls is still standing guard at the end of the short hallway. I don’t look back. I know my father will wait to leave until the coast is clear. Smalls follows me into the store where we find Molly paying at the counter.
“That was fast,” I say hoping she can’t hear the tremble in my voice.
“What’s wrong?” she asks the second she turns away from the counter and sees my face.
So much for trying to fool her.
“Nothing,” I mutter.
“My brother should be shot for making you feel this way.”
Her arm swings around my shoulder as she guides me out of the mall. Smalls goes ahead of us to open the back doors on the SUV, and somehow, I drop the cell phone, kicking it under the vehicle, without either one of them noticing.
Chapter 31
Lynch
“Want to explain what the fuck happened back there?”
“Want to give me a little fucking privacy?” I counter.
Briar stands in the hotel bathroom doorway, refusing to leave, even after I begin stripping out of my clothes.
“I expect that kind of shit from TJ,” he growls.
I ignore him, more focused on the blood swirling in the sink as I wash my hands and forearms.
“Lynch!”
“I’ve killed dozens of men before,” I remind him, emotionless.
“You’ve hung dozens of men. Gutting them isn’t the same as leaving them swinging at the end of a rope,” he clarifies. “That was a fucking massacre.”
My eyes meet his in the mirror. “Was there one single innocent man in that room tonight? One who didn’t have a part in betraying the club?”
“You already know the answer to that,” he seethes. “This has to do with Candi. I know it, and you know it.”
“Not everything revolves around pussy for me.”
At least it didn’t until recently.
“You were sloppy tonight.” He’s resigned. He knows better than to expect anything else from me. We don’t chit-chat about petty shit, and short of asking him to find a new girl to sink inside of, we never talk about women. “Get a handle on your shit before we get back to the clubhouse. We have enough to worry about without the chance of your ass getting sent back to prison on a murder charge.”
I turn to plant my newly cleaned fist in his face, but he’s gone from the doorway. The door leading to the parking lot slams a second later.
This has to do with Candi.
I sneer as I reach for the shower nozzles.
Of course, it fucking does.
She’s infected my brain like a metastasized cancer.
She’s the throbbing in my chest, the irregular heartbeat that shows up every time I see a flash of brown hair or get a whiff of flowery perfume.
She’s the reason I can’t eat anything sweet because everything is bitter in comparison to the honey dripping from her cunt.
It doesn’t matter that I took off from the clubhouse minutes after she and Molly left for the mall, or that I’ve been gone for nearly a fucking week. Geographically, we could be on opposite sides of the fucking earth, in different fucking galaxies, and everything would still be about her.
With punishing hands, I scrub the blood of numerous faceless men from my body. It’s everywhere, in my hair and on my biceps even though I was wearing a long-sleeved shirt. My skin is burning, rubbed raw in anger and frustration. Pain is my friend, coming along for the ride no matter how many miles I put between myself and Sutton, Massachusetts. Its brother, regret, has also tagged along for the damn ride.
Denial has also been trying to rear its ugly fucking head. More than once I’ve almost let that excuse of an emotion creep in. Most people live in it, revel in the ease it brings, but I’ve always been a self-aware person. That trait, or flaw as it feels in recent days, is what’s fucking with me the most.
That fucking redhead, in all of her amateur d
ick-sucking glory, was a way to take back control of the situation that had sent me spiraling the day Molly showed up with her friend. Candi would’ve enthusiastically joined us had I asked her. I might have even convinced her to put her talented tongue to work on pleasing Cherry while my dick tested the limits of her throat.
Doing so, however, would’ve made the situation about us.
Us was the whole fucking problem to begin with.
Us is what I never wanted.
Yet, us is exactly what I crave.
It’s what got my dick hard in the first place.
It’s what made me come down Cherry’s throat while Candi stared at us with resignation so heartbreaking I felt the tremors from across the room.
I pour shampoo on the top of my head, keeping my eyes open while I rinse. Blaming the sting on the soap is a much more palatable explanation than the truth.
The truth doesn’t help anyone. It doesn’t set you free and make everything okay. At least my truth won’t. My truth is what nightmares are made of. What parents warn their teenage daughters about, and pray their sons don’t get involved in. My truth is swirling crimson around the drain. My truth is that what happened tonight has happened before and will happen again. The truth is, I don’t regret a single fucking minute of it.
You make a mistake, you die.
Each and every person who signs on to work with Ravens Ruin MC knows the rules. It’s the one thing my father insisted on, one of the very few rules we’ve kept in place since I took the reins. He wanted the men he killed to know exactly why they were dying, why they were bleeding at his feet. He wanted them to know they chose wrong, that they chose betrayal.
And I can’t change that.
I won’t.
Not for a beautiful, brown-haired girl who would never fucking understand the brutality I enjoy.
Keeping this part of my life a secret is a requirement. It’s essential to club life for every man who wears the patch. Building anything pure with Candi would require disclosure of what happens behind closed doors and in the basement. Confessing those sins will only make her leave.
Pissed doesn’t even begin to describe my mood when I climb out of the shower and towel off. My disposition doesn’t change as I dress, tugging my jeans over my hips like the fabric personally wronged me somehow. The only light at the end of the dark tunnel I’m perpetually traveling down is the small bar connected to the motel we’re boarded up in. Liquor, the burn of alcohol, and the empty escape I’ll feel later bring me comfort as I step outside and let my eyes rake over my men.