Ravens Ruin MC: The Complete Series

by Marie James

  “You know I have to tell Briar about this,” he warns.

  “Please do.” My pulse races with the challenge. “I’m doing exactly what he told me to do.”

  “Turn your phone back on. Answer the fucker when I call,” he snaps before turning around and leaving.

  Owen doesn’t step away from me until the roar of Boston’s Harley fades into nothing.

  “I’m ready to listen when you’re ready to explain what just happened,” my boss says before he disappears into the back of the office.

  I stiffen my back, facing the front with a fake smile on my face when the door chimes again.

  “Mrs. Crumpton,” I greet. “Rocco did an amazing job today, but I imagine he’ll be ecstatic to see you.”

  I carry on for the next couple of hours, wishing time would slow down so I can postpone the hell I’m going to catch when I get home.

  Chapter 8

  Briar

  “Did you sleep?” Lynch asks as we walk down a long hallway to meet Luis.

  “Not a fucking wink,” I mutter.

  “Me either,” Chains adds with a wicked grin. “Those bitches drained me dry. My nuts are shriveled this morning.”

  For good measure, he cups his junk over his jeans with a sated smile.

  “Glad you had a good time,” Lynch says, “but, I need your eyes open for any trouble in this meeting.”

  “Not like we can do a fucking thing about it,” TJ murmurs as he joins us. “They have semi-automatic rifles. We don’t have shit.”

  With curious eyes and heightened senses, we enter the room. It’s structured exactly the way I would expect a corporate office in downtown New York City to look, which is surprising since we’re in the belly of a cartel den. The long mahogany table takes up a massive section of the room. The leather office chairs surrounding it each have tablets for note-taking and sweating pitchers of water and matching heavy crystal glasses situated in front of them.

  “Seriously?” TJ snaps as he walks to the far end of the table and plops unceremoniously in one of the leather chairs.

  Surprisingly, I didn’t see him touch a single woman last night, but he probably can’t get his dick hard without piercing their skin with his knife. Since they confiscated that upon entry yesterday, he’s been acting like a petulant child.

  “Please,” Luis says as he enters from a door camouflaged as part of the wall. “Have a seat. Let’s discuss some business.”

  We were instructed that four of our guys were allowed to attend the meeting, and as we settle in the room, I notice there are three other men standing behind Luis as he settles at the head of the table. Of course, they’re heavily armed while we sit with no recourse for self-defense if shit goes sideways.

  “Nice room,” Lynch says to break the ice after we all settle, and no one speaks.

  “Not what you expected?”

  “Honestly?” Lynch sounds surer of himself than I know he feels. “Not really.”

  Luis smiles, the delight meeting his eyes for the first time since we met in person yesterday. “The days of living like thugs and barbarians are over. My plan for the business is structured, and with an ally like the Ravens Ruin MC we can both become very rich men.”

  “I’m already a rich man,” Lynch assures him.

  “There’s no such thing as having too much money, Mr. Quintal,” Luis counters.

  “Business partners bring headaches, Mr. Jiménez.”

  “Yet, they are an essential part of being successful. Where are you currently getting your cocaine?”

  “Don’t insult me by asking questions you already know the answer to.”

  I barely manage to keep the smile off my face. If this fucker thought we were going to come in here and roll over at his commands, he was sorely mistaken.

  Rather than being pissed, he looks almost proud at my president’s gall to stand up to him.

  “Fair enough,” Jiménez concedes. “What’s the difference between my coke and Mexican cartel coke? Other than quality?”

  “Mexican coke didn’t get my mother gunned down by her own family,” Lynch seethes.

  Shit just got real.

  Luis nods, mulling over the information before speaking. “Alejandro Días was a brutal man, but it’s my understanding that you run your club with as tight a fist as he led our regime for decades. I can assure you, however, that my corporation, although just as thorough on accountability, would’ve handled things differently.”

  “How so?” Lynch grunts.

  Cringing at his insistence, I’m disappointed in his question. We don’t normally have to make an example of women, but it’s not something we haven’t involved ourselves in in recent years. Concern for Molly’s safety is one of the main reasons I’ve never even let myself imagine holding her in my arms.

  “I would’ve put the bullet in your father’s head rather than ordering the assassination of my daughter. Bastard or full-blooded child, family is allowed a little more leeway. Do you disagree?” A wicked grin lights Luis’s face in a sinister twist of his lips. “On the other hand, I don’t have a nagging fucking wife to concern herself with where my cock travels and the consequences of that.”

  “Frances was a means to an end,” Lynch confirms what we’ve speculated over for the last couple of months when Frances was choked to death, and the cartel didn’t come knocking on our clubhouse door.

  “I grieve for my wife.” Not an ounce of remorse crosses Luis’s face. “Yet, I find joy in the kingdom I’ve inherited.”

  “That makes one of us,” Lynch mutters.

  “You knew what you were getting into when you strung your father up. Now is your chance to make his empire-your empire-strive in a shitty economy. There will always be money in cocaine. You should use ours instead of the Mexicans’,” he pushes.

  “What’s the offer?” Lynch asks.

  Luis snaps his fingers, and one of his soldiers produces a stack of papers seemingly from thin air. “I can guarantee the finest cocaine at twenty percent below cost for the next five years.”

  Looking over Lynch’s shoulder, I eye the paperwork.

  “The cartel is using fucking contracts now?” TJ snorts from the opposite end of the table.

  “We’re businessmen,” Luis assures him. “And before you ask, after five years we can come back to the table and renegotiate.”

  “Why the fuck do you want us involved? You have the power to move more coke than we can even hope for,” Lynch says as his eyes stay on the cartel boss rather than drifting to the paperwork in front of him.

  “Several reasons. I hate the cold weather, so making trips up north doesn’t interest me. Also, I know Ravens Ruin is a thriving enterprise up there. You guys are astute businessmen, and I don’t have to worry about getting fucked over. I know for a fact you don’t tolerate people fucking with your business.” He winks at my prez before continuing. “You keeping your guys in line keeps the coke flowing like water, and everyone is happy.”

  “And your oversight?” Lynch still isn’t convinced.

  This isn’t at all what we thought we were walking into when we left Sutton.

  “None,” Luis says simply as he leans back in his leather chair. “We’ll meet your guys halfway a couple of times a month, on neutral ground of course. You pay for the product, and that’s that. All that we’re asking for is untraceable money and exclusivity.”

  “And in the event your lines dry up?”

  Luis chuckles as if Lynch asked about hell freezing over. “That’s highly unlikely, but there are concessions for that in clause twelve of the contract.”

  Only then does Lynch lower his eyes to the paperwork in front of him. Several tense minutes pass as he reads over the contract.

  “Housing for your men on occasion?” Lynch snaps his eyes back up at the cartel boss.

  “All I ask is appropriate accommodations as I’ve provided for you in my own home.” Luis shakes his head as if even asking is ridiculous to him. “I have a couple guys that have
never seen snow. The winter weather in Massachusetts appeals to a few of them for some unknown reason.”

  “I ask for seventy-two hours notice, and they don’t hurt my women when they visit,” Lynch barters, continuing only after Luis raises his brow in confusion. “I heard the screams from several rooms last night. Those ladies didn’t seem to be enjoying the attention they were getting.”

  “Fair enough,” Jiménez concedes. The big motherfucker who looks like Satan incarnate grunts his disapproval, but otherwise remains silent. “Anything else?”

  Lynch lowers his head as he finishes reading the contract.

  “Seems fair,” he says when he lifts his eyes.

  “You’re sure you can move that much product?”

  “My business model is none of your concern,” Lynch says as he holds his hand out for the pen the gorilla man just handed Luis.

  He signs our lives away to the cartel before passing it back to Luis for his signature. A second copy is produced and they each sign again.

  “It’s nice doing business with you,” Luis says as he stands and offers his hand.

  Lynch grips it tightly as they look each other in the eye for a second too long. Warnings, threats, and promises pass between them silently before they release each other.

  Immediately after dropping Luis’s hand, Lynch spins around. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

  He rolls his copy of the contract, twisting in his hands as we stride to the door. We barely pause to collect our anxious men in the foyer before piling out of the mansion, into the waiting SUVs, and getting the fuck out of Dodge.

  No one breathes a sigh of relief until we’ve cleared the iron gates of the compound and they close with a thunderous boom behind us.

  “That’s it?” TJ asks, just as shocked as I am as we put distance between us and the most lethal Colombian cartel.

  “Looks that way,” Lynch says as he pulls his buzzing cell phone from his pocket and answers it. “Yeah?”

  The silence is only broken by the rumble of Boston’s voice on the phone. Concern washes over me when his brow furrows with whatever news our treasurer is delivering. My blood thins as images of an ambush on our compound flash in my head. I’m ten conspiracy scenarios deep about what could’ve happened while we were distracted with Luis Jiménez before Lynch grunts a few words and hangs up.

  “What’s going on?” TJ asks, turning in his seat and looking back at his brother.

  “Molly disappeared for hours today. He found her working behind the desk at some fucking vet’s office. He said he thinks the doctor there has a thing for her. He said the guy had balls big enough to puff out his chest and question him.”

  TJ snorts from the front seat. “She needs a man willing to get his ass kicked over her.”

  “Agreed,” Lynch says as he looks out the window, effectively ending the conversation.

  I can’t help but feel their words hitting me right in the chest.

  Chapter 9

  Molly

  Anxiousness fills my blood as I sneak down the stairs. The guys came back late yesterday evening, telling by the squeals coming from Lynch and Zoe’s room.

  “Breakfast?” Lynch grunts just as I reach for the doorknob.

  “I don’t have time to eat,” I explain without pulling my hand from the door.

  “Work requires a backpack?”

  “Fuck,” I grumble as my hand drops heavily at my side and I turn around to face my nosey-ass brother.

  “I’m cooking,” he says as if seeing him standing at the stove over a skillet with a spatula in his hand didn’t explain without words.

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “The backpack?”

  Never one to be redirected, Lynch turns around to fully face me.

  “I have a date,” I hedge, giving minimal information in the hope that he’ll just leave it alone.

  “With the vet?”

  I could cut Boston right now for meddling in my damn business.

  “Correct.”

  “Pretty tight-lipped this morning, aren’t you?”

  “In a hurry is all.”

  I grow nervous under his scrutiny. He has a way about him that makes me want to spill all my dirty secrets. It’s a good thing I’m still able to resist because as much as he wants to know every single detail of my life, there are some things that will tear this club apart, and he’s not ready for that information.

  “What do you know about this guy?”

  “Less than you, I imagine.”

  Unable to escape the inquisition, I drop my backpack near the door and pull out a bar stool. Sitting heavily, I lean in, resting my chin on my closed fists and wait for him to get all of his questions out of his system.

  “You don’t have to work.” He pulls the skillet from the burner and turns the stove off.

  I don’t respond as he plates the scrambled eggs and begins working on putting bread in the toaster.

  He waits me out, remaining silent as I just stare at his back.

  Sighing, I give in to the pressure to speak. “I want to work. I’m bored just sitting around here all day every day. At least I’m being productive in my spare time.”

  “Working outside of the clubhouse brings certain kinds of danger, Molly. You know that.”

  “I refuse to stay trapped here.”

  His shoulders stiffen. He’s unaccustomed to others telling him what they are or aren’t going to do in his kingdom. He gives a command and expects everyone to roll over and obey. What he may not be aware of is that I’ll leave this place before I’m sequestered here like Zoe. She loves sticking close and being at his beck and call, but I don’t get to lie on the warm chest of the man I love every night and make plans for our future. I’m alone, between cold sheets, trying to forget my feelings because all they do is cause pain.

  “You’re not trapped. I just want you to be safe.”

  Grumbling my displeasure, I straighten my legs and begin to stand from the stool.

  “Sit,” he commands.

  Glaring at him with as much frustration as I can manage on my face, I park my ass back right where it was.

  “We need to talk about your safety.”

  “I can defend myself,” I mutter. “I have a knife, my taser, and pepper spray in my purse. Not to mention, I know you’ll have someone watching me constantly, and you track my phone like I’m a tagged bear in the wilderness.”

  “I’m not talking about your physical safety.” Looking uncomfortable, he rakes his hands over the top of his nearly black hair before he sits on the stool beside me. “I want to discuss your sexual health.”

  “Fuck this,” I snap and stand again. “I’m not talking to you about the fucking birds and the bees.”

  His arm reaches out and clasps my elbow before I can get away. “I know Cowboy never sat you down to talk about this, and as much as I’m not looking forward to this conversation, it has to happen.”

  “I know all about sex, Eric.”

  I can feel the heat burning my cheeks, but I take the seat beside him. I know I’ll never get away from him now. When he’s focused on something, it’s just better to suffer through and pretend the conversation never happened, exactly like the conversation we both endured when I got my period while Piper was away.

  His eyebrows raise at my declaration, and I can damn near see the steam coming from his ears.

  “Before you lose your shit, keep in mind that the clubhouse isn’t exactly a convent for reformed sinners. I caught TJ fucking one of the girls when I was thirteen.” I can’t even meet his eyes. Why is this so damn embarrassing?

  “You know the logistics,” Lynch agrees, but as if too stressed to sit still, he stands from the stool and walks around the counter to a bag I hadn’t noticed before. “You’re eighteen, and as much as the thought of you having sex with someone makes me want to spill their blood, I know it’s going to happen.”

  He holds out the box in front of me. Staring in horror, I can’t even begin to gain the co
urage to reach for the pack of rubbers he’s gripping in his hand.

  “You have to be safe. This place isn’t fit for babies anytime soon. I had TJ grab the multipack because I don’t know what the vet is working with.” He swallows thickly as if even the thought of me having sex with someone causes bile to rise in his throat.

  My cheeks are on fire at the thought of my other brother being involved in my deflowering, even though the prospect of sleeping with Owen hasn’t even crossed my mind. Could this fucking day get any worse?

  I’m still gaping at the bright blue box of rubbers when the door opens and closes.

  “What’s up?”

  “Fuck my life,” I moan at the sound of Briar’s voice as he enters the room and walks around so he can see both of us.

  “What the hell is going on?”

  Great, just what I need.

  “I was just talking with Molly about her sexual health.” Lynch shakes the box, unrelenting until I take it from his hand.

  “Am I in the Twilight Zone?” Briar stares between his best friend and the prophylactics in my hand. “A couple of days ago you were ready to kill anyone that got near her. Now you’re giving her permission to just go out and fuck anyone she wants.”

  Briar’s got some balls to bring up whatever happened between the two of them after Lynch caught us with our lips on each other in the hallway.

  “I’m not giving her permission to fuck anyone.”

  “Handing her rubbers is permission to do just that,” Briar argues as he reaches for the condoms and tries to snatch them out of my hand.

  “She has a date tonight.”

  Briar’s hand freezes mid-grab, his eyes finding mine for the first time since he joined this happy family moment. “A date? The vet?”

  “Jesus, does everyone know my business?”

  Briar spins around, glaring at his best friend. “You’re giving her permission to fuck the vet?”

  “I’d rather her be prepared than end up knocked up.”

  Briar growls, but my brother either didn’t hear him or is pretending it didn’t happen.

  While the two of them are distracted talking about my non-existent sex life, I shove the box in my backpack and lift the strap back over my shoulder.