Archer: A Wings of Diablo MC Novel

by Rae B. Lake

  “Why don’t you just follow him to find out for yourself,” Mallory said as she clicked through another show.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well you’re so sure that it’s not another woman, so why don’t you follow him or show up someplace he’s going to be to see exactly what is going on. I mean that’s what I would do. Get a good look at what the competition is.”

  “How can I do that, he never tells me where he is going.” The gears in my head were turning.

  “Ain’t you some kind of computer whiz? I’m sure there is a way to track his phone or something like that. I mean the police do it all the time.” Mallory looked over at me again waiting for an answer, I assume.

  “No, I couldn’t. That would be an invasion of privacy, it would be wrong like I didn’t trust him.” I stood up from the couch, as much as I didn’t want to admit it, I was really beginning to like that suggestion.

  “Well then just sit here and mope about how you’re the other woman. Either way, I don’t care.”

  “It doesn’t have to be a big thing, you don’t even have to tell him that you were there. Just stay in your car or somewhere he can’t see you. If you see him walking into a house with a woman you don’t need to be in the room to know that they are having sex. You are smart if anything, Daria. You can do this!” Nika smiled brightly at me.

  “Yeah, I can do this.” That was it, I had made up my mind.

  “Really?” Mallory asked clearly surprised that I was about to go along with the plan.

  “Yeah, I can’t find out the exact location, that would be super illegal, but I can get a location at least a couple of hundred yards from him. Hopefully I will be able to spot his truck before he spots me.” I picked up my laptop and began to get to work. It wasn’t very hard to do a trace on someone but it was considered stalking and illegal. Usually I would be too scared to do anything that would get me in trouble but not this time. I had to know. I had to know if the man I had given my heart to was who I thought he was.

  “Wait, you’re going to do it now?” Mallory asked sitting up and paying close attention to what I was doing.

  “Yeah, I’m tired of all this waiting. I want to find out now, once and for all.”

  “Look at you, growing a pair.” Mallory nodded slightly, “I don’t think I have ever liked you more than I do right now.”

  “You want some backup? I’m not the best fighter but I can curse someone out like no one’s business.” Nika said, clear determination on her face.

  “No, there won’t be any confrontation. I’m literally going to just see what is going down. If it’s bad or good, I won’t say anything to anyone.”

  “Alright then, go for it girl.”

  Within a few minutes, I had pinned down the approximate area Archer was in. He was deep on the other side of town where there were no real houses only empty land, farms. I didn’t know what he was doing there but as soon as I got into my car to try and find him, I got an uneasy feeling in my gut. Something was telling me that I wasn’t going to like what I was about to roll up on.

  I pulled my little car up to a large building with vans and cars out front, also quite a few motorcycles. Immediately I was a bit scared. I didn’t know what was going on but there seemed to be quite a commotion going on there. The building wasn’t marked so I didn’t think it was a hospital or anything like that but I did see a few women who looked like they could definitely use a doctor. I tried to stretch my neck to see if I could spot Archer anywhere in the crowd but I couldn’t. He had to be here though, the geo locator had put him within three hundred yards of this place and there was literally nothing else around. He was here somewhere in the crowd.

  At first, I was glad that I didn’t pull up to a residential area, that meant that he wasn’t going home to a wife that I didn’t know about. However, now that I had seen all these women, I was starting to think that maybe he was there for one of them. I had no choice but to get out of the car and see if I could at least catch a glimpse of him.

  I had parked the car behind one of the vans, it actually looked like it had been in a crash recently, maybe that’s what all these women are here for. I was beginning to hope that he was here to help, maybe it was a good deed that he was doing of some sort. How silly would I feel then if all he was doing here was lending a helping hand?

  I looked around and saw a few men walking around in the crowd, bringing women clothing and water. It wasn’t until I saw what they were wearing that my anxiety kicked up another notch. Most if not all the men had on club vests and if I wasn’t mistaken, I saw a gun tucked into one of their pants. I was standing in the middle of a motorcycle club.

  The sweat began to gather on the back of my neck and on my forehead. I couldn’t hear much of what was going on around me, I just knew that I needed to get out of there as soon as possible. This was a dangerous place and I had no intention of staying here one second longer than I needed to. I would have to find Archer another way.

  “… Even if the Cartel doesn’t come looking for these women, the Cobra’s definitely will.”

  My world stopped, the anxiety and the fear drifted way. That is what the sound of Archer’s voice did for me. I turned my head to look for him, he must be close by if I could hear his voice. I saw his profile standing next to two men I didn’t know, one of them looked very familiar but I couldn’t place him.

  I watched as he interacted with the men on either side of him but the smile I once wore, was now gone from my face. The fear creeping back in. He was wearing one of those vests. He was part of it. My answer solidified when I saw him give a handshake to one of the men near him when he reached over to hug him I could see the gun tucked into his pants.

  No, not my Archer.

  It was all a lie, from the very beginning. He was one of them and I had fallen for the lies.

  “Oh Shit.”

  One of the other men that were standing around was staring right at me like he knew me or something. Archer must have heard him because he turned, looking straight for me that very second. I couldn’t look at him. I couldn’t talk to him. For the first time since I met him I was afraid of him. I turned as quickly as I could and got in my car. I could barely see the gears as I shifted from park to drive, the tears were so thick on my lashes.

  I heard him call for me and tell me to wait, but for what? I already knew what he was, a killer, I wanted nothing to do with him.

  Chapter 21

  Fuck! Fuck! What the Fuck!

  I paced back and forth for a second trying to wrap my mind around what had just happened. I’m usually the one who sees everything coming before it does but there was no way I would have ever thought that Daria would show up at my club. I couldn’t play it off either, she was staring straight at me. I couldn’t lie my way out of this or pretend it didn’t happen. I was screwed.

  “Damn it!” I yelled out, running my hands through my hair. I watched as her car disappeared down the road.

  “Archer, she was bound to find out sooner or later.” Wire said from next to me.

  “No shit! I know she was but I wanted to do it right, not this way! Fuck!” I screamed at him not that he had said anything that I didn’t already know, but I was at a loss what to do. I was completely out of control and I couldn’t do anything to stop it.

  Wire stood there and let me scream at him. He wouldn’t hold my hand through this.

  “I mean what are you going to do, she obviously has a problem with the club. Are you going to leave your family for her? That’s what it looks like you’re doing to me.” Wire asked.

  “No, of course not, I would never leave my family. This club is as much a part of me as the very heart that beats in my god-damn chest.” I let out a breath, I would never give this place up. As much as I love that woman, either she accepts all of me including the Wings of Diablo MC club or I was just going to have to be a miserable man.

  After all the shit I have done, that’s what I deserve. I deserve to lose her.

&n
bsp; “How about you do some damage control?” Clean spoke up this time.

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Right now that woman is off making all her own conclusions. You might want to get a hold of her face to face and set the record straight. She may still hate your fucking guts but at least she will hate them for the right reasons.” Clean shrugged trying to keep it as nonchalant as he could.

  I looked over to Keeley who had witnessed the tail end of everything that had gone on and being the only woman that I actually listened to on occasion I was sure that whatever she said I was going to go with.

  “It may work, you got to lay everything out brother, no more lies.” Keeley walked over to me, squeezed my arm once and just walked off to continue helping the girls.

  They were right. Time to meet my fate. I only hoped that she would accept me for who I am.

  I ended up at Daria’s complex, on my bike, my kutte on my back and I even kept my piece on me. I was registered to carry this one so even if I was pulled over they couldn’t say anything about it. I had to show her all of me and just hope that she would accept me.

  I had been through multiple tours while I was in the military, been through hell storms with the rest of the boys at the Wings of Diablo MC Club and what I was about to do was the scariest mission I would ever undertake.

  I have always been in charge, in control of whatever I was about to do. With Daria, I had no way to know what she would do. After giving myself a pep talk, I walked up to her duplex and knocked on the door.

  “Huh, who would have fucking thought?” Mallory opened the door but not wide enough to allow me to walk in. “I knew there was something about you, I would have never thought it was this. You know it’s almost a good thing that Daria found out you were a big bad biker.” She pulled up close to me, her bloated breast pressing against her shirt and poking into my chest, “You wouldn’t have had any real fun with her.” She gave me a sultry smile.

  I never wanted to smack a woman more in my life.

  “Mallory, how about you get the fuck out of my face. I’d rather have my dick slowly rot off before I would even allow you to give me a hand job.” I sucked my teeth in disgust. “Now can you let me in so that I can talk to my woman?” I glared down at her.

  “Fuck you!” She was livid.

  “Keep dreaming, sweetheart” I kept my hands tightly secured behind my back, but I let my smugness show on my face. I guess that was enough to push her over the edge because before I could react, Mallory smacked me straight across the face. It did nothing but make me laugh. She stormed off from the door, leaving it wide open and I walked straight in.

  I made my way to the stairs, but before I could take one more step Nika stopped directly in front of me. “I know you don’t know us, I know you don’t think we are the best friends for Daria and you wouldn’t be wrong, but I am enough of a friend to fuck you up if you continue to hurt her.” She stared me straight in the eyes as she delivered her speech. I could tell that she meant it. It actually surprised the hell out of me. “Now I don’t have the same fears that she does, but she has them, either put her at ease and explain yourself or get the hell out of her life. Only one or the other, no more fucking lying.”

  I nodded my head once, I had a newfound respect for Nika. If Daria and I get through this I’ll make sure to find a way to thank her for looking out for her friend. After Nika moved out of my way, I made my way up the stairs and into Daria’s area. I walked to the back where her bedroom was but before I could even get to the door I could hear her sobbing. Gut wrenching wails.

  Just leave, this is all you are good for. Destruction and sorrow.

  For a quick second, I thought about turning and just going home. I deserve to live with this guilt, I deserved to live with this pain.

  I knocked on her bedroom door before I lost my nerve.

  “What?” Daria called through the door.

  “Ma chérie, please let me in.”

  There was no response.

  “I know I fucked up, I betrayed your trust, I just want to explain myself.”

  I shadow appeared to my left at the top of the stairs. I turned my head to see Nika giving me silent cues, rolling her hand so that I keep going.

  “Daria?”

  Still no response.

  I looked back at Nika, she was now placing her palms together as if in prayer. She thought that I should beg. Beg? My pride roared to life demanding that I stop the bullshit immediately, but my heart told me to beg, plead, cry do whatever I had to do to get a chance to get Daria back.

  “I am so sorry. Please, please just give me one shot to explain to you what’s going on. If you still want me to go after that, I won’t question your decision and you will never have to see me again. Just, please give me a chance.”

  I looked back over to Nika, but she had no more cues for me. I waited what seemed like forever for a response.

  “Come in but leave the door open.” A small voice came from the room.

  I walked in to see something I never thought that I would see. Daria was in the far corner of her room with a small bat in her hand, she thought that I would attack her. I shook my head and took a step in her direction.

  “You can stay right the fuck there.” The venom oozing from her mouth surprised me. There stood my little submissive, my obedient kitten, and she was more than ready to smash my skull in at any given moment.

  I pointed over to the chair. “Can I sit there? What I have to say will take some time.”

  She nodded once and I made my way over to the chair. I sat down with the weight of the world on my shoulders. “What questions do you have?”

  “Are you fucking kidding me, I don’t know who the hell you are.”

  “That’s true. You only know the very best parts of me. I didn’t want to show you my worst. I didn’t think you’d accept me.” I was going to be an open book. That was exactly how I felt. I’d always felt like I wasn’t good enough for her.

  “You don’t know that. You never even gave me a chance to choose.” A single tear rolled down her cheek, it was heartbreaking.

  “I didn’t want to leave it up to chance, I wanted to control it, I wanted to control you.”

  “How could you do that? How could you-?” She dropped the bat down and walked over to the bed to sit down. She put her head in her hands. I let her gather her thoughts.

  “Start from the beginning, were you sent to kill me or something? I mean I don’t even understand how you and I managed to cross paths.” She threw her hands up in exasperation, pointing at my kutte she asked, “Are you in a gang?”

  “No, it is not a gang, it is a motorcycle club. There are thousands of MC clubs around the nation. Some are filled to the brim with the worst kinds of people while others are as harmless as a group of small town grandmothers. The Wings of Diablo, my MC club is somewhere in the middle.” I took a deep breath and continued with my story, “It is true that I was in the military for a total of six years, I would have stayed in for as long as I could but one shot changed my whole life. I was a sniper, and I was given the order to shoot a man that was running toward our location with a package in his arms. Of course, we all thought that the package was a bomb but we couldn’t be sure. I knew it felt wrong, I knew I didn’t have enough information but I was under orders. Those orders were to shoot. I did, the first bullet dropped the man but then his wife came out and grabbed the package and continued to run toward us, I knew something was wrong, I knew it but I fired again. This time my bullet went through the wife and the package. It wasn’t until they were both down I realized that the package they were carrying was a little girl.” I let the tears I tried to keep inside fall. I didn’t want to hide anything. “I was so messed up for so long after that I had to be discharged from the military, they said it was a no-fault shot but it was my fault, it was my finger that pulled the trigger. I looked up to see that she was completely focused on what I was saying, I continued. “I came home and was lost, all
I could remember was that little girl. I was in a really bad place and those guys saved my life. They reached out to me and brought me back from the edge. Literally. I could never repay them for what they did for me. We are the largest MC club in the state but there are others that are trying to rise up and not in the best way. The club where you and your roommates went to that party, The Rolling Cobra’s is one of those clubs that are doing the wrong things to get ahead. They’re trafficking women for a cartel and when we found out what was going on we knew we had to fix it. So we went to the party with the only solution we knew would fix the problem, we took out the president of the club. Rather, I took him out.” I looked back up at her, waiting for her to put two and two together.

  “Oh my god, it was you, you shot me.” She began to hyperventilate and all I wanted to do was to rush over to her and hold her in my arms. As soon as I made a motion to get up she stopped me in my tracks.

  “Don’t you dare, don’t you dare think you can ever touch me again!” She screamed at me, tears streaming down her face.

  “I know it’s fucked up, I know but I promise you, I never meant to hurt you. I don’t know what I would have done if I had killed you. In the short time I didn’t know if you were alive, I nearly drunk myself to death. I wanted to give up on life too. When I found out you were alive, well at first I was only going to ensure that you were ok, that you had everything that you needed. Then you assumed that I was a PTSD mentor and I just went with it.”

  She didn’t say anything else, just continued to cry.

  “I know you have no reason to trust me, but if there is anything that I ever needed you to believe it’s the fact that I love you, more than anything, but my club is my soul you don’t get me without them. They are good guys who are only looking out for the best of our brothers and town. I am so fucking sorry that you got dragged into one of my mistakes but I can’t help but be thankful that you were dropped into my life.”