by Monroe, Evie
Drake
Steel Cobras MC
By Evie Monroe
Copyright © 2019 Evie Monroe and BookBoyfriends Publishing LLC
Contents
Drake
Copyright and Disclaimer
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
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Acknowledgements
About Evie
Contact Evie
Copyright and Disclaimer
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2019 Evie Monroe and BookBoyfriends Publishing LLC
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of the trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.
Chapter One
Drake
Same shit, different day. We couldn’t keep this up.
All the officers of the Steel Cobras, minus Zain, who was perpetually late, gathered together in our new clubhouse, a warehouse not far from the one the Fury had ripped apart with a bomb a month earlier. Cullen, the Cobras president, had called church for Saturday, which meant something big was going down.
We all sat there, smoking, stewing, waiting for the latest news.
Cullen had declared war on Hell’s Fury three weeks ago. At least, in theory. Now, we were locked in a stalemate. Things had been quiet since they’d nearly killed Cullen, and he’d managed to take out three of their guys, including their Vice President, Blaze.
But there were little incidents breaking out all over the Aveline Bay, California. The Lucky Leaf, Hart’s garage and a hangout for the Cobras, had been the victim of a drive-by shooting. A gunfight had erupted in front of Rocky’s Bar . . . which was Fury turf . . . a few weeks ago, until the police showed up. It was like we were all waiting for someone to fire the first shot.
And it was fucking tense.
We’d all been walking around the city, our fingers on the trigger, like volcanoes ready to blow.
We all just sat there, waiting for Zain to arrive. “I’d rather be in all-out war,” said Jet, my best friend and Sargent at Arms of the Cobras. “At least we could do something. No more of this waiting shit.”
Jet was younger than all of us by a few years. He was Nix, our VP’s, little brother, and he always tried harder than anyone to be a badass. He was also most likely to get his damn head blown off by being reckless.
But I had to agree with him. The Fury wanted us out of Aveline Bay. “This isn’t going to end without bloodshed. I don’t see how it can. Not after what they’ve done. And not after what we’ve done to them. I mean, Blaze is dead.”
We’d had a long history with Hell’s Fury. They were bigger than us and had been around longer. They were into dirty business and didn’t care what they had to do or who they had to screw over to expand their empire. Months ago, they’d kidnapped an innocent girl to use for ransom in order to force the Cobras to hand over our lucrative business, jacking expensive cars and selling them overseas. Then, they’d destroyed our clubhouse. And to top it all off, they smoked out Cullen in the middle of the night and tried to force us all out of town. They were just asking for it.
Jet nodded. “Yeah. So, let’s get down to it. Let’s just go to their clubhouse, and game on. None of this bullshitting around.”
“Where is their clubhouse, again, Jet, since you seem so hot on going after them?” Hart said, making a point. None of us actually had any idea where the Fury had most of their meetings.
Jet frowned. “I can’t fucking believe we don’t know. We should be able to find out.” He glowered at Hart, our club secretary and resident computer geek.
Cullen was leaning back in his chair, his boots up on the table. “You’ve made your point clear, Jet,” he said, looking at his phone. “All right. Zain is late again, no surprise, but let’s start anyway. Nix, tell them what happened at The Wall earlier today.”
We all looked at Nix. The Wall was our place. The Fury didn’t dare come there.
“Someone fired at Zain as he was walking in,” Nix said. “Grazed his forehead. I was there. Saw it happen. It was definitely Fury.”
Jet clenched his fists and pounded on the table. “Why the fuck are we wasting our time like this again? It shouldn’t be this goddamn hard to find their clubhouse. Just send some of the prospects over to North Aveline Bay and eventually we’ll find it.”
I nudged him. “Easy.” I looked at Cullen. “You talk to Slade since they wasted our clubhouse?”
Cullen shook his head. Slade was the Fury president, and a mysterious, evil motherfucker. Word was, he was criminally insane, ruthless, and got a sick enjoyment out of killing people. But he didn’t often make his presence known. None of us had ever seen him in the flesh. He had his men do his bidding. I got the feeling that even his own men were scared shitless of him. “Naw, man. I can’t figure that asshole out.”
Hart, our club Secretary and resident computer geek, looked up from his laptop. “I think that’s what he intends, man. To keep us all scratching our heads. There isn’t even a fucking picture of him online, anywhere. He’s like, fucking Houdini.”
Just then, the door creaked open and Zain, our Road Captain, walked in. He threw his helmet down and sat on the bench next to me.
We all stared at him silently. Cullen knew not to get on him for being late, though he always was, because it was clear the fucker’d had a bad day. He had a mother of a bandage on his forehead, and it was soaked with blood.
“Dude,” I said to him. “I thought the bullet just grazed you.”
He touched it and brought his fingertips in front of his eyes. “Fuck.”
“Give it here,” I said to him, standing up. I peeled back the tape and looked at the contusion. “Not just a scratch. You need stitches.” I went to my pile of stuff and grabbed my medical kit. “You let this go and you’ll have a permanent hole in your melon.”
Jet asked, “Fury did that to you?”
Zain nodded. “I was leaving The Wall. They must’ve been across the street in that used car lot. Nix was there. He could tell you.”
“He was just filling us in,” Cullen said. “You know who it was?”
Zain had a little more intel about the Fury than the rest of us. He’d almost been one himself, until he had a change of heart. He knew thos
e guys pretty well and could tell us what they were up to. But this time, he was just as confused as the rest of us. He shook his head. “It was dark. Didn’t even see them. No clue what they were doing in that part of town, either.”
I went to the sink and washed my hands, then grabbed the needle and suture. I motioned to Zain with my chin. “Sit.” As he did, I said, “You were almost Fury. Have you ever seen Slade?”
He nodded, “He spends a lot of his time in the clubhouse. Big dude. Definitely jacked but getting up there in age. He’s kind of a legend to them. Those pussies practically worship him. He’s a mean son of a bitch. The stories I’ve heard…” He whistled. “If they are true, then he deserves the adoration.”
Hart said, “There’s practically nothing about him online.”
I peeled the rest of the bandage off, got some disinfectant, and dabbed it on Zain’s wound. Definitely ten, maybe twelve stitches were in order here. Who knew that when I started doing my residency at Stanford in plastic and reconstructive surgery four years ago with intent to make people more beautiful, I’d be spending most of my time sewing up the injuries of some of the ugliest sons of bitches on the planet? “What stories are you talking about, Zain?” I said, interested.
“You know. Shit like killing his own men with his bare hands for going against him. Gutting a guy with a pool stick. That kind of shit.”
I let out a laugh. Sounded like a bunch of urban legend shit, where the more it was talked about, the crazier it got. “Riiight.”
“Hey, I don’t know if Slade ordered the hit at The Wall or what. Probably just some Fury, wanting to fuck with us,” Nix said, as I threaded the needle and started to sew up the gash.
Zain didn’t flinch as the needle dug into his skin. He said, “Well, it’s time we fuck ’em right back. We talk about what we’re going to do?”
“No. We were just getting to that,” Cullen said.
As usual, Jet was first to open his mouth. Before he could, his brother said, “Yeah, Jet. We all know where you stand. Blow ‘em back to hell as soon as possible. Got it.”
Jet shrugged and nodded. “Only solution, in my book.”
“Yeah. We all want the Fury to pay. But how do we do it?” Hart said.
“I don’t know. Find their clubhouse first. Send ‘em a bomb like they did us. But a big one, this time. Wipe them off the face of the fuckin’ planet.”
We all looked at Jet, and I silently willed him to shut the fuck up. Sometimes he got so hotheaded and wrapped up with his kill-‘em-all shit that he couldn’t stop. He was such a pretty-boy that most of his life, he’d been allowed to go on talking, whether or not he actually made sense. I said, “We have enough ammo. Enough guns. Right?”
Cullen nodded. We’d done an inventory a month ago, when we thought we’d sneak up on the Fury. “We have a lot. I don’t know if it’s enough,” he said.
“Right,” Nix said. “We don’t know what they have. They have us beat on manpower, that’s for damned sure.”
Zain nodded, and I missed the perfect line of my stitch. I flicked him in the side of the head to get him to stop moving. “But we’ve got to get more intel on them. We don’t want a repeat of last month.”
We all sucked in a breath as we looked at each other. Cullen nodded. Last month, we’d all been so sure we’d find them at a party, and we’d expected, bam! We’d strike first, and the war would finally get started. We were wrong. They’d fooled us. We couldn’t afford to let that happen again.
“The only solution is that we wait for Slade to make contact again,” Cullen said.
“With another bomb?” Jet countered.
“Or until we get some solid evidence of where they’re going to be and what they’re planning. Until then, we can’t go off half-cocked. We’d get ourselves all killed,” Cullen said, looking at Jet. “I know it’s frustrating. Frustrating as hell for me, too. I want nothing more than to send them out of Aveline Bay for good. But we need a strategy and we can’t have that without reliable information.”
Jet frowned, hung his head, and nodded. I finished tying the suture and cut the ends. “Good as new. Bet you won’t even have a scar,” I said, admiring my handiwork.
Zain felt it and shrugged. These guys really didn’t give a shit about scars. He shook my hand. “Thanks, man.”
When Cullen called the end of church, I looked at Jet. He was staring at the wall, like he sometimes did, intent, looking like he was going to blow. I saw where Cullen was coming from, and it made sense, but Jet had a point, too. We were beyond antsy, at this point. We just wanted to get this over with.
I nudged him, and he nodded and got up. He knew what that meant. Saturdays were for beer and pool at The Wall. It’d been that way since I’d become a Cobra, three years ago.
Cullen saw us and slapped us both on the backs. “Hey. Guys. If you’re going to The Wall, you might want to lay low. Especially after what happened to Zain. Last thing I want is the same thing happening to you two.”
I nodded and thanked him. Cullen was a damn good president; he cared for us like we were his own brothers. But Jet always had a chip on his shoulder.
When we got out to our bikes, he strapped his helmet on and straddled his bike. “This is fucking bullshit,” he muttered to me.
“Hey. Relax. You’re not the only one who’s sick of dealing with these assholes. We’ll get it done.”
He nodded. “I guess. I just wish I knew when. Can’t even walk around town without thinking I’ve got a target on my back.”
“What you need, I think, is some pussy,” I told him, straddling my bike. “So, let’s go.”
“Hell, yes,” he said, giving me a grin.
It was barely ten o’clock. Time to blow off steam, forget about our trouble with the Fury for a little bit, and have some fun.
Chapter Two
Caitlyn
“Hold on,” I told Martie over the phone as I pushed open the car door and walked across the motorcycle-packed gravel lot, toward a secret lair tucked away in the foothills of North Aveline Bay. “Let me just check to make sure the coast is clear.”
Holding the phone to my ear, I choked my way into the Hell’s Fury clubhouse, searching out his face among all the cigarette smoke, jeans, leather, and testosterone.
The couches were awash in unshaven leather-and-denim clad men, and a lot of women, wearing as much hair product and as little clothing as possible.
Ho-hum, just another Saturday night at the Hell’s Fury clubhouse.
“Hey, Sweetheart,” one of the men said to me, reaching for me. He wrapped his hand around my waist, his fingers searching under my sweatshirt and over the band of my jeans, finding bare skin there.
Whoa. Bad move, dude. Didn’t he realize I wasn’t dressed like any of these other chicks? Either he was drunk, or suicidal, or a little of both. He was young, probably a couple years younger than me, with the acne scars to show for it. I’d never seen him before.
I decided to have a little fun.
“Hi. You’re cute,” I said, meaning that in a lost-puppy kind of way. He looked barely out of puberty, the poor guy. I waved my hand in front of my face to part the haze of smoke between us. My eyes watered. “And what’s your name?”
“Oh, my God,” Martie said to me over the phone. “Cait. You’re so bad. Quit tormenting them and just get out of there.”
I smiled as the guy looked at me through his liquor-bleary eyes. “Joe,” he said, mesmerized.
Aw, Joe. Poor, unfortunate Joe.
“Joe, can you help me?” I asked him, licking my lips seductively.
He zeroed right in on the gesture and started licking his own lips. Did he really think I was going to invite him to kiss me? Please. Men. So easy. So stupid. “Of course, baby. Anything you want.”
I leaned in close. “Could you tell me where in this big ol’ clubhouse, Slade is?”
I could feel his arm tense around my body. His eyes widened, and he let out a strangled gasp. I didn’t think I could’ve g
otten more of a response if I’d have said Satan. “What do you want with him?”
The clubhouse wasn’t really that big. It was just a couple of crappy rooms. I could’ve easily found Slade, if it weren’t for the heavy smoke and bodies packing the place. I didn’t need Joe’s help, that was for sure. But Fury guys were so predictable: horny, egotistical, and they all thought they were so badass. I fluttered my eyelashes. “Does that mean you haven’t seen him?”
“Dude,” another guy came up to him from behind and smacked him upside the head. It was Wolf, one of the oldest members of the club. “Don’t fuck with her. That’s Slade’s daughter. She is severely off-limits, fucker. Stay away unless you want to leave here with one less body part.”
Joe just stared at me, his mouth slightly opened. “Daughter?”
Wolf looked at me and shook his head. “Quit playing with the new guys. What are you doing here, Cait?”
“Looking for Daddy,” I said innocently. “Seen him?”
Wolf pointed to the room in the back. I blew them both a kiss and walked away. On the line, Martie said, “Would you fucking quit wasting time and check? I need to get some liquor pumping through my veins before I go nuts.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I muttered to my best friend, maneuvering through the sea of black leather and smoke until I got to the doorway of the back room. I hesitated a little before I went inside, not knowing in what state . . . or in what mood . . . I’d find my daddy. On rare occasions, he could be the sweetest thing. Most of the time, though, he was the scariest. And he turned on a dime.
I exhaled in relief when I saw him lying on the couch, passed out, his big boots hanging over the arm of the sofa, his head covered in a pillow. A snore emanated from somewhere under there. He looked like he was in for the night.
Hallelujah.
That meant my mother wouldn’t have to worry about him tonight. Meaning I wouldn’t have to worry about her. “Martie?” I said into the phone.
“Yeah?”
“Good news, girl. It’s our lucky night.”
“Fuck yes!” she shouted into the phone. “Get your ass over here and pick me up. Lucas’ sitter has already been here a half hour.”