Making sure there was no one else on the road, Shady took off. Maybe she would find the answer she needed with this ride, because she knew she couldn’t keep going on like this.
There was too much shit to think about but she had to. The guys didn’t know what they were dealing with, she did—she'd lived it. Her prick of a stepbrother was not the head of this shit, no matter what it looked like. It had to be her stepfather, and she sincerely hoped her mother knew none of this, although she knew more than likely she didn’t, it was still possible since she was living in the same house with him. Well, unless she was dead.
At one time Shady had thought she would be able to get her mother out, but it was hopeless to get someone out of a shitty situation when they refused to acknowledge something was wrong.
For the first year she had been on the run, it had been shit, living on the streets, trying to make due with stealing food and working day jobs for money. Hell, she had even found another street kid named Robby so people wouldn’t know she was on her own, but that proved to be a fucking mess. The kid had wanted more from her than what she wanted to give, and they had parted ways, which was right before she met Creed.
Hell, she was still surprised that Creed had stopped and helped her, and was even more surprised that after she'd kicked him in the nuts, he hadn't thrown her back on the streets. Never once had she thought about letting someone close to her. Bikes were the only things she absolutely needed. She refused to admit she needed the Warriors and had needed the family connection for years. Now she would do anything for them—even kill.
Knowing her fucking stepbrother was in the area was so not okay. She was going to kill him, she always knew when he found her it would come to this, only one of them would walk away. It was damn sure going to be her—or no one at all.
She'd never forget that day a month ago when the fucking asshole appeared in front of them in the parking lot. Cocksucker had been so sure of himself then.
“Do you know what really pisses me off?” he'd asked her and Harmony as they were walking back to Bitches from the car.
They'd froze but then she turned, and answered coldly. “Fuck you.”
“Women who don’t know their place,” the asswipe had said and laughed. “What makes you think you could ever have beaten me.”
“Well, Dom,” she sneered and Harmony had jumped, which Shady figured was due to her realizing that she knew the man standing behind them pointing a gun. Shady felt her mind tense as she realized they had no weapons to use quickly, their only gun was in Harm’s purse. “You would know everything about women—riiight, because you have held onto yours?”
Dom had grinned and Harmony had shivered, Shady knew what she was seeing, because she saw the same man in her nightmares every time she closed her eyes. He was scary, and not scary-hot-biker-dude, he was scary-freaking-psycho-dude. His black hair looked exactly like hers, and even his eyes were the same ice blue color, the difference was Shady's showed signs of life in hers, where Dom's were dead. He was tall and thin, and if everyone met him on the street when he was wearing his black silk suit, they would have thought he was a businessman. Not her, not seeing him with a gun in his hand; Harmony, on the other hand, had probably figured they'd just met the guy who was behind all of the shit, but she would be wrong.
“Francesca, you never should have run away,” then Dom had laughed.
Harmony frowned and looked at her, and she knew she grimaced, causing Harm to say, “Wait, Francesca? Your name is Francesca?”
Shady laughed and smiled at Harmony, trying to lighten the situation, “Yeah, I kinda changed that right away, you know how embarrassing it is to have the nickname Franny? It sucked when I was young.”
“Well yeah,” Harmony agreed with her. “I mean, torture, Franny, ugh…I can’t even say it without thinking of an old lady with ugly underwear.”
“I know right.” Shady laughed.
She'd known then what Harmony was doing. Harmony had slowly moved so she was turned to Shady's side, her purse was hidden then, and she was moving her hand slowly to find her gun. Dom hadn't noticed, keeping his shit talk up.
“Shut up,” he'd growled. “I am thinking you are not appreciating your position.”
Harmony then took a turn to answer, “Because we aren’t, nothing you can do will stop the shit storm coming your way, asshole. Coming onto Warriors' property has signed your death warrant.”
Dominic Reyes was a prick and Shady knew it so when he smiled and shook his head, replying to Harm, she wasn't shocked. “Little girl, I am safe as I would be if I were at my own house." Then the fucker had turned to her, "Too bad you will not be around to actually see your friends die, oh, and when you see him in hell, let him know I am sorry I missed out on the family reunion.”
He'd laughed and looked over his shoulder and when she and Harm had followed his gaze, they'd noticed the backdoor had been chained and someone or something was pushing to get out. She'd figured the front door was probably the same way. At that exact moment, was when she'd known for certain she was going to kill the motherfucker.
She could still hear Harmony using her name, “Franny.”
Shady had replied using the name they'd picked for Harmony, "Yeah, Spork.”
It was then that Harm decided to ask her, “Who is this?” And fuck, she really hadn't wanted anyone to know, but she'd answered her anyway.
“My brother, Dominic Reyes III,” then she'd spit on the ground to get rid of the taste his name left on her tongue before adding, “the fucking bastard who ruined my life.”
The rest had happened fast after that little announcement. Harmony had said, “Shit,” and pulled the gun from her purse and turned to fire.
Dom though had been prepared. Shady felt the burn and knew Harmony had felt the same when two shots were fired, a bullet entering each of their bodies, then Harm had reached for her.
Shady would have loved to add that day to her list of bad ones but in reality, it didn't even come close. She throttled her bike hard and took off down the road, she needed to forget, she needed her head cleared, but most of all—she needed fucking revenge.
Chapter Two
Slider and Cajun buried another body in the desert and then drove back toward the compound. Both men belonged to the Warriors, although not to one specific chapter, they were Nomads and they liked it—until now. They were settling and it looked like they were walking into a shit storm. It was going to be a beautiful morning, dawn just passing, but it wouldn’t stay that way. It couldn’t, they were riding back to the one place both dreaded for different reasons. Slider, to face his one and only regret and Cajun, to face his past all in one fucking place. It was not going to be a smooth road. They had already been here off and on for a month and it hadn’t been pretty. They had been assigned shit jobs, like burying the bodies until their leaders were ready to talk to them.
Creed and Fork approached Cajun several times, but became frustrated when Cajun told them he was back, but wouldn't talk about why he'd been off the grid for so long. Their group of Marines had made a plan when they were in the desert on post those long fucking nights. Creed and Fork told them about their club and all of them agreed it was something they were interested in when they got out. An MC club was freedom to be who they needed to be without worrying about the confines of normal society. They were trained and bred to be killers, making them unable to fit in society. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust them; Cajun didn’t want anyone to know the shit he had been through, it was too sick. Cajun dealt and moved on, well kinda. He hoped the interest his cock was showing in Shady was a step in the right direction; she was the first female he had actually been attracted to that didn’t give him the creeps.
As they rolled into the compound and got off their bikes, Creed and Fork came out front and they looked pissed. Cajun shifted on his feet nervously, he knew things were coming to a head, he just didn’t know if his leaders were going to let this shit go.
“Church in five,” Creed b
arked and Slider nodded. Something happened between last night and this morning. Something they didn’t know about, and by the looks of their leaders, something that was going to piss them the fuck off. “Freebyrd called this morning, you were Prospecting for them for the last year?”
Cajun nodded slowly, he wasn’t sure how his old leader was going to feel about the fact that when he finally cleared his fucking head out, he'd went to the leader of the Ops Warriors in Cali to join. Freebyrd told him he wouldn't say anything until he had too. Well apparently, Freebyrd felt the time had come.
“Yeah, Creed, needed to make sure I could actually handle all this,” Cajun said slowly, Creed should know what he was talking about. Cajun’s leg had been damaged when he was captured overseas, and until a year ago, he wasn’t sure he would ever be able to ride again. Then there was the other shit, his head was messed up, and he needed to just ride to get it on straight.
“You are patched in, we voted, get your ass in the meeting, we'll find your room later,” Creed said and Cajun nodded. They weren’t going to ask questions, Cajun was relieved. He knew he would tell them sooner or later, because they were his friends. He just wasn’t ready yet.
Slider grinned, put his hand around his friend’s neck, and put him in a chokehold. “Fuck ya, we are back!”
Cajun walked to his side and shook his head. “No rest for the weary. No time to celebrate.”
“Don’t think we are going to have rest for a long time,” Slider said.
They walked into the clubhouse and looked around. The guys were just now getting up and moving but they felt the air of tension. As they filed into the room where they held their meeting, Slider greeted several of the men, but they were staring at him with a hard expression, like he had done something wrong. What, he had no idea.
“Dominic Reyes III is a dead man,” Creed said with a hard tone. “Last month we found out why Dominic Reyes has decided to target our club. It seems he is looking for someone, a long lost family member, as you know. Now, we know when he showed up and tried to kill Harmony and Shay that things were gonna be fucked up. After last night, I have to tell you all how fucked up they are going to be,” Creed said slowly.
The room became silent, Slider and Cajun tensed, one, because he was afraid of what was coming and the other, because he could tell by the look on his former leader's face the woman had been through hell, and they were just finding out about it.
“As we know, Reyes is Shady’s stepbrother, in addition to being a sick fuck. Abused our girl for years until she ran away—ran to us and we claimed her as family. When I say abused, I mean in the worst fucking sense of the word. Shay is having issues right now, and we need to cover her.”
“Okay wait, he tried to kill Shady and Harmony, I get that. What the fuck else are you talking about?” Slider said quietly. He had been on the road and, besides seeing them at the storage container, he had no idea what was going on. He hadn’t listened because he hadn’t cared—it was a job, he was a cleaner and good at his job. But now, now he want to know goddammit. Shady was the reason he was here, and damn it, each and every one of them knew it.
“Well, he shot Harmony in the arm, and Shady point blank in the chest, she was lucky but she is still healing, man. You know this part. The part you don't know is because Shady didn’t tell us the whole story until she was out of the hospital,” Fork said. “Fucker stood there laughing over them for a minute before he took off, the look he had on the tape seemed fucking weird. Shady has been having nightmares, fucking scary ass shit, which I will spare you the details to because Shay needs to wrap her head around this shit first. Let’s just say, the shit is way beyond what we imagined. We'll talk about that shit later, because honest to God, I can only stomach saying it once, and not everyone is fucking here. The guy we were talking to that night was one of his fucking minions. He gave nothing. The only thing we did get was Lola. The bitch is fucking stupid. She kept the phone the idiot used to contact her. We have a location. It is hot, and it is dangerous. We need to make a fucking plan before we go in.”
Slider lost it completely. It took five men to hold him down to keep him from leaving the compound to hunt for that bastard. Slider finally got his answer, and it ripped him apart knowing he had once again failed someone who needed him.
He hadn't known, damn it. Fuck, let’s be honest, he hadn’t asked. He knew there was something deep going on with Shady a year ago, he just chose to let it go and walk away. It was easier, right—for him not her. Every single fucking night they were together, she didn’t sleep all the way through the night. Every single fucking time she crawled out of bed mumbling she needed a drink and he had just fallen back asleep, never asking a fucking question—never seeing why she woke. He just went back to sleep.
“Rein it in, Slider. We need a plan on how to protect Shay. We don’t need for this to fuck with our heads,” Fork ordered while Slider glared at him.
Fuck, I want to ignore him, but for once, I can't.
He shook off the hands that were holding him and stood straight and nodded. The room was still filled with tension as he picked up his chair and sat back down next to Cajun. His brother didn’t even know Shady, and Cajun was clenching his fists and, by the tension in his jaw, he would likely need new fillings. Cajun wasn’t fucking down with hurting women. Over the last month, they had talked about Shady, and both were interested.
Creed looked around the room at his brothers, his family, and nodded. “I am calling the kill shot on this one. Don’t give a fuck what you do to him before he gets to me, but he get to me, breathing. I will kill that motherfucker.”
The men nodded and then they began to make phone calls. At least the fucking little pervert they tortured gave them information, they needed a location even if it wasn’t through his lips. Because the Ops Warriors would have burned the town to the ground searching for that sick fuck. He hurt one of their sisters, and for that, he would pay with blood. There was no other option for him.
*****
“The fuck, Cajun?” Creed said and leaned back into his chair with a beer in his hand.
Cajun sat silently for a minute. They were all there, all the men he fought beside and called brothers. It had been too long and yet, looking at their faces, maybe not long enough. He wasn’t sure he was ready to talk to them yet, but fuck it, he had to give them something, just not the worst.
Ryan ‘Cajun’ Dubois was a Marine, and a fucking good one. He joined the unit with the rest of these guys one month after Creed became the Commander. He requested the assignment because he respected the man. Creed had risen quickly through the ranks, and he was a legend in their circles. From the moment they met, Cajun knew this man was a kindred spirit if you believed that kind of shit. Which he did because his mama was all about the woo woo shit.
For three years, Ryan worked with Creed, Fork, Slider, and the others. Then one day it all changed in the blink of an eye. While in the Middle East, Ryan had filled in on a mission with a unit that had been one man down. The mission turned into a clusterfuck from the moment it started until it ended with him and two other men captured.
They were held for a month before Creed and the others rescued him, he was the only one to walk out alive. Well, not walk, carried out alive. The others two had been tortured for information, which they never gave. He closed his eyes remembering and if he concentrated, he could still hear the screaming from the room where they were tortured.
When he was rescued, Ryan Dubois was not the same. He was suffering from burns, cuts, and various other injuries, compliments of the assholes who took him. He was transported directly to Germany where he recovered, then to his mother’s home in Louisiana where he did physical therapy until they declared him completely cured. Yeah, right. He left the day he was released, kissing his mother on the head, getting on his bike, and roaring away. For a while, he drifted, trying to figure out why the fuck he was even still alive. He never talked about the days he was captured, and even though people tried to get
him to open up, he refused. Which is why he avoided Creed and the others for so long, they would want to talk about it, and he couldn’t—no wouldn’t.
“Needed to get my head on straight,” Ryan said and stared at Creed with an intense look hoping the questioning would end there. The room was silent for a moment, his friends staring at him intently, waiting for him to elaborate and he was so not going to do that.
Finally, Creed nodded and then switched his gaze to Slider. “What about you, you got your head on straight?”
“Fuck no,” Slider replied instantly.
The guys in the room laughed and Creed shook his head but continued, “Listen, this shit is gonna get real, we need to get prepared. I have a meeting with the Devil Savages tomorrow. We are going to have to work together to get this fucked up shit straight. Shady, being Shady, is gonna want in, this is partly her gig and we need to get it straight before we even make plans about what we are gonna let her in on.”
“She has been through too much as it is,” Slider said softly and looked around the room. “Shady is going to want to kill him, don’t want that shadow on her soul, we all know how that can fuck someone up.”
The men nodded and then Fork said, “Nightmares.”
“Huh?” Poke said and leaned forward.
“She has nightmares,” Fork said and then guys shifted uncomfortably. “They are bad, never seen anything like it. Harmony had to tackle her and hold her down she was so wrapped up in the nightmare. Creed and I just stood there, nothing we could do but let it play out. She has demons, even with what we know, I think it is just the surface. Someone needs to find out what we are dealing with. This whole thing could blow up in our face if we don’t do this right.”
Shady: Ops Warriors MC Page 2