Steel: A Dark MC Romance (A Dark and Dirty Sinners’ MC Book 4)

by Serena Akeroyd

  I wandered toward her room, unsurprised by all the IVs she was hooked up to. She was on the last stage of cancer, close to death, and she looked it. Her skin was like porcelain, frail and milky white, so white in fact, you could see the blue of her veins beneath the surface of her skin. She was all bone, no fat, and her eyes were a strange yellow.

  One of the reasons Stone wanted to be a doctor was because of her ma, who’d been fighting cancer for a long time, but if I was going to be Stone’s Old Man, which was going to happen the day she turned fucking eighteen, then shit needed to be said.

  When I strolled in there, her gaze drifted from Jeopardy on the crap TV to me. Her eyes flared wide at the sight, but once a clubwhore, always a clubwhore. She started fussing with her hair, trying to sit upright, settling herself in a way that’d show her good side.

  I’d seen it a thousand times already, and I was barely nineteen. The last person I needed it from was a cancer patient who was on the brink of a death I was grateful for.

  She’d always treated Stone like she was a piece of shit. I figured that was because of who her daddy wasn’t, but that wasn’t anyone else’s fault but Lana Jane’s.

  “Steel! What are you doing here?”

  Her voice was a little less shrill than it had been before, but I could hear a dazedness to it, and that, combined with what Stone had told me about her treatment, confirmed that she was as high as a kite.

  Her pinpricks for pupils also gave that shit away.

  Before I could say a word, her gaze drifted over me again, and when her eyes lit on my mouth, she smirked. It was a smirk of a person who knew something, who was going to hold it against me.

  A snicker wheezed from her mean lips. “Like father, like son.” She winked at me. “If I’d known you swung your father’s way, Steel, I’d have let you have Stone when she was a kid.”

  Her words had me freezing.

  For a second, I wasn’t even sure what to process first. The fact that she had essentially told me she would have sold my fucking soulmate’s body when she was a child if she’d known I was into kids. Or the fact that she referenced my father.

  A father I didn’t know.

  But the father shit was neither here nor there. A part of me wondered if Lana Jane had pimped Stone out before, but then I thought about her kiss, and even if she was confident with me, there was a hesitance to everything she did that told me she was new to this shit. New as in untouched.

  My throat closed at the bitch’s inference, and how I didn’t stride over to her, take her by her miserable throat, and squeeze the life out of her, I’d never know.

  “You don’t know who my father is,” I growled, trying to focus on that rather than the other point she’d made, because if I did, she really would be dying ahead of her time, and after that?

  I wanted her to suffer.

  I wanted the cancer to eat her away from the inside out.

  If that made me a cunt, then so be it. I’d deal with that.

  Hell, I’d make her deal with it without even giving her fucking morphine.

  Rage swirled around inside me, and it only tripled in strength when she muttered, “Course she knew. A woman knows.” She winked at me. “Always knows.”

  “Come on then, if you fucking know who it is, tell me, bitch.”

  She pouted. “Why are you being so mean to me? I was being generous!”

  Generous? Selling her daughter…

  My heartbeat doubled.

  “You know shit,” I snapped and, striding forward, I carried on, “Now, while I’m here, you need to—”

  “You’re Kevin’s boy, of course. Should have known that shit was in the blood.” She sniffed at me. “Pervert. Look at you, mouth all red. What were you doing? Sucking on my little girl’s tits? Fucking her?” She roared out a laugh. “Pervert just like your papa.”

  Kevin.

  My throat felt too thick at her words.

  She was bullshitting me, right?

  She had to be.

  My father wasn’t the fucker who’d raped Nyx’s sister, Carly, since she was a little kid. Who’d prompted her to kill herself. Who’d died at Nyx’s hand.

  No.

  It couldn’t be.

  She smiled at me, dazed but somehow lucid, and I’d never loathed anyone in my life more than I did her.

  Just from her smugness, I knew she was enjoying this, savoring the ruination of my world, wrecking me from the bottom to the top.

  Deep inside, everything started to shatter on its very foundations, but the only thing I could think of was to end her.

  So I strode over to the IV line that I’d seen Stone change for her momma when the nurse who was supposed to come never did. I knew which was which, knew which was the morphine too.

  And I felt no compunction in switching off that line.

  Her eyes flared wide, distress flashing in them as I leaned down and pressed my hand over her mouth. “Don’t worry, I won’t kill you. But when you wake up, and you’ve been without the morphine, you’ll wish you were dead.”

  I raised her bony ass arm, tipped her head to the side and, ignoring her struggles, didn’t relent until she passed out.

  My hatred for her made me want to grab a pillow and shove it over her face, but Stone would never forgive me for that, and even though my entire world had just been ruined, I wasn’t about to have her hate me.

  Throat thick, I rushed out of the room, and when I saw her approaching me, her mouth as pink as before, her eyes lazy with slumberous arousal, everything inside me locked up tight.

  I couldn’t taint her.

  I just couldn’t.

  I—

  My mouth was dry as I rasped, “She fell asleep while I was talking to her.”

  Her brows rose. “Huh. That’s unusual. I doctored her milk so it’s probably a good thing she slept on her own.” Her smile widened as she held out her other hand. “Want to come sit in the living room?”

  I heard the promise in her voice, knew what she was really asking, and I wanted it so much that my body ached with it. But deep down, I needed confirmation that Lana Jane wasn’t being a bitch.

  I believed her, but I’d be a fool to wreck my life over something some sour bitch said while she was high on morphine.

  So I sucked in a breath, and mumbled, “I can’t, baby doll.” Her cheeks pinkened at the endearment, something that flew off my tongue as it always did. “Been called in.”

  Her nose crinkled, but she was also used to my having to go away at odd times, hell, she was friends with the guys I deemed brothers, and she was used to us being sent off at random all over the country.

  “That’s a shame,” she whispered, her eyes filled with a promise I wanted to take as my own but couldn’t.

  Not yet.

  Maybe not ever, if Lana Jane wasn’t lying.

  Fuck.

  She had to be lying, didn’t she?

  I moved toward her, swept my hand to the center of her back, and held her close.

  It felt so good. Too good.

  Too perfect.

  I breathed her in, absorbed the scent of honeysuckle and vanilla, absorbed it because it might be the very last time I got to hold her that way, and then I squeezed her before striding off.

  She shouted after me, but I didn’t wait. I ran to my hog, climbed on it, and headed for the clubhouse.

  Bear would know. He knew everything. He’d be able to tell me if I’d been spawned by a pedophile fuck.

  If she was lying, I’d make her pay, but God, I hoped she was. I hoped she was wrong.

  For the first time in my life, I prayed, but unfortunately for me, that prayer was too little.

  Too late.

  One

  Quin

  Today

  Saying I was nervous was like saying the Ferrari 458 Spider was easy to jack.

  Which it wasn’t.

  The 2015 model was pretty fucking impossible to steal, but I’d give my left nut to try…of course, this was the equivalent
of said carjacking.

  I’d never killed someone before. I knew that becoming a Sinner often meant getting your hands ‘dirty,’ but in all honesty, I’d just never thought I’d have to do that. But here I was, in prison after my sentencing was skewed, with an unenvious job.

  Nervous, I bit my lip as I thought about my plan.

  I had no idea why Fieri was on my Prez’s shit list, but my place was not to question why. My place was just to…you guessed it—do or fucking die.

  Still, it wasn’t hard to figure out. Fieri was a fucker, high up in the Italian mob, and when I said high up, I meant he was like the heir to the Famiglia’s throne or something. As a result, he was the kingpin of the prison, so getting to him made figuring out who was going to sit on the Iron Throne look simple.

  The easiest place was also the hardest—the showers. Accessing him was going to be nearly impossible, what with his guards around him, but I’d been planning this for a little while.

  I worked in the kitchen, and some eye drops in their food today was, I prayed, going to give me some time while giving them the shits.

  That was why I was nervous.

  I’d heard that crap about the eye drops before, but I wasn’t sure if it would work, and I didn’t exactly have access to Wikipedia in here. Yeah, I had a phone I stashed in my briefs, just under my dick—I knew the radiation would probably boil my balls—but it wasn’t a smartphone. It was just a simple boring burner that I’d only managed to get recently when my sis had visited.

  It wasn’t like I could ask for an upgrade, was it?

  I didn’t think Verizon was going to be willing to give me some perks for a job well done. Congrats, Quin, you made it to a federal prison!

  “Focus, Quin. Fucking focus,” I muttered under my breath, gulping as I glanced over my shoulder, just waiting on Fieri to walk by.

  While he was cautious, he was also arrogant. The guards weren’t his idea, but his father’s, and I knew he chafed at their presence because he didn’t like to look weak.

  In the time since I’d received the call from my Prez, I’d been watching him, waiting. Planning.

  That didn’t take my nerves away any.

  I sucked in a breath when I heard rustling, and when he moved past me, I darted out of my cubicle and slipped into the one opposite, making it look like I was walking out of the shower room when I wasn’t. I knew his cubicle came with a camera blackout for his privacy, he even had a shower curtain the guards put up temporarily, and I intended on taking advantage of both privileges.

  The showers were at half capacity when Fieri took his bathroom break, so I knew I’d be one of the suspects in his murder, but I was also hoping that the governor’s dislike for the prick would be on my side.

  I didn’t have a shank, was armed only with my bare hands, and I hoped that my somewhat slender appearance was going to work to my advantage.

  In comparison to my brother, Nyx, I was puny. I’d been working on that inside, and while I was getting there, I wasn’t as big as him—life goals.

  Still, with my scrawny fucking arms, I knew they’d mistake me for a weakling. I’d already had four guys try to make me their fucking bitch, and they were all talking at a higher octave as a result, but that was when the idea had struck me.

  How to get away with murder.

  It wasn’t foolproof, could totally go wrong, but I just had to have faith.

  This was the first time Rex had ever asked anything of me, and I wasn’t going to let him down or show Nyx up. My brother’s opinion of me was already low for getting caught and sent down, so I needed to make this better somehow. Needed to make shit right.

  When I heard Fieri start to hum under his breath, I slipped past the stall wall, and darted into his cubicle.

  He didn’t even notice I was there, and I saw why—he had music in his ears.

  Fucking music.

  I almost drooled at the prospect of stealing his waterproof headphones, but I didn’t, couldn’t steal them, even though stealing was what I did best. All they’d have to do was search my cell to find them and realize I was the one behind Fieri’s death, but sweet God, the temptation was hard.

  If I’d learned anything in my relatively short life, it was that me and temptation didn’t work well together.

  Only thinking of Indy’s glum face the last time I’d seen her and Nyx’s disapproval had me staying on course.

  Instead of stealing the headphones, I took advantage of his idiocy, grabbed him by the hair, held him tight, then kicked his feet out from under him.

  In the slippery stall, he crumpled, unable to gain purchase on the floor, even as his arms flailed, and I took the opportunity to jerk his neck to the side.

  The distinct crack had my heart pounding as I stared into his lifeless eyes.

  I’d done it.

  My mouth quivered.

  How had that been so easy?

  Who the fuck knew killing someone would be so—

  Jesus.

  I wanted to puke.

  I—

  Barely holding my gut in line, I grimaced as I slipped out of the stall, leaving the corpse behind. I rushed down the corridor, using the blackout spots to my advantage, peering up at the cameras all the while to make sure they hadn’t moved since Fieri had strolled in, and then I darted out toward the exit where a couple of guards were waiting. I hoped I’d been fast enough to make it look like the departure from my shower to the guards’ stand wasn’t too long

  I could have called attention to a ‘scuffle’ I’d heard, try to cast the net wider, but instead, I decided not to muddy the waters, kept my wits about me, and just strolled out like nothing had happened.

  The second I made it back to my cell, I got into bed, ignored my cellmate, and rolled onto my side.

  My tears shamed me, but fuck. That was my first kill.

  I had to pray it would be the last.

  Steel

  “My ass is growing a rainforest.”

  Rex sighed down the line. “Have you turned into Link? Do you think I give a fuck about your ass?”

  “You should. I swear to fuck there’s sweat on top of sweat on top of goddamn sweat, and then there’s this place.” I stared out onto Phnom Penh’s harbor, where modern humanity clashed with an ancient culture that seemed to be winning the war.

  Mostly, I missed AC and food that didn’t make more than my ass crack burn.

  I hated fucking spicy foods, and for some reason, whatever I picked up was hotter than fucking hell.

  It was safe to say that I wasn’t as happy as fucking Larry, but my mission was about to end, and I’d never been happier.

  I’d lay down my life for the Satan’s Sinners MC, but coming to Cambodia again?

  I’d prefer to die.

  Then I winced, because I knew I was being harsh on a pretty great country. The people were so fucking friendly, it made me realize how miserable we were in the States. The place was great too. But the weather? I’d been to Texas in midsummer where I was less miserable.

  The rainforest shit was no joke. I had a whole subculture of flora and fauna growing between my butt cheeks now, no matter how often I showered.

  And I was on my eighth shower today already.

  Raising an arm, I leaned it against the window as I gazed out onto the dying sun. Naturally, my forehead stuck to my forearm, but that was just my luck right now.

  “Not turning into Link,” I muttered, annoyed. “It’s not all about the ass. Just telling you my predicament.”

  “And I’ll get you some fucking Butt Paste for your boo-boos when you’re back home,” he grumbled with a snort. “Now, for the reason why I actually fucking called, is everything down for tonight?”

  “I already told you that,” I retorted. “We didn’t need this powwow.”

  “Sure I did. You’re a sneaky fucker. Like to make sure things are all copacetic verbally,” he scoffed, making my eye roll even more imperative, though he couldn’t see it. “FYI, all travel arrangements are set.�
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  I grunted. “Good. I don’t feel like being arrested on my way back to the States.”

  He snorted. “We’ve got friends in high places, and they want Donavan down as much as we do.”

  “Okay, good. What’s the deal?”

  “I’ll send you the address where you can pick the bastard up, and when you arrive, you’ll be given horse tranquilizers. Don’t fuck this up, Steel. Don’t kill the bastard. You know Link wants blood.”

  “Like I’m going to kill the fucker.”

  “Since when are you a doctor?”

  My brow furrowed at that. “Is this your way of getting me to ask Stone?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Why?”

  “Just think she’d like to talk to you is all.”

  That had my brow doing the Macarena, never mind fucking furrowing. “Stone? Are we talking about the same bitch here?”

  “Yeah, we’re talking about the girl who followed you around like a puppy until you found a way to fuck it up.”

  Rex’s long-suffering sigh grated on my last nerve, and I gritted my teeth.

  He knew I hated talking about Stone, knew I loathed it. It was one of my only ‘do not touch’ subjects, and that he was touching it when I was all the way across the fucking world and unable to beat the shit out of him only pissed me off even more.

  I grunted. “She likes to hear from me when she thinks I’m dying.”

  “Yeah, well, shit’s changed.”

  “What’s changed?” I retorted. “I’ve only been gone three weeks.”

  It had taken that fucking long for our contacts to bring the bastard in.

  He hummed. “Not my place to discuss this shit.”

  “Not your place? Since goddamn when?” If I sounded confused, that was because I was. Jesus Christ. That was all Rex fucking did—stick his nose where it wasn’t wanted.

  Dude should have a pussy.

  If he wasn’t one of the meanest fuckers I knew, he’d have a rep for giving too much of a shit about people.

  “I’m not calling her.”

  “You need to make sure you don’t kill him,” he countered. “He needs to be out cold for the entirety of the trip.”