WRAITH (Iron Kings MC, #1)

by Franca Storm

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Get the Latest

  Blurb

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Epilogue

  Next Book in Series

  Want More MC Romance?

  Franca Storm Library

  About the Author

  IRON KINGS MC

  BOOK 1

  FRANCA STORM

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  WRAITH. Iron Kings MC. Book One

  Copyright © Franca Storm (2020). All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission of the author.

  Cover Design by Clarise Tan at CT Cover Creations

  Cover images provided by:

  ©istockphoto.com Stock Photo 482003618

  The sale of this book without its cover is unauthorized. If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that it was reported to the publisher as “unsold and destroyed”. Neither the author nor the publisher has received payment for the sale of this “stripped book”.

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  Cold.

  Dark.

  Dangerous.

  I’m a ghost, living off the grid, never getting involved.

  Until the President of the Iron Kings MC comes calling.

  My oldest friend. My brother-in-arms.

  I’m pulled back in to protect his daughter.

  But the mission quickly turns personal.

  She tempts me, drawing me too close.

  I need to stay away.

  I’m a dangerous monster.

  I’ll ruin her.

  But I’m drawn further into the world of the Iron Kings MC.

  The promise of brotherhood and a fresh start seems too good to pass up.

  She can’t stay away and neither can I.

  Her light cuts through my dark.

  She’s everything I didn’t know I’d been looking for.

  But can a damaged bastard like me really find peace?

  1

  ~Wraith~

  GODDAMN CIVILIANS.

  Six months had passed since I’d retreated to this one-horse town.

  Even after all that time, the locals still hadn’t gotten the message that I’d been communicating loud and clear.

  I was an anti-social bastard.

  I didn’t share details about my life, neither my present, nor my past exploits.

  I didn’t want to strike up any friendships with any of them either.

  Or, worse, any kind of romantic entanglement.

  For some reason, despite my overt standoffishness, the people of Langton still tried. Especially, the women. The come-ons were beyond brazen. Some of them were actually downright cringeworthy. There was a certain partygoing group of them that just wouldn’t let up with their flirtations, their staged run-ins, in an attempt to get a piece of me. Some of them were even married.

  It was exactly the kind of trouble that I needed to avoid.

  I couldn’t draw attention to myself. The stakes were literally life and death.

  Sure, at one point, that high-stakes existence had given me a fucking hard-on.

  But that’d been before.

  Before the betrayal that’d torn everything apart and turned my life upside down. Before I’d been forced to retreat.

  Now I was trying to pass for what I hated. A clueless civilian.

  I was living a low-key life. Nowadays, I taught self-defense at a gym I owned in town.

  Being a ghost had its limitations.

  At least now I’d found a way to have something that almost resembled a life. Even that hadn’t been possible before.

  For a year and a half, before I’d relocated here, I’d been holed up in a safehouse.

  I’d been on the verge of losing my mind from the inactivity. I’d been going stir-crazy.

  I was a man who needed to keep busy. I couldn’t stand still. I had to keep moving.

  I couldn’t block shit out otherwise. And then it hurt. It hurt too much.

  What a fucking mess.

  Sighing, I pushed through the creaky door into the local hole-in-the-wall, Langton Arms, making my way over to the bar.

  I scanned my surroundings. I could never be too careful.

  All clear. No threats.

  On instinct, I kept my head low, most of my features hidden beneath my gray hoodie. I ignored the glances I could feel directed my way from the half a dozen regulars situated around the place. They didn’t like the mystery I posed. It unnerved them and confounded them all at once. I only spoke when I had to, not out of some sort of mind-numbing social expectation.

  Besides, if they discovered who and what I truly was, it’d shatter their fragile little lives.

  “Your usual? Bourbon?” the young bartender spoke, as I slid onto one of the rickety wooden stools that’d seen better days.

  Just like everything else in the old pub. The owners claimed it was intended, rustic charm and all that. They needed to call a spade a damn spade. The place was falling apart. I cringed as the stool scraped along the hardwood floor, etching yet another dent into it.

  “Yeah, kid,” I answered the twenty-something guy, inwardly rolling my eyes at his neon-green mohawk. Normally, I’d applaud someone openly bucking the expectations of the conventional, disturbingly traditional little town in a bid to carve out their own path. But it was too obvious that he was doing it more so to get a rise out of people, rather than for any meaningful reason. If you were going to be a rule-breaker and a badass, it had to be for the right reasons. You had to own it well. Otherwise, you were just a sad poser.

  At least he was a good bartender and quick on his feet for that matter. In seconds, he was sliding my glass across the bar top.

  I caught it in my right hand.

  My fingers trembled violently as I endured the all-too-familiar battle of trying to bring it to my lips. I could’ve used my left, but I was right-handed and no matter how I’d tried, it was still instinctual to act with my right. The struggle only occurred once in a while. The problem was, I could never predict when the old injury would act up and momentarily incapacitate me. Even if it had been possible to shed my ghost status, the unpredictable nature of my right hand these days would’ve barred me from returning to my old life in the field anyway.

  I felt the kid’s eyes on me and I eyeballed him over the rim of my glass to see his focus drawn to the brutal scar in the center of my right hand. He’d seen it before, because I’d been in here enough times, but he just couldn’t get past it. It wasn’t the most appetizing sight, honestly. And civilians were so fucking fragile.

  “Wayward power drill,” I told him.

  A hell
of a lie, but revealing the truth would endanger me, pointing towards what I truly was.

  A dangerous son of a bitch.

  A killer.

  A man who used to get paid a mint to deal out death to the worst of the worst, the most despicable human beings to ever walk this fucked-up earth.

  I’d been really good at it.

  The best.

  Fuck. Another life now.

  I chugged back all of my bourbon in a couple of gulps.

  Slapping down a few bills in front of the bartender, I told him to keep them coming. He nodded and hurriedly served me another, before heading off to deal with a couple that were trying to get his attention at the other end of the bar.

  “Rough day, Wraith?”

  My fingers tightened around my glass, my body tensing.

  That name. That alias.

  I hadn’t heard it in a long time.

  I was well and truly out. Retired from all of it.

  That name had suited me well for a long while now, though. I barely existed. I was rarely visible to the world and not truly a part of it. During my time in black ops, I’d also been the last thing many people had seen before death took them. Hell, I’d been the bringer of their deaths. I was a ghost, a fucking apparition.

  “More like rough life, yeah?” the voice continued.

  He pulled up a stool right beside me. I heard the squeak of hard leather as he settled himself upon it. The thump of his elbow on the wooden bar top had me drawing in a calming breath to brace myself, before turning to see who the unwanted visitor was.

  Well, damn.

  Scott “Spartan” Tate.

  “Scott,” I ground out, more than a little surprised to see the President of the Iron Kings Motorcycle Club in my neck of the woods, miles from home.

  He looked me up and down. My hoodie under my black leather jacket, jeans, and my gray long-sleeved tee visible beneath. He smiled as he took in my motorcycle boots.

  “It’s been too long,” he said, earnestly. He clapped his hand on my shoulder. “Missed you, brother.”

  Brother.

  I knew how much that word meant to him. While I wasn’t one of his club brothers, we went back way further than that, before he’d even founded Iron Kings.

  We’d fought together. We’d suffered together. We’d survived together. We were brothers-in-arms and it wasn’t something either of us took lightly.

  Pulling my hood back a little, I took him in.

  Those odd slate-gray eyes of his got me every time. It was creepy, the way they seemed to pierce right through a man. His dirty-blonde hair, all wild on top, yet closely cropped on the sides. He was normally clean-shaven, but he was sporting some serious stubble. It was more evidence that something was very wrong, because Scott was a stickler for routine. He was still heavy with the piercings with three in each ear and a stud in his nose. He’d added a hoop through his right eyebrow now too. He was going incognito, wearing an unmarked brown leather jacket, instead of his cut with the insignia of the Iron Kings MC. I glanced down past his worn jeans, surprised to see that he wasn’t even wearing his motorcycle boots. Come to think of it, I hadn’t heard the roar of his Harley pulling up outside either.

  What was going on? “Spill it, Scott.” If he was bringing trouble my way, I needed to know immediately so I could formulate a plan and minimize the potential damage.

  He leaned in, dropping his voice low to tell me, “We got trouble.”

  “No shit,” I muttered. “Why else would you come all this way?”

  “I don’t wanna be calling in favors and keeping score with you, but I need your help.”

  For six months, he’d allowed me to recover at his clubhouse, bringing in the best doctors and nurses on his payroll to see to me. The injuries I’d sustained had been too incriminating to head to a real hospital with. The cops would’ve been called right off the bat and I’d have been done for, given that I’d been in no condition to make one of my miraculous escapes. But, without hardcore medical attention, I wouldn’t have survived. He’d basically saved my life.

  “The situation is that dire?”

  “Yeah,” he rumbled. “It’s dire all right.”

  With a heavy sigh, I shifted on my stool to face him head on. “I’m not the guy you knew. Not physically.” I gestured to my hand, then pointed to my side. He knew well about the extent of the damage I’d suffered. “Not mentally either.” I took a large gulp from my drink. “I’m not getting back into all of that.”

  “Ain’t asking you to.”

  I frowned. Why the hell else was he here then?

  He snatched up my drink and downed the rest of it, gulping it back, anxiety rolling off him. “The Rogues are back.”

  “Jesus Christ,” I choked out.

  The Rogues, known officially as the Rogue Riders Motorcycle Club, were a rival club to Scott’s. Brutal, down ‘n’ dirty bastards without conscience, without restraint.

  The bitch of it was that they hadn’t always been.

  Many of the members, including their president, had been part of the Iron Kings MC at one point. But when Scott had settled down with his wife, Andrea, and had a family, he’d made the call to take the club legit. That one decision had been the beginning of the end.

  It’d kickstarted a war that’d waged for years, causing brutal collateral damage, widespread carnage, torment, and actual death. Scott’s decision to shakeup the club had infuriated his right-hand-man at the time, Knox Price, now the president of the Rogues. He’d refused to accept Scott forcing them to pull out of lucrative, illicit deals, that he’d engineered in the first place, refused to accept the club’s revised weak, peaceable status. In fact, Knox had started his own club, the Rogues. And then he’d gone after Scott’s wife. He’d murdered her. Scott had gone after him and his new club, risking his legit status to avenge his wife. He’d managed to take out a large number of them, but a few, including Knox, had survived, and gone to ground.

  But now they were apparently back, I was sure all hell would break loose again, that Knox would be out for blood.

  “What do you need?” I asked automatically.

  “Need you to protect my baby girl.”

  “What?” I croaked. “That’s my role in this? Running protection detail on Ashley?”

  “The club’s gonna be focused on the war coming with them fuckers. All hands on deck. And there ain’t nobody outside the club that I trust, but you. I gotta have her safe.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. Like I said, I’m not at my best anymore. And this is your daughter we’re talking about.”

  His knockout of a daughter. Jesus Christ, she was something.

  Running protection detail, being in close quarters with her, day in and day out for hell knew how long was the last thing I wanted. The last thing I needed.

  The girl had a thing for me. She’d made it known when she’d helped nurse me back to health.

  The whole situation was fraught with complications. And I didn’t do complications anymore.

  Scott’s hand clamped down around my wrist, pulling me from my thoughts.

  His eyes burned into mine, a stark vulnerability I’d never seen from him before, hitting me right in the gut.

  “I already lost the woman I loved to those fuckers. I ain’t losing my baby girl, Finn,” he said, distraught. “Please, all right? You’re the most dangerous, ruthless fucker I’ve ever met. That’s the kinda man I need watching her back.”

  I knew what he was really saying.

  He needed the version of me that I’d been trying hard to bury down deep.

  The monster.

  As much as I wanted to stay as far away from all the bullshit of my old life, I couldn’t deny him.

  He needed me.

  Goddamn it.

  “Fine. She’s under my protection.”

  2

  ~Ashley~

  I CRINGED.

  Once again, my phone buzzed in the back pocket of my jeans.

  Urgh. It had t
o be the fifth time in the last hour.

  Hadn’t he gotten the hint yet?

  He was infuriatingly overbearing. Ridiculously overprotective.

  When it sounded yet again, I couldn’t take it any longer.

  I blew out a breath of frustration and tossed the stencil I’d been trying to concentrate on down on the table. Pulling my phone out from my back pocket, I slumped down onto the adjustable chair and braced myself as I scrolled to his latest message.

  Ain’t playing, Ashley Marie Tate. Call me back. ASAP.

  I felt a twinge of nervousness. Using my full name made it clear just how pissed he was and that was never something to be taken lightly when it came to the notorious President of the Iron Kings Motorcycle Club. My father.

  I shook it off. I wouldn’t allow him to get to me. I wasn’t at his beck and call like his boys were. I’d gone to great pains to remove myself from his messed-up world, from the domineering influence he’d exerted over my life.

  Besides, I had a fairly good idea of what he wanted and there was no way in hell that he was going to get it. He didn’t like me being so far away from him, from the watch of his club. He wanted me back home.

  Well, I wouldn’t sacrifice my freedom for his peace of mind. Those days were long past. Going back home was the last thing I wanted.

  I’d spent years trying to build a life for myself, going to art school, networking, working as an assistant to two tattoo artists. In the last year and a half, I’d succeeded in acquiring my own chair. I’d built up a reputation as a respected and sought-after designer in my own right. I wasn’t about to give all of that up just so he could sleep easier at night. It was ridiculous. He was easily the most paranoid man I’d ever known.

  It all stemmed from what had happened to me as a teenager when his enemies had taken my mom from us and nearly succeeded in dealing me the same fate as well.

  Didn’t he get that it was safer for me to be as far away from him and his club as possible? To continue to distance and disassociate myself from it? That brutal world was what had killed her, being mixed up in my dad’s screwed-up life.