by Simone Elise
Reaper’s Rival
Simone Elise
Copyright © 2017 by Inkitt
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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Table of Contents
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
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 1
Three Months Later
Abby
I leaned back in the booth, watching the high-class stripper’s dance on the poles. Most of our business meetings were done at the Red Flower. It didn’t even bother me anymore, seeing the half-naked women dancing.
It meant all the eyes were on them.
While I stayed in the booth, sipping on whiskey and dryly taking in the details Damon was telling me.
I was having one of those nights, my mind pulling me back into the past. Even though it was pointless. Even though it didn’t change a goddamn thing but make me be swallowed with regrets and faded hopes.
I still don’t know how I got here. I still don’t know how I somehow ended up here. Here. The fact I was in a strip club didn’t bother me. I wasn’t talking about that. I was talking about how the hell I went from painting to running a gang? To being a hit-woman? How did my life get so bloody complicated?
I knew instantly how I got here. I fell in love. I wanted to roll my eyes. A simple thing like falling in love had changed me to the core. I still couldn’t understand the person I was becoming. I was colder after every job. I was losing myself, and it wasn’t happening slowly.
Each job took a part of me, and all of a sudden, I wasn’t over thinking the next kill. I wasn’t worrying about the details. All I cared about was getting it done. I wasn’t the caring and loving girl I was. I was, well…I don’t think there was a word to sum me up anymore.
“Abby, you aren’t fucking listening to me.” Damon’s eyes narrowed, and he leaned over the small table. “How are we going to pull this off with you listening to only half the details?”
“I’m listening,” I fired back at him over the music.
“She’s in one of her moods, leave her be.” Kim reached for the bottle in the middle of the table and refilled her glass. “You know how she gets.”
How I get.
What the fuck did that mean?
Damon was Blake’s cousin. He wasn’t much of anything, but he sure as hell liked detail.
When I first met him, I was scared of him. It was only natural. He was built like a cage fighter. Strong thick arms and legs. His chest was broad and strong. He had taken many hits over the years, and it showed.
But it was his slightly dark brown hair and brown eyes that really took you in.
He wasn’t good looking.
He was fucking handsome and a ladies’ man; worse of it all, he knew how handsome he was.
It was something about his build that made women flock to him. As if he was their protector. But when it came down to it, Damon cared only for two things: money, and what money brought.
“I haven’t missed a word.” I put my empty glass down. “We’re taking back the stolen guns from the Chinese. You want us to move in when the money has been exchanged, and you want us to take the guns and the money. So really, you want us fucking ripping off the bikers and the Chinese?”
“What bikers are they?” Kim’s voice was coated with curiosity.
“Doesn’t matter. Your job is to go in guns blazing, get the cash and guns, and come out with only a few dead.” He poured himself a shot and swallowed quickly. “Not too much to ask of my girls, is it?”
His girls.
Ever since we joined, we became his girls.
We ran the show, and he organized the jobs. We were the face, and he was the silent partner that ‘kept us in line,’ as Blake said.
I still wasn’t sure what that line was.
“We’ll handle it.” I butted the cigarette out and rose. “Kim, I’m heading home. You ready?”
Her eyes were fixed on a man across from us. I sighed, knowing that she had other things on her mind.
“I’ll take you home.” Damon threw some cash down on the table.
“Yeah, and I’ll take the keys,” Kim put her hand out, which I then dropped the keys in. “I have other plans for the night.”
“Clearly,” I muttered, getting out of the booth and strolling away, with Damon following me.
Damon had made his intentions when it came to me crystal fucking clear. He wanted me. He's been wanting me for a long while now. Still, I wasn’t giving it up to him.
In some twisted and screwed up way, I still saw myself as Reaper’s girl. Even though I hadn’t heard a word from him since he left. Not a message. Not a phone call. Nothing. And the man had my number, so he had no excuse.
When it came down to it, he just fucking didn’t want to contact me.
Suppose I should be more upset about it, but I wasn’t. If he hadn’t been home, he wouldn’t have known that I left.
He wouldn’t know that I walked away from the club for him.
Shoving my hands in my leather pockets, I wished he would fucking call so I could tell him there was nothing keeping us apart anymore.
Well, apart from the fact I was now working for their competition.
“You’re quiet tonight.” Damon unlocked the doors to his car.
“Been a long week.”
“You’re lying to me.”
I looked across the bonnet at him. “Maybe.” Then I walked to the door and opened it up. Damon climbed in after me.
“You wanna talk about it?” He started the car up.
“No.”
“What’s got you so pissed off?”
“Nothing.”
“Is it about the job?”
“No.”
“Woman, give me a fucking
bone here.”
I twisted in my seat to look at him. “Why do you care?”
Really, why did he? I was a flat-out bitch to him, and still he cared.
“You’re going colder after each job.” He shrugged his shoulders. “I care about you, Abby. I don’t want you doing this shit if it is messing with your head.”
“The only thing that is messing with my head is your double-sided questions. I don’t see you harassing Kim.”
“I don’t see Kim pulling the trigger on every job.”
The first kill was the worst. After that, you just dealt with it. You moved the fuck on because you had to. But on the first job, I couldn’t stop myself from wondering if that man had a family. Did he have a girlfriend waiting for him? But Damon put me to the test and when it came down to it, it was the guy’s life or mine, because he sure as hell didn’t care if I had a family or not. That was my first kill and ever since then, I had become colder after each one.
“Someone has to do it.”
He glanced off the road, his eyes locking with mine for a moment. “Look, I don’t know who pissed you off and has you trigger-happy, and I don’t care. All I wanna know is you aren’t going to fucking crumble on me.”
Crumble on him.
I was far past caring.
“I’m not going to crumble.” I glared at the side window. “We’ve all got our demons, and I’m telling you mine aren’t getting in the way of this job or the next.”
“That’s all I wanted to hear.”
We started moving through the traffic heading home. Kim and I lived with Damon, Eric, and Matthews. It was a big, newly-built, double-story house on the edge of town. It never felt like home, but a lot of things didn’t feel like they should.
***
“So when are you going to get the ink, Abby?” Damon locked the car, and we both walked across the lawn to the house.
He was always on about when I was getting the Hellbound tattoo on me. Kim and I both didn’t wear the mark yet.
It had already been three months, and I knew it would take something—something big—to push me to get it.
“When the time is right,” I muttered, and the security light flicked on as we approached.
“You know Blake keeps asking.”
“Blake doesn’t trust us.”
“Never said that.”
“Well, if he can do a better job running the gang from prison, we should let him.”
Damon smirked. “We?”
“I was talking about Kim and me.” I watched him unlock the door.
“No, you weren’t.”
“Well, we are a team, aren’t we?”
His hand froze on the door, and he cocked a look my way. “We’re a whole lot more than a fucking team. We’re family.”
“Pity.” I suppressed my grin. “Here I was just thinking about fucking you. Can’t fuck family though.” I patted him on the back and pushed the door open, leaving him standing at the front door, speechless.
Sometimes I just can’t help myself.
***
It was one of those nights. I couldn’t sleep. Lying on the bed, with the blankets pulled back, staring up at the ceiling, I was only thinking of one person. Reaper. My fingers traced my stomach as I thought about his touch, his laugh, and the way his eyes would always shine with protectiveness when he looked at me.
I missed him.
I missed us.
Sometimes I would miss the club: the smell, the men, and Dad. I missed the good times, the laughter, and the way time felt like we had forever in front of us. Now, time was ticking, and it was going faster.
Each day I found myself a little deeper into something that I didn’t fully understand and didn’t fully get. I was being pulled under, and I was losing who I was.
Hell, I had lost her the day Reaper rode out.
I rolled to my side and reached for my phone; it was still the early hours of the morning. I couldn’t get any sleep. Not when I was being haunted by memories.
I wonder what he was doing this very moment. Was he asleep? Was he with someone else? Was he even in this state?
I knew one day I was going to have to let go of him. Didn’t mean I wanted to.
I flung the rest of the blankets back and climbed out of bed.
Fuck it. I wasn’t going to sleep, so I might as well go do something useful.
Reaching for my phone, my body froze.
Once in a while, it would occur to me. Once in a while, it would hit me hard.
I could call him.
I doubt he even had the same number. My hand curled around the phone, and I unlocked it, scrolling through my contacts till I paused on Reaper.
I closed my eyes and pressed dial.
Putting the phone to my ear, I listened as it rang, and my stomach twisted tightly with nerves. I doubted he would even be up.
“Hello?” His voice was thick and coated with liquor.
“Reaper.”
“Abby?” He sounded more alert, and I heard noises in the background. “Is everything ok?”
Was everything ok?
Sure.
I had left Dad. I had left the club. I had joined a gang. I killed people now. I doubted every single thing I did, and I was losing myself a bit more after every hit.
“What do you mean?” Did he mean about the club? Or Dad?
“I mean is everything ok?”
Everything was so far from ok. “Things are complicated.”
Then I heard a woman’s voice in the background. He wasn’t alone. God, I was so stupid. Of course he wouldn’t be alone.
“Can I ask you something, Reaper?”
“You call me out of the fucking blue in the dead of night, and you’re telling me it is so you can ask me something?”
The old me would have chewed her lip and muttered an excuse and hung up.
The new me, well, “Are you fucking someone right now?”
“No.”
“Fine, did you just finish fucking her?”
“Things are complicated.”
I scoffed. “I’ve been waiting for you. But you haven’t been waiting for me, have you?” Realization hit me hard and fast in the face, making my stomach curl into a tight knot, ice slowly creeping through my veins. Suddenly I was feeling a lot colder and for the first time, it wasn’t the fact that I was taking lives now making me cold. It was him, knowing there was no future.
“I’m not coming back, Abby. Your old man made damn sure of that.”
“Then I guess you have no reason to lie to me. Are you fucking other women?”
“It’s fucking after three in the morning, and you want to have this fight?”
“I didn’t say anything about a fight.”
“Fine. Yes. I am. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t miss you every fucking day. That I don’t wish things could be different.”
“I left the club. I left Dad. All for you.” I wanted someone to slap me. “And now you tell me you wish things could be different. They can be different. I made it so they can be.”
God, I was so stupid.
“Abby, you’re talking too fast. What do you fucking mean you left the club? Where are you? You ok? Who the fuck is looking after you?”
“Why would you care? YOU moved the fuck on.”
Like I should have. God, all this time wasted.
“It’s not like that.”
“Well, I’ll tell you something, Kade; this is the last night I stay awake thinking about you.” And I meant it. I would spend one more night wide awake thinking of him, then I was done.
“Abby, don’t you dare fucking hang up. You know your number is private. Where are you? How did your old man let you leave the club?”
“You know you have a lot of questions, Kade. Pity I don’t feel like fucking answering them.” Then I pulled the phone away and hung up.
It was a mistake. It was a fucking mistake thinking he would be mine one day.
Angry tears slid down my cheeks, and I threw my
phone across the room.
I needed something to drink. I needed…I fall back on the bed, my mind racing. I needed to turn back time and never fall in love with the Reaper.
***
I followed my feet, not really over thinking about where I was going till I was there. I knocked once and heard nothing on the other side of the door. Slowly, I twisted the knob and slid in.
He wasn’t sleeping. Just like I had expected.
Damon’s eyes zoned in on mine from across the room.
“What are you doing, Abby?” He tilted his head, watching me lean against his door.
“Have you ever made a mistake you can’t come back from?”
“Many. It’s the lifestyle we live. You regretting killing those two French men?”
I shook my head. “I’m regretting ever falling in love.”
“Love comes and goes. Sometimes you think you’re in love when really you are just hung up on someone who will one day only be a memory.”
“Have you ever loved someone?”
Damon lit a cigarette and gestured for me to come into the room. “I thought I did when I was younger.”
I sat on the edge of his bed while he sat in an armchair, smoking and reading something.
“How do you get over it?”
“For me, I just got on top of someone else.”
I cringed. “Not happening.”
He coughed out laughter and shook his head, “Didn’t expect my solution to work for you, darling. If you want some wise words, do what your sister does.”
“Kim?” I tilted my head, looking at him, confused.
“She is hurting badly for someone, yet she handles it by throwing herself deep into this. Into the gang,” he moved forward in his seat. “Maybe you just need to let go and let the gang take care of you.”
“I’ve been part of that type of family before.” I looked straight ahead at his cupboard, which was decorated with photo frames and empty glasses. “I promised myself I would never let that happen again.”
“You’ve never been part of this family before.”
My eyes flickered to his. “You’re right.”
“Stop always second guessing yourself, Abby, and make a stand for something, or all you’re gonna do is fall for everything.”
He was right.
Yet wrong.
Yet right.
I sighed, dropping my head in my hands. This was all too heavy for this time of night.