Malia: A Black Sentinels MC Novel

by Johns, Victoria

  I sat back down and stared at the space he’d just vacated, feeling exhausted. I could’ve blamed it on my lack of sleep, but I knew I was mentally drained. I’d given him everything he wanted. I’d given him all of me and I still wasn’t enough.

  I didn’t know what to do with myself. The life I had planned was so far from this it was like back then an entirely different person had made those plans for me.

  The more I thought about how he could do this to me, the angrier I became. Anger was good; anger meant I’d be ready for him when he came home. I needed to have it out with him. I needed Dean to be honest. If this wasn’t the life for him either, then we could call it a day.

  The relief I felt at thinking those words was immense. Even though I’d have nothing and no one, I’d still have myself and I could learn to be happy for just me.

  A crazy idea crossed my mind. I needed evidence; I needed something that showed him I knew he wasn’t happy, and like a woman possessed, I went on a rampage. I started in the kitchen, pulling open drawers and rifling through mail that had been stuffed inside. The only evidence that search gave me was that we were struggling for money. Bills with the feared ‘PAST DUE’ stamped in red ink reminded me that unless I paid the bills, they didn’t get settled at all.

  Our little living room held nothing. There were drawers stuffed with junk and useless electrical items, old charger cables, and batteries that rolled around in the bottoms and clunked harshly as I plundered through the contents.

  Our bedroom was the only other place. We each had a nightstand. Mine held old tubs of cream or the dog-eared novel from the ‘borrow a book’ bookshelf at work. Dean’s wasn’t much better—a tube of dried up lube that reminded me we used to have a sex life, and thinking about that caused me to ponder just how long he’d been fucking other women. Too long. There was some loose change and even worse, stuffed at the back was an old condom wrapper.

  In our bedroom.

  I reached for it.

  We never used condoms.

  The realization that he’d fucked someone in our apartment, in the bed we shared, caused my eyes to mist over. With the ripped wrapper in my hand, I fell to the floor. My life was an absolute sham. I’d been busting my hump to hold things together while he’d been busting his hump… humping something else.

  The tears that I hadn’t shed the previous night came. The shock of seeing him fucking another woman was all too clear in my thoughts, and I couldn’t stop the sobs that shook my body. I wrapped my arms around my legs and clung to them, my cheek resting on my knees. I waited for the wailing to subside, but it didn’t, even though my anger at him was gone. My tears were pure disappointment in myself. I felt let down. Again. All my life, the people who were supposed to love me had taken chunks out of my heart and left me alone to repair the damage. Sooner or later that damage would become too deep and I’d never find my way out of it.

  I threw the condom wrapper to the floor, both its touch and meaning scorching at my heart. I watched as it fluttered to the floor just on the edge of the rug under our bed. I remembered choosing that rug. We couldn’t afford a full bedroom carpet and I hated the hard, cold floors under my feet. I’d walked past the home store one day and seen it was having a closing down sale. It was the compromise I needed to make our place feel more like our home.

  The rug under Dean’s side had become ruffled where it met the bed’s foot post. I reached underneath to flatten it out and when that task became impossible, I lay on my front to investigate what was stopping it. With super human female strength, I lifted his corner of the bed and pulled the rug back completely. It was stuffed with magazines and papers, some flat, some folded and some in envelopes.

  I reached for the magazines, even though I could see an ass on one of them. I knew what they were.

  Porn. I wasn’t bothered by that, but maybe if he’d shared them with me or at least worked through his desires with me, he might not have needed to fuck some whore against the wall of an alley. I moved them out of the way and noticed some corners turned down.

  Icky. He’d page marked certain items. My curiosity got the better of me, and with the magazine held between two fingers, I flipped it open.

  “Fucking hell!” I shouted at the silent house around me.

  On her hands and knees, wearing a poor excuse for a schoolgirl uniform, was a woman being fucked and fisted by the same guy. The uniform was a poor porn attempt at something Britney Spears had worn only with a lot less material. It was probably a good thing Dean kept these desires to himself. There was no way anyone was giving me the full veterinarian treatment for pleasure; getting a smear was bad enough.

  I went to close the magazine and noticed the name of the model in the article. “No way!” I shouted again.

  It was Charmayne Hunt from school.

  I went back and looked at the woman, feeling nauseous as I examined the picture closer. Even with her poor attempt at half lidded eyes, a new set of rubber lips—and I didn’t mean her lower ones—and a lot of fake hair, she still resembled the girl Dean had been in a ‘relationship’ with for most of his high school years. “Nasty.”

  I scanned the pathetic attempt at a fantasy story, and it was like reading our high school years again. Apparently, Charmayne had wooed the love of her life in the locker room in an outfit he couldn’t resist, as the frigid girl his parents wanted him to be with had no idea. It was partly true.

  I dumped the magazine amongst the rest of the papers and went back to the living room for my laptop. Call it morbid curiosity, but I wanted to know if she’d done any actual porn. The feeling of smug satisfaction that this was how her life had turned out would add a small amount sparkle back into my world, and right now, I needed all the sparkle I could lay my hands on.

  My google search came up trumps, and sure enough there was a video of the same set where the still photos had been taken, and I clicked play.

  The screen went black as the title credits rolled. The film was called ‘Charmayne gets schooled,’ starring the great ‘Schoolgirl Seductress’. I forwarded the video on a little bit, desperate to watch the end credits roll to see her name in lights. Sure enough, the star was Charmayne Payne. Shit name, but it did describe what that hand up her ass hole must have felt like. My finger hovered over the cross on the laptop window, when I saw the final frame of the movie.

  ‘This film has been brought to you by Morrison Mayhem Inc. For more information including publication rights and auditions, please dial 310-821-FUCK.’

  It couldn’t be.

  I took the footage back a frame and sure enough, I’d read it right.

  I opened up a fresh Google page and searched Morrison Mayhem. The search returned a homepage that showed a typical budget web site with Vegas style cherries and smiley faces over the private parts of the girls in the movies and photos. There was an index list of movies available from them and there were a lot. After a few minutes, my eyes stopped seeing the girls and the stupid movie titles that were about as classless as a back-alley sex cinema, and I was on the hunt for confirmation.

  Confirmation that my boyfriend, the man who treated me poorly and fucked girls up against walls, was in fact the Morrison of Morrison Mayhem.

  There was nothing.

  No corporate directors photo page. No details I could access about the company. Nothing.

  Nothing but a phone number.

  My hand hovered over my cell where it sat next to me on the kitchen table. This was a very bad idea.

  But it was the only one I had.

  I dialed the number, recognizing the code as the Venice Beach area of Cali, and waited as each pip of the ring tone drilled my ear and my brain told me to hang up.

  Too late. “Hello. Morrison Mayhem Productions, how can I help?”

  I crossed my fingers and prayed I’d got it wrong. “Can I speak with Dean?”

  “Dean?” came the sickly-sweet voice, shortly followed by the pop of bubblegum.

  “Yes, Dean Morrison.”


  The girl on the other end went quiet and my nerves calmed. I was wrong. Thank fuck.

  “He’s not in the office today. He’s out at auditions in Santa Monica. Can I take a name and a message?”

  I clicked the off button.

  That motherfucker, supposedly at his construction job, was at porn interviews. I’d even sent him with a packed lunch! My fiancé ran a porn company I had no fucking idea about. He looked me in the eye most mornings as he wandered off with his packed-fucking-lunch and went to manage a load of girls who got laid and earned him money. If I’d had the physical strength to crush my cell in my hand it would have been in a million pieces.

  Now I was angry.

  I stormed back to the bedroom, sat on the floor and went back to the paperwork.

  There were a couple more magazines and from the looks of it, he’d kept them because there’d been a feature about the company in them. That was nearly as bad as realizing Charmayne was one of his leading ladies.

  The folded-up bits of paper were receipts for nonsense—hotels, equipment and other stuff I was sure he would feed to an accountant at some point.

  I found a bank statement for a checking account and when I saw the number at the bottom I had to squint. There was no way we were living in this shithole apartment when he had access to a bank account with that much money in it. The statement was a month old and said that his production company was sat on just over two hundred thousand dollars.

  The next item I opened was the business registration for Morrison Mayhem Productions. According to the papers, he’d been in business for over five years and owned full rights to the company. At the very bottom, in black and white, was his signature and that of an attorney who had witnessed it.

  I opened another envelope and saw it was a pack from a life insurance firm. The policy was opened six months ago. There was one for Dean and in the event of his death, I was named as beneficiary. The second policy was in my name, but worryingly, it was for twice the amount that Dean’s covered—$3,000,000. I flipped to the back of the document, noticing what I hadn’t noticed on Dean’s.

  I’d signed Dean’s policy as his beneficiary.

  And I’d signed my own, too.

  Only, I hadn’t signed anything, because I knew nothing about them and there was only one reason people kept these things quiet: if they intended to cash in on them at some point. I’d seen enough hallmark movies to feel more than a little uneasy about my discovery.

  I had to get away from Dean before my sudden and unexpected death made him a very rich man.

  Wave

  I could have done without this crap.

  No one wanted to kick a pretty girl out of their bed, but it was a policy, a necessity.

  I’d returned home from my secret mission, the one that kept Gears’ old lady safe, and it was a dark reminder of the life I’d willingly walked away from.

  College parties, fuck bunnies and downright debauchery seemed acceptable when you left home under the guise of further education and becoming a functioning adult. I should have taken it as a compliment that I could still fit into that lifestyle, even at my more mature age, but I didn’t. I just needed to be away from it all—away from the reminders and parties, where the air was thick with betrayal and sin. It did nothing for my headspace.

  I did get laid, though. That was a night neither of those girls would forget for a while. I pitied anyone who went there after me. The little college fuckboys wouldn’t be living up to my reputation anytime soon.

  “Sweetheart.” I tapped her thigh which was draped over mine. “Time to go.”

  The celebration that had taken place after Gears had told Gigi she was safe was intense. The sheer adoration they had for each other was like a blinding light—look at it for too long and all you saw were spots until you’d blinked, like, a million times. Don’t get me wrong, I was fucking stoked that I’d been able to give them that. Gears was my brother, and he was made for the MC life and for Gigi. Her life until she met Gears was full of shit—shit no one should have to suffer, and after a short reprieve, she was back with us. For me, though, that was something I couldn’t have. I would have laid down my life for any of the guys who surrounded me every day, but no bitch was worth that kind of commitment.

  I lifted my head from the pillow and waited for the pounding to start. When it didn’t, the small amount of elation caused me to smile. “See… that smile says it’s not time for me to go. It’s time for me to get busy again.” She smacked her lips together and I felt it in my groin.

  “You gonna blow me again?”

  “You and your mind,” she whispered, and shuffled down the bed in my room at the club compound.

  She dragged a nail down my chest as her tongue licked the full length of me. Maybe she could stay for a few more minutes. My head flopped back onto the pillow with a groan.

  “You like it when I do that?”

  “Ahhh.”

  “Oh, he likes it like that.”

  “Sweetheart, if you’re talking you ain’t blowing.”

  Finally, she shut up and got down to business that delayed her eventual departure from my perfectly crafted world.

  Crafted to protect me from emotion.

  “Sweetheart.” Her thigh was back in its previous position, holding me prisoner. “You really gotta go now.”

  “It’s not even morning,” she moaned.

  “Exactly.” I tapped her leg, but on the third tap, I pushed it off mine instead. “This was a night time activity and I need to get some sleep.”

  She sat up and reached for the top I’d thrown on the floor earlier. “Can we talk? You know, over a beer. I like you, Wave.”

  For fuck’s sake.

  Here we go.

  I was going to have to scratch this one off my list for the future. Why didn’t they get it? I belonged to no one. The minute they talked about talking and hinted that they were after more, I swear my balls actually shriveled up.

  “Sure,” I lied. “I’ll check my schedule.”

  She didn’t miss the sarcasm in my voice. “Don’t be an ass, Wave. We’ve been fucking regularly for a while now.”

  “Fucking being the key word.”

  She sucked in breath and then started to pull on a pair of hot pants. When she looked back at me, she held new resolve. “I can convince you. I know just how to make you see that we can be good together for the long term. Exclusive.”

  And I knew just how to convince her that this would be a terrible idea. I’d pick up another chick and invite her back in here, and just like that, I’d be the asshole she always knew I was but she’d convinced herself that I wasn’t. Making her watch me laying it on another girl was an asshole way of doing it, but I figured that would be kinder than me having to tell her to her face that she wasn’t the one who would finally nail me down. Selfishly, it also meant less whining, tears and usually, the temper tantrums that finished off any bitch’s bad mood.

  “I’ll let you rest.”

  I rolled to my front, sure she’d try to latch onto my dick again in a last-ditch attempt. Instead, she climbed on my back and started to rodeo buck my ass. “Babe! Go.”

  The tone of my voice pulled her up short and I felt her teeth nip at my traps before she climbed off. I didn’t turn my head as the door opened and closed. Only then, I breathed in relief that I was alone. Just how I liked it.

  The thump of a fist hit my door. “Fuck off!”

  “You’d best come out here. There’s a chick downstairs and she’s causing a stir.”

  Fucking Stephanie.

  “I thought she went home,” I shouted back. “Tell her to go the fuck home.”

  Shadow went silent on the other side of my door, and just as I thought he’d gone to get rid of her, he spoke again. “Don’t think this one is going anywhere. Maybe Horn’s room if you don’t get a move on. You coming or what?”

  “Yeah. Although leaving her to Horn sounds appealing.” I threw back the covers and revved myself up for the ‘discussi
on’ Stephanie and I were about to have. I pulled my jeans on, reached for my cut and opened the door.

  Shadow, who lived up to his name, was outside my door, silently lying in wait with a grin on his face. “Thought you’d gone.”

  “Not gonna miss this.”

  I looked back at him just to make sure he was still there. Even though I knew he was right behind me I couldn’t hear a thing from him. How the fuck a six-foot five motherfucker in motorcycle boots had the finesse and stealth of a ballet dancer was beyond me, but I figured it had something to do with his time in the Special Forces. Shadow was the complete opposite of me.

  I had a thick head of blonde hair; his head was shaved to the point that sometimes I could see the outline of his skull. I was tanned; Shadow looked like he’d lived in the dark for far too long and we often made jokes about him being a vampire. Although calling him Edward Cullen had earned me an uppercut that I felt for a week. I gave off a friendly, calm demeanor and sometimes it was my best asset as people generally underestimated me. Shadow, Jesus fuck! When he walked into a room or unknown situation, he assessed, prioritized, dealt with it and moved on, like busting heads and breaking bones was business as usual. Gears and I had become close to him, but only as close as he ever allowed. There was a darkness in him that you wanted to understand but were afraid to get to know in equal measure.

  “You’re smiling. Should I be worried?” I asked as I pushed through the last door into the general bar area. The place was busy and the music was pumping. Some of my brothers were at the pool table and some were propping up the bar, shooting back tequila. I scanned the heads and didn’t see Stephanie. “Where the fuck did she go?”

  “Right there.” Shadow pointed at Horn who had his back to me. If he was already moving in on Stephanie then great, but why the fuck had Shadow got me out of bed? I’d threaten to punch him for dragging me out of my pit, but it would be a pointless endeavor.

  Just then Horn threw back his head in laughter, revealing the girl he’d blocked from my view.