Tread: Biker Romance (Ronin MC Series Book 1)

by Morrow, Justin

  I went back to my house and saw it with whole new eyes. The possibility of not getting my girl back threatened to make me want to toss the couch into the TV. Instead, I made sure everything was how she left it. It seemed important right then to leave the clean clothes in the basket on the couch so that she could put them where she liked. Instead, I packed from the dresser.

  Back at the saloon, I took my seat at the poker table upstairs. Royal sat at the head. Booker and Alt followed behind me. The rest of the available boys lined the table on either side. Hendrix sat silently, his foot bouncing under the table, shaking it like an earthquake tremor every few seconds.

  “Let’s make the call,” Royal said calmly as he typed on a laptop in front of him. He picked up the phone. “Should be a head honcho answering, the peon that answered earlier was supposed to be getting his boss.”

  We waited in silence for the.

  “Hello? Yeah, this is the Ronin MC.” He put the phone on speaker and placed it on the table. “Who am I speaking to?”

  “Dante Montago, Vice Presidente of La Familia Diablo, Chihuahua chapter.” All eyes flew around the room. The same fucking guys we just stole from and got back from killing. Fuck!

  Royal cleared his throat and continued calmly as I choked on every breath to keep from screaming. “Awesome. Now you got some things of ours, and we have some of yours. What are we going to do with that?”

  “Not a clue, blanco puto For starters, I think I’m going to have my men taste your women. Then once they’re used up, I imagine we’ll dispose of them. I hope you enjoy snorting my coke.”

  My eyes bulged and I sprung forward, violently jostling the table. Coke? Harvey had our women steal coke from a cartel?! Royal eyed me and held a finger to his lips, not wanting to let this guy know he was on speaker.

  “Yeah, about that. See, I think that’ll actually cost you everything if you do that.”

  “Oh? How do you suppose? Which one do you like better? I think I will take her for myself,” the man said, completely confident in his position.

  “Well, you could do that. I guess you don’t mind a hundred blood crazed lunatics knocking at your door neither, huh? We have chapters all over this country.”

  “Please! There is no way you will be finding these women, or me for that matter. As for your men, I will enjoy seeking vengeance for the men you killed.”

  “Is that so? Well, you see the thing is, technology is amazing these days. I mean, you can trace almost anything, anywhere.”

  What the hell was Royal doing? He was going to get them killed.

  “You cannot trace this phone, burro. We have the best cyber security money can buy.”

  “You could believe that. However, I know the best hacker money can buy, and guess what I’m looking at right now.”

  “What is that, pinche gringo”

  “A nice mansion in Chihuahua.”

  “One of many, no doubt.”

  Royal pushed the laptop so that the screen was facing away from him to show the table. “One with a pool, manicured lawn, helicopter pad. Is that a race track in the back? What do you crazies race? Burros?”

  I shook my head. Please don’t tell this asshole about the GPS. I met his eyes and he shook his head with a smirk.

  “I do not know what the fuck you’re playing at, blanco, but you’re about to piss me off. When I’m pissed off, I enjoy bathing in the blood of white women. Won’t be good for you, since I have one at my disposal.”

  “I don’t think you’re going to be doing that. Not unless you want me to wipe your chapter off the face of the earth. I will destroy you. I’m talking scorched earth, motherfucker!” Royal yelled, leaning closer to the phone, the tendons in his neck popping.

  Dante chuckled dryly. “Oh. You want to play Tom Cruise? Very well, let us play. There is a mesa you know well. The one my men died at, si? Meet me there. Four hours is enough time, yes? We’ll discuss how you’ve fucked with us for the last time.”

  “Oh, we’ll come play.”

  “Your disrespect is working my patience. First, you take our skinny comadreja. Then you kill my men. Then you steal my drugs. THEN! Then you kill a poor, innocent immigrant working to better his family! We are La Familia Diablo! For this you will pay dearly. With your lives, Dios willing.” With that, the man hung up the phone. Royal was angry, you could read it plain as day on his face. Good.

  Royal put a finger very carefully down onto the table, like it was a point on a map, before meeting our eyes. “This is war. Tread, I want you to constantly monitor that signal you found and map out every rock of that mesa. Mac, I want you to gather anyone who isn’t here already and tell them to prep for war. Prospects, everyone but Harvey. Alt, I need the deuce and a half ready as well as the war machine. Meet back here in two hours.”

  THE FIRST THOUGHT IN MY head was that I had died.

  I moved my head to the side as my temples throbbed, my neck ached, and my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. My stomach made itself known by rolling violently, making me gag.

  “Gah,” I croaked, smacking my lips together as my throat tried to stick together when I swallowed. I coughed, jarring my hands. The rattling sound that followed startled me so much I tried to roll onto my stomach to get away from it.

  That’s when I realized that my hands were bound above my head. My eyes flew open and I craned my neck back to see that I was handcuffed to a wrought-iron bedframe.

  It took me two seconds to go from ‘what in the world’ to ‘oh my fucking God, I’m gonna die’. Kicking my legs, I tried to sit up as I looked around wildly. I was in a nondescript bedroom. There wasn’t much to it, just a bed, some windows that had drapes covering them, and two doors that were firmly shut.

  As I got my butt under me, my hands had more room to reach out to the sides. One hand touched what felt like hair and I screamed. In the waning light, it took me a few seconds to make out the face next to my hip.

  “Tatum?” I whispered, my voice trembling. She didn’t move. I couldn’t even tell if she was breathing. Barely breathing myself, I leaned down and asked again, “Tatum?”

  When she didn’t move a second time, I had to resist the urge to scream for help. I may have been working off my naïveté, but I wasn’t stupid. The fact that we were taken flashed through my head, and the words of the Mexican man made me shudder. We were in deep shit if they were after us for killing the mule and didn’t know where the drugs were being held.

  I looked to the window again. The light was fading, not growing, so the sun was going down. We had been at the saloon right before lunch time. The guys should be pulling in around now, if we were in the same time zone still.

  I closed my eyes and rested my head against the unforgiving metal holding me captive. Tread was going to lose his mind. Just picturing him pulling into town and finding me gone had me gritting my teeth and fighting tears.

  It was interesting how a few months ago I was slated to marry someone and had never thought about what happened after I disappeared. But with Tread, a man that I had fewer ties to, I felt more of a connection, and that was all I could think about.

  Tread would find us. He would tear into Harvey and Veesa wouldn’t rest until we were rescued. His nightmares would be worse than ever, if he allowed himself to sleep. That fact brought a pain to my chest that wouldn’t fade away. Poor Tread had enough things to haunt him. I never wanted to be one of them.

  Tatum’s lack of movement was starting to freak me out. I raised a hand and hesitantly hovered it over her face until it was shaking an inch from her nose. I closed my eyes when my panicked breathing threatened to shut out my other senses.

  Finally. There. I felt a small puff of air hit my fingers and dropped the shackled hand to her shoulder, giving her a strong squeeze. She was alive. What was taking her so long to wake up, though? I remembered the cloth going over my nose. I remembered the sweet smell and light-headedness. Then nothing for sixish hours. Another thought occurred to me.

  What if it was
the next day? Had we lost more time than I thought? My Vet Tech training kicked in and I started thinking about how dangerous it was to keep someone sedated for long periods on inhalant anesthetics. It caused liver damage, and even death, because the tongue could easily block the airway. And Tatum was on her back.

  Shit. Was her breathing weak because she couldn’t take a full breath? I pushed at Tatum’s shoulder, trying to roll her to the side, but the angle was bad and her body was so limp that even when I got her shoulder off the bed her hips and legs didn’t budge. Moving my knee into her back, I tried to force her right leg over the left with my foot. Everything was floppy and almost always went back to the way it was before I started.

  Finally, I moved my whole body against her so that I was a wedge between her back and the bed. Her weight was on me, but she wouldn’t choke on her spit, or suffocate on her own tongue. As I panted against her neck, I closed my eyes in exhaustion. Something so simple shouldn’t have taken so much out of me.

  I opened my eyes, Tatum’s skin inches in front of me. It was too close to focus on, but I was too tired to move. I let my mind wander as the light slowly drained from the room, hoping that she would stir awake. At least I could feel her breathing as her ribs expanded against my stomach. My eyes were so heavy, I couldn’t keep them open anymore.

  Just before they closed, I noticed a black mark on Tatum’s all white shirt. It stood out because I specifically remember her telling me many times she couldn’t come in the garage because she was wearing it. It was a peasant blouse that had a wide neck and flowing arms.

  Images flashed through my head of other black dots I had seen recently, mainly the ones splattered on my face. I wondered if the stain on her shirt was blood. Lifting my head, my own neck twinged with the strain as I grabbed the material with my mouth and pulled it away from her skin.

  The light was barely filling the room anymore and my eyes were playing tricks on me, showing dots everywhere the more I tried to focus. Sighing, I let my head fall back and tried to find a more comfortable spot with a woman on top of me and my hands stretched out above my head.

  Despite my discomfort, my eyelids quickly became too heavy.

  “GET OFF.” A KICK TO my shins accompanied the demand and I opened my eyes to Tatum’s head coming towards mine violently. I rolled away with effort considering she was throwing all of her weight onto me at the same time. “Grace? What are you doing, spooning me?” Tatum slurred, sounding drunk. Definitely not the way I woke up, though I didn’t try to talk too much.

  It was still dark outside but the moon was bright, allowing me to see the shadow of the woman next to me. “I didn’t want you to choke and die, you ingrate,” I grumbled, still feeling the headache pound at my temples.

  “Where are we? What happened? What?” She pulled at her arms, quickly rolling like an alligator on a line and twisting her chains.

  “Will you stop? We’re chained to a bed. I don’t know where. I haven’t seen anyone yet.” I watched Tatum thrash around, her hair getting pulled out as she fought to get her arms out of the shackles. “Is your neck sore?”

  Tatum stopped finally, and blew a piece of hair out of her eyes. “What? Yeah, everything hurts. I feel like I got ran over.”

  “I think we were drugged. I woke up and you were still out. It would make sense, since you’re a lot smaller than me.” I work to push my butt up the bed, digging my heels into the mattress for traction. My shoulders screamed at the new position.

  “I feel drunk sort of. Probably drugged. Those assholes.” Tatum twisted to her knees and easily walked up the bed with her chains crossed in a big X. Damn it. That looked way easier than the way I just did it. “I have to pee.”

  I glared at her. “Well you better hold it. We have nowhere else to go.”

  “What day is it?”

  “I don’t know. I woke up as the sun went down. I don’t know which day though.”

  Tatum wiggled her head and shoulders trying to move her hair away from her face without using her hands. “Can’t be too long after we were taken. Tread should be back by now. He’ll find us.”

  “How can you be sure? We could be in Brazil for all we know.”

  Tatum smiled widely, her teeth making her look like a skeleton head bobbing in the night. “Come here, Gracie.”

  “What?” I asked skeptically.

  “Come here and let me feel your ass,” she practically purred.

  “Are you out of your ever loving—”

  Tatum pinched my thigh, hard. I yelped and moved my hip closer to her waiting fingers. “Little bit closer, Grace.”

  My shoulders were stretched to the breaking point, my hand all the way behind my back, stretched tight by the chain. I panted out a pain-filled breath. “I can’t move anymore.”

  I felt her hand skim inside of my jeans. I wondered for a second if she was searching for underwear before I felt the sting of her peeling the plastic away from where it had fused to my skin. My heart practically exploded in my chest as I realized I still had the GPS watch.

  “Oh my—” I breathed.

  “Hush, Grace. The walls may have ears,” Tatum quickly cut me off.

  I clamped my mouth shut and straightened against the headboard. My bladder was full, but what was getting to me worse was the cold. I looked over to the windows again and could see the curtains flutter. I was almost positive it wasn’t open before I fell asleep. This meant someone had been in the room when we were sleeping.

  For some reason, that freaked me out more than actually being chained to a bed. I shivered.

  “Looks like you had the right idea with spooning before. With that window open, we’re gonna freeze real quick.” Tatum slid closer to me, her hand moving behind her back like mine. I moved closer to her until we were hip to hip.

  “How long do you think it’ll take?” I murmured.

  Tatum shrugged. “Dunno. Assuming we weren’t put on a plane, and Tread doesn’t lose his fool mind when he finds out we are gone, then it won’t take long.”

  The thought of Tread assuming the worst was happening to us brought back the ache in my chest. My fingers twitched to touch it, but couldn’t get far.

  “I hope you’re right. Are you hungry?”

  Tatum groaned. “Don’t think about it. We’re sitting good as far as I’m concerned.”

  “Yeah? How do you figure?” I asked, looking around the barren room again.

  “No one’s beat us yet. We aren’t in any pain at all.”

  “Speak for yourself,” I grumbled, trying to find a comfortable spot. There wasn’t one.

  “Suck it up, babe. Still sure you want to stay in the dirty south? No urges to go home to the mountains?” she asked with a smirk I didn’t appreciate at all.

  I sighed and seriously entertained the thought of going home to Utah. Church, no cussing—which had actually become quite liberating—and no Tread. Despite the danger we were currently facing, and all of the hair-raising moments I had since I was stranded next to the border, I couldn’t make myself regret it.

  I felt more comfortable in my skin, whereas before I felt like I was trying to contort my body into what was expected of me. Sure, with the MC, they wanted me to be tougher, but it was different. Take hand-to-hand combat. It was quickly apparent that I didn’t have the talent for knives, so Veesa—who was eerily proficient with knives—passed me to Lola, who taught me to shoot.

  Rarely did I feel lacking with my new family, and especially not with Tread. Before, I was playing a game of poker with a checkerboard, and now I was just missing a queen or a jack.

  No, I would never feel comfortable going back to my old life, but with some experience, I could definitely have a place by Tread’s side, if he would have me.

  However, the thought of never seeing my mother again made my eyes sting and my nose itch. She was the only person who seemed to get that I wanted more, no matter how hard she tried to mold me.

  “No. I’m happy. Or I was before this run,” I finally ans
wered quietly.

  Tatum studied my face in the moonlight and nodded her head. “You think you’ll want to see them again? You’re family, I mean.”

  I swallowed past the lump in my throat. “Maybe one day. Not now. Do you think Tread would go with me?”

  Tatum snorted. “If he doesn’t want to go, just mention the ex-fiancé. Brother doesn’t share.”

  “He doesn’t have to worry about that. I’m his as much as he’s mine.”

  “Have you heard from Kit lately?” she asked, changing the subject.

  “Yeah. She’s good,” I said shortly. I had never told her, or anyone, about the man she was dating.

  “Hmm. Does she sound happy?” Tatum asked, her shoulders starting to shake as the wind picked up.

  “It’s hard to tell through a text. I think she’s trying to be.”

  “That’s good,” Tatum said, resting her head on my shoulder. I looked over in surprise, but she was already out. I waited another minute before laying my head gently on hers and resting my eyes.

  “HEY, YOU DON’T HAPPEN TO have your gun by any chance, do you?” Tatum asked the next afternoon.

  I couldn’t help but snort. “You know, I’m not that stupid. I actually did check when I woke up. Lying flat on my back clued me in right away. Kinda hard to miss a holster digging in.”

  “Hey, you forgot about the other thing,” she said with a smile.

  “Only because it’s flat.”

  Tatum’s chuckle was cut off sharply when the door opened suddenly. “Oh thank God. I’m about to piss this bed, dude.”

  I thought that may have been unwise, her speaking first, when the man that had kidnapped us lowered his eyes to glare at her. And here we were doing so good at not getting hurt.

  The man walked towards the bed aggressively and I shrank into Tatum. Her muscles were stiff and didn’t give at all. I watched the guy produce a key and unlock the chain at the headboard instead of my hands. When he yanked on the chain, I fell to the floor headfirst. My cheek scraped the tile, making me hiss as it peeled the skin.