A PRICE TO PAY: A Dark Bad Boy Romance

by Zoey Parker

  “Eat up,” she said, handing him a spoon.

  Cain took a bite, and immediately followed it with another and another, his hunger suddenly flooding through his body like water from a broken dam. It was, without doubt, the best chili he'd ever had, with the perfect blend of spices and a rich consistency.

  “Not bad,” he nodded between huge bites.

  “Don't gush, you'll embarrass me,” Missy replied.

  Cain chuckled once, then plunged a muffin into his chili and wolfed it down in a single bite. He couldn't remember the last time he'd had a home-cooked meal, but as he searched his memory, he realized it was probably the night of his VP ceremony.

  I'll bet she cooked that food too, he thought. In which case, she's actually pretty fucking talented.

  “Where did you learn how to do this?” Cain asked, spooning more chili into his mouth.

  “My mother,” Missy answered.

  “She must have been great in the kitchen.”

  “Well, it's not like she could have taught me how to make steamed mussels or salmon tartare,” Missy smirked, “but she knew how to make the things bikers like to eat, so I've got that down, basically. Burgers, ribs, maybe even a corned beef brisket if I'm feeling fancy.”

  “You cook like this for Hunter?” Cain asked.

  “Wow, you're certainly asking me a lot of questions for a change,” Missy observed. “Does this mean you're actually going to start treating me like a person, instead of just grunting and yelling at me?”

  “Fuck it, forget I asked, then,” snapped Cain, pushing his bowl away.

  “Oh, don't be like that,” Missy teased, shoving the bowl back in front of him. “I was just kidding, I didn't mean to set you off again. Besides, you may as well finish the half-spoonful you've got left in there anyway. You don't strike me as the kind of guy who 'leaves a little for Mister Manners.'”

  Cain sighed and picked up his spoon, finishing off the chili.

  “Thank you,” said Missy. “If you really want to know, I mostly cook like this for myself. I do breakfasts for Hunter, but by dinner time, there's no way of knowing when he'll be home. So I make what I want, and save the leftovers for him to pick at whenever he gets back.”

  “He's a lucky guy, to eat this well so often,” he murmured.

  “Thank you for that lovely and unexpected compliment,” Missy said. She picked up Cain's bowl and brought it over to the pot, ladling more chili into it. “I know if I ask whether you want more, you'll say no whether you want more or not, so I'm just going to get you more anyway, okay? If you want it, eat it. If you don't, leave it. Deal?”

  Cain nodded and Missy put the bowl down in front of him.

  He considered it for a moment, then starting eating again.

  Chapter 22

  Cain

  Once dinner was over and the dishes were soaking in the sink, Missy showed Cain the deck of cards she'd gotten at the Shop-N-Stop. “Got any favorite games?” she asked.

  “Sure,” he said, “but we don't have anything to bet with.”

  Missy laughed. “You don't have much imagination, do you? Jeez, when you were a kid, you must have been a terrible friend to have on a rainy day.”

  “When I was a kid, I was in juvie,” Cain said, “so rainy days were pretty much the same as sunny ones to us, what with not being allowed outside and all.”

  “Juvie, huh? So if convicts play cards for cigarettes in prison, does that mean that the kids in juvie play for candy cigarettes instead?”

  “Hilarious,” Cain replied. “I take it you never spent any time inside?”

  “Nope, I left that to dad and Hunter,” said Missy, grabbing a pen and some scratch paper. “They never made it look like much fun. Now do you want to play or not, sourpuss? We can each start with an imaginary thousand bucks and keep track of the bets by writing them down. First one to run out of make-believe money loses.”

  Cain sighed. “I guess it beats staring at the wall, so sure.”

  “That's the spirit!” Missy exclaimed, shuffling the cards. “So what'll it be? Blackjack? Five-Card Draw? Just don't say Texas Hold-'Em, 'cause I forget how to play and I'm too lazy to learn again.”

  “Blackjack's fine,” he said.

  They played for almost two hours, until Cain's imaginary account ran down to zero.

  “Guess that's the game, then,” Missy said, “unless you want to start betting items of clothing.” She wagged her eyebrows at him suggestively.

  “You wish,” Cain smirked. As he said it, he found that the image appeared in his mind even though he hadn't tried to conjure it—Missy getting up from the table and removing her panties, the last item of clothing before she stood completely naked before him under the milky yellow lights of the kitchen. What might her exposed breasts look like? Would her pussy be shaved, or...?

  He shook his head to clear the thought away, tossing the pen aside. He didn't know where that unwelcome fantasy had come from. Damn it, he barely even tolerated her, and now he was thinking about her like that? He decided to blame the pills for turning his brain into mush.

  “Dice was always more my game anyway,” he said.

  “Classy winner,” Missy laughed. “At least you didn't accuse me of cheating.”

  “I'm still not entirely sure you didn't. How the hell did you get so good?”

  Missy shrugged. “Cards are just numbers. I'm no math geek, but handling the product and the money at the Knife keeps my counting skills pretty sharp. As long as I can more or less keep track of which cards have already been played and which ones haven't...”

  “I didn't realize I was sitting down to play cards with goddamn Rain Man,” Cain grumbled. “If that's how you play, the game was kind of over before it began, wasn't it?”

  “Would you rather play something else instead?”

  “Other than cards, we don't exactly have a lot of options around here, do we?” he said. “Unless you want to make paper boats or play Tic-Tac-Toe, or any of the other lame shit you probably had in your rainy-day activity book growing up.”

  “I'll have you know it was an awesome rainy-day book,” she replied primly, “but no, I had something else in mind. Remember when I mentioned that I might pick up a board game at the store?”

  Cain's eyes narrowed warily. “You didn't.”

  “You bet your ass I did,” Missy said. “I wasn't sure if cards would be your thing, and I thought it might be a good idea to have a back-up plan so I wouldn't have to spend the night watching shitty TV and listening to you grumble. Besides, you're going to love this, I just know it!”

  Missy went into the bedroom, rummaged around in a shopping bag, and returned with...

  “You have got to be fucking kidding me,” Cain groaned.

  She held up the colorful box for a classic battery-operated game called “Doctor's Orders.” Cain remembered seeing the commercials for it when he was a kid. The players pretended to be surgeons, moving their plastic game pieces around the outer track and drawing cards to determine which bones or organs they had to carefully remove from the prone cartoon body drawn on the board. The body parts were labeled with their slang terms, and if removed incorrectly, each part would trigger a specific noise to indicate that the pieces had to be moved back—the “Peepers” peeped, the “Honker” honked, the “Ticker” ticked, the “Guns” went bang, and so on.

  “See?” Missy smiled. “Now we can have fun and learn more about what's wrong with your body!”

  Cain grimaced, then nodded. “Yeah, okay. You're fucking sick, though. I hope you know that.”

  “Ahh, perhaps, but what's making me sick?” Missy asked playfully, setting up the game. “Is something burning in my 'Brain Pan?' Maybe someone popped my 'Six-Pack,' or put too much filling in my 'Pie-Hole!'”

  “Yeah, I got something for your 'pie-hole,' all right...” Cain mumbled.

  “I'll bet you do, pal,” Missy shot back. “You want to be the red piece or the blue one?”

  “Whichever one gets this over
with.”

  “Red it is, then,” she agreed. “You can roll the dice first, since you said that was your thing.”

  “Swell,” he said, picking the dice up and shaking them.

  Chapter 23

  Bones

  Bones sat on the front porch of Cain's house, watching the setting sun paint the windows of the neighborhood houses in shades of pink and red.

  His bike was parked in the driveway next to Missy's car, with his cut carefully folded up in the saddle bag. He leaned back in the rusty metal folding chair next to the front door, a lanky man in a sweat-stained white t-shirt, his bald head hidden by a ten-gallon hat, his cowboy boots up on the railing in front of him. Anyone passing by who looked his way might easily assume that he was just a local hick out enjoying the sunset.

  However, Bones' casual posture was a careful act. He'd have preferred to stand guard on his feet like a sentry ready to leap into action at the first sign of trouble, his hands hovering near his guns instead of laced behind his head. But that would have attracted attention, and made neighbors nervous. Maybe nervous enough to call the cops—or other, more dangerous people they might be acquainted with.

  So he had to play it loose, even though every muscle in his body was tense. From deep within the craters of his hollow eyes, he took in everything around him with the detached, meticulous focus of a security camera.

  Bones had been born Louis Bonaparte, in Dayton. He'd joined the army the day after 9/11 and worked his way into the ranks of the legendary 82nd Airborne Division as a lieutenant commander. He'd led covert special ops in Iraq, and during that time, he learned to embrace the yin and yang of his personal philosophy: That life—and war—were equal parts stealth and shock-and-awe. Sometimes it was important to stay under the radar, and other times, it was just as important to leave a message in the form of scorched earth.

  When the shock-and-awe arm of his approach resulted in the accidental deaths of several Iraqi civilians due to bad intelligence, Bones was dishonorably discharged. By then, war was everything he knew and the only thing he really wanted, so he headed back to Ohio and joined the baddest MC he could find. His skills as a tactician often offset Hunter's rage and bravado, and his reputation as a ruthless fighter allowed him to climb the ranks of his chosen army once more, this time earning him the patch of Sergeant-At-Arms.

  And now it was time to go to war again, and Bones couldn't be happier.

  He enjoyed being an Eagle, and he felt closer to this family of outlaws than he ever had with his platoons in the military. He liked the freedom of the biker lifestyle, and the brutal simplicity of the codes they lived by. But most of the biker life also involved sitting around drinking and carousing aimlessly, interrupted by the occasional dope deal or hijacking. Even the violence was often brief, and was usually confined to a messy brawl in a parking lot with chains and wrenches.

  No, Bones missed real war, and the longing itched deep in his veins every day like a heroin craving. He missed strategies and missions, and the blasphemous thrill of mowing down hordes of enemy combatants with automatic weapons or blowing them to pieces with well-placed explosives.

  Finally, with these Hernandez punks on the move, it seemed like Bones would get his wish. He knew the Eagles were outnumbered and outgunned, but that just made the prospect of war with them all the more enticing.

  Fighting the insurgents in Mosul and Fallujah had taught Bones that having a worthy opponent only forces one to become the best version of oneself. These cartel members seemed like worthy opponents indeed. Bones had seen specials about them on TV, and he knew that many of them were ex-soldiers themselves.

  Maybe this conflict will be good for the Eagles, Bones thought. It'll be bloody, certainly, and we may endure losses. But in the end, maybe it'll turn this sloppy band of gearheads and road-pirates into a disciplined cadre of soldiers.

  The sun was gone now, and night was creeping in all around. Bones wistfully wished for the night-vision goggles he used to carry in the service, then thought about how that would look to passersby and chortled to himself.

  Suddenly, he heard a rustling sound coming from a cluster of hedges neighboring Cain's house. He craned his neck to look, and saw a dark shape moving behind the thick branches.

  I gotta admit, fellas, Bones thought as he stood up and drew his gun, I'm more than a little surprised you'd try the same thing twice in one day. Maybe you ain't quite as clever as I thought you'd be.

  Bones leaned back and rapped his knuckles on the front window twice, keeping the gun pointed downward next to his leg. A moment later, Missy appeared in the window, opening it. “What's wrong?”

  “Maybe nothing,” Bones said quietly, “but I saw something over by the hedge, so I'm going to check it out. Just keep your ears open and your guns close for the next minute or two, okay?”

  “Sure,” said Missy. “Thanks.” She shut the window again.

  Bones crept over to the hedge, thumbing the safety off on his pistol and wrapping his finger around the trigger. He peered into the depths of the bushes.

  Something jumped out, and Bones raised his gun quicker than lightning.

  A fat brown squirrel landed on the grass and looked up at him, twitching its nose.

  Bones let out an uneasy laugh, tucking his gun away again. “Go bury your nuts someplace else, will ya? It ain't safe here.”

  He walked back to the porch and rapped on the window again. When Missy came into the living room and slid the window open, he said, “False alarm. Sorry.”

  “No problem,” she replied. “Thanks for checking it out.”

  “It's what I'm here for,” Bones grinned, tipping his hat.

  “Do you want a bowl of chili, or a beer or something? I mean, you're just sitting out there...”

  “Nah, I'm fine,” Bones said. “If I've got my hand on a beer or a bowl, it'll make it harder to reach for my gun in a hurry if I need to. Thank you, though. Maybe put some aside for me to take home when Keith gets here, huh?”

  “You got it,” Missy said, smiling. She slid the window shut again.

  Bones was preparing to settle back into the chair again when he heard another rustling sound, this time behind the house. He started to reach for the window to tap on it, then thought better of it.

  If I'm going to spook them every time a chipmunk crosses the yard, Bones thought, this is gonna be a long night for all of us.

  He stepped off the porch and pulled out his gun again, keeping it low. He placed his feet in the grass carefully, making sure he made no noise at all. A light breeze drifted past and he sniffed the air out of habit, trying to detect the scent of unfamiliar cigarette smoke, cologne, or human sweat nearby—any sign that someone might be stalking the house. There was nothing but the faint aroma of chili from inside the house, and the flowers in the neighbor's garden.

  As he poked his head around the side of the house, he saw a pair of gleaming eyes over a pointed snout and sharp teeth. The 'possum hissed at him once before retreating under the house with a flick of its wiry, worm-like tail.

  Bones sighed, tucking his gun away in his waistband.

  A split-second later, a thin, strong wire looped around his throat and constricted from behind.

  Bones gagged and struggled, reaching behind him for the gun. Before he could grab it, a rough hand snatched it away and his legs were kicked out from under him. He sank to his knees, clawing at his neck as he felt the wire sink through his flesh. There was a hot spurt beneath his right ear, and he realized that his jugular had been severed. A moment later, he felt a towel wrap around his neck and shoulders to catch the blood.

  How could I not have smelled them coming? Bones asked himself, trying to get a look at the men behind him. They wore ski masks, but Bones could see an oily substance smeared around their eyes and lips. It was special forces issue, made to neutralize the skin's natural odors. He recognized it. He'd worn it numerous times when stalking his prey through the desert.

  Fuck me, he mused. They really are s
oldiers after all.

  Dark blooms appeared at the corners of his vision, and he felt himself getting light-headed. The world cartwheeled away from him giddily, and all he could think was, No war, I'll never get to have another war, everything just ends here for me on some stupid fucking suburban lawn. And no gunshots or explosions, Christ, everything's so goddamn quiet...

  Then the curtains closed over his eyes, and the last thing he ever felt was grass on his cheek before his body was swiftly dragged off into the night.

  Chapter 24

  Hunter

  Hunter stood in the kitchen with a towel around his waist and peered at the smoldering rectangular lump of burned plastic, oozing gloopy-looking gravy and pink chicken-juice onto the bottom of the oven. It smelled like a fire at a chemical factory and he coughed, waving the fumes away from his face with an oven mitt.