Red Eyes MC: Books 1 - 3

by Grey, Blair

  But we didn’t all have the same conclusions, still.

  “So we have to go after them,” Marcus said decisively. “Those fucking Unknowns. We all know they’re the ones behind this.”

  “We don’t know that,” Ray snapped, scowling at Marcus. Marcus met his eyes for a moment in a stare-down, but he was the one to look away first. “What we need to do,” Ray continued, “is figure out a way to get our money back. We can pretend that we’re renovating headquarters, at least for a little while, but we have to get that money back.”

  Everyone started brainstorming plans for getting the money back, but no one could really come up with anything other than just working hard for the coming month. That wasn’t going to cut it. Another option would be to take over some other MC, to steal money from them, but no one liked that plan with the Unknowns already trying to move in on our territory. Whether or not they were the ones behind the initial attack on our headquarters, we didn’t know what they might be planning, and the last thing we needed was to stretch ourselves too thin and give them an easy opening.

  I could think of one way to get my hands on that much money, but I definitely wasn’t about to bring it up in the middle of the meeting.

  If I could get married within the month, my inheritance would cover the MC’s losses. As before, the only person I could think of who might possibly marry me within the month, even as a sham marriage, was Belle. When it was for my own selfish reasons, because I wanted to leave the MC and better myself, I knew that neither she or Ray could ever go along with it.

  But what if I wasn’t asking out of selfish motives? What if marrying Belle could save the MC, thereby helping Ray? He couldn’t be mad at us for the fake marriage if it was the only way we could get our hands on enough money to save Red Eyes. And what’s more, I knew that Belle would do anything to save her father.

  Sure, it would mean that yet again, I couldn’t get myself out of this life. That maybe I would end up tied to the MC forever. But Ray would owe me something. And anyway, wouldn’t it be better to end up in the MC but married to Belle than having nothing and no one?

  I’d have to talk to Belle about it, though. I wouldn’t do anything against her will. I had told her about the inheritance and the marriage I needed to have, but I had stopped short before suggesting that she marry me for the sake of it. I had maybe thought, in some wild part of my mind, that she might suggest it. Even though I could never really hope for that.

  Now, I had reason to bring it up.

  “Do we have a contingency plan if we can’t manage to come up with the money?” Braxton asked.

  But we all knew what the contingency plan was. If we couldn’t come up with the money, we would have no choice but to resort to violence. If we couldn’t stake our claim on the area using money, we would need to stake it using force.

  And I knew I was going to be very involved in this, no matter how loath I was of it. I was going to have to be some of the main muscle, alongside Marcus and Ray no doubt. Not only that, but I knew Ray was going to want to make a move on this soon. He couldn’t let it go unanswered for too long; every day, our claim here got weaker and weaker. We had to do something.

  I still didn’t want to have any part of it. I didn’t want to go around beating people up, and especially not over something stupid like money. I didn’t want to be some average thug. I wanted something more with my life. Sure, whoever it was had stolen a lot of money from the club, but I didn’t want to kill a man over that.

  I had to talk to Belle. There had to be another way we could fix this.

  To my surprise, she called me right after the meeting was over, as I walked out of Ray’s house with a couple of the guys. I paused, waving them on. I let them get a good distance away from me before I answered. “Hey,” I said, unable to keep concern out of my voice. Yet again, I was worried that the only reason she was calling me was because something was wrong. After all, hadn’t we agreed, the previous day, that we were going to take a rest until things calmed down a little?

  “I have some things I need to talk to you about,” Belle said in a rush. “I know you said you needed to think some things over, but I can’t wait.”

  “Okay,” I said slowly. I had some things I needed to talk to her about, too, after all. “Where are you?” I glanced toward the mother-in-law house, half-expecting to see her looking out one of the windows. Not that I could meet her there, under the watchful eye of her father.

  “I’m at the diner,” Belle said. “It’s pretty dead in here if you wanted to talk.”

  I thought about that for a minute. If we kept meeting at the diner, people were sure to start raising some eyebrows at it. But then again, if we were going to get married, even if it was just for the sake of getting our hands on that money, better start getting people used to the idea of it now.

  Besides, I didn’t want to wait on this. Every second we wasted was another second for Ray to plan some attack on the Unknowns or whoever else may have raided us. If it went on for too long, I was bound to get caught up in it.

  I nodded, even though she couldn’t see it. “All right, I’m on my way,” I told her.

  I felt strange, trying to convince her to marry me. I had just told her that I thought we needed to pause. Even if Ray couldn’t see any other way to get his hands on $400,000, there was no reason to think that he’d agree to let me marry his daughter. He’d see it as blackmail, probably, of the highest order.

  But I had to try at least. For my own sake, and for Ray and everyone else in Red Eyes. Otherwise, I was going to hate myself for having squandered my chance to fix things without anyone getting hurt.

  I headed to the diner.

  24

  Belle

  I felt breathless as I waited for Will to come into the diner. “Can you keep an eye on things?” I asked Nicole as I spotted him coming down the block.

  Nicole followed my gaze and then gave me a knowing smirk. “Yeah, of course,” she said. She winked at me. “I’ll keep everyone out of the back if you want a little privacy to, you know.”

  I hit her lightly on the arm. “It’s not like that,” I said sternly. “Get your mind out of the gutter.”

  Nicole laughed. “Hey, I wasn’t judging!” she said.

  I rolled my eyes and pretended to focus as I waited for Will to come in and have a seat. Instead of sitting at the counter like he usually did, he chose a booth in the corner. Quieter, more secluded. It would raise eyebrows if anyone noticed us back there, but then again, people were bound to start raising eyebrows if we kept chatting at the counter, too.

  I watched as he flipped through the menu for a moment. Then, I took a deep breath and went over to him, sitting down across from him and pushing a white envelope toward him.

  Will frowned down at it. “What’s this?” he asked. “What’s going on?”

  “I know you said you didn’t have time to do your research about college,” I told him. “So I stopped by the college for you this morning during my break. That’s all the information there. And an application, already mostly filled out. It’s going to cost you about fifty thousand, which seems pretty absurd, but with your inheritance, I’m sure that’s not a problem, right?”

  I didn’t know why I had done it. It had just occurred to me that morning that I had a little bit of free time and that the walk to the college campus wouldn’t take that long. It was a nice walk, anyway. And then I had started asking questions, and the lady at the registrar’s office had been super helpful, and the next thing I knew, we were going through all the paperwork together and figuring out what scholarships Will might qualify for.

  And once I had all that information, it seemed silly to waste it all.

  Will stared at me for a moment and then looked down at the packet of brochures, putting a hand over it. “Thanks,” he said, but he was frowning. “There’s just one small problem: I don’t have the inheritance money. I have to get married first, remember?"

  “I remember,” I said. I bit my lower
lip and then blew out a noisy breath. “We talked about scholarship options as well, and there’s a bunch of information on that in there. But I think there’s another way.” This was the part where I expected him to flip out. It was one thing to stick my nose in his business by going over to the college and getting all the information he needed about the place. But it was another thing to suggest what Nicole had suggested.

  I couldn’t help myself, though. “Remember, I said that I wanted to help out. I’ll stand in as your wife if that’s what you need. We can get the license and get married at the courthouse. No one has to know.” I paused. “I know it would just be a fake wedding. That we don’t really know one another well enough, but it just needs to be enough to convince the lawyer, right? Just enough to get the certificate. I looked into everything online, and they don’t really require much to get married over at the courthouse. It’s not like we have to prove anything.”

  I had spent all night thinking about Nicole’s idea. It wasn’t the way I wanted to do things. If I was getting married, I wanted Dad to be there and all my friends. I wanted a beautiful ceremony. But this was just a fake wedding. A favor to a friend. Eventually, I could have the real wedding.

  But the only way I was going to ever have that real wedding was if I had the chance to meet guys, and the only way I was going to do that was to get out of the mother-in-law house. We wouldn’t tell Dad about it until after we were married. The marriage itself, we’d do that in secret.

  Dad didn’t have to know about it. We could take a few pictures, arrange whatever we needed. Help Will get his hands on that money. If the lawyer came out from Texas to see if we were really a couple, well, we’d cross that bridge when we got to it. But for now, maybe it would be enough for us to get the certificate. The sooner we did this, the sooner Will could start applying for schools and the sooner he could get his life on track the way he wanted to.

  And maybe then, I could convince Dad that he was the perfect guy for me to date, that I wasn’t going to screw up my whole life by dating him.

  I didn’t have a choice anyway. The more I thought it, the more certain I was that I had to help him. If he needed a fake bride, I had to help him with that.

  Will was staring at me, though. “What did you say?” he asked, sounding shocked.

  I ducked my head, knowing full well that this stupid suggestion might have just screwed up everything between the two of us. “Look, I know we don’t know one another well enough to get married,” I said hurriedly. "I’m not saying I love you or anything like that. But if you need someone to marry you just so that you can get this money and go back to school, I can help you out. It was Nicole’s suggestion.”

  Will still looked surprised. “You told Nicole about it?” he asked.

  I shrugged. “She’s my best friend,” I said, hoping he wouldn’t get mad about that. “I tell her everything. She knows better than to spread it around.” I paused and then laughed bitterly. “Anyway, it’s not like being married to you is going to cause any problems with my future love life. My father’s never going to let me date anyone, ever. He hired you to stop that, didn’t he?”

  “Yeah, but…” Will trailed off, shaking his head. Then, slowly, he said, “We might not have to keep it a secret, though. Unless you wanted to.”

  I laughed. “What do you mean?” I asked. “Have you forgotten about my father? He’d kill us both, even if this was just to get you your inheritance.” I paused. “I’m not sure he would believe that, even.”

  “He might not,” Will agreed, inclining his head. “But he might not have any say in the matter.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Will sighed. “Actually, I came here to suggest the exact same thing as you did,” he said. “I wanted to ask if you would consider being fake married to me so that I could get my hands on the inheritance. I thought about it before, just in passing, when I first heard from the lawyer. But it seemed too selfish to ask you then. Even if I gave you a cut of the fortune, it still felt wrong.”

  “What changed?” I was touched by the fact that he didn’t want to marry me out of selfish reasons, just to get his hands on the money. He really was a good guy. But I wanted to help.

  Will shook his head. “Remember everything I told you yesterday? About the clubhouse and the Unknowns?”

  “Yeah,” I said slowly, wondering what all of that could have to do with our sham of a marriage.

  “Apparently, the MC is out something like four hundred grand,” Will said. “Between the cash that was in the safe and the damages to the building and everything else. Not to mention, it was just poor timing. I think most of the money we took in this month was in there. Not that I keep the books or anything like that. Regardless, it was a lot of money.”

  “Oh no,” I groaned, sensing where he was heading with this. “You’re going to take all the money from your inheritance and use it to pay back the club, aren’t you?” I asked. “Even if it means that you never get to go to college.”

  “They’re like my family,” Will said immediately. “I can’t just turn my back on them.”

  “You can’t turn your back on your future, either,” I pointed out.

  “I’m not,” Will said. “It’ll be like a loan. The club was doing so good before all this shit started happening. Once everything clears, it’ll start to make money again. I’m sure Ray will pay me back.” He shrugged. “And besides, there might just be enough left over for me to go to college. At least to see if I want to go to college. I’m still not sure if that’s the right path for me.”

  “Dad will probably pay you back, sure. Unless he’s still pissed at you for marrying me,” I sighed. “And what’s this about not being sure if it’s the right path? You seemed so sure about it the other night. If you didn’t have to bail out the MC, you’d be on board, wouldn’t you?”

  “I can’t turn my back on them,” Will said stubbornly. “Besides, Ray will have time to get used to the idea of us, and he’ll owe me one for bailing us out. It’s the only way to get the money we need. You should have heard the things people were coming up with during our meeting today. None of them were any good.”

  I sighed. “Look, Will, when it was about helping you, that was one thing. But I’m not sure I can marry you just so that you can help out the MC.” I felt horrible saying it, but it was the truth. It felt like he was selling himself short, and that wasn’t the man that I wanted to help. Maybe I had built things up too much in my mind, but I couldn’t help feeling cheated now that he was talking about using the money to help Red Eyes.

  Will stared at me for a moment and then shook his head, disgust clear on his face. “Not even when it’s helping your father?" he asked. “Do you realize what’ll happen to him if word gets out that we’re that deep in the hole? Businesses will stop paying. It’ll be the end of Red Eyes. Some other MC, maybe the Unknowns or maybe someone even stronger, will move in and take over. And they won’t let your father live here, a constant threat to their ability to hold their territory. They’ll have him killed, or at very least driven out of New Mexico.”

  I swallowed hard. “Dad won’t want me to be involved in anything to do with the MC,” I reminded Will quietly. “He hasn’t even told me about the Unknowns or about the clubhouse.”

  “He won’t like it, no,” Will agreed. “He won’t like the idea of you marrying me, either. But there’s no one else we could trust like we trust you. And I’ll make it clear that it’s just for the sake of convenience. He doesn’t need to know that we’ve already started something.” He paused. “In fact, this could be a good thing, as far as he’s concerned. He’s all worried that you’re seeing someone. This would nip that in the bud if you really were seeing someone else.”

  I gnawed at my lower lip. I’d been so excited about this plan when it meant that Will could go to college. Now, it was like he didn’t even care about that. I remembered what Nicole had said, about how it sounded like one of those relationships with a married guy. Maybe Wil
l was all talk; maybe he wasn’t really going to leave the MC. Maybe he just thought that was what I wanted to hear. He certainly hadn’t seemed interested in the information I’d brought him.

  But if this was the only way to help out Dad, I had to do it. I couldn’t let him be driven out of the area, and I definitely couldn’t let him be killed. If this was the only way to make sure he was safe, then so be it.

  I nodded. “I’ll talk to Dad,” I said. “I’ll do it.”

  “No,” Will said sharply. “Let me.” He paused. “Remember, you’re not really supposed to know about any of this. The MC stuff. Better if I talk to him.”

  I stared at him for a long moment, wanting to protest. But I knew, deep down, that Will was right. As much as I hated the way Dad kept me out of all MC business, even when it might affect me, I knew better than to cause an even bigger stir now. If I suggested this as a way to get back all the money the club had lost, Dad would want to know how I knew about it, and I’d have to admit that Will had told me. I had never been able to lie to him. The last thing I needed was for him to come down hard on Will over that, with everything else we were dealing with.

  Besides, when it really came down to it, the inheritance was Will’s. He was the one who needed to get married to someone. I had to let him propose his idea to Dad, even if I doubted that Dad would agree with him. No, Dad would probably try to come up with someone else that Will could marry. Someone like Nicole, someone who would bounce back from a whirlwind marriage and divorce as though it were nothing.

  Dad would think I would get too involved with Will. And he was probably right. I already felt like I was in over my head with him. But for now, there was no use worrying about that.

  “All right,” I said, “you’ll talk to him.” I paused, reaching out a hand to lightly trace Will’s knuckles. “Can I see you tonight, though?” Even though we had just agreed to get married, albeit solely for convenience’s sake, it felt like there was more distance between us than ever before. I knew that talking over this further wasn’t going to change anything; Will had clearly made up his mind about what he wanted to do, but I couldn’t help wanting to see him.