by Lilly Atlas
Toni’s hands trembled as she unfolded the short note accompanying the very large check.
Toni,
I apologize for assuming Zach would be a repeat of your past. Clearly, I couldn’t have been more wrong. You seem happier now than I can ever remember you being. This gesture brought tears to my and Andrew’s eyes, but it is completely unnecessary. Keep it. Zach has a wonderful idea for its use. Hang on to him.
With so much love,
Mark and Andrew
Toni turned in his embrace, her brow furrowed, and the check still in her hands. “I’m more confused after reading the note.”
“I know how much it bothered you that Mark paid so much money to Shark. You told me how guilty you felt. How you feel like you owe him.” He shrugged. “I’ve worked for years with only myself to support and minimal expenses. I have money. So, I re-paid Mark.” He couldn’t help the smirk that formed. “I’d rather you owe me. I can think of some very inventive forms of payback.”
As he spoke, he squeezed her waist. His words were meant to lighten the mood. Keep her from becoming too emotional and making a huge deal of it. Because it wasn’t that big of a deal, at least not the financial part of it. He had the money. Who better to spend it on than the woman he loved?
Tears immediately filled Toni’s eyes. “I can’t believe you would do that for me, Zach. It’s so much money. Why would you do this?”
He wiped an escaped tear off her smooth cheek. “Who else would I do this for, baby? You’re the only one who matters.”
“I take it Mark wouldn’t accept it.”
“Nope.”
“Well, here,” she said holding the check out to him. “This belongs to you then.”
Zach folded his hand over hers and nudged it into her lap. “I want you to have it.”
“What? No, Zach, I can’t possibly take this. I don’t even have a use for it.”
“Yes, you do.”
“I do?” The cute furrow was back on her brow.
“I was thinking you could use it to start a work program for troubled teens. You know, training them, giving them skills they can use in the real world. You have a lot of opportunity with the diner. Cooks, servers, management, human resources, those kinds of things.”
The words were barely out of his mouth when Toni catapulted herself into his arms. “Oh my God,” she squealed as she crushed him in her embrace. “You are the most wonderful man,” she whispered against his ear. “It’s perfect. Absolutely perfect.”
He wished he could say it was all for altruistic reasons, but the reality was, he was selfish. He never wanted Toni to regret her decision to stay in Tennessee or consider leaving again. What was the one thing she was missing from her life in Chicago? The ability to help troubled teens. Well, not anymore. This was the last piece of the puzzle. She’d have no reason to ever search for greener pastures. Zach would see to it.
As he hugged her back, he said, “I was thinking I should sell my house.” He held his breath while he waited for her reaction. She’d only been his ol’ lady for a little over a month. Some might think it was too soon to move in together, but fuck that. He hadn’t slept at his house once in the last month. Toni was it for him, so why waste a bunch of fucking time just because other people might give them the side eye.
He’d been getting that from people since he first put on his cut.
“Oh really? Where are you thinking of moving to?”
Zach pinched her waist and she giggled until she snorted. “Oh, that’s cute,” he said, eliciting another round of giggles. Damn, it was nice to see her so lighthearted and free. The past few weeks had been rough and he’d done his best to keep her from getting pulled under by the unnecessary guilt. The world was a much better place without Shark.
That didn’t make killing him easy. Especially not for someone as good as Toni.
“I want you to move in with me, Zach. I’ve been thinking it for the past week but I was afraid it was too much too soon.” She wiggled in his lap until she had her legs wrapped around his waist.
Fuck if he wasn’t the luckiest bastard in the world. He brushed her hair off her shoulders. “Not too much, baby. I want to crawl into bed with you each night and fall asleep with you in my arms after pleasuring you for hours. I want those beautiful green eyes to be the first thing I see each morning. I want to make a life with you, Toni.”
“Zach…” Her eyes shimmered with unshed tears.
“And I want to keep discovering new places to watch the sunset every evening until we’re absolutely certain we’ve found the best place.”
“I think this is it. Even if the sun burned out and turned gray, this moment would make it the most beautiful.” She played with the hair at the nape of his neck.
“Guess we’ll know for sure in fifty years or so, after we’ve seen thousands of sunsets together.”
Toni almost knocked him on his ass with the most gorgeous smile he’d even seen. “That sounds like the perfect plan.”
He leaned in to kiss the lips he couldn’t get enough of but stopped a breath away from her mouth. “One more thing,” he said.”
“What?” Toni asked, her voice a breathless whisper full of need.
“I love you.” He closed the distance and kissed her.
“Zach,” she said against his mouth. “I love you too.” The words were muffled by his lips and they both chuckled.
Zach slid his hands into her hair and worked his mouth over hers until she moaned. Then he shifted and guided her to her back in the dirt.
“What about the sunset?” she asked when they came up for a breath.
Zach sucked on the skin of her neck hard enough to leave a mark. “Fuck the sunset. We’ve got thousands ahead of us. Missing one won’t matter. I’ve got much more important things to do, like make the woman I love scream.”
“Well, don’t let me stop you. Love you, Zach.”
“Love you, Toni,” he said as he set about driving her crazy. Making love to his ol’ lady with a gorgeous sunset backdrop. Hands-down the best moment of his life.
He couldn’t wait to try to top it.
Thank you so much for reading Zach. If you enjoyed it, please consider leaving a review on Amazon or Goodreads.
Please read on for a sneak peak of MAVERICK, Book 2 in the Hell’s Handlers MC Series
Available for pre-order
Other books by Lilly Atlas
No Prisoners MC Sereis
Hook: A No Prisoners Novella
Striker
Jester
Acer
Lucky
Snake
Trident Ink
Escapades
Hell’s Handlers MC
Zach
Maverick
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Maverick Preview
The world existed in only two shades: black and white.
At least that’s how Stephanie Little had always seen it.
A clear divisive line separating right from wrong kept life manageable.
Good and evil.
Truth and lies.
Rule followers and rule breakers.
Criminals and law-abiding citizens.
All the murky gray areas and half-truths were just excuses and loopholes for people who weren’t willing to make the right choices.
Stephanie always chose right after careful consideration, or at least she tried to. And if she didn’t, she owned it and faced the consequences of her actions.
The split between right and wrong was what drew her to law enforcement straight out of high-school. Well, that and the fact that she grew up with the police chief for a father.
Born and raised in Pittsburg, she’d hardcore hero-worshiped her father through her childhood. He’d received countless commendations for his amazing work reducing the murder rate and crime rate in general.
So, at twenty-one with a shiny new criminal justice degree, she’d joined the police academy. Dreams of confiscating drugs, saving kidnapped children, and locking up murders powered her to the top of her class.
On the eve of graduation, her father showed up at the apartment she shared with another female cadet. In a matter of twenty minutes, he’d shattered Stephanie’s perfectly compartmentalized world.
“Steppy,” he’d said in the way her younger brother used to say her name. Jake had trouble with the F sound until he was four, but by then the name stuck and she’d been Steppy to her family from then on. “I know you’re excited to graduate and eager to dive into your first position with the PPD, but I need to tell you something important.”
She’d frowned and leaned her head on her father’s broad shoulder. “What’s that, Dad?”
“The world doesn’t always work the way you think it does, Step. You see black and you see white. Well, honey, in the real world, those colors don’t even exist. It’s all a grayscale. You need to know that, really know it, in order to survive the life you’ve chosen for yourself. There may be things you’re called on to do that don’t fit neatly into the boxes you’ve created.”
That conversation was the beginning of the end of her relationship with her father. She’d smiled, nodded, and told him what he wanted to hear, but rolled her eyes the moment he left. He was older, nearing retirement, out of touch with the way the world worked.
Such youthful arrogance and ignorance.
But Stephanie managed to hold on to her ideals through the first year of work. Even when her father lost his position in a shameful bribery scandal that earned him five years in prison she hadn’t budged.
He’d done the crime, he deserved the time.
Then, somehow, she made it through two years working for the FBI before her perfectly divided world was smashed to bits. And it wasn’t smashed with a sledgehammer either. No, a damn wrecking ball in the form on an undercover assignment crashed through the glass house she lived in, launching millions of sharp shards at her delicate skin.
And it hurt.
God, did it hurt.
“One more chance, bitch. What the fuck are you doin’ here?” some crazy-eyed brute asked her about five seconds after his fist connected with her face.
For the second time.
The second punch disoriented her for a second. Long enough to lose her sense of vertical and meet the ground.
On all fours, with palms and knees throbbing from the bits of gravel and dirt embedded in the skin, Stephanie spit out blood that had pooled in her mouth from the split lip. “Hiking,” she said, the sound a bit muffled from her swollen lip. “Got lost.”
And…damn…who knew talking with a split lip would hurt so freaking much. Tears pooled in her eyes, but she’d rather die than let one of those suckers slip free. She wasn’t the toughest of chicks out there…physically at least. A few arrests during her time as a beat cop had resulted in physical altercations with significant bumps and bruising. She’d always put on a tough mask in front of her fellow officers but bawled like a baby in the privacy of her own home.
Crazy-eyes threw back his head and laughed before looking at his buddy, a guy so overweight, Stephanie was pretty sure she could outrun him even if they broke both her legs. “You believe this bitch, Top?” he asked the larger man.
Top grunted and shook his head, his many chins wobbling like Jello. “Fuck no. No reason for a bitch to be hiking out here, Shark. Ain’t even any fuckin’ trails.”
Like he would know?
Stephanie bit back the smart-assed remark on the tip of her tongue. Silence was her best bet. Plus, this little gangbanger pow-wow gave her a second to reorient and breath through the pain.
“What about you, King? You believe her?” The man called Shark asked the man on his right and Stephanie held her breath.
This was it. Her way out. Sure, there’d be hell to pay later for the rookie-level mistake of getting busted snooping in the woods outside their compound, but she’d take an ass chewing form her boos over being beat to shit or worse by pissed off gang members.
All her partner, Eric, or King to these pieces of shit had to say was that he believed her. Saw her tromping around like an idiot. Spotted her looking lost and stupid in the woods. He could volunteer to drop her somewhere and scare the piss out of her so she wouldn’t talk.
Shark and the Top dude were scary as fuck and she wanted gone in the worst way.
“No I don’t fuckin’ believe this, bitch,” King said, lifting his military grade rifle and stomping forward until the weapon was pressed dead center against her forehead. “I say we just waste her now. Bury her and get back to those bitches we left naked and needy.”
What. The. Fuck.
Stephanie had never worked so hard in her life as she did to keep the shock off her face and the vile words in her mouth.
Calm down.
King wasn’t serious. He couldn’t be. Her partner was a veteran FBI agent for crying out loud. There had to be a plan to get her out bouncing around in his head.
That knowledge helped her relax despite the fact one twitch of King’s finger and her brains would be splattered all over the Tennessee woods.
“Nah,” Shark said. “Where’s the fun in that? Let’s take her with us. A few hours hanging with the boys and she’ll be ready to talk.”
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
She stared hard into King’s eyes trying to send him a mental message. This was as bad for him as it was for her. They’d torture her for information and she’d crack.
Everyone cracked.
Especially if they had only a rudimentary training in enduring torture.
“Who gives a fuck why she’s here? Let me kill her and be fuckin’ done with it.”
Stephanie was in serious danger of puking all over the forest floor. As she stared at her partner of two years—the partner who taught her everything she knew about working for the FBI, the partner who teased her endlessly for her opinions on the black and white nature of the world—his lips quirked.
And her viewpoint was validated.
There were no shades of gray.
She’d been right all along.
Only black. Only white.
And King had officially been swallowed by the darkness.
He’d always told her working undercover would change her perception of the world. That undercover agents often had to live the life of a criminal and learn to deal with living in the shadows for the sake of doing good. But this wasn’t a case of doing what he had to maintain cover. This was a monster who wore human skin for a time and managed to fool even the most skeptical.
“What the fuck did I say, King?” Shark asked. “I want her at the compound. You can kill her eventually, but it’s been a shit week. The boys need some fun first.”
Stephanie swallowed. Boys? Fun?
There weren’t too many ways to interpret that.
The gun fell away from her head and she sat back on her heels.
Why? What was so appealing about this lifestyle that a decorated FBI agent would do a one-eighty and betray everything he once stood for.
Money?
Frustration with the system?
Stickin’ it to the man?
It seemed too dramatic to be making a point.
The ultimate hissy fit.
“Let’s roll,” Shark said, turning on his heel and strolling toward the building she could see through the trees in the distance.
The fat one leered at her for a second more before waddling after his master like an overfed but well-trained dog.
Somewhat alone with her partner, Stephanie rose to her feet. Whatever was about to happen, it wouldn’t happen while she was on her knees in front of him. He’d have to look her
full in the eye. For one second, she had the insane urge to call out to Shark. To yell as loud as she could and let the scumbag know his precious King was an undercover FBI agent.
It wouldn’t matter if he pledged his loyalty to Shark forever. He’d be killed. That’s how it worked with gangs.
Nothing less than he deserved at that moment.
But she didn’t give into that urge. Because it would be wrong.
And she always chose right.
“Why?” she whispered when Shark was out of earshot.
King grunted and shook his head. “So fucking naïve, Stephanie. You always have been. It’s all gray out here.”
No. She refused to believe it. This situation was clearly not on any gray spectrum. King was evil. Plain and simple.
“No, Eric, I’m not naïve. But you sure are a fucking traitor.”
“You’ll never get it. And you’ll never survive this world. Wake the fuck up,” King said as he thrust his right arm forward and rammed the butt of his rifle into her head.
His murderous expression was the last thing she saw before her vision blacked.
About the Author
Lilly Atlas is an award-winning contemporary romance author. She’s a proud Navy wife and mother of three spunky girls. Every time Lilly downloads a new eBook she expects her Kindle App to tell her it’s exhausted and overworked, and to beg for some rest. Thankfully that hasn’t happened yet so she can often be found absorbed in a good book.