Breaking It All (The Hellfire Riders Book 3)

by Kati Wilde

  Breaking It All

  Kati Wilde

  Contents

  Breaking It All

  Author’s Note

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Coming Next

  Going Nowhere Fast

  Also by Kati Wilde

  Reading Order

  Newsletter

  Breaking It All

  A Hellfire Riders MC Romance

  Anna

  When Zach “Gunner” Cooper rode into my life ten years ago, he turned me inside out with a single kiss. Then he discovered who I am—his best friend’s little sister—and he never touched me again. Now he’s the Hellfire Riders’ sergeant at arms—sexy, dangerous, and still the only man who’s ever set my body on fire. I’ve tried to stop wanting him. I’ve tried and tried. But this time…I have to get over him. Because everything I feel for him is killing me inside.

  Gunner

  For ten years, I’ve pretended that I don’t think of Anna Wall as anything other than our enforcer’s little sister. Because the blood running through my veins is poison, and getting close to Anna will only destroy her.But when her brother goes missing and the past comes calling, and a threat to her life waits at her front door…there’s no pretending anymore. She’s mine. She’ll always be mine.

  And I’ll do anything to break through Anna’s defenses and make her believe it.

  Author’s Note

  Anna & Gunner’s Prologue

  Hello, book lovers! Kati here, with a note regarding some bonus prologue content available for this book. Zach “Gunner” Cooper and Anna Wall’s story became much longer than I anticipated. The plot I envisioned also underwent a fundamental change, so part of the way through writing the book, I decided to toss all of the scenes that originally opened the story—the chapters where Gunner and Anna meet, along with their earliest interactions.

  Although their backstory was fun to write, and I refer to these events in Breaking It All, the chapters didn’t add anything to the plot. So they had to go.

  I thought fans of the series might enjoy them, however, so the chapters are available on my site. These deleted chapters won’t spoil anything for Breaking It All; they are more like a peek into the beginning of Gunner and Anna’s romance, and great for anyone who enjoys seeing the extended backstory and would like to start there—you can read it before beginning their book. Just click here!

  Happy reading!

  Kati

  1

  Gunner

  My brain’s about twelve hundred miles away—in some restaurant in Pine Valley or Bend, or wherever the hell that smug fucker Mark Miller is taking Anna Wall out tonight—when her brother abruptly sits up in the passenger seat of our rented Escalade and yanks me right back to a deserted highway in Arizona.

  “Twenty-four goddamn hours,” Stone spits out like he’s been chewing on it for a while.

  I tear my gaze from the dark road ahead. Stone’s staring out the windshield, sitting straight up though his seat is still reclined. Not a word has passed between us the past hour. I assumed he was asleep. Maybe he still is. Or maybe he took a few too many hits to the head today, because I have no fucking clue what he’s talking about.

  I’ve usually got a good idea what’s going on in his thick skull. But my body’s too damn tired and the day’s been too damn long to try figuring it out. Especially when my brain’s too damn busy imagining his sexy little sister on a date with a pompous prick.

  But I can’t say a word about that. Anna’s not mine. She can’t be. So I don’t say anything at all, because Christ knows what would shoot out of my mouth.

  Nothing her brother wants to hear, that’s for goddamn sure.

  Stone scrubs his palms over his scarred face and up over his short blond hair. Yup. Tired as fuck and trying to wake up. Roughing his hands over his swollen jaw probably does the job better than the scrubbing does. He winces and prods at the bruise blooming under his eye before shaking his head.

  “Twenty-four hours,” he says again. “We come all this goddamn way. And not a fucking thing to show for it.”

  Not true. “You got a busted lip to show for it.”

  His eyes narrow. “Your mama got a busted lip trying to fit her mouth around my dick.”

  I know he’s still half asleep if he’s pulling out the mama jokes. “My mama would bite that shit off.”

  “That’s not funny, brother.” His hands drop to his lap, as if protecting his junk. “Teeth are never funny.”

  Maybe not. But making him cringe is always entertaining. “You ever hear about vagina dentata?”

  “Have I heard about it?” His full-body shudder is better than a cringe. “When I was sixteen, Anna tortured me by telling me all about that shit. Then she found my porn stash and drew teeth on the crotch of every centerfold. I had nightmares for a year.”

  My chest tightens up when he mentions his sister. He always makes a young Anna sound like a terror. She probably was.

  She still is. A terror who can reach into a man’s chest and squeeze his heart in her little fist without even trying. But even though the simple mention of her name aches like a motherfucker, I can’t stop myself from wanting to hear about every single horror she unleashed on him.

  Better than the shit my family liked to unleash. “Did she do it on purpose?”

  “Probably. That was back when she started reading about Freud—thirteen years old, with full access to my mom’s shelves, and my mom willing to discuss anything she read there. Jesus, those were terrifying days. You wouldn’t believe some of the things she asked. But that vagina dentata stuff, it was probably an experiment so she could play psychiatrist and analyze my fear. Or it was a subtle way of trying to make me become a dentist, I don’t know.” Digging his phone out of his pocket, he starts scrolling through messages. “But it stuck. Last year, this one chick asked me about the scars. I told her my face got chewed up by vagina teeth while my mom was giving birth to me.”

  Jesus. “Were you trying to scare her off?”

  “Hell no. This girl had the sweetest ass. Not the brightest bulb upstairs, but a sweet ass. I was just too wasted to think of another story and said the first shit that came to mind. Anyway, it worked. She invited me to stick my dick into her pussy and check for teeth. But I’m not stupid, man. I used my fingers first.”

  Grinning, I shake my head. “Shit, you’re like the second coming of Einstein.”

  “Laugh it up, pretty boy. I’ll take pussy teeth over the nothing you’ve been getting.” He pauses on a message screen. “The prez says to stop by the Den tomorrow.”

  When we get back to Oregon. No problem there. I’d planned to stop by the Wolf Den anyway. Anna should be working the bar by then.

 
Unless she’s sleeping late in Miller’s bed.

  Fucking hell.

  A red haze swims in front of my eyes like I’ve taken a blow to the head. My fingers clench on the steering wheel. I’ve got no goddamn business caring if she hooks up with that prick. And the day will come when she hooks up with someone. Someone who can’t be me.

  I’ve always known that. I’ve got no business letting it tear at me now.

  But I can barely make myself focus on the shit that is my business. “You already told the prez that Shaggy was a no-show?”

  “Yup. But I expect he wants the full report.”

  Except we don’t have a damn thing more to tell him. The point of traveling here was to get some info, but our contact from the Desert Kings MC failed to show.

  Instead we spent three hours at a truck stop café, eating greasy steak and slurping coffee like aimless dickheads before giving up. That was an hour ago and our flight doesn’t leave until noon tomorrow. “Maybe we’ll pick up some chatter at the bar tonight.”

  Stone’s wordless grunt gives his opinion of that. Not freaking likely.

  Frustration bites at me. He’s not wrong. Every weekend for over a month now, we’ve been bouncing around the western U.S. searching for goddamn shadows. The Hellfire Riders’ warlord, Blowback, is doing the same, following leads he dug up in Vegas. And we haven’t heard anything more concrete than what we started with: rumors that bikers are disappearing after they participate in underground fights. They get into the ring, they vanish, and everyone assumes they took their prize money and rode for sunnier climes.

  That’s what I assumed, too. On the rally circuit, a few Hellfire Riders are regulars in the ring—including Stone and me. I’ve fought some of the guys who supposedly took off and nothing I knew about them made me doubt that’s what happened.

  Until about a month ago, when the Devil’s Hangmen nabbed a Rider. Our girl Zoomie had taken down their president with her fists. In retaliation, they were going to hand her over to some slick motherfucker who intended to put her in the ring.

  Not just any ring. No, she was heading for the Cage. Blowback’s source in Vegas says the Cage is some black market pay-per-view, fight-to-the-death shit that starts at a million dollars per ticket, but the real cash comes from the assholes who are placing bets online and laying odds on which fighter survives. Money from a cartel is twisted up in there somewhere, too. A network of MCs, including the Eighty-Eight and the Desert Kings, have been running merchandise for the cartel—merchandise like guns, meth, and girls. It’s not a long jump to thinking those clubs are picking up and transporting the missing fighters, too. But we don’t know who’s really calling the shots or where the Cage is, or where the men are being held between fights. So we’ve got questions.

  No one’s giving answers. Not the families of the men. A few don’t seem to know anything at all, but there have been others who clammed up fast, which tells us they’re scared shitless. Some of the MCs we’re friendly with want to talk—it’s their brothers who are going missing. But they know less than we do and no one noticed a damn thing odd before the men vanished.

  They won their fights at the rallies or their regular joints, they partied afterward, they got laid. No different from any other Saturday night.

  Except the next morning they were gone.

  Zoomie’s situation was different. She won a fight, yeah. But it wasn’t at a rally. Instead she pissed off the Devil’s Hangmen, who were all too happy to hand her over to the motherfuckers running the show.

  According to Blowback’s source, that’s another way to end up in that ring: piss off the wrong people and they’ll make an example of you.

  Anyone who knows more about the Cage is probably either too wrapped up in the business or too fucking scared to open his mouth. Because with the kind of money they must be pulling in, cartels won’t dick around. Most MCs won’t either. Talking means a bullet in the head.

  And asking could mean a target on our backs. But the Riders don’t give a fuck. Those bastards went after one of our own when they went after Zoomie. So one way or another, we’re shutting them down.

  As soon as we find them. Which isn’t happening today.

  God damn it all. A whole fucking weekend wasted, with the two of us stuck flying around and spending half the time in a cage.

  I roll down the window. Cold desert air blasts my face at eighty miles an hour. It’s not like riding, with a bike between me and the asphalt and my back to the sky, but an open window’s better than sitting on a damn cushy seat in a pocket of stale air.

  Stone’s voice raises over the noise of the wind. “Where the hell are we?”

  As if in answer, the headlights catch the reflective paint on the sign ahead.

  Now entering CACTUS GULCH. Population 14,598.

  Except this weekend, about three thousand bikers have been added to that number—mostly regional riding clubs raising charity money with their holiday swaps and turkey runs. But there’s a showing of one-percenters who come for the booze and the bikes and the fights.

  The Desert Kings aren’t among the one-percenters here, but our contact has family in the area and the holidays are coming up. So if he’d been spotted locally, no one would be asking why one of their members would show his face at an event like this.

  Except Shaggy didn’t show.

  Stone must be thinking about the same thing. “Do you figure he chickened out or he’s dead?”

  Hell if I know. Both seem equally likely. But I’d put my money on dead.

  Stone and I have worked together long enough I don’t need to voice that answer. His expression is grim as he looks forward. “Yeah,” he says. “Someone got wind.”

  “They got a sniff. But no details.”

  He glances at me. “Or we’d have had a meet up?”

  Yup. Someone would have been waiting for us in Shaggy’s place, ready to take us out. Or they’d have gotten to us on the highway as we left. So if Shaggy is dead, they didn’t bother digging out any information from him first. They just shut him up.

  “Better pass that on to the Butchers,” I tell him.

  With a nod, Stone pulls out his phone again. I hear the “fuck” he mutters under his breath as he starts typing. This isn’t the kind of news we want to pass along.

  Stone and I have ties to a few members of the Bedlam Butchers; those ties go back to our years in the Marine Corps. But Shaggy has personal ties to the Butchers, not to us. Specifically, he has a family connection to Crash, one of two Butchers who recently disappeared.

  Needless to say, the Butchers have been real fucking interested in finding out what happened to their brothers. They knew Handlebar and Crash hadn’t just up and gone. They found the remains of Handlebar’s custom chopper and his kutte in the possession of some shitstain patch in the Hard Nine, who confessed he’d gotten them from someone in the Eighty-Eight—a skinhead club with chapters in practically every goddamn state. But that was as far as their trail led until we flew down to New Mexico and told the Butchers what happened to Zoomie. Then all signs pointed to the Cage.

  But those signs might as well have pointed to Stone’s ass for all the good that did. We’ve gotten our hands on a few low-level skinheads in the Eighty-Eight and had a few friendly conversations—it’s fucking amazing how polite a racist piece of shit can be after you’ve put a bullet in his knee—but the grunts don’t really know anything. They can tell you how far they escorted merchandise, and which club was waiting at the end of their leg when they passed the merchandise on, but they don’t know what the hell they were escorting each time or who set up the runs.

  And getting to the higher-ups in the Eighty-Eight or the Desert Kings? Fuck. Stone and I used to dig terrorists out of caves and infiltrate compounds guarded by suicidal fanatics. Yet even we aren’t thinking of trying to lay hands on the assholes running the national chapters of either MC.

  We’re not afraid of dying. Dying stupid is something else.

  Besides, something will
shake out. It always does.

  Something like Shaggy.

  Stone and I don’t know him. That’s why we’re here. A member of the Desert Kings, he was too skittish to meet with the Butchers, though they were the ones he contacted—it was just too damn risky, considering that he has family ties with Crash. If anyone was watching him, it wouldn’t be a stretch to put two and two together. But there’s trust between Stone and me and the Butchers’ co-presidents, so they persuaded him to meet up with us, instead.

  And explaining our presence here? That one’s simple. Stone and I are regulars on the rally fight circuit. Considering that we both recently invested in a gym and we each wiped out our savings, picking up some money in the ring is a no-brainer.

  The guy I was up against earlier today looks like a tank—and he moves like one. I had him laid out before the first round was over. Stone matched up against a tougher, faster fucker from the Iron Blood MC. He’ll be feeling the bastard’s fists for a few days, but he still came out on top.

  All at once I’m grinning.

  Stone looks up from his phone and gives me the side-eye. “You losing it?”

  “Just wondering when we became such dickheads that, between us, we pick up twenty grand in twenty-four hours and say we’ve got nothing to show for our time.”