End Game (Sinners MC Book 2)

by Jennifer Hanks

  End Game

  Sinners MC Series

  Jennifer Hanks

  Loyalty. Bravery. Honor.

  Three words the men of the Sinners MC live by.

  Three virtues they have sworn to defend.

  No matter what the cost.

  She’s his obligation.

  Josie Carmichael is uptight, opinionated, and judgmental.

  She has no place in his motorcycle club, but he’s made a commitment to protect her after she became a target for his enemies, and as the president, he takes that seriously. Setting up her protection is easy. However, ignoring the heat between them is impossible, and it isn’t long before he’s sacrificing everything to get close to her.

  He’s her nemesis.

  John Pierce, known only to his MC brothers as Bear, is overbearing, infuriating, and pushy.

  He lives his life on his own terms, in complete contradiction to how she lives hers, but she needs his protection to keep herself and the kids in her program safe. However, as their obsessive attraction continues to pull them together, she begins second-guessing everything she thought she knew about the man and what he’s willing to do for her and the club.

  But things are rarely what they seem.

  With danger still lurking and the club’s enemies marking their targets, can love keep them together?

  Or will their differences tear them apart?

  END GAME

  Sinners MC Series

  Copyright © 2021 by Jennifer Hanks

  All Rights Reserved

  This is a work of fiction. Any names or characters, businesses or places, events or incidents, are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  Cover Design by CTcovercreations

  Digital Formatting by Author E.M.S.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  END GAME

  About the Book

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Prologue

  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

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Epilogue

  Excerpt from WASTED TIME

  About the Author

  DEDICATION

  For my sister-in-law.

  Your belief in me has never wavered.

  And because of who you are, I know it never will.

  Thank you for showing me that new beginnings can lead to happy endings.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  As always, I would like to thank my family, specifically my children who are incredibly supportive and patient with me while I travel this road.

  Thank you Clarise at CT cover creations! This is one of my favorite covers and as we continue to work together on this series, I imagine I’ll be saying that several more times!

  Thank you Jessica Snyder at Jessica Snyder Edits! This was our first project together, but it won’t be the last. Your insight and suggestions during the developmental edit were just what I needed to make this story into what it became.

  Thank you Jenny Sims at Editing 4 Indies! The editing process always goes smoothly and I attribute that to your skill and professionalism.

  Thank you, Amy for another incredible job formatting my work! You’ve been an amazing friend to me as well as a support and I can never thank you enough.

  Finally, I’d like to thank the readers, including my Beta readers, Rachel and Candyce! Your love for these characters encourages me to continue creating stories I can be proud of. And to everyone who reads and reviews my books, I owe you a debt of gratitude. Reviews mean everything to an author and for those of you who take the time to leave your thoughts, I cannot thank you enough.

  PROLOGUE

  BEAR

  The deafening roar in my ears caused me to hear the gut-wrenching sound of bullets leaving the barrel of so many guns long after they actually stopped firing. Adrenaline pumped through my blood, the knowledge of what I was going to see already foreshadowing what should have been considered a victory for our club.

  An empty victory.

  I rose from my position behind the coverage from the brush and cocked my gun, aware that the threat could still be hunting me, but ultimately knowing the threat was over.

  They were all dead.

  My eyes scanned the area I was so familiar with and saw the lifeless bodies of men I knew both as brothers and as enemies. Now they lay together as nothing but wasted blood for a cause I was no longer willing to defend.

  Across the tree-filled area and through the veil of darkness, I positioned myself after I watched another rise. He moved soundlessly toward me through the death and destruction, and I slowly lowered my weapon, recognizing the sheer mass of the man approaching with his fist high in the air.

  Bull.

  He was a man who earned his road name the hard way. As the enforcer for a club that needed to use him way too often.

  I took a deep breath and exhaled as more of my brothers rose, only knowing them by the signal we’d decided on long before this war began. With fists in the air, they approached me until twenty of us stood together.

  We started this war with a hell of a lot more than twenty.

  “Dog?” I barely recognized my own voice.

  Bull grunted. “Gone.”

  I let the thought of losing our president wrap around me, but I felt numb. I would feel it later, and I already knew my only emotion would be relief. Dog was taking us down a path of self-destruction that could only end with prison or death.

  I pointed at Bull’s arm where blood trickled across the large muscles of his bicep. “Just a graze?”

  He tipped up his chin. “Yeah.”

  “Let’s clean up, boys,” Pop declared loudly. He was one of the oldest in our club and would take charge now that our president and vice president were obviously gone.

  We nodded and moved quickly into action. Our clubhouse was off the grid with no one around for miles, but the sound of gunfire travels, and it had gone on for quite a while. Most people around here wouldn’t show and wouldn’t call the police. They left us to ourselves in the hopes we’d leave them be, but we couldn’t take any chances.

  Over the past year, I’d come to hate the fear on their faces when I was in town. Hated that I was responsible for that.

  Disposing of so many of our enemies’ bodies wasn’t an easy task. We
had a place deep in the mountains where we dumped bodies. A place where the coyotes would destroy the evidence in no time. I hated to admit I’d been there and done it many times before.

  But that ended with this one war. I was no longer willing to defend something I didn’t believe in or fight off small clubs like Mayhem battling for territory or the monopoly on drugs. I refused to be the person I’d been turned into three years ago when my father, who was president at the time, was killed, and Dog was voted in. My father led the club in the right direction but was taken out before he could see it materialize, and my brother died right alongside him. Dog became the president I hated. Greed, hate, and destruction were his only visions, and ones I did not share.

  It took all night, but we destroyed any evidence of our enemies, and in the acres of ground we owned behind our clubhouse, we buried our own fallen members. Some too old to still be fighting, some too young to understand what they were fighting for, but all a waste of life over a cause that no longer meant anything.

  Early in the morning when we’d finally finished, I fell into my bed at the clubhouse and slept, but only for a few hours before my own conscience woke me, and I called Pop. He agreed it was time to meet.

  A decision had to be made.

  And there was only one I would accept.

  ~*~

  “I’m calling this meeting to order today,” Pop announced from his spot at the end of a very long table. This table was where we held every meeting—or church as it’s called in the clubs—for as long as I’d been a member. “We’ve got some decisions to make, and we need to make them right now.”

  My eyes scanned the table, and I shook my head. Twenty men sat around this table. Twenty fucking survivors.

  “We need to vote in a new president.” Tank spoke first.

  “We do,” Pop agreed. “We need to stand strong for the other clubs to see we’re united.”

  “You know club life, Pop. Maybe you should just step in,” he suggested.

  Pop shook his head. “Nah, not interested, Tank. Rebuilding this club is a young man’s job.” He looked around the table slowly, his eyes passing over each remaining member until they landed on me and stopped. “I nominate Bear.”

  My eyes widened in surprise. I shook my head but shifted my attention to Tank when he called out, “I second the nomination.”

  My attention shifted back to Pop when I felt his eyes on me. His stare met mine and held. He was trying to communicate something to me, something I knew was important, but not something I was sure I understood. Not yet, anyway.

  “Do you accept the nomination, Bear?”

  I looked around the room and thought about the responsibility of the title they wanted to assign me. They needed a leader, someone to offer hope that the club they’d literally put their lives on the line to protect was going to survive this type of massacre.

  The Sinners MC had won. We’d shown our strength in the face of doubt, and that alone should be considered a victory. The remaining members of Mayhem would no longer bother us. Our territory was safe. Our business was safe. But at what cost?

  I saw an opportunity. An opportunity to finish what my father dreamed of and started all those years ago. An opportunity to make a club where we didn’t have to watch our backs every day, to become a club we could be proud of, and I decided at that moment I wasn’t going to forfeit it.

  No matter what the fallout would be. And if I was elected president, there would most definitely be a fallout.

  I nodded slowly, my decision made. “I accept.”

  I waited while the vote was taken, a little surprised when it was unanimous in my favor. I accepted the role of president and stood before accepting the patch Pop had lying on the table in front of where he sat. I had no fucking clue where it came from, but it lay next to an almost identical patch saying, Vice President. We’d lost all of our leaders, and I would have to call to vote for their replacements, but not today. Today, as president, I would announce my intentions. Anyone who chose to remain would then be considered.

  It was the only way our club could survive.

  And the only way I wanted to remain a part of it.

  I stood and addressed the men. “I appreciate your confidence in me, brothers.” I met the eyes of every man before continuing. “Last night, we lost almost our entire club. We’ll have to rebuild, and I’d like to build it into something better than before.”

  Many head nods and murmurs of agreement spread through the room, but I knew what I was about to propose would not be met with the same.

  “Some of you aren’t going to like the direction I want to take the club, and to that, I say you’re welcome to leave with no retribution.” Tension once again filled the room. “I mean that. There will be no consequences if you decide to leave the Sinners after I propose the changes.”

  “What kind of fucking changes?” Griller called out.

  I decided to just put it out there. “I want a clean club.”

  “What?” Banshee stood, his eyes searing into mine.

  I didn’t budge from my position. “Clean,” I emphasized. “Legitimate club. A club where we don’t have to make our money illegally, always on the lookout for the fucking cops, wondering which of us will be serving time on a weapons or drug charge.”

  Marvel stood. He was one of the older members of the club and one of the meanest. I knew he’d never agree to the changes. “That’s not a real club.”

  “It can be,” I argued. “We defend our territory, protect our neighbors, but we do it without fear tactics or bullying. We do it clean.”

  Marvel narrowed his eyes. “You want a club of pussies? The others will be like dogs with a bone. We won’t have a club left to defend.”

  “A clean club doesn’t mean a weak club, brother,” I emphasized. “We build us back stronger than before, but with a real purpose.”

  “No fucking way,” Banshee said. “Should have known you’d be a pussy like your father was. I thought I saw something different in you while you stood beside me fighting, but I guess I was wrong.”

  Marvel punched his fist into the hard wood of the table. “This what we get for voting you in? For trusting you to do right by us?”

  I put my hands on my hips. “You voted me in to do right by this club, and that’s exactly what I’m doing. I’m not sitting back and watching one more of my brothers fall for something that no longer means anything. I lost my father to this club. I lost my blood brother to this club. I lost a lot of friends last night to this club. I won’t lose any more. I still have a sister I won’t sacrifice to live a life I’m no longer interested in or proud of. I want to make this a club one we’re all proud of and one that gives us what we want the most, our freedom and our brotherhood.”

  Banshee narrowed his eyes and laid his palms on the table, leaning forward. “Shit that no longer means anything?”

  “Do you even know what the fuck you’re fighting for?” I asked, honestly.

  “For respect.” Banshee sneered.

  “What the fuck does that matter if half of our brothers are dead?”

  Silence filled the room until Marvel broke it. “Our brothers died heroes.”

  I snorted and stared into his eyes. “Tell that to their wives. Tell that to their kids. To their families. Tell them they lost someone they loved because we wanted to prove our strength as a club.”

  Marvel narrowed his eyes, ready to lay more shit on me when Ax leaned forward. “My wife had my boy two days ago. Last night, I walked into that fucking mess knowing I may never watch him grow up, never teach him to ride, and never teach him about loyalty and honor if I’m in the fucking ground.” He looked directly at me. “You come up with a way for me to ride, be in a club I can be proud of, and raise my boy, I’m with you.”

  I nodded, shocked because I expected Ax to walk away. I hadn’t given enough consideration to his son being born and what that meant for him, but Ax had always proven to be a good brother, and I was happy he was on board.

/>   “Fucking sellouts,” Griller spit out. “That is not what club life is about.”

  “Club life is about riding, being free, and living on our terms. We can do all of those things while keeping our asses out of jail and out of the ground,” I argued.

  “You keep those things in this club without making us pussies, I’m with you.” Tank, who had been quiet up until now, finally spoke.

  I nodded. “I don’t want to lose anyone here right now, but I’m not going to be a part of a club anymore where I put my life on the line for things that just don’t matter. I want a club that focuses on bravery, loyalty, and honor. I want a club where I can get on my bike and ride without the risk of being taken out because of who I am or what I represent. I want to live my life as freely as I can, but I won’t do it illegally anymore.” I paused and looked around. “If you want that type of club, then stay. If you don’t, then you can go without any fear of retribution from me or the club.”