Savage Saviors: The Complete Boxset (Savage Saviors MC)

by J. C. Allen

  It had been hours since I’d last seen Eve. Hours with nobody but myself to talk to. Hours with only liquor coursing through my veins. I gunned the engine as I saw a light turn yellow from afar, determined to beat at least one thing tonight.

  And then, my chopper sputtered a little. I saw that the gas meter had fallen to “E”—which meant, at best, I had maybe five miles, probably closer to two, before this girl gave up on me too.

  Riding on fumes, huh, girl?

  At least you aren’t lying to me. At least…

  You’re full of shit. You know she’s not lying.

  Shut up!

  Heads turned my way as I coasted up beside a free pump. I had just barely avoided the death of my bike, which began to sputter as I pulled forward.

  Death…

  As it so seems to haunt my life.

  If it’s a part of my world…

  Why not join it? Why not say hi to Death once more?

  I finished pumping, nearly falling over my bike at one point. I wasn’t sure if I felt grateful, annoyed, or just sad that there weren’t any cops around. I’m not even sure the lack of cops around played a presence in anything I thought in that moment.

  The only thing I knew was where I was headed next.

  To the grave.

  Epilogue, Pt. 1

  “Do I really have to do this every time?”

  “You really want to argue with Falcon?”

  No, I sure as hell did not. For as much as I’d helped that bald, fat fuck, I still knew my life was in his hands, as sick as that was. I’d practically hand-delivered him the city with my games, and all it had taken was, I don’t know, the beatdown of a lifetime from a man twice my size?

  And still, I had to wear these goddamn cuffs when I went to visit the man responsible for my freedom. Security, my ass. Did they really think someone like me posed a threat to the Falcon? I had a better chance of knocking myself out than I did the Falcon.

  “Just make them light, asshole.”

  The guard said nothing, giving me a look that said he’d love nothing more than to punch me in my mug. But what was he going to possibly do that that Knight asshole hadn’t already?

  The doors opened, and I felt an immediate pit in my stomach. Few people scared me, but the Falcon was most certainly at the top of the list.

  Inside, he sat at a single table for two, drinking on some wine, smirking as I was led inside to a chair.

  “Welcome, Charles,” he said. “You don’t need those.”

  “I—”

  I kept my mouth shut. I wanted so badly to pipe up, but for a man who valued serenity and stoicism as the Falcon, I knew better than to make a smartass remark.

  The guard removed them and quickly left the room, shutting the door behind him.

  “So,” the Falcon said, putting his palms up. “You actually did it.”

  “Oh, quite,” I said giddily. I’d exceeded even my own expectations. “You’d think that that Knight guy has never heard of Photoshop in his life before, the way he fell for it so easily.”

  I laughed, but the Falcon just silently watched. I suppose he let me have that moment, but I knew better than to push my luck with more ridiculous displays of emotion.

  “Last I saw, just before your guys got me, I saw Derek peeling out of his place alone, looking so sloppy drunk he’s bound to die in a drunk driving accident,” I said. “And even if my sister isn’t a dripping mess of a slut, she will be once Derek dies.”

  “You are a fool to speak presumptively,” the Falcon warned, tightening my chest in a heartbeat. “It is true that the leader of the Saviors is easily manipulated by emotions and lacking in self-control. But to assume he will die tonight is to underestimate him. Don’t you think if he was easy to kill, we would have done so by now?”

  I said nothing.

  “Of course, you would know. Judging by the look on your right eye and the marks on your neck.”

  God, this was the fucking worst part—having Falcon pick at me and not be able to retaliate. Not if I wanted to live.

  “Well, I’m just saying,” I said, struggling to contain myself. “I think we have him in a weakened state. If we are to kill him, now would be the time.”

  “Ah, but you think too short-term, Charles. You want to go for the immediate gratification of seeing your enemy hurt so badly they quit. You fail to relish the process.”

  I nodded to pretend to agree, but this all sounded like some high-falutin bullshit to me.

  “We will not kill Derek Knight so quickly. No, I would rather see his club crumble, his woman killed, and his life fall to nothing before I kill him. To kill him now would be to give him what he wants—a release from the pain. I say we give him more pain until he numbs up. Then, and only then, will we kill him.”

  He smiled and finally did something I hadn’t heard from him since he’d freed me.

  He laughed. Very slowly, and very menacingly, but he laughed.

  “We recently had an acquisition from the Saviors who will help us significantly,” he said. “And thanks to your work, we now have them in the most precarious spot they could be—overly confident with Rock’s death, and completely unaware of our moves. Everything.”

  He began clenching his fist.

  “Everything is coming together. Just as I have planned it.”

  Epilogue, Pt. 2

  “Hey, Maggie.”

  I’d been standing in front of her grave long enough that I’d come to lose track of how much time it had been. It felt like hours. But, even being crazy, I knew that time had a funny way of moving in places like this.

  Death had an especially strange way of warping time. Caught up in the throes of death, either in its grip or witnessing somebody you cared about wrapped up in its clutches, it could creep by so slowly you were certain you were being tortured by each second or it could be over so fast that you’d never come to fully know what happened.

  Yeah, death had a funny way of warping time. Death, and places that remembered and celebrated death, like this cemetery.

  It was a place where the grass grew in more yellow than it would in other places.

  It was a place where the songs of birds sounded hollow, defeated, and wrong.

  And now, it was a place where time didn’t want to make sense.

  I stood there, silent and time-warped as death itself, before a smoothed-out chunk of etched rock holding my wife—the only woman who had truly ever…

  Stop. Stop. Stop!

  And then the cycle began.

  It was a cycle that I’d come to know quite well and, seemingly, had reason to celebrate all over again.

  Pain led to resentment. Resentment to bitterness. Bitterness to anger. And anger to self-hatred.

  Hello, hatred, my old friend…

  Thinking of that tombstone and the bones buried beneath it stirred up a fresh gumbo of hatred in my guts. Two-hundred-and-six adult bones, plus another two-hundred-and-seventy that would never fully develop. My wife. My daughter.

  Dead.

  I hated it.

  I hated everything.

  I hated Eve.

  I hated the Falcons.

  I hated…

  I hated myself.

  Fuck you, God, I remembered thinking.

  Fuck…

  I really thought that I’d left all that behind when I started feeling for Eve.

  But now…

  “Hey, Maggie, it’s me, again…”

  And, go fucking figure, Maggie’s tombstone said nothing.

  Or maybe she’s just taking her own sweet time.

  Or maybe you’re just a drunken fucking idiot who can’t control his drinking, can’t control himself, and lets his emotions control him.

  There is no way that you are ever going to win Eve back. You blew it. You knew, you fuuuuucking knew, she wasn’t that bad.

  But you let your emotions win.

  You fuck.

  Maggie’s tombstone still said nothing.

  “OK,” I said.
“I still love you. Always will, Maggie.”

  I turned to move, but in doing so, I made myself so dizzy that I started to fall. I had just barely enough coordination that I landed on my butt, but I did so against the marker that was supposed to represent Maggie and our baby.

  Because God, apparently, hadn’t fucked with me enough tonight.

  “How’d it ever get this far?”

  I’d been meaning to ask Maggie’s grave, talkative as it had been so far, but realized I was extending it to whatever might listen.

  Well, something seemed to listen.

  My stomach.

  And all of the whiskey that had not fully digested and now seemed to seek a home outside of me.

  I clenched my teeth against the threat and told my belly that it’d take the abuse or I’d let the whole machine of my body drown in puke right then and there. At least if that happened, I’d die next to the only woman who truly loved me.

  I started darkly laughing at my own thoughts, but I lost track of myself halfway through and realized too late that I was crying.

  “How’d it get this far?” I asked again, sobbing around the words. “God fucking damnit, Maggie, what… what am I even doing? How did I let me get to this spot! I’m so sorry, Maggie, I’m… I failed you. I failed everyone. I’m a failure. I should just… oh, fuck…”

  I let my head fall back, slam painfully into my dead wife’s tombstone, and then just forced myself to stare up at the sky. It was clear and peaceful up there, and a part of me felt like if this were a book or a movie there’d at least be clouds. The weather always reflected the hero’s mood, didn’t it?

  You’re no fucking hero.

  “Least I had you, baby…”

  I deserve this, I thought.

  I finally slapped myself again. I was overdue.

  Although, let’s be honest, I could never slap myself hard enough for what I had done to those I loved and those who loved me.

  No, I had to realize just how low I had fallen.

  “Public drunkenness is a… is a crime. M-mur-der is… a crime… and prostitution is a crime… I’ve supported… all of these! And… and…”

  I paused. My stomach had decided it had had enough.

  The vomit finally came.

  The force was enough to have me scrambling onto the my hands and knees. Pain and suffocating nausea had me certain that the only way to not choke to death on sickness was to slam my face to the very ground my wife was buried under.

  “Maggie!” I sobbed, finally turning back towards the stone and throwing my arms around it.

  Never had I been made more aware of what a piss-poor representation it was to its source. Hard, jagged, and unfeeling. I craved a warm, understanding body and this was what I got. I yearned to feel her, to see her, to smell her, to hear her… to be with her…

  “I know…” I stammered, “I know. I fucked up! I… I always fuck up, but— I…”

  I stumbled and toppled back away from Maggie’s grave.

  “I don’t… I don’t know, Maggie. I believed Chuck. I don’t know! It just seemed… but that wasn’t Eve… that… that…”

  You don’t know. You never know. Never bother to know.

  This isn’t another electronic, Derek; this is Eve!

  Never mind what her brother thinks.

  What do you, Derek fucking Knight. What do you think?

  “I… I love her,” I said to myself. “I fucking love her so goddam much.”

  Then why should the rest matter? You were happier loving her and happier with her.

  What’s real to you, Derek? You’re crazy, remember? Just because some douche-nozzle claiming to be her brother says she’s a whore? Why were you so quick to believe what he said? You really think he couldn’t have made up a few photos?

  I sighed. I was losing the battle with myself, but then again, I’d been losing that battle for over two, nearly three decades now.

  I felt myself passing out on my wife’s grave as the alcohol won, shutting down my body. But just before I did, one last voice in my head came at me with an undeniably disturbing truth.

  So long as she’s out there, she’s in danger. And that—more so than anything else you claim to know or have evidence of—you know to be true.

  BOOK 5

  * * *

  SACRED GRIP

  Prologue

  Three and a Half Years Ago

  The clock had struck midnight, and my promised delivery had not yet arrived.

  I stared at my watch with some bemusement at my guards, who looked nervous that the promised arrival had not yet happened. Tonight would mark a special occasion, and yet with the clock having passed the hour of a most opportune celebration, to say I felt upset was an understatement.

  Not that my men would know that, of course. To show emotion was to show weakness, and I never showed weaknesses. The Black Falcons didn’t deserve to have weaknesses.

  But that didn’t mean I couldn’t verbalize my frustration and disappointment.

  “Gentlemen,” I said. “As I understood, I requested that my gift be delivered to me an hour ago. It is now after midnight. Does anyone care to explain to me why your peers are so ineffective that they cannot even provide me something so simple?”

  No one dared to say a word. This was typical, and I didn’t mind one bit. I got quite a thrill out of seeing everyone look like they want to speak, but not having the courage to do so.

  We had a healthy level of fear of me here in the Black Falcons, just as I liked it.

  “You are tasked with hunting down someone, bringing them here, and allowing me to have my reward. You are tasked not with capturing a special ops force, not with capturing a high-ranking official, but with capturing an old man who barely has the wrists to ride a chopper, let alone use a gun. And yet you cannot accomplish this?”

  Again, no one spoke. Again, I relished the level of fear this club had for me.

  But I did not relish this delay. I had a gun with three bullets in it, just in case one didn’t do the trick—but I was rapidly approaching the point where my gun could not just sit there idly anymore. At some point, a trigger would have to get pulled.

  And when I checked my phone to see if anyone had alerted me that the package was en route and I saw that no one had, I decided that that time was now.

  “Perhaps this will encourage your fellow members,” I said, pulling my gun out and clicking the safety off.

  And that’s when I heard three bikers pull up just out of sight, near the stairwell to this abandoned subway station that I had “reserved” for this special occasion.

  “Fortune has smiled upon you, gentlemen,” I said as I lowered the gun. “But it has not signed upon Dominick Knight.”

  And if it has, then fortune shall smile upon no man at all in this room.

  I waited for the bikes to kill their engine before listening closely. I needed to hear that muffle, that dragging of legs and limbs, that symphony of groans and pains.

  Oh, what a beautiful sound it was.

  There was nothing quite like going to bed to the sound of the screams of your enemies, or waking up to the dying gasps of your rivals.

  At that moment, I did not quite get the epic masterpiece of Dominick’s dying breath. But I did get the pleasurable grunts of a man being dragged down the stairs against his will, even if his will had nothing left to fight with. He was a man who knew he was going to die, and yet could not muster the energy to fight back and make a show of it.

  Two of my men turned, dragging Dominick by the arms. He was conscious, but his head hung low. I saw blood all over his body, as if my boys had had to shoot and pummel him into coming here.

  Good enough. As long as he lived and as long as I got to be the one to deliver the final death blow, I allowed them to take whatever measures were necessary to bring him here.

  They dropped Dominick before me. I holstered my gun—that would come at my own time—squatted down, and lifted the chin of Dominick to me.

  “
Frank Young,” Dominick said.

  “Dominick Knight,” I said, patting his cheek with more aggression than needed—not that he could do anything about it. “For a man in his seventies, you’re a hard motherfucker to find.”

  “And for a fatass who’s not going to make it to his seventies, I could say the same to you.”

  As tempting as it was to strike Dominick and kill him right there for the snide remark, I kept my cool, snickered, and patted his cheek again. Such a display of uncouth behavior was a good way to lose control of my men.

  “It’s funny you should say I won’t make it to that age,” I said. “Perhaps that is true. But I know it is true for your sons. And, should I add, your wife.”

  “You fuckin’ shit!”

  I just laughed. Dominick spit in my face, but it was so weak and so pathetic I could only laugh more before I actually slapped him, dropping him to the ground.

  “Look at you, Dominick,” I said. “You know, this could have easily been avoided. All these years, you could have simply said, ‘you were right, Frank. You were right.’ And then, all would have been forgiven. The Black Falcons and the Savage Saviors would reunite—under my rule, of course, but at least there would be no bloodshed.”

  I looked down with mock pity, bent over, and picked him up by his hair, drawing another groan.

  “But instead, you had to stick by your outdated ethics, your insufferable morals, and your naive belief in people, all for what? Avoiding profit, preventing growth, and missing out on opportunities to enrich your man? Well, I suppose it has gotten you one thing. It got you one last audience with me tonight.”

  “I rode and served with value, unlike you, Frank,” he responded. I was rapidly reaching the point of just shooting the motherfucker in the face. “You used to be my most trusted. I sincerely believed you would serve us for life. I raised Dustin and Derek to believe in you!”