All For You (Snakes Henchmen MC Book 2)

by Alivia Grayson

  Christ, my heart is pounding with terror. All of the things those monsters did to me came flooding back in my dreams. All the things Crack did to me when no one else was in the room, every look, every touch, each time he forced himself on me.

  Jesus Christ!

  I stand under the hot spray of my shower, washing away the sweat my nightmare brought. It's three in the morning, I'm never going to be up in the morning for work. I'm an elementary teacher, well, I was until I was hurt. Tomorrow is my first day back and I want to prove that I'm ready for this.

  Not that I like disciplining the kids when they've done something they shouldn't. I'm terrible, I can't even tell my niece no when she's screaming for something she can't have. Trust me, she can be a real madam when she wants her own way. She's just like her mother.

  I imagine if I had a child of my own, it would turn into a brat because I wouldn't be able to say no. I just hate to see kids crying. I'm soft, I know. My mom tells me all the time.

  Why am I a teacher when I hate upsetting children in any way?

  Because apart from owning a horse ranch one day, teaching is all I ever wanted to do. Showing children how smart they really are, teaching them how to conduct themselves, is more rewarding than I ever thought it could be.

  I know I went down the lawyer route at first, and I still don't know why I did that, but writing and teaching are what make me happy.

  It means I'll always have something to count on. Something that's mine when I finally make my dream of owning and caring for horses come true. I want to run my own school on the grounds. I want to teach children who come from less fortunate backgrounds. I want them to be able to play with the horses during their breaks. To learn how to take care of them.

  I want a big ranch-style house with plenty of acres of land for my horses to run free. I want stables and staff to help me care for them.

  It's a big, expensive dream. It will cost me a literal fortune, but I work hard and I save everything I earn in order to make my dream come true. It'll take me a good while to reach my goal, that's why I'll keep working every hour God sends to make it come true.

  It might be hard now that Jordan is gone, but I'll make it happen one day. You'll see.

  There's no point going back to sleep now that I'm awake. Might as well watch a movie. I get dressed in clean pajamas, my hair blow dried, and my neck creamed with that medicated crap the doctor gave me to help my scar heal faster. My phone begins to chirp with an incoming message just as I'm about to choose a movie.

  Who the hell could be texting me at almost four in the morning?

  When I open it up I'm shocked to see it's from Hammer asking if I'm awake. He must be drunk, why else would he be texting me at this hour?

  Willow: Yes, I'm awake. What's going on?

  Hammer: I'm outside your place, I want to see you. Let me in?

  He's outside my house at this hour?

  What the hell?

  Nervously, I open my front door. There he is sitting on my front porch swing. He looks frozen, but I doubt he even feels it. He's a big guy, a very big mountain of a man. Six-foot-four and packing muscle. His long, shoulder length, dark hair is blowing softly in the wind. My heart pounds for this man. I wish I could tell him what he means to me. But that's not what he needs from me, he needs a friend. I'm only grateful that he wants to be around me again after months of staying away.

  “How long have you been out here?” I ask as he turns to look at me with a smile on his face. I can't tell if he's been drinking or not.

  “'Bout twenty minutes.”

  “Well, come inside it's cold out here.” He follows me inside and into the kitchen.

  He looks like he hasn't slept in days. He's dressed as he always is, jeans, boots, a t-shirt, and his cut. All of those goddamn sexy as hell tattoos on his arms are on show. God, I could lick him all over and... Shut the hell up, Willow!

  I hand him a coffee and take a seat at my table, trying not to look into his eyes. I seem to lose all thought whenever I look in his eyes. It's painful because he will never be mine.

  “How are you feeling, Will? Now that Trace is gone?”

  I shrug. “Fine, I guess. Wanna tell me why you're at my house at this hour?”

  “Couldn't sleep. I feel shit for tellin' Shepard about Trace when you asked me not to.” I shift uncomfortably in my seat. He grabs my hand and holds it tightly. My core clenches and I have to press my thighs together to relieve the ache a little, which, of course, it doesn't. “I never meant to break your trust, but I couldn't stand watching that cunt acting like nothing happened the other day.”

  “It's okay, I know you didn't do it to hurt me.” I stroke my thumb over his big hand. “What's really wrong, Hammer? You seem to have the weight of the world on your shoulders.”

  “Lot on my mind, baby girl.” I smile shyly. He has no idea what it does to me when he calls me baby girl.

  “Like what?”

  “You. Me. Us.” He scrubs his free hand over his face. “I don't know.” I clutch his hand tighter, refusing to let go, even when he pulls back slightly. “I haven't been a very good friend to you these past couple months, Will, and for that, I'm sorry.”

  “Don't, Hammer. You saved my life. What came after must have been hard for you. Hell, being in that room must have been hard for you. Especially after Cindy.”

  He shifts and pulls his hand away from me, and I let him because I can see that he's still not over what happened to her. I don't think he ever will be.

  “I'm sorry, I didn't mean to upset you.” It's all I ever seem to do where Hammer is concerned. We can't talk about Cindy because he can't take it. And he's the only one I want to talk about her with, because he's the only other person, apart from Coral, who understands how much it hurts that she's not here with us anymore.

  “You didn't upset me, I just wish I could talk about her without the guilt eating away at me.”

  “What happened to Cindy wasn't your fault, Hammer.” He looks away from me.

  I know this hurts, but there's a reason he came here, and in order for me to understand what it is he wants from me, in order for me to give it to him, I have to make him see the truth about Cindy.

  “Look at me, please.” He turns to look at me slowly. His jaw is clenched so tightly that the scar on his hairline is more defined than usual. “The day it happened,”

  “I didn't come here for this, Will.”

  “No, but I think you need to hear it. You need to know the truth.”

  “I know the truth. She ignored me when I told her not to go out of the damn house, and it got her killed because I couldn't save her!”

  Oh, Hammer, if only that were true.

  “She didn't ignore you.” I swallow hard past the lump in my throat.

  It's time for me to come clean. Well, it's time for me to make him listen. I've tried to tell him the truth a million times. I've tried to tell everyone. The only people that would listen to me were my mother and father. They told me not to force people to listen, that they would when they were ready to. To just let things lie because to keep going on about what happened that day wouldn't change a thing. But I have felt like such a fraud these past two years, keeping what really happened to myself.

  “When you left that day, Cindy and I were talking about Jillian's wedding and how we needed to find outfits or we'd never be ready,”

  Jillian was a friend of ours who went to school with us. Cindy became my best friend immediately. The four of us, me, Cindy, Tessa, and Jillian were the best of friends. We did everything together. Until Cindy moved away with her family when she was ten. She moved back to town almost twelve years later, but she didn't really know Hammer.

  As soon as they met, she was hooked. A couple weeks later, she was his old lady. And it cut me up inside when I felt like it should have been me. But I didn't let it show. But can you imagine loving someone for so long and watching them with every other woman but you?

  Yeah, it hurts. A lot.

 
Anyway, the day Cindy was kidnapped, I asked her to go to the bridal store with me to look for our bridesmaid dresses. Jillian wanted us to meet her there, but Cindy really didn't want to go. She said she had a bad feeling about things.

  I laughed it off and told her that I was used to being warned about danger, I was the daughter, granddaughter, sister of bikers, after all. I told her we'd be fine, that nothing would happen to either of us and that we'd even be back before Hammer even knew we'd gone.

  Little did I know that nothing would ever be the same again.

  We had fun at the bridal store, we picked our dresses and even our shoes. We said our goodbyes and left. I'd driven us and promised to get us home quickly. Cindy was still worried, still had that uneasy feeling inside. But I tried to reassure her that everything would be okay.

  I'd just put the bags in the trunk when two huge guys came up behind us. I grabbed Cindy and pushed her behind me. But the biggest one grabbed her and pulled her against him.

  I begged the man to let her go. They said they only wanted one of us, they needed the other to give Shepard a message. I told them I was Shepard's daughter and they should take me. But according to them, their president wanted Hammer's old lady.

  Why did they want her?

  Because Hammer was the one who pulled the trigger and killed a higher member of their MC, and he was the one who had to pay. Or so they said.

  I did everything I could to make them let go of her, she was screaming and begging me to help her. I tried, I tried so fucking hard, but the bigger of the two hit me so hard across the face that I fell to the ground and was knocked clean out.

  By the time I came around, they were nowhere in sight. I'd failed to protect her, failed to stop them from taking her, and I could do nothing but cry in frustration.

  Of course, I went straight to Shepard and gave him the information, told him everything they'd told me. He made me swear that I wouldn't tell Hammer that I was even there. He said Hammer would kill the whole damn state if he knew I'd been there also.

  I didn't understand what he meant at the time, but I kept my mouth shut. Even when the video came through of those monsters torturing Cindy, slitting her throat, I said nothing. It killed me, and I know I did the wrong thing.

  But watching him right now as I tell him everything, his eyes wide and the vein in his temple thumping away, I know I most certainly did the wrong thing.

  “I'm so sorry, Sam.” It's been a very long time since I've used his birth name, not since I was sixteen at least. A long time since anyone has called him that, and by the bulge of his eyes, he doesn't like it. But I need him to hear me, I need to speak to Sam as well as Hammer.

  “I tried so hard to make them let go of her.” The tears fall from my eyes. No one has any clue how guilty I feel about what happened to Cindy. No one has ever let me really rid myself of it. Somehow, I doubt I'll ever be free of it. “I tried to make them take me instead, but they wouldn't.” I jump when he gets to his feet and slams his hands down on the table with so much force, the coffee mugs jump. “I'm so sorry.”

  “Sorry? What the fuck good does sorry do me now, Willow?! How could you keep this from me?”

  “I didn't want to. I wanted to tell you, but I didn't know how.”

  “You didn't want to more like it! You kept it from me for your own selfish reasons!”

  “No,” I shake my head, get to my feet, and touch his arm. He snatches it away from me. “I didn't have any agenda. I just wanted to protect you from more pain. But in doing so, I made my best friend look reckless. She wasn't reckless, Hammer. I made her go with me because I wanted to get out of the house. I wanted some freedom because I hated being told I couldn't do something.”

  “And by doing exactly what I told you not to, I lost her! Do you have any idea what it did to me?! What it's still doing to me!”

  I nod my head, tears falling from my eyes, stomach churning in pain. I've done this. I've caused him more pain. But he needed to know that Cindy didn't defy him, she didn't put herself in harms way deliberately.

  “It should have been you!” He hisses through his teeth, eyes hard with anger. My heart literally sinks to my feet. “You killed her!”

  “No,” I whisper the word in shock.

  “You may not have pulled that blade across her throat, but you killed her. If only you'd done what was asked of you instead of thinking about your damn self for once, she'd still be here!”

  “I know.” I lower my head and sob. “I paid for my part in her death,” I touch the scar on my neck. It still hurts to touch. “I think I did. Maybe if you'd left me there, I would have paid fully. Maybe you shouldn't have saved me.”

  “Maybe I shouldn't have!” He walks away from me, leaving me there in a mess of my own tears.

  I sink to my ass against the wall of my kitchen and sob my heart out. I'll never be anything to him now. I've lost him in every way a person can lose another besides death.

  Maybe I shouldn't have!

  His words rattle through my head long after he's gone.

  He regrets saving me when he couldn't save her.

  Maybe my mom and dad were right, I shouldn't have said anything. But I just couldn't keep it to myself any longer. But I fear by telling him the truth, I have lost him for good.

  I don't know what to do now.

  My heart is breaking in ways I didn't know was possible.

  I sob and sob, the guilt eating away at me all over again.

  I'm so sorry, Cindy. I loved you so much. If I could bring you back, I would do it in a heartbeat.

  I'm sorry, Hammer. If I could trade places with Cindy so you could have her back, I would.

  But I can't and I have to pull myself together. Crying won't change anything now. What's done is done. My best friend is dead and the man I love hates me. Life couldn't get any worse right now.

  Chapter Six

  Hammer

  I didn't mean to be so harsh with her the other night, but the fact she lied to me, kept things from me sent me into a maddening rage. All this time I believed Cindy left the house on her own when I'd told her not to. I had no fuckin' clue Willow was the one who talked her into it.

  How could I not have known?

  All through church this morning I've done nothing but think about what she'd done. She convinced my Cindy to go shopping with her, to defy me, and it got her killed! Twice the Prez has yelled at me for my mind being elsewhere.

  I can't afford to have my mind on anything other than the club right now. Too much shit is about to go down with an outside MC who think it's okay to try taking over our turf. The Razor Hogs are a small MC the south of Texas. What business they have here is beyond any of us.

  What is it with the smaller motorcycle clubs thinking they can move in on huge charter territory? Do they not realize we'll rip them to shreds?

  This kind of thing isn't unusual, though, we've seen it all before. The only difference this time is the little fuckers have mafia ties. Something to do with their Prez and his family. I personally don't give a shit, I'll protect this club and its members with my life. I've done it many times before, and I'll do it again and again until my last dying breath.

  “I want the women and kids protected at all costs.”

  First thing Shepard thinks of each time we have a battle is putting the old ladies and the kids of this big family of ours in the safe house we own. A huge mansion style home that belonged to Horn, our founding president, Shepard's great-grandfather. He left it to the club in his will. He stated that the place was to be used to protect the family because that's what we all are, a family. No matter what, we have to protect our women and kids.

  Trouble is, we find a couple of the women fight us on having to go into hiding. They don't want to leave their old men. It takes some convincing, but they go in the end. Not that they really have a choice, they do as their old men tell them.

  The house is a secure compound where no one can get in without voice and thumbprint recognition. It's completel
y surrounded and armed to the back fuckin' teeth. The fence that surrounds the grounds is electric. Touch it, get fried, simple. Our family is safe there.

  But I'm not sure Shepard isn't being a little paranoid with this. We're talking about a small MC that can't do shit. We'll deal with them within days. I'm hoping they're not stupid enough to go after our women.

  But not one of us will disagree with Shepard on this. Ever since Willow was kidnapped, he's been paranoid about our women's safety. Never underestimate the underdog. Apollo taught us that. Shepard's father, the Prez before him, was a wise man.

  So, if Shepard wants the women and kids put on lockdown at the safe house, the safe house they shall go. Whether they want to or not.

  “Nova will fight me on it.” My brother says grimly. Nova is headstrong and then some. The girl is a trained assassin, she'll more than likely want to end those fuckers herself. But since giving up The Exorcist, she swore only ever to get involved if Shepard asked her to. He's not going to do that now. We're men, we can handle this.

  Not that I'd ever take away the fact she's a smart and strong woman, but come on, what man wants his ass saved by a woman? Especially one who knows how to handle a gun and herself better than most men I've ever met.

  “Nova, Lynette, and Willow have already been informed.”

  “I bet Nova loved that.” My little brother folds his arms across his massive chest while chuckling to himself.

  “She agreed to go.”

  I think even my eyes are bugged out at that news. I never expected to hear that she'd go to the safe house so easily. I thought she would have had something to say about how this is overkill. No need for everyone to be on lockdown. The woman's gone soft.

  “She agreed to go because she doesn't want Ember in danger. She'll talk to you, Tank when you get home. I've made it clear to her that she is not to get involved this time. We don't need anyone else's help. She gave up the Exorcist, I won't have her going back to it. We've always managed to put an end to each threat ourselves in the past, now is no different. I want my wife and kids safe as of now. I know the rest of y'all's girls will go, right?” There's a chorus of yeah's and nods of agreement. “I don't want any of you taking no for an answer. I will not risk any of our women or kids being hurt. I think we've had enough of that to last a lifetime.”