Gigi: A Black Sentinels MC Novel

by Johns, Victoria

  “Well that was odd,” Wave commented the minute I was back in the truck.

  “Yeah.” He wasn’t wrong. I wasn’t sure exactly why it was odd, though. I had no real experience of the correct way to grieve the motherfucker who fed you to the wolves to be raped.

  Gigi

  Fucking God.

  Why couldn’t he just give me a break?

  Just five minutes of good, clean living without any pain or drama.

  I waited for twenty minutes after Gears had left to make sure he wasn’t coming back. Those twenty minutes felt like five hours.

  I kicked back the covers and had one goal in mind—get to the family home, find that bag and the address contained inside, and make my niece and her mother safe. Gears would kill me when he found out what I’d done, but I couldn’t risk him getting involved and being in danger, too. It was going to be safer for all if I did this myself, and I prayed I could do it before anyone found out what I’d done.

  The task was simple: get the money, take it to them and never look back. My Livingston history would be well and truly behind me.

  Gears’ mom was busy making a pie in the kitchen with the radio on. She had her back to the hallway and was singing some fifties soul music loudly and out of tune. I tiptoed to the table by the front door and, quietly as possible, picked up her car keys. As I reached for the front door handle, the radio DJ started to talk and I felt my heart stutter as I clutched the keys, praying I wouldn’t get caught. When the next song started and the tone-deaf singing recommenced, I opened the door and snuck out.

  “Please forgive me,” I mumbled with remorse as I slipped into the front of her car and reversed it down the drive.

  My nerves were on edge. I’d made a promise to my brother—a brother I owed nothing to, but I knew if I didn’t see his wishes through, I’d never forgive myself.

  Like I’d done so many times, I parked at the far side of the woods and ran through carefully to the barn at the back. I prayed the Hermanos weren’t there. If they were, I’d have to wait before going to the barn. The grab bag was stashed perilously close to their drugs, but that wasn’t the danger. If Gears realized I was missing, the first place he would look would be here and I couldn’t have him walking into the middle of anything with the Hermanos.

  I approached quietly and was relieved to find no motorcycles parked anywhere. With extreme caution, I waited, listening for any signs of life, and was thankful when all I could hear was my own heartbeat, the birds and the wind rustling the leaves.

  Skulking like someone might see, I tiptoed into the barn and was surprised by the level of destruction that awaited me. Someone had completely turned over the contents of all the shelves and work cabinets and it didn’t take a genius to figure out who. The illegal bricks had been taken, and by the looks of it anything else of value, too. Crawling down to the underside of the tractor that hadn’t moved in well over a decade, I pushed aside the half hay bale underneath it that had one of daddy’s old oil pans resting on it to catch the leaking drips from lack of use.

  Like I did in the house when Momma guided me to her bag of money, I pushed at the floorboards and prayed that no creepy crawlies would jump out at me. With a creak, I felt a loose one and cursed when I couldn’t get a finger down the side to lift it. Finding the first screwdriver I could, I prized it open and sure enough, there was a large black bag. A heavy bag that I had a hard time hauling the four feet from the bottom beams of the old barn.

  I was scared enough to haul ass out of there immediately. The place held too many bad memories, and with Edward murdered—I was absolutely certain his so-called brothers had killed him—the last place I needed to hang around was here.

  The bag proved a challenge to manage, and by the time I’d trekked the relatively short distance through the woods and got it into Gears’ mom’s car, I was sweating and breathing heavily. With it sat on the seat next to me, I unzipped it. Inside, it looked like there was three times the amount of cash that Momma had left for me. There were three envelopes, and stuffed in the middle of the money, a hand gun. Each of the envelopes was addressed. One to Faye, one to Gabriella and one for me. I ripped open the one for me and found the address he’d promised he’d leave for me.

  Nothing else, no note of thanks. Just an address.

  Zipping it all back up again, I punched the zip code of my brother’s secret family’s home into the car’s navigation system and got moving.

  Faye’s place was nearly a two-hour drive away and there was so much to be nervous about. I was about to meet my brother’s family and I was going to have to impart the news that he was dead. I needed to convince them to take the money and run, and then forget I’d ever met them. I also knew that Gears would be home before me and find me missing, if his mom hadn’t already checked on me, discovered I’d gone and alerted him and the rest of the Sentinels.

  When I arrived at the house, it was nothing like I expected. It was a little cracker box house with a tiny front garden and a picket fence. The neighborhood seemed nice, even if some of the houses were scruffy and in need of some DIY. The one house that looked loved and cared for was Faye’s. It was then that I understand all the times my brother had apparently been working overtime, or out with other women, maybe he wasn’t. Maybe he used to come here and live a normal life with his family until it became too risky and he had to give them up.

  The garden was strewn with plastic toys and dolls, and it looked like little Gabriella loved to build sandcastles.

  Parking the car down the road away from the house, I grabbed the bag and did my best to walk to the house as inconspicuously as possible. When I got there, I noticed the front door was left ajar, not something that a person with a five-year-old would do intentionally, and I began to worry about what I would find.

  Pushing the door with a finger, I peered inside, trying to listen for any sound. The place was completely silent. Doing my best tip-toe, cat burglar impression, I progressed down the small hallway, moving further into a house that had the same trashed look as the barn at home. The closer I got to the kitchen, the worse the smell became, and I couldn’t ignore what that odor was. I’d smelled it every time I placed a band aid on my cut lip or broken skin.

  Blood.

  When I poked through into the kitchen, I saw the reason for the blood.

  “Oh, God,” I cried.

  A woman who I could only assume was Faye was laid out on her back, her shirt pulled open and her chest exposed. As if that wasn’t bad enough, there was a dark, blood clotted letter H carved in her chest going right through the center of her breasts. Her throat had also been slit.

  I dropped the grab bag on the floor and felt my head go woozy, feeling certain I might be sick at the grotesque sight in front of me. That was when I heard a noise coming from one of the cupboards in the kitchen, the sound of bottles moving. Leaving the bag, I stepped around Faye and went to the cupboard, pulling it open a touch, expecting a cat or dog to bolt out at me. I was met instead with a pair of big chocolate brown eyes.

  “Hello,” the small voice whispered. “I’m hiding from the bad men. Mom told me to.” My instinct to slam the door shut on my niece was strong. I was haunted by just how like my brother she was. “Who are you?”

  My throat was constricting and all I could think about was shielding this girl from the horror that her mother had endured on the floor behind me.

  “I’m your Aunt Gigi. Can you stay hidden for me one more minute while I go and make sure the bad men have gone?”

  She nodded and went back to stroking the long blonde hair of a barbie doll she’d taken into the cupboard with her. I had no idea how she fit in there, but I was so thankful that she had. I shut the door and went straight to the grab bag. I reached inside for the gun and pulled it out. My palm was sweaty and I was shaking like a leaf. I had no idea how to hold a gun, let alone use one. I’d be more of a danger with it in my hands than the men who could still be here.

  The safest option was to get Gabriella
and the bag and run.

  I walked to the nearest room and grabbed a comforter from the back of the sofa, took it back to the kitchen and covered up Faye’s body before going back to the cupboard and opening the door.

  “You came back?”

  “I sure did, kiddo. Your momma had to go out for a while so I’m going to look after you, okay?”

  “My daddy said I’d meet you one day. He was right. Are we going to see my daddy now? I miss him.”

  This girl and I shared a connection. My brother’s blood family had destroyed us both, and now we were each all the family the other had left.

  I swallowed the lump in my throat and reached into the cupboard for her, watching as her tiny, chubby hands trusted me enough to reach back for me.

  As I walked out of their house, carrying the weight of my brother’s world on my shoulders, I pushed back the tears.

  I knew what I had to do.

  I had to take Gabriella and run.

  I had to keep Gears and his Sentinel family safe and out of this.

  In that moment there was no decision to make, and I shattered my own heart and my future dreams to do it. This was fate talking to me again, giving me my dream of keeping other children safe and loved, free from harm.

  I left Gears’ mom’s car, took Faye’s, and drove away with Gabriella until I’d put enough distance between myself and the life I so desperately wanted with Gears, and made good on the promise I’d made to my bastard of a brother over our dead momma’s grave.

  Gears

  “Where’s the nanny?” It was obvious that Wolf’s kids were missing. We were actually getting some work done in the autoshop.

  “Gone,” came Wave’s reply from under a car on a lift.

  Thank fuck for that.

  Wolf’s latest nanny was gone.

  She was always hovering, gagging for it like she was in heat.

  They were never interested in the kids, just the ‘trimmings’ that came with the job.

  The men of the Black Sentinels MC and Autoshop.

  Pussy was a serious perk of who we were. We only had to crook our fingers and panties disintegrated, and there was only so much willpower a man like me had.

  I was always a target for their affections and there was a fine line between fucking the nanny and fucking up my relationship with my boss/MC president and his wife. They all thought they’d be the one to lock me down, but they were sorely mistaken. I’d fucked up once before and handed over my man card to the only girl I ever really loved. When she ran out on me, she didn’t give it back. She tore it up and burned it to shreds.

  Now the only things I loved were my bike, my brothers and naturally, my ma, and that was plenty enough.

  Everything else was temporary.

  It had to be.

  There was no way I would ever make the same fucking mistake again.

  I still hadn’t recovered from the last time.

  Laughing, I waited for Wolf to come out from under another car. “Can’t decide whether the munchkins cause less trouble here or with Angel.”

  “Well, the good news is that a new nanny has already started.”

  Wave looked over at me, waggling his eyebrows. He was worse than me for road testing the bitches.

  I ignored him and carried on talking to Wolf. “We may actually get something done around here, although you managed well with the kids strapped to your legs while the last nanny did her thing.”

  We all knew what her thing was.

  Chatting us up, seeing if she could line up one of us to take her to bed for the night.

  I did, however, give it less than an hour before Little Angel as we all called her—real name Angelica—broke free of this nanny and made the sprint across the fields. Liam, her older brother, was in school and even though I’d never admit it to Wolf, I missed him around the place. If the school system thought they were going to pin down the kids of Declan and Angel Foster, they were mistaken. I often wondered whether I should have sent them an anonymous letter, just letting them know there was some of JP’s Sentinel blood in there, too. That kid was the future of this business and like his mom, he’d be back in here, covered in grease just as soon as the new nanny fed him his afternoon snack.

  “How’s Angel coping?”

  “She likes this one, says she’s gonna be good for the kids. Then muttered about her being intriguing, so my guess is she may not last long or she’ll be a big fucking headache.”

  Wolf and Angel had been looking for the right nanny for a while now. They both had a burning desire to work under the hood of car, but the autoshop was becoming like a circus act and nothing was getting done. So, they compromised. She could work in the newly built workshop next door when the mood took her and was also in charge of the auto shop admin, which she bitched about frequently, while Wolf worked in this one with us. Wolf and Angel living and working together shouldn’t have worked, but it did. I suspected that also had to do with his frequent disappearing acts. That loved up fucker could usually sense when his wife was bending over the hood of car, and around a nanosecond later, usually headed there to watch. It would have been creepy but for the fact that they were linked by decades of history and each had a need to know the other was safe.

  I got it. I’d only ever felt that connection once before.

  For me, though, it had ended badly and I’d worked hard to avoid it ever since.

  “The newbie is coming to the party tonight. Vix is having ‘glam-ma’ time.” It was Friday, so there would be an open bar and some links and burger patties being grilled.

  I laughed. JP’s wife, Vix, refused to be a grandma, said she wasn’t old enough. When they suggested she become a nan, she hit the roof. Only goats were nannies. So Glam-ma it became. The best thing was that the stink she kicked up was totally fake. She was fucking thrilled to be in the kid’s lives. Angel was the same age as me and was already a grease monkey by the time I started sweeping the workshop floor as a sixteen-year-old. I’d never admit it, but she probably knew shit I didn’t when it came to cars.

  I’d joined the Black Sentinels as soon as I got my shop qualifications. I could remember watching them ride around town and just thought they were so fucking cool. My ma and pa were horrified when they hired me as a mechanic. It was like the devil had recruited me to be his right-hand man, but it was all I ever wanted to do. Most teenage boy’s bedroom walls were full of color posters of Pamela Anderson and some other titty babes, but mine were wall to wall motorcycles. The more bespoke, the better. I’m not saying I didn’t have titty pics. I did. They were just in magazines scotch taped to the underside of my pants drawer. Ma only found my stash once and it was ugly. Looking back, my folks had been fighting a losing battle for most of my time at high school. I wasn’t a jock, but I was on the football team. I wasn’t a mathlete, although I could work out the 0-60 time of a 1000cc Kawasaki quicker than those guys. I could factor in the potential drag from windspeed and a full tank of gas, too. I was a kid coasting through school with a dream of doing something I enjoyed. I had principles. I understood my own fucking life and knew what I wanted, and no one was going to sway me into being a high school sheep. That was one thing I did have my parents to thank for. My dad was a miserable fuck, working for ‘the man’, corporate America, and ending up shuffling papers like him while being strangled by a neck tie held no appeal. One of the many reasons he walked out on us just after I became a prospect. He was having some kind of midlife crisis, and fucking a Denny’s waitress near his office appeared to have helped curb that.

  I don’t diss anyone’s choices, but I learned my lesson one afternoon when I managed to sneak into the Sentinels’ compound. A younger JP caught me looking at the motors and gave me some wise words. He said, “You have one life, son. Do not fuck it up doing a job you hate and tying yourself to a bitch who ain’t worth it.”

  That seemed like a lifetime ago and I was still mostly living by those rules. I was still trying to figure out the bitch part in his words. I’d onl
y ever known him with his old lady, Vix.

  My eagerness to learn meant I quickly rose to the top. I just needed the experience to back up my qualifications and JP showed faith in me by giving me extra responsibilities, even though I was young enough to be his son. It sounded scary as fuck to be high up the food chain in a motorcycle club, especially at my age, but it worked. JP kept his older brothers happy, those who had been in the military with him, and I looked out for the next generation. When Wolf took over, I stayed put and so did my closest brother, Wave. Most idiots called us a gang, but that wasn’t what we were. We were just a unit who found an alternative family to get through life with.

  I mean, for fuck’s sake, I’d never killed anybody, done hard drugs or robbed a bank. I just rode a bike, custom repaired cars, most of them classics, and happened to wear a leather cut while I did it. If dumbass people wanted to be narrow minded, then they didn’t exist for me. I put up with enough of that and after a while you got over it. That shit wasn’t important. It was their problem, not mine.

  “Gears,” shouted Angel from next door. “Phone.”

  I threw down the rachet I’d only just picked up and grabbed for the rag stuffed in my pants pocket.

  As I walked next door, she was already moving between the workshops looking for me. I knew by the look on her face what it was.

  “It’s your mom. She sounds frantic.” Angel placed her hand on my forearm and gave me a gentle squeeze.

  “Fuck.”

  I readied myself for whatever disaster had happened at home and cursed my father to hell and back for causing this.

  Mind you, it wasn’t just him. She was always a little kooky, then she lost a second person she loved, someone we all loved, and that sent her spiraling.

  I inhaled deeply to calm myself and put the receive against my ear.

  “Griffin!” Mom was the only one who still called me by my full name. It was a fucking stupid name that sounded way cooler when it was shortened to Griff, which was what everyone who didn’t wear a leather cut called me. My ridiculous name was thanks to my dad’s childhood obsession with war reenactments. I was named after some fucking pioneer who served in the American Revolutionary War. Dad was a revolutionary nut and bored us stupid for years. I wondered sometimes if he still did, and did his new—well kinda old—piece of ass just ignore his ramblings like we did? To top off the shit first name, he paired it up with our surname of Geary. I was Griffin at home, Griff at school and then I became Gears, which felt more like fate and a lot like me. Most people thought I got my club name by just shortening my surname, but I didn’t. I earned it because I had the hearing of a bat when it came to all things mechanical. I could listen to an engine idling and tell you what was causing the misfire. Let me hear a brand new or reconditioned engine tick over and I could tell you whether it was syncing properly and the gear ratios were tuned correctly. It was a name I’d earned, and I was damn fucking proud of it.