Steel Cobras MC Complete Box Set: Books 1-6

by Evie Monroe

  I shook my head. “I can’t,” I cried out. “I can’t. I can’t.”

  “You stay here and in the mood he’s in, he’ll fucking kill you,” he growled out, wrapping both arms around me and yanking me over to his motorcycle. I tried to break free, but he stood in front of me and lifted me up into his arms.

  “Cait,” he said, depositing me on the back of his bike. “I’m not leaving here without you. So sit still and let’s go.”

  Tears started falling down my face as he gunned the engine and drove me away from my poor, poor mother, who was getting another ass beating.

  All because of me.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Drake

  “Let me go! You have to turn around and let me go!” she shrieked at me, the whole way back to my apartment.

  I drove faster, drowning the sound out.

  No fucking way was I going to let her go into that house, with Slade the Asshole on a rampage.

  “You think he saw me?” I asked as we sped away, knowing that would be the icing on the cake. Slade finding out his daughter was with a Cobra. Perfect.

  But Cait didn’t answer. She was too busy pounding on my fucking back and telling me to let her go.

  That was the first time I’d ever seen Slade, the mysterious dude that he was. I was surprised that he wasn’t seven feet tall with arms the size of tree trunks. I’d heard the stories about people he’d supposedly messed with. The man who’d touched his property and was now drinking all his meals through a straw. The guy he’d practically lobotomized with the pool stick. There were dozens of stories about what an insane son of a bitch he was. All of them had made him seem superhuman.

  But the guy I saw looked like nothing but a has-been. Sure, he was jacked, but his face was grizzled with age and white whiskers. He was balding on top with a long, graying ponytail that went halfway down his back. His arms might’ve been solid muscle, but he had the telltale beer belly from just a few too many long nights at the watering hole. He didn’t impress me.

  It sure didn’t impress me to see him raise his hand to the woman screaming in the house. He had to be a real fucking asshole to hit a woman. What did that prove, beating up on someone weaker than he was? And if he’d rearranged a man’s internal organs with a pool stick, there was no telling what he could do to a woman, even if that woman was his own daughter.

  So the second I saw him in the front window, face red and hands raised in fury, there was no fucking way I was going to just drive off without her.

  “Shut up,” I muttered to her when I stopped at a light. She was still trying to get off the bike, but I had my hand clamped around her wrist, my body pushed back on the seat to pin her on it. Adrenaline pumping through me.

  Sure, I’d gotten Cait out. But that other woman was still there. I should’ve gone in the house. Confronted him. I should have killed that mother fucker.

  We finally pulled up at my apartment, and I cut the engine. “I’m not staying here,” she huffed. “I have to get back.”

  I shook my head. “Come upstairs first.”

  As she scowled at me, I saw the tracks of dried tears on her face. “Fine. The Wall is around here, right? I’ll just walk over there and get my car.”

  She started to march off, but I grabbed her wrist. “Don’t.”

  “Why? You don’t understand. I have to help her.”

  “I do understand,” I muttered. It was mid-day Sunday, and the parking lot outside my apartment was full. We were about to create a scene, something I didn’t want. I came up close to her ear to mutter something about calming down. I saw the anger in her eyes a second too late.

  She reared up her knee with force and caught me square in the balls.

  I doubled over, seeing fireworks as I tried to catch my breath. She started to run away but by then, I’d had enough.

  “You really fucking think I’m the enemy here, don’t you?” I went for her middle, grabbing her around the backs of the legs so she toppled over my shoulder. She was about as heavy as a sack of potatoes. She pounded on my back with her fists as I carried her upstairs, screaming and carrying on the whole way. When I got her inside, I threw her on the couch for the second time that day.

  “Well, thanks, baby. Now all my neighbors think I’m a fucking serial killer,” I growled, trying to ignore the fact that her skirt was now up around her hips, showing her pussy. Didn’t she fucking wear underwear? Right. I tore them off of her last night. Shit. “The knee to the balls was especially fun.”

  She sat up, pulling her skirt down, and crossed her arms. “Serves you right! Carrying me up here like a fucking caveman! Why didn’t you just drag me by my hair?”

  “Maybe next time. If you don’t tell me what the fuck’s going on. What was that all about, with Slade? Is he like that all the time to you?”

  She stared at me, breathing hard, her eyes full of rage.

  I paced in front of her. She started to move for the door but then I leaned over her, caging her on the sofa between my arms. Seeing her bare like that had made my cock pulse to life. Now, I wanted to kiss that defiant little snarl off her face.

  “Who was that, in there? Was that your mom?” When she didn’t answer again, I was ready to punch a fist through the wall. Instead, I counted to ten, taking deep breaths. Then I sat down on the corner of the coffee table and looked into her eyes. “I’m trying to help you.”

  “You can’t help me,” she snapped. “No one can. Especially you. You’re a Cobra.”

  I nodded. “Yeah. I might be a Cobra. And I might be your father’s enemy. But I’m not your enemy, Cait.”

  Her eyes softened. She let out a ragged breath. “Your friend seems to think that you should be.”

  “Fuck what Jet says. I’m not saying I can, but I might be able to help you,” I said gently, touching her bare knee. Her skirt was riding up, so I could see the bruises on her thighs. They sure as hell weren’t nothing. “And to me that looks like your best shot right now.”

  She swallowed hard. “It’s been like this too long. I can’t believe that anyone can help me.”

  “Well, like I said, maybe I can’t,” I told her. “But I sure as hell can’t do shit until you tell me what’s going on. You’ve got to trust me and tell me what’s happening.”

  She threw her head back against the sofa, and she stared up at the ceiling. Like she was looking for angels to help her or saying a prayer.

  Then she nodded. “Okay. I will.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Caitlyn

  Drake went to the kitchen to make us coffee. As he did, I thought of the time when I was younger, and my father had taken me and my mom to Disneyland. We’d been so happy. In the old days, he hadn’t even been part of Hell’s Fury. He worked as a welder in the machine shop, made a good living, and took care of his girls. That was what he used to call us, his girls. We were the most important things in his life. The reason he got out of bed in the morning.

  It wasn’t until I was seven or eight that he started getting entangled with the Fury. As he got more and more involved, he became more and more removed from us. My mom said it had to be drugs and drug addicts have a disease and we couldn’t fault someone for being sick.

  I cringed at the thought of the first time I’d seen him striking my mother. I was nine. I remembered that day like it was yesterday.

  We’d been making BLTs for dinner in the kitchen, wearing our pajamas and ready for movie night, which we always had on Fridays. He’d come in with this weird look in his eyes. I asked him what was wrong. I smelled the stench of sweat and alcohol. I knew it was wrong, that he was wrong. He took one look at the bacon, said it wasn’t crispy enough, and when she told him he’d just have to make do, he smacked her across the face so hard she fell down.

  I remembered that thin line of red blood that ran from her nose, down over her pink silky robe, even as she tried to stop me from crying.

  After that, my mother was always careful not to tell my father to make do. No, if he want
ed something one way, she was damned sure to make it that way. She did her best, trying to anticipate exactly what might set him off. I thought she spent her days trying to be a mind reader, trying to arrange everything in the house perfectly so he wouldn’t find fault.

  Didn’t ever work.

  There were many more nights, after that BLT night, where he came home with buggy eyes and smelling like alcohol. More than I could count. Sometimes he’d be overly sweet during those times, and I thought I had my regular dad back. Other times, he’d just be nasty. And it only got worse, until he didn’t even need to be drunk or high to be full of rage.

  It was kind of like a snowball. Small at first, but once it got rolling, it gathered up strength and speed until nothing could stop it. He found more and more fault with everything as the years went on. Nothing was safe.

  But that one trip to Disneyland? I had a picture on my dresser at home of the three of us, with Mickey and Minnie in front of Sleeping Beauty’s castle. My daddy was holding a pig-tailed me and I was holding a Mickey balloon and leaning into him, cheek to cheek. My mother was so beautiful, with long glistening red hair and a smile on her face like she was standing next to the loves of her life. I loved my mother’s smile, even though it’d been all but erased over the years.

  In that picture, we all looked so happy. So normal. So much like an ordinary family.

  It’d been so long since I’d had normal, I didn’t even think I’d know what it was if it hit me in the face.

  Drake sat down across from me, and for the hundredth time in the eighteen hours I’d known him, I was struck by how sexy he was. How masculine and impossibly handsome, making my insides flutter with an intensity that almost made everything else fall away. Packed with muscle and larger than life, I could almost believe he’d be a match for my father, that one super-heroic figure who could stand up to Slade and not back down when the going got tough, like every other man out there.

  And the way he stared at me, his amber eyes holding me trapped through those heavy dark lashes, made me wish he’d just corner me, lift me into his arms, and take me to his bed. Fuck talking.

  But then he tilted his head, eyebrows lifting up to his hairline in question, and I knew he was waiting for something else.

  I wrapped my fingers around the warm mug of coffee. “I don’t even know where to start. You see him as a monster, right? Someone who has no good qualities. Who the world would be better off without.”

  Almost as if reading my mind, he said, “But he’s your dad.”

  I nodded, and the tears really started to flow. “Yes. Yes,” I murmured, and right then I was there as a child, in my father’s arms, on the Dumbo ride, feeling safe and loved and treasured. I just wanted to feel that again. It’d been so long.

  He handed me a tissue, and I wiped at my eyes. “He wasn’t always like this. He took care of me and my mom when I was little. He was actually a good dad. Loved my mother and treated her like gold. I know you can’t believe it, but it’s true. And then he started getting more and more involved with the motorcycle club, rising in the ranks, and I saw him less and less. We knew he was an important guy, so we let him do what he needed to do.”

  I rubbed my hands over my face. “I think being in the Fury stressed him out. It took away what humanity he had, Drake. He started coming home and finding fault with my mom. Nothing she did was good enough and she started walking on eggshells around him. I’d see him hit her, once or twice, not too often, usually just when he’d come home drunk or high after a really hard day. He drank a lot. Then he started using as well and Mom knew to stay out of his way, but every once in a while, he just went looking for it. So he’d hit her, and things would get ugly for a while, and then it’d blow over, and my mother would come to me with the same old excuses. ‘He’s a good man. He just has a lot of stress. He takes good care of us. We should be thankful.’”

  I sighed. “But it wasn’t until I was twelve or thirteen that I realized that she did everything she could to shield me from the brunt of what he was doing. You know, thick, caked on make-up, wearing baggy clothes to hide the bruises, staying in bed late sometimes with a ‘headache’ he’d given her with his fists. I started noticing more and more. We were always losing furnishings around the house. My mother had this antique porcelain doll, and one day it was just gone, or I’d go outside to find the coffee table, broken to pieces, out on the curb for the trash collectors. No explanation. But as I grew up, I knew.”

  A headache was beginning to slice through my skull. I vised the bridge of my nose between my fingers and leaned my elbow on the table, bowing my head so I couldn’t look into his eyes. His eyes, which I knew were on me. I could feel their sheer intensity. I took in a deep breath and continued.

  “I used to be the apple of his eye. I always trusted him, believed in him, knew that when he touched me, it’d be out of love. Yes, once I did hear him accusing my mother of having me to trap him, not that he ever acted trapped, because I’d seen how many women he had. But he never acted like I was a trap. He was gentle with me, even as he was beating up my mom,” I said, thinking back to those early days of how we’d always believed that if we acted a certain way or just said the right words, things would get better. “When I was thirteen or so, I decided I was big enough to step in and take my mother’s beatings. I stood up to him.”

  “You did?”

  I scoffed. “Yeah. My mom didn’t like it at all. She begged me to stop. But I learned that when I got in his face and told him he was being an asshole, it got through to him a little. He’d get pissed as hell, but it hit home with him. The beatings didn’t last that long. And I’d rather him beat up on me than my mom.”

  “Motherfucker. I can’t believe he’d hit you.”

  “Yeah, that’s how it was. Me protecting my mom. I think my dad actually respected me for being the only one to stand up to him. He liked me and my fresh mouth, told me he thought my sticking up for my mom was ‘building character’.” I shivered as I thought of that first night when he’d learned I crossed the line from his little girl to worthless whore.

  “That all changed when I turned fifteen. I started seeing a guy from the Fury. He was a lot older than me. Most of the guys knew to stay away from me but this guy was young or suicidal. I was restless, being kept in my ivory tower, so I pursued him relentlessly. I kind of made it impossible for him to say no to me.” I smiled at the thought of how ridiculous I’d been, chasing him around the clubhouse when my father was away, wearing tight clothes and short shorts so he’d have no choice but to notice me. “He was a nice guy. Really nice. Sweet. He tried to take care of me.”

  “Anyway,” I said, wiping my eyes as my sob turned into a bitter laugh. “I think he’s dead. I think my father killed him. Because of me. Because he touched me, and I’m off-limits to everyone, even the good guys. Whatever happened to him, it’s not good, and it’s my fault.”

  “Jesus, Cait,” Drake said tugging on a handful of his long hair as he recoiled in shock.

  “So since then, I’ve been careful. On the rare occasion, like last night, when I can go out, I leave North Aveline Bay. I stick to one-night-stands. Men my father can’t possibly find out about. Men I can’t get attached to.”

  He spread his legs out and crossed his arms. “Me.”

  I nodded, then realized that what I said was kind of offensive. “I mean. Because of proximity. I’m sure I could get attached, if I let myself. But I don’t. I don’t want to hurt anyone again.”

  “I get it,” he said, but I wasn’t sure he did. Because of my father, I was keenly attuned to notice the signs of a man’s anger, and Drake had that look now. I forced myself to breathe in through my mouth, out through my nose, to calm down.

  I had to physically stop myself from flinching. I wished I wasn’t so conditioned to believe that a man being angry meant flying fists would soon follow. Drake was not my father. Most men were not my father. I was safe here.

  Drake took a sip of coffee. “What I don’t ge
t is why you and your mom don’t just leave.”

  I snorted. It sounded so easy. Just leave. But there were a thousand intricate threads binding us together, tying us to my father. “My dad has always been our sole provider. He made sure my mom never worked. First, he said it was because we were his princesses, but now I look back and see that he wanted to keep us helpless and dependent on him. We have no money, no family, no means to survive without him.”

  “But there are shelters for abused women.”

  “You know my father’s insane, right?” I said to him, the words coming out harsher than I’d wanted them to. “If we went to one of those places, he’d probably burn it down, just out of spite. He’d find us and make us pay. Those places can only keep us safe for so long.”

  “All right,” he said, sucking in his lips.

  “So you understand why I have to go back, right?”

  He jerked his head up and narrowed his eyes. “No, I don’t. You go back there now, and your father will kill you. Is that what you want?”

  “But my mom—”

  “No. Jesus, Cait. I know you want to take care of her, but you’ve got to think of yourself, too. Your mom have a cell phone?”

  I nodded.

  “Call and check on her. If she doesn’t answer, we’ll call the police and ask them to check on her. You sure as hell shouldn’t be going there. After what I saw. Fuck no. I’m not letting you.”

  He didn’t need to convince me. When I thought of going back, a stone settled in my stomach, rolling around in there, making me queasy at the thought of what I’d find. What he’d do to me. What my mother would say. She never blamed me, but whatever happened to my mother today? It was all my fault.

  I forced that thought away, reached into my purse and pulled out my phone. I pressed the button for my mom and listened to the voicemail message to click on before ending the call. “She’s not answering.”