by Zahra Girard
Razor
An MC Romance
Book 1 in the Twisted Devils MC
By
Zahra Girard
Copyright
Copyright © 2019 by Zahra Girard
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Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Epilogue
Want More Steamy Action?
The Rebel Riders MC:
Book one: Thrash
Book two: Riot
Book three: Duke
Book four: Rooster
Book five: Creole
Book six: Bull
The Wayward Kings MC Series:
Book one: Bear
Book Two: Ozzy
Book Three: Hazard
Book Four: Preacher
Other books by Zahra Girard:
His Captive
Liar
Chapter One
Razor
It’s just another Friday night outside of Lone Mesa, a tiny little city huddled on the opposite side of the mountains separating Los Angeles from the rest of the desert. The air is cold, dusty, and smells like a mixture of rodent piss, old leather, and spilled liquor. There’s nowhere else I’d rather be.
I nudge the desiccated remains of a rat aside with my shoe and peer out a cracked window. Thirty seconds of observation is all it takes for me to make my judgment: whoever’s in that building down the street from this old tannery that we’ve turned into a stakeout spot is up to some shit they’d rather keep secret. They’ve got two men on the door, both armed to the teeth and watching the street like hawks. The security’s tight, but there will be an opening soon — one of the guards is doing the kind of shuffle that only happens when you’re minutes away from hitting the head.
“We go in two minutes.”
“That soon?” Trips says. “What’s the rush? It’s barely past midnight. We should take some more time, watch the place some more.”
I ignore the question for the moment. Trips is always too cautious for his own good. “Trips, did Fat Mike tell you anything more about this poker game these guys are running?”
Trips shrugs. “Nah.”
“Nah?” I press him. “You sure about that?”
“Yeah. He didn’t have much information. Said this game is a new thing. High rollers. New gang in town, maybe.”
“Sounds like our course is pretty clear.”
“That’s a whole lot of nothing to go on and you know it, Razor. We should take our time with this one, make sure there are no surprises,” Trips says.
I’ve still got one eye out the window, watching the man on the door up the urgency in his shuffle. Any faster and he might as well ask the other guy at the door to dance with him. “This is our territory, Trips. Our home. And those assholes across the street haven’t paid for the privilege of conducting their game in our city. What does it say about us and about our club if we don’t defend our territory?”
“I’m not saying we don’t defend our territory, I’m saying we wait.”
“And I’m saying we go in fast and hard, just like your mother likes it. Unless, what, you want to have Rusty talk our way in?”
Trips rolls his eyes. Rusty does, too; the man’s as smooth as sandpaper and everyone knows it.
“Razor, Stone will be pissed if you end up stirring shit up. We know nothing about who’s in there or how much firepower they’ve got. Sure, it could be some fucking rich people who didn’t want to make the drive to Vegas to lose their money, but it could be more than that. We should—”
I stop listening — the dancing doorman’s moved from his spot and is off to relieve himself. It’s time. Whoever is in that warehouse represent a threat to my MC — the only real family I’ve ever known and the people that I’ll die to protect. My gun’s in my hand and I’m leaving the secrecy of our stakeout spot and heading towards the front door of Lone Mesa’s newest illegal poker game. “Talking’s over, Trips. You can either join me on this or watch how it’s done. Either way, I’m going in there and getting our club’s cut.”
I’m hardly out the door before I hear his footsteps behind me. I knew he’d follow. The man might protest, but he’s been my best friend since we were young enough to steal cars, we always have each other’s back. Usually, it’s him watching my back and pulling me out of trouble. But tonight doesn’t look like it should be more trouble than reminding a bunch of doctors, lawyers, and two-bit facilitators that they need to pay for the privilege of playing on the turf of the Twisted Devils MC.
I keep to the shadows on my approach, which isn’t too hard in this part of town — half the streetlights are busted and the alleyways loom larger in the dark, like the open maw of some sinister, syringe-filled beast. The three of us are just a couple doors away from the lone guard before he sees us and by then it’s way too late — he’s got three sets of pistols trained on him and even though he looks like he’d lose a match of Jeopardy to a brain-dead caveman, even he isn’t stupid enough to try anything.
“Keep your hands where I can see them, buddy,” I say. “Tonight just isn’t your night.”
Rusty’s got zip ties out and ready before I even have to ask him. In a short second, the bulky door guard is on his knees and tied up nice and secure.
“You all have no idea who you’re fucking with,” the guard says, trying to sound threatening. Which is a hard thing to do when you’re trussed up like livestock. “This is a big fucking mistake.”
I put my foot on his chest and push him over. “The only mistake was you and your people not paying the proper taxes before conducting your little poker game. Tonight’s going to be a costly lesson for you all.”
“You’re dead, you’re all—”
I finish his sentence by pistol whipping his C
ro-Magnon face. He hits the concrete, out cold. “Welcome to Lone Mesa.”
We push open the door and step into a long hallway. It’s dank and reeks of nearly a century of cigarette smoke and decades of history. Lone Mesa is my home and my territory, and I know it like the back of my hand. Before it shut down, this building was a secret bar that catered to most of the industrial workers on the block during the Prohibition era. The men and women that built Lone Mesa’s past would spend their hard-earned wages in here for a scant few hours of drinking and forgetting about their rough lives. Back then, life in this hardscrabble town perched on the edge of a vast desert that runs all the way to Nevada and Arizona was anything but easy. They called this place Big Jim’s Oasis, and the owner, ‘Big’ Jim Cavalcante, was in the business of providing more than just booze to help a tired worker forget his rough day. This place is a dank, dirty, beautiful pit of a bar.
I breathe in the musty history. Shame we have to shoot it up.
The hallway leads deep into the belly of the building, with tiny offshoots leading to little alcoves that used to be smoking rooms, poker rooms, and places where workers could buy a dance from any of the women that Big Jim had shipped in from Los Angeles. But I hardly bother checking out those alcoves, the action’s straight ahead — the lights, laughter, and trash-talking coming from the semi-ajar door at the end of the hall tells me our payday is deeper inside.
I motion for Rusty and Trips to be ready.
It’s time to collect our MC’s due.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, the Twisted Devils MC welcomes you to Lone Mesa,” I announce as I kick the door open. “And reminds you it’s important to pay your taxes.”
The room is packed full of six tables, two-dozen well-dressed gamblers, a handful of henchmen, a man in a fancy suit who looks like he’s running the show, and, sitting next to him and stealing the whole damn show, is a woman who — with just a glance — tempts me to put down my gun, apologize, and spend my night trying to figure out what a woman like her is doing in a musty pit like this.
The whole room’s shocked attention whirls right to us.
I gesture to a pile of cash on one table. “Rusty, go collect our share.”
Then someone shoots at me and a bullet just nicks my ear as I duck. In the dim light, it looks like the same man who left his post to take a piss has the bright idea to start a firefight. Shooting at me is his second display of poor judgment in just the last five minutes. And his last. My return shot catches him in the throat and his cry of pain comes out as a thick geyser of blood.
With one shot, all hell breaks loose and all bets are off.
Tables flip, a stampede of gamblers runs for the back exit, and the two remaining henchmen and the man in the fancy suit draw their guns — it’s time for a fight.
“Don’t shoot the civilians. This shit ain’t their fault,” I scream to my brothers as I heft over one of the heavy wooden poker tables and take shelter behind it.
Bullets blast at us from three sides and these bodyguards are no amateurs — they keep us pinned with gunfire and right away start moving to encircle our position.
“What’s the move now, fearless leader?” Trips yells to me from his position behind another table. “Still think we shouldn’t have waited? Or was getting pinned down and shot at all part of your master plan? Because, if it was, it’s the stupidest fucking plan I’ve ever been a part of.”
“Even worse than the time we stole Stone’s motorcycle?”
“Worse than that. Now, what’s our move?”
“Shut up. Let me think.”
“Now you decide to think?”
“Watch your mouth or I might shoot you too, brother.”
I rise, buy myself a bit of breathing room with a few shots at one bodyguard, which sends him scrambling for cover. They’re trained — these guys aren’t some for-hire thugs pulled from the dregs of Criminal Craigslist — they know what they’re doing and they’re coordinated, timing their movements and communicating with each other without saying a word.
We’ve got to act fast. They’ll have us totally surrounded soon and then we’ll be as good as dead.
Suddenly, shouting erupts from down the hall behind us. Three voices. More henchmen. Even if one of them is the bodyguard we tied up, it sounds like the way we came in is no longer an escape option.
“Rusty, keep your eyes and your gun on that hallway. We can’t let whoever’s out there take us from behind.”
“On it,” he says.
I eyeball the room again. The two guards are circling and the well-dressed man is taking potshots at us with one hand, while keeping a tight grip on the woman with the other. Whoever she is, she’s valuable enough that he’s willing to risk compromising his aim to keep her close.
Whoever she is, I can hardly take my eyes off her.
That’s our way out.
“Trips, when I say ‘go’, I need you to put down some cover fire and keep these assholes occupied. You know, like Rusty’s mother does if you slip her an extra twenty.”
I don’t listen to his response; I can’t hear it over the bullets blasting by my head and the shots that are tearing the table I’m sheltering behind into kindling. Whatever he says, it doesn’t matter — he’s my brother and I know he’ll have my back. I’ve got a plan, I’m sticking to it, and it’s time to put it in motion.
Besides, I don’t listen that well. Whatever he’d say to me, I’d probably ignore it.
Reaching down, I snatch a half-full bottle of vodka off the floor. Then I rip off a good chunk of my shirt and, wrinkling my nose at the smell because I fucking hate vodka, I unscrew the bottle and shove my shirt inside. Voilà — one Molotov cocktail.
My lighter’s in my hand before I know it and, with a spark, I’ve got the Molotov cocktail flaming and smoking. I make another from a bottle of Wild Turkey bourbon, but only after taking a long drink. It goes down nice and smooth and makes what I’m about to do seem a little more sane. But only a little.
“Razor, no. No. No. You’re a fucking idiot. I hate you so much right now, brother,” Trips yells.
“Yep. But you’re still going to cover me, brother. Keep that suited asshole busy,” I snap back. Then, rising, I hurl the firebombs — one in front of one bodyguard, one in front of the other — and bury the two assholes in a mountain of fire and smoke.
While Trips unleashes a storm of covering fire, I charge forward.
Then I stumble.
Something bites my shoulder, a bullet that goes in one side and out the other, but it doesn’t slow me down — thank fuck for adrenaline — and I keep running. Under the hail of gunfire, I reach the suited man as he’s ducking for cover from Trips’ bullets and I kick him square in the face. He tumbles, but he’s not down long. He rises to his feet and seizes a chair by the legs. With a bone-shaking blow, he cracks me square in the face. Things go black for a second. Then a woman’s fearful scream snaps me back to reality and I lay into the suited man like a rabid animal.
With my fists, my feet, and even my gun, I hammer him with all I’ve got. When he keels over, falling flat on his ass after I pistol-whip him in the face, I whirl and I seize the woman by the hand. A jolt runs through me as I touch her — electricity from her soft hands and surprise that, even through the scent of fire and smoke, I can smell the subtle lavender scent of her perfume. Touching her feels so damn right in a way that I’ve never experienced before.
But right now isn’t a time to appreciate the effect this woman has on me. Whether she likes it or not, I’m claiming her as my prize and I am taking her home.
“Don’t struggle, don’t fight, don’t scream, and you won’t get shot,” I say as I level my gun on her. “You’re coming with me.”
“Holy shit, you’re bleeding,” she says. “Like, really bad.”
I shrug. My vision’s blurry, too. Because taking a chair to the face certainly doesn’t improve one’s health. Tonight ranks third on the list of my worst nights ever, behind the night my mom died and th
e night I ran away from home when I was fifteen.
“Thanks for noticing, darling. We need to leave. Now. Come on.”
I take her tight by the hand and drag her towards the back exit.
Trips and Rusty follow us as we charge through the smoke and the flames, bullets peppering right behind us.
I breathe in the fresh air in a great gasp as we burst out into the night. Together, we race down the alleyway behind the old saloon, mountains of billowing smoke in our wake as the Molotov cocktails turn the abandoned bar into an inferno. I pause for a second, looking around, my vision blurring and my mouth sucking air as I try to catch my bearings. I’m fading fast.
“You need medical attention,” the woman says. There’s concern and care in her voice underneath the fear and adrenaline. Whoever she is, this isn’t the first time she’s been in a life-or-death situation.
“Later. I’ll be fine,” I say, giving her hand a reassuring squeeze. I’ve known her for all of a minute, yet it’s long enough for me to know I hate the sound of fear in her voice.
Rusty points towards one end of the alley. “This way. We go out and turn right. That’ll get us to the tannery and keep us out of sight.”
I follow, sprinting though the act makes my head feel like I’m underwater. My grip on my pistol wavers and I grit my teeth.
Keep it together, Razor.
Now is not the time to slow down.
The four of us get to the open street and make it to the tannery. Inside sit our three Harleys, ready to carry us to freedom.
Out on the street, the night air fills with the sounds of the bodyguards gathering and calling out orders to split up and search every building on the street.
“Get on,” I snap to the woman as I hop on my bike. Next to me, Rusty and Trips are already on theirs. None of us have started our bikes yet because, the second we do, the noise of our engines will give away our position; we need to make sure everyone is ready to go.