Revenge - Reckless Renegades 1 Read online

  Contents

  TITLE PAGE

  RIGHTS

  DEDICATION

  NOTICE

  TITLE

  -

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  EPILOGUE

  DON'T FORGET!

  ALSO BY JESSICA GADZIALA

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  STALK HER!

  REVENGE

  Reckless Renegades #1

  --

  Jessica Gadziala

  Copyright © 2019 Jessica Gadziala

  All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author's intellectual property. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for brief quotations used in a book review.

  "This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental."

  Cover image credit: Shutterstock .com/ intueri

  Dedication

  to sisters

  and sisterhood

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  REVENGE

  Reckless Renegades #1

  --

  Jessica Gadziala

  -

  ONE

  Thayer

  There's a reason pimps and drug dealers wear gold chains.

  Aside from maybe thinking they look good or that others see it as a status symbol.

  See, when you're arrested, cops can take your cash if they claim it's connected to illegal activity.

  Civil asset forfeiture.

  A fucking crime in and of itself if you ask me.

  And while they can take your hard-earned cash, they have to give you back your personal items.

  Jewelry included.

  This was what was on my mind as I stood in front of a desk manned by a middle-aged guy with a beer belly and jowls that jiggled when he talked - likely stuck at a desk job when they realized he'd likely have a major cardiac incident if he even tried to subdue an out of control prisoner.

  It was lucky I was raised up to know the finer points of a criminal lifestyle. Otherwise, the bag Mr. MyWifeHasn'tSuckedMyDisckSinceTheNineties was going through would only have consisted of my wallet with cards that had likely expired, a cell that was long dead, and an old condom.

  Not the Submariner Date Rolex 40mm Oystersteel and yellow gold watch he was currently fondling with sausage fingers.

  Even used, it would clear me a cool ten grand.

  More than enough to get me home.

  From there, I could access the cash stores I had stashed so deep that no one even knew they existed.

  Not even the backstabbing motherfucker who took everything else from me.

  "Now, don't come back, y'hear?" he asked as I signed the paperwork in front of me, accepting the gate money - cash from my commissary prison grind accounts - and tucking it into my pocket.

  "If I'm be inside bars again, it will be at a supermax," I told him, shooting him a smirk when his mouth fell open slightly. He was likely used to everyone telling him that they had no intentions of going to prison again, that they were innocent in the first place, yadda fucking yadda.

  I wasn't the most moral of men.

  But I wasn't a liar.

  I did what got me inside in the first place.

  And, with what I had planned now that I was free, there was a good chance I was going back.

  It would be worth it.

  But I wasn't necessarily naive enough to think I would get away with it.

  There was a good chance I would end up in San Quentin on death row waiting for that fateful day they'd strap me to a table and inject liquid fire into my veins.

  Again, it would be fucking worth it.

  I was just realistic about my future.

  Making my way out the doors, I squinted up at the blinding early summer morning sun, taking my first breath of freedom in nearly three years.

  I was only in for two on a misdemeanor assault two. But, well, I was never great getting along with a bunch of assholes who think they are more important than they are. Got some time tacked on, something I only regretted because it meant I had wasted some precious time I could have used to plot payback.

  It was alright, though.

  Because I was out.

  I was ready.

  Now, I just had to get out of Bumfuck, Nowhere, and back to my hometown.

  I jumped on the first bus out of town, then had it drop me off at the next stop that had a strip of small mom-and-pops, one of them boasting a gold buying store.

  "This is a hell of a watch," the man behind the counter told me, having clearly never handled anything of the like before, likely running a business consisting on buying back Great Aunt Edna's wedding band or Grandpa's pocket watch, not a watch worth more than the car he had parked out front.

  "Yep," I agreed, impatiently tapping a hand on the counter, needing a smoke, needing to get the hell home, find my brothers, figure out what the fuck had happened to our lives.

  "Let me just look it up," he said, going to his computer straight out of the early two-thousands with a goddamn extended back and everything. I was half-surprised not to hear the dial-up of AOL when he turned it on. "Well, I can't pay you exactly market value..."

  "Figured. What can you offer?"

  He pretended to hem and haw that for a minute like he didn't know exactly how much precious cash he could part with at the moment. "Nine? I know that..."

  "If it's cash, we're good. Count it out."

  "In a rush, eh?" he asked, turning away with no small bit of suspicion as he squatted to plug in his safe code.

  "Meeting my brothers out in Toptown. I'm running late," I explained. "Any place in town I can get a cell? Pre-paid," I added, not having time to fuck with people at some chain store with plans and paperwork.

  "The convenience store carries some," he told me, coming back with a wad of cash, eyes roaming over me like he was checking me for some hidden gun.

  Which, well, was fair.

  Were this any other day, I would absolutely have one on me.

  I also didn't come across as anyone's upstanding citizen, bearded, tatted, currently sporting one of those inverted triangle prison bodies speaking of too much time on my hands and too much energy to sit on my ass and play fucking cards all day long.

  "Great," I rumbled, fingers tapping as he counted the cash like a six-year-old learning money for the first time.

  "Want to double-check?" he asked as I took the finished pile, folding it, tucking it into my back pocket.

  "Nope. I trust you," I told him, choosing not to tell him that I could tell you how much cash was in a pile by fanning it, having no need to count every single bill out. "Give that watch a good home," I added, throwing myself back outside, making my way to the convenie
nce store, getting the phone, the card, a bag of chips - barbecue, as if there were any other kind worth your time and taste buds - and a soda, heading up to the counter.

  "Hey there," the girl behind the counter (heavy on the tits, maybe a little short on the brain cells), but pretty in a small-town kind of way, greeted, eyes running over me. Almost three years of being behind bars came at me hard and fast, making me wonder for a second if I could fuck her over the counter before the next customer came in.

  "Hey, babe," I greeted, tapping my finger on the glass cabinet. "Two boxes of those," I told her while reaching for a lighter, tossing it with the rest of my shit.

  "I've never seen you around here," she informed me as she reached for the cigarettes.

  "That's because I spent the past three years behind bars," I told her as she rang the items through quickly.

  "Oh, wow. I can't imagine."

  "You don't want to," I told her, tossing some cash on the counter, gathering up my things. "Keep your pretty ass out here where all us poor fucks can admire you when we come out," I added, giving her a half wave over my shoulder as I made my way out.

  I could barely make it out the door before I was freeing a smoke, getting it between my lips, lighting it up, taking a deep drag that managed to immediately ease some of my agitation.

  Why they ever outlawed cigarettes in prison was beyond me. I'd bet they'd have a lot more laid-back a convict population if they offered cigarettes and conjugals.

  "Bus stop is that way," a surly voice snapped at my side, making me turn to find two older fucks leaning up against the wall, eyeing me, sizing me up, finding me dangerous. They had no idea. But they were right in wanting me out of their town as quickly as possible.

  "Mhmm," I agreed, nodding, refusing to move. Just out of spite. Just because I never really took kindly to authority. It was a miracle I managed to get my ass through high school, let alone not get my ass constantly whipped by the corrections officers I had a tendency to smart-mouth when they got on a power trip.

  Smoke between my lips, I reached for the soda, twisting off the cap, taking a long swig, wishing it was whiskey. Hell, I'd settle for a beer. But there would be time for drinking. Once I tracked down my brothers, once we got a minute to talk shit out.

  Like how that motherfucker managed to stage a coup right underneath my nose.

  Like how he got my baby sister in on it.

  Like how every single one of those bastards I employed, protected, provided for like any good president would, decided to take their loyalty from me and offer it to that douchebag.

  Even just thinking about him made my hand curl into a fist as I decided the old guys were right; I needed to make it to the bus station. Because I was primed for a fight meant for another man several hours away, but I would be all-too-happy to settle for a stand-in to get some of the rage out.

  Turning, I walked back down the street, sun beating on my back, checking out the schedule as I set up my phone, trying to calculate how long it would take to get back home.

  Six hours.

  Six hours on fucking buses full of stale air and body odor.

  But, I guess, it wasn't all that different from prison.

  And it was just six more hours.

  Six more hours, and maybe I would have some answers.

  Climbing on the first bus, I sat down in the back, trying to call my brothers' cells. With no success.

  I had only heard from them a handful of times since I went in. First, to let me know they would hold shit down for me until I got out. Then an emergency call to say something was wrong with the club, something was going on.

  Then weeks... fucking weeks of nothing.

  No word.

  I didn't even know if they were alive or not.

  It was finally Hatcher - the next oldest - who reached out almost three weeks after I'd heard from them last, telling me that Doug had staged a takeover, that Bea - our baby half-sister - must have been in on it somehow, and that he and Calloway - our younger brother - had both been gunned down.

  It was one thing to think there was betrayal.

  Shit happened.

  It was the price you paid for working with fellow criminals all the time.

  It was another to know that not only did they turn my sister and take my club - and the business attached - but they tried to take out both my brothers, knowing they would have eventually tried to take the club back for me.

  Hatcher caught three bullets in the torso, had needed surgery, but only needed to be in the hospital a few days. Calloway only caught two, but one had plugged his heart, and the other had ripped through his leg, shattered a portion of his kneecap. He needed a knee replacement at twenty-eight-years old, followed by months of hard rehab.

  After they got out, they had needed to get and stay hidden. If Doug - and the rest of our brothers we thought had been loyal - figured out that they were walking away relatively unscathed, they would track them down, make sure it was permanent damage.

  Of course they had changed numbers.

  But I hadn't gotten the new ones.

  Luckily, I did know where to find them - crashing in an old fuck-pad our pops had kept so as not to piss off our mother with his screwing around. She knew he wasn't faithful - had never expected it of him - but she demanded respect. She never wanted the men at the club to sneer at her because they knew he had banged some clubwhore the night before.

  No one knew it existed save for us.

  Luckily, not even Bea.

  At eighteen, she had been the one to inherit the strip club - Peaches - that worked as a front for our real business. She'd also inherited the clubhouse the MC used to hang out in and out childhood home - our old man had left us the fuck-pad and his bike and car collection.

  I wondered if any of them had survived, if Hatcher or Calloway got to keep their two, even if the hopes of my bike being around were slim, or if Doug had taken them all. Sold them. Or kept them for himself.

  I hoped it was the latter. Because I would take those back along with his life.

  I wasn't God, but I was happy to pretend for a while.

  The hours stretched long and irritating, listening to a restless baby whine and scream, some crazy chick bitch at her guy on the phone about not doing her laundry right (though it was a fucking miracle, if you asked me, that he'd done the wash at all), and some older guy hack up half a lung for an hour straight.

  The chips and soda weren't cutting it, and I was itching to get up and move around.

  Luckily, around the six-and-a-half point, the bus dropped me off at the side of a small strip mall boasting a mediocre pizza place, bagel shop, and 'antique' store that I knew was a front for little old Mama Maria's mid-level money laundering operation for some smaller-name mob member.

  It was a fifteen-minute walk down the side street before you came upon a four-garage storage facility with an apartment overhead.

  The storage facility housed two of Pops' most valuable antique cars - ones I had helped him rebuild by hand for my whole adolescence. The furthest on the right, however, had a fingerprint scanner and a big ass gun safe. It held guns, of course, but also a nice stack of money. Then the key to the place I had the rest stashed.

  Only I could access the safe, making me hope my brothers had the good sense to stash some of their own money away for rainy days - or years - or else they were likely busting ass at some nine-to-five in my absence, a thought that didn't sit well with me. Not when we all should have been kicking back, living a relatively easy life thanks to what Pops had left for us.

  But he'd left it all in Bea's name.

  He'd told us when he'd done it that she was the safest bet since the chance of her landing up in prison was slim, which allowed the business to go on no matter what, provide for all of us left on the outside.

  He never could have known.

  None of us could have.

  What family bonds ended up meaning to her.

  I jogged up the stairs leading up to the second flo
or, pounding my fist on the door.

  "Open the fuck up," I growled when I heard nothing coming from inside.

  It was just a couple seconds then before the door unlocked and flew open, revealing Hatcher - the middle son - standing there, a little dumbstruck.

  The three of us were all tall, golden-eyed, tattooed, and bearded, but that was about where the similarities ended. Hatcher was the tallest at six-four, solid, but not muscle-bound, with darker brown hair that he pushed backward on top and a matching beard that he kept perfectly groomed at all times. Where my tattoos ran toward blue and gray/black, and Calloway's were all black and gray, Hatcher was all traditional full-color. Where I favored jeans and tees, Hatch always seemed to get some fashion sense from fuck-knew-where. Right now, sitting around at home, he was in jeans that neither clung nor sagged, and a white tee under some Army green button-up tucked in, sleeves rolled up to the elbows.

  "Shit," he hissed, shaking his head for a second before throwing an arm around me, pulling me in for a short second, slapping his hand on my back a few times. "Why didn't you tell us you were getting out? One of us would have come and gotten you."

  "I didn't have a working number," I told him, shrugging it off. "Is Cal home?"

  "Work," he said, shaking his head.

  "Work where?" I demanded, moving in when Hatcher moved out of the way.

  "Doorman over in Quickwater," he told me, shrugging it off.

  A doorman.

  Shit.

  The apartment was much the way I remembered it; one room that featured a small one-wall kitchen to the left, a small four-seater dining table with a table scuffed from our old man's knife, and a seating area to the right with brown leather couches, a coffee table, and a TV.

  There were changes, though, too.

  The TV was new. The walls had been painted a lighter color than the smoky gray our father had slapped up. Or, rather, had made us slap up after we got into a brawl on school grounds in high school. Everything seemed cleaner, brighter.