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  Contents

  TITLE PAGE

  RIGHTS

  DEDICATION

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  EPILOGUE

  DON'T FORGET!

  ALSO BY JESSICA GADZIALA

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  STALK HER!

  VIRGIN

  A Henchmen MC Novel

  --

  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/ g-stockstudio

  Dedication:

  This book is dedicated to the endless string of distractions and the epic case of after-the-holidays-stress-hangover that made it their very mission in life to try to prevent this book from being written. Also, to coffee. I couldn't have done it without you, old friend.

  ONE

  Freddie

  If you're going to be stupid, you've got to be tough.

  That was my first hard-won life lesson. And, as with most life lessons, I hadn't learned it willingly.

  I had to have my freedom taken away from me to harden me up. I had to spend my days in a cage inside a cage inside a cage.

  There was a perpetual chill there, something that burrowed under the skin, whittled away at the bone to settle in the marrow, making you sure that you would never feel warm again.

  I still felt it, even clad in my own clothes again for the first time in a decade. Jeans of the boyfriend variety skirted the heel of my open-toe wedge sandals. On top, I had a simple white tee under a lightweight jacket. My aunt would call it a windbreaker. And me, well, I didn't know what to call it. And I didn't really even know if it would be in style anymore. Or if I would walk outside and everyone would know where I had been for the past ten years.

  The embarrassment - long buried because there was no one around to judge without being considered a hypocrite - welled up stronger than it had been on the day when I had first shuffled shackled feet through the cinderblock walled halls.

  I wondered as I accepted my old wallet from a male guard behind the desk - a man wholly disinterested in the enormity of his position, of his daily impact - if it was something I would ever get used to. The prickling, uncomfortable sensation of eyes on me, seeing me for what I was. At least on paper. And on paper was all that really mattered, wasn't it?

  A felon.

  Ex-con.

  Just another part of a debilitating statistic.

  "And sign here," the man behind the glass that wasn't glass at all demanded, pushing the paperwork toward me, the pen attached to his side of the desk with a bunch of interconnected rubber bands tied together.

  A precaution against pen theft? Or fear that one of us might jab it through the soft of his eye and into his brain?

  Like we'd risk our freedom before it was even fully granted to us.

  "Hope we don't see you again." It was a phrase that was likely meant to sound hopeful or supportive. But it always came off as condescending. And maybe there was some fairness in that. Seeing as eighty percent of us who walked out these doors as free women would return in the next five years.

  And while I never would have thought of myself as someone who would go to jail at all a decade ago, I had a sneaking suspicion that I might very well be shackled and shuffled back in within the next year. Though, next time, rightfully so.

  "The bus stop is at the end of the street," he added, a plastic pre-paid debit card to me. On it, I knew I would find the money I had earned from the prison job I had been working for the last few years, minus what I had spent at the commissary. I was crossing my fingers that it would be enough to get me back to my hometown, back to Navesink Bank where my brother would be welcoming me into his life.

  I'd never taken a bus - save for the ones that would shuttle me to school when I was younger - in my life. There was going to be a learning curve to figure out how to get from where I was now - in the middle of nowhere Pennsylvania - to the coast of New Jersey. A Google search a week ago had told me it would be over six hours if the drive was straight through. I would likely be getting into Navesink Bank sometime around dinner time.

  I could have made my life easier by having one of my brothers pick me up. Guilt was what had me telling them that I didn't know my release day yet, that I would let them know as soon as I did. They already did too much for me. Putting money in my commissary so I could buy extra tampons or pads on heavy months when what the prison supplied as though it was freaking contraband was nowhere near enough to get me through, could get extra socks or panties, soap, toothpaste, shower shoes, deodorant, Tylenol. If there was one thing you learned quickly, it was how important personal care items were in prison.

  On top of the generous monetary contributions they made every week without fail, there were the trips they made out to see me. Not as often as when I was first sent away, but at least a couple times a year.

  And now I was going to be leaning on them while I got back on my feet as well.

  It was too much. I simply couldn't ask for anything else from either of them.

  I would merely have to do this on my own.

  Worry twisted in my belly as I slipped the card into the clutch that had been mine once upon a time and turned away from the desk, eyeing the door I was supposed to walk through, a guard standing beside it looking bored, his gaze moving over me in a dismissive way I had come to know and accept.

  Taking a breath, I pushed my shoulders back and made my way toward him, inwardly hoping my feet wouldn't betray me, wobble on my heels, send me face first to the floor, so unaccustomed they were to heels anymore.

  "Don't come back, you hear?" he told me as he opened the door to my freedom.

  I forced my feet forward, stepping outside.

  Dreary.

  That was how one would describe the day.

  It was perhaps too much to ask for a bright, sunny day that would warm me, make me think that maybe I did want to do right, act right, get my life on track, never return to the cold halls of the minimum security women's prison that had been my makeshift home since I was eighteen.

  A third of my life I had been in those walls.

  Somehow, despite the outside world being vast, it felt like it was closing in on me as I forced my legs to carry me out, away, toward the end of the paved drive. My chest tightened. A hand curled around my throat.

  It was pure stubbornness that pushed me forward, likely reinforced with the simmering anger that had managed to keep me sane all those years locked up with a revolving door of, well, a mix of nut jobs, general undesirables, and those wrapped up in an endless cycle of incarceration, making them hard and rough around the edges, made them grate on your softer skin.

  A horn beeped as I made my way down the street toward the covered bus stop where I knew everyone who saw me board would know I had just been set free, would sit and wonder what I did, would maybe clutch their purses closer, move their children to the i
nside of the row.

  My head turned to find a group of guys giving me knowing eyes and obscene gestures of the oral sex variety, making me sigh out a breath as I turned back away.

  Sex - oral or otherwise - was hardly even on my mind. I knew it was different for most of the women inside who sat around and talked about the men they left behind, all the things they planned to do to them the moment they were free. It was a favorite pastime, really. Each tale more sordid and detailed than the last, leaving me a perpetual odd-woman-out.

  Which was fine.

  Because my plans did involve a man.

  But there would be nothing sweet or sexy about it.

  It would be rough. Ugly. Violent.

  Bloody, even.

  Hopefully.

  If I had enough rage left.

  If I hadn't burned through enough of it while locked up.

  And if, well, I had the stomach for it. Which was possibly the most significant factor. I wasn't like the women the other inmates told me about from the medium or maximum security facilities, women who made you afraid to sleep in the bunk with them, women who shaved down their toothbrushes into shivs, women who thirsted for blood like the worst of any men could be known for.

  No.

  I was the kind of person who felt a bit queasy and had to look away when my big brothers fell out a tree or something and came home bleeding.

  But I would harden up.

  I had been doing it for years.

  I had a feeling I would be doing it for many years to come.

  Hard.

  And stone cold.

  That was what I would need to be to get through this, then through the repercussions afterward.

  Eyeing the covered bus stop shelter bench, covered with half decomposed leaves from the past fall - brown and gold and auburn - along with the gritty texture of the salts from the past snow, and a single daddy long legs moving from one end to the other, I moved back outside, leaning against the wall, taking another breath, checking out the schedule, seeing which route I needed to pick from the ticket machine.

  It wasn't that I wanted to go back to prison, of course. No one who went in actually wanted to go back once they were free. Sometimes - maybe most of the time - it was just the cycle of poverty or addiction. They couldn't survive on the outside without money, without support. They turned back to the drugs. Or they got desperate and went back to crime to make money to keep a roof over their heads, food in their bellies, clothes on their kids' backs.

  It wasn't like the food was amazing inside. That the two-inch thick, used mattress was the right kind of firm for my back. That being strip searched was the highlight of my life.

  No.

  Of course, I didn't want to go back to shitty medical care, horrible choices for hair products, the stink of dozens of people in the same space, the occasional abusive words from the guards, the impossibility of a restful night sleep thanks to others talking, yelling, crying.

  It just seemed like there wasn't much of a choice in the matter if I got my hands on that bastard. Really, even if my plan wasn't premeditated like it clearly was, and I just happened upon him one day on the street, yeah, I was pretty sure it would lead to me heading back to a cell.

  I heard the chugging, hissing sound - an old, familiar one - looking up to find the rusty silver bus approaching, stopping at my side with a grinding screech. The door squeaked open as I straightened up, checking the bus number against the schedule, making sure it was heading in the right direction.

  Reaching for my ticket from the machine, I climbed the grime-covered steps, stopping a few feet from the driver - a man in his fifties with a hangover of a waistline and an impressive handlebar mustache - to slip my ticket into the machine.

  I was thankful for the measly smattering of people scattered around me - a middle-aged man in a custodial jumpsuit, an older woman in a waitress uniform, a duo of high school kids clearly ditching class. There were glances, but nothing damning, nothing that said they knew where I had been, what I had done.

  It was a comfort of sorts as the bus jolted back to life, taking my belly with it for a moment, and I sat back to watch the world speed by me.

  I hadn't been in a bus since the ride into the prison, my wrists and ankles shackled, a female guard standing up by the front with a baton at one hip and a gun at the other. I'd been too sick with fear, with uncertainty, with bone-deep trepidation to notice the world moving past me. And after so long in a standstill place, the way the trees, budding with spring leaves, raced past me was making my chest tight, my stomach queasy.

  After the fourth transfer, the queasy feeling was replaced with one of hunger. But I was finally across the border of New Jersey. And I was running short on money on my debit card. So I decided to suffer until I got to my brother's place, knowing he would have something in his fridge I could steal.

  Real food, too.

  Nothing mushy or unidentifiable. Made with actual spices.

  And then I could shower. With hot water. For as long as I wanted. Be allowed to use a razor without worrying about having to return it in a certain amount of time or else I'd get in trouble.

  Then, finally, I could get a night's rest a decade in the making. On a comfortable bed. With soft, numerous blankets. A TV on as background noise. And no one yelling or crying to keep me from rest. I could wake up when my body wanted to, not when the lights clicked on and guards started yelling.

  Such bliss was worth the churning, angry emptiness in my stomach as the final bus deposited me half a block from the train station in Navesink Bank.

  I don't know what I expected.

  For things to look different. Or exactly the same. When the reality was somewhere in between. The station was the same as it had always been - a little worn, a little in need of paint or a power washing. But there were new trees planted. The restaurant across the street that used to be a Mexican place was now Italian. The parking meters were covered, replaced with some central ticket system that seemed a lot less efficient.

  I chose not to call a cab, knowing the walk would just be about half an hour to the apartment building. Sure, I had to walk through gang territory, and the me I used to be shrank away from the idea. But the woman I was - who had once seen a fellow inmate hold another inmate's hand in a pot of boiling oil - knew there was little that truly scared me anymore.

  My brother's apartment building was one that had been a mere debate in the town meetings when I had been in Navesink Bank last - most of the citizens agreeing that it would bring more and more unneeded traffic to the area. Clearly, the taxes outweighed the community uproar.

  The building was nice - sand-colored stucco with each apartment getting a wrought iron-lined balcony.

  It was pretty.

  More upscale than the other buildings that had been in the area.

  Luck I never had in the past shined upon me as a woman came to the door with a stroller in front of her and a toddler on her hip, struggling to open the door for it. I rushed up, holding it open, accepting her thanks, inwardly giving her my own as I slipped inside, making my way to the elevator to ride it up to the fourth floor.

  Unexpectedly nervous, I stood in front of the door for a long moment, trying to find the guts to knock.

  Then I did.

  And there he was.

  Thaddeus.

  In a gold, white, and blue thigh-skirting kimono and a gold sequined turban on his head. Despite the fact that he didn't even have any friggen hair.

  "Bitch, you don't tell your brother you're getting out? You make me find out when I call the prison to talk to you? That's how we do things now? Christ, this hair," he said, grimacing as he reached out to stroke the admittedly dry tresses I had pulled back because I had given up on it years back.

  Thad and I looked a lot alike. The same deep skin, the same high cheekbones, full lips, sleepy-lidded, golden brown eyes. But where I was only maybe five-five on a day when I was standing up straight, and slim if perhaps a bit thick of thigh and back e
nd, Thaddeus was about six feet of solid muscle, making his black wifebeater look like it was holding on for dear life over his strong chest, leaving his impressive arms on display.

  "Come on, get your pretty ass on in here," he demanded, stepping aside to invite me into the apartment.

  It was what I would expect from Thad. The walls were a warm golden color, peppered with giant art prints in bright, crazy primary or neon colors. The living room to the left was full of plush, tufted creme furniture, a sleek oversized coffee table with a marble top that matched the countertops in the mostly-white kitchen.

  Thad was neat by nature, save for a chair that was undoubtedly still in his bedroom where his discarded wardrobe choices would be piled, awaiting the day some months in the future where he would feel motivated to steam and hang them all back up again.

  Everything had a place and was in it.

  Except, of course, for the completely out of place black leather hairdresser chair sitting butted up against the kitchen sink.

  "Um, Thad, why do you have that?" I asked, waving a hand toward it, watching as his eyes went to my hand, his head shaking as he grabbed my wrist, inspecting my short nails, my overgrown cuticles.

  "Girl, I know they have emery boards and nail polish in there. This is a disgrace. And I have the salon chair because when a bitch hears his sister is getting out of federal prison after a decade, he makes sure he gets what she might need when she comes in. Like food in the cabinets. Fresh sheets on the guest bed. And the basic fundamental necessities for a much-needed makeover and pampering day."

  Maybe I might have been offended by the idea of him insisting I needed a makeover. But, well, my own reflection had told me as much just that very morning.

  "I also have some new clothes on the way."

  "On the way? Do they deliver clothes now?" I asked, feeling like I had been under a rock only to reemerge to find an entirely different world had grown around me.