Revenge - Reckless Renegades 1 Read online

  We'd be busy for a long while. But after sitting on my hands in a cell for a few years, I was looking forward to busy.

  "It's been five days," Hatcher went on. "The sex had to have been better than fine if you're still this out of sorts about it."

  To that, there was a low chuckle as Cal came back into the room, a guitar in his hand. He hadn't been playing when I had gone away. He'd always talked about it, but never did it. Shit changed, and I hadn't been aware of it. He lowered himself down on the chair, casually strumming once.

  "You know..." he started, sending Hatcher a smirk. "He lost his club, his freedom, his job, his girl... if he had a dog to lose, this would be a country song."

  "She's not my girl."

  "I know, because you lost her. It's in verse two of track one from your debut album," Cal agreed.

  "No, because she was never my girl."

  "You know, I frequently find myself dropping a grand fixing up the car for some chick who isn't mine," Hatcher said, tone dry.

  "She was an asset. We needed to make sure she could make it to and from the club in one piece."

  Even as I was saying it, I knew it was bullshit.

  Sure, if her car had broken down, I would have fixed it for exactly that reason. But there had been no reason for me to go above and beyond, fixing her head light, changing her air filter so her idiot light would go off, checking the brakes, changing the oil. I'd done more work on that piece of crap than it was worth.

  I never really let myself stop to wonder why it felt so good to fix her car, why it gave me a sense of relief when it was done. Like I cared if it broke down on her, left her vulnerable in some shitty part of town.

  Most people wouldn't call a woman like Sera vulnerable. Lest they were willing to risk a kick to the balls. There was no mistaking there was a bit of soft under all that hard, though. It was clear every time she talked about her life with her sister. It was plain on her face each time she came back from the clubhouse after seeing her sister detoxing or high. The pain that made her shoulders slump, the life leave her eyes.

  Her weakness was her sibling.

  I knew a thing or two about that.

  But having a weakness didn't mean you were weak. It didn't mean she wasn't able to handle her shit. She did. She handled it. And she'd been doing that for longer than was fair.

  I knew a thing or two about that as well.

  Maybe that was what it was. I saw a bit of myself in her, in her strength, in her ability to shoulder the burden of responsibility without it making her bitter or resentful. She handled her shit. And she did it without complaint.

  I'd never been a guy who was into the delicate chicks. The wallflowers, shrinking violets, damsels in distress.

  I knew a lot of men went for that, liked being the hero, needed the ego boost. Some men needed to make a woman small in order to make themselves feel bigger. Men like Doug.

  And there were plenty of women who liked being saved.

  I wasn't into that.

  Give me a woman who told me to give her a minute, fought her own battles, then celebrated her victory with me over a couple drinks. Give me a woman who wanted to be my equal.

  That shit turned me on.

  That was what I went for.

  There was no denying that Sera fit that ideal image pretty fucking perfectly. Then she went ahead and had to be hot as fuck to boot.

  Women with great tits and asses were easy to find.

  Women who were strong weren't in short supply either.

  But to find all those qualities in one package?

  Yeah, that was the goal.

  Well, the goal if you were the kind of man who had his mind on things like settling down and monogamy and more permanent shit. It wasn't that I didn't plan for that to be my future one day. I did. I liked growing up with my Pops and my Ma, together, happy. I wanted that someday. I wanted an old lady and a brood of kids and all that traditional shit. With the decidedly non-traditional backdrop of my club. But I would prefer to be faithful, just because I knew it did bother my mom at times that our old man wasn't loyal, even if that was the arrangement they'd had.

  Those goals were nowhere in my immediate future, though.

  I had shit to do.

  My father taught me a lot over the years, not the least of which was that you had to have your house in order before you invited someone else into it. He made sure I understood that my place was to provide. A house, a car, the bills, spending money. That was my job as a man to give that to a woman who would be the mother of my kids. So until I had those things to offer - and in a stable, long-term way - I had no business even entertaining the idea of a woman in any serious way.

  My house was a fucking mess.

  First of all, I was sharing it with my two brothers. I had money, but no steady stream of income. I didn't have much of anything to offer someone.

  Not that I was thinking of shit like that.

  I had just spent two years in prison.

  My mind should have been on how many women I could get under my belt.

  Should have, being the operative words.

  There was no denying that I wasn't thinking about those other women.

  My brothers were right; I was thinking about one woman in particular.

  I wanted to tell myself that it was just the sex, just the way she cried out my name when she came, the way her mouth had worked my cock - with enthusiasm and expertise - how she rode me hard and fast, almost desperately.

  There was that, sure.

  It was more than that, though.

  I found I just liked her. As a person. It wasn't a new phenomenon. I wasn't one of those guys who had never been able to get along with women he didn't fuck. Or didn't have an interest in them outside of how willing they were to spread their legs for me. Women were interesting to have around, a different dynamic, they had different things to talk about than the men, different views on shit. So it wasn't strange that I felt drawn to her as a person.

  The problem was that I was drawn to her as a person and as a woman.

  It made things more... complicated.

  The last thing I needed was complicated.

  Which was why it was a good thing that I had gone and pissed her off, made her want nothing to do with me. I wanted to tell myself that by the time we got her sister back, I would have gotten her fully out of my system. Yet a part of me seemed to understand that it wasn't going to be that easy.

  It had been days, and she kept creeping into my head.

  "So, we're doing this," Calloway said, fingers absentmindedly strumming. For the first time while discussing the plan, he wasn't tense to the point of angry. He actually seemed calm, shoulders relaxed, feet kicked up on the table, no tension in his jaw. Maybe the music was therapeutic for him. It made sense. Even before getting shot, anytime he was in a mood, there was music thumping. Metal when he was pissed off. Classic rock when he was relaxing. That pop-punk-emo shit when he was upset about something. You could always tell what mood he was in by what he was listening to. After losing me, then the club, then Bea, followed by his security, and finally taking a couple bullets that nearly killed him - made him ache when it rained, made him go through months of rehab - turning to music as a form of therapy made perfect sense.

  "We're doing this," I agreed with a nod.

  --

  Then it was the day.

  There was a sparking energy in the apartment, all our movements oddly clipped, precise, as though we needed to be on our game even before we were anywhere near the clubhouse.

  Hatcher pounded coffee.

  Calloway hit the gym for a four-hour stint.

  I went over and over the plan, pored over the sketches from Sera, cleaned the guns, tried to make sure there was no possible way this could go wrong, that I could get more bullets in my brothers. I wanted to make sure we were careful enough not to put Bea or Joey at any unnecessary risk.

  There were a dozen ways things could go sideways, of course. Human error could
n't be discounted. Guns could jam. Someone could somehow see us heading into the clubhouse, the crew could decide to leave the strip club, ambush us, take us all out, kill Joey and Bea for good measure.

  My stomach twisted into a knot, stayed that way as the hours passed, as I shared too much coffee with Hatch, as I choked down the food Calloway brought back with him after the gym.

  We all seemed to feel the need to take an extra shower. Calloway tied back his hair. We took out our body jewelry - my gauges, Cal's earring and his nose ring. Hatcher came out in a plain black tee and jeans, none of his usual sense of fashion, no accessories.

  The closer the time got, the more thick the air seemed, weighed down with the seriousness of the night.

  None of us were going into this lightly.

  Lives would be lost tonight.

  Sure, they were traitorous.

  But knowing that didn't make it easy per se.

  These were men we had lived with. Many of them we had grown up with. Some we had looked up to with a nearly parental respect. We'd shared drinks and dinners. We'd swapped hardship stories. We'd fought wars. We had been a family.

  It wouldn't be easy to aim a gun and take their lives.

  We all recognized that.

  We also all knew it was necessary, that there was no way around it.

  Other people might say we could set up a meeting with Doug, demand to see our sister, make sure she was alright. If she was happily in on it, then the rational thing would be to walk away, let it go. As for Joey, well, she was an adult. What she did with her life was her choice.

  Those people were wrong.

  There was no chance that we would just... walk away from it all. From the legacy our father had left us. From the only lifestyle we knew how to live. Cal and Hatch lucked out by only getting pulled in on charges that got dismissed. Me? I was a felon. I would never get a respectable job that didn't require back-breaking jobs working on boats or in warehouses. While I didn't believe that anyone was above hard work, that wasn't the future I wanted for myself. I wanted the future that had been offered to me since I was a child. I wouldn't know how to live a life without the freedoms I had always known, with the brotherhood of my club.

  I also knew there would be no talking to or reasoning with Doug. I truly believed the only reason Hatcher and Calloway were still alive was because they disappeared after they got shot, they decided to lay low, to stay off his radar. If he knew they were still alive, still right outside of town? Yeah, I had no doubt that they'd have wound up with more rounds of bullets.

  He didn't mutiny only to be willing to hand it all over.

  It had to be taken from him.

  So there was really no choice for us.

  "The car is ready?" I asked, having secured it with cash a few days ago. It was just a piece of crap decade and a half old thing, but it was quiet. Unlike the bikes. We'd still have to drive it into the woods and hike most of the way, but it wouldn't tip anyone off that bikers were nearby, set them on edge.

  We needed everyone to think it was just a normal Friday night.

  Most of them would be having the time of their lives in the strip club where the music was generally thumping far too loud for them even to hear gunshots. Besides, by the time they heard them, it would be too late.

  "Yeah, got gas on the way back from the gym," Cal told me.

  "I cleaned all these," I told them, pointing to the coffee table. "Loaded up in case any of them jam."

  It was a bit of overkill. I already had a bunch of guns stashed in the safe, but I had hopped over to an MC a state over who dealt in arms, spent a mint on more just in case. If we took them all in, we'd have several guns on each of us. Considering we only had a dozen men to take out, it was overkill. But each of us rose from our seats, gathering them, slipping some into holsters I'd had laying around, gathering the rest in our hands to tuck in our pockets or waistbands once we got out of the car.

  "Let's make our old man proud," I told them, watching as his eyes looked back at me in the faces of my brothers. Somehow, mentioning him seemed to help the knot in my stomach unravel a bit.

  "Let's get our family back together," Calloway agreed, mind on Bea as he turned away, leading us out the door.

  It was an uncommonly bright night, the moon deciding to light up the entire sky so much so that we could see twenty or so feet in front of us even under the canopy of trees in the woods.

  "This ruins the cover of night," Hatcher grumbled, speaking exactly what Cal and I had been thinking.

  "It's a good thing the external lights aren't working," I reminded them, trying to keep morale up. If those lights had been operational, it would be just like walking up to the club in the broad fucking daylight.

  We'd gotten into the planned spot in time to watch the guys swarm out, hop on their bikes, head in the direction of the strip club. By my count, five of them left. Doug included. That left seven inside.

  Seven against three might not have been the best odds in the world. But we had the element of surprise.

  "There he goes," Cal said twenty minutes later, jerking his chin toward where, as expected, Zack headed off into the woods.

  "Five minutes."

  The plan was to storm in, take out who we could as quickly as possible.

  Zack would hear the gunshots.

  He would call or text Doug, then wait for reinforcements, then they would all come in together.

  While we waited for them to come back, I would have Cal find Bea and Joey, get them into the panic room, then come back up to help us take out everyone else.

  Honestly, Bea and Joey would likely be in there a big chunk of the night.

  I understood that my sister knew how the club worked, that blood and death was a part of the life. That didn't mean, however, that I wanted her to see us dragging around dead bodies, bleaching away blood.

  I shook my head, knocking the thoughts free.

  I couldn't be thinking about the future.

  I had to be focused on the moment.

  We all did.

  "One step at a time," I reminded them, seeing both of them jerk much like I had, like they had also been lost in distracting thoughts. "This isn't going to be easy," I reminded them, mostly Calloway who I knew had the most reservations about what needed to be done.

  "But it has to be done," Cal responded, surprising me.

  Taking a moment to cast a glance in his direction, I saw something there I had never seen before. A fierceness. A ruthlessness. A slow-burning rage.

  He was here, yet a part of him was somewhere else. If I had to place a bet, I would say that he was right there on that afternoon when he was getting off his bike, and felt bullets rip through his kneecap, his chest. Likely recognizing who had aimed the gun. That was where he was. It was likely where a large part of Hatcher was too.

  While they may not have been willing or able to process it all, had needed to focus on recovery, then how to pay bills, get life going again, there was no denying that there were issues there. Anger, pain, maybe even bitterness, vulnerability.

  It wasn't only me who was getting revenge.

  They were as well.

  Somehow, we all seemed to sense the need to move at the same time, leaving our tree cover, making our way to our old club for the first time in over two years.

  We'd grown up in the building. We had bedrooms there. We had sneaked liquor from the bar, had shot pool, had taken our first women to our beds, had learned how to ride a bike in the lot, had been taught how to fix them in the garage.

  I knew it better than anywhere in the world.

  But it felt almost foreign as we closed in.

  Even though everything was almost exactly the same.

  Sure, the lazy fucks let all the shrubs grow up, the grass needed mowing, and there was destructive ivy growing up the side, but it was all mostly how we left it.

  "Here we go," I said as I reached for the front door.

  My clenched sank as I pushed the door open.


  You expect an invasion to be loud. I guess because that is how you see it on TV - people rushing in, screaming.

  This was freakishly, eerily quiet for a long few seconds, nothing but the quiet pads of our footsteps and our breathing.

  Then we saw the men.

  I wasn't the first to fire.

  I figured I would be, having the most rage about the whole situation.

  But Calloway's gun was the one that went off, catching Six between the eyes before he could even fully recognize who we were.

  From there, all hell broke loose.

  Guns got picked up, bullets started flying.

  This was where the noise became deafening. The exploding sounds of bullets firing off, the thunk as they hit walls, the crash as they pierced through glass, the screams as bullets hit flesh, but didn't kill.

  Everything seemed to happen in slow motion.

  The way bodies jolted when hit, the looks of surprise on eyes, the calls of our names, the expected pleading.

  Prez, we didn't mean...

  No one ever wanted to own up to meaning to fuck you over. But they did it regardless. There was no actual satisfaction in the act like I figured there would be. Just a sense of completion.

  There was a searing sensation in my upper arm, a graze from my side, making me turn just in time to see someone disappearing down the basement stairs.

  It was fast, but I had seen just enough to know who it was.

  Roux.

  The man whose betrayal had stung the most.

  Even as I tried to make my way in that direction, the dead silence in the room - save for my, Hatcher's, and Calloway's heavy breathing - allowed us to hear the bikes revving up.

  The rest of the men were coming.

  I moved over to the basement, sliding the hook and eye we had installed there in case we needed to keep someone down in the basement.

  I could deal with Roux later.

  Right now, I was feeling the first hint of actual blood lust.