Cook (The Ridge MC Book 4)

Prologue

Twenty-Three Years Before

Cook

I drummed my fingers on the dash and then locked my elbows as Celt took a sharp turn without braking.

“Fuck, man!” I glanced back to make sure the ass end of his pop’s 1973 Gran Torino didn’t hit a bolder or sage bush.

All I could see behind us was dust as Celt gunned it through the canyon. The orange rock turned an unnatural shade this time of the day, like the sun set the cliffs on fire.

“Just trying to see if you’ll piss your pants for me.” Celt chuckled maniacally.

Fucker.

“How’d you ever pass your driver’s test?” I had just passed my exam and behind-the-wheel test in Phoenix, and I couldn’t say why the hell I trusted my best friend to drive.

“I’m the best driver in the Ridge.” He reached over to punch my shoulder.

I rolled my eyes. “Just keep all four wheels on the ground, would ya?”

Music blared in the Gran Torino, and I sang along until the car swerved again. I glared over at the so-called driver. Dipshit would be a better word for him.

“Pull over. I’m driving.” I pointed to a roadside pull off.

Celt barked a laugh. He was goading me on. Asshole.

“Calm your tits. I’ll take it easy.” He slowed down to a grandma’s pace, groaning over the inconvenience, and flipped through the three stations we could tune in on the radio.

He could grumble all he wanted. A slow pace out here would at least keep us alive.

I dropped my head back onto the headrest and let out a long breath. Assuming I made it home in one piece with my best friend’s driving, I’d be scot-free—minus a car. The only problem was I’d have to face Daddy.

I was saving up to buy a ride Celt’s dad was fixing up with my job at the only diner in Park Ridge. The pay was shit, but I was lucky to have a job at all in a town where the only businesses, aside from the local motorcycle club that monitored the border traffic, were the diner and the grocery–gas station combo.

Plus, working gave me an excuse to be out of the house. I could barely take it there any longer, but I needed to keep going home to make sure my mom was safe from my bastard father.

I drummed my fingers again. Safety, what an illusion.

“You good?” asked Celt over the music.

I cracked a smile. “Yeah.” It was a small lie, but I couldn’t stop thinking of my license as my ticket to make life suck a whole lot less. With a car, I would be well on my way to being a grade-A badass at school.

With Celt at my side, why the fuck not?

“We road-tripping next weekend?” asked Celt, staring out at the open road.

“I’m down, but I’m driving.”

He snorted a laugh. “Where to?”

“Wherever the fuck we want,” I said, eyeing a motorcycle that passed us.

The bike’s purring engine opened up with a roar, taking off in front of them. The back tire squealed on the pavement and left a black tar splatter. What a beast. Celt revved the old car’s engine. As much as it was a muscle car, the Torino kept up with that majestic beauty just fine.

The sunlight had glinted off the fresh paint job on the tank, and the pipes were polished chrome. Everything on the thing shone like a goddamn star. Celt slowed to the speed limit.

“Pops’ll have my head if I get a ticket.”

I scoffed. “Not to mention the car.” No matter how much I wanted eyes on that hog, I was relieved that he slowed his roll. I needed the freedom his car symbolized.

As Celt pulled into the gravel driveway of my house, I thumped my fingers a little louder. A little faster. The house looked quiet, but it always looked like that from the outside. A false fucking facade masking all the shit with Daddy that went down inside.

On the outskirts of Park Ridge, the ranch-style house, a lump of wood and gross pinkish stucco, sat in the solitude of nature. Inside the house was anything but.

Celt parked twenty feet outside the door like he was about to make a quick getaway. I couldn’t blame him. He left the car running and music pumping from the speakers. “You could come to the shop with me. I’m sure Bou wouldn’t mind catching up.”

I searched the windows at the front of the house, each shrouded in white curtains. Nothing moved, but Daddy’s beat-up, shitty, and rusty truck sat before the front door, the driver’s door cracked open and the windows down.

Fuck.

Daddy was home, but the house was quiet. So he probably wasn’t too jacked up. This early, no way he’d be high yet.

“Nah, all good. See you later.” I closed the door in Celt’s face.

While Celt’s home life was better than mine—anyone’s would be better than mine—I didn’t need to bring my shit into the Murrays’ lives. Celt had enough crap to deal with just trying to pass English in school.

No, this was my problem. I didn’t look back as I climbed the steps, entered, and closed the front door behind me.

The scent ofburning engulfed me. Not a yummy burned popcorn or toast smell, but the rancid scent of meth. Odorless, my ass.

I dragged my heels back. Maybe Celt was still out there, and I could hide out for a while, waiting for Daddy to sober up yet again, but then I heard whack! followed by a scream. Caring more about Mom’s safety than my own, I ran before I thought better of it, stumbling into the kitchen. My sneakers squeaked against the linoleum floor. Daddy threw his fist down on my cowering mother. Blood crawled across the floor and splattered all over the cabinets and table. Steam rose from the pot she had been using on the stove.

Mama lay in a heap, her normal whimpers silent.

Fuck, was she even conscious? Alive? Did the bastard finally kill her and just continue to beat her like she was a piece of meat?

“You finally home, boy?” Slowly, Daddy turned to me, wobbling on his feet. Mother’s blood dotted his face like freckles, and a line of it dripped from his chin. He wore a snaggletoothed smile, the teeth yellow and dangling from gray gums. The slow, disgusting, and shitfaced smile matched the glassy look in his eye.

So fucking high.

Did he even know I was standing in front of him? If I didn’t move, maybe Daddy would think I was a hallucination. I held myself still like a deer caught in the headlights until Mom whimpered.

Fuck, she was still alive. Couldn’t she just die and save herself?

She’d always refused to leave him, and for years, I’d feared when her last day might come.

Daddy looked back at her. His grin pulled a little higher.

“Stop,” I said. “Don’t.”

Daddy eyed me again, registering that I was no hallucination. Mom couldn’t fight back any longer, and Daddy wanted blood. I was the next best thing.

“Shit!” I turned on my heel and sprinted as Daddy scrambled after me. The pots and the pans clattered, and Daddy stomped like a fucking bull. Each step rattled the thin and crumbling walls.

I ran out the door. Celt’s car was gone, but it was fine. I didn’t want my best friend to see what would happen next. I took off toward the old toolshed, Daddy hollering after me.

“Come here, boy!” His voice echoed inside the house. “You know it’s gonna be worse if you run, Morris! I’ll find you, you bastard!”

I hated hearing him call my name, so I threw myself into the toolshed, searching the racks and the shovels. Those would be good to bury him, but they couldn’t serve as a weapon. I rifled through another shelf. Gardens shears, pliers, wrench, clamps—everything I could use to cut up the dead motherfucker and scatter the parts for the coyotes, but nothing that would kill him quickly.

Then I slowed and turned.

Above the door, the rifle taunted me.

Outside, he gave up on following me, waving his thick hand toward the shed. Watching him stumble back toward the house snapped my last shred of patience.

I grabbed the rifle.

Daddy hadn’t used it since I was a kid, and he forbade me from touching it.

High even then, he’d slurred, “Rabid animal on the land. That’s Daddy’s job, son.”

If I hated him using my given name, his calling me son tripped all the broken circuits, and the memory of it now... When I went looking for the dead animal, I couldn’t find it. Not even blood.

So, what the fuck had the bastard been doing then?

Didn’t matter. It was all about to end today.

Right now.

Daddy still yelled after me, and I stomped out of the shed. The rifle was a boulder of lead in my hands, but I moved like it was a feather. I had the fucking power now.

I stood behind the house, but Daddy wasn’t to be seen.

“Sorry, please! No!” screamed Mom from inside, and I ran for the kitchen.

Daddy was on her again, pummeling his fists into her.

Why couldn’t she just pass the fuck out? Each thud of his fist hit her skinny bones, breaking her more. I didn’t want to do it with her watching, but she could die before she lost consciousness.

I raised the rifle, no thoughts, and I didn’t even give warning.

Boom!

Pulling the trigger was easy, but staying on my feet after the reverberation was hard. I hadn’t thought the blow back would be so bad.

When I finally dragged my gaze up, I gasped. Daddy was dead, lying on the floor next to my cowering mother. My dead father would forever have that glassy look in his eyes from the meth, but he lost the rest of his head. His meaty brains added to the mess in the kitchen, bits of them covering the floor too, oozing from his missing skull.

I couldn’t find the bone in all the red blood.

Though he was definitely dead, I had a hard time letting the rifle go. What if the bastard somehow rose again like in those horror movies where the bad guy comes back for one more scare? And Daddy was such a shithead, I wouldn’t put it past his ass to come back as a zombie just to drive his fists into me or Mom. Even when Daddy would pass out from the drugs, he’d raise himself up and beat me again.

His death was the only way we’d ever be safe from his tainted soul.

“C’mon on, Mom.” I knelt beside her, and the blood soaked into my dark jeans. “We need to get you to the hospital.”

“Leave me, baby,” she cooed through breathless gasps. Her eyelids were swollen shut, and her jaw dangled open at an odd angle. He hadn’t actually broken it this time, but there was a good chance it had never healed.

What else had he broken? Me? Her?

I wouldn’t leave her behind. “You need a doctor.”

“You need to leave me, Morris,” she said. “My place is with him.”

She tried to crawl over to his prone body. How many times had she been beaten, or had he beaten me? She had never stopped Daddy, and she was too weak to stop him now.

So I had to.

“C’mon.” I dropped the rifle and gathered my battered mother up in my arms.

Her arm was definitely broken.

I stopped in the living room to rip apart a blanket and create a sling around her arm to shoulder before loading her into the passenger door of the truck. Then I went back to Daddy and picked his pockets for the keys. We didn’t have AC in the house, and he already seemed to be turning rancid. It was the Arizona heat, but Daddy was already rotting before he was dead.

Now, I had cracked him open like an egg, and everything spilled out.

You think I fucking cared?

Only that he’d created a mess I’d have to clean up.

I grabbed the keys and left.

As soon as Mom was safe, I could come back to clean up, then I’d go on with my fucking miserable life here in Park Ridge.

No more Daddy in my life, or Mom’s. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not ever.