Ronny (Grim Sinners MC Next Generation #1)

Prologue

PROLOGUE

Ronny

Sixteen Years Old

My life before my mom and dad adopted me was tough. My bio mom chose everyone else, primarily men, over me.

We were in and out of homeless shelters and centers for women and their kids who were suffering from domestic violence.

That’s where I met my mom, Bell, and my dad, Maverick.

Bell was the first person ever to show me kindness. She was determined to give me an amazing life.

And she did.

For years, I couldn’t believe it was real, that I could have a bed, food, and just someone to care about me.

Then, I found my calling in life: hockey. Mom and Dad took me to every game and practice, raised money for the team, and took me all over the States for games because I joined an elite team.

Fucking blessed is what I am.

My dad had me train to protect myself outside of practice, which included being able to shoot and ensure that I could defend myself and others around me if needed.

I never dreamed the training he pounded into my head would have led me to the moment that changed my life forever, or that it would have happened so soon.

I’m heading home from practice when I get a phone call from my mom, telling me that the women’s center is under attack.

My father’s clubhouse owns a center for women that are escaping cults and other horrific shit in their lives. Sometimes their abusers show up to the center wanting their women or kids back.

“Get home, Ronny, so we can get into lockdown until it’s under control,” she tells me, and I can hear a slight tremor in her voice.

But I can’t.

I slam on the brakes and turn around toward the center, because I won’t let those women who have been hurt by others their whole lives be hurt again if I can help it.

I was out in the countryside practicing shooting with my new sniper rifle that Dad got me for my birthday.

And the closer I get to the center, the louder I can hear the gunshots. Fuck me. I fear for some of my family members that are there right now and the ole ladies that help out there sometimes.

The club is family; we aren’t blood, but we are there for each other. I can’t tell you a time when half of the club hasn’t shown up to my games.

Since I was a small kid they’ve been there for me, and seeing all of my family watching me from the stands is a feeling I will never forget.

I park at the side entrance and put in the code to get in, as only family have the code to get in through the side gate in case of emergencies.

I grab my sniper rifle and speed through the gate, looking out of the rearview mirror to make sure it shuts behind me so I don’t allow these fuckers to find another way to get in.

Some of the women see me and start screaming, hiding, going into their small houses. I roll down my window so they can see my face and not be afraid. “Lock yourselves inside of your home, ladies,” I tell them when I put the truck into park.

They take off, running and dragging their kids with them, their faces pale white, and I know they’re terrified.

I go straight to the main house that we call the center half of the time, carrying my case.

I duck behind trees and vehicles, staying out of sight. I see a ton of men in white garbs at the entrance to the house. I add the code in for one of the back doors, running through the house and seeing the girls about to hide in the bunker.

They scramble and following the noise of people yelling, I turn the corner and see Etta is trying to hold the door shut while a man’s foot is sticking in the door and keeping her from being able to shut it. Two other girls are trying their best to help her.

Etta steps back and takes a running go at the door to get it to slam shut, but it doesn’t work.

From the window I can see the other men outside of the house running up the steps to get to the front door.

“Olivia, run!” Etta screams at a young girl maybe a couple years younger than me.

The girl shakes her head. I can’t see her face, but she continues to shake her head vigorously. “No, I won’t leave you and Maci.”

I snap to attention, running over to Etta, and see that she has a pistol in the back of her pants. I grab it, pointing the gun down toward the fucker’s foot and pulling the trigger.

Boom.

Boom.

Boom.

The fucker screams at the top his lungs and falls backward, then we slam the door shut, locking and arming it.

Etta turns to me and looks horrified to see that I’m standing there. “What are you doing here?” she says in a tone that I’m very familiar with from my mother. I fight the urge to roll my eyes.

“I heard what was going on and I was the closest, so I came here first,” I tell her, and I look over to see the girl is around my age. I feel like the ground is taken out from under me right then.

I swallow hard and try not to visibly react the way I want. She is beautiful, her hair is long, blonde, and hanging down to the middle of her back, and her eyes are huge—blue—and she is looking at me like I just saved her life.

Concerned that she got hurt, “You okay? He didn’t hurt you, did he?” I ask her, moving closer.

She shakes her head, smiling at me. “It just scared me, is all. Thank you for saving me,” she says sweetly, and I feel like someone could push me over with just a feather.

The urge to protect her, to bring her out of this place so no one can hurt her, is overwhelming.

The moment is interrupted when the men start running and banging on the door, trying to get inside.

“Come on, ladies. Let’s get you to the safe room.” I motion for them to follow me, but Etta stays back to make sure they don’t break in.

“I’ll be back, but I would get dressed if I were you.” I give her a look that tells her to get herself ready for war, because that is what’s to come next the second I get the girls to safety.

“Stay close to me, girls,” I tell them softly and Olivia walks closer to me, putting her hand on my back to stay close. I try not to smile as I guide them through the house to the bunker that’ll protect them from someone getting in. The only people that know it is there are the ones that will die to protect the people inside. All of us boys have prepared for this sort of thing.

I get the girls inside safely and the door is closed shut, beeping to let me know it’s locked into place.

I run back to Etta and see she is dressing up, then I put on a bulletproof vest and other gear I might need.

They’re banging on every window now, every door, trying to find their way in. I know the MC made sure that every window and door is reinforced.

We get to the roof and I have my sniper rifle ready to start picking them off one by one, when the gate crashes down and around fifty more men burst through, running across the field and to the houses of the women.

Fuck me.

I start to panic and Etta has the same look. She pushes a button on her phone and I hear a bunch of loud slams, and I know she is locking down all of the cottages that house the women long term.

“We need to take them out,” Etta tells me, and I prepare myself to do this. She puts her hand on my arm. “You don’t have to do this, Ronny.”

I stare at her, respecting her for worrying about me, but I won’t have a stain on my soul because of these fuckers. Besides, they deserve what’s coming to them. “We protect our people.”

I move and lay down so that I can see everyone but out of the line of fire. I’m damn good at shooting a sniper rifle.

I can feel Etta watching me as I let out a deep breath and shoot the first man I see that poses as a threat.

It’s only minutes, but waiting for my dad and the others to get here seems like it’s taking forever. I don’t like feeling exposed like this because of all of the battered women that are here.

“Fuck!” I look over at Etta to find her staring at her phone. “One of them got locked inside of the house, Lynn just texted me. I need to go to her.” She takes off running back into the house.

I can hear gunfire inside of the house and it takes everything not to rush inside to make sure the girls are okay.

I hear the bikes in the distance and I rest my shoulders some, not as tense as I was a few moments ago because backup is here.

When the bikes roll in, I spot my dad right in the front. He is one of the original founders of the Grim Sinners MC.

I pull myself from my family and to the fuckers that are running around trying to find a way inside of the main house and the cottages the women are in.

It blows my mind that grown men are here trying to hurt these innocent women. As a man, it’s engrained in me to protect and care for women, not this shit.

The only answer is, they are not fucking men.

I see a fucker going toward the side of the house where my dad and River are. I take my shot and he falls dramatically with the bullet on the right side of his head. I don’t give him a second thought.

From the corner of my eye, I see Etta, Dad, Olivia, Lynn, and Konrad all walking toward one of the cottages. I let out a deep breath the second the girls are inside. Olivia looked terrified.

Fuck, those blue eyes are going to haunt me because of how scared she was. I remember her on the news when she went missing.

I don’t let myself get distracted as I take out the fuckers that move in front of my scope, while my family below me are riding around and taking out the rest of them.

Within minutes, it’s all over, the sounds of gunshots dissipating and the silence eerie.

I pack up the gun and put it back in the case, carrying it back downstairs to the armory, not wanting one of the kids to randomly find it lying around.

My dad comes up behind me and I turn to look at him. His expression shows he is pissed the fuck off but I don’t care if he gets mad at me, I would do it all over again to protect my family.

This is why from the age of thirteen, I was trained better than most men in the military.

He starts laughing before grabbing the back of my head and pulling me to him so he can hug me. “I’m proud of you, son. You stood for the shit we have taught you. You saved lives today.” My heart feels like it’s going to beat out of my chest and behind him comes Lane, our president, carrying a cut. “We were going to wait until you were eighteen,” Dad tells me, and he steps back.

It’s a prospect cut. I have wanted to be a member of the MC since I understood the brotherhood. I grew up in this life, I have many uncles, aunts, and cousins.

I swallow hard, nodding. “I’m honored.”

Lane hands my dad the cut and I turn around, letting him slip it over my arms. Fuck, this feels like home.

“Today, you aren’t just my son, you’re a man.”

This very day, my life changed forever.

* * *

Olivia

Sixteen Years Old

Two Years Later

Today is the day I’m starting high school. For my last couple years I decided I was going to go back to high school. Trust me when I say I’m terrified.

I was twelve years old when I snuck out of my mom’s house to go back to my dad’s. It was stupid and I shouldn’t have been walking by myself in the middle of the night.

That very moment altered my life forever.

I was kidnapped off the side of the road, then thrown into a cult where I was hurt every day of my life, forced to be married and live a life that was so backward and wrong.

I held on to the hope that one day I would get to see my dad again. I was hurting more for him because I know me being missing was the worst kind of hell for a parent.

It was two years before I was finally found. Honestly, I don’t even remember half of the time I was there, it’s like I locked a part of me away.

But after years of intense therapy, I’m healed physically, and emotionally I’m getting there.

You never know how much pain you have pushed down until you have to sit down and actually deal with it.

I have been homeschooled all of this time. I’ve had made great friends with some of the MC kids from the Grim Sinners, mainly Ronny.

Ronny has been a permanent fixture in my healing process, he has been a friend that I can count on all hours of the night if I get scared and need someone to talk to.

I would be absolutely lying if I didn’t have the world’s greatest crush on him, and I have since the moment he saved me.

My dad is going to drop me off at school. He is gripping the steering wheel like it’s his lifeline, and I know he is worried about me finding this hard.

I’m sure it’s going to be, but there has to come a time where I start to live a little and be a teenager with what little time I have left to be one.

I want to be a social worker, to help kids who are in horrible situations and give them a way out any way I can.

I had an amazing childhood because of my dad, and I want all kids to have that. I want to intervene and protect them when I can. I want to make a difference in their lives—hell, to anyone’s lives that I can.

My dad looks over at me. “You can stay home, you know?” he tells me.

“I know, Dad, but I need to try this, to see if I can try to be brave and be a teenager.”

He lets out a deep breath, his eyes filled with pain in a way that hurts a whole lot more than what they did to me in the cult.

Yes, they hurt me by hurting others in the cult. If I did something wrong, they would punish other people and I would have to watch. I had to learn to get over the fact that everything was not my fault or that there would be major consequences for the most minor things.

The school comes into view and it takes everything in me to not throw up all over the car.

“Don’t let these boys flirt with you, baby girl,” Dad tells me and I laugh, happy to see him joking with me.

“Trust me, Dad, I will be the last one they will flirt with,” I joke back, but pain slices through me.

Dad stops the car in one of the parking spots. I can’t look at him because my heart is hurting. “Why do you think that?” he asks me, his voice rough.

I swallow hard, gripping the strap of my backpack. “Dad, people don’t want used goods.”

I shouldn’t have said it, I should have kept my mouth shut, but deep down in my heart, that’s how I feel. “What boy would look at me? I’m scarred to my core. No one would want to touch me,” I voice my fear, and it’s one that I have kept inside for so long.

My dad looks like his heart is broken, pissed off. “That is the stupidest shit I have ever heard.” He takes my hand gently. “You are beautiful, a survivor, and you are worth so much.”

He looks behind me at the window. I turn and see that my window is cracked open, and through it Ronny is standing there. He is a senior now.

He opens the car door and I’m utterly humiliated because he just heard about the worst part of me. I look down at my lap, ashamed.

But he ducks down so I have no choice but to look at him, and I do. He is so handsome. In the two years since I have met him, he has gained a ton of muscle and height, hitting six-foot-five, and when he is in his hockey skates, he is huge. And his eyes are such a bright blue-green that it takes your breath away at times.

“You’re wrong,” he tells me, and I let out a pitiful laugh, my eyes filling with tears.

“Yeah, I don’t see how,” I reply.

He chuckles. “God, I thought it was obvious.”

That confuses me, so I look over at my dad, wondering if he knows what Ronny is talking about. He is grinning ear to ear, his arms crossed while watching the two of us.

I turn back to Ronny to find his expression is serious. I hold my breath, waiting for him to speak. “I have liked you since the moment I saw you. I have wanted you the moment you looked at me with those bright fucking blue eyes.” He cups my cheek, catching one of my stray tears.

I think I’m going to pass out from what he just told me. Is this real? Is what I have felt all this time returned by him?

“So don’t think for a second that no one will ever want you, because I do.”

I think I just died. I’m floored.

I lick my dry lips, both surprised and happy. “But I know you’re not ready to be mine the way I want you to be. I will wait for you—I will wait until you’re ready to be mine fully, and trust me, no boys will be touching you.” He winks and my fear is no more.

“I can’t ask you to do that.” It’s not fair for him to wait for me to be ready, because when will I ever be?

He shakes his head. “Me being around you is enough. Don’t think your worth is based on if you can have sex or not with a man. You are so much more than that.”

I could float away, I swear I could fall over dead because this is not what I ever expected from Ronny. “Right now, I will be your protector, your friend, okay? I won’t go anywhere.”

I nod. “If it’s any consolation, I have liked you these last couple years but I was scared to tell you.”

Ronny grins. “That’s good to know. I was prepared to woo you in any way I can to win you over.”

I giggle and a piece of my fractured heart heals, and it’s because of this man in front of me.

Then it hits me that he is saying all of this in front of my dad. I peek over at him to see he is still grinning. “Your parents have raised a good kid.” He slaps Ronny on his shoulder and I know that means a lot to him because, in a way, he just gave Ronny his approval.

“Are you ready to do this?” Ronny asks me, and I nod, putting my hand in his so he can pull me out of the car.

“With you? Yes,” I reply, and he grins.