Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Bane
Two Hours Earlier
“You fuck that purple-haired chick at Kitties yet?” I lift my beer to my lips, waiting for Gator to flip his fucking lid. The grumpy bastard has been even more of an asshole since Bash hired the stripper.
“Why the fuck do you care who I stick my dick in?” he grumbles, staring at something on his phone.
I smirk against the rim of my bottle.
He hasn’t.
“You need to get laid, bro.”
He opens his mouth, no doubt to spout some more bullshit about how he’s not hung up on the stripper, but pauses when my phone starts buzzing across the bar.
Glancing at the screen, my lips turn down.
Cyber: Come to the Command Center.
Well, shit. Getting summoned to the IT room at eleven o’clock on a Friday night is never good.
Downing the rest of my beer, I slide off the stool.
“Where the fuck you goin’?” Journey asks from two seats down, his arm draped around a blonde who’s been eye-fucking him since we walked in an hour ago.
I dig in my back pocket for my wallet, pull out a couple of twenties, and toss them on the bar top. “Cyber wants to see me about something.”
Gator’s head snaps up, his ice-blue eyes sharp. “Maybe he tracked down the cocksucker who’s been stealing your money.”
My jaw clenches at the mention of my missing money.
Over the last month, someone’s been siphoning money out of my offshore account. Five grand here. Two there. Small enough amounts that I didn’t notice it at first, but it’s been adding up. I’m down over a hundred and fifty Gs now.
It’s money I’ve been saving for years to buy a place on the edge of town. Money I earned running product and risking my ass every goddamn time.
And some piece of shit thinks he can take it from me, and I won’t do shit about it?
Nah. Fuck that.
When I find the bastard, I’m gonna slit his fucking throat and watch him bleed out. Slowly. Then I’ll cut him into pieces and feed him to the gators in the swamp behind the compound.
Nobody fucks with the Kings.
I hold Gator’s stare and growl. “Let’s fucking hope.”
Shoving my wallet in my back pocket, I head for the back door. I know I shouldn’t get my hopes up. Not with all the more important shit that Cyber’s been dealing with. I need to chill the fuck out and give him time to work his magic, but I can’t. Not with this shit hanging over my head.
Throwing open the back door, I step out into the humid Florida night. The air is thick, heavy with the promise of rain. Mosquitoes and moths buzz around the floodlights mounted on the clubhouse, and I hear the sound of the ocean waves crashing against the shore a couple blocks away.
Cyber’s command center is a small concrete building about fifty yards from the main clubhouse. It looks like a glorified shed from the outside, but inside, it’s as secure as Fort fucking Knox.
I stalk across the compound, my hands curled into fists at my sides. My pulse is pounding in my ears, adrenaline racing through my system.
Please let him have found this fucker.
At the door, I punch in the six-digit code on the keypad.
The lock clicks, and I shove the door open, stepping into the darkened space.
There’s another door ahead, solid steel and thick as hell.
I punch in another code on the keyboard mounted on the wall, and the vault door slides open with a hydraulic hiss.
This is Cyber’s kingdom. His domain. Where all the magic happens that keeps our asses out of jail.
Computer monitors and TV screens are mounted across the entire wall, displaying everything from security camera feeds, to all our businesses, to what’s happening on Wall Street, to lines of code I don’t understand. The room is a chorus of cooling fans and hard drives whirring.
Hunched over his desk is Cyber with his eyes glued to the screens and his fingers flying across the keyboard.
The kid’s only twenty-three, but he’s a goddamn genius when it comes to all this techy shit.
Been recruited by every three-letter agency in the country before he said fuck ‘em all and patched in with us.
“What’s up?” I ask, closing the vault door.
He doesn’t look at me, just reaches over and grabs a piece of paper from the desk, holding it out.
I take it and glance down.
Frankie Hayes
1247 Sunset Drive
Rubbing my chin, I ask, “This who’s been stealing from me?”
Cyber lifts his head and frowns. “Yeah. But it doesn’t make any sense. Someone went through a lot of trouble to hide this kid.”
“Hide him?” My brows go up. “What do you mean?”
“Layers of encryption, VPNs, proxy servers. This Frankie knows his shit. I had to dig deep to track him down.”
“But you did track him down,” I say, crumpling the paper in my fist.
“Yeah, but...” Cyber shakes his head. “I haven’t had time to get into the details. Another girl’s gone missing.”
“Fuck.”
The trafficking ring. We’ve been trying to track down the assholes snatching women off the streets for months now. Every time Cyber gets close the IP’s geolocation jumps all over the map, then vanishes like smoke. It’s starting to piss us all off.
We’re not saints. We run guns and dope, sure, but we don’t fuck with women and kids. That’s a line we don’t cross, and having some sick fucks operating in our territory brings heat we don’t need. FBI, ATF, Homeland Security; all those three-letter agencies sniffing around our business.
We need to shut this shit down before it bites us in the ass.
“Take a break,” I tell Cyber, bumping my fist against his. “Maybe it’ll be clearer with fresh eyes.”
He exhales hard and nods. “Yeah. Maybe you’re right.”
I wave the crumpled paper. “I’m gonna take off. Handle this.”
Cyber glances at me, his hazel eyes tired. “You need help?”
“Nah. I got it.” I head for the door, then pause. “Seriously, brother. Take a fucking break.”
He grunts in response, already turning back to his screens.
The vault door slides shut behind me, and I pull out my phone and fire off a text to Journey.
Me: Got the address. Time to fuck some shit up. Meet me at my truck.
His reply comes back almost instantly.
Journey: You’re a cockblocker, you know that?
I snort. Yeah, well, he can finish his fuck fest later. We’ve got a job to do.
With a grin on my face, I shove my phone in my pocket and head for my truck in the lot.
I’d rather be on my bike but with what I’m planning to do to this punk kid, that’ll draw too much attention.
I don’t need some nosy neighbor calling the cops because they saw two bikers rolling through their neighborhood in the middle of the night.
Journey’s leaning against the passenger door when I get to my truck, arms crossed over his chest. “This better be good, brother. That blonde had a mouth like a Hoover.”
“You’ll live,” I mutter, unlocking the doors.
We climb in, and I fire up the engine, pulling out of the compound and onto the main road. Odin’s a small town, and it doesn’t take long to get to Sunset Drive. I punch the address into my GPS and follow the directions to a nice neighborhood with big houses and manicured lawns.
I kill the headlights as I turn onto the street and roll to a stop in front of the address. There’s a main house that’s dark, and a three-car garage off to the side.
There’s a light on in the window above the garage.
Bingo.
“Stay here,” I tell Journey, keeping my voice low.
He nods, melting into the darkness by the side of the garage.
I take the steps two at a time, my heart pounding in my chest. Adrenaline is pumping through my veins, my hands itching to snatch the life out of this punk.
I’ve been waiting for this moment for weeks.
Patiently counting the minutes until I’d get the chance to get my hands on the fucker who stole from me, and make him pay.
The lock on the door is a joke. I pull my pick set from my pocket and have it open in under thirty seconds.
Pushing the door open, I step inside and pause.
This place is a fucking dump. It’s small and cramped, and smells like stale food and dirty laundry. A single bed is off to one side of the room, and a large desk with computer screens is on the other.
I’m not sure what exactly I expected, but this wasn’t it at all. Not with all the money this fucker’s been stealing from me.
Movement catches my eyes, and I turn. Standing in the middle of the room, holding a goddamn Louisville Slugger like she’s about to go to war, is a tiny blonde.
What the fuck?
She’s no bigger than five-foot-nothing, wearing an oversized hoodie and leggings, and her hair is piled on top of her head in a messy bun. Her eyes are wide behind a pair of hipster glasses, and she’s gripping that bat like her life depends on it.
For a second, I’m too stunned to move.
Where’s the punk kid? Is this his girlfriend?
Then she swings.
“What the—” The bat connects with my cheek, and pain explodes across my face.
Crazy fucking bitch!
She swings again, aiming for my head. I duck, and the bat whooshes past my ear.
“Jesus Christ!” I growl, lunging forward when she swings again. I catch the bat mid-swing and rip it out of her hands with a hard yank.
She stumbles back, her eyes wild with panic.
“Stay back!” she shouts, scrambling backward until her hip connects with the desk. “I know Tae Kwon Jitsu!”
I almost laugh. Tae Kwon Jitsu? Is she fucking serious?
“You know what?” I ask, fighting a laugh as I stalk towards her.
“And karate. And—”
I don’t let her finish.
I move fast, closing the distance between us. She tries to dart to the side, but I’m faster. I grab her wrist and yank her toward me.
Her lips part, and she gasps.
Spinning her around, I bend her over the desk and pin her arms behind her back.
She’s tiny. Her bones fragile—breakable.
And she just tried to bash my fucking skull in.
My dick twitches at the pain I could inflict.
Jesus.
I’m a sick bastard.
“Let me go!” she screams, her ass pressing against my crotch.
I tighten my hold, using my body weight to keep her still. She’s strong for someone so small, and the fight in her makes my dick hard as a rock.
Fuck me. What’s wrong with you, asshole?
“Who the fuck are you?” I snarl, glancing around the room for the asshole I came for.
“Frankie,” she gasps, still struggling.
My brows go up. She’s Frankie?
You’re a fucking girl?
My jaw clenches.
I glance around the loft, taking in all the computer equipment. Monitors, towers, cables. There’s tech shit everywhere.
This little bitch stole my money.
Almost two hundred Gs.
Gone.
Because of her.
I should snap her neck right now. Toss her ass in the garbage with the fuckin’ trash.
But then I’d never get my money back.
And something about the terror in her honey-brown eyes, the way she’s trembling against me, the smell of her shampoo—something sweet, like vanilla—makes me want to keep her.
Own her.
Break her.
She’s mine now.
“You’re coming with me,” I growl in her ear.
She goes still for a second then explodes into motion, kicking and screaming.
“No! Let me go!”
I reach into my pocket and pull out a zip tie. I’ve done this dozens of times; restrained men twice her size. This little bitch doesn’t stand a chance.
I loop the tie around her wrists and pull it tight, ignoring her sob of pain.
“Please,” she whimpers. “Please don’t kill me—”
Grabbing the bandana from my back pocket, I spin her around and shove it in her mouth to muffle her cries.
Her eyes are wide, tears streaming down her cheeks, and fuck me, I want to see that look on her face when her lips are wrapped around my cock.
Eyes on the prize, asshole. She stole your money.
Narrowing my eyes, I scoop her up and throw her over my shoulder like a sack of potatoes. She’s light, too thin.
She thrashes harder, growling some nonsense I can’t understand around the gag in her mouth.
“Keep it up, baby,” I murmur, gripping my hand tighter around her thigh. “I love a good struggle.”
I carry her down the steps and across the yard to where Journey’s waiting by the truck.
His eyes go wide when he sees the wiggling woman over my shoulder. “What the fuck, Bane?”
“Get in,” I snap, yanking open the back door and tossing Frankie onto the seat.
She lands hard, her muffled cries filling the cab as I climb in after her, shoving her down when she tries to sit up.
Journey slides into the driver’s seat, twisting around to stare at me. “Brother, Tacoma ain’t gonna like this.”
I know.
The club has a code. We don’t fuck with women and kids.
But Frankie Hayes ain’t no ordinary bitch.
She stole from me.
From the Kings.
And she’s gonna pay.
“Drive,” I order, my hand still pinning down my prisoner.
Journey hesitates for a second, then starts the engine and pulls out onto the road.
I stare down at the woman beneath me, her body shaking, her eyes squeezed shut.
She’s terrified.
Good.
She should be.
Because I’m not letting her go until I get every fucking penny she stole back.
Nobody fucks with the Kings.