Chapter Four Thea
I woke up to the sound of someone snoring.
Where the fuck was I?
I looked to my left, and there he was, sleeping.
It was the guy from the bar, and the hazy memories flooded back to me.
I covered my face with my hand. I wasn’t the one-night stand kind of girl.
Yes, I had taken men home from the bar before, but not for sex.
Usually, we just partied some more and fooled around until we fell asleep.
Last night was still a blur. Not that I was a slobbering drunk or anything, but a few steps before shit-faced. I looked back at the sleeping man. He was still just as intoxicating as the night before.
The intricate design of his tattoos gave me goosebumps and I had to fight the urge to run my hands across them. He didn’t give me stay-the-night vibes, so I wasn’t sure how we had fallen asleep.
I never knew sex could be as good as it was with him. It was like he was in the moment with me. When I fell over the edge, he had fallen too. I could see in his eyes that we had a connection neither of us was used to. I’m sure he could see it in mine as well.
Marcus never looked at me the way this man had.
Hell, Marcus barely looked at me at all unless he wanted something.
Peeling my eyes from the naked man next to me, I didn’t know what any of this meant, but one thing was for sure, I had to get the fuck out of there, and quick.
I slowly got out of bed, grabbed my dress and slipped it on.
I gave him one last look before I headed out of the apartment.
Damn.
We didn’t even know each other’s names.
***
Haven Hills was a shithole. I wasn’t sure what my brother was doing in this small town, but I was sure I was going to find out.
My brother was a Navy SEAL, which meant he spent more time overseas than in the country. Of course, that also meant he thought he could get away with only seeing me once or twice a year.
I didn’t even know where my brother lived anymore.
I drove 16 hours away hoping that this would be the right address.
A few months ago, I got curious and had Marcus hack into the school’s records to see the billing address tied to my tuition.
He was studying IT operations after picking up hacking and programming in high school.
The address led me to Haven Hills, and I memorized it just in case I ever needed it.
Well, I needed it. The thing was, I had already spoken to my brother.
I hadn’t told him the exact details of my last few weeks in Cali, but I told him that I needed to get away and wanted to transfer to a school closer to him to finish my last year after the summer.
The asshole wouldn’t even hear me out. He kept telling me that I was at one of the best schools in the country and that I shouldn’t throw away my chance at a successful career over a whim. A fucking whim.
That asshole. What he didn't know was that I was kicked out of my house, all my money was gone, and after beating Bridgette’s face into the ground, I didn’t trust her not to tell anyone about what happened during our semester abroad, which meant my safety could be on the line.
Not that I didn’t think Bridgette was scared of him, too, but the thing about Bridgette is she makes stupid mistakes for the sake of love.
She would put it all on the line if it meant me getting out of the way of her being with Marcus.
But me? Fuck love.
I was more of a self-preservation type of girl, which is why I was on the way to force my dickhead of a brother to hear me out.
Once I told him what happened in Italy and the real threat I was facing, we could take it on together.
Just the two of us.
I pulled up a dirt road that led to a big barbed wire fence. It was a little unnerving to say the least.
Was my brother staying at some super secret military base out in the middle of nowhere?
As my car approached the gates, a man around the same age as me stepped around.
He stood around six feet tall and was bulky as fuck.
He looked barely old enough to drink and was sporting a gun in his pants.
I quickly noticed that he was wearing a leather vest that read Martyrs in Mayhem New Mexico Chapter and then the word “Prospect.” I thought the name of the club sounded familiar, but Bridgette and I had spent so much time partying at seedy bars that I just figured I had seen it in passing one night.
“Yo, you here for the party?” He shouted at me.
Party? What the fuck. This didn’t seem like the type of place anyone would want to party at. We were dead center in the middle of nowhere surrounded by trees and a scary-ass fence.
“Uh. Yeah, a friend of the host.”
He gave me an unsure look and then nodded his head, gesturing me to drive through the gates. My heartbeat started to pick up as I thought about what could happen if I was in the wrong place. I mean, what if I was headed smack-dab into the middle of danger and had no idea?
Luckily, Chase and I talked every day, and if I didn’t answer, he’d get worried and check my location.
I pulled up to the massive house with buildings spread about.
There were motorcycles and cars everywhere.
The buildings had a rustic feel to them but in a modern way, like the owners wanted them to look old, not actually be old.
This was clearly not a military base and I started to think I made a mistake by coming.
It was too late to turn around, though. I had to find my brother.
I stepped out of my car and started making my way toward the door.
The entrance looked like an opening to a bar, not a house.
Two big wooden doors were facing me. I wasn’t sure if I should knock or just walk in.
Hell, I was already trespassing so why would I need to knock?
I twisted the handle and stepped inside.
My thoughts were right, it was a bar. I looked around and saw tables and chairs everywhere and a wooden bar top sat in the middle.
There were people all around of all ages.
The men were wearing the same vests as the man outside, and the women were dressed more casually than you'd expect at a biker bar.
Thank god I swapped my red dress for a more formal outfit.
I was wearing a light blue sundress and barely any makeup on my face.
Another thing that caught my eye about this place, there were kids running around, giving me the impression that this was a private bar and a private party that I was, in fact, crashing.
Fuck, Thea. What were you thinking?
At least I was carrying. I may have dressed like a spoiled rich girl and hung around them, but I wasn’t stupid. I saw real horrors and lived them long enough to know that the devil can be charming. Not like I expected to get into a shootout with bikers at some kind of kid's party.
I made my way to the bar acknowledging the people behind it.
There were two men who obviously belonged to the club, their patches read Bullet and Ace, and then a beautiful woman.
She couldn’t have been more than 4’10” and looked about 7 months pregnant.
Her black braids hung low to her hips and she didn’t have any makeup on, yet her skin still glowed as if she bathed in bronzer.
“Can I help you? Are you lost?” Bullet, one of the men behind the bar, said.
“I’m looking for someone,” I replied.
Their eyebrows shot up.
“Who are you looking for, baby?”
I fought the urge to roll my eyes. Remember, I’m a self-preservation type of girl.
“His name is Davien Blake,” I said, trying to gesture to him to look at a picture of my brother on my phone. He was about a decade younger, but he still looked about the same, just a little more rugged.
“Don’t know him,” he said, shrugging me off.
It’s not that I didn’t think he was lying, it just felt like he didn’t even try to know who I was asking for.
“Are you sure? Maybe you’d know if you looked at the picture,” I sassed to the man about two times the size of me.
“Not how shit works around here,” he grumbled. “I don’t know how the fuck you got in here, but the way you’re asking questions tells me that you don’t belong and you shouldn’t be digging around.”
I huffed. Who the fuck did this man think he was? I was about to rip him a new asshole when the woman standing next to him grabbed his arm and pulled him back.
“Sorry about him,” she said, giving me a reassuring smile. “He’s just upset because one of the dogs ate all the cake I made before he could have some.”
We both laughed. She seemed nice in a genuine sense. Though, I wouldn’t have gotten those vibes from her before she spoke. She looked like every other rich kid back home in California.
“We do have some rules here, but if you describe who you’re looking for, maybe we can help.”
“Sure. He’s about six-foot-something, buff, Black, walks around like he’s better than everyone else, with a massive chip on his shoulder,” I said, doing an impeccable job at describing my brother, or so I thought.
The girl laughed at me. “Honey, you just described half the men in here. The other half are just white.”
“Oh, sorry,” I said. I don’t get nervous but they were staring me down and a few other people around me were too. “Um. He also has a huge tattoo of the Navy SEAL emblem on his chest. The words, ‘death before dishonor’ on his right arm.”
The men around us stood up a bit straighter. Her eyes widened in slight shock as she shouted, “Babe! Come here.”
The look on her face made me start to worry that something bad had happened to him, but then a man rounded the corner and I knew instantly that he was my brother.
“Why are you screaming at me, woman?”
I was a little taken aback by the term of endearment the pregnant lady used to call my brother over. I couldn’t stop looking at her stomach, and I’m sure that others could see the look of disdain on my face.
“Someone’s looking for you,” she said as she pointed in my direction.
“Thea?”
He froze, and then every ounce of color drained from his face.
“What the fuck are you doing here?”