Deadly Paradise (Royal Bastards MC: Oahu, Hawaii #3)

Prologue

Falling in love with my best friend’s sister was never part of the plan. Neither was her cheating on me, or her trying to pass the product of that affair off as my daughter.

Kalea Ka’ana’ana. She was fire and brimstone, wrapped in a sarong of passion.

And it hadn’t hurt that she wasn’t as crazy as her brother.

Four years younger than Aloiki and me, Kalea was always there in the background.

I met Aloiki and Kayl, another close friend, when we were in grade school.

The three of us pulled a lot of shit together, but while Kayl was still a friend, he chose to become a cop while Aloiki and I chose less reputable professions.

When Aloiki was nineteen and Kalea was fifteen, their makuahine, mom, was killed by a horse.

It broke their makuakāne’s, their dad’s, heart so much to lose her that he left the funeral, and was never seen again.

The belief was that he took a long walk off a tall cliff to join his beloved in the sea.

Kalea was a wreck following her parents’ death, and Aloiki wasn’t what one would call “paternal by nature”.

He never mistreated her, and always made sure she had everything she needed from food to new clothes, but he was never there.

Not like I was. And while I never had paternal feelings toward Kalea, I did step into almost a big-brother role the latter half of her teen years.

Aloiki took over their family’s farm and was heavily involved with a radical activist group as I was building my arms business and helping to take care of his teenage sister.

She became such a constant presence in my life that I hadn’t even realized I so heavily relied on until she was no longer there.

The shy, indoors-y type, Kalea didn’t date much through high school.

That might also have to do with the fact that Aloiki, Kayl, and I had left behind such a reputation that her last name alone likely kept many potential suitors at bay.

When she was nineteen and going to community college, she met a man whose name I never could remember but whose terrified face I would never forget.

Because you never forget your first kill.

The prick had struck her. Not once, not twice, but numerous times over several months. She’d begun disappearing, not checking in. I hadn’t even realized how often we talked on a daily basis until she no longer sent those messages.

Aloiki might not be the most emotionally available person, but there’s a code with him. Family and loyalty were everything. Betray that, and you pay the ultimate price. And I knew that it wasn’t just me she was ghosting when Aloiki approached me to know if I had heard from Kalea recently.

Aloiki and I tracked her down. And when we found her beaten and broken on the fucker’s kitchen floor? Well, let’s just say the sharks ate well that night.

She never knew. We didn’t even tell Kayl, who was still walking the beat back then.

But that was when I knew the feelings I had for Kalea were not paternal or even fraternal.

Absolutely fucking not. Because the rage that consumed me at the very memory of seeing her crumpled and bleeding on that old, yellowish linoleum floor was visceral.

I told Aloiki that she was mine. Maybe not today, maybe not even in the near future after what she’d just gone through, but she was mine. I was a patient fucker, and one day, I would have her.

I showered her with gifts, protection… I even bought her a house.

My business was a dangerous one, but it was quite profitable.

Helped when one of your best friends was a police officer who swept certain things under the rug for a little extra paycheck each month.

I took her on adventures. The entire island knew that Kalea Ka’ana’ana was mine, and what happened behind closed doors—or didn’t happen, in our case—was none of their fucking business.

Both Aloiki and I asked Kalea if the prick had raped her.

She swore up and down that he hadn’t, but a part of me always felt like she was lying.

She’d been so young, and there wasn’t a doubt in my mind that he’d been her first. Then again, I’d fucked my first when I was fourteen, so I wasn’t exactly the authority on what was “young” when it came to sex.

All I knew was that Kalea was skittish when it came to physical intimacy between us.

I was many things: Kānaka Maoli, an arms dealer of both illegal and legal weapons, a murderer, a warrior… I was not a rapist.

My vow to protect Kalea did not just mean from the world, but also myself. She would never know harm by my hand or cock. I never made her feel guilty or pressured. Waiting did not change my feelings for her or my claim on her. It was only when she was ready that I took her for the first time.

We married the following year when she was twenty-four.

My home life wasn’t the greatest growing up.

Unlike Aloiki and Kalea’s who wouldn’t even let death separate them, my parents hated each other with such a passion that they continuously used me as a pawn between them long after the divorce.

I walked away from both the moment I turned eighteen, and never looked back.

I saw them on occasion, but I never acknowledged them.

As far as I was concerned, I had no parents. I was a son of the sea and of the land.

When I put a ring on Kalea’s hand, I hadn’t been sure what to expect of marriage. I certainly hadn’t had the role models she had growing up, and I couldn’t spend the rest of our lives together just trying to not be my parents.

It was Kalea who eased my worries and my fears. She said our marriage would be neither of our parents’. It would be ours. We would make it our own and compare ourselves to no one.

I was fairly certain I fell in love with her all over again at that declaration.

Life became good after that. It wasn’t without its struggles, but I never felt like it was too much or not enough.

My business expanded. For a few years, I worked with Aloiki when he needed someone watching his back he could unquestionably trust. He had his own struggles with heartbreak, and literally decided to move on by pussy hopping his way through life.

The fact that he made a killing doing it with his growing porn business was either fucked up or completely genius.

I never got on camera, but I helped out behind the scenes when he asked.

Then, Kalea and I started to try. I was nearly thirty at that time, and we just celebrated our first wedding anniversary.

A child was a big step, but the idea of fatherhood did not scare me.

I wanted it so much that I became blind, ignoring signs that I now realized were right in front of my face the entire time.

After two years of trying and seeing a fertility specialist, it finally happened. We got to see those two blue lines on that piss stick.

I was never an angry person by nature. Even growing up as I did and my chosen profession, I had always defined myself as a rational person. Then again, when your best friend can easily be called a sociopathic asshole, you tend to always appear the more reasonable of the two.

I cannot remember a happier time in my life than experiencing pregnancy with Kalea. It was new and exciting, and there was something primal about knowing I had knocked up my wahine.

And when the nurse placed that little bundle in my arms? When I got to hold my daughter for the first time… It had nearly brought me to my knees. I was a father to the most wonderful, most perfect baby girl on the planet.

Or I was for three weeks.

Pualani Ano. That had been my daughter’s name. The name she should have had until I gave her to the man—or woman—who would love, cherish, and protect her for the rest of her life.

She’d been born a preemie. We never even got to take her home.

At thirty-three weeks, she needed to remain in the hospital’s NICU until her lungs and immune system finished developing.

They told us to anticipate another month at the hospital, but by three weeks old, she still wasn’t gaining weight.

The doctors wanted to run additional tests.

I still remember the first time I noticed her blood type on her chart. I’d rarely left the hospital at that time. Both Kalea and I were never far from our daughter’s side. Yet it took three weeks for me to notice.

I was no genius, but I had been a decent student. I’d even helped Kalea a time or two with her homework when she was still in high school. We both had the same teachers, so many of our projects and curriculums were similar—including a biology project in junior year about blood typing.

It was the only reason I even knew my blood type was B Positive. And yet there I stood, looking at my daughter’s chart that proclaimed her to be AB Negative.

I was so sure I was wrong. That project had been over a dozen years ago for me. I had to have been remembering my blood type wrong. I knew Kalea was AB Positive from helping her with that exact same project.

And when I confirmed I was in fact B Positive, then I concluded the doctors were wrong. I’d even accused them of being so and laid the blame of my daughter’s weak condition on their incompetence.

Only, they weren’t wrong…and neither was I.

The anger I had felt when I killed Kalea’s boyfriend was nothing compared to the rage that boiled through my soul when I stared down at the paternity test that stated the probability I was Pualani Ano’s biological father was zero percent.

Many things crossed my mind in that moment.

Many dark and dangerous things. I had never understood my parents’ hatred for each other.

How could they vow to love and cherish one another one day and then be at each other’s throats the next?

How could anyone, man or woman, get to the point where they were so angry, so spiteful, so hateful that they could murder the person they professed to care about most in the world?

I understood now.

My wahine, my wife, the woman who I looked after, protected, adored, and loved beyond measure, had slept with another man. A man who fathered the child who now held my last name.

Pele, goddess of fire and volcanos who was known for her temper, fury, and destruction, had never felt the rage that now burned inside me.

I could have killed Kalea. To this day, a part of me does not understand why I didn’t.

It wasn’t because she was Aloiki’s sister, nor was it because she was now a new mother with an innocent child that relied on her.

The thoughts were there, the rage was there, and while I was armed, I certainly didn’t need a weapon to complete the deed.

And yet, I didn’t.

I walked out. I left the paternity test next to Kalea, where she sat sleeping in the rocking chair while nursing her daughter, and I walked out.

I went home to the house I had bought a decade ago for her—for us—and I packed my things.

I took no furniture or anything petty. I didn’t destroy our wedding portraits or set fire to our marital bed.

Due to the nature of my business, I never brought work home with me.

I didn’t have an office or sensitive information that needed to be removed.

I literally packed my clothes and toiletries, and left.

I moved in with Aloiki. Maybe I did it because I literally had nowhere else to go and maybe I did it so he could be there to stop me if I ever did follow through with my dark desires to see Kalea pay.

My best friend and brother-in-law was now my best friend and ex-brother-in-law.

Aloiki asked me no questions, nor did he push for me to reconcile with his sister.

He abided by my rule to never mention either of their names to me again.

I felt no different after the divorce was finalized and my name was removed from the birth certificate. Every happy memory from the time I was nineteen was now tainted. There was no happiness left within me. I dove into work. I distracted myself with booze, women, and the sea.

I didn’t look for love again. There was no love in this world. As for fatherhood, that dream had been broken, smashed, and eviscerated.

I was Tangaloa Ano. Kānaka Maoli, arms dealer of both illegal and legal weapons, murderer, warrior…and now eternal bachelor.