1. Chapter 1
Myth
The docks were cold tonight. A sharp breeze shooting through my leather jacket and chilling me to the bone. I hated shipment days when half my crew were busy on another run. My Sergeant-at-Arms, Menace, made his way over to me, a grim expression on his face.
That was never good.
“What is it?”
“Office is empty, looks ransacked,” he said. “I’ve sent Flash in to inspect it. Destroyer thinks it looks like the Scorpions.”
Fuckin’ right.
Our only rival MC in these parts and they had to set up right near our newly renovated clubhouse. At least they kept to themselves and stayed off our businesses, but I didn’t like it. One step out of line and they’d know why they called me Myth.
Maybe it was time I offered them a friendly warning to steer clear of my territory.
Our enforcer, Destroyer, made his way over to me. The six-foot-five Russian wasn’t one to be toiled with, and if you ever came up against him, you regretted it instantly. He was a good enforcer, and I knew he kept the hounds at bay.
“Flash doesn’t see anything of use. Safe is protected, paperwork scattered. Poor excuse for a cover up.”
“Scorpions?”
“Reeks of them,” Menace added. “I’ll get Frenzy and Cowboy on their asses.”
I nodded before Destroyer pried the shipment container open with a crowbar. Our shipment was half gone, and what was left had been damaged to the point we could barely use.
Fuck.
Our supply was already running low. This was going to affect our cash flow for the next month, and if there was anything I didn’t like, it was being low on supply.
“Get Fang on the phone. We need a new route.”
Menace nodded, pulling his phone out and dialling, turning from us so he could speak to our VP. Destroyer looked over to where our prospect, Flash, was currently throwing paperwork out of the office to search for more information.
“Camo’s funeral is this week,” Destroyer said, his tone telling me he would rather be attending a prostate exam than discuss our fallen brother’s funeral. “This has to be related.”
I nodded, stiffly. “Agreed. He was onto something with them, I know it.”
When Camo, one of my oldest friends, told me he’d been tracking the new chapter of the Bloody Scorpions who had popped up, I’d been mad.
I’d never given him the go ahead which was why he hadn’t come to the club with it.
Only Fang, Menace and Destroyer knew, and only because I’d come to them about it a few days before Camo was killed.
“He got too close.”
“You’re the king of obvious, Destroyer. What of it?”
“This shipment, the shooting, the threats,” he said. “I hate to say it…”
I groaned, rubbing a hand down my face out of frustration. “We have a rat.”
Destroyer let out a long breath. “Surveillance?”
“Fuck,” I let out a long breath. “After the funeral. We’ve got enough on our plates with that. Camo’s ol’ lady, Grace… she’s coming in this afternoon.”
Destroyer nodded his head, but his eyes never left his feet. He felt responsible for Camo’s death, taking a dad away from his kids, and a husband away from Grace. Personally, I blamed him too. It was his run that Camo had taken while he’d been holed up with a club girl, hungover.
But if it hadn’t been Camo, it would have been Destroyer.
We would have lost a man, either way, and that’s what hits me hardest. For years, since I became the president of the Royal Bastards MC Sydney chapter, we’d never lost a man unless it was of natural causes or they were serving time for being dumb.
This one hurt.
Not only because he was a close friend, and had been for years, but because he knew of the reason I worked my ass off, the reason I kept my bed cold at night.
He was my last link to her.
“We good?” Menace asked, putting his phone back in his pocket. “Fang’s working on a new route as we speak and has the suppliers on the phone.”
“Let’s go,” I ordered, heading back to our bikes parked next to the van that Flash would be driving back. Empty.
Fuck this shit.
You didn’t steal from the Royal Bastards. Everyone knew that. If it was the Bloody Scorpions on our turf, fucking with our supply, then we’d be having a BBQ of corpses by month end.
That was a damn promise.
I peeled out of the parking lot of the shipyard, Menace and Destroyer on my flanks, and Flash in the van behind. Even though I was pissed, I was still grieving for my fallen friend…and in the back of my mind, wondering if she would come home for the funeral.
It had been fifteen years since she walked out on us. Fifteen long years I’d obsessed over her, wondering if she would ever come back.
She was a distraction.
One a MC prez didn’t need, but damn did I want her back in my bed, on my lap, on her knees for me.
The only woman to ever own my heart.
Rox.