Raff (Shady Valley Henchmen #10)

Chapter One

Raff

Look.

I didn’t mean to start the bar brawl.

Sometimes, shit just happens.

Did shit happen a lot around me? Yeah. Sure. Especially since I started doing the lion’s share of the trips through the South to procure weapons for the club by myself. I liked being on the road. The others weren’t as big a fan.

I’d been laid up for a long time with a knife wound to my thigh. I had some extra steam to blow off.

Besides, could I even be blamed for this one?

The woman climbed up on the bar herself.

She spread the line of salt between her tits, set the tequila shot glass on her bellybutton, and the lime between her teeth.

Was I really supposed to not lick, sip, and bite?

How was I supposed to know her boyfriend would walk in and get all butt hurt about it? It wasn’t like she was branded with his name.

Fine.

She was.

But it was a tramp stamp.

How was I supposed to see it until she climbed off the bar?

By then, I had a fist the size of a fucking catcher’s mitt in my face.

And, hey, it’s hard to apologize when you have a mouth full of your own blood, y’know?

The problem was, the dude came with a whole group of his friends. And his friends got into it with my friends. Bones were breaking. Blood was flying. The distant sound of sirens was drawing closer.

“We gotta go. We gotta go,” York said, snagging my wrist and dragging me up off the floor and pulling me toward the door.

Velle and Dixon followed us out the door, the Florida heat slapping us in the face as soon as we stepped outside, the humidity making sweat bead up on my brows and scalp as we ran toward the bikes parked in the lot.

Mine was borrowed since I came to Florida with an old beater sedan that was outfitted to hide the guns I purchased from various shows or private sellers.

Our engines roared to life, and we pulled out of the lot and down the street just as the cops made their way into the bar parking lot, sirens blaring, red and blue lights flashing.

My face was throbbing in time with my heartbeat as we drove through the swampy backroads on our way back toward the clubhouse in Golden Glades.

I swallowed back more of my blood and ran my tongue across the gash on the inside of my lip where the punch made my teeth bite into the sensitive flesh.

“The fuck happened?” Huck, the president of the club, asked as we pulled into the driveway and parked.

“Bar fight,” York admitted.

Huck’s gaze slid right to me. “What’d you do?”

“How’d you know it was me?” I asked, smiling with blood in my teeth.

“Because Coast and Remy are retired from the bar life,” Huck said.

“You gonna tell on me to Daddy Slash?” I asked, meaning my club chapter president.

“Pretty sure he can see it for himself when you make your ass back to California,” Huck said, shaking his head at me. “I was looking for you,” he added.

“What for?”

“I got a call from Zayn. He wanted me to put in an order.”

Zayn was an international arms dealer connected to the Golden Glades club. But because his clients wanted more weapons than Huck and his club could feasibly supply on their own, I picked up extra guns on my travels to sell to Huck, who unloaded them to Zayn.

“I just gave you half of what I had.” Slash would not be happy if I came back to Shady Valley with an empty car. Which either meant I dealt with his anger… or I extended my trip and picked up more guns on my way back.

“No, this is for a specialty gun. Specially built, if you know what I mean.”

I knew what he meant.

One of my club brothers, Sway, was with a woman who was a weapons designer. But she made all the shit herself. Which meant it wasn’t cheap.

“That’s gonna cost,” I warned.

“Trust me, this client can pay.”

“Alright. I’ll talk to Murphy as soon as I get back to Shady Valley. Put her in touch with you, and you can figure it out from there.”

“Good. Appreciate it. Now go ice that eye before it swells so much that you can’t drive your troublemaking ass out of here tomorrow.”

It might not have sounded like it, but Huck loved my trouble-making ass. He was a president who found reckless behavior more amusing than frustrating. It probably reminded him of his early life before he settled down and started a family.

I made my way inside the clubhouse, snatching a frozen bag of peas out of the air as it was thrown at me.

“How’s everyone’s damage?” I asked, looking around at York, Velle, and Dixon. Velle had a split lip and bruised jaw. Dixon’s shirt was ripped and bloody from his nose taking a hit. But York, that mammoth, lumberjack fuck, seemed mostly uninjured, save for the splits on his knuckles.

“Haven’t had that much fun in a while,” Dixon admitted, shooting me a smirk.

“What time are you heading out?” Velle asked. “You have time to party? We could have some girls over.”

“Far be it from me to turn down your club girls, but my motel room is a mess. I gotta get it cleaned up before I head out in the morning. Should probably head out.”

“When you planning to head down here again?” York asked.

“You know me. I never stay planted anywhere too long. Probably just a couple of weeks. Maybe two months, max, depending on what my club has going on. I’ll text you when I’m heading back this way,” I said, tossing the peas at Velle. “Been nice fighting alongside you.”

With that, I turned and made my way out back, climbing in my ancient little car that had been a home away from home of sorts for a long time.

I’d never admit it aloud to any of the guys, but recently, I’d been feeling something akin to frustration when I climbed into the car.

Maybe it was because most of my trips were solo ones now. No brother in the front seat with me. No friends to talk to or hang out with. Just me, the car, and empty hotel or motel rooms. And this growing feeling like I was missing out on something.

By the time I made it back to my clubhouse, I’d typically been gone for weeks. It seemed like new relationships had formed, babies had grown, the town had shifted. And I’d missed it all.

Maybe getting stabbed in the leg and grounding me for a lot longer than I planned had softened me or something.

All I knew was there was this ache in my chest that seemed to grow stronger each day.

And because it was there—gnawing, unavoidable—I did what I could to drown it out.

Life on the road was full of bars, clubs, women, the occasional bar fight or two, and every single activity I could squeeze into a day to distract me from what I was feeling.

That was why I was in a hurry to get my shit packed up before I crashed, so I could leave as early as possible in the morning. Everything would start feeling better as I made progress toward home.

It was on my second trip out to the dumpster to trash all the take-away containers that had been piling up that I saw something out of the corner of my eye that had my heart stuttering.

Curious, I turned, looking across the street toward another motel on this little strip of highway frequented by truckers.

I’d opted for the motel I was in only because I’d stayed in the other one once, and the water pressure was more of a trickle, and life was too short for that shit.

Both motels were similar: long, low, with cracked pavement in the lot that weeds were bursting through, filthy windows that hardly let any light in, and ancient signs.

The one across the street was half-hanging off its post, just waiting to screw someone’s day up when they parked under it when it decided to finally release.

It wasn’t the hotel itself that caught my eye. Or the sign. The trucks parked in the back. The sex worker on her knees beside one of those trucks or the ogre of a man she was servicing.

Nope.

It was the woman in white making a mad dash from the front office.

A very familiar woman.

I knew Lula when I saw her.

I’d been admiring the woman for years.

There was no mistaking her for anyone else. All those perfect, soft curves. That feminine face with high cheekbones, a soft jaw, that stunning, rich sepia skin.

The only thing about her that was different was the way her hair was split down the center and slicked back. I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen her with her hair fully up before.

Or wearing something so dressed down. In this case, a matching short and tank set in a crisp winter white.

It was Lula.

But also… it couldn’t be Lula.

Because Lula belonged in Shady Valley. In her fancy-ass condo. With her BMW.

Not at some shady-ass motel in Florida making a quick dash toward a cheap-ass little red sedan.

I was frozen in place, watching her slide into the driver’s seat, slamming the door, locking it, then tossing her luggage into the backseat before turning the vent toward her face and letting it blow on her for a minute before throwing the car into reverse and pulling out of her spot.

I was doubting my eyes, wondering if maybe I was seeing what I wanted to see. But then she pulled out of the lot, driving right past me.

“The fuck?” I mumbled to myself.

Because it was absolutely Lula.

And there was a strange, haunted look in her eye as she drove.

She never looked at me, gave no sign that she’d noticed me like I’d noticed her.

Hm.

I tossed the trash and made my way back to my room, wondering what kind of business Lula could have in this area. From what I understood, any family she had was in California. And this was not the kind of place anyone went for vacation.

Could she be on the job? Doing something for the Murphy brothers?

Technically, she was their accountant. But maybe she needed to make some kind of investment in person?

But if that was the case, there was no way she was staying in some fleabag motel.

The Murphy brothers would put her up in luxury.

She was, after all, their most valuable asset.

Keeping her happy meant they got to keep doing their illegal shit without getting the IRS breathing down their necks about where all the extra money was coming from.

Lula wasn’t just an accountant.

She was a mafia accountant.

And she was the queen of cooking the books.

I considered calling my brother or even texting one of the Murphy brothers. But something told me not to, to hold off until I got back to Shady Valley to ask about her at all.

Hell, maybe I was just so homesick that I was conjuring her up.

But as I dropped down onto the bed and stared at the ceiling, I knew that wasn’t the case.

I knew who I’d seen.

I’d been admiring Lula for longer than I cared to admit. You could drop her face into one of those Where’s Waldo? Books, and I would find her in a heartbeat.

The question wasn’t if I could trust my eyes.

It was why a woman like Lula was in a place like this.

I needed to get my ass back to Shady Valley to find out.