Chapter 13 #2
The area is mostly industrial, with rows of self-storage across the street, a heavy-equipment dealer down the road, and some sort of warehouse where big trucks come in and out several times a day.
Just beyond the chain-link fence, the lower-income housing starts.
In any other town, that would make the dark street I’m walking on a little sketchy.
Maybe I’d have my keys jammed between my fingers or my hand on the knife I’ve got strapped to my thigh.
But with the Sinners here, this is one of the safest neighbourhoods in South Bay.
No one wants to risk jumping a man, only to find out he’s got a snake-wrapped skull tattooed on his skin, or putting their hands on a woman who might belong to the club.
Cross the wrong person in this neighbourhood, and you die. Simple as that.
Halfway to the clubhouse, my phone vibrates.
Bex:
Yo bitch, where you at? These Sinner Sluts are outnumbering us.
I snort. Bex is the epitome of a Sinner woman. Mean, hell of a drinker, and hostile as fuck to outsiders. She and the Danforth sisters, along with a few other women Bex has deemed worthy, are the Sinner Sisters. Ride or dies. They share the kind of connection I’ve never actually experienced.
Then there’s the Sinner Sluts. The biker bunnies that, according to Bex, are all gunning to be someone’s old lady and don’t care who they have to tread all over to make it happen.
That’s how it was out west in the heart of Raiders territory too.
The men were bonded. A brotherhood. But the women?
Not a chance. Every girl for herself. It’s how I’ve lived my life. No attachments, no loyalties.
Having women in my life I can actually talk to is strange. A good kind of strange. One that maybe I’m wishing I could hang on to. Even if it’s only for a little bit.
Bex:
Don’t tell me you’re in the back of another cruiser.
Me:
How the fuck does everyone know about that?
Bex:
Small town, babe. No secret is safe.
My stomach drops. No secret is safe. That’s… comforting.
A sudden clanging noise startles me. With a sharp breath in, I scan the sea of parked cars and scrap metal crowding the back of the lot, searching every dark corner, looking for the culprit. A chill crawls up my spine and my limbs tingle, telling my body to get ready to run, that there’s a threat.
Keegan wouldn’t dare come to the clubhouse.
He may want to scare me, torment me, drag this out until I’m running, but there’s no way in hell he’d risk showing up here.
An enemy sneaking into Sinner territory is one thing, but walking through their front door?
He might as well hand them a knife and point to where he wants it.
The festival last night was already a huge risk.
He might not have been wearing his patch, but he’s easily recognizable.
A Sinner tags him, and it’s game over. They’d fucking kill him.
Slowly. In the same way he wants to kill me.
My punishment for killing his VP. His brother.
I quicken my pace, heading for the clubhouse. I’ve almost reached the group of bikers gathered outside the front door when my phone vibrates in my hand, startling me so fiercely that I nearly jump out of my skin.
Heart racing, I clutch it to my chest. But when I register the name flashing on the screen, I stop dead in my tracks. I almost don’t answer, but knowing that’ll only make shit worse, I suck in a deep breath, swipe up, and press the phone to my ear.
“Hey, Jimmy.”
“You got something to tell me, kid?” he asks.
He’s pissed. Sometimes Jimmy talks to me like he’s my father. Other times, like now, he talks to me like he’s still in charge of the biggest, baddest outlaw motorcycle club in the country.
“I’m not sure,” I say steadily. “Is there something specific you wanted to know?”
“Don’t be cute,” he snaps. “Why is some lawyer woman asking me to sign a request for release from an impound lot in South Bay? For a bike they can’t possibly have. Since it’s with you. Three provinces over.”
My stomach twists painfully. Shit. I should have been ready for this. “Um. Well?—”
“I had one damn rule.”
That phrase dampens my fear enough to make me roll my eyes. “Actually, you have a lot of rules.”
“Cut the attitude. I told you there’s no going back there. We agreed.”
With a sigh, I wander away from the crowd, past a long row of gleaming bikes and around the side of the clubhouse. “I didn’t agree to anything. You decided. It’s not fair?—”
“Life isn’t fair,” he grunts. “When I lay out an order, I expect you to follow it. I want you out of South Bay the second that bike is released.”
“Jimmy—”
“After everything that happened to your mother? You being back there is straight disrespect.”
“Can you just let me explain? I?—”
“I want you home, Grace. I should have shut this traveling bullshit down years ago. When you get that bike, the only place I want you riding it is to my front door.”
“Dad!”
Finally, he falls silent.
I don’t call him that. Dad . Not often, at least. Most of my life, I knew Jimmy was my real father.
But only when I was fourteen, when he took my mom as his old lady, did he claim me as his kid.
We’ve worked through my resentment around that, but I still never got into the habit of calling him what I know he wants me to.
Sometimes it slips out, and when it does, Jimmy… softens.
With another deep sigh, I say, “I’m not going back there. I don’t know where home is, but it’s definitely not that place.”
He clears his throat. “Home is where your family is, kid.”
“Half my family is here. You and Mom decided what was best when I was a teenager, I get that. But I’m not a kid anymore. You have to let me make my own decisions.”
The line falls silent. He’s thinking. Axe does the same thing. If I were in front of Jimmy right now rather than two-thousand kilometres away, he’d be staring, subjecting me to that harsh Donovan glare as he worked out whatever’s going on in his head.
“There’s nothing for me out there,” I say. “I won’t get into any trouble, all right? I promise.”
The lie comes easy. Jimmy wouldn’t understand.
His decision to cut ties with the only family I’d ever known sentenced me to years of loneliness, of feeling…
out of place. Home is where family is, but my family was in the one place I wasn’t allowed to go.
So I had to make a new family. And unfortunately, I chose the wrong one.
There’s no scenario where Jimmy forgives that.
No scenario I don’t come out of this dead and labelled a traitor.
Another long pause, and then he says, “My son giving you trouble?”
I close my eyes and exhale. “What do you think?”
“He’ll warm up, Gracie.”
With a smile, I say, “You let ’em rattle you, you let ’em win.”
He chuckles. “Attagirl. Just don’t work too hard to piss him off, all right? You know how he is.”
I snort. “You mean like his father?”
“Exactly,” he says, humour lining his voice.
“So… you’ll sign it? The form.”
“Yeah, yeah, kid. I’ll sign it. But you keep that nose of yours clean. Straight and narrow. So much as a speeding ticket, I’ll ride out there myself to pick you up. Got it?”
“Yes, Jesus. I’m hanging up now. Okay?”
Another deep laugh. “Yeah, all right. Talk soon.”
Once the line goes dead, I take a breath and scan the dark road lining the Donovan lot, barely illuminated by the dim, flickering streetlights some twenty metres away.
That’s when I see it. See him. A silhouette of a very large man.
I can’t see his face, but I know in my bones that it’s the man hunting me.
The man who, when he gets his hands on me, will unleash the full wrath of the Road Raiders.
My blood runs cold as a deep panic creeps into my chest. It’s hard to breathe, hard to think, as my pulse pounds against my eardrums.
A hand wraps around my arm, and, stomach plummeting, I jump back with a yelp.
When I realize who’s got me in their grip, I almost sob in relief.
“Jesus, Grace. Why the hell are you so jumpy?” Decker says as he releases me.
I search the road again, but it’s empty. No creepy shadows, no enemy waiting to pounce.
Decker looks behind him, following my sight line, and I swallow as I force my attention back to him and will my breath to steady.
“I’m not jumpy,” I snap. “What the hell are you doing slithering around in the dark in this part of town?”
“I had some business out here.”
I quirk a brow. “Yeah? What kind of business?”
“The kind that’s none of yours.” He folds his arms across his chest. “And speaking of business. Let’s talk Sinners.”
It’s ballsy as hell, grilling me like this when there’s a literal pack of bikers just around the corner.
I give him a tight smile. “I’m not telling you shit.”
“You don’t do what I say, and I’ll?—”
“You’ll what? Because if you tell, I tell.
I go to prison, guaranteed you’ll be right behind me.
Whatever business you got out here is definitely not the legal kind.
You’re deep in with my brothers, and I’d bet Sergeant Allen would be more than happy to nail your ass to the wall for being as dirty as you are. ”
Jaw ticking, he closes the distance between us.
But I’m not up for more intimidation tonight. Grasping the collar of his leather jacket, I slam him hard against the brick wall.
Decker merely smiles, his hands finding my waist as he pulls me against him. “You’re hot when you’re mad, you know that?”
Handcuffed. Hand at my throat. Ungodly fingers working their way between my legs.
I swallow. It takes everything in me not to circle his waist, slip my hands under his jacket, soak in all that warm skin my fingers are itching to touch.
Need isn’t the word for it.
It’s what he said when he had me against his car, yanking up my skirt, ready to take what, in that moment, I was so ready to give him.
It’s only the thoughts of what happened after that keep my hands from wandering. Thoughts of the man he turned into the moment he needed to save face, to show his sergeant how big and bad he could really be.
Scowling, I slap his hands away. “Stop looking at me like you want to see me naked. Like I said last night, your hands will be coming nowhere near me. Not ever.”
With a broad smile, he holds his hands up in surrender. “All right, Gracie. I won’t touch you again. Not until you’re begging for it.”
I snort. “Not gonna happen.”
Carefully, he pushes me back and sidesteps me. “We’ll see, won’t we?”
He throws me a little wink to accompany that stupid charming smile of his.
Then he gives me his back and saunters to the black sports bike at the end of the lot.
He pulls on a full-faced helmet, mounts the machine, and kicks it to life.
As he rips by me, the rumble of the engine shakes the ground below my feet.
My heart doesn’t stop thundering until he’s well out of sight and the growl of his bike has long been silenced.