Shadow: A Motorcycle Club Romance (War Reapers MC) Read online

  This is a work of fiction. Any names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons--living or dead--is entirely coincidental.

  Shadow: A Motorcycle Club Romance (War Reapers MC) copyright 2017 by Sophia Gray. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission.

  ***

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  Contents

  Shadow: A Motorcycle Club Romance (War Reapers MC)

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Epilogue

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  Torque: A Motorcycle Club Romance (Iron Angels MC) (Unbreakable Bad Boys Book 2)

  Wrench: A Motorcycle Club Romance (Inked Hunters MC) (Unbreakable Bad Boys Book 1)

  Torn by the Devil: A Motorcycle Club Romance (Broken Wings MC) (Satan's Outlaw Sins Book 3)

  Ride with the Devil: A Motorcycle Club Romance (Satan’s Riders MC) (Satan’s Outlaw Sins Book 2)

  Ruined by the Devil: A Motorcycle Club Romance (Storm’s Angels MC) (Satan’s Outlaw Sins Book 1)

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  Shadow: A Motorcycle Club Romance (War Reapers MC)

  By Sophia Gray

  I took her in the shadows, so no one could hear her scream.

  NIC

  My days are filled with violence, my nights with blood.

  The most dangerous crime lord in the city wants my MC slaughtered.

  It’s why I ride alone.

  Any woman in my life has to leave the next morning – for her own safety.

  But when Lauren walks into my biker bar on Christmas, looking sweet and innocent and seductive?

  I can’t resist.

  I take her home. I make her scream my name until her throat is hoarse. I give her a night to remember.

  But then she disappears.

  Months later, I’m in the battle of a lifetime, trying to keep my MC alive.

  But guess who I end up saving one night?

  Lauren.

  And to make things worse?

  She’s carrying my child.

  Now she—and the baby she carries—are in mortal danger.

  And it might cost me everything to keep them both safe.

  LAUREN

  When my boyfriend dumps me, I refuse to spend Christmas alone.

  I go to the place I’ve always been too scared to enter: the city’s biker bar.

  There, I see the most gorgeous man. With muscles rippling and tattoos all over his body, he puts me under his spell.

  When Nic says he’s taking me to his bed? I don’t resist.

  He gives me the greatest pleasure I’ve ever known. All through the night, he claims me.

  But that one night has consequences.

  Because now I’m pregnant with Nic’s baby.

  I don’t know how to tell him. How can a man like him be a father?

  But when he rescues me, keeps me safe, I want to believe we can be a family.

  Can I tell him I love him—before it’s too late?

  Chapter One

  Nic

  I woke up with a headache that felt like someone was tapping rusty nails into my skull. My guts were being slowly wound around a fist and squeezed. I heard myself groan like a wounded animal as I rolled over onto my back, knowing with grim certainty that as soon as I opened my eyes, the morning sun would jump through my window and dig its thumbs deep into my eye sockets.

  And if it didn't, well, probably one of Giovanni’s guys would.

  Sure enough, when I opened my eyes, the sunlight delivered on its threat and clawed at my face savagely. I forced my eyelids to stay open despite the pain and waited for the yellow haze to slowly fade away, bringing the rest of my apartment into focus one detail at a time, like an old Polaroid being shaken. Thankfully, the sunlight appeared to be my only attacker that morning. I wasn't sure how long that kind of luck would hold given my situation, but I'd take it while I could get it.

  I stumbled to my feet and staggered across the barely-furnished apartment, leaving a trail in the thick layer of dust on the floor. I wasn't much of a housekeeper. I didn't spend much time in this place. Why would I, when I spent at least two-thirds of my life on the road and most of the remainder at the Nest? It was just a spartan first-floor studio in a mostly-abandoned building in Rogers Park—an anonymous place to crash when I needed to be off the radar for a bit.

  I didn't even pay rent for the apartment. I'd managed to rig some extension cords and power strips connecting to an empty apartment across the hall where the electricity was still running. That gave me enough juice to run a heater to warm the place and a small TV to fall asleep to. My books were in one battered cardboard box, and my clothes were in another. My beloved bike was stashed at the Nest down the block, fiercely protected by my brothers in arms, the War Reapers.

  What more could a man need?

  Something to make this goddamn hangover go away, that's what.

  I swayed over the toilet as I pissed through the thin layer of ice that had settled over the water in the bowl, the tiles freezing under my bare feet. The heater was decent at warming the corner of the living room where I slept, but in the bathroom, I could see my own breath hovering in front of me in silvery clouds, here one moment, gone the next.

  God bless Chicago in the wintertime. There’s nothing on earth like it, and thank Christ for that.

  Then again, I figured I should have probably just been grateful that I still had breath to see, the way things had been going.

  How the hell did it come to this? I asked myself, grimacing at the answer. This whole scenario was what Bard, the president of the Reapers, called “a comedy of errors.” Growler, his VP—who wasn't nearly as big a fan of books in general, or Shakespeare in particular—preferred to call it “a thoroughly righteous fuck-up of biblical proportions.”

  The Reapers had a long-standing business arrangement with Giovanni's crew. We'd run a few pounds of weed and sometimes, a few dozen tabs of MD
MA from Indiana to Chicago so that Giovanni and his guys could make a little money off the city's college kids and burn-outs. Compared to the other stuff Giovanni was involved with (labor unions, money laundering, sports betting, and political fixing, just to name a few of the highlights), what we brought him was a drop in the bucket.

  Mostly, the arrangement existed to keep things peaceful and friendly between our club and the Mafia. Their connections with cops, judges, and other Midwestern crime families allowed us to move and operate with far greater freedom than we had on our own. One of our guys gets busted for speeding in Indianapolis or for bashing some dude's teeth in with a vodka bottle during a bar fight in West Lafayette? Call Giovanni, you'll be out of the joint by dinnertime. Some shit gets out of control, and we need a body to disappear without a trace? Call Giovanni, and wait for a couple of guys in overalls to come by in a truck, toss it into a rug or an industrial garbage bag, and boom—“What body, officer? We didn't see nothing. We’re just a harmless motorcycle club that does charity runs and Toys for Tots, so go bother someone else.”

  It was a good arrangement. And then fucking Vole had to come into the Nest a few nights ago and flush the whole damn thing right down the crapper.

  # # #

  Benvolio Bertolucci was one of Giovanni's many cousins, which was probably the only reason a pathetic nimrod like him could ever have become a made guy, let alone a major capo in the Bonaccorso family. They called him Vole for short, and he certainly looked the part. With his beady black eyes, massive nose, and protruding front teeth, he looked like some revolting species of rodent. Most of Bonaccorso’s soldiers were known for dressing sharply in their expensive suits and designer golf shirts. Even their track suits were kept spotless out of respect for Big G's obsession with neatness and presentation.

  Vole, on the other hand, seemed to pride himself on being the exception that proved the rule. His hair was always unwashed, his jaw and neck were always blue with stubble, he always had food stains drying and crusting on his off-the-discount-rack suits, and his shirts were always untucked and marred with careless cigarette burns. In short, he pretty much looked like something you'd find up your nose. He even seemed to take pride in this, since it represented just how much he could get away with, being related to the boss.

  But despite all of this—and the fact that his breath usually smelled like he'd just munched on a urinal cake, with a handful of stale cigarette butts on the side—the worst part about Vole was that he thought he was a comedian. His “jokes” usually fell into two categories: The ones we’d already heard a zillion times, and the ones we could do without hearing altogether. He always traveled with two other Bonaccorso thugs in tow who seemed to be paid exclusively to laugh at his bad jokes and smooch his ass for him whenever he needed it.

  Vole's “favorite joke” was to walk up behind guys, shove his knuckle against their upper backs like the barrel of a gun, lean in close, and whisper—with that heinous breath—“This ain't no stick-up, Jack. I'm just really tall, and really excited!”

  I’d heard that one in first grade and didn't laugh at it then, either. But oh how the two guys with Vole would pretend to fall all over themselves with their fake cackling and knee-slapping, waiting until Vole's own laughter died down so they'd know when it was safe for them to stop.

  Since Giovanni was a high-profile guy and always under the fed’s microscope, he usually let Vole do all of his business for him. This meant that every time we needed to hand off weed and pills in exchange for the money, Vole would come and visit the Nest with his two flunkies. So we'd all have to make nice for a few hours and give him free drinks, no matter how much he acted like an obnoxious prick.

  A few nights ago, Vole and his guys came in to make the usual exchange, and it was more of the same. Except that we were having a party for Kong, a member of the Reapers who'd just served a three-year stretch in Joliet for aggravated assault. Since Vole had never met Kong before, he decided it was a perfect opportunity to try out his favorite joke on a new audience.

  If I'd known what Vole was planning to do, I'd have tried to talk him out of it, or I could have at least talked to Kong beforehand and told him what was going to happen, asked him to play along. But I didn't know until he was all the way across the room behind Kong and it was too late to reach him.

  Vole stepped up behind a man who had just spent the past three years looking over his shoulder in prison. A man who was twice his size and probably three times his weight, with a long and unrepentant history of violence. He shoved his knuckle into the small of Kong's back.

  Before Vole could lean in to form the words “This ain't...,” Kong had already started moving with an easy, lightning-fast grace that no one would ever expect from such a giant ape of a man. He pivoted, grabbed a beer stein from the bar next to him, and broke it against the right side of Vole's face, all in a single fluid motion.

  A silence descended on the bar immediately. Vole fell to the floor, shards of glass protruding from his bloody cheek. There wasn't any pain in his eyes, though, or even any fear—just a look of utter shock and disbelief and an inability to process the information being sent to his brain, as though the ceiling had magically parted and a UFO had touched down in the middle of the bar. He simply could not imagine a world in which someone could reach out and harm him, and why not? In his world, that would be unheard of. In his world, anyone who dared to lay a hand on a made man in the Bonaccorso family would immediately be sponged from the face of the earth like a blot of red sauce dropped on a kitchen counter.

  I looked into Kong's eyes and instantly recognized three things: He understood what he had done, he wished he could take it back but knew damn fucking well that he couldn't, and he was ready for whatever came next.

  That last one frightened me because, to be honest, I wasn't sure I was ready.

  But I knew I'd find out in the next two seconds.

  The silence hung in the air for another long moment until Vole's eyes darted from Kong's face to the blood collecting on the front of his own shirt. He opened his trembling mouth and a high-pitched squeal came out, wavering, like the crying of an infant. Spit-bubbles formed on his lips, and somewhere amid the breathy screams and babbling, I could make out the words “Kill 'em all.”

  Apparently, so could Vole's bodyguards because they both reached for their shoulder holsters in unison. Their faces were matching masks of confusion. They were clearly operating on instinct and had been conditioned to do anything Vole told them and to draw their guns the moment a threat presented itself. But they both also seemed mildly puzzled by their own actions, drawing their guns in a bar full of bikers who clearly outnumbered them ten to one.

  Before my brain could even register what was happening, my own .38 snub-nose revolver was in my hand, and I was crouched behind an overturned table, firing hollow point rounds at the gangsters across the room.

  In real life, firefights don't resemble their movie-screen counterparts at all. With so many bullets flying and ricocheting, with thunderous gunshots so loud that each one seems to shatter my eardrums and make my jaw ache, with the shards and splinters of debris clouding the air, and the reek of blood and cordite in my nostrils—well, I’m probably going to miss most of the shots I take since I don't have the proper time or focus to aim without getting my own damn head blown off.

  But as it happened, I got lucky that night. If you can call it lucky when you make one of the biggest mistakes of your life. I saw one of Vole's guys slide the clip out of his Glock. Before he could grab another and click it into place, I rolled from my table to the safety of the one next to me, firing three bullets in his direction.

  The first round went high and wide, zinging off the shelf above the bar.

  The second round buried itself in his left shoulder with a meaty thwap.

  The third round hit him directly below his windpipe. Both the Glock and clip tumbled to the floor as he clutched his throat, emitted a gurgling whine, and fell face-first on the floor with blood pou
ring from his mouth.

  Vole's other bodyguard was distracted by this for a moment. He let out a sharp cry of grief, and I wondered for a moment whether they'd been related. His brief flicker of hesitation was all the opportunity Growler needed to raise his sawed-off shotgun, rack it, and blast a hole through the second bodyguard's midsection. The impact threw the man against the wall, and he slid down, his gun hanging limply from his bloody fingers, his mouth opening and closing silently like a fish out of water before he slumped over dead.

  For the second time that night, a deathly stillness invaded the bar. It was broken only by the soft tinkle of shell casings rolling across the floor and the steady drips of blood from the dead men. My skull felt like it was vibrating.

  Kong was dead. A bullet had gone through his eye, and the entire back of his head had turned into a soft, sickeningly-spongy exit wound. He'd served three years, survived a riot, a vicious beating from the guards, and four different attempts on his life just to die on a filthy floor on his first night of freedom.

  Vole was gone. No doubt the rat had fled during the gunfight, leaving his own men behind without hesitation. We followed a trail of blood out the back door, and it vanished at the curb where his car had been parked. He was long gone, no doubt already blubbering and tattling to his fat cousin.