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

  We were left with three bodies to get rid of—without Giovanni's help, this time—and a crushing sense of how catastrophically fucked we were now that the Bonaccorso family had become our enemies.

  # # #

  Now, as I walked back into my living room and started to pull my jeans up over my chilly legs, my eyes fell on the empty handle of cheap vodka on the floor. It was no wonder a hangover gripped my head like a vise. I'd been drinking a lot more than I should have over the past couple of days, partly to escape the shitstorm that I knew was ahead of us all, but mostly to purge the gruesome memories of the rest of that night—sawing through muscle and bone while trying not to throw up, breaking into a hardware store after hours to steal chemicals and plastic tubs, and holding a bandana against my nose and mouth to keep the acid stench of dissolving limbs out of my nostrils.

  Suddenly, I heard a soft creak in the hallway outside my door. The pain darted out of my head immediately, replaced with the keen awareness of an animal that knows it's being hunted.

  No Reaper would ever come to this building without calling me first.

  And no one else would have any reason to come here at all.

  Well, at least my hangover's gone. You know what they say—careful what you wish for.

  I grabbed my .38 and gently slid the window open, climbing out into the cold December air. Careful not to make a sound, I walked around to the building's entrance and crept into the main hallway, avoiding the floorboards that were loose or noisy.

  Sure enough, Vole was standing outside the door of my apartment with a .45 in his hand, clearly working up the nerve to bust in and take me by surprise. The side of his face was swollen and covered in small stick-on bandages where the shards of glass had cut him. His skin was mottled and his bruise was already fading to sickly shades of yellow and brown.

  I'd have laughed out loud, if I hadn't felt so insulted.

  I planted the barrel of my gun directly in the middle of his back. His entire body jerked with a spasm of surprise. His finger tightened on the trigger, and for a moment, I thought he'd accidentally shoot it off and plant a bullet in the cheap drywall.

  Instead, he forced a titter of laughter, high-pitched and girlish. “Lemme’ guess. That ain't no gun. It’s Dikembe Mutombo!”

  I cocked the gun, relishing the thick, oiled sound of the hammer snapping back. “Wrong on both counts, rodent. Now drop it, or the next thing you'll feel is the sun shining on your fucking lungs.”

  His gun dropped from his fingers and I kicked it, sending it spinning into the corner of the hall. “Good,” I growled. “Now, let's take a little walk.”

  “I, uh, already got my exercise this mornin', thanks!” he replied with another inane, infuriating giggle. “You know me...active guy, treadmill, all that...”

  I cooed dangerously into his ear. “Remember, the more exercise you get, the better you'll look. Or let me put it another way—if you don't get your ass in gear right now, you're gonna start lookin' real ugly real fast. Now walk, asshole.”

  I frog-marched him out to the alley behind the building, trying to ignore the nauseating smell of his dime-store cologne and foul body odor. I wasn't sure what I'd do. Hell, I wasn't sure where I'd go. If Giovanni knew where I lived and his play was to keep sending guys after me, I'd be stupid to stay put.

  Which meant I'd have to make sure he didn't keep sending guys.

  Which meant not killing Vole, even though the idea of exterminating the wretched bastard once and for all was damn near intoxicating. If he never came back from this errand, it was a sure bet that Giovanni would turn a disastrous misunderstanding into an all-out war. A war the Reapers probably couldn't win, if it came down to it.

  I dragged him to a large patch of black ice in the gutter. “Get on your knees.”

  Another titter from Vole. The pitch climbed higher still, quavering—betraying his terror. He thought I was going to execute him. Good. “Hey, now, how 'bout buyin' a lady a drink first...?”

  I spun him around and bashed the injured side of his face with the butt of my gun, forcing a yowl of pain from him. “Get it straight, Vole. Just because you look funny and you smell funny doesn't mean you are funny. Now get down on your goddamn knees, because the next time you try your stupid jokes on me, I'm gonna pull this trigger and send you to meet your fuckin’ maker. Do not doubt me.”

  Vole lowered himself to his knees, and I grabbed a handful of his hair, bringing his face within inches of the ice. I could see his reflection—his eyes wide and bulging, his teeth chattering from the fear and the cold, a bizarre smile still tugging at the corners of his lips.

  “Now,” I grunted, “I've got questions. You give me the answers I need, and you can go back to stroking yourself outside of playgrounds, or whatever the hell you do on your days off.”

  “Hey, you want answers? Go try Google!” he spat back.

  I snapped his head back briskly and slammed his face down against the frozen surface of the puddle. The ice cracked open, revealing the filthy water beneath. Several drops of Vole's blood hit the water, followed by a broken tooth.

  “Fime! Fime! Jeebuzz cribe!” he whined. It took my ears a moment to adjust, as I realized he was trying to talk through a busted mouth.

  “That's better,” I said. “So, coming here and taking me on yourself...was that your brilliant plan, or did Giovanni send you?”

  He gulped, mumbling through the blood on his swelling lips. “Gee-bani. He sen' me to fin' you, see where you were, whab you were doin. Dab's all, I wabn' gon' kill you or nothib. Jus' scare you! Lebbe go!”

  “Yeah, you're a real scary guy, Vole. 'Specially the way you pissed your pants and ran while we were ventilating your guys. And let me guess. When you went running back to Big G a couple nights ago minus your little fan club, you made out like it was all our fault, right? One minute everything's cool and rosy, and the next, the big bad bikers huffed and puffed and fucked you all up for no reason?”

  Vole snarfed and snuffled, more blood bubbling out of his nose. “I seb you were prob'ly on beth!”

  Meth, I thought. Of course he'd say that. What an asshole.

  He seemed to sense my thoughts, and sneered. “Wab was I gubba say to'm? Dab your friemb bibn' know how ta take a joke?”

  I lost my temper then, and shoved his face down into the water with the damp cigarette butts and fossilized dog shit where it belonged. He struggled, his screams bubbling up below me, and I contemplated how good it would feel to just keep going until he stopped thrashing. Instead, I gave it another moment and pulled his head back up again, listening to him choke on cold slime and puke it back up again.

  “I just gave you a long-overdue bath, Vole,” I said. “If you want to thank me, you can start by delivering a message to Giovanni. We don't want trouble, and we won't start trouble, but we're ready for trouble if that's what it comes to. We got a dead Reaper on our side, you've got two dead wiseguys on yours. Fine. We're even. We can all still walk away from this, and go back to business as usual.”

  “B-B-Big G ain't gonna go for that!” Vole spluttered. I tossed him aside, then delivered a brutal kick to his stomach, feeling one of his ribs snap under my foot. I heard him moan as he crumpled into a ball, shitting his pants.

  “Then you'd better convince him, Vole,” I answered through clenched teeth. “Or next time, your face will be connecting with pavement instead of ice. Think it over.”

  With that, I turned my back on him, walking back to my apartment. My bare feet were numb from standing on the cold sidewalk for so long, and I was grateful that the city hadn't gotten much snow this winter. Otherwise, I'd probably have lost a couple of toes to frostbite.

  Of course, I'll probably lose a lot more pieces—valuable ones—if this thing with Giovanni doesn't get straightened out.

  I tried to tell myself that everything would be fine. Vole would take the message back to his boss, and Giovanni would think it over and realize that an all-out war would be bad for business. We'd have a sit-do
wn—someplace neutral, where neither of us could ambush the other—and the whole thing would end with a drink and a back-slapping embrace and a “Sorry about your guys,” and we could all get back to earning and living our lives without jumping at our own shadows.

  Sure. I'll bet it'll play out exactly like that.

  Either that, or Giovanni will call in all of the crews affiliated with his own, burn us all to the ground, and piss on the ashes before finding some other MC to do his dirty work for him.

  I bent down to pick up Vole's gun from the corner of the hallway, tucking it into my jeans next to my own. I opened the door to my apartment and looked at the few possessions I'd accumulated. Deciding that almost none of them were irreplaceable, I grabbed a rumpled t-shirt, pulled on my socks, and zipped my beaten-up paratrooper boots. Finally I picked up the most important thing I owned—my sleeveless denim “cut,” a vest embroidered with the words “War Reapers MC” and “Chicago” surrounding a bullet-riddled skull wearing an army helmet.

  I knew I'd have to crash at the Nest, at least for the foreseeable future. There were plenty of rooms with cots in the back. I also knew that if the Reapers had even a slim chance of surviving this mess, we'd have to rely on strength in numbers.

  It was either that, or hop on our bikes and clear out of town for months or even longer. It wasn't as though this was not an option. We'd often hit the highways together several times a year for weeks at a time, visiting with other chapters of our MC, hijacking valuable cargo from well-traveled trucking routes, running guns or drugs. We slept out under the stars most nights and roasted hot dogs and marshmallows like we were on a camping trip.

  Those runs were my favorite thing about being a Reaper. They made me feel like Jesse James and a star-gazing, hopelessly romantic kid all at the same time. We could go anywhere we liked, take whatever we wanted, stay off the radar and away from the buttoned-down geeks and weak-ass cagers who could never understand real freedom the way we did.

  Yeah, it all sounded like a good plan for getting us out of Giovanni's crosshairs until things quieted down. Except that I knew no matter how adventurous it sounded, all it would really amount to was running away scared. And I knew what Bard would say—that wasn't what the Reapers were about. It could never be what we were about, because the message it sent would be all too clear: The Reapers were cowards. The Reapers were pussies. The Reapers could be pushed around, driven out without a fight, disrespected and dismissed without any consequences.

  Well, fuck that.

  I hadn't fought and bled for my Reaper patch just so I could paint a wide yellow streak on it when things got tough. None of us had. Other gangs could call us thugs, gear heads, grease monkeys, cavemen, and barbarians. But no one would ever call us cowards, not while even one of us was left alive to shoot a gun or swing a wrench. That was the pledge we'd all taken—the oath each of us had sworn on our own blood when we were patched and officially inducted into the club.

  Yeah, well, that's pretty talk, isn't it? Real cowboy shit. The only problem is, these wiseguys all swore an oath too. And there's a fuck-load more of them, an entire army in Gucci and Armani, with access to the kind of firepower piss-poor bikers like us could only dream of. So aside from a flat-out suicide mission, what's my big plan?

  I didn't have a long-term plan, but my short-term one was crystal clear: I needed a drink.

  Chapter Two

  Lauren

  I was standing in front of the door, wearing my most alluring black dress and working up the nerve to enter a room full of rowdy bikers. I could already hear them, roaring and cursing and chanting like Vikings who've just returned from a season of violence and pillaging.

  The Devil's Nest was a biker bar on the edge of the upper North Side where the slums of Rogers Park grudgingly gave way to the meticulously manicured suburbs of Evanston and Skokie. Its facade consisted of bashed, battered, rotting, sun-bleached planks of wood, many of them pocked by old bullet holes. Its sign was so ancient that the dull and flaking painted words could barely be read anymore. The neon signs in the windows had long since been darkened, casualties of thrown fists and thrown bodies in a hundred different brawls. The main window had been smashed far too often, and a black tarp was stapled over it.

  My hand trembled over the door handle, and I thought back to the previous night, remembering how it all started—the six words that had led me to this point.

  # # #

  “Is there anything I can do?”

  I almost didn't hear these words over the sounds inside my own head: my pulse throbbing like someone's palms smacking fiercely against my ears, my breath coming in sharp and whistling gasps of pain and disbelief.

  Jared stood in front of me, his watery blue eyes blinking rapidly with guilt, a hateful pink flush blossoming across his neck, ears, and shoulders. Ever since he'd started studying pre-law during our first year of college together, Jared always fretted about that flush. He called it his “tell,” and lamented that it would almost certainly prevent him from ever realizing his dream of becoming a trial lawyer, since it would alert his opponents—not to mention the judges—whenever he became flustered or angry.

  I used to tease him about it, telling him that he'd better never cheat on me because I'd know immediately when the raspberry-red blotches appeared high on his cheeks. And he'd laugh and tackle me on the couch or bed, insisting that that'd never happen, telling me he could never even look at another girl as long as he had me.

  He'd made these colorful proclamations as recently as a couple of weeks ago, straight-faced, clear-eyed, with no hint of the familiar scarlet stress-rash spreading across his skinny, milk-pale shoulders. Based on what he'd just admitted to, he'd been fucking someone else—no, worse, much worse, he'd been loving someone else—during that time. So clearly, he could control it just fine while he was lying. The rash only seemed to be a problem while he was telling the truth when he'd rather not be, under the disapproving gaze of someone who'd judge him.

  That was all I'd become to him in this moment, I realized. I was no longer a lover or a friend or a confidant. I was just a judge to present a guilty plea to. He was speaking again, and I shook myself, trying to clear the red haze of anger and pain that pulsed steadily behind my eyeballs. “What?”

  “I asked if there's anything I can do,” he repeated, the corners of his mouth turned down in a sulk like a little boy caught scrawling on the walls in crayon. Not a man, but a weak and selfish child, never truly sorry for what he's done. Only sorry that he has to take responsibility for it now and live with his mother's disappointment.

  In that moment, I wanted more than anything for him to be the best lawyer who ever lived—to make a fiery, rousing, persuasive opening argument, to present a compelling case that would allow me to understand how he could have done this to me. I wanted him to stand square and tall, meet my gaze evenly, and soberly offer up evidence to justify his deception. I wanted him to be Perry Mason, Atticus Finch, hell, even Saul fucking Goodman...I wanted him to be a man, even a bad man, instead of the slope-shouldered, mortified toddler standing in front of me.

  I desperately wanted him to assemble any combination of words and phrases that could possibly make these feelings inside of me go away. Something that could erase the last few moments and make me believe everything would be okay. Something that could let me unclench my jaw and not feel so utterly humiliated and broken.

  I don't know, Jared, can you do anything I thought, the words themselves wavering and distorting in the burning wreckage of my mind. You're clearly hoping this scene will magically end with me somehow liking you anyway, so you can leave with a clear conscience and a song in your heart.

  Will you skip straight over to her apartment, so you can celebrate together about your newfound “freedom” and fuck triumphantly without the fear of discovery? Will she ask how I took the news, and whether I'm okay? Will she care?

  Can you at least be the lawyer I need you to be in this moment, Jared? Can you play the part of the das
hing and charismatic attorney so that this will somehow all seem like it'll be okay? Can you do that for me, Jared? If you couldn't love me enough to keep your dick in your pants and act like a real boyfriend after four years, can you at least do this?

  Or are you a lousy lawyer, just like you were a lousy lay?

  That last thought snapped me back to reality, as I realized what a cheap charge that would be to hurl at him. Too shrewish and predictable, too easy for him to shake off as just something girls lie about during bad break-ups.

  Our break-up, my thoughts twirled nauseatingly, the words doubling and tripling like something seen through a kaleidoscope. Our break-up. Not some tear-jerking thing we saw together in a movie or a TV show, but our own, and had I really never seen this coming? Had I really spent the past four years so certain of the outcome, so sure that the only way this could possibly end was with a ring presented on one knee and a ceremony filled with teary-eyed relatives and a Happily Ever After?

  Yes, it turned out. I had been exactly that certain, the same way I was certain that the sun would come up with each new morning. I had never doubted it, not once, not even during our rare fights, and not even secretly.