Sweet Revenge (Sinners MC Book 1), page 25
I recognized the teasing and smiled. “Yeah, well, my date’s tired.”
“Already, brother?” He whistled. “They don’t usually start using that excuse until they’re tired of fucking you.”
I dropped my head and grinned at my shoes before looking back up at my friend. “We good?”
His smile slowly faded from his face, and his expression became serious. “Not gonna lie, brother, that shit don’t sit well with me. Secrets, lies, all that shit is what I hoped we wouldn’t have in the rebuild. That’s why I stayed.”
“That wasn’t a club decision. That was mine,” I reminded him, but he was shaking his head before I finished speaking.
“Bear knew, and he kept that shit to himself too. You told us we were taking down the Widows because of the girls and drugs they were selling and to hopefully run them out of this town, but you never told us, and neither did Bear, how personal this was.” He ran his hand over his bald head. “That’s how people get dead, Gunn, and you know that.”
“It wasn’t the right decision.” That was my only defense. I screwed up, I knew that, but all I could do now was own that shit and move the fuck on.
“Gonna take a while,” he said honestly. “You savin’ Pop was a step in the right direction.”
I knew it was going to take a long time for my brothers to trust me and my word, but they would. I didn’t have any other fucking secrets; all my skeletons were standing proudly in the open for them all to see.
I came out of my own thoughts when I heard his voice. “Gotta be honest, I don’t like how quiet the Widows have been. In my experience, the only time those fuckers are quiet is when they’re planning shit.”
He barely finished speaking before Bear called out my name. I glanced over, but he was already running for the door. I moved quickly, feeling Bull do the same behind me. Pulling open the door, we rushed through the parking lot toward where Bear was kneeling on the ground.
“Call an ambulance!” he yelled, just as Becs ran past me and slid to her knees beside her friend Josie who was lying on the ground, bleeding.
I ripped my phone from my pocket and stepped away to speak to the dispatcher, gave her the address, ended the call, and shoved the phone back into my pocket.
“Why the fuck was she out here alone?” Bear roared, but at no one in particular. I thought she was still at the bar with Bear and hadn’t been paying attention. Fuck, I didn’t even know she’d left.
“Bear.” Becs whispered just as I squatted down next to him.
“Ambulance is on the way.”
He jerked his head in acknowledgement, but his eyes stayed locked on Josie. “Josie, who did this? Did you know them?”
“No.” Her voice sounded rough when she answered. I looked at her neck and saw small bruises forming like someone had choked her.
“Can you tell me what they looked like?” Bear gentled his voice when it was obvious she was scared.
“Three men.” She answered slowly, her eyelids drifting shut. The swelling around her left eye was bad, and the way she held her arm against her side, I’d guess she took a few hits to her ribs. “Black vests. Big one said to tell you…” She paused, but Bear prompted her to continue. We needed to hear her say it even though black vests told me everything I needed to know. I knew Bear was thinking the same.
“Tell me what?”
“He said…” She paused again and licked her lips. “We’re coming.”
Bear’s body jerked, and he looked back at me. “Fucking Widows.”
“They know,” Bull growled from where he stood behind me, and I stood. “Knew they were too fucking quiet.”
“Why Josie?” Becs glanced over at Bear, and I saw the absolute horror on her face.
Race had been quiet up until now, just standing behind Becs who was still kneeling on the ground. “Fuckers must’ve been watching and saw me take Dozer, so no one was watching the parking lot or the door. They probably thought they hit the fucking jackpot when a woman walked out, especially because I’m sure they thought she belongs to one of us.”
Sirens sounded and Bear stood, watching over Becs who whispered quietly to Josie. His face was hard, his eyes glued to the woman lying on the ground.
“Gunn.” My head jerked to the left when Bull said my name, and I saw Maggie jogging across the parking lot.
She was almost in front of me when she called out, “I heard the sirens. What happened?”
I grabbed her arm and pulled her into my chest, laying my head on top of hers. “The Widows attacked Bec’s friend when she left tonight.”
She pulled back and looked up at me. Gravel crunched behind me when an ambulance and two police cars pulled into the lot, but I ignored them and kept my eyes locked on Maggie. “How bad is she?”
I blinked my eyes slowly, knowing this was going to bring back a lot of shit for her, shit she’d been conquering until now. “Not sure, baby, but she’s conscious.”
She nodded and looked down at the ground. We listened to the police talking to Bear and the sound of the EMTs asking Josie questions, but we didn’t move. There was nothing I could do to make this better. She knew as well as I did that her being out of the clubhouse would once again be limited as would Becs. I also knew for her, that the small taste of freedom she had, could only be that.
For now.
She stood straight from where she’d been leaning against my chest and looked up at me. “It isn’t over.”
My shoulders sagged at the sadness on her face. In her mind, this shit would probably never be over. It would be, but I couldn’t make her any promises as to when. “It will be.”
I glanced over at Josie who had been loaded on the stretcher and was being pushed toward the ambulance doors. Becs walked right behind the EMTs, and I knew she’d be riding along, which meant Bear and Race would be heading to the hospital.
Maggie stood on her tiptoes and placed a kiss on my jaw, causing me to look back down at her. “It’ll be okay.” She took a deep breath and exhaled heavily. “I just know. This time, it’ll be okay.”
I didn’t feel as confident as she did, but I liked that she was. It proved she trusted me, trusted us, and more importantly, finally felt safe. “Nothing will touch you, not ever again.”
She smiled softly. “I know that.”
“Gunn.”
My head jerked from staring into her beautiful and trusting eyes to Bear who was standing beside me. I didn’t need to ask what, he just started talking. “Going to the hospital, Race is with me. Becs is with Josie. I need you to get everyone else inside and call the other members, fill them in, tell them to be on alert, and sleep here if they need to.” He glanced back at the ambulance when the sound of the doors closing filled the air. He faced me again, his expression hard. “Tell them church tomorrow, eight a.m.”
We both watched the ambulance pull out, the police cars close behind, and I had a feeling Bear called in a favor to Luke to have the police escort Josie and Becs to the hospital. I slapped my hand on his shoulder, and he looked back at me. “Consider it done.”
“Keep everyone close. I’ll call you with an update.”
He started to move away, but Maggie called out to him, stopping him in his tracks. “Be careful.”
I slung my arm around her shoulders and pulled her tight against my side when Bear ran his hand around the back of his neck. He was pissed, and in a way I hadn’t seen in a long time. He was taking this personally. A hit on an innocent woman, one who didn’t even belong in the club, was not going to happen again. It never should have to begin with, and that guilt was going to force him into a world he’d been trying so hard to stay out of.
He nodded at Maggie, but then aimed his stare in my direction. “This ends.”
He turned and walked toward his bike, threw his leg over, and started it up. Race was already straddling his and pulled out behind him, their engines screaming in the quiet of the night.
Continue Reading for an excerpt from the second book in the Sinners MC series, End Game.
End Game
The Sinners MC, Book Two
by Jennifer Hanks
PROLOGUE
BEAR
The deafening roar in my ears caused me to re-live the gut-wrenching sound of bullets leaving the barrels of so many guns long after they actually stopped firing. Adrenaline pumped through my blood, the knowledge of what I was going to see already foreshadowing what should have been considered a victory for our club.
But it was nothing more than an empty victory.
I rose from my position behind the coverage of the bush and cocked my gun, aware that the threat could still be hunting me, but ultimately knowing the danger was over.
They were all dead.
My eyes scanned the area I was so familiar with and saw the lifeless bodies of men I knew both as brothers and as enemies. Now they lay together as nothing but wasted blood for a cause I was no longer willing to defend.
Across the tree-filled area and through the veil of darkness, I watched as another rose and positioned myself. He moved soundlessly toward me through the death and destruction, and I slowly lowered my weapon, recognizing the sheer mass of the man approaching with his fist high in the air.
Bull.
He was a man who earned his road name the hard way, as the enforcer for a club that needed to use him way too often.
I took a deep breath and exhaled as more of my brothers rose, only knowing them by the signal we’d decided on long before this war began. With fists in the air, they approached me until twenty of us stood together.
We started this war with a hell of a lot more than twenty.
“Dog?” I barely recognized my own voice.
Bull grunted. “Gone.”
I let the thought of losing our president wrap around me, but I felt numb. I would feel it later, and I already knew my only emotion would be relief. Dog was taking us down a path of self-destruction that could only end with prison or death.
I pointed at Bull’s arm, blood trickling across the large muscles of his bicep. “Just a graze?”
He tipped up his chin. “Yeah.”
“Let’s clean up, boys,” Pop announced loudly. He was one of the oldest in our club and would take charge now that our president and vice president were obviously gone.
We nodded and moved quickly into action. Our clubhouse was off the grid with no one around for miles, but the sound of gunfire travels, and it had gone on for quite a while. Most people around here wouldn’t show and wouldn’t call the police. They left us to ourselves in the hopes we’d leave them be, but we couldn’t take any chances.
Over the past year, I’d come to hate the fear on their faces when I was in town. Hated that I was responsible for that.
It wasn’t any easy task to dispose of so many bodies. We had a place deep in the mountains where we dumped bodies that would never be found, a place where the coyotes would destroy the evidence in no time. I hated to admit I’d been there and done it many times before.
But that ended with this one war. I was no longer willing to defend something I didn’t believe in or fight off small clubs like Mayhem battling for territory or the monopoly on drugs. I refused to be the person I’d been turned into three years ago when my father, who was president at the time, was killed, and Dog was voted in. My father had been taking the club in the right direction but was taken out before he could see it materialize, and my brother died right alongside him. Dog became the president, and I hated him. Greed, hate, and destruction were his only visions, and I did not share them.
It took all night, but we destroyed any evidence of our enemies, and in the acres of ground we owned behind our clubhouse, we buried our own fallen members. Some too old to still be fighting, some too young to understand what they were fighting for, but all a waste of life over a cause that no longer meant anything.
Early in the morning when we’d finally finished, I fell into my bed at the clubhouse and slept, but only for a few hours before my own conscience woke me, and I called Pop. He agreed it was time to meet.
A decision would need to be made.
And there was only one I would accept.
~*~
“I’m calling this meeting to order today,” Pop said from his spot at the end of a very long table. This table was where we held every meeting, or church as it’s called in the clubs, for as long as I’d been a member. “We’ve got some decisions to make, and we need to make them right now.”
My eyes scanned the table, and I shook my head. Twenty men sat around this table. Twenty fucking survivors.
“We need to vote in a new president.” Tank spoke first.
“We do,” Pop agreed. “We need to stand strong for the other clubs to see that we’re united.”
“You know club life, Pop. Maybe you should just step in,” he suggested.
Pop shook his head. “Nah, not interested, Tank. Rebuilding this club is a young man’s job.” He looked around the table slowly, his eyes passing over each remaining member until they landed on me and stopped. “I nominate Bear.”
My eyes widened in surprise. I shook my head but shifted my attention to Tank when he called out. “I second the nomination.”
My attention returned to Pop when I felt his eyes on me. His stare met mine and held. He was trying to communicate something to me, something I knew was important, but not something I was sure I understood. Not yet, anyway.
“Do you accept the nomination, Bear?”
I looked around the room and thought about the responsibility of the title they wanted to assign me. They needed a leader, someone to offer hope that the club they’d literally put their lives on the line to protect was going to survive this type of massacre.
The Sinners MC had won. We’d shown our strength in the face of doubt, and that alone should be considered a victory. The remaining members of Mayhem would no longer bother us. Our territory was safe. Our business was safe. But at what cost?
I saw an opportunity. An opportunity to finish what my father dreamed of when we left Colorado and started this club all those years ago. An opportunity to make a club where we didn’t have to be watching our backs every day, to become a club we could be proud of, and I decided at that moment that I wasn’t going to forfeit it.
No matter what the fallout would be. And if I was elected president, there would most definitely be fallout.
I nodded slowly; my decision made. “I accept.”
I waited while the vote was taken, a little surprised when it was unanimous in my favor. I accepted the role of president and stood before accepting the patch Pop had lying on the table in front of where he sat. I had no fucking clue where it came from, but it lay next to an almost identical patch saying Vice President. We’d lost all of our leaders, and I would have to call to vote for their replacements, but not today. Today, as president, I would announce my intentions. Anyone who chose to remain would then be considered.
It was the only way our club could survive.
And the only way I wanted to remain a part of it.
I stood and addressed the men. “I appreciate your confidence in me, brothers.” I met the eyes of every man before continuing. “Last night, we lost almost our entire club. We’ll have to rebuild, and I’d like to build it into something better than before.”
A lot of head nods and murmurs of agreement spread through the room, but I knew what I was about to propose would not be met with the same.
“Some of you aren’t going to like the direction I want to take the club, and to that, I say you’re welcome to leave with no retribution.” Tension once again filled the room. “I mean that. There will be no consequences if you decide to leave the Sinners after I propose the changes.”
“What kind of fucking changes?” Griller called out.
I decided to just put it out there. “I want a clean club.”
“What?” Banshee stood, his eyes searing into mine.
I didn’t budge from my position. “Clean,” I emphasized. “Legitimate club. A club where we don’t have to make our money illegally, always on the lookout for the fucking cops, wondering which of us will be serving time on a weapons or drug charge.”
Marvel stood. He was one of the older members of the club and one of the meanest. I knew he’d never agree to the changes. “That’s not a real club.”
“It can be,” I argued. “We defend our territory, protect our neighbors, but we do it without fear tactics or bullying. We do it clean.”
Marvel narrowed his eyes. “You want a club of pussies? The others will be like dogs with a bone. We won’t have a club left to defend.”
“A clean club doesn’t mean a weak club, brother,” I emphasized. “We build us stronger than before but with a real purpose.”
“No fucking way,” Banshee said. “Should have known you’d be a pussy like your father was. I thought I saw something different in you while you stood beside me fighting, but I guess I was wrong.”
Marvel punched his fist into the hard wood of the table. “This what we get for voting you in? For trusting you to do right by us?”
I put my hands on my hips. “You voted me in to do right by this club, and that’s exactly what I’m doing. I’m not sitting back and watching one more of my brothers fall for something that no longer means anything. I lost my father to this club. I lost my blood brother to this club. I lost a lot of friends last night to this club. I won’t lose any more. I still have a sister who I won’t sacrifice to live a life I’m no longer interested in or proud of. I want to make this a club we’re all proud of and one that gives us what we want the most, our freedom and our brotherhood.”
Banshee narrowed his eyes and laid his palms on the table, leaning forward. “Shit, that no longer means anything?”
“Do you even know what the fuck you’re fighting for?” I asked, honestly.
“For respect.” Banshee sneered.
“What the fuck does that matter if half of our brothers are dead?”
Silence filled the room until Marvel broke it. “Our brothers died heroes.”
