Nova
Fiona Davenport
Copyright © 2021 by Fiona Davenport
Cover designed by Elle Christensen
Edited by Editing4Indies
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Created with Vellum
Contents
Nova
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Epilogue
Epilogue
About the Author
Nova
Nova Rossi wasn’t happy when the Silver Saints MC president assigned him a babysitting job. Not until he saw Rylee Nelson’s picture. All it took was one look for Nova to realize that his sister’s friend was meant to be his, and he’d do whatever it took to keep her safe.
Rylee wasn’t expecting to be rescued in middle of the night. Or for Nova’s caveman attitude to turn her on. But the motorcycle club enforcer was going to need to show Rylee the difference between trying to control and protect her before she’d be willing to accept his claim.
1
Rylee
I jumped when the librarian set her hand on my shoulder since I hadn’t heard her approach. I’d been sucked so deep into the fictional world of the book I was reading that I had blocked out everything around me. “Sorry, sweetie.”
“No worries.” Twisting around, I smiled up at her.
She tapped the face of the watch wrapped around her frail wrist. “It’s fifteen minutes past closing time. I’ve already shut everything down and am ready to head home.”
I snapped my book shut and stuffed it into my backpack. “Thanks so much for letting me stay late. I really appreciate it.”
“You’re always welcome here,” she assured me as I stood and headed toward the front door.
“Thanks again.” I gave her a little wave before I walked outside and started the familiar trek to my house. I used to spend most of my time outside playing sports at school or hanging out with friends. Nobody would’ve ever said I was a library kind of girl, but ever since my world crumbled around me, it had turned into my second home.
Since my parents never split up like so many of my friends’ had, I hadn’t realized my mom was the type of woman who needed to be in a relationship. Not until she married my stepfather barely a month after my dad died. I was still devastated by his loss, but apparently, she’d started dating again while I’d been lost in a sea of grief. I hadn’t even met the guy before he moved his stuff into our house and introduced himself to me as my new dad. Talk about a what the heck moment.
I was more than willing to admit that I hadn’t been very welcoming to Chad, but I didn’t think a reasonable person could blame me for my attitude. I’d spent my entire life being a daddy’s girl, and it was a huge slap in the face to have some stranger stroll into my life so soon after he was gone and expect me to treat him like my father.
My bedroom had been my haven in those first couple of months after my dad died, but that was before Chad decided he didn’t need to knock before coming in to see what I was doing. I didn’t think about it too much the first few times it happened, but I got super creeped out when I realized my stepfather felt as though he had the right to come and go from my room whenever he wanted. After that, I started locking the door when I was in my room...and staying away from home as much as possible. But there were only so many places a seventeen-year-old girl could hang out without anyone asking too many questions, and I didn’t want my friends to know how bad things had gotten at home.
My pace slowed the closer I got to the house I’d grown up in, to the point that my feet were practically dragging on the sidewalk. All of my wonderful memories had been replaced with bad ones, and the bitterness had grown inside me to the point that I wasn’t sure I could wait until graduation before I took off. I turned eighteen last week, so nothing was technically forcing me to stay—except for a lack of money.
My dad had always taken care of the finances, and it hadn’t taken long for things to fall apart after he died. If my mom had been expecting Chad to take care of us, she’d picked the wrong guy to marry. My stepfather hadn’t held down a job for more than three weeks since he’d moved in with us. His favorite pastime was knocking back a twelve-pack of beers before stumbling upstairs to sleep off his drunken stupor. Showing up late in wrinkled clothes had apparently not impressed any of the bosses who’d fired him. Go figure.
I heaved a deep sigh of relief when I reached our driveway and saw my mom’s parked car in front of the garage. I hated when it was just my stepfather and me. At least when she was there, my mom acted as a small buffer between us.
But it also irritated me that she was forced to park there. It was just another symbol of how Chad had taken over our home and treated it as though he belonged there more than we did. He’d even sold his old junker, started using the car my dad had meant for me, and somehow came up with enough money to buy himself a motorcycle. He kept both vehicles in the garage and made my mom park outside, even in the rain or snow, instead of manning up and making sure she had space to park in the garage. My stepfather was a selfish jerk who refused to lift a finger to make her life even a tiny bit easier. And the worst part was that there would have been more than enough room if he had spent an hour at most rearranging his tools and a bunch of boxes with his crap so his motorcycle would fit on the other side of the car that should have been mine.
I was tempted to duck into the garage and stuff a potato into the exhaust pipe before heading inside, but I resisted the temptation of digging one up from my mom’s garden—yet another thing my stepfather didn’t help with. Instead, I headed up the stairs to the side door that led into the kitchen. When I got to the landing and saw them standing on opposite sides of the island, I ducked to the side so I was out of their line of vision. It had looked like they were arguing, so I pressed my ear against the door to make it easier to eavesdrop on their conversation.
“What are we going to do?” my mom wailed.
Her tone of voice reminded me of how she’d sounded when the police knocked on the door to tell us about the car accident that had killed my dad. I wanted to offer her comfort, and my hand inched toward the doorknob. But I stopped when she continued, “How did this happen? Michael left me a quarter of a million dollars from his life insurance policy. We couldn’t possibly have gone through all of that in less than two years.”
I covered my mouth to hold in my gasp of shock.
A quarter of a million dollars?
Holy crap! That was a freaking lot of money. I couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that my mom and Chad had burned through it all so quickly, especially when they’d barely spent anything on me in more than a year. My dad had thrown a huge, blow-out party for my sixteenth birthday, but that was the last time I’d had a celebration. My mom hadn’t even baked a cake when I turned seventeen, and I wasn’t sure she remembered that my eighteenth birthday was last week since she hadn’t said anything about it. I’d basically lost both of my parents the day a drunk driver killed my dad.
“I’m sick and tired of hearing about how much your precious first husband did for you, Elaine. You’re married to me now.” Chad’s voice was a drunken slur that was all too familiar. He must have gotten an early start on the beer today because he usually didn’t t
alk like that until the sun went down. “If you didn’t spend so much on shit we don’t need, then we wouldn’t be in this trouble. I borrowed that money for you.”
I gritted my teeth so hard that a muscle jumped in my cheek. My mom hadn’t treated herself to anything fun in more than a year. She used to get a mani-pedi the first Wednesday of every month, but she started to do her own nails a few months after she married Chad. If they had money problems, the fault lay squarely with the guy who never denied himself anything he wanted. Not my mom.
“I’m sorry, baby. I’ll try to do better.”
I squeezed my eyes shut with a sigh, hating how she deferred to him even when he was wrong.
“Tightening the belt isn’t going to fix this situation. The Ukrainians don’t fuck around when you owe them money.” I jumped when Chad pounded his fist against the counter, almost falling backward off the landing. Gripping the railing for balance, I gulped at the menace in his tone when he added, “We’re racking up interest charges by the day, and the amount we owe has reached the point where they’re not going to accept anything less than everything due to them the next time they come knocking on the door.”
“What are we going to do?” My mom circled back to the first thing I heard her say.
“We don’t have a choice, Elaine. Unless you want them to kill us both, we’re going to have to give them the only asset we have...Rylee.”
Whoa. I shook my head, sure I must’ve heard him wrong. He couldn’t possibly be suggesting that they sell me to the Ukrainian mob to pay back whatever debt he owed to them. But as he laid out his plan to my mom—who was actually listening to him—I realized I was in deep trouble and needed help. The kind that came from people who weren’t afraid to go up against people who bought girls and killed people who owed them money. And there was only one person I could think of who might be able to connect me with someone who could save me from the mess my mom and stepfather had created...my childhood friend, Arya. Her older brother was in a motorcycle club, and she’d married one of the guys in it last year. Maybe my luck would finally change, and they’d be willing to protect me because of my friendship with her.
2
Nova
“Prez,” I greeted Jared “Mac” Mackenzie as I entered his office.
He said something quietly to his pretty, redheaded old lady before she blushed and scooted away when he went to grab her. “Hi, Nova,” she said with a little wave.
I lifted my chin but didn’t say anything because I recognized the look on my president’s face. Jealousy was riding him hard, and I didn’t want to be the one to invite the green monster out to play.
I’d seen that look a lot lately, what with so many of my brothers falling head over heels, claiming their old ladies, and popping out babies. They’d turned a badass motorcycle club into a fucking nursery school.
Okay...I didn’t hate having all the little ones around. They were damn cute.
“Bridget,” Mac growled.
She threw him a bright smile and sashayed from the room.
I kept my eyes forward, but I had to mash my lips together to avoid laughing.
“Something funny, Rossi?”
“Not a thing,” I replied, patting myself on the back for keeping the amusement out of my tone.
Still, his eyes narrowed into slits, and the jealous, whipped husband morphed back into the cutthroat leader of the Silver Saints MC. I swallowed hard but didn’t give the slightest hint of cowering.
Finally, he took his laser beams off me and focused on a slip of paper on his desk. “Need you for an assignment,” he grunted as he held it out to me.
There was a name and an address on it. I raised an eyebrow when I recognized it as my hometown. I’d never heard of this guy, though. “Rylee Nelsen? Is he a new prospect?”
Mac shook his head and leaned back in his large leather chair. It had seen better days, but he refused to get rid of it. We all had a bet about why, and my theory was that it held too many fucking memories. And I meant that literally.
“She is a friend of Arya’s.”
“What the fuck?” I growled. “Babysitting duty? I don’t have time for that shit. I’m booked solid.” I was using the excuse to get out of the bullshit assignment, but I wasn’t lying. I ran the Silver Saints’ tattoo shop attached to the compound, and I was a damn good artist. I had a waitlist a mile long.
I felt a trickle of guilt at trying to get out of a job that had to do with one of my sister’s friends...but fucking hell. I was an enforcer, not a kindergarten teacher.
Mac stared at me.
After at least a full minute, I grunted in annoyance and asked, “What’s the story?”
“Needs our help getting away from her stepfather. He’s in deep with the mob, and apparently, he thinks he can sell his stepdaughter to pay off the debt.”
“Son of a bitch,” I snarled. How were there so many fucking jackasses in the world? A thought occurred to me then. “You call Nic?” Nic DeLuca was the head of the Italian Mafia in New York. He and Mac went way back. He sometimes helped us out with sticky situations, and we returned the favor when needed.
“Not yet. It’s the Ukrainian mob, and I don’t know how deep his connections go. I’ll see what he has to say, and we can discuss it after you get back.”
“Back?” Then I remembered the address on the paper. Well, shit. “Never mind. I’ll ask Patriot to fill in with anyone who doesn’t want to wait.” Next to me, Patriot, another patch, was the best tattoo artist we had.
Mac nodded. I pivoted around to head out the door, but just before I reached it, his voice stopped me. “Wouldn’t count on her handing you a ladder on this one, brother.”
Gritting my teeth, I flipped him the bird as I stalked down the hall, ignoring his laughter. Great. Just fucking great. Another stalk and steal job.
Mac had met his old lady when he kidnapped her for leverage against her father. When he climbed into her room, she had literally presented him with a ladder to aid their escape.
After squaring things with Patriot, I loaded a saddle bag with some food and water, an extra piece and ammunition, and a change of clothes. The girl was only a six-hour ride away, but I didn’t know how long it would take me to find an opportunity to snatch her.
I was walking out to my bike when my sister, Arya—who was also married to one of my brothers, Dax—came jogging to the door, calling my name. I immediately spun around and hurried over to her.
“Everything okay, sis?”
She nodded and handed me a picture. “I thought it would be helpful if you knew what she looked like since you’ve never met her. She was a year behind me in school, so she just graduated.” It wasn’t a shock that I didn’t know her friend. I adored my sister, but I avoided my hometown whenever possible. I went back fairly often to check on her but rarely stayed more than a night or two, and we always spent them catching up. Arya had always spent a good portion of her school breaks visiting me, and we took a vacation together during the summers. Even after we were both adults, it was always to Disney World. Though I threatened not to go again if she ever breathed a word of that to one of my club brothers.
“She’s seen pictures of you at the house, though, so she’ll recognize you.” Arya twisted her hands together and gave me a worried look. “She sounded so terrified when she called, Nova. Thank you for helping her.”
I glanced at it quickly, but once my eyes were on it, I couldn’t peel them away. My breath stalled in my lungs, and my heart began pounding in my chest.
A young woman stared back at me with sparkling green eyes and rosy red lips spread in a wide grin. She had a sprinkle of freckles across the bridge of her pert nose, and her head was surrounded by fluffy blond curls that went to just above her shoulders. The sun was shining down on her, and it lit up her hair like a halo around my angel.
As my eyes took in the rest of her, I managed to exhale, but my mouth went dry and my cock stood at attention.
Holy fucking shit. She was a bomb
shell—full-figured, an hourglass shape with mouthwatering curves, thick thighs, and big, luscious tits. I’d never seen anyone so fucking sexy in my life. I shook my head to clear my mind of all the images of what I would do to that body. Down boy, I instructed my cock harshly.
I didn’t even know her, for fuck’s sake! And she was a year younger than my little sister, which meant she was eleven years younger than me.
“Also...” Arya gestured to my Harley. “It’s just...I don’t think Rylee’s ever been on a bike, and a six-hour ride is kind of long for a beginner.”
I shoved the picture in my pocket and glowered at the ground, knowing if Dax caught me frowning at his wife—and it wouldn’t matter that she was my sister—he’d try to knock out my teeth.
Arya was right, but it didn’t stop me from cursing at the situation. I’d been looking forward to the ride, the only positive part about the next day or so of my life.
“Also, um...her stepdad has one…”
Inside, I groaned. This assignment was just getting more and more fucking complicated. “He MC?” I asked.
“No. But he rides, and...it’s a long story. I don’t think Rylee has anything against them, but she might need a little coaxing from someone she trusts to get on the back of one.”
For some inexplicable reason, the thought of this girl sitting on another man’s bike, even Dax’s, unfurled something hot and angry inside me. It felt a lot like jealousy, but that was completely insane.
“Fine,” I agreed with resignation. “I’ll take the Mustang.” I didn’t know what was worse—six hours with her wrapped around me on the back of my bike or six hours alone with her in a car.
Nova: Silver Saints MC Page 1
