“Nah, baby girl, you love me—and that’s a fucking problem.” His grip on my hip tightened. “Because I have always struggled to stay away from you. Now I don’t think it’s fucking possible.”
Everything he had done to me. Everything we went through. The tears. The pain. The insane need for his touch. I thought I was over him when, in fact, all I had done was lie to myself. Lie that I was in love with someone else. When the only reason I craved Ty’s touch was that I wanted Kobra’s.
He let go of me, and his eyes flashed to my tattoo one more time before he looked me back in the eyes.
“Tell yer mother that yer done. And if I so much as hear that you are working the books—I’ll murder the next bastard you’re with.”
Just like that, my expression dropped completely.
“You wanted me to admit to loving you years ago. I couldn’t. I couldn’t be the man you needed all those years ago—”
“And what? You’re the man I need now?” I cut him off. “What makes you think I would ever let you back in?” I tilted my head and stared at him. “I let Holly stay here for a few weeks because she’s a friend. That wasn’t me letting all the Kincaids back in my life.”
He looked at me with a merciless expression. Like it didn’t matter what I wanted, not any more—because he had made a decision, and I wasn’t sure if anyone could save me from the wrath that was Kobra and my addiction for each other. Because that was what it was, an addiction. I loved him then, and it drove me to insanity; trying to get comfort from others’ arms.
Only for me to realise now that the mask I wore, the secrets I kept, and the lifestyle I had been living was all due to the love I felt for Kobra Kincaid.
Kobra was the devil, but he took more than my soul—he had also taken my heart.
Kobra had left my bags at my front door, and I couldn’t lie that I didn’t have other motives when I sent Kobra to Opal’s. I had hoped they would talk. But from the one-word answers I was getting from Opal, I doubted they had.
After what I had said to Dad, I wanted to put in an appearance at the club. So that was the reason I was here. And I had to keep reminding myself of that every time I felt his eyes on me. Club party was different from a family club party. The club girls wore less and didn’t care if they made it to a bedroom or not. All they cared about was the members’ dicks.
The reason I was making this clear was that Creed could have his choice of women tonight. Instead, I kept feeling his eyes on me, and it was driving me insane.
He was still president of the North until he appointed another. I heard he was riding back soon to handle the finer details of him leaving. Knowing he was coming back was one thing, but actually hearing he was doing the requirements to patch back scared the shit out of.
My phone buzzed in my pocket, and I pulled it out. Seeing a private number, which had been calling me lately, I ignored it. I wasn’t sure if it was Trey or not, but I wasn’t answering. They also never left a message—so I just assumed it wasn’t important.
Just as I rejected the call, someone pulled the stool out beside me. I glanced up and saw the last person I expected to see here at the club.
Slater Winston.
Creed’s brother.
And the enemy of my father.
“Are you lost?” I said, slightly shocked he had even managed to make it into the club without being shot by my father.
His lips twitched up. And the scar on his chin showed more in this light. I knew stories of Slater, stories that left a lot of information out.
“Need a word with Creed,” he said, and he slowly looked me up and down. “You’ve got two options, sweetheart. Tell Creed to come outside to see me, or I go up to the table and get their attention.” His eyes and mine went to the table Creed was sitting at with my father.
I looked back at him. “I’ll get Creed. You get the hell out of my dad’s clubhouse before he loses his shit. Or you lose a body part.”
He chuckled slightly, nodding his head and turning to leave.
Knowing Slater was on club property set my skin on fire. I hadn’t wanted to speak to Creed tonight, yet it looked like I was going to have to do it. Throwing back my whiskey, I walked to their table.
My dad’s eyes were on his cards. He always took poker seriously. Mum was glued to his lap since Ollie was with Ivy.
Mum and Dad were the power couple that people in the underworld warned you about. There was no doubt that the relationship they had was what every club woman here wanted with their biker.
Pausing at the table, I noticed Kobra had a foul look on his face and a cut lip.
“Creed,” I said loudly, and every pair of eyes went off the game and to me. Even Vin, the dealer, looked at me. I gestured my head to the door. “I need you outside.”
With that said, I turned and walked. I wasn’t having a confrontation with my family. I could guarantee that Dad would be disappointed, and Kobra would think I was about to fight with Creed.
I pushed open the clubhouse door. Luckily for us, the lot was bare apart from the armoured Hummer parked, with Slater leaning against it.
The clubhouse door opened behind me, and I glanced back, seeing Creed. He had a puzzled look on his face until his eyes found Slater—who was standing behind me, looking cocky like normal.
“Creed, brother,” Slater said, and I saw Creed’s whole body go tense. “We need to talk.”
I knew Creed and I weren’t a couple. Creed and I weren’t anything but a drama-filled mess. But I wasn’t leaving him to face the man he hated.
Creed came from a family built on blood money and was run by sin. How was that different from a club? Well, our club had standards. We never did human trafficking. Creed’s family was known for it.
Creed turned his back on his blood—not because the club expected him to. No, he joined the club because he didn’t want the life they had, the life he was brought up having. Being a street kid was one thing; being a street kid associated with the Winston monarchy was another. He was a walking target.
“You can go, sweetheart,” Slater said, and he had the stomach to whack my ass.
I swiped his hand away and turned to face him—looking him dead in the eyes.
“No.” I crossed my arms.
Slater’s lips twitched up. “Standing by him in the good and the bad, geez.” His eyes went to Creed. “Can we share her?”
“What the fuck you want, Slater?” Creed asked, now standing by me. I was surprised he hadn’t forced me back inside.
Slater’s eyes lifted from Creed to me, and then he tilted his head. “Is she worth the blood?” He then slowly looked at Creed. “We dealt with you when you dabbled with the Satan’s Bastards, but Mother and Father want you back where you belong now.”
Silence.
“We dealt with your little anarchy phase, but we heard you are about to patch to the table as VP.” Slater looked at Creed, arching his eyebrows. “You know we can’t let that happen.” Slater fixed a cufflink on his wrist. “Family is family, and you are family. So we are giving you time to reconsider.”
“Family?” Creed scoffed, and I heard the grip on his temper slipping. “We aren’t family.”
“Oh, and your little club brothers are?” Slater said mockingly. “Family, blood, loyalty, trust for the Winston name runs through your blood.”
Creed stayed silent.
Slater sighed. “Fine, don’t come willingly. If you wish to stand by Hades as he burns to the ground—then so be it.”
“You threatening the club?” Creed said with a hiss. “’Cos you didn’t exactly win when it came to a war last time.”
Slater smirked. “Let’s say the devil is reaping, and I heard Hades name was on the list.” With that said, Slater took two steps back. “You’ll be back at our table before you wear a VP for this brotherhood. I promise you that, my brother.”
Creed didn’t say anything. We both remained quiet as Slater got in the Hummer and left.
My heart was racing because t
he last time the club went to war, we lost our grandfather and grandmother. Because Kincaids believe you stand by the club until you take your last breath.
Creed glanced me up and down before turning and heading back to the clubhouse door.
“What! Are you not going to say anything!” I yelled at his back, but Creed being the alpha male he was just ignored me. I watched in anger as he opened the clubhouse door, and it slammed behind him.
I was stunned for a moment—until I heard the club music die.
Opening the door just in time, I heard as Creed barked the party was over. Dad looked confused before he met Creed’s eyes. I don’t know how, but they silently had a conversation, and Dad called for every patch member to church.
I saw the panic in my mother’s eyes, and I felt the terrifying unknown smother me. I was frozen as I watched the men pried their way off the girls and headed into church.
I didn’t know what was coming. It felt like everything had changed in a matter of minutes. As I watched the boardroom doors close, it felt like the doors on the life we had closed too.
My parents were anything but saints. Perhaps it was their sinning blood that drove my worse actions. My father’s lack of control and my mother’s boiling rage flowed in my veins.
Just like it flowed in my brothers’ veins. My father believed that no real club was powerful unless they ruled countries, not states. So Khaos Kincaid, one of my brothers, led Satan’s Bastards in the United Kingdom where my other brother Thanatos Kincaid ruled over the Satan’s Bastards on American soil.
Right now, in the small hours of the night, I sat in front of a computer monitor, the line secure. This was the first time we all had met face-to-face virtually.
Thanatos and Khaos were quiet, waiting for why I had called the meeting.
“We going to sit here and act like Hades hasn’t called a country war over a patch member?” Khaos barked.
In that instant, I knew he must have had a member there, informing him. Only made sense. Same as I had one at their club.
We trusted each other, but a watchful eye was always needed.
“Creed Winston, he’s Winston blood, Hades, fuck him off.” Khaos growled.
“Creed is not the problem,” I muttered and leant forward. “I’ve called war because they threatened our family.”
“What! One of my nieces married this bastard!” Khaos roared, and my speakers crackled.
“No, Khaos,” I snapped back at him. “The Winstons and Hydes, two family trees that are similar to ours, but with one difference. They share a common goal.” Creed came from a bloodline just as deadly as ours. Perhaps darker. Because even I drew lines on how far we would go.
Both families ruled by having control over human trafficking. Something our clubs, our blood had nothing to do with. Like I said, I drew a line in the darkness.
Khaos remained quiet. Thanatos was never big on speaking, to begin with.
“They killed our father and mother,” I said, staring at the computer. “They strung them up and hanged them…” I saw the pain flash across both my brothers’ faces. “We never made it even.”
“So now is the time to call war?” Thanatos moved, uncomfortable. “We always said we would make it right.” Then he added, “But is now right? We haven’t recruited in months. Is now the time, brother, to even a debt that has been pending for decades?”
I felt the vile flood me. “I’m not doing this in the name of Vix and Arrow. I’m doing this because I stand by the reasons they went to war against them, to begin with. Humans are not to be sold. Women are not be sold.” I looked at the computer. “I will die bloody, I will die in pain, but I will not die living in denial.”
Thanatos’s eyes were the ones that narrowed because he knew that now we were making what happened to Onyx, his daughter, right.
“We do this for the millions of human slaves. We do this for the women that are pumped with drugs so they can’t put up a fight as weak men rape them. We do this because no other bastard will. We do this for my niece that was taken and sold. We do this for our parents, who were hung. We do this in the name of Kincaid!” I felt my blood boiling. “We do this so no other woman knows what it is felt like to be traded on the black market.”
Silence followed my speech.
“We die bloody, and we die slowly. So be it, brothers, we have lived.” Khaos leant forward. “Let them come. The United Kingdom joins Hades’ movement of war.”
I had thought Khaos would have been the harder one to convince. After all, Thanatos had his daughter taken and sold on the market, but it was Thanatos who remained quiet. Thanatos ran his hand down his beard.
“I look in my daughter’s eyes, and I never see happiness. She’s alive, but she is not living,” Thanatos said. He had kept Onyx’s recovery very private—and we knew better than to ask. “They robbed my daughter of life. But vengeance will not serve her. It will, however, help another family from experiencing what we have.” He leaned forward. “The United States of America will join the movement of war.”
If I had known I was calling a war that I couldn’t lead, then, perhaps, I would have reconsidered. Because this war, it was personal. It was in the name of decades of hate towards those two families. The level of hatred I had for the Winston and Hyde families was unimaginable. So how could I have let a member of their blood patch into my club? Because I knew hate when I saw it. And there was only one emotion that filled Creed’s eyes when he spoke of his blood. That was hate.
I called the war, but I was not to know that it was not my war to lead.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Holly
I arrived in the emergency department just as the alarm went off, paging all doctors for a twenty-two code blue, which meant gunshot wounds and more than one. It was changeover, and most staff were leaving the hospital while the next shift was taking over. I didn’t even think about it. I dropped my bags on the nurses’ desk and could hear the ambulance sirens over the alarm bells.
This was what I’d trained for. I was calm, ready and prepared, just like the rest of the doctors standing by me near the ambulance bay entrance. I wasn’t even gowned up when the plastic doors opened wide, and the ambulance stretcher rushed in.
“Gunshot wound, upper body.” The paramedic rushed a summary of the condition, and my eyes locked on the patient. I saw the rings that I used to feel on the back of my cheek when I was a child. The vest that always smelt like home was covered in blood.
Dad.
And that was when the heartbeat monitor flattened. Before the paramedic even shouted, “No pulse,” I was snapped out of the trance and into action mode, getting the paddles and charging them.
The paramedics had already cut Dad’s shirt. “Clear” was screamed before I placed the paddles on Dad. His body jolted, but I don’t hear his heartbeat. “Clear” was yelled again, and I charge the paddles higher, placing them on his chest.
In those moments, those split seconds, my dad’s grin, my dad’s look of disapproval but the feel of his arms, the safety I felt in them, all flashed through my mind. Then tears sprung in my eyes when the heartbeat still wasn’t heard.
“Clear” was screamed once more, and I applied the paddles all while knowing if no heartbeat followed, he was gone.
I felt as if the time that had passed within me, charging those paddles and applying them and waiting to hear his heartbeat, was everlasting. Part of me didn’t want to hear the flatline.
“Pulse!” George shouted, and then I stepped back, as the surgeons rushed to take over. His heart was beating, but he was still bleeding out. I heard the surgeons shouting which operating theatre as they took off down the hall, pushing my dad, knowing that his life was now in their hands.
Hearing the shouting from the next bay, I snapped out of the trance and rushed around. Knowing I needed to help whoever was hurt. That was when I heard a scream of pain and him yelling at the nurses.
I rounded the corner, and my eyes landed on Kobra. He was fighting aga
inst treatment, trying to get up.
“Holly!” Kobra shouted at me through the pain. “You’ve got to get Mum and Ollie. You need to fucking go.” And he roared in pain as the doctors tried to apply pressure to his bullet wounds.
“He’s delusional!” the doctor shouted, and I knew they were about to sedate him.
I rushed to his side, knowing they were trying to save his life. “It’s okay,” I said, and I gripped his hand, seeing the blood running from his mouth. He was fighting them because he thought we were in trouble. “Everyone’s fine.” I smiled, and he looked at me, his body going into shock because of the pain.
“Mum’s okay? Ollie? Ivy?” His bloodshot eyes were locked with mine, and I nodded my head. But the tears formed in my eyes.
“Everyone is fine, and now you’ve got to keep breathing, okay?” I clenched his hand as if it would save him, the same thought running through my head—I can’t lose my brother. I saw the needle with the sedative go into his.
The blood was slowly running down the corner of his mouth, and I wiped it away. Lowering my head to his, I could see him still fighting.
“They’re gonna kill everyone I love,” Kobra got out as he fought the sedation. I didn’t know what he was talking about, but I felt the squeeze he had on my hand weaken, and then I squeezed his hand, hoping he would react, but he was asleep.
The nurses screamed that the operating bay was ready. I couldn’t let go of Kobra’s hand as they took off the brakes. They had already taken my father. It was Clare who shouted at me and made me look up, my vision blurry. The last thing I felt was my brother’s steel skull ring in my palm before Trey forced me to let go.
Kobra’s warning was running through my head. Get the family safe, and as I stepped out of the bay, I saw faces of members I was raised with—all near death’s door.
Someone was wiping out the Mother Chapter.
Dad was bleeding out. Kobra was also in an operating suite. I could see our enforcer and sergeant at arms.
Creed's Honor: Satan Bastards MC Book 1 Page 11
