by Vivian Gray
This is a work of fiction. Any names, characters, places, events, 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.
Trigger: A Motorcycle Club Romance (Broken Mavericks MC) (Longing for the Bad Boy Book 1) copyright @ 2018 by Vivian Gray. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.
Contents
Trigger: A Motorcycle Club Romance (Broken Mavericks MC) (Longing for the Bad Boy Book 1)
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
Books by Vivian Gray
Born Biker: A Motorcycle Club Romance (Devil’s Crucifix MC) (Dark Outlaw Secrets Book 3)
Born Killer: A Motorcycle Club Romance (Bad Devils MC) (Dark Outlaw Secrets Book 2)
Born Sinner: A Motorcycle Club Romance (Blood Ravens MC) (Dark Outlaw Secrets Book 1)
Screwed: A Motorcycle Club Romance (Death Angels MC) (Scars and Sins Collection Book 3)
Sinned: A Motorcycle Club Romance (Chained Kings MC) (Scars and Sins Collection Book 2)
Scarred: A Russian Mob Romance (Anosov Family Mafia) (Scars and Sins Collection Book 1)
Slash: A Motorcycle Club Romance (Savage Hearts MC) (Outlaw MC Romance Collection Book 6)
Jet: A Motorcycle Club Romance (War Choppers MC) (Outlaw MC Romance Collection Book 5)
Diesel: A Motorcycle Club Romance (Bonebag MC)
Jasper: A Bad Boy Motorcycle Club Baby Romance (Hellions MC)
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Trigger: A Motorcycle Club Romance (Broken Mavericks MC) (Longing for the Bad Boy Book 1)
By Vivian Gray
The bad boy biker has his finger on my trigger.
Trigger saved me from a drug dealer’s abuse.
He thinks I can save his soul.
But giving myself to the biker doesn’t go as expected…
When I end up with a baby in my belly.
KENNA
My mom is in trouble again.
A vicious drug addiction has sunk its claws into her.
And it won’t let her go without a fight.
So back into chaos she falls.
But this time is worse than ever.
And when I go to try and rescue her…
I end up face-to-face with the devil.
Trigger is like something out of a dream.
Tall and tattooed.
Skin glistening with muscle and ink.
Eyes that see me, pin me, pierce me.
And hands that – once they get a grip on my body – will never, ever let me go.
TRIGGER
They call me Trigger.
I shoot first and ask questions later.
It’s why I became a biker in the Broken Mavericks MC.
So I could hurt the scum of this world who prey on the weak.
But sometimes, my job brings me in touch with people who deserve a better life.
The innocent.
The pure.
Kenna is one of those.
She shouldn’t be with a killer like me.
But I can’t let a beauty like her slip through my fingers.
She’ll either save me from my darkest path…
Or I’ll corrupt her beyond repair.
Either way, she’s mine now.
Chapter One
Kenna
I did my best to stay busy while Mom was gone. If I stayed still for too long, my mind would wander to the worst possibilities. That she was dead in a ditch with a needle in her arm. Sold into sex trafficking. Unconscious in a hospital bed. The longest she’d disappeared for was seven days when I was sixteen. This time it had only been four days. Concerning, but not yet reason to panic.
She’d been on something for as long as I could remember. When I was little, she told me it was medication because she had migraines or a bad back. At some point, though, she grew tired of the lie and stopped explaining it. I grew accustomed to her glazed expression and the way her mouth would hang open, drool collecting in the corners.
I also grew accustomed to her withdrawals. The shakes and tremors, the sweat-stained sheets and howls of pain. She’d hand me her phone and tell me to call someone, anyone. Get her something. Now. And what was I supposed to do? She looked like she was dying, and for all I knew, she could have been.
So, I’d call. She’d get what she needed, only she wouldn’t look better. She’d look just as sick as before, only now she wasn’t screaming in pain, which seemed like a small improvement.
My life was marked by her promises to sober up, followed by meager attempts, and cataclysmic relapses.
“I’ll do better, sweetheart. I don’t want to live like this anymore. I want to be healthy for you.”
Somewhere deep down I know she meant it. There was a tiny part of her that wanted those things, but it had been chipped away at over time, overshadowed by the much larger part of her that needed a fix.
I’d taken part in a program at school that taught kids not to do drugs. The instructor, a burly man in his mid-fifties, explained that drugs are like the apple Snow White ate. They look red and shiny and perfect, but as soon as you take a bite, you realize they are poison. Only, it’s too late. At the time, I felt embarrassed that my mom had fallen for the trick. The program also ruined the movie Snow White for me.
Before her latest disappearance, Mom had been doing a little better. She seemed clearer, more engaged. She asked me about my day when I came home from working retail at an expensive boutique in the mall and wished me luck before I left for my night job as a waitress. It was how I knew her next bender would be one for the books. The calm before the storm, as they say.
Delia had called in sick, so I’d worked the boutique by myself all afternoon. I’d worked at a discount store for a few years, and I didn’t think anything could be worse. People put clothes back on the racks where they didn’t belong and never folded anything properly. By the end of every day, I was dead on my feet.
When I’d taken the job at the high-end boutique, I thought I had really moved up in the world. It was a small shop with expensive items catering to women in their thirties and forties. It should have been a cakewalk, except I quickly learned one entitled rich woman is as bad as three discount store shoppers.
They try on eighteen different sizes – all of them smaller than their actual size – before deciding they don’t like the item anyway and trying something else. They don’t leave the dressing room to get their own sizes though. That is purely my job. So, all afternoon I had catered to the needs of privileged women who had never worked a day in their lives, running back and forth from the dressing room, the sales rack, the back room, and the register.
As soon as I got home, I crashed down on the couch. Thankfully, the weather hadn’t turned too cold yet, so I was comfortable in my jeans and long-sleeve T-shirt. When winter took hold, we would turn on the gas stove and open the door to warm up the kitchen. Gas was included with rent, so it didn’t cost anything extra. During a blizzard the year before, I’d moved my mattress into the kitchen because I was tired of lying awake shivering. In the summer, I lived in a tank top a
nd thin cotton shorts.
When I opened my eyes, the room was dark. The little bit of sunlight that had been coming through the large window in the living room had faded, and I blinked several times, trying to figure out when I’d fallen asleep and why I’d woken up. Then, I felt the vibration in my pocket.
Only the people at work, a few close friends, and my mom had the number, so I knew it had to be something important. I pulled it out, and the clenched fist of nerves that had been growing inside of me every day my mom had been missing unfurled into anger.
“Hello,” I said with a bark. “Where have you been?”
Every time she took off, I told myself I wouldn’t worry about her. She’d be fine. She always was. But then she would disappear, and everything changed. A girl was supposed to depend on her mom. I was supposed to be the one making mistakes, and she was supposed to be the person I could turn to for help, not the other way around.
But still, the place in my heart where my mom lived – the mom I remembered from childhood, the one who cut the crusts off my bologna sandwiches and shined a flashlight into my closet to check for monsters before I went to bed – ached for her when she was missing. I needed to know she was safe.
I expected another dopey apology, a thick-tongued excuse and a meager ‘I love you, Kenna.’ Instead, I heard labored breathing. My chest seized.
“Mom?” It sounded like the phone was being dragged through dense weeds. Was it a bad connection or was something or someone on the other end of the line making that noise?
“Help me.”
The words froze me solid. I sat bolt upright and began pulling on the shoes I’d discarded under the cluttered coffee table. “Where are you? What’s going on?”
She breathed again, sounding like her lungs were full of water. “I need money, Kenna. Help.”
I stopped. “What do you mean you need money? For what? Where are you?”
“I need money, Kenna,” she repeated, her voice weaker this time. The short phone calls seemed to be sapping the life out of her.
“I’ll bring money, but you have to tell me where you are.” It was a lie. I didn’t have any money.
I’d just paid rent for the month, bought minutes for my flip phone, and spent the rest on a few staple items – bread, milk, lunch meat – and I wouldn’t get paid for another two weeks. I had just enough money left to pay for gas to get me to and from work and that was it. The account was dry.
She didn’t know the exact address but gave me an intersection I knew well enough. I’d been there plenty of times looking for her, but thankfully she’d never been there. It was in the worst part of the city, which I hated visiting in the daylight, let alone in the middle of the night. Still, my mom’s raspy, choked voice filled my head, and I knew I couldn’t leave her there. I slipped on my shoes, grabbed the Taser from my nightstand, and left.
Women in clothes way too revealing for the cool temperature stood at the corners of buildings, their skinny, bruised legs posed like broken dolls, their eyes bloodshot and rimmed in dark circles. My body was on high alert, noticing everything. I couldn’t seem to stop swiveling my head.
When you opened a newspaper and saw that a person had been murdered overnight, this was the street where the body was found. A place so ubiquitous with crime that it was nearly lawless. Officers patrolled the area semi-regularly, but if they stopped every person walking down the street, they’d still barely make a dent in the criminal activity. So, they gave up.
As the skyscrapers gave way to crumbling infrastructure and pothole-laden roads, I’d considered turning back onto the interstate and driving to the police station. I could tell them that my mom was in trouble, have them check it out, and find her in the crack house she’d holed up in.
But they’d probably end up arresting my mom, and I didn’t have the money to bail her out. We definitely didn’t have the money for a decent attorney. Or any attorney, for that matter. She’d be sent to prison because of her priors. On the one hand, at least I’d know where she was. On the other, she was my mom. Could I live with myself if I sent her to prison? Not to mention what happened to snitches in this city. I’d be putting a huge target on my back when all I really wanted was to get my mom home and go to sleep.
So, I pulled my beat-up blue car along the curb in front of a boarded-up house with a sunken in roof. I was alone and armed only with a Taser. I considered knocking, but the dilapidated house didn’t look like the kind of place where anyone would come rushing to the door, greeting me with open arms. So, steeling myself for whatever I might find inside, I pushed the door open and stepped inside.
Immediately, the smell of rotting wood and mildew and dust overpowered me. My lungs clenched up, and I struggled with the decision to breathe through my nose or my mouth. I didn’t want to smell the air, but I also didn’t want to swallow mouthfuls of whatever the dust in the house was made of. Could you get high if you ingested enough of the dead skin cells of junkies? Probably not, but it felt better not to risk it.
The small entrance was lit only by a crack in one of the boards over the window next to the door. The crack looked purposeful, and I figured it was so they could look at whoever was knocking. I wondered if anyone had watched me walk up the long sidewalk to the house through the crack and then shivered.
I heard a distant cough from somewhere at the back of my house and jumped. In every regard, the house looked like it should be deserted, so I was still surprised to hear any sign of life inside its water-stained walls. I walked down a long hallway and took the first left through an open door.
The door was laying on its side in the hallway, the hinges gnarled and twisted like the Hulk himself had kicked it down. Inside, it looked like a deserted civil war hospital. Yellowed blankets and newspapers were spread out across the dusty floor, and piles of soiled clothes sat like mountains in the corners.
And then, amongst the trash heap, were bodies. If I didn’t know what this place was, I would have assumed they were dead. But accustomed as I was to the sight of limp bodies pumped full of drugs, I scanned each of them quickly for signs of life. A black-haired man in the corner twitched his foot as I walked past and the skinny woman next to him with arms like a bird had her eyes wide open, though they rolled around in her head like unseeing marbles. One man was covered in newspapers, and they rustled as he breathed.
And then, I found the person who had been coughing. My mom was wrapped in a tattered sleeping bag, most of the stuffing lying on the floor, even though someone had used duct tape to try and cover the holes. She was lying on her side, her legs curled up into her chest like a small child.
It was clear she hadn’t showered since the last time she’d been home. Her greasy blonde hair fell around her face like hay, and it was so thin I could see directly to her scalp. As I stood there watching her, she seized up and then launched into a coughing fit that rattled her entire body. The coughs sounded like they came from deep inside of her, worse than I’d ever heard them, and I imagined them ripping their way up her dry throat.
I knelt down next to her, pushing aside a used needle and a pile of newspapers that smelled like pee. I placed my hand on her back, and she was startled, opening her paper-thin eyelids to look at me. Then, she smiled.
“Kenna,” she said, sounding like a ninety-year-old woman instead of forty. “You came.”
“Of course, I did,” I said, trying to keep the annoyance out of my voice. When hadn’t I come after her? I never let her down, yet she insisted on sounding surprised. I wrapped a hand around her arm. Her skin was cold. “Come on, Mom. We have to get you out of here. You’re sick.”
She sat up slowly, groaning as the wood floor creaked beneath her. I wasn’t convinced the creaking hadn’t come from her joints.
“I can’t go yet,” she said, holding up a finger to stop me.
I didn’t listen. I grabbed her hands and tried uselessly to bring her to her feet. “Help me out here. I can’t carry you. You’re too heavy. We have to go.”
> “And where would you be going?” a deep voice asked behind me.
I let go of my mom’s hands, and she fell back against the wall, wincing as her spine made contact with the exposed brick. Behind me stood a man so wide I wondered how he’d made it through the door. His shoulders looked almost as wide as my entire wingspan, and he had to stoop slightly to not hit his head on the dangling lightbulb above him.
But aside from his obviously large frame, he had a good deal of extra weight around his midsection and his ankles and wrists. He looked like the villain in a cartoon movie – comically large and stereotypical in every meaning of the word. He even had a bright white scar that ran in a jagged line across his right cheek.
“This is my mom, and she’s sick,” I said, gesturing down to where she was hunkered on the floor. I didn’t need to explain any further. It was obvious she was ill. “I need to get her to a hospital.”
The man gave me an apologetic smile and shook his head. He took a step towards me, blocking out the entire room, making it impossible for me to see anything other than the mass of his body and smell anything other than the sweat beading across his skin.
