Shattered Grace

by Brook Wilder

  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.

  Shattered Grace copyright @ 2020 by Brook Wilder and Scholae Palatina Inc. All rights reserved. This is an Advanced Review Copy, and 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.

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  BOOKS IN THE ROUGH JESTERS MC SERIES

  BOOK 1: SAVAGE ANGEL

  BOOK 2: BROKEN BEAUTY

  BOOK 3: CORRUPT HONOR

  BOOK 4: RUINED MERCY

  BOOK 5: SINFUL HAVEN

  BOOK 6: TAINTED DESIRE

  BOOK 7: OUTLAW VIRTUE

  BOOK 8: WICKED LEGACY

  BOOK 9: SHATTERED GRACE

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  SHATTERED GRACE

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Epilogue

  SHATTERED GRACE

  Chapter 1

  Jill

  I sat back in the chair, staring at the computer screen in a mixture of horror and pissed-off rage. He had done it. That fucker had found yet another way to screw me over and make me regret the day I had ever met him.

  I hated it.

  Running a hand through my short dark hair, I clicked off the screen, feeling sick. How hard had I worked on that piece? How many hours had I poured into every single word, making sure that they made sense and that my sources were credible?

  How many times had I told him about the piece, showing him proudly just so I could get a grin from him and a pat on the back?

  Now I hated the fact that I had preened under his praise like it had meant something to me. “Bastard,” I muttered under my breath, wanting to throw the laptop out of the window.

  No, I couldn’t afford to do that. He could. He could afford all sorts of things now that he was about to win a Pulitzer.

  A fucking Pulitzer. The one coveted award I wanted on my mantelpiece, on my résumé. Every serious journalist wanted to be known as the best of the best, to be part of an elite group of brilliant people that had reached the pinnacle of their respective careers.

  Of course, that couldn’t happen now. One, I couldn’t prove I had written those words. I had been stupid not backing up my work, handing over my flash drive to him like he could be trusted with it.

  Two, I couldn’t go up against him. There would be too many questions and he would deny everything. Besides, who was everyone going to believe, anyway? A well-respected professor at the University of Texas or a broke journalist who had a fancy degree but nothing to show for it?

  Well, that and a nice hefty student loan too. Now that, I could show them.

  Shaking my head, I pushed away from the desk and stood, stretching my long frame. I wasn’t that person anymore, though I felt like I was back in that classroom, allowing him to run his hand along the front of my shirt, flicking open the buttons slowly.

  I had worn that shirt for him. Heck, half the class had tried to get his attention that year. Julian Elbert had that distinguished air about him, even at fifty, that drew all sorts of attention from his female students.

  I had been one of them. I had been enamored by him, tired of the same games that the guys my age had liked to play. Instead of parties, I had been attending his extra-credit classes, beaming when he would notice with a nod and a slow smile that warmed my insides.

  Then there were one-on-one sessions with Julian (what he preferred to be called), a small, intimate group that consisted of all women hanging onto his every word.

  I had been one of them.

  Somehow, I got the individual attention. He asked me to stay after class one day and that day I realized that I was special to him. I wasn’t like the rest of his students. I had talent and was beautiful to boot, the kind of combination he was looking for in a woman.

  A load of crap was what he fed me.

  It wasn’t long before I was in his bed and we were doing far more than just trading writing pieces. At first, I had been surprised he would even be interested in a student. Julian was well known in social circles in Texas, a permanent fixture on many boards, and involved in many charities.

  Plus, he was a professor and what we were doing was a steamy romance novel, nothing more.

  Now, looking back, I realized he had picked me because I was gullible. I had lapped up everything he had fed me and asked for more, allowing him to draw me into his web of lies and deceit. For two months we snuck around, mainly having our sexcapades at a hotel on the outskirts of town. Julian had explained it was too risky to be seen until I graduated and they couldn’t hold it against us any longer.

  I had believed that line of bullshit too. Had I been the journalist I thought I was, I would have just researched student-teacher relationships and realized they all ended up the same way.

  Julian kept me so occupied with what my future could be, with the notion that he could elevate me immediately to a high-paying position at the New York Times, my dream job. He had connections, he explained, and all he needed was some of my best work to pass along. Then he and I would move to New York and take the town by the storm.

  Yeah, I know. I was stupid.

  My life crashed down around me before I realized it. One minute I was dreaming of New York and my new life after college, the next I was realizing that Julian wasn’t returning my calls or seeking me out. I hunted him down after one of his classes and to my horror, found him and another student getting cozy.

  He never saw me, not once. It was then I realized I had been duped and more than that, used horribly. Like a woman scorned, I went to the board and explained my case, but Julian had been very careful with making sure I had no concrete evidence. There had been no exchange of text messages, no emails, no phone calls. All our conversations had been face-to-face.

  The hotel had been paid with cash and how he had known they didn’t have a security system was beyond me. The employees there denied ever seeing us together.

  Of course, Julian had been outraged that I ‘made up’ our entire affair, discrediting me immediately and stating that I was just another journalism student that had attempted to seduce him.

  I was horrified, but once the news broke, I couldn’t squash it. All of a sudden, I was the most hated person on campus. The news outlets were brutal, especially with Julian playing the wounded victim. The board didn’t take my ‘lying’ lightly, but instead of expelling me, allowed me to finish my remaining classes online.

  It didn’t help. Julian discredited me as a serious journalist before I could graduate. I looked up my name once, online, and found the articles that had been tagged to my name, all about the affair, and my attempts to discredit him.

  I was ruined. My dream job was no longer something I could even conjure
up and every serious news outlet knew my story, making it extremely difficult for them to even accept my résumé, much less think about offering me a job.

  The only thing I could find was an online site that loved gossip to begin with. The pay sucked, but it was enough to put food on the table and keep me in my crummy apartment. For three years I had been writing for them, none of the articles serious enough to garner any sort of reaction.

  And now this.

  I stood and walked over to the sliding glass door, stepping out onto the small balcony that overlooked a highway. The sound of the cars whizzing past soothed me somewhat and I took in lungfuls of air, attempting to clear my head. Julian was now the new head editor at the Times, my job. He was not only raking in the dough but was using my best work to drive his platform for a Pulitzer. Already there was buzz that he was nearly a shoo-in.

  He had stolen my best work for his own personal gain. I felt like an idiot.

  Leaning against the railing, I tried not to let it get to me. What could I do anyway? I had tried and had fallen completely on my face trying to stand up for myself. No one believed me. No one believed that I could write something so great.

  No one believed that Julian had taken advantage of me. Sure, the sex had been consensual, but that hadn’t been what he wanted. He had seen that I actually had talent and that he could use that to his advantage by seducing me and then stealing my work.

  Which was exactly what he had done.

  And now I was suffering for it while he raked in the benefits and rewards.

  I hated him with every fiber of my being.

  Now, though, I was tired of being the victim or the enemy, depending on who you were asking. I was tired of writing fluff pieces to pay the bills. I was tired of being treated like I had done something wrong.

  I was going to show them all that I could compete with the best and probably beat them in the process. I was going to show them that I also meant business.

  I stared at the traffic, tapping my fingers along the railing. There had been some small chatter on some of the sites I followed for news that there was a biker club in Castillo that not only had ties to the cartel war, but also had ties to the CIA. Rumors were beginning to swirl that the CIA had potentially gotten involved with the cartel at some point, though I hadn’t found a source that could confirm it definitively.

  It was a story full of holes but would have explosive results if it turned out to be true.

  I planned on either discrediting it or blowing it wide open. A smile crossed my lips as I thought about Julian’s face when it was me being courted by every news outlet on TV, not the papers. It would be me who would smile and flutter my eyes at their praise, fielding their questions about how I had been able to find such a gem and follow it through without being killed.

  I would be the one basking, not him, and then I would take my heel and grind it in his face when he came begging.

  That was what I needed. This story had to pan out, but in order for it to do so, I needed a source.

  A good one.

  Drawing in a breath, I thought about my steps. I would go to the club and do some staking out myself, hoping that I would find a loose-lipped biker willing to talk to a pretty woman.

  Then I would be in. Using my feminine wiles was something I was used to.

  I walked back inside the apartment and headed to the kitchen, finding a beer in my nearly empty fridge. I was a good journalist. I could write better than most. I just needed a shot at redemption, a way to put my name out there that was not tied to the scandal I had been part of, the scandal that had tried to ruin my career. It wasn’t fair that I had been so young, so naïve to what Julian had done to me. The stars in my eyes had covered up his true nature and that was never going to happen again.

  It was partly why I hadn’t dated since. Sure, I had had some one-night stands since then (I mean, a girl has needs), but trust a man? That wasn’t likely to happen, ever. Julian had ruined that for me.

  So, I was going to show them all. I was going to prove that I was a damn good journalist and take my name beyond the affair, beyond the fact that he had stolen everything from me, and make something else of myself.

  Starting with this story.

  Chapter 2

  Wires

  I grinned as the bank account started to populate, feeling good about myself. Ten down, forty more to go. In less than a month, I had cracked ten of these babies, revealing yet another layer of transactions that hadn’t been seen before.

  And boy, this information was going to shake things up.

  “You must have cracked another one.”

  I looked up at my partner, Sabrina, nodding. “You know it. I’m just that damn good.”

  She stuck up her middle finger. “Watch it. Remember, I got you this job.”

  Holding up my hands, I gave her an apologetic look. “You’re right. I concede. You are the best.”

  She smirked and turned back to her computer, frowning as she looked at the screen. Sabrina wasn’t lying. She was the reason I had gotten this job, one that was completely different than anything I would have thought I would use my IT degree for. When she had approached me about working for a biker club, I had literally laughed in her face. I was far from a biker, just a gangly long-limbed man who spent more of his time in front of a computer than doing anything dangerous.

  Well, you could look at the work I did as dangerous. I could hack into the best of them.

  But the money she had quoted was far more than I could make in any other job and when she had thrown in the caveat that I would have to become a member of the Rough Jesters, I decided it couldn’t kill me.

  So, I had started the initiation process, meeting with Chains, the Rough Jesters’ president, who had sized me up like a tiger would his prey. Yeah, I hadn’t been that impressive back then, but my computer skills were on point and that was what they needed, not another rough handler.

  That was three months ago. I had gone through the courses, learning to do things that I didn’t think I could ever physically do. Over time, I started to gain bulk, and now I carried a gun under my arm just like the rest of them.

  Though I hoped I could stick with the computer work and not actually shoot anyone.

  Still, I didn’t recognize myself in the mirror on some days. There was now a Rough Jester tattoo on my forearm, and a patch on the vest that I slipped on every morning. The gun was there, my hands rough and calloused from hard labor that I had partaken in as part of my training.

  But inside, I still felt like that computer geek that got pushed around in high school.

  “Hey, look at this.”

  I looked over at Sabrina’s screen at the list of codes that had popped up. “Looks like two-factor authentication. You need my help?”

  She laughed, cracking her knuckles. “The day I ask for your help, Wires, is the day I might as well hand over my laptop and call it a day.”

  I smirked, knowing that she was just teasing me. She had, in fact, asked for my help the day she had come to see me about being part of the club. I couldn’t believe what she told me about how she had gotten tangled up with a Rough Jester herself that had been hell-bent on kidnapping her father.

  He had gotten her instead and the rest—I guess you could say—was history. I had known Sabrina for the last ten years. We moved in the same geeky circles and spent a hell of a lot of time online together, both because of our kindred spirits and because of our love for computers.

  Though she was everything I thought I would be attracted to, I thought of her as the little sister I never had instead.

  Which was why I was surprised when she told me she was marrying a biker who was the complete opposite of her. Not only that, but she was a Hell’s Bitch herself, fully sworn in to handle the club’s online duties. I was glad we were working the same job. It was nice to have someone that could relate to your own weirdness.

  “Odd,” Sabrina was saying, sitting back in her chair. “There’s some new activit
y in the accounts I thought were just dummy accounts.”

  I looked over at her screen and whistled. “That’s a shitload of money moving around there.”

  “Yeah,” she echoed, a frown on her face. “I don’t know what to think of it. I mean, I just checked these accounts two weeks ago and it had been months since anything had been moved through them, but now, this. It’s just odd.”

  All of it was just odd. She had filled me in on the war with the cartel and how her father had gotten tangled up with dangerous group. Then, on top of it all, she had thrown in casually that the CIA was involved in all this as well. The names being thrown around were shocking, including the fact that there was a CIA agent in their ranks now hooked up with a former female biker.

  If this all wasn’t so serious, it would make for a damn good reality show.

  “I’m going to try and trace the account activity,” she decided, sitting up again. “Maybe we can find out where the money came from.”