by Kasey Krane
Spike (Iron Thunder MC #5
Kasey Krane
Savannah Rylan
Copyright © 2020 by Kasey Krane & Savannah Rylan
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.
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Contents
1. Spike
2. Sabrina
3. Spike
4. Sabrina
5. Spike
6. Sabrina
7. Spike
8. Sabrina
9. Spike
10. Sabrina
11. Spike
12. Sabrina
13. Spike
14. Sabrina
15. Spike
16. Sabrina
17. Spike
18. Sabrina
19. Spike
20. Sabrina
About Kasey Krane
More Books by Kasey Krane
About Savannah Rylan
More Books by Savannah Rylan
1
Spike
I think I woke up because I was suddenly freezing. It was as if the cold had sunk somewhere deep inside me, into my bones and deep in my organs. I sat up in bed with a start, looking around the dark room and realized I wasn’t in my own room. This wasn’t my bed.
I should have been perfectly warm. There was a thick blanket tucked neatly around me. The windows in the room were shut tight, and in fact, I was sweating. I was damp with sweat.
I pushed the covers off me. Where the fuck was I? I couldn’t remember what happened. Why I was here. I swung my legs over the side of the bed and tried to stand up. That was when I felt the sharp pain that threw me back. It was as if someone’s cold hands had grabbed me by the shoulders and thrust me backward.
I growled in anger and pain. I was angry because I was in pain. I couldn’t even decipher what the source of the pain was. It was as if my brain was swimming. I couldn’t focus on one spot. I tried to sit up again but my body spasmed.
“Spike, no!” I heard a voice but I couldn’t see anything. It was a female voice I didn’t recognize. Then a dull light filled the room as though someone had switched on a lamp somewhere. “You need to stay in bed. Don’t try to get up.”
The voice came closer and through the haze of my vision, I could see a face hovering over me now. I flinched when she put her hands on my shoulders. I couldn’t place her. I didn’t know who she was.
“Please, lie back down. Here, have these pillows.”
I blinked rapidly, trying to clear the fog, but it wouldn’t go away. She was fluffing up pillows and then trying to pull me back so I was straight on the bed again.
“What the fuck is going on?” I growled and realized I was parched. My lips felt chapped and stuck together. I could barely get the words out.
“I know it’s going to be very confusing for you, but you please need to stay calm. Ghost will be back any minute now.”
Ghost? I looked around the room, peering to see. Now it was beginning to look familiar. Had I been in here before? Was this Ghost’s bedroom? His cabin in the woods? What was I doing here?
She gently pushed and pulled me, helping me recline against the back of the bed.
“Spike, come on, look at me,” she urged. I turned to focus on her again. By now, I was beginning to see more clearly. Yes, I knew this face. I knew who she was. Mercy. Ghost’s new woman.
“What the fuck is going on?” I asked again. They were the only words I could fathom right now.
“You’ve been stabbed, but you’re going to be alright,” she said and picked up a glass of water with a straw and held it out to me.
“Do you remember what happened?” Mercy asked, pulling up a chair to sit beside me on the bed.
There was a lump in my throat. It felt as if it was dry and chafing. It hurt to gulp but I drank more of that water anyway. No, I couldn’t remember anything and it was fucking with my head. Mercy was studying me closely.
She used to be a stripper at the Silver Knights’ strip club, Teasers, but now it was coming back to me—she was also a nurse. She had to get into stripping because she couldn’t afford to finish nursing school and look after her sick grandmother.
“It’s okay, it happens sometimes when you’ve experienced trauma. I’m sure it will all come back to you,” she said, cutting through my thoughts.
I took more thirsty sips of the water, even though it hurt to swallow.
“Where is Ghost?” I choked out the words. I slipped a hand under the covers when I remembered I actually didn’t know where my wound was. Mercy said I was stabbed but how badly? Where?
She saw my movements under the covers and knew what I was trying to do.
“He called Church at the clubhouse. He’s going over the plans with the others, but he will be back soon.”
My hand fumbled on my torso. It was as if I was numb all over, even though there was a searing pain inside me. I couldn’t locate the source of that pain. Then I found the bandage. It was clearly Mercy’s job.
It was on my side but stretched over a part of my stomach too. I had an urge to pull apart the bandage so I could feel what was really going on underneath.
“He missed your kidney narrowly, that would have been very bad,” she said.
I looked up at her and saw she was trying hard to not look worried.
“But this…this will just take a few days for you to recover. As long as you take it easy and follow all my advice.” She smiled lightly then but I was in no mood to smile.
“Eagle did this,” I growled. Mercy remained silent.
“We didn’t see it happen, but we’re sure it was him. You were out looking for him and we figured he was around here somewhere.”
I pressed my eyes closed, trying to remember but I couldn’t. I had no idea what I was doing before I woke up in this room. What led to the stabbing? Why wasn’t I able to take him down?
I slammed the glass down on the bedside table. I could feel the rage and frustration rising in me again. Mercy must have sensed it too because she stood up. Maybe she wasn’t sure of what my reaction could be. It wasn’t as if we knew each other well.
“I’ll give you some privacy, but you stay here. You can let me know if you need anything. I’ll just be out there in the kitchen.”
I had my jaws clenched as I watched her retreat to the door.
“Spike, please, it’s my professional opinion that you should take it easy right now if you want to give yourself a chance to fully recover,” she said, and then she was gone.
How was I supposed to just lie in bed like a fuckin’ invalid when that motherfucker Eagle was still out there?
He was the reason for all the chaos our MC had been facing the past year. Over and over again, our business and our men were affected. We came close to losing our power and our allies, but we managed to fight back each time.
All this time, we thought the Silver Knights’ President, Crash, was responsible for all the shit they were pulling. But then we managed to capture him and realized it was his VP, Eagle. Crash was too high and addicted to heroin to have made any of those decisions himself. Eagle was the one who got him hooked. He was the one who made all the plans about pulling us down and wiping us out.
Now that we managed to take over Silver Knights’ Clubhouse and some of their territory, their MC scattered but Eagle was trying to resurrect them from the ashes. He was in hiding. Like a little scum rat. He knew he couldn’t come out in the open and face us like a man. He was trying to operat
e in the dark, trying to regain power and control of the Silver Knights.
We were out looking for him. Keeping our ear to the ground to try and find him. Ghost got close. He found the cabin he was holed up in, but Eagle had Mercy in his possession and Ghost prioritized saving her life over capturing him.
This was exactly the reason why I made a vow to never get involved with a chick. Not in a serious way. I couldn’t blame Ghost. She was now his woman and it was obvious to me that he had feelings for her. But I was not going to put myself in that position. I didn’t want to have any liabilities and weaknesses.
I was in bed, just as Mercy instructed me. Staring up at the ceiling in Ghost’s bedroom. I was trying to remember, trying to retrace my steps. Where would I have gone in search of Eagle? Did I get any new information on him? Did he intercept me? He stabbed me. So I got close enough to him for this kind of injury.
I couldn’t just lie in bed anymore. My mind was spinning out of control and I needed to move my limbs. Maybe if I went out, back into the woods, tried retracing my steps that way.
I tried to climb out of bed again and that pain shot up my spine, making me growl like a wild caged animal. Fuck that. I’d just have to work through it. I wasn’t going to lie in bed forever.
“Where do you think you’re going?” I heard a voice and looked up to find Ghost at the door. He was shaking his head disapprovingly at me.
“I don’t fuckin’ remember what happened, but I must have been close enough to get stabbed. So I was close enough to bringing him in myself, alone, I should be able to do it again,” I argued. Ghost was in the chair beside the bed now. Mercy was standing at the back, still looking concerned.
I knew what she was concerned about—that I might somehow be able to convince Ghost to go back out there and help them find Eagle.
“Yeah, you got close. You got very close, but you don’t need to worry about that motherfucker right now.”
“And what am I supposed to do instead? Just shut off my brain and lay here in your house like a cripple?” I snarled the words. Ghost glared at me. I couldn’t even count the years we had been friends for. Brothers in arms. And yet, I knew he was about to pull rank on me right now. He was the MC’s VP after all.
“You’re not going anywhere. You get that in your head right now. If you start moving around, you could seriously injure yourself.”
“According to Mercy?” I growled and I knew I’d said the wrong thing.
Behind him, she hung her head. I knew she was having trouble fitting in. She was a stripper who used to work for Eagle and Crash. Our MC had already taken a long time to get used to the idea that she was now Ghost’s woman. Add the nurse-thing to the mix and it was pretty obvious why she was so self-conscious around us.
“Mercy is doing her job. This is why she’s here, why she’s a part of the team now. You have no choice but to accept her professional opinion.” Ghost was trying to be firm even though I could see the frustration behind his eyes.
A part of me knew I had to apologize for disrespecting his woman, but the other, stronger part of me, wanted to get out of this bed and room. I was beginning to feel like a captive.
“Spike, please, take my advice. It’s just for a few days. I can give you some medication that will help you sleep if that is the problem.”
“No! No drugs!” I growled.
Ghost and Mercy exchanged looks again.
“Okay, you don’t have to take the drugs if you don’t want to, but it’s the MC’s unanimous decision that you need to be put on light duty for a while.”
“Light duty? What the fuck are you talking about?” I didn’t even know what that meant.
“We have been given a new assignment. We were thinking of putting one of the prospects on the job, but now I think you would be perfect for it.”
“You want to give me a prospect’s job?”
“It is actually pretty important. This could open up a whole new avenue for our MC.”
I had my jaws clenched in anger. I knew Ghost was trying to build up this job to make it sound more attractive to me. I didn’t even want to hear about it. I’d already decided I didn’t want to take it.
“You’ll be working with the mayor of this town, and you can guess what that will mean for the MC,” Ghost continued and now there was a big smile spreading on his face.
“The mayor?”
“Jeffrey Wyndham.”
“You fuckin’ serious?” I ran a hand through my hair and again the pain on my side intensified. A quick reminder that I wasn’t going anywhere right now.
“Totally. He is in the market for discretion.”
“You need to be clearer than that.”
“He needs protection, or actually, his daughter needs protection, apparently. Her life has been threatened and he doesn’t trust hiring someone government-approved. He doesn’t think it would work that way.”
“This shit is already starting to bore me.”
“Well, this shit is what you’re going to have to do for a while. Until you’ve made a full recovery.”
I glare at Mercy. “She just said I need a few days.”
“A few days till you can be up and on your feet again,” she explained.
I rubbed a hand over my face, working through the pain that was beginning to numb one side of my body now.
“We can’t have you on the field just yet, Spike. It’s what everyone at Church thought and agreed upon. Plus, we need someone reliable and good at the job. Making a good impression on Wyndham is key. This could be huge for us. Connections in the right places could go a long way for us.”
Ghost was trying to speak calmly, even though he could see the frustration on my face.
I grumbled and cursed under my breath.
“You want me to sit around all day, watching and spying on some kid?”
“She’s not a kid. She’s a young woman. Currently, she’s on her way back from a trip to Europe.”
I rolled my eyes. I was well aware of those types. Prissy with a stick up their asses. She didn’t sound like the kind of chick I wanted to be around.
“Find someone else to do it. Give it to one of the prospects. I’m sure they’ll jump at the opportunity.”
Ghost stood up from the chair. He clapped his hands together. Clearly, he’d had enough.
“You’re fuckin’ doing it and that is an order.”
I thrust myself further back in the bed, feeling like a teenager who had just been grounded by a parent.
“Just take it fuckin’ easy for a while? Then you can be out there getting stabbed in your stomach again in no time,” Ghost said at the door. I glared at him but he smiled. “Glad you’re still alive, man.”
Then he was gone. What the fuck was I supposed to do now?
2
Sabrina
I couldn’t hear anything besides the metal music playing loudly in my ears. I had headphones on, and I figured nobody else would be able to guess what kind of music I was listening to.
I looked to my side and saw the clouds out the window; puffy and pillowy. For a minute I imagined myself floating out there, just flying along, taking a turn, and flying away. Somewhere far where nobody knew me.
I blinked, pulling myself back into my reality again. I was in First Class, with a glass of champagne by my side. The strawberries had sunk to the bottom of the glass. There were more strawberries on a dish with cream on the side if I wanted it.
If daddy was here with me, he’d give me ‘the look’ if he saw me coating the strawberries in cream. He was always concerned about my weight. What I ate. How I looked. Way more than I would have been if I wasn’t around him. Way more than it was healthy for a father to be.
And I was no fool. I knew exactly why he cared so much. It had nothing to do with my health or my own benefit, but he wanted all his associates, friends, and rivals to be jealous of him. Jealous of the fact that he had a beautiful daughter who knew how to look after herself.
I pierced two strawberries
with a toothpick and dunked them in the ramekin of cream. It smeared my mouth as I chewed and I didn’t even bother wiping it off.
Only a few more hours until I was back in his presence. Which meant that I only had a few more hours of being myself; sitting how I wanted, looking the way I wanted, eating whatever I craved. I drank more of the champagne. It was beginning to make me a little woozy and that made the flight a little bearable.
Sometimes I felt guilty. Daddy was the only family I had, and most other girls would probably be jealous that I had a father like him. The mayor of New York. A man with unmeasurable wealth and power. Technically, I could have whatever I wanted.
But they wouldn’t see I was a prisoner. I had no freedoms. I was a puppet in my father’s hands and had been all my life. I was brought up through childhood to serve his needs and ambitions. No matter where I went or tried to hide; I would never be able to escape his reach.
All I could do now was sit back in my chair and wait. Wait for my next marching orders. I was sure daddy already had a couple of plans up his sleeve for me.
Most other people would have been happy and even relieved to finally go home after so many months away, but all I felt was exhaustion and bitterness. I didn’t know how I was going to face it, so I ordered another champagne instead.
When I got up from my seat, I felt shaky on my feet. I caught one of the flight attendant’s eyes, and he jumped in my direction because he could see I was unsteady. Maybe he even knew who I was and had been instructed to keep an eye on me. To make sure I was having an extra comfortable flight.
