by Brook Wilder
“Good, you owe me a weekend.”
Sydney grinned as I moved over her, touching my face with her hand.
“Well then, do your worst.”
EPILOGUE
Neil “Deadeye” Wheeler
Three hours from Cibolo
I drummed my fingers on the scarred table, watching each person as they walked into the bar. It was late afternoon, but the interior of the bar made it feel like night, the smoky atmosphere already full despite the time of day.
I hated bars. Even in my youth I had tended to stay away from them, not liking the claustrophobic feeling of having people crammed into a small space. As much as I would rather have been anywhere else than here, I was here for a reason.
A damn good one.
The waitress stopped by, a wide smile on her overly painted face.
“Another beer?”
“Sure,” I said, handing her the empty bottle. “Bring two while you are at it darling.”
She nodded, giving me a wink before disappearing in the crowd. She had already slipped me her number with the last beer, and as much as I could use a quick fuck outside, I had bigger things to do.
That, and I couldn’t afford the distraction. After a year of hunting down my own brothers, traitors to the Horsemen name, I was starting to make headway on the road that led to Grayson Barnes.
Disgust crawled over my skin as I thought about the former vice president of the Devil’s Horsemen. At one time I had looked up to him, as many of the younger members had. Hell, even Grant Travis had treated him like family, entrusting that his right-hand man had his back regardless of what happened.
But that hadn’t been the case. Grayson, in an attempt to take over the top seat, had kidnapped Harley Travis, Grant’s youngest daughter, and gotten many of our brothers killed in the process. Some were still recovering, making our numbers pitifully slim.
I had been given the task of hunting down any traitors to the Horsemen name, and over the last year I had killed more than I cared to count. Guys I had once shared a beer with, some that had been good friends, staring at the end of the gun as I ended their life. Some had begged, but most had been resigned to the fact that the undocumented assassin for the DHMC had found them. Their traitorous ways could not go unpunished.
Shifting in the seat, I watched the crowd, looking for one in particular. He was supposedly Grayson’s right-hand man now and would likely know where the former head was hiding. If I could find him, then I might end this year of bloodshed and heartache that night.
God knows I wanted to be done with it. Months on the road had taken its toll on me, and I was ready to be back home, moving on with my life.
The sound of a familiar laugh caught my ear and I turned, my blood turning to ice as I took in the familiar form. Shit. What was she doing here? Of all the things I could have seen, I hadn’t anticipated seeing her.
Swallowing, I watched as she talked to the woman next to her, her long hair swaying to the music that played from the speakers overhead. I knew every inch of that body, every freckle that graced her skin. Even now my cock hardened against my jeans, remembering our times together as well.
I couldn’t let her see me. Roxanne had been everything to me but also my own worst enemy, and we were apart for a damn good reason.
It wouldn’t be good to drum up anything from that time, not today.
I stood and threw some bills on the table, pushing through the crowd as I headed for the exit. I would find the asshole another day.
“Deadeye Wheeler, what brings your ugly face around here?”
I turned and stared down the ugly biker in front of me.
“Who the hell are you?”
The biker sneered, showing his tobacco stained teeth.
“You don’t remember me. That’s fine. I am going to cut that tongue out of your lying mouth and feed it to my dogs.”
I held up my hands as he pulled out a knife, a sneer crossing my face.
“I’m sure you don’t want to do that, partner.”
“Oh, I want to do that and more,” he said, passing the knife from hand to hand. “You killed my brother, and I have been waiting a long time to get revenge.”
Great. This is not what I needed.
The patrons of the bar were backing away as I pulled my own knife, seeing no recourse other than to kill the fucker and move on. The glint in his eye told me that he would bury the knife in my back the moment I turned away from him, which only gave me one option.
“You want some?” I asked with a feral grin. “Come get some.”
The biker growled and lunged with his knife. I sidestepped him and watched as he stumbled to catch his balance, palming my knife lightly in my own hand. By the looks of it, I was going to be shedding his fucker’s blood all over this bar in a matter of minutes.
He snarled and lunged at me again, but again not fast enough.
“Give it up,” I challenged him as he stumbled into the crowd. “Don’t make me kill you.”
“You don’t have a soul!” he shouted. “You killed my brother in cold blood.”
“Your brother was an asshole,” I growled, not even sure who his brother was at this point.
I didn’t make it a point to know all their names or their faces, only that I had gotten the job done and moved on. That was what Grant Travis was paying me to do.
“Looks like it runs in the family.”
He lunged, and I caught him midair, slamming my knife into his belly and feeling the immediate warmth of his blood on my hands. The man made a sound, but I ignored it, pulling out the knife and letting him fall to the floor. A gut wound was a nasty one, but I doubted it would kill him.
If he got treatment in time.
“Y-you stabbed me!” he wailed as I wiped my knife on my jeans and sheathed it back into place.
“That’s what happens when you play with knives,” I muttered, looking at the horrified faces staring back at me. “Enjoy your afternoon folks.”
Stalking toward the door, I could feel everyone’s eyes on my back, the tension in the room thick enough to… well, cut with a knife. There would be stories, but no one would call the cops on this one. Hell, half the room was wanted by the cops anyway.
A motion caught my eye and I found myself staring at Roxanne, my bloodied hand on the door. Her eyes were cold, not full of the warmth I had been used to all those years ago, with no hint of tenderness on her gorgeous face. I didn’t bother to smile a her, knowing what was running through her mind about me.
“Rox.”
She gave a hollow laugh.
“Seems you haven’t changed one-bit, Neil.”
I shook my head.
“Were you expecting someone different?”
She crossed her arms over her chest, her generous breasts shifting with the movement and threatening to spill out of her top. Damn she looked great and smelled even better.
“No,” she bit out. “Once a killer, always a killer.”
I gave her a slight grin as I pushed open the door, letting the sunlight into the dim interior.
“What you see is what you get sweetheart. You look good, Rox.”
She made a strangled sound as I walked out into the hot Texas heat. I would see her again, no doubt about it.
END OF BOOK 1
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Rox
I stood at the back door, feeling a world of emotions swirling around in my body, threatening to overcome me at any moment. I had put this off for four months, dealing with my grief in ways I didn’t want to even think about. When people said there was
a step-by-step process to grief, I had never believed them, thinking it was some crock of shit to get the whole therapy business going.
But now… well, I probably needed some therapy at this moment.
I straightened my shoulders, fiddling around with inserting the key into the lock. I didn’t have to do this by myself. More than one person had offered to come with me, to even do it themselves, but I knew my brother would not want strangers rifling through his stuff.
As if he would care now.
Turning the key, I pushed open the door, and the immediate smell of stale cigarettes hit me full force. Leo had never been one to smoke outside, much preferring to do it wherever he was standing.
“Why the fuck would I want to smoke while freezing my balls off?” he had asked me once. “It’s my damn house. I can smoke in there if I want to.”
I hadn’t disagreed. It was his house, after all. It was understood that you would come out smelling like an ash tray after a visit. I had given him hell about it of course, being his younger bratty sister. I got more middle fingers than I cared to mention, always done with love.
But I wouldn’t have that happen now. I wouldn’t see his grin when I came over to have our weekly supper, nor would I hear him call me ‘Red’, a nod to my fiery red hair.
Tears clouded my vision as I stepped inside and shut the door, taking a moment to allow the tears to flow down my cheeks. Leo Tate had been everything to me, my only sibling, whom I’d looked up to dearly. He had been my best friend, my rock, and though we both hadn’t had an easy childhood, it had been Leo that had protected me from our father’s fists, Leo who had taken the blows himself, so I could escape.
Who was going to protect me now?
Sliding down the door, I sat on the cold tile of the kitchen, staring at the doorway that led to the rest of his small house. Any minute, he was going to come around that corner and laugh at me for crying like this. Any minute, he was going to scoop me up in one of his famous hugs.
Why had he died instead of me? The pain… I couldn’t take it. There had been a moment after his death when my life had fallen apart, when I had considered joining him. I had no family other than him, nothing in my life that meant a damn. It would have been too easy to take some pills or drown myself in my bathtub and just give up.
But there had been a small voice that nagged me every time I had considered it, urging me to fight in his name and never let this earth forget Leo Tate.
Wiping my face with my hand, I picked myself up off the floor and walked over to the cabinet to locate a trash bag, so that I could start my clean out. Four months this house had sat silent, and over the last few weeks I had started to think about moving in. My crap apartment was the size of a closet, and I knew that Leo’s house was paid off, paid with cash that I knew had come from his time with the motorcycle club, The Devil’s Horsemen. The club had been everything to my brother, the family we’d never had, and there had been a moment… well, I thought I could have been a part of that family as well.
Anger filled my veins as I yanked open the fridge and started dumping the spoiled food into the trash bag. There had been a time in my life when I’d thought everything was lining up for the Tate children. Leo was happy, and I had finally gotten with the man I thought would make me just as happy.
But that had not been the case. In fact, Neil Wheeler was the reason Leo was not here in this house today.
Blowing out a breath, I moved on to the drawers in the fridge, throwing away anything that was in there as well. Seeing Neil two weeks ago had been a jolt to my entire body, sending me hurtling back to the days that were not full of pain and anguish. My heart had stopped as I took in his muscular form, dressed in his customary black outfit. I had sworn to him at one time that he had no color in his closet, even going as far as to buy him a shirt that reminded me of his eyes.
Oh, those eyes… They were a show-stopper.
“No,” I said aloud to an empty house.
I wasn’t going there. After years of lusting after Neil, I had succeeded in getting his attention and ultimately into my bed.
And it had cost me everything.
Finishing the fridge, I put the bag by the door and forced myself to walk down the hall, pausing at Leo’s bedroom. I was going to give nearly all of his clothes to the thrift shop, keeping only a few pieces for myself. In fact, there would only be a few things of my brother’s I would keep. I wanted to turn this house into a place for me and not a shrine to him. At some point, I had to move on from his death.
The bed was still unmade, the covers thrown on the floor as if my brother had just crawled out of it. I sighed as I walked over and laid my hand on the covers, the cold seeping through my skin. That day I’d got the call, I had been at my beauty shop not far from here.
It had been the worst day of my life.
“Oh, Leo!” I whispered. “What were you doing?”
Silence greeted me. My brother had been dumped in a ditch outside town, still wearing his DHMC vest. I had that vest, bloodstain and all, back in my apartment, tucked away in a box. The club had been such a huge part of his life, and I knew he wouldn’t want me to burn it, though I wanted to. I wanted to burn the entire club down, along with a few people inside. They had turned their back on my brother, and one of their own had killed them.
The one I had least expected to do something like that.
Sitting down on the bed, I placed my head in my hands, the memories of my childhood hitting me flat in the face. Neil Wheeler had lived next door to us. Leo and Neil had been good friends growing up, getting into trouble together and planning one day to be part of one of the bike gangs in Cibolo, Texas.
I, on the other hand, was the gangly little sister, with stars in her eyes every time I interacted with Neil Wheeler. My crush on him literally started from birth, and even though he didn’t give me any indication that he would be interested in me one day, I hadn’t given up.
Especially the time my brother found out about my little crush.
***
‘Roxanne Wheeler’.
‘Roxy Wheeler’.
‘Rox Wheeler’.
I frowned as I looked at the doodles on the page. While ‘Roxanne’ sounded so sophisticated, ‘Roxy’ was sexy.
And if I was to be with Neil, I had to be sexy.
The problem was, I had no curves like the girls I had seen him with lately. He clearly preferred big boobs and a butt to match, and I had neither.
I doubted he was going to go for my charming personality, or the fact that I could tell him all his favorite things, from his food to the shows he liked to watch on TV. I knew everything about Neil Wheeler, everything.
My bedroom door burst open, and I froze on the bed, half expecting my father to storm into the room. He was still pissed about the grades I had brought him yesterday, and while Leo had stopped him from hitting me, I knew it was only going to be a matter of time before he got his hands on me.
“You scared me,” I scolded my brother, sitting up.
“Sorry,” Leo said, grinning. “I just wanted to tell you that I won’t be home tonight.”
A shiver of fear ran through me, knowing what that meant for me. I would have to bolt my door tonight.
“What are you doing?”
He shook his head as he walked to the bed, sitting next to me.
Leo was seventeen, and I knew I would be lucky to have him another year in this home. Once he left, there would only be me and my mom to take the brunt of my father’s wrath.
“You don’t need to know that. It’s probably better you don’t, so if someone asks, you won’t have to lie.”
I gave him a little shrug. Then it must be something dangerous or illegal. He shifted, and my notebook fell on the floor.
“I’ll get it,” I said quickly.
He got there first, picking it up and reading the contents on the page.
“What the hell is this, Red?”
My cheeks burned.
“It’s nothi
ng, just some doodling. Give it back.”
He held it just out of my reach, his gaze narrowed.
“You have a thing for Neil.”
“I-I do not,” I said with very little conviction, as I reached for the notebook.
“Yes, you do,” he breathed. “How have I not seen this before now?”
I crossed my arms over my chest, giving him a look.
