by Atlas, Lilly
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Author Note
Blurb
Prologue
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
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Epilogue
FB Group
Author Note Amazon
About the Author
Little Jack
Hell’s Handlers Book 6
Lilly Atlas
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Copyright © 2019 Lilly Atlas
All rights reserved.
Other books by Lilly Atlas
No Prisoners MC
Hook: A No Prisoners Novella
Striker
Jester
Acer
Lucky
Snake
Trident Ink
Escapades
Hell’s Handlers MC
Zach
Maverick
Jigsaw
Copper
Rocket
Little Jack
Audiobooks
Audio
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Holly Lane has spent her life under the crushing thumbs of her cop father and controlling mother. Now, well into her twenties, she’s finally getting a fresh start and moving into her own apartment. Breaking away from her parents should be easy, but how can Holly begrudge their overprotective nature when their other daughter was murdered by an outlaw biker years ago?
With his brand-spankin’ new patch, Little Jack has a satisfying life in the Hell’s Handlers MC. Sure, the town’s new sheriff is messing with his club, but it’s nothing they can’t handle. Life only gets better when LJ’s dream woman walks out of his fantasies and into the vacant apartment next to his. Holly is sweet as sugar, curvy in ways that make LJ’s mouth water, and the woman can bake like no other. Personal demons keep LJ from chasing a long-term relationship with any woman, but that doesn’t mean he can’t have a little fun with his hot new neighbor.
Holly is pretty sure life is finally on the right track when she meets LJ on her first day in town. Incredibly tall, bearded, tattooed, and strong enough to unload her car without breaking a sweat, her new neighbor just might be perfect.
With outrageous chemistry and a genuine liking for each other, Holly and LJ seem destined for an explosive encounter until a tornado rolls through their budding relationship in the form of Holly’s father. As the new town sheriff, her father only has one item on his agenda: eliminate the Hell’s Handlers MC.
PROLOGUE
STARING AT HER own face on a corpse in a coffin topped the list as the most surreal experience of Holly’s twelve years. So bizarre, the shock overrode her grief. A truth she wouldn’t have thought possible when she woke up that morning, eyes swollen and tear stains on her pillow. Or when she finally fell asleep the night before, with a crater in her heart.
But it was true. Holly was so stunned by the sight before her, she forgot to be sad.
She closed her eyes and softly counted aloud to ten. Tightening her grip on the edge of the unforgiving wooden pew, she opened her eyes only to find herself gazing at her own image once again. Her shoulders sagged as all the air left her body and the hole in her heart seemed to grow in size. As it had at least a hundred times over the past two weeks, the exercise proved futile.
Reality hadn’t changed.
Holly still had a front-row seat to exactly what she would have looked like had she died instead of her twin. Her best friend. Her other half. The person she loved most. And the sentiment was mutual.
Or it had been mutual. Now, Holly was left loving Joy just as much, but not having that love returned. Because Joy was gone.
“Joy,” she choked out on a sob as pain once again exploded its way through her body. She hadn’t thought anything could hurt more than that time she’d cracked a rib trying to catch a baseball her older brother threw to her. Instead of catching it with her mitt, the ball slammed into her body. This made that experience seem like getting hit with a cotton ball.
Some funeral worker had wound Joy’s hair into two long, tight braids that lay over her shoulders and ran halfway down her torso. Her favorite hairstyle. Both their favorites. Neither wanted the hassle of dealing with long hair, but their mother insisted they not cut it. Braids at least kept the too-long locks from being totally annoying. Other than wearing far more makeup than Joy would have been allowed or would have wanted in life, she looked like herself, but peaceful. As though she were sleeping. But Joy never slept on her back. She was a stomach sleeper all the way. Not Holly, she much preferred to sleep on her back. Like a corpse, Joy used to tease. Now the sentiment had new meaning, and Holly would probably never sleep that way again.
Though nearly impossible to tell apart by sight, their personalities couldn’t have been more different. Joy was outgoing, brave, rebellious, and so much fun to be around. The embodiment of her name. Holly was far more introverted. Happy to spend her free time in the kitchen baking instead of out causing trouble. “Holly and Joy,” their mom always said. “Two different cookies shaped from the same cookie cutter.” That’s right, born on Christmas Eve, her parents named their identical twin girls Holly and Joy.
A fact that used to make Holly gag, but now that Joy was gone both literally and figuratively, she’d give anything to hear someone chuckle over their names.
“Could have been worse,” Joy had always liked to say when Holly complained about the cheesiness of their names. “If we were boys, we might be Frosty and Rudolf. Or they coulda called us Jingle and Belle.” The ridiculous argument always led to them trying to one-up each other, thinking of the most outrageous Christmas themed names their parents could have dreamed up.
“Fuck,” Holly whispered as a sharp pang pierced her already battered heart. Thankfully, her parents were out by the funeral home’s exit, seeing off the last of the mourners, so no one was around to hear her swear. Mamma Lane didn’t abide by her pre-teen daughters cussing. Nothing pissed her off more.
“I’m so sorry, Joy,” Holly whispered. “I should have gone with you. Maybe if we’d both been there—” She shuddered, unable to finish that sentence as guilt once again swamped. Even though it’d been a constant emotion over the past few weeks, the crushing feeling still killed her. The logical side of her knew that had she been with Joy that day, there could be two coffins side by side at the front of the room. But the part that loved her sister beyond reason blamed herself for not saving Joy.
Maybe whoever kidn
apped, and eventually murdered half of Holly’s heart would have been deterred by the prospect of going after two kids instead of just one. Or maybe she could have fought off the attacker while Joy ran for help. Or maybe she could have done…something, anything to prevent sitting in a room with her sister’s corpse. The maybes and what-ifs had torn her apart over the past few weeks and probably would for the rest of her life.
How was she supposed to go on without Joy? They’d been so excited to turn thirteen in a few months. Ready to enter their teen years as a unit. They often spoke about going to college together, someday getting an apartment in Tampa, and eventually marrying another set of twins. Together forever.
Now it was all over. Gone in an instant.
Holly felt so lost and alone. Constantly cold as though all the warmth had faded from her life with Joy’s death.
And the added sense of responsibility was overwhelming. How she spent the remainder of her life just became twice as important as it had been only two weeks ago. Now, she was no longer living for herself, but for two. And she refused to let Joy down by living half a life.
“I promise, Joy-Joy,” she whispered to the lifeless body in the shiny black coffin with a silky yellow interior—Joy’s favorite color. Bright and cheery. Just like her twin’s personality. “I promise I will live every day to the max. For you.”
Silence was the only response, of course, because dead bodies didn’t speak, no matter how hard Holly wished otherwise. With a thousand-pound weight resting on her chest, Holly finally stood and walked toward the coffin. She’d been waiting for a private moment away from all the pitying gazes. All four of her limbs seemed to grow heavy as though she was slogging through thick mud.
When she reached the coffin, Holly dug half of the Best Friend’s necklace out of her pocket. It was one of those hearts split down the middle with best on one side and friends on the other. A trinket they’d purchased a few years ago with their allowance money. Though they’d never taken it off in life, Holly’s mother hadn’t wanted Joy to wear it today. She thought it not classy enough.
But there was no way Holly would allow that coffin to be put in the ground without Joy’s half of the necklace. Afraid to disturb the peace Joy’s body seemed to have found, she didn’t clasp it around her sister’s neck but hid it under her palm instead. Then she held onto the charm of her own necklace as she let the tears fall. “Goodbye, J-Joy,” she said, then pressed a kiss to her sister’s forehead. “I’ll wear this for the rest of my life.”
“Holly? Holly, where are you?” Her father’s panicked voice sounded from the hallway outside the visitation room.
She should call out. Alert him to where she was. The poor man had just lost a child in the most traumatic of ways, but all of a sudden, exhaustion hit so hard, she couldn’t summon the energy to shout back.
“Holly?” Pounding footsteps drew closer until they came to a stop somewhere behind her in the visitation room. “Jesus, Holly. What’s wrong with you? Do you have any idea how worried your mother was when we couldn’t find you?”
As she turned away from the coffin, Holly used every last bit of her fledgling strength to bite her tongue. For the past two hours, family, friends, and what seemed like a thousand police officers from around the state had paraded in and out of the memorial service.
For her dead twin sister.
Throughout the entire ritual, Holly sat with her butt rooted to the very seat she now returned to. She didn’t cry, didn’t speak with any of the guests, didn’t move a muscle. Just stared at her sister. Most mourners seemed to understand without words that she needed this time to be with her sister. So where did her parents think she would be?
This should have been the very first place they looked before anyone even edged toward worry. She was trying, really trying to remember their grief was just as consuming as hers, but they’d changed over the past two weeks. They’d changed when Holly needed them most, and it was so hard to deal with the loss of Joy and the change in her parents at the same time.
“Been right here the whole time, Dad,” Holly said as her father approached. He sat, leaving an empty seat between them. No hug, not even so much as a pat on the back for comfort. That wasn’t her father’s style. All he had to offer was a burning desire to punish whoever it was that took Joy from them.
“Well, your mother was scared shitless. You should have let her know you planned to stay in here.” His eyes narrowed, and the expression of near disgust wasn’t lost on her. As though he couldn’t stand to look at her face now that the other half of her was missing.
Welcome to the club.
Holly sunk her teeth into her lower lip so hard she made herself jump. “Just been sittin’ here. Haven’t moved.”
He grunted. It wasn’t often she saw him in his police uniform these days. Not since he’d been promoted to detective and wore civilian clothes ninety-five percent of the time. Today, he looked so official in the crisply pressed navy-blue uniform. With the same blonde hair she and Joy shared along with those blue eyes, she and her twin were clearly their father’s daughters.
“Come on,” he said, voice thick with regret as he stared at the lifeless body of his child. “Y-your mother’s waiting in the car. She wants to get to the cemetery before everyone else. After that, everyone is coming to the house. Gonna be a long afternoon.” Holly couldn’t help but notice the trembling in his hands and the agony written all across his face.
More socializing. All Holly wanted to do was curl up with Joy’s childhood stuffed giraffe and hide under the covers for the next week. But instead, she had to spend the day schmoozing people who pitied her.
Holly rose and started for the exit. Each step felt like she was leaving her sister behind and the urge to turn back, run to Joy, and hold on with everything she had was nearly impossible to resist.
“Hol?” her dad called out.
She turned to see him still staring at Joy, silent tears on his cheeks. Her heart softened. She knew she’d been difficult over the past two weeks. Angry at them, angry at herself, angry at the whole world.
“When we get home, you stay inside the house. Preferably within sight of your mother or I the entire time, you hear?”
A sense of foreboding overtook her as she stared at her father’s sunken eyes and haggard face. The man seemed to have aged ten years in the past seventeen days since Joy had been kidnapped. Everything was about to change. Her life was in the midst of a dramatic shift. The transformation went beyond learning how to live without her best friend. Ever since Joy had been abducted, her parents acted as though Holly would also vanish at any point in time. She was watched like a hawk. Questioned every time she left the room about where she was going, who she was going with, when she’d been back. Hell, she couldn’t even go to the bathroom without an interrogation about her plans.
This would become her life moving forward. She could sense her parent’s obsession with her whereabouts wasn’t a passing neurosis due to recent circumstances. No, Joy’s death had altered the way her family functioned from here on out.
Holly was about to enter her teenage years, and they wouldn’t be anything like she’d expected.
As she stepped outside, her father at her back, Holly squinted and lifted a hand to shield her eyes from the harsh glare of the afternoon Florida sun. Didn’t make any sense how the sun could shine so bright and beautiful while she suffered from such intense darkness and heartache on the inside.
A rumble from somewhere to her left had her father tensing in an instant. As the noise grew, she had the urge to cover her ears. Holly’s jaw dropped as ten giant motorcycles rolled down the street, stopping in front of the funeral home.
“Fuck,” her father bit out. With a crushing grip, he snagged her arm and dragged her behind his body. Holly gaped in shock as his hand fell to the gun resting at his hip.
“Dad!” she whisper-yelled. “They’re not going to do—”
“Quiet, Holly! You have no idea what these men are capable of. Th
ey killed your sister, for Christ’s sake.”
A stare-down ensued between the president of the local motorcycle club and her father. To Holly’s frightened mind, the standoff seemed to last for hours.
Joy’s kidnapper, and ultimately her murderer, hadn’t been identified as of yet. Holly didn’t have a clue what evidence the detectives were working with, but her father was one hundred percent convinced the MC was to blame. More than to blame, he believed they were directly responsible. Or so she’d overheard when she’d been unable to sleep and snuck into the kitchen for a late-night snack. He’d hated the gang since as far back as Holly could remember, and now made it his mission to see every one of them behind bars for Joy’s murder.
Holly wasn’t so sure. About six months ago she’d had a run-in with the president of the MC. Curly was his name. He’d helped her when she’d gotten herself in a sticky situation, something she’d never told her father. That was until the lead detective on Joy’s case questioned her about the day Joy went missing. He’d flat out asked if she’d ever had any interaction with someone from the MC and she’d been unable to lie. It was hard to imagine the man who’d saved her bacon kidnapping and murdering her sister. He’d actually been kind, calling her Little Miss and helping her despite knowing full well who her father was.
But what did she know?
Holly peeked around her father’s side. Her gaze met Curly’s. The old man gave her a sympathetic smile and a nod. “Little Miss,” he mouthed.
“What the fuck?” her dad growled. “Keep your fucking eyes off my kid.”
Curly made a production of skirting his gaze.
Some of the remaining mourners lingered as they got into their cars, watching the scene with nervous curiosity.
“I’m coming for you, assholes. Enjoy your freedom while you’ve still got it because one day real soon you’re gonna miss it.”
