Patch (The Black Cobras MC Book 3)

by Savannah Rylan

  “Open up, friends. We just want to talk. Let’s have a friendly chat!” It was Lynch’s voice and there was that same tinge of laughter again. Grimm nodded at the guys standing guard at the door. He wanted the door unlocked. He wanted to have this conversation with Lynch.

  It made me fuckin’ furious. Why were they still ‘talking’? We were supposed to have shook hands for peace and now they’d shown up here with guns, shooting at us, pretending like they gave a shit about having a conversation. Why were we still falling for this shit?!

  The guys opened the door for Grimm and on the other side was Lynch, Gunther and six of his men, all loaded with guns and ammunition.

  Inside the bar, it was Bones, Cash, Grimm, Rogue, Bender and me. The rest of the club was ‘out of office’ at the moment. None of them were expecting the Sons of Satan to just show up here like this. I was, but nobody had fuckin’ listened to me!

  We had our guns pointed at the group and they did the same. Lynch and Grimm were the only ones without any weapon in their hands. Lynch smiled at Grimm who shook his head in dismay.

  “What are you doing here, Lynch? I thought we agreed on a deal that you were going to honor. We fuckin’ shook on it!”

  Grimm sounded more exhausted than angry. Like he was just exhausted with himself. Lynch smirked and stroked his chin. He was enjoying himself. He knew he technically had us outnumbered. He had an entire hoard of men outside in the cars who’d come in with reinforcements.

  “You got us at the hospital. You killed my top guys, and you thought I was just going to sit back and shake your hands and be done with it? Forgive you for your trespasses?” He threw his head back and laughed.

  My finger was on the trigger, just seconds away from squeezing it and shooting one of their guys in the head. I had to do everything in my power to hold back. To not shoot that bullet. The sound of Lynch’s laughter triggered it in me; the need to kill.

  “I thought we were over that. We discussed it. You killed my men, I killed yours. Tit for tat. We decided we were even now.”

  Lynch shook his head and it seemed like it was a cue. The guy on his left side shot two bullets. None of us reacted fast enough and the bullets got Rogue and Jett. They toppled to the ground, groaning. Rogue was clutching his shoulder and Jett was shot in the thigh. They weren’t dead but were already bleeding out profusely.

  “Hold!” Grimm shouted before any of us could shoot back. We were never going to win this shootout if we started one right now. Grimm was right about that command.

  “Now we are somewhat even,” Lynch said and pulled a cigar out from the pocket of his pants. It already looked half smoked.

  Rogue and Jett were groaning, rolling in their own blood on the floor but none of us could go over and help them.

  “We shook on a fuckin’ truce!” Grimm hissed and Lynch lit his cigar and filled his cheeks with its smoke.

  “Sure, and you also killed a load of my men. And I also want a piece of your pie. I have no interest in honoring some schoolboy handshake. I have interest in making money, expanding my business, gaining power. Why do you look so fuckin’ surprised, brother?”

  “I am not your fuckin’ brother!” Grimm shouted, which only made Lynch laugh harder. He shook his head like he was disappointed.

  “I can’t believe you actually fell for it. Didn’t I tell you they fell for it?” He turned to Gunther then, who nodded his head once but kept his steely blue eyes on the rest of us. It didn’t seem like things had smoothened out between the two of them yet.

  Then Lynch turned his attention to me. I wasn’t expecting that either.

  “As for you, your little girlfriend is as good as dead anyway, so you might as well give up now,” he said, hissing his words out.

  “What?” I growled and took a step towards him, which triggered Lynch’s men to all aim their guns at me.

  “Patch. Stand the fuck back!” Grimm yelled.

  “What did you fuckin’ say?” I growled at Lynch, who exchanged a quick smile with a few of his men.

  “I know you heard me the first time. Your girlfriend. Samantha. She’s not going to make it out of this alive, just so you know. Maybe you shouldn’t have gotten her involved in all this in the first place,” he explained, and I could see how much joy he gained from those words.

  The blood ran cold in my veins when I heard him say them. What was he talking about? How did he know Samantha and I were involved in any way? What did he mean she was as good as dead?

  My hand tightened on my gun and I tried to hold back, keep myself from blasting this bastard’s head right off.

  It made Lynch smile. No doubt he could see the confusion and worry on my face.

  “Don’t worry about her, we’ll take care of her in her last days. We’re not animals!” he commented, which produced a few more chuckles from the group. Lynch turned his attention back to Grimm again.

  “Consider this a preliminary warning. Every time you come to fuckin’ mess with us, we’re going to mess back even harder. There’s no such thing as striking a deal in our world, dear friend. You should have figured that out by now. I just needed some time to get my shit in order.”

  Lynch didn’t wait for a response, he turned and was gone, before his armed men started to back out of our bar too. Gunther was the last to go and he gave me a sinister wink before he left.

  As the door shut on them, the guys jumped towards Rogue and Jett to pull them off the ground and get them to our in-house doctor. Those wounds needed to get looked at quickly if they had any chance of surviving with all their limbs intact.

  I lowered my weapon, still glaring at the door. Thoughts of Samantha and her condition were running through my head. When I turned to Grimm and Cash, I saw that they were staring at me, their faces full of the same tension that was on my mind too.

  Maybe now they were going to believe me.

  14

  Samantha

  Lynch, Gunther and the other guys had been gone for some time. Not like they’d informed me of where they went but I was starkly aware of being alone in the Clubhouse. The only problem was that I was still locked inside a cage, which meant that I wasn’t going anywhere.

  I rattled the bars of the cage, kicked them, cried some more and tried to remind myself to keep my head up. Maybe there was a chance for me still. Maybe I could still make it out of here. What if Patch found out what had happened to me? Would he come to rescue me? Did he actually care that much? And also, how was he ever going to find out? Who would tell him? The more I thought about that prospect, the weaker the idea seemed to get.

  Why would Patch risk his life, the life of his club men to come save me? The Sons of Satan were probably already in the process of destroying their club. They had bigger fish to fry than coming to my rescue!

  I wasn’t sure how long I’d been alone in the cage. All I knew was that I was hungry and weak. And then I heard the sounds that indicated that maybe they were back. Sounds of cars and voices and bikes outside the building. I didn’t know if I was relieved for the company or afraid of what they were going to do to me. Now that Lynch and the others knew I’d passed on secret information to the Black Cobras, it was only a matter of time before they took care of me.

  Instead of Lynch, it was Gunther and a couple of his cronies who came into the room soon after. I braced myself for an onslaught of leers and attacks. But they walked into the room in a huddled group and it seemed like they were in deep conversation with each other at first. Like they hadn’t even noticed I was there.

  Gunther was leading that conversation, talking in low whispers. But I could sense it was about Lynch. His name was coming up often. Were they discussing an overthrow? A coup? It seemed like they could be, which was maybe why they came down here to discuss it in private. Then Gunther looked over his shoulder at me and winked.

  “You got something you wanna say, bitch?” he asked with a big smile on his face. I shook my head. The best strategy was to keep my mouth shut, to not engage. But Gunther soo
n broke away from his crew and headed towards me.

  “I had the opportunity to see your boyfriend today. He wasn’t asking about you, just so you know,” he continued in that low creepy voice of his. I knew he was talking about Patch. I wanted to ask him if he was okay. If he was alive, but I knew I wasn’t going to get an answer from Gunther. I remained silent and kept my head down.

  “Yeah, nobody gives a shit about you. You better get that into your head now, so you know what you have to do to stay alive,” he said and then spat on the ground beside him.

  I was never going to give myself up to him willingly.

  The first time I ever noticed Patch was when we were very little and he used to play outside their house, riding around on his bicycle at full speed downhill. It was back when their mom was still alive, and their dad was away on his military tours. His younger sister, Nancy, was a year or two younger than me and Patch was a year or two older.

  Even then, even when they had a loving mother and a seemingly normal home environment my parents had always instructed me to stay away from them. It was like they’d already sniffed out the possibility that I would be attracted to Patch. That he would catch my attention and I’d want him. They’d already decided he was going to be trouble and no good for me.

  And the more they spoke badly about him and his family, the more curious I got. About that dark haired boy with those warm blue eyes and square jaw. Even as a young teen, Patch was handsome, and I knew he made other girls in school swoon too. Nobody wanted to admit it because he was a loner. He wasn’t the star. He barely attended classes and as time went by, people started talking about how he was seen hanging around with the ‘wrong crowds’.

  Then their mom died, their dad came home, and I could see it for myself—things just started to go downhill for them from there.

  Up until then, when I was so cocooned and sheltered in my perfect suburban life, Patch’s father was the worst kind of man I had ever come across. He was a slob, a drunk and prone to fits of unimaginable rage. Most of the neighborhood could hear him shouting and raging inside their house, breaking plates and glasses, cursing at Nancy and Patch too.

  Patch became more and more withdrawn from the community. He dropped out of our school and the only news I ever got about him was that he was constantly involved in petty crime around town, crime that his ‘crowd’ got him involved in.

  But still, when I watched him from a distance, I wanted him. He intrigued me. I thought about him at night when I was in bed alone, when I wasn’t supposed to.

  When boys at school asked me out and I turned them down, they all assumed it was because I was playing hard to get. The truth was that I was just hoping Patch would notice me. That maybe he would ask me out. That maybe he would help me live a little.

  And then he did notice me, and it felt like my whole life was going to change forever from there.

  He’d already dropped out of school by then and I knew he had his own life and different interests, but I was surprised to see that he had started following me to school every morning. Without fail.

  Initially, I tried not to think too much of it. Maybe it was just a coincidence. Maybe he wasn’t actually ‘following’ me at all, but when it continued to happen for several weeks, it was the only explanation I could come up with.

  That he’d noticed me, the way I’d noticed him!

  I could barely focus on anything else in those months…the months that lasted up to nearly a year when he followed me on his bike all the way to school. I thought of him all the time. At school in class, twirling my curls around and around my finger while I imagined us together. On a date. Kissing.

  I wanted to be seen with him. I yearned to be ‘his’. In all this time since I started becoming interested in boys, nobody had sparked an interest in me the way Patch had. I was fantasizing about him at night, even before I had any experience in sex. Before I even knew what it would be like to see him naked. For him to touch my body.

  And then finally one day we talked. I took the opportunity to invite him to my place. I wanted to make it happen. I wanted to make my fantasy of him come true and it seemed like he was interested in it too.

  But then my dad caught us together and I knew he was never going to let it happen between us. I was grounded, scolded, punished—it was the first time I’d disappointed my parents in such a big way and they couldn’t find it in their hearts to trust me again.

  All my life I’d been protected and spoiled and treated like a delicate flower. Since the incident with Patch, it seemed like they were now planning on keeping me under lock and key. I wasn’t allowed to go anywhere alone. I was constantly being watched by my parents. They were afraid of me messing up again. Getting involved with Patch or the ‘wrong crowd’. They thought they would have to keep an even closer eye on me and make sure I achieved every hope and dream they had for me.

  It felt like ever since Patch had noticed me, since he took an interest in me—my life had changed. I was never going to be free again. I was a prisoner in my own life, and he wasn’t coming to save me.

  Soon after that, they moved out of their home and I never saw them again. I thought Patch was gone from my life forever. I didn’t think I’d see him again…the man of my dreams and fantasies. But now he was back in my life, and once again, it seemed like he was going to change it forever.

  “He doesn’t give a shit about you!” Gunther growled at me as I stood there at the back of the cage, with the bars digging into my skin. My mind had wandered for a short time to thoughts of Patch and what it would have been like if things had worked out differently for us. If my dad hadn’t caught us that night. If Patch had liberated me that night.

  Maybe I wouldn’t have rebelled against my parents.

  Maybe I wouldn’t have spent my whole life searching for the same kind of thrill that Patch gave me.

  Maybe I wouldn’t have ended up in a place like this.

  I looked away from Gunther and he came forward.

  “You ratted on us to your boyfriend, bitch! You’re a traitor to the club. You think Lynch is going to let you live now?” he continued in a snarl.

  I could feel the tears pricking the backs of my eyelids. I was still trying to hold it together, trying not to cry. Small victories. I wasn’t going to let Gunther win this round.

  “He’s not coming for you, your boyfriend and Lynch don’t give a shit about a lying, ratting whore. You know what you have to do, don’t you?” he said, and our eyes met. There was a hunger in Gunther’s eyes now, which I recognized.

  I’d seen it in other men before. Unfortunately, I wasn’t that little sheltered princess from my childhood anymore. I’d learned to recognize what men wanted from me. The kind of men to stay away from. How to survive in this filthy unforgiving world. The one that Patch wasn’t going to be able to save me from.

  On the one hand, I had the option of getting down on my knees right now and sucking Gunther off. Even if that wasn’t really going to buy me my life, it would at least buy me time. If I could please him in all the right ways.

  And on the other hand, I could just not give a flying fuck. My life was over either way. How did it matter how soon or how late?

  I turned away from Gunther, choosing to face the wall now.

  “If there is something you want from me, you’re going to have to fight me for it.”

  For a moment it seemed like he had no reaction to that and then he started clapping his hands. Like he was impressed by my declaration.

  “You surprise me sometimes, whore. You really fucking do!” he said and then turning from me, he walked out of the room with the rest of his guys and they left me alone for the rest of the night.

  It was in the dark when I was all alone that I allowed myself to cry again. I had nobody to blame but myself. None of this would have happened to me if I’d just been a good girl.

  15

  Patch

  There was chaos in our Clubhouse now after Lynch and his brood left. Rogue and Jett we
re being administered to at the back by Bender. The rest of our club had been summoned as well so we were back to full strength again, but it didn’t matter now. The Sons of Satan were watching us, they were going to know exactly when to attack. They weren’t going to come for us when we had all our men with us. They were going to wait for our next weak moment. To strike us down. Like they had done so many times before.

  Tensions were still running high, but not for the same reasons as before. The attention had been diverted from me. Nobody was suspicious of me anymore. The problem was that Lynch had been lying. The truce meant nothing; just like I said it didn’t.

  Thankfully for Grimm and Cash, I wasn’t the kind of guy to say, ‘I told you so’.

  Grimm and Cash were pacing around the bar while Bender served us drinks, trying to calm our rattled nerves. There was a worried buzz in the room now. Everyone had wrongfully assumed it was over; this war with the Sons of Satan.

  They had all hoped that things could return to normal again, but it wasn’t the case. It was just a temporary illusion and now we weren’t prepared. Even though we’d struck a large percentage of their club down at the last hospital showdown when Cash’s kid was born, they were still technically stronger than us.

  Grimm was rubbing his hand over his face. Over and over again like he wanted to tear his skin off.

  “Samantha wasn’t lying, and she had good intentions when she came here to speak to me,” I said. Breaking the silence in the room now. I was waiting for the opportune moment to bring her up. The way Gunther had spoken about her told me he wasn’t kidding. Her life was in real danger. Even if it wasn’t yet, it was soon going to be. Maybe they had her followed. Whatever it was—they knew of our connection and they weren’t going to let her go unpunished from an act of defiance like that.

  Grimm looked up at me and nodded.