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.
Trapped copyright @ 2019 by Brook Wilder and Scholae Palatina Inc. All rights reserved. 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 GRIZZLY MC TRILOGY
TRAPPED
SNARED
TANGLED
TABLE OF CONTENTS
TRAPPED
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
Epilogue
TRAPPED
Prologue
Tomahawk, Montana—a sprawling, blue-grey mountainous wilderness with more backwoods than big cities and where everyone knows everyone. Its history runs deep, the frontier days still present in the ranches that dot her lands, a place where hard work is the cause of every callus and grey hair.
Not much of that is different now from when I was growing up. The mountains still rise high and blanketed over with snow, and every man worth his salt has rough hands and weathered skin. The deep-seeded history that built Tomahawk bleed deeper still into the Tomahawk of today—the frontier ride or die lifestyle where all you have is yourself and the companions you choose has become the foundation of the MCs that have risen through Tomahawk over the years.
It’s rough, and brutal, but the brotherhoods that have evolved from the old days into the new prove the turmoil of the life is worth the suffering of it, just to have something to call family. It’s been that way for decades. My father, my father’s father: they were loyal members of the MC. They paid their dues as I pay. They learned, as I’ve learned, that a good life requires sacrifice and dedication. My father never put in a day where he didn’t work—either at the Grizzly Bar or for the MC.
The legacy he left me is one I’d kill for and die for. It’s a legacy I’ve tried for years to maintain, knowing that my father didn’t given me the ropes to fuck it over doing something stupid. The last few years have been tenuous, Tomahawk land split between the factions: my Grizzlies and the Vipers on the south side of town. We’ve been cordial… through hard times and good times.
But now… Something’s trying to change that.
A tentative peace with the Vipers we’d been sworn to work against since the inception of our MCs looks like it’s coming to an end. The air feels different… I can feel it. Toeing the line of the law and defending our own gets harder every day when southside drugs get pumped into the whole of Tomahawk, and the biggest question on all our minds is when the dam will finally burst.
Chapter One
James
Working a night at the Grizzly Bar & Restaurant is always a test to my ability to multitask and my willingness to remain a patient man. Sarah always told me that I needed to learn how to better curb my temper; funny how it’s always the women sayin’ that, when they have them just as raw and hard as we do.
But Sarah’s not here anymore to scold me on mine, and I have to regulate myself. I’ve gotten good at it over the last few months. After all, it’s a Friday night and I haven’t cursed anyone out—yet. It’s naturally one of the busiest nights to work. My tables are full of rambunctious families and my bar is lined with enthusiastic drinkers. Huge plates of all-American burgers and fries roll out of my kitchen on the dot, and hearty steaks are washed down with fresh, cold beer from the tap. Though it’s Grizzly territory, it’s one of the few places in Tomahawk we’ve designated common ground. Burly bikers in Grizzly cuts and Viper cuts alike sit scattered across my tables and my bar, drinking and yelling. I watch them all carefully; never know when the pleasantries are gonna end and it’s my job to make sure things run smooth.
With my table occupied with families and men, my bar is lined from end to end with women. Blondes, brunettes, red-heads… Even bottle-dyed wonders with lots of skin to show and pouty lips to press against their bottles.
If it’s common for the floor to be packed on these nights, it’s just as common for my bar to look like it’s been ripped out of a centerfold for a biker magazine. I work the bar and oversee the place while my assistant manager and freshly pledged Grizzly, Pete Jones, handles making sure tables are satisfied. As such, I get the brunt of the ‘bar babes,’ as Pete calls them. Once upon a blue moon I’d eat that shit up; now it’s just goddamn taxing.
“Hey, James, another round over here?”
Camille is her name. She’s a particularly leggy blonde, three divorces in and she’s only twenty-six. She loves men, and men love her. She rolls a new beau out every season and for the last three she’s been trying to make me one. She’s not bad to look at and she’s not even a bad woman. But she can’t hold her liquor and I’m not in the market for an old lady. Makes for a bad combination.
But she smiles at me with her red-painted lips and I can’t hold a grudge for her.
“Got another round for you Camille. Coming right for you.”
I grin at her and she giggles, watching me as I pour her another drink and make a note not to get her a third unless I want her stumbling out of here with trouble on her arm. She takes her beer and plays in the bubbles with her fingers before taking another drink; I almost wish I could be as carefree as her. Down the way another regular hollers for a beer and I get it for her and smile at her too as she winks at me with false-lashed eyes.
What’s the saying? ‘C’est la vie?’
“Why so glum, biker boy?”
I glance over to the newest newcomer, a strawberry blonde with make up too dark for her powder pale skin. She was the least drunk of the women at the bar, but that could always be fixed and likely would be.
To her question, I raise a brow.
“Glum? Never,” I say. “What are you looking for tonight?”
She grins at me, leaning over the bar. Her tits practically spill out of her low-cut shirt; I guess it’s supposed to entice me.
“I was lookin’ for whatever was good behind the bar,” she says with a wink.
Barking up the wrong tree there. I smile, knowing well enough to keep the comment to myself.
“Whiskey, then.”
I don’t miss the flicker of disappointment on her face, but I pretend not to see it. If she thinks that she’s special just because she showed some cleavage… well, I got another thing for her. If the hundreds of women through my bar hadn’t turned my head yet, she’s not going to. My self-imposed dry spell when it came to women was a hard one I intended to stick to.
“So, you new around here?” I ask her to be polite, to earn my tip; I don’t really care either wa
y.
It works, though. Her frown instantly upends itself at the attention given to her and I have a sneaking feeling that perhaps I’m going to regret being nice.
“Yeah, just passin’ through,” she says. “Lookin’ for trouble wherever I can.”
“Tomahawk’s full of trouble.” I slid her her whiskey. “Try not to get into too much.”
“Oh, well. That’s a little hard,” she says. “I love it when trouble gets into me.” She took a sip of her whiskey, more than I expected in one go. “You know, you look like you could be trouble too…”
Before she can finish that train of thought, I hear a shout come from across the bar.
“Hey, go fuck yourself!”
“What’d you say to me?”
I recognize one of the voices, a rookie with the Grizzlies—Jeremy. Young kid, kinda dumb when he’s plied with liquor. I scan the restaurant with a huff and see a thick gathering of people over on the other side. Half are dressed in Grizzly cuts with a great big snarling bear emblazoned on the back with its gaping mouth dripping. The other half is a different story: black leather vests with an angry viper ready to strike upon them.
God damn it.
I leave the woman disappointed at the bar and vault over the counter. The shouting and whooping jeers only get louder as I push my way through the increasingly thickening crowd, and the platinum shock of blonde hair I know is Jeremy’s shoots up over the crowd as he stands; he’s pretty tall for a young buck, I’ll give him that.
There are protests as I push people out of my way, but they’re short-lived when people see who I am. Everyone knows me and knows better than to speak against me too. I get to Jeremy and the Viper as they lock in a shoving and cursing match with each other. They’re getting egged on from all sides, from Grizzlies and Vipers and civilians alike. It’s fucking madness, and I grip the two by the backs of their necks, yanking them away from each other. They snarl, lips curled angrily at being interrupted, but… honestly? Tough luck for them. This isn’t the bar where this kind of shit happens.
They’re both bleeding from cuts on their faces. I shove them away from each other.
“I’m gonna kick your fuckin’ ass,” the Viper snaps, ready to start going again.
Jeremy scoffs. “Yeah, right, as if you could. I’d like to see you try…”
“Enough!”
My voice rings out loud enough for the whole bar to fall dead silent upon hearing it. All eyes that hadn’t been trained on the scuffle certainly are now. Jeremy and the Viper exchange one last venomous look before they turn their petulant gazes to me.
“James…” Jeremy mutters my name, not quite meeting my gaze. I hope he’s as embarrassed by his actions as I am of him.
“The fuck is going on here?”
“This jackass started it…”
“Like hell I did…”
“Shut up.” I level a severe glare at them before they can start hemming and hawing again. “I don’t give a shit about who started what or why; I’m ending it. You two dipshits come into my bar and cause a problem; you’re lucky I don’t string both of you up out front by your ankles and let everyone around here use your sorry asses for piñatas.”
I cross my arms, letting the broadness of my stance do all the intimidating I need it to.
“You dumb asses know good and well that this place is neutral ground. No scuffles, no fights—no matter what. You morons know better, or at least you’re supposed to know better, that this shit. The Vipers and the Grizzlies before you didn’t bust their asses making the neutral ground here for a pair of drunk young bloods to go and fuck it up. You hear me?”
They look chastened—good. Their eyes are downcast as they nod. They know that I’m right. Hell, everyone in the damn bar knows that I’m damn right. They can’t refuse my words, even if they wanted to.
“Get lost,” I tell them. “Go make trouble somewhere else.”
I jerk my chin at them, and they scatter off in opposite directions. They don’t give so much as another look to me, or to each other for that matter. Good. Less likely for them to end up doing something stupid like setting the other off again.
The roll of chatter starts up again, and I sigh.
“We close in thirty minutes,” I decide. I don’t feel like dealing with anymore potential fuck-ups from people who should know better, and I know without a shadow of a doubt that my willingness to be patient is gone and my temper is only so interested in being tested.
Sorry, Sarah. Sometimes your boy has his moments.
***
The bar is empty. True to my word, I’ve run everyone out in thirty minutes flat. The woman at the bar hadn’t liked the idea—or rather, hadn’t liked it when she realized that I wasn’t going to give her what she wanted and let her stay after hours for some ‘trouble’ from me. She’d batted her eyelashes and practically begged me to let her stay.
I told her hell no—in nice terms. She at least left me a hefty tip.
Sitting at my abandoned bar, nursing a glass of whiskey as I wiped down the surface, I shake my head. I know women like her, know them all too well. They speak about making trouble, and you give them a night of it only to have them try to stay in your life a little longer than planned. Nudge in with sex, then they start talking about love.
I scoff. Love. Now that’s a notion that I’ve entertained all of once, only to have it ripped from me. I’m not cut out for love, or any woman bringing herself my way trying to get it, either.
Chapter Two
Lena
The music is deafening, pounding hard in my ears and the bass is so deep I can feel it dance across my skin and sink into my bones. It’s just another night at the Snake Pit—just another night of drunk and disorderly Vipers and their dirty bills thrown my way as I circle the pole on the center stage.
It wasn’t where I saw myself when I left home. I envisioned settling down with my man, running my own business, having children. Things women in love dream about, I wanted. I craved it as surely as an addiction.
Too bad my love had different plans, and different addictive cravings than I did.
As the music slows and my movements become more sensual with it, I look at him across the dim, smoky room.
Marc was always handsome. Even as he twisted into something I resented, he’d never stopped being attractive. On the shorter side for a man, he was still muscular with arms covered in tattoos and eyes as blue as midnight. I drowned willingly in those eyes once. Now, turned lecherously onto another woman, I can see nothing more in those eyes than a monster I wanted nothing to do with.
I tear my gaze from him and look out into the crowd. They have their eyes on me, drinking me in with a violent sexuality that I know would have them on me if they were allowed—or on any of the other girls working tonight. If I said I was wholly used to it, I think that would be a lie; the actuality of it is that I’m just numb.
I continue to dance. I let the music dictate my movements, the soft swivel of my hips and the sensual arching of my back. I try not to get too distracted by what’s around me: Vipers in the back corner handling my girls too roughly, the vacant look in some of their eyes as they sit perched in Viper laps. At one point, the Snake Pit was supposed to be mine, the girls were supposed to be mine, this whole establishment was supposed to be…
Better.
My set finishes out, and I exit the stage to handfuls of money and cheers that signal how good I did. It’s time for my break now, the blessed half-hour between now and when I need to be on the floor. I see Marc out the corner of my eye, scooting the girl he has off his lap; his eyes are on me.
Well. I guess I won’t be having a break. Sometimes I perform so well he likes to remind his Vipers and anyone else there that I’m entertainment but I’m his. Just as his bike belongs to him, this bar belongs to him, I’m just that: a status of wealth, a commodity for him to flaunt. Passing the large mirror in my dressing room in back, I suppose it’s not that far off the mark. My silvery costume doesn’
t scream old lady so much as it shouts to the world I’m a shiny trophy.
Not seconds into my dressing room, the door opens again. Marc comes in with his eyes glazed; I can tell he’s high and that doesn’t make me feel any better. I can’t remember a day in the last few years that he hasn’t been. Back when it used to be just weed it wasn’t so bad, but that look in his eyes is a cocaine haze and I hate him for it.
“Hey babe.”
I stand by the wall-length mirror as he stalks over to me. He’s a predator on the prowl and he takes me in his arms when he gets to me, pressing me back against the glass. His mouth finds my neck, his teeth digging in hard. I wince; he’s always loved marking me.
I let him, knowing that there’s nothing I can do about how much it hurts and how vile his hot breath is against my skin. I squirm when I feel the hardness of his cock in his pants press against me. If this is going where I think it’s going, there’s no way I’m going to be able to finish out my night properly.
