by Ivy Black
Bullet
Steel Knights MC Series Book 2
Written by Ivy Black
Copyright © 2020. All rights reserved.
It is not legal to reproduce, duplicate, or transmit any part of this document in either electronic means or in printed format. Recording of this publication is strictly prohibited and any storage of this document is not allowed unless with written permission from the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
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Table of Contents
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
Epilogue
Your Free Gifts
Chapter One
Bullet
The sound of bullets piercing their targets was my favorite sound in the world. Something about the hollow hiss, just before the dull pinpoint of the heated metal sinking in was like music to my ears.
“Bullet! Fucking fire!”
My finger flexed against the trigger and the gun vibrated in my hand as the bullet fled from it with a mission in sight. I recoiled back but smiled as the bullet found purchase. I sighed with satisfaction as the remains of my quarry splattered out and hit the floor below.
“That’ll teach you to challenge me,” I growled.
I rubbed the barrel of my gun free of any stippling with a rag and grumbled at some of the evident soot on my shirt. A change of clothes would be necessary, no matter how much I tried to avoid it.
“That’s why they call ya ‘Bullet’,” Avery said, pointing his gun out in front of him, peering over it like a hunter cornered on its prey, “but you know what they call me?” I smirked as he pulled the trigger and his bullet released, but it faded down to a frown as I watched his bullet shoot straight through the center point on the target in front of him, skirting mine which was one ring outside the center. He looked over at me and winked. “Bullseye.”
“Fuck.” I stared down the row of ten targets, each with one bullet hole near the target and all with one straight through it. Not one of the direct hits was mine. “Load up another ten. I’m gonna beat you.”
“Dude,” Avery groaned. “We’ve gone five rounds already. Give it up. You are not going to beat me.”
“I’ll pay for it, just go tell them to load up another ten.”
“Stop. What’s wrong with you?” Avery lifted his goggles, letting his blue eyes catch in the overhead halogen lights of the shooting range. “I know you like a good shoot-off, but this is weird, even for you.”
“Nothing’s wrong. I just wanted to get some shooting in before the meeting,” I replied. “Are you scared?”
Avery snickered. “Do you honestly think I’m that childish, I’d fall for that? You’ve known me since college, and I’ve known you, too, and I know something’s wrong.” He pointed his gun at me, knowing full well the one bullet in it had already been discharged at the target. “You fucking tell me or I’m calling Cameron.”
“Do what you say or you’re gonna tell my dad? How old are you?”
“Take it or leave it, Bullet. I ain’t shooting another ten targets just because you have a bug up your ass about something.” He raised an eyebrow at me. “Is it that date you had?”
The question knocked me sideways just a bit. Avery’s nickname was Bullseye for two reasons as far as I was concerned. One, because he could hit a dead shot at midnight with one eye closed, and the other because he could take one look at me and know exactly what was going on in my brain.
“That date was weeks ago,” I barked. “Why would it be that?”
“Exactly, it was weeks ago. You were asking people for advice and you wouldn’t shut up about her for a few days there, then all of a sudden you just stopped talking about it.”
Grabbing the cloth again, I cleaned my gun off one more time, engaged the safety, and shoved it into the back of my waistband. “I stopped talking then, and I’m done talking now. Let’s go, we have a meeting.”
Avery let out a low whistle and then a gruff chuckle. “Aw, man. Doesn’t go out on a date in how long, six months? Seven?”
It had been closer to a year, but who was counting. “Shut your mouth.”
“Fine. Party Pooper.”
“It’s not like you have women falling outta your house,” I snapped back.
“Don’t you worry about me, bud. I do just fine.”
He could say that, but I knew Avery was a romantic. He hadn’t had a woman on his arm in any permanent capacity in at least as long as it had been since my last date; it had to be getting to him. “Anyway, Celia is hardly a concern of mine.”
“Celia,” Avery repeated. “That’s her. That tall, hot chick right?”
I didn’t respond. “Tall” and “hot” were descriptors that objectively described Celia, but she was much more than that. In the one meal we’d shared, we went tit for tat like a tennis match. She took everything about me in her stride, and we shared one amazing night together.
Then I never heard from her again.
“Isn’t that the one Nicky set you up with?” Avery asked.
I rolled my eyes. “He didn’t set me up with her so much as he forced my hand.”
“Yeah, but you went.”
We checked out of the gun range, I paid for the targets we’d shot, and then we walked out into the fresh fall morning and over to where our bikes were parked. “You took her home, too,” he laughed, “because you walked into the club the next day like you had springs in your shoes.”
With lightning speed, I reached over and smacked him across the back of the head. “Shut the fuck up.”
“Fine!” Avery yelped, rubbing his head. “Fuck, you try and joke with your best friend a little and look what it gets me.”
We each climbed on our bikes and a moment later, the rumble of them starting up pierced the quiet air. Birds and squirrels scattered from nearby as I twisted my handle to rev a couple of times, then with a screech, I spun my wheel to kick a little dust up at Avery, and then fired off, out of the parking lot and onto the main road.
Nothing in Hoppa was too far from the next thing over. Anyone who lived here long enough could draw the
entire town map from memory, and it made it easy to get from A to B. Of course, this was bittersweet for motorcycle riders. By the time we really got going, we were already arriving at our destination. Back in the day, I might have spent a little time taking the long way around, maybe even ditching Avery and taking a ride down the highway and back before the meeting, but history had taught me that keeping a trusted ally by your side was a good idea and that, sometimes, long rides lead to trouble.
I was first into the parking lot at Hoppa’s Taphouse, the meeting grounds of the Steel Knights Motorcycle club. Apart from being Hoppa’s premiere drinking spot, it was no mystery that we ran our operations there. A large Steel Knights banner hung from the roof down the side of the building, overlooking the parking spots that were painted with the same sigil to symbolize that they were designated for club members only. Only two of the spots were occupied when Avery and I pulled in, so I parked in the next one over and then Avery next to me.
The rumble of our idling bikes filled the air for a few brief seconds until we powered down, leaving us in a deafening silence.
“It’s weird isn’t it?” Avery said. “Just four officers. I’m not paranoid like Nick, but even I know this isn’t good.”
A few different thoughts crossed my brain, but I opted to keep them to myself. After everything I’d been through with the former Vice President and Nick’s daughter, Tess, and our brief, President-forced Secretary, Colin, my feelings on their sudden absconding together were complicated, to say the least.
“How many spots does it leave open?” Avery asked.
“Three, including Grim’s spot. We’re out a VP, a Sergeant, and a Secretary.”
Avery sputtered out a chuckle as he climbed off his bike. “I didn’t even know Secretary was a position.”
“Quite a useful one,” I said as I unmounted my bike and tucked my helmet away in the back compartment. “Though I can admit, it wasn’t until Nick suddenly nominated CJ to that spot that it even occurred to me that we didn’t have one.”
“How come?” Avery asked.
“That I don’t know.” With a tap on Avery’s shoulder, I started for the front door. “But I intend to ask.”
The front door to Hoppa’s jingled as we walked through it, and as expected, only two other people were inside. It’d been a few weeks since everything had gone down with our rival gang, the Unchained Dogs, and Tess, Colin, and Taylor came to blows which ultimately ended Taylor’s life, but we’d been sort of ignoring and skirting the issue. Today was the first official meeting our President, Nick, had called since then, and I had no idea what to expect. All I knew was that it was a strange feeling not seeing Taylor, Nick’s late son, throwing me a psychotic gaze from the back corner, while I attempted to keep my own hateful glare from settling too long on his sister, Tess. Despite my thoughts about the former Vice President and Sergeant at Arms, there was no denying that their departures had left a couple of wide, deep crevices in the Steel Knights battalion, and Nick had done little to close them yet.
“Hey, y’all,” Bernard “Bucky” LePall called over from the pool table that sat in the back-left corner of the bar. He was hunched over, aiming his stick at the white pool ball. “I’m just about done kicking Nick’s ass, then we can get started.”
I looked to Nick, expecting a colorful jeer or counterstrike, but he looked more like a ghost sitting on a stool against the wall with a pool stick balanced between his legs. He was staring at the table, but it likely wasn’t what he was seeing. His short brown hair had, in the span of just a few weeks, started to sprout patches of gray, and though he normally kept his face shaven, he’d grown a budding goatee, which also had gray hairs poking through.
Nodding my head in his direction, I called out, “Hey, Nick.”
It was almost as if he didn’t hear us enter or hear Bucky address us. “Oh, hey.” He looked around the empty bar with sunken-in eyes and pursed lips. “I guess this is it, huh?”
“For officers,” Avery said as he walked around the bar and pulled a couple of bottles of water from the small cooler that sat against the back wall. He tossed one to me before leaning over the bar and opening his own. “How ya holding up there, Nicky?”
He shrugged. “I’m still here, ain’t I?”
“Eight ball, corner pocket.” Bucky finally took his shot on the pool table, smacking the white pool ball, knocking it into the eight ball, which flew into the pocket he’d called. He chuckled with satisfaction. “That’s how it’s done, Squared.”
Nick hardly seemed fazed. He set a few bills on the pool table, then hung up his stick and walked over to the bar. He sat down on one of the bar stools and I sat on one a few down from him. “Get me a whisky, Bullseye. Neat,” he said.
Avery side-eyed me quickly, no doubt because Nick was requesting a drink, but I just shook my head, and Avery shrugged before pulling a bottle of whisky out from below the bar, along with a glass to pour it into. He filled the glass up about halfway and slid it over, but Nick didn’t drink it, rather just pulled it up to his nose and smelled it a bit, before setting the glass back down on the counter and just staring into the liquid.
After a few seconds of silence, he took a deep breath and stood up off the stool with the glass in hand. “All right. Let’s head back.”
No one protested as Nick walked around the bar and Avery waited for him to pass through the door to the kitchen first, before following after him. I stepped just ahead of Bucky behind the bar, but he was right on my heels, and we filed through the kitchen and followed Nick through the heavy, swinging metal door in the back of the kitchen into the warehouse in the back, in the center of which was our round meeting table. There were still several chairs situated around the table, but no one made mention of that as Nick sat in his regular chair and the rest of us situated ourselves at equal intervals around the table to not make it feel so empty.
“First of all, gentlemen,” Nick started, “I need to apologize. Not just for these past few weeks of uncertainty, but for the way I behaved after Colin first arrived. I could try and make excuses for what happened, but the truth is, I let the fact that I’m a father overshadow the fact that I’m your President. I was nervous about things with the Unchained Dogs, yes, but I embarked on a course of action that was in direct conflict to our bylaws and dwarfed your jobs as members, simply because I liked Colin and wanted him to be close at hand.” He snickered. “I’m not gonna lie to you guys, I still fucking like him. He loves my daughter and I know he’s gonna take care of her, wherever the hell they are. I wish things had worked out differently. This all may be a different story.”
“He was an Unchained Dog,” Bucky grunted.
Nick nodded. “He was, but a little flip-flopping isn’t entirely unheard of in our world, though I might have trusted him less. Though maybe not, too. I don’t know. He’s a weird blind spot for me, that’s all I can say.”
“He’s like you,” I interjected. “The last couple of months notwithstanding, you’re typically much more like him. Reserved, not super flashy, silently tough. You saw yourself in him.”
A small smirk cracked across Nick’s face. “That was pretty insightful of you.”
I shrugged. “I have my moments.”
He crossed his arms. “You’re probably dead on there, Bullet. He felt like family already. Maybe that’s why. In any event, none of it is worth the way I behaved, so I apologize. As President, I have the responsibility to offer up my position. I believe any of you would have exercised better judgment than me, so if any of you would like to vie for this spot, I would respect that nomination.”
Avery, Bucky, and I exchanged looks, and then I looked across at Nick. “Don’t be so dramatic,” I huffed. “No one is asking you to step down, just be a little more mindful next time.”
The small smirk curved wider across his face. “Thanks, guys. I don’t want to step down, but… you know…” He shrugged. “Anyway. We’ll get through this, and I promise, I’m bylaw-bound from here on out.” The t
ension in the room immediately dissipated. Nick was wearing the stress of losing his kids like a brightly colored coat, but he at least seemed to be in a better place as far as the club was concerned, and that could only bode well for us. “Which brings me to our next topic of discussion. Obviously,” he motioned to the empty chairs, “we’re down a few bodies. Tess has left the VP position vacant, Colin left the Secretary position wide open, and Tay—”
Just like that, the tension was back. We all watched as Nick rapidly deteriorated. Tears quickly welled up in the corners of his eyes, and his jaw clenched. Despite his best attempts to keep his emotions back, a couple of tears broke loose and slid down his cheeks. Apart from when he announced that Taylor had fallen to Tess, Nick hadn’t brought up his son once. Signs of stress aside, it seemed like he was holding it together well, but suddenly he was shaking and barely managing to hold himself up.
Bucky held out his hand timidly and set it on Nick’s shoulder. “Hey, Nicky, we know. It’s okay, man.”
Nick wiped his eyes and then took a deep breath. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be,” Avery said. “It was your kid.”
Nick cleared his throat a few times. “Yeah. I know he was off his rocker a little, but—”
“Nick,” I cut him off. “I’m not like a therapist or anything, but I don’t think it’s wrong of you to mourn your kid.”
Nick nodded. “Yeah. Thanks.” A few more tears escaped his eyes, and he slapped his hands against his cheeks and shook his head. “Wow. Sorry. Okay. Well, you guys know. I mean you were fucking there. Point is, we have the VP, Secretary, and Sergeant at Arms positions to fill, so there’s going to be some changes internally probably. We have our member pool to pull from, but promotions from within isn’t off the table either and we do need to do some recruiting.”
“Can I ask a question?” I asked. “The Secretary position, why didn’t we have anyone in that position before? We have careful records. I know because I’ve used them. Who was doing that?”
