by Lilly Atlas
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Author Note
Blurb
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
Epilogue
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About the Author
SNAKE
No Prisoners MC Book 5
by 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 © 2017 Lilly Atlas
All rights reserved.
Lilly Atlas Books
This final book of the No Prisoners series is dedicated to all the amazing readers who gave these bikers a chance. Thank you from the bottom of my heart!
Thank you so much for spending some time in the No Prisoners’ world. If you enjoyed the book please feel free to leave a review on Amazon or Goodreads.
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Books in the No Prisoners Series
Hook: A No Prisoners Novella
Striker
Jester
Acer
Lucky
Snake
At the height of power, one ruthless misstep crumbles Snake’s kingdom in an instant. Beaten within inches of his life, betrayed by his own club, and left for dead, he has nothing remaining to focus on but healing and revenge.
Physical Therapist, Amanda, thinks she’s seen it all. Then, she meets Nick, a broken man who has sustained the most severe beating she’s ever encountered. Surly, brooding, and angry, he should be a nightmare patient. But under the rough exterior lies a man determined to overcome his devastating injuries, a quality Amanda can’t help but be drawn to. Plus, he’s ridiculously attractive, to the point she finds she can’t stay away.
Women like Amanda—kind, sweet, intelligent, independent, respectable—don’t exist in Snake’s world. When she offers him a place to live after his hospital stay, he can’t turn her down. The more time they spend together, the more torn he becomes between two realities: a gruesome MC world full of lies, betrayal, and hatred, or a life with Amanda that promises healing and peace.
As Snake helps Amanda through some troubling times, passion flares. For once, he actually cares about a woman and it’s enough to make him question everything. After leading a life as a dedicated outlaw, is it too late to change? And if not, is he willing to leave his vendetta behind?
Chapter One
Blackness surrounded Snake like a shroud.
“He still alive?” A shrill, pissed-off voice cut through Snake’s hazy confusion, making him jump.
He tried to open his eyes, but they might as well have been glued shut.
“Think so. The bastard makes a wheezy, gurgling noise every so often. I’m surprised he lasted the whole trip. That big man worked him over good. His face is unrecognizable. Look how swollen his fucking eyes are,” a second man said, his voice as well known as the first, yet not identifiable.
“That big man who kicked his trash was Jester. Ol’ man of the bitch we kidnapped,” the first man said. The high-pitched, almost whiny quality of his voice seemed so familiar, but just on the edge of recognition. In fact, both voices seemed to hover on the outskirts of Snake’s reality. Like they were coming from a television. Present, but not real. And still, nothing but darkness.
Pain, however, was there in real time. That was for damn sure. But even the hurt was difficult to place. It seemed to come from every pore in his body. But that wasn’t possible, was it?
“What’s the plan here, boss?” A third man spoke up.
Maybe he should say something. Ask for help. Snake moved his mouth to speak, but only a garbled mess of unintelligible sounds came out.
And then the pain localized.
Holy shit, his face throbbed like it had been pounded repeatedly with a sledgehammer. Inside his mouth, his tongue occupied the entire cavity like a balloon, making speaking near impossible. He dragged in a breath, but the air met resistance before it ever reached his lungs, blocked by a throat that felt swollen shut. Choking coughs racked him, jacking the pain to an unbearable level.
Snake registered the laundry list of things happening with his body and recognized that he should probably be in panic mode. Everything was fuzzy and he couldn’t get himself together enough to make sense of his reality.
“Pull him out of the van and toss him down the ravine. I’ll fire a couple slugs in him. See how overgrown it is down there? He’ll rot out here long before anyone ever finds the body.”
God, that voice…it was dancing on the edges of Snake’s diminishing consciousness. So memorable…
“You got it, boss.”
Rough hands grabbed under his shoulders and around his legs, jerking him forward. In the next second, he was airborne. The weightless flight couldn’t have lasted more than five seconds, before a crushing jolt and the insane sensation of the world spinning out of control ensued. His stomach lurched as he rolled and rolled. Jagged rocks and branches tore at his clothes and skin, bringing even more pain. His battered face mashed into the ground with each revolution until dirt and bits of rock clung to his skin.
All the while he struggled to breathe, inhaling soil and choking until it felt like his insides were being shredded. He waited for it all to stop, for death to take him and end the torture. Death had to be close, lurking just past the next rotation.
After what seemed like an eternity, Snake’s broken body slammed against something hard and the tumbling stopped. His head was still spinning out of control, but at least he wasn’t actually moving anymore.
Laughter rang out from a distance. “Shit, brother. Look how he rolled down that ditch like a fuckin’ sack of potatoes. You probably don’t need to waste any bullets, boss. No way he survived that trip. It’s what, twenty feet? And with all those rocks and branches. Something musta smashed in his fuckin’ skull.”
“Yeah, well, Snake’s a slimy bastard. I want to be one hundred percent sure. Can’t have him slithering back into our lives six months down the road,” the higher-voiced man replied.
He tried to move, tried to lift a limb and open his eyes, but there was a disconnect between his body and his brain. None of his muscles obeyed commands and all he could do was lie there, a giant, vulnerable target.
A pinpointed, hot, burning pain bloomed in his thigh, followed by another in his shoulder. Bullets. Hadn’t they said they planned to shoot him?
Odd.
He’
d been shot before and it had hurt like a sonofabitch, a lot more than it did now. His brain must be pretty fucked up not to be registering the pain of two bullets. Of course, the rest of his body was one giant ball of agony. Maybe there was a limit to how much pain the flesh could experience. Maybe after the body hit the pain ceiling, it no longer registered something new.
Snake thought he’d known pain before, but it was nothing compared to this full body tormenting sensation. A man didn’t live his kind of life without pain.
His kind of life…
That high-pitched voice…
Recollection was right there. If he could just reach out and grab the fuzzy memories.
“Nice fucking knowing you, Pres.”
The words were called out about three seconds before a final hot flash of pain entered his side. Gut shot. The fatal blow.
Pres…
That high-pitched voice…
As the darkness behind his closed eyes grew even blacker, realization dawned.
President.
Grimm Brothers Motorcycle Club. Sandy Springs, Arizona.
The high-pitched voice. His long time right-hand man. Close and trusted friend. Brother.
Reality faded into the distance, taking some of the pain with it. Would there be peace in death? Not for him. Not going out this way. There were men who had to pay whether now or in the afterlife.
Men like Casper.
His loyal vice president.
A murderous traitor.
Chapter Two
The shrill bleeping of her pager cut through Amanda’s concentration with an eardrum-piercing volume. Darn thing drove her bonkers. With a huff, she saved and closed the note she’d been working on and drew the pager from the pocket of her scrub pants.
She groaned as Dr. John Michaels’ number flashed on the screen. Amanda bit back a groan and picked up the phone. For the past five years, she’d worked closely with Dr. Michaels, who was the medical director of the intensive care unit, and about a year ago his interest in her changed from strictly professional to romantic. She’d had a crush on the handsome doctor since the first time she’d met him and jumped right into an exclusive relationship.
The first three months were great. John was charming, attentive, fun, and she’d really thought she’d found something that could go the distance. Things began to change over the next month, spawned by him witnessing another colleague, Mark, asking Amanda for a date. She’d declined with a polite smile and explanation that she was taken, but John wasn’t satisfied with that. He’d railed at her for hours about how her friendly nature could be misconstrued as flirting. What was she supposed to do? Give all her male coworkers the cold shoulder? It was the first red flag she’d ignored.
The second came a few days later when Mark’s tires were slashed in the parking lot of the hospital. There was never any proof that John had done it, and he’d even convinced Mark it wasn’t him, but Amanda’s gut told her otherwise. And she trusted her instincts.
From there, he seemed to grow more possessive by the day. He never crossed the line into abusive, but after just six months of dating, Amanda couldn’t take it anymore. He called or texted so many times throughout the day, it was making her crazy. She didn’t owe him any explanations about how she spent her time or who she associated with.
She’d broken things off and he’d reacted like a child, calling her a slew of insulting names and insinuating she’d slept her way through the hospital. In reality, she’d had a strict no dating coworkers policy until she met him. That and he was only the third man she’d ever been with. Not that he believed her. Sick of his nonsense, she’d made it clear a cordial working relationship was the only one they’d have moving forward.
In the month since then, she hadn’t regained her footing when working with him and she’d avoided him whenever possible.
But she was the lone physical therapist on call that weekend, which meant any consults would go to her. After two rings, the charge nurse in the ICU answered the phone. “Hi, Cindy, it’s Amanda with PT. I’m returning a page from Dr. Michaels.”
“Oh, hey, Amanda. He was here two seconds ago but got called away to answer some questions for a patient’s family. He asked me to see if you could come down here. There’s a patient in bed five he wants you to start working with tomorrow and I think he wanted to discuss some things with you first.”
“Be there in three minutes,” she said as she ended the call. Ugh. Now she’d have to go talk to him in person. “Might as well get it over with, girl,” she muttered to herself as she stood and headed toward the stairwell. With as many wards as she rotated through in a normal day, waiting for the elevator got old very fast. Plus, taking the stairs all day long helped keep her rear end from getting flabby. Or so she told herself on days she was too lazy to hit the gym.
Amanda waved her badge in front of the wall panel granting her access to the locked ICU and entered the quiet area that held the most critically ill patients. Not that they ever got cases that were overly intense. The hospital was a small community medical center. Any kind of major trauma was airlifted to one of the trauma centers over an hour away.
Dr. Michaels was nowhere to be seen, so she made her way to bed five. Might as well peek in on the new patient she’d be evaluating the following day. She popped her head into the room and was greeted by the familiar sounds of a ventilator breathing for the sedated man in the bed. She’d been at this for so many years now, it was easy to look at a patient with a clinical eye and leave her emotions out of the equation. Yet, as she trailed her focus up to his face, she couldn’t help the gasp that left her lips.
“Pretty shocking, isn’t it?” Dr. Michaels’ voice behind her made her jump.
“Um, yeah. It really is. Not what I was expecting.” For the moment, the awkwardness with the physician was forgotten as she took in the sight of the injured man before her. He had to have been beaten. One of the worst she’d ever seen, and she’d worked in a few trauma centers during her schooling.
His face was mottled with a grotesque palate of purple and green bruises, almost to the point that none of his white skin was visible. A tube ran from the front of his neck to the ventilator next to his bed. If she had to guess, without knowing anything about him, she’d say the facial swelling had blocked his airway making breathing through his mouth and nose impossible. A tracheostomy tube had been placed to bypass the normal breathing route and allow the patient to breath…and survive.
“What happened to him?” she asked.
John was indeed a handsome man, she had to give him that much. Sandy blond hair, green eyes, wide shoulders, movie star good looks. Not her typical type, but still very attractive.
Unfortunately, she tended to be drawn to darker guys, both in coloring and in temperament. Dark hair, dark eyes, and as her roommate liked to tease, dark pasts. But those men weren’t good for her, so she steered clear, making her dating history a sad and short story. John had been her shot at a stable relationship with a man who had it all together. And that had sure blown up in her face. Now what kind of man was she supposed to look for? The bad boys were off limits and it turned out the good ones could screw her over as well.
With a heavy sigh, John entered the room and stared at the telemetry monitor, keeping track of the patient’s status round the clock. “We’re not entirely sure. I mean, we know his injuries, but not how they came about. Hell, we don’t even know his name. He was found without any identification and no one has called or made any inquiries about a missing person.”
He bent over the patient and pressed his stethoscope against the man’s chest. John was interacting with her as though they had no messy history. As though she was nothing more than a respected coworker. Just as she’d demanded. Maybe this could work. Maybe they could maintain a professional relationship and she could stop avoiding him at all costs.
“Anyway,” he said as he straightened and faced her, “we’ve been weaning him off the vent and tomorrow we’re planning to discontinue
it and stop the sedation. Now that most of the swelling in his airway has receded he’s been breathing surprisingly well. He has some facial fractures and three bullet wounds. One in the thigh that hit his femur. Another in his shoulder which luckily only did soft tissue damage and another in his right side. That’s the one that should have killed him. One inch over and it would have. A few of his ribs are broken and he has more bruised skin than not. He also had a brain bleed which required surgery but is now stable. He’ll be looking and feeling rough for quite a while, but he’s damn lucky to be alive.”
Geez. The man was a mess. Exactly the type of patient she loved to work with, but not one that was typically admitted to that hospital. Amanda only worked there on the occasional weekend, for extra cash. Her primary job was at a rehab hospital about forty-five minutes away. She was used to this level of injury, but this hospital wasn’t. “Shouldn’t he be at a trauma center?”
Dr. Michaels shot her a nasty look and she took a step back. It wasn’t a look she’d received from him before. Granted, it did sound like she was questioning his medical judgment, but, truth of the matter was, John Doe probably needed to be in the trauma center. They just had more experience with critically injured patients.
“Are you questioning my ability to properly care for this patient?” John asked, his voice cold.
Ugh, someone save her from the fragile male ego and its ability to bruise like a peach. “Of course not. I was just surprised to see him because we don’t typically admit patients with this level of injury here.” She chose her words carefully. If she played it right, she could end this conversation, finish her two notes and be out of the hospital within the next half hour. Very important because she had a date with her roommate, a bottle of wine, and some cookie dough ice cream to catch up on their favorite trashy television shows they’d missed during the week. Wild Saturday night. A long dramatic encounter with Dr. Michaels would only delay her fun.
