by A. J. Downey
BROTHER
TO BROTHER
A.J. Downey
Second Circle Press
Melody Beswick thought she was bringing herself and her thirteen month old son home to his father. It was her last ditch effort to make a better life for her and her boy. One in which Noah had a father to look up to and guide him. While she knew Grinder wasn’t perfect, she believed in him, and love always found a way, right?
Melody never thought her dreams for herself and her son could twist into such nightmares, and that it was so true, the old adage, that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. She’s about to find out that another adage is true, that sometimes it’s better the devil you know when instead of finding Grinder, it’s his cold and critical brother Archer at the end of her long drive that she must contend with.
With no other options, and no place else to go, Melody is about to make a deal with this devil that she can’t refuse. Who knew it could, quite possibly, be the best decision she’s ever made?
Author’s Note
Being a spin-off, the events of this trilogy take place after the events of Damaged & Dangerous, The Sacred Hearts MC Book VI. If you have not read the SHMC series, references and events that are talked about in this book may not make sense to you. I highly suggest reading the SHMC series first.
Dedication
To all the moms out there who have gotten down and dirty to take care of your kids. Especially those moms who have had to suck up their pride and accept help from the last place you’ve wanted to. The struggle is real, ladies and you’re making it. It might not be pretty, but you can do it. Just keep on keepin’ on. Fitting this book’s first draft was finished on Mother’s Day weekend.
The Sacred Brotherhood
1. Brother To Brother
2. Her Brother’s Keeper
3. Brother In Arms
Published 2016 by Second Circle Press
Book design by Lia Rees at Free Your Words
Cover art by Wicked Smart Designs
Text copyright © 2016 AJ Downey
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
All Rights Reserved
Contents
Title Page
Book Summary
Author's Note
Dedication
The Sacred Brotherhood
Publishing Info
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Epilogue
Her Brother's Keeper: Teaser
Other books by A.J. Downey
About the Author
Chapter 1
Melody
I’d had my phone shut off and the little pre-paid go phone I’d purchased in case of an emergency didn’t exactly have GPS, so I was doing this by way of the dinosaur; with a set of hastily scratched instructions on a napkin and an honest-to-god fold out map from the back room of a gas station. The attendant had even been surprised his dad had them back there and even though they were from something like the 1970’s, they were still pretty functional. The gas station clerk’s father had told me that I was looking for the juvenile correction center on the map, and that that was the place.
I put the map back down on my passenger seat and ignored it when it slipped to the floorboard. I was pulled over on the side of the road, and I looked into the back seat, twisting all the way around, to check on Noah, my son, in his car seat. He was fast asleep, and I sighed. The trip from Arizona all the way here by car had been a rough one on both of us.
“Okay, Baby. We’re almost there,” I said under my breath, twisting back forward again. It was spring, early March according to the calendar but that didn’t stop the sun. It was out bright and shining but I wasn’t in Arizona anymore so it was considerably cooler than back home, that and it totally showed. Everything here was so green and I really loved it. It was easy on the eyes after so much flat, scorched brown dessert tract.
I turned on my signal and pulled back out onto the three lane, rural highway. One lane in either direction, with a turn lane down the middle. I was close according to the map, and when I saw the wrought iron fence, the gate to it open wide but still less than inviting, I knew this was the place. The Sacred Hearts club in Arizona had been the same; less than inviting to look at, but the man I’d loved had been one of them, and now he was here, and so I had to try.
I pulled up into the driveway and turned off to park in the lot, the back of my car pointed at the front door of the building. I got out and shut the door quietly. I didn’t want to wake Noah, and I would only be feet away. A clubhouse, even during the day when it was sedate, wasn’t any place for a baby, which Noah still was being barely past a year old.
I let out my breath slowly, my heart rate picking up speed. I was out of money, I was out of options, and I was desperate. It showed, too; to have gone to the trouble to track Grinder down all the way here. I swallowed hard, and wiped sweating palms off on my cut off shorts. We’d parted on less than fabulous terms when I’d last seen him. In fact, he’d pretty solidly broken my heart, but I still somehow loved him, and I still somehow harbored the belief that there was a chance, and so I was here.
I put my sunglasses up on the top of my head and went to the door, pulling it open and stepping into the gloom. The door swung shut behind me, and I jumped when it thumped closed. I stood still just inside it and waited for my eyes to adjust to the dim, daytime barroom gloom. There were two men at a table talking, and at least one behind the bar and I looked for the brother who looked like he was most likely in charge.
“Can I help you?” one of them at the table asked, standing, smoothing down his brown faux-hawk in front. I opened my mouth to ask for Grinder but was stopped cold before I could even vocalize anything.
“Oh no! Oh hell no, you tramp. Get the fuck on out of here,” a familiar voice, but not Grinder’s, oh no, it was his brother, Archer, who spoke from the archway leading back further into the club. He approached me like an impending storm that was going to unleash all kinds of havoc on me and I shrank in on myself.
“Archer, I’m not here to cause any trouble, honest! I’m just looking for –”
“I don’t give a fuck!” he barked and made long strides towards me, I felt myself shrink back even more, backing away into the closed door while he powered in my direction, rolling like a thunderhead across the sky. He grabbed me by the arm and pulled me forward, away from the door which swung inward as he jerked it open with his other hand.
“Archer, no! Please, I’m just looking for G
rinder I have to talk to him, please just tell him I’m here!” I babbled, trying to get him to listen to me as he dragged me out into the sun. He spied my car, eyes locking onto the Arizona plates. The two men from the table and the man from behind the bar piling out the door calling after him as he towed me towards my car.
“Archer! Man, let her go,” one called; the other right over the top of him saying, “What the fuck are you doing, man?”
“Archer, please!” I hauled my body away from him, dug my sneakers into the gravel but he was hurting me, dragging me inexorably away from the building. I was sliding and I either let him tow me or I was going to go down and he’d drag me across the unforgiving sharp stones anyways. He was a man on a mission and that mission was to get rid of me at all costs and as soon as possible.
“I don’t know what the fuck you were thinkin’ comin’ around here, Melody, but you damn sure ain’t welcome. Now, get back in your car and take your ass back to Arizona! I mean it, too, right the fuck now,” he was saying as I shouted and pleaded over his husky smoker’s voice, which he’d always had, a lot of the girls finding it sexy until they actually slept with him. I don’t ever remember any of the club girls doing it twice.
“Archer, I have to talk to Grinder, please let me go! Let me talk to him you have to let me talk to him!”
He rounded on me and slammed me up against the side of my car and screamed, “Grinder’s dead, you bitch! Whatever the fuck you told him to chase him out here, it was the last move he ever made! It fuckin’ killed him, so I don’t have to do shit!”
I cried out as my back made impact with the back door and his words made impact with my heart. I looked up at him, shocked, eyes wide and the tears gathering just as the high, thin wail of my son broke the clear day as he started to cry. The noise and the car rocking from mine and Archer’s scuffle waking him.
Archer looked past me through the window glass at Noah’s small face, and his eyes widened in shock. I stared up at Archer, and I stammered out; “I told him I was pregnant… that’s why he left us,” but all I could think was, oh my god, he must be lying, he must be lying, no Grinder can’t be dead, he can’t be dead… Oh my god, what was I going to do? It’d taken everything I had, all of my money, just to get us out here.
“They didn’t tell me, oh god, they knew and they didn’t tell me… what am I going to do?” I heard myself say out loud. I looked up at Archer’s familiar and angry face and asked the empty air, “What am I going to do?”
Chapter 2
Archer
She pushed me back and I was so fixed on the boy in the car seat I just sort of stepped back, poleaxed, while she opened the back door and brought him out where I could see him better. Jesus Christ, he looked just like Grind when he was a kid. I mean, this kid had Melody’s bright blond hair, but the boy’s eyes? They were the same hazel as my brother’s and all I could do was stand there for a second and stare.
Fuck you, Grind. I thought at my dead brother, fuck you, if what she says is true. Which I knew it was. The proof was right in fuckin’ front of me, staring at me with my dead brother’s eyes.
“Archer, you fuckin’ cool, man?” I turned and looked at Reaver who was standing there with Data and Disney flanking him to either side, all three of them lookin’ skeptical but Reaver’s eyes especially cold.
“Mel, put the baby back in his seat,” I ordered, staring Reaver down. He arched an eyebrow at me and I gave him a nod.
“What, why?”
“Just put him in the fuckin’ cage, now!” I barked at her, and she jumped, the boy started up, screaming loud and she cuddled him close, making soothing noises and I cursed myself silently for scaring him.
I snatched her keys hanging out of her hip pocket and as soon as she shut the door hauled her over to the passenger side of her own cage, dragging open the door and sitting her ass in the seat.
When I’d first seen her, the first thing I’d noticed was that she’d cut her hair, and that she’d filled out some in all the right ways, but now I knew why for the second. She’d had a fuckin’ baby, my brother’s baby. I shut her into the cage and went around to the driver’s seat.
“Where you takin’ her, Archer?” Reaver demanded, winter in his voice.
“My place,” I uttered, “It’ll have to fuckin’ do for now.” I got into the cage’s driver’s seat and turned it over, the guys walked back to the club and I pulled out in a spray of gravel. I could see ‘em watching in the rearview mirror but I didn’t care.
I glanced at Melody, who was staring at me wide eyed, I expected her to ask me where I was taking her and her boy, my brother’s son, but she didn’t, instead she asked me, voice hollow with shock and pain, “Is he really dead?”
Fuck.
“Yeah,” I gritted my teeth a second to bite of the string of curses I had for every last one of my old chapter. “He’s really dead,” I said, and I didn’t have a fuckin’ thing else for her.
She turned her face out the window and stared blankly, and it was like I watched her shut down, like some kind of robot or something. Her eyes unfocused and stared blankly as the scenery whipped by the window, and for her? Knowing where she’d come from? I knew it was nice scenery.
At least the boy was quiet now, too. I stared into the rearview mirror for a second and found him staring back at me, little cupid’s bow of a mouth hanging open, my brother’s eyes staring wide like I was the most interesting and awe inspiring thing ever. I felt my jaw take on that familiar determined steel and shook my head, casting my eyes where they belonged on the road ahead. I hated driving a fucking cage.
Chapter 3
Melody
He stopped the car in front of this old motel that appeared to have been renovated into apartments. I looked up at the place, as dilapidated as they got, and he shut off my car, pocketing the keys.
“Get the boy,” he grunted.
“Noah,” I said softly.
“What?”
“My son’s name is Noah,” I said and I got out of the car. He sat for a moment and I think seethed, but I didn’t give a damn. I’d named my son after his father, Archer could and would just have to get over it.
I went around to the driver’s side back door and opened it up, slinging Noah’s diaper bag across my chest and ducking into the car to get him out of his car seat; my sweet boy looked distressed, and reached for me, calling “Mamma!” I pulled him out of the car and stood up with him in my arms, his chubby little arms wrapped tight around my neck. He looked around, his father’s hazel eyes scanning the cracked parking lot at the same time mine did. This place was a dump, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.
“Get up here,” Archer said, halfway up the cement steps with their rickety looking metal railing. I hugged Noah to me and followed him warily. He went to the door with a rusty, corroded metal number six nailed to it; rust stains running down the dirty, beige colored door like blood, and unlocked it ushering me quickly inside.
He shut the door behind us, and I stared. The living room was nothing more than a couch, television on an overturned milk crate, and a battered coffee table that looked like it’d come out of a pile marked ‘free’ on the side of the road. To the right was an old, seventies, equally battered four seater table in front of every apartment kitchen you’ve ever seen. The table had four chairs around it, vinyl and equally as aged, yellow foam peeking from a slashed seat. The table at least looked like it might have come from a goodwill or garage sale, the chairs though? They looked like they came out of the same ‘free’ pile the coffee table had come out of.
A doorway in the wall by the kitchen led back to the bedroom, which is where he took us next. I stared at the queen sized bed with the wrought iron headboard – probably the nicest piece of furniture so far, and swallowed hard.
He gripped me by the upper arm and hauled me through the door when I hesitated too long, sitting me down on the end of the bed. I sat, and Noah looked around quietly; my heart broke just a little. Noah was usually a bubbly
, talkative child, but kids knew, and my boy’s silence as he slobbered all over his fist, told me he was as apprehensive as his mamma. I looked up at Archer and he set his jaw.
“You can take the bedroom, I’ll take the couch. I’m going to go pick up an extra shift. I’m taking your cage. I’ll be back later tonight. Don’t go anywhere,” and just like that, he went out the bedroom door shutting it tightly behind him. I blinked and looked around the room.
Aside from the queen sized bed, there was a battered garage sale dresser with a smaller television and DVD player on its top at the foot. One of those tall chest of drawers. There was a squat, longer dresser along the wall beside the bed where a doorway opened into a bathroom off to the side and by all appearances, the only bathroom in the place. The opposite wall had a window that was not only shuttered with venetian blinds, but had a heavy military blanket tacked up over it.
That was it furniture wise; there was no more room for anything else in this bedroom with its stark walls and cracked ceiling. I looked at Noah, asking him, “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” his soft little breathy child’s voice almost made me smile.
“You got a stinky butt?” I asked and he shook his head no, his fist resolutely back in his mouth and I closed my eyes for a second.
“I love you, my sweet boy,” I murmured and kissed his soft hair. He chattered and murmured in his soft baby voice, his breath evening and deepening and I sighed. He hadn’t had much of a nap in the car. I slid the strap of his diaper bag off of my shoulder and sat him down on the bed. He immediately started to fuss and whine until I picked him back up and he clung to me. I sighed… I knew exactly how he felt.
Chapter 4
Archer
The bar was closed, and the shift had gone pretty well, and by well, I mean it’d been boring as shit. That’s pretty much what you preferred when it came to this shit, and so I wasn’t complaining, in fact, I was giving Cindy, one of the lead bartenders, a hand by mopping the floor while I waited for my two dumbass younger brothers to show up.
