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.
Shattered copyright @ 2018 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 DEVIL’S HORSEMEN MC TRILOGY
WRECKED
SHATTERED
DEFILED
TABLE OF CONTENTS
SHATTERED
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
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SHATTERED
Chapter One
Rox
I stood at the back door, feeling a world of emotions swirling around in my body, threatening to overcome me at any moment. I had put this off for four months, dealing with my grief in ways I didn’t want to even think about. When people said there was a step-by-step process to grief, I had never believed them, thinking it was some crock of shit to get the whole therapy business going.
But now… well, I probably needed some therapy at this moment.
I straightened my shoulders, fiddling around with inserting the key into the lock. I didn’t have to do this by myself. More than one person had offered to come with me, to even do it themselves, but I knew my brother would not want strangers rifling through his stuff.
As if he would care now.
Turning the key, I pushed open the door, and the immediate smell of stale cigarettes hit me full force. Leo had never been one to smoke outside, much preferring to do it wherever he was standing.
“Why the fuck would I want to smoke while freezing my balls off?” he had asked me once. “It’s my damn house. I can smoke in there if I want to.”
I hadn’t disagreed. It was his house, after all. It was understood that you would come out smelling like an ash tray after a visit. I had given him hell about it of course, being his younger bratty sister. I got more middle fingers than I cared to mention, always done with love.
But I wouldn’t have that happen now. I wouldn’t see his grin when I came over to have our weekly supper, nor would I hear him call me ‘Red’, a nod to my fiery red hair.
Tears clouded my vision as I stepped inside and shut the door, taking a moment to allow the tears to flow down my cheeks. Leo Tate had been everything to me, my only sibling, whom I’d looked up to dearly. He had been my best friend, my rock, and though we both hadn’t had an easy childhood, it had been Leo that had protected me from our father’s fists, Leo who had taken the blows himself, so I could escape.
Who was going to protect me now?
Sliding down the door, I sat on the cold tile of the kitchen, staring at the doorway that led to the rest of his small house. Any minute, he was going to come around that corner and laugh at me for crying like this. Any minute, he was going to scoop me up in one of his famous hugs.
Why had he died instead of me? The pain… I couldn’t take it. There had been a moment after his death when my life had fallen apart, when I had considered joining him. I had no family other than him, nothing in my life that meant a damn. It would have been too easy to take some pills or drown myself in my bathtub and just give up.
But there had been a small voice that nagged me every time I had considered it, urging me to fight in his name and never let this earth forget my brother Leo Tate.
Wiping my face with my hand, I picked myself up off the floor and walked over to the cabinet to locate a trash bag, so that I could start my clean out. Four months this house had sat silent, and over the last few weeks I had started to think about moving in. My crap apartment was the size of a closet, and I knew that Leo’s house was paid off, paid with cash that I knew had come from his time with the motorcycle club, The Devil’s Horsemen. The club had been everything to my brother, the family we’d never had, and there had been a moment… well, I thought I could have been a part of that family as well.
Anger filled my veins as I yanked open the fridge and started dumping the spoiled food into the trash bag. There had been a time in my life when I’d thought everything was lining up for the Tate children. Leo was happy, and I had finally gotten with a man I thought would make me just as happy.
But that had not been the case. In fact, Neil Wheeler was the reason Leo was not here in this house today.
Blowing out a breath, I moved on to the drawers in the fridge, throwing away anything that was in there as well. Seeing Neil two weeks ago had been a jolt to my entire body, sending me hurtling back to the days that were not full of pain and anguish. My heart had stopped as I took in his muscular form, dressed in his customary black outfit. I had sworn to him at one time that he had no color in his closet, even going as far as to buy him a shirt that reminded me of his eyes.
Oh, those eyes… They were a show-stopper.
“No,” I said aloud to an empty house.
I wasn’t going there. After years of lusting after Neil, I had succeeded in getting his attention and ultimately into my bed.
And it had cost me everything.
Finishing the fridge, I put the bag by the door and forced myself to walk down the hall, pausing at Leo’s bedroom. I was going to give nearly all of his clothes to the thrift shop, keeping only a few pieces for myself. In fact, there would only be a few things of my brother’s I would keep. I wanted to turn this house into a place for me and not a shrine to him. At some point, I had to move on from his death.
The bed was still unmade, the covers thrown on the floor as if my brother had just crawled out of it. I sighed as I walked over and laid my hand on the covers, the cold seeping through my skin. That day I’d got the call, I had been at my beauty shop not far from here.
It had been the worst day of my life.
“Oh, Leo!” I whispered. “What were you doing?”
Silence greeted me. My brother had been dumped in a ditch outside town, still wearing his DHMC vest. I had that vest, bloodstain and all, back in my apartment, tucked away in a box. The club had been such a huge part of his life, and I knew he wouldn’t want me to burn it, though I wanted to. I wanted to burn the entire club down, along with a few people inside. They had turned their back on my brother, and one of their own had killed them.
The one I had least expected to do something like that.
Sitting down on the bed, I placed my head in my hands, the memories of my childhood hitting me flat in the face. Neil Wheeler had lived next door to us. Leo and Neil had been good friends growing up,
getting into trouble together and planning one day to be part of one of the bike gangs in Cibolo, Texas.
I, on the other hand, was the gangly little sister, with stars in her eyes every time I interacted with Neil Wheeler. My crush on him literally started from birth, and even though he didn’t give me any indication that he would be interested in me one day, I hadn’t given up.
Especially the time my brother found out about my little crush.
***
‘Roxanne Wheeler’.
‘Roxy Wheeler’.
‘Rox Wheeler’.
I frowned as I looked at the doodles on the page. While ‘Roxanne’ sounded so sophisticated, ‘Roxy’ was sexy.
And if I was to be with Neil, I had to be sexy.
The problem was, I had no curves like the girls I had seen him with lately. He clearly preferred big boobs and a butt to match, and I had neither.
I doubted he was going to go for my charming personality, or the fact that I could tell him all his favorite things, from his food to the shows he liked to watch on TV. I knew everything about Neil Wheeler, everything.
My bedroom door burst open, and I froze on the bed, half expecting my father to storm into the room. He was still pissed about the grades I had brought him yesterday, and while Leo had stopped him from hitting me, I knew it was only going to be a matter of time before he got his hands on me.
“You scared me,” I scolded my brother, sitting up.
“Sorry,” Leo said, grinning. “I just wanted to tell you that I won’t be home tonight.”
A shiver of fear ran through me, knowing what that meant for me. I would have to bolt my door tonight.
“What are you doing?”
He shook his head as he walked to the bed, sitting next to me.
Leo was seventeen, and I knew I would be lucky to have him another year in this home. Once he left, there would only be me and my mom to take the brunt of my father’s wrath.
“You don’t need to know that. It’s probably better you don’t, so if someone asks, you won’t have to lie.”
I gave him a little shrug. Then it must be something dangerous or illegal. He shifted, and my notebook fell on the floor.
“I’ll get it,” I said quickly.
He got there first, picking it up and reading the contents on the page.
“What the hell is this, Red?”
My cheeks burned.
“It’s nothing, just some doodling. Give it back.”
He held it just out of my reach, his gaze narrowed.
“You have a thing for Neil.”
“I-I do not,” I said with very little conviction, as I reached for the notebook.
“Yes, you do,” he breathed. “How have I not seen this before now?”
I crossed my arms over my chest, giving him a look.
“It’s nothing, alright?”
“It better be,” he said, throwing the notebook on the bed. “You don’t belong with any of us, Rox. You are too good for this town, for the likes of Neil Wheeler.”
I stared at him.
“B-but he’s your best friend.”
Leo gave a shrug, walking to the door.
“But he’s not good enough for my baby sister. Keep this door barred tonight, Rox. I’ll be back in the morning. Love ya!”
“Love ya!” I echoed as he walked out of the room, shutting the door behind him.
Leo was wrong. Neil was the perfect guy for me.
***
I shook out of my thoughts. Maybe my brother had been right all along about Neil. He had done nothing but broken my heart and ripped my brother from me. Neil was a sniper for the DHMC, and when Neil’s body had been examined, it hadn’t been difficult at all to know who had fired the fatal bullet.
I hated him.
Rising from the bed, I started toward Leo’s dresser, tripping over a box in the middle of the floor in the process. The contents spilled out onto the carpet and I knelt down, shuffling through the papers. An envelope slid out from my grasp, and my blood ran cold as I saw my name scrawled on the front in my brother’s handwriting.
I dropped the other papers on the floor and snatched up the envelope, my hands shaking as I looked at it. Leo had never been one to be sentimental; he’d gotten me a gun for my eighteenth birthday, instead of a birthday card.
This would have to have been something very important for him to have taken the time to prepare it. There was only one way to find out.
I sat back on the bed and slit the envelope, extracting the single piece of paper out of its holding place. My eyes blurred as I opened it, recognizing my brother’s handwriting. With a deep breath, I started to read.
Chapter Two
Neil
I drummed my fingers along the window sill, watching as Zack put the tire back on my bike. The damn thing had nearly fallen off the other day, and had it happened, I would have been eating asphalt. The last few months had really taken a toll on my bike; the backroads and paths I had been forced to go down were not good for the shocks.
But it was a hell of a lot faster than my truck, especially when one needed to get out of a tight spot.
“There,” he said, locking the last nut in. “That should hold it for a little while longer.”
“Just a little while?” I asked, arching my brow. “Dude, I don’t want to be meeting my maker over a damn tire.”
Zack chuckled as he threw the wrench into the box next to him and straightened up.
“In your line of work, I doubt a tire is going to be the thing that sends you to hell.”
I gave him a shrug. He had a point.
“Maybe we will be done soon.”
Zack’s expression darkened.
“Hell, I hope so, man. I’m ready to get Syd the hell out of danger.”
I gave him a grim smile. Zack and Sydney’s relationship wasn’t quite what any of us had expected to have in our midst, a cop and a biker not being the best mix. But I knew my friend loved her, and she condoned what we did as long as we didn’t step too far out of line.
In fact, the cops had eased off of us since Syd and Zack had made it official, working with us to find Grayson and his brood of traitors rather than against us.
But none of us would have any peace until we found the traitors and brought them to our own kind of justice.
A year and a half ago, Grayson Barnes had kidnapped the president of DHMC’s daughter, nearly getting her killed the in process. He had done it in the hope that we would go to war with the Caballeros de Los Muertos and eliminate Grant Travis, so he could rise to the top and take over the brotherhood. His plan had failed, thanks to Zack and Sydney, and I had been tracking his scent ever sense, taking out the traitors as I got my hands on them. I had killed many of them, some up close and some with my sniper gun, but with each and every death, I felt we were one step closer to Grayson.
Zack wiped his hands on a rag before throwing it at the same box as the wrench.
“I heard you got Leo Tate recently. That’s a damn shame man.”
I swallowed hard, not wanting to talk about it. There had been more at stake than just going after the club member. Leo had been my best friend growing up, next door neighbors who stayed in trouble more often than we stayed out of it. Leo’s home life was shitty, and most of the time he had been attempting to escape the pain that his house held.
But it wasn’t only Leo that had lived in that house.
“I don’t know where he went wrong,” I finally forced out, realizing Zack was waiting for an answer. “I’m sure a lot of those guys believed the shit that Grayson was spouting around.”
“You got that right,” Zack said quietly.
We had heard many things since Grayson had gone on the run, from rumors that he was building an army to come back and wipe us out to his ties with the Muertos, who wanted nothing more than to wipe us off the face of the planet. Every Horseman was on high alert, and most had moved their families out of town in case there were some targeted attacks. I had attempted
to do the same for my mom, but she had just pushed me out the door, telling me not to worry about her.
But I worried. I wasn’t a very popular guy these days.
Pushing away from the wall, I walked over to the bike, running my hand over the leather seat.
“This is gonna get ugly Zack. You might want to get Sydney out of it.”
Zack laughed.
“Are you serious? You have met my wife, right? She won’t even entertain the idea of getting out of the task force. Hell, she threatened to shoot me in the face if I asked her one more time.”
I chuckled.
“Hey, I thought I would at least throw it out there.”
