He slumped back down to his position in the back of the truck while Vinny swerved wildly through traffic and through red lights. The motorcycles had faded in the background as they took off in one direction and Vinny went in another, towards the Devils’ club’s headquarters.
As soon as he was about two miles from the quarry, he suddenly pulled into an alleyway concealing the back end behind industrial sized garbage cans. The one or two Devils riders that had managed to keep up, passed his truck’s hiding spot. As he watched them go, Vinny’s heart raced quickly and his palms sweat. He wasn’t worried about two bikers trying to take them. He just wanted to throw them off his scent and get to Cattlemen’s as fast as he possibly could.
Vinny had two options, though. He could pull back out and take the fastest route down the town’s center streets and business district to the restaurant, or he could slow everything down and bide his time taking the back alley and side streets where he’d look less conspicuous. He chose to continue on. He knew getting seen while on the main streets was dangerous. The Devils had eyes and ears of all kinds. And, no doubt, their leadership had put a search out for the truck or even Vinny and Benni.
Cattlemen’s parking lot was empty besides one or two bikes parked in the back entrance. A man paced the yellow and white faded lanes as he talked on a cellphone. He was wearing the Devils’ signature purple colors, but he certainly didn’t look prepared to take on an entire truckload of a rival club’s most fearsome men.
Vinny did not wait to take charge. Parking the car in a spot near to where the man stood, he jumped out of the truck’s driver’s side and banged on the hot metal of the truck. Without looking back, he continued on towards the restaurant. His eyes were dead set on the building in front of him, and his mind raced with hopes to just finish the job he should have ended weeks ago when he had a chance. If Junior were really in there, if he had his shot at taking him out himself, he was going to take it.
The man on the phone had suddenly come to despite Vinny striding right past him. The older man with a gray beard and black sunglasses yelled at him as he shouted passively that the restaurant was closed today. That was, until he noticed he was wearing the other side’s patches.
Vinny saw the first man’s hit coming. Nearly a foot taller than him, he managed to duck under his tired right hook. As he popped up, Vinny grabbed the man’s chest and kneed him as hard as he could. He could feel the literal breath jump out of his body as he connected to his gut. The watchman fell backwards in pain as he rolled back and forth in the black gravel.
With the one person in his way and his companions finally hopping out of the bed of the truck, Vinny had all of the advantage as far as he could tell. One of those bikes resting near the door Vinny passed belonged to Junior. Behind him, the rest of the Horsemen kicked and continued to beat at the watchman. Only Benni watched from afar as Vinny entered the building alone and unguarded.
The restaurant was completely silent except for the metal clinking sound and the voices of the crew of a kitchen preparing for dinner. When the staff saw him, the red switchblade clenched in his hands, they took off running towards the front as they knocked down plates and silverware in their wake. Vinny stepped over the mess as he opened every door he could. Kitchen drawers, walk-in freezers, pantries, and offices. All were turning up empty.
“Junior!” He called out into the restaurant with a thundering roar. “You stupid fuck! Get the hell out here and take what is coming to you like a—”
Vinny stopped as he listened closely to a new sound take over the space. It was footsteps. They were pounding, running, climbing. There were many pairs of them, and they were all heading to the place where Vinny stood alone and without a partner in the heart of the restaurant’s kitchen.
How could that be? Vinny asked himself. This wasn’t the setup!
***
Gloria checked in at the front desk of Hotel Sunco at Breaker’s Pointe. From the small picture window she could spot the hint of gray and white waves crashing in to the shore as seagulls cawed into the afternoon sky.
This was supposed to be paradise. At least, she had always wanted to see the beach. It was the one place in the world where she had always dreamed of traveling to. Now she had the excuse and the money to make it there.
Breaker’s Pointe was also the one place she could think of to go where she could not be tracked.
She had made her getaway real. There was no memory of Gloria back home except for her empty microphone at Jackman’s Tavern and the blood stains in the living room of her townhome. After making enemies for so long with her blackmail scheme, she was sure that there were plenty of people that did know her that wouldn’t care in the slightest if she was really offed.
Even with Vinny, she could not be sure if he would be grateful or disappointed that she did actually leave. To be fair, it was her and her schemes, her greedy desire to get more from him and the clubs, that got him into this predicament to begin with. With Gloria gone, he would be free to get back into his club’s good graces and put her out of his memory.
Gloria wished she could do the same. But the heat of the last kiss and the soft purple bruises he left on her skin were still etched into her all the same. She could call him. She could let Vinny know she needed him and wanted him. However, this was the only way. There was no other means to keep them both safe and out of harms way.
This was their new life. Together. Apart. On opposite roads, but traveling to the same goal. Gloria knew she would never find another man like Vinny. And she doubted he could find her equivalent either. But they would have to do without. Their time together as partners in secrets had come to an end.
The man at the hotel counter handed her the keycard with her room number written in blue pen. As she turned to grab her bag, a sudden realization occurred to her. She spun back towards the man in the mustard colored tie and the big black nametag and said sweetly, “I’m sorry to be a bother, but does this hotel have a computer I can borrow? I need to send an email before I head out to the beach.”
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CHAPTER ONE
“Mimosas! This is absolutely paradise!” a woman with salt-and-pepper hair exclaimed loudly as a well-dressed waiter handed her an orange drink in a tall crystal glass.
Her companion was just about her age, equally gray in the hair, and looking longingly at the white sandy beaches from their spot on the patio’s white wicker lounge chairs. “Yup,” he said simply, “we needed this. Fresh air, sea breeze—and none o’ the nonsense back home.”
“Especially after Matthew—” Her voice trailed off as she turned directly toward her partner and whispered under her breath, “—Matthew and his bank scam… Oh, Tom, I just can’t take the stress and the pressure of it anymore.”
“Just forget it, Emma,” Tom replied testily. “If Matthew wants to be a damned fool and steal from his workplace, we ain’t gonna stop him. He was an idiot as a kid, he’s an idiot as an adult, and he’ll probably die an idiot of an old man.” Tom said this with an uncaring iciness towards Emma, too preoccupied with the frothy yellow beer in his hand to concern himself with details like her feelings.
“But he’s our son, Tom,” Emma insisted, “Our son. If he gets caught, we are gonna watch him go to jail.” Her voice rose frantically as realization over her family’s situation came back to her. No amount of freshly squeezed orange juice and bubbly champagne could distract her from the realities of her life as the mother of an unchecked criminal.
“Listen,” Tom said, turning on his side now to face her. “This is our time away. Just let this go for one night and try to find some peace. We’ll deal with Matthew when we get back to Sterling.”
As their bickering continued, Emma, distraught, stood and began pacing the paved brick patio as her husband continued to hide behind his thick black sunglasses. The sun beat down on them mercilessly, adding
physical heat to their anger and confusion.
Gloria wanted to take pity them. Raising a child up for eighteen years to be a good man, a moral man, meant nothing when greed and money took hold of him. In Gloria’s former line of work, she had seen hundreds of good men go bad or grow corrupted over a plan they thought would never fail or a scheme that promised to make them rich. No mother’s love or a lover’s kindness could change them or steer them away—she was certain of that.
From her spot on the deck, just a few feet down from where the two were now screaming at one another, Gloria tried to suck in as many details as she could as she wrote in her black notebook. Client Name: Emma and Tom?. Location: Sterling, FL. Plot: Son Matthew stealing money from bank employer. Deal: _________.
She wanted nothing more than to fill in that last blank regarding their deal. But she was supposed to be out of the blackmail game. After years of being the queen of information, the woman with the know on everyone’s business, she had been forced into retirement after a motorcycle club her former bodyguard and lover was a member of began threatening her to provide information and keep their own secrets safe.
No one trusts the blackmailer, that’s for sure. Gloria couldn’t really understand it. Sure, she had information on the group. And, yes, she knew a bunch on their rival gang, the Devils. But what none of the Black Horsemen knew except for her man Vinny was that she was the one who killed the Devils top rider. She would keep that secret to the grave if she had to if it meant saving Vinny’s reputation and skin.
But now she may have bit into more than she chew. Just a couple weeks ago, Gloria managed to get out an urgent message to Vinny once again that he was in danger. After hearing from her partner, Jordan, that the Devils were actually hiding out a very wanted man named Junior in a restaurant and were planning to ambush Vinny and the leader of the club, Benni, while they staked out the quarry, Gloria acted fast. Just hours earlier, she had drove off into the sunset, vowing to never be a part of Vinny’s perilous life ever again.
But as his secret keeper, she sent him a warning and hopefully got him out of the quarry in time to find Jordan, end the war between the Devils and the Horsemen, and get on with his life without her. Part of her didn’t want to know what really went down. If he survived, it would kill her to know he had yet to contact her or reach out to her. If he had not made it or was mortally wounded, she couldn’t take the thought of not warning him sooner while she still had the chance.
And that’s why she could not blackmail the couple on their vacation. Blackmailing only led to pain and strife. It only chased her into dark corners of seedy bars and put all her hopes and dreams into envelopes sealed by drug dealers, adulterers, and robbers. Her actions had not only hurt her, but they had managed to kill others, as well.
The image of Calvin Senior flashed before her eyes—the father who, just like the couple attempting to soak in some sun away from their troubles, was one of Gloria’s blackmail victims. She had found out about his son’s double cross and, in the end, it led to him being tied up in the basement of his own home while two of the top Horsemen’s enforcers, including Vinny, beating the crap out of him. His wife probably got the worse of it. Totally innocent in all of it, Gloria had watched in horror from her hiding spot as one of the men dragged her by her hair down the stairs and into the basement to await her fate.
She never learned what had happened to her or her husband. The two could have died that night. From the beating she heard and saw Calvin take, it would not surprise her if the man couldn’t bounce back from those vicious injuries or the from the accumulating puddle of blood under his chair. On the other hand, they could have survived by Gloria’s quick thinking plan to warn Vinny that she had called the cops.
Gloria could not live with herself if she let this couple endure even an iota of what Calvin Senior and his wife had gone through. Even if Michael had not committed a crime against a dangerous motorcycle club, wasn’t seeing someone’s loved one being taken away or forced to flee painful enough?
Still, she wrote down their names in the nearly full notebook. Accumulating secrets was a habit she just could not break. And if she wasn’t going to bank on it, she was going to at least hold onto it. You never know what you can do with a secret.
The couple moved on rather quickly. The husband left in a huff after the wife foolishly began weeping openly. She screamed after him as he ran down the white stone steps to the beach area, “Thomas! Thomas! You come back here and talk to me right this instant! Thomas!”
Gloria watched with some amusement as Emma chased him down, tripping on her brown flip-flop. Neither had paid her any attention or mind. She was the only one out there on the deck. And with vacation season long gone and the crisp fall air moving in over the sand, there was not another soul occupying the rooms Gloria had known about.
The resort was hers and hers alone. After several days, the staff began calling her by first name. By the first week, she had taught them her favorite drinks and menu items for easier access. And by the start of the second, Gloria had even convinced the bar manager to let her use the piano and an acoustic guitar belonging to the house band to practice.
It was not home by any stretch of the imagination. But it was some place she could call her own. It was her kind of paradise.
With her entertainment exiting stage left and her third drink of the day downed, Gloria retreated back to her room on the third floor. As soon as she walked in through the door, she headed straight for the gray metal safe hidden in the side of her closet wall. She punched in the combo and pulled out the black purse. In it was envelope after envelope of cash.
When she had hit the road, there was at least ten thousand dollars weighing the bag down. She had counted each and every bill to be sure the amount was correct. By the second week of paying for the room and the all-inclusive package, the cash had significantly disappeared. She had made the fatal mistake of not budgeting, of not being more diligent, with spreading her money out. At the rate she was going with her hemorrhaging cash, she could only live like this for two more weeks or so before she was flat out broke or forced to find a job—whether back to bar singing, her first love, or blackmailing.
Suddenly, planting a blackmail capture on the couple from the deck seemed more and more appealing to her. But if she was going to pull off this one big trick, she had to get more information. Normally, this was a job for Jordan or where she would pull her strings from other clients or plants from inside Jackman’s Tavern, where she did most of her work. But she was alone, unguarded, and unassisted here in Florida.
Gloria dragged her feet as she walked slowly down the hallway. She had to get herself together if this was going to work. Looking suspicious or even giving off the air of novice wasn’t going to get her anywhere. She had to find the old Gloria – the sassy, sexy, dangerous, carefree Gloria. It was the one she left on that stage at Jackman’s nearly a month ago.
She put herself back there, singing on that stage and dealing out in her favorite booth. It wasn’t just about her getting some attention or cashing in. She had to remember just how powerful she felt holding something so important as a secret over another’s head. It was thrilling and it made her feel, for the first time in her life, like she was something vital to this world.
The secret keeper started to stride. She hit the elevator button with the palm of her hand as she crossed her arms over her bare stomach. Gloria adjusted her bikini top and rearranged her see-through coverall that draped across her bare, sun kissed legs and hips.
She was in luck. Emilio was working the front desk, as she had suspected. The day she checked in, he was there, staring at her from across the room. He eyed her up and down as she bent over to pick up the handle of her backpack and as she reached up to grab the key from the attendant. He had not changed in the two weeks she had resided in the hotel. If anything, he grew bolder. He bought her drinks, tried to make awkward conversation, and always seemed to be there when she needed something like a takeout menu o
r a restaurant recommendation.
“Hey, Emilio,” She played it coy, not wanting to come off too alluring and flirtatious just yet. “You workin’ the desk today?”
“Just for a little bit while Nicole grabs some lunch at the Crab ‘n’ Go.” He smiled at her as she leaned over the desk, exposing the curvature of her small breasts as her bikini moved downwards with her. He licked his lips eagerly at the sight.
“You look good behind there. They should assign you some time at the desk more often. I’d sure enjoy it.”
“Yeah, well, I was just thinkin’ how great you were looking lounged out on that deck. You get some good sun?”
“Mm-hmm,” she smiled teasingly, biting her lower lip slightly—a flirtatious trick she’d picked up in high school and been wooing men with since. “I forgot how good it feels to just strip down and let the rays hit me. See, no tan lines anywhere!” She leaned over farther and pulled down the strap of the turquoise blue bikini top slowly like a dance. She could practically feel the heat radiating off of Emilio as he watched her with wanting eyes. “Plus,” she continued after a long pause to let him take her in, “I met this really nice couple. I forgot their last names though. The… uh…”
Ride Me Hard (Black Horsemen MC Book 2) Page 8
