The Devil's Silver (The Road Devils MC Book 2)

by Marysol James

  She looked at him, saw that despite his words, he was trying very hard to find a loophole somewhere, some way to convince him to take the heat and the hit. She had to make him understand.

  “Silver,” she said, and he heard it in her voice, that she wasn’t playing here. “ You remember what I told you about the gaslighting?”

  He nodded.

  “So you know that for almost five years, that man made me not trust my own thoughts, my own eyes, my own memories. I didn’t have the first clue what I really believed or wanted, what I liked and enjoyed. He made me question every single thing that I thought I knew, to the point that I questioned my perception of reality and my own sanity.”

  “I know, baby.”

  “So let me tell you this clearly and with zero confusion: I wanted to kill him. I made that decision all on my own, with perfect understanding and knowledge about the consequences. I made a choice and I made it a long time ago, long before Wednesday night. I’m asking you to please let me stand by what I decided and did. Don’t try to rewrite what I wanted, or what happened, or ask me to lie about it. Please, Silver. Please try to understand that expecting me to live a lie or a fantasy as the truth is asking me to live the way that Brian expected me to… and that’s the one way that I can’t live anymore. I won’t.”

  Silver was horrified. “Oh, my God. Jolene. I never meant to fuck with your sense of reality…”

  “I know that you didn’t. I know that you’re coming from a place of protection and care, but where I’m coming from is, I don’t want to get reality confused with illusion, not ever again. I don’t want to tell and hear the lie over and over, so many times that one day I actually believe it. I don’t want to keep the secret for so long that eventually, I forget that it even exists.” She gazed at him, imploring him to let her have this dark gift. “Pretending that something happened a certain way doesn’t mean that it did. I want to always remember that it happened, exactly how it happened – and that I chose for it to happen. You promised to always tell me the truth and this is part of that, Silver. Let me tell the truth.”

  He was quiet again, really hearing her words and her need. That was when he decided to trust that she knew what she wanted, she knew it better than anyone. Even better than him, even if all he wanted to do was step in and protect her.

  Sometimes loving someone means not protecting them.

  “OK, Jolene,” he said. “I hear you and I have your back. We do it your way. We tell the truth – the whole truth. But only to Wolf and the guys, OK? We never ever tell anyone else what you did, because if we do, you’re going to jail.”

  “You too.”

  “Yeah, me too. And Wolf, Scars, Ice, Cain, Viking and Zack.”

  “We’d fill the jail full to bursting with a single escapade, huh?”

  He laughed, but without any mirth. “No doubt, baby. So let’s just keep it in our circle of trust.”

  “I guess that this circle holds lots of secrets like this?”

  “More than I can count,” he said heavily. “I never wanted you to be an outsider in the MC, but I certainly never wanted you to be an insider this way.”

  “I know,” she said quietly. “But I am. That’s reality and no sugarcoating it or pretending otherwise. Thank you so much for letting me tell the truth, letting me own what I did.”

  He lifted her hand to his lips, gave her fingertips a sweet, lingering kiss. She smiled, turned her hand to cup his unshaven cheek in her palm. He shut his eyes, loving her touch, and she noticed again how exhausted he looked.

  “Have you been here the whole time that I’ve been out?” she asked.

  “Yeah.” He opened his eyes again, nailed her with that shimmering, smoky stare. “Where else was I going to be?”

  “Actually…” She paused, wondered how much he’d tell her if she asked. “I thought you’d have been with the guys, doing whatever it is that had to be done to make Brian a ghost.”

  “Nah.” Silver shook his head. “They don’t need any help with that. They’ve got it covered every way that you can possibly imagine.”

  “Tell me.”

  “I can’t tell you everything.”

  “Tell me what you can.”

  “OK.” He sighed. “Well… Ice and Cain cleaned the house. The carpet in the bedroom is gone, so is the bed and the room has a new coat of paint on the walls and ceiling. You’ll have to come and stay with me for a few days until I can fix everything up again.” He looked at her, gauging her reaction. When she nodded calmly in agreement, he carried on. “Cain burned our clothes, the bed stuff and the towels, and Viking took the body early on Thursday. Drove off in the cage that I just brought back from the trip at about 1 a.m. and hasn’t come back yet.”

  For the first time, Jo looked shocked. “Viking did? Not Ice?”

  “Nope. Viking’s always been our main body man.”

  “Wow. I never saw that coming.”

  “Right? The good ex-doctor knows how to disappear flesh and bone better than anyone.”

  “So – what did he do? To the body?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Silver –”

  “I don’t know, I swear to you. I’ve never known. Viking’s never told anyone how he does what he does, whatever the hell that is. I don’t know if he dumps the bodies in another state, or if he disintegrates them in a vat of acid, or if he chops them up into fifty pieces and scatters them in different lakes and rivers across Canada. I don’t think he’s told any of us, as far as I can tell. Except maybe Wolf and I wouldn’t even count on that, to be honest. I’d imagine that the deal is that the less anyone knows, the better, and no one person knows everything. If I ever got picked up for something, I’d have no idea where the bodies were buried – or even if the bodies still existed.”

  “No body, no crime, right?”

  “Exactly. That’s why I think that Viking’s made sure that there aren’t any to be found. If you really want to know what happened to your asshole ex, you’ll have to ask Viking – but don’t expect him to tell you, baby. I don’t think he ever will.”

  “I’m OK with that.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yes.” She bit her lip. “Does anyone know where Brian was for the past month? I thought that Ice’s contacts said that he had to have left Denver?”

  “Oh, yes,” Silver said darkly. “Ice checked Brian’s phone and kicked ass up and down the city when he saw the numbers in and out. He was fucking furious that Brian had been here the whole time and nobody knew it.”

  “Where was he hiding?”

  “Well, this is very goddamn interesting. He was staying with some old friends of ours, Dawson Kinney and The Blood Crew.”

  “Uhhh.” She scrambled to put some pieces together. “You mean the guys who used to be in your MC, and who left to start their own because they didn’t like the direction that Wolf was going?”

  “Exactly right. They hid your ex in their clubhouse.”

  “But… how did Brian know a bunch of outlaw bikers in Denver?”

  “Turns out that your ex was way, way more connected to the seedy side than anyone realized before. Davis and the feds may have rumbled the whole conspiracy thing with Worth, but they somehow totally missed that Brian was cooperating with Crusher Alcott.”

  “Who?”

  “A fucking nightmare of a lunatic one-percenter up in Utah. He’s President of The Highway Hellions and he’s one of the worst human beings that any of us have ever known. I can tell you that when Wolf pulled us out of the life, one of the biggest up-sides was never having to think about that asshole Crusher ever again.”

  “What?” She was stupefied that Brain was just so, so much worse than she’d ever known – and she’d known beyond any doubt that he was horrific. “How did Brian get involved with a criminal MC in Utah?”

  “Seems that he defended
one of their boys a few years ago, when he got in some trouble in Minneapolis. Your ex got him off on some technicality and won the eternal gratitude of Crusher and The Hellions. As far as Davis and Ice can figure, he turned to them for help when Worth told him where you were and his good buddy Crusher made a call to his good buddy Dawson, asked him to keep Brian out of sight.” He ran a hand through his beard. “It’s actually a bit weird because according to Wolf, Crusher and Dawson had some problems between them when Dawson first started his Crew, but I guess drug money talks louder than club loyalty and they’ve clearly kissed and made up. Those two asshole being friends is not good news.”

  “So, wait.” This was all happening too fast for Jo. “So that means that a bunch of one-percenter bikers in Utah and Colorado know that Brian is missing. They’ll know that he was here for me, and that I’m connected to The Road Devils… and when they find out that he’s just disappeared off the face of the earth, they’ll guess that you guys did something to him. Right?”

  “I think so. Yes.”

  “But – but –” She was starting to panic. “But that’s going to mean that they’ll come after you and the guys!”

  “Wolf and Scars are taking care of that.”

  “What? How?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Silver –”

  “I really don’t know. This is the kind of situation that stays between the Prez and Vice, and the rest of us get invited in on a strictly need-to-know basis. Right now, I’m not needed, so I don’t know.”

  “Oh God,” she muttered. “Oh God, what have I done? When I killed Brian, I brought all of this down on your heads…”

  “Baby, if you hadn’t killed him, I would have. That’s the fucking truth and I knew that when I set foot in that house to save you. So he’d be gone anyway, and we’d be in the exact same spot no matter what. This situation was inevitable – the die was cast and events set in motion the second that Brian picked up the phone and called fucking Crusher Alcott for help. That call put The Road Devils back on Alcott’s radar, and on Dawson’s radar too. We didn’t know it, but we’ve been in the crosshairs for a while now. Nothing to do with your dead ex.”

  “But won’t they – I don’t know. Want revenge for something bad happening to Brian?”

  “Revenge? For a citizen? For a crooked lawyer under federal investigation?” Silver scoffed. “No way, sweet thing. They don’t give a shit about anyone outside of their own MC’s and I’m not totally sure they even really care about their brothers. They’ll be after Wolf and Scars for something, that’s for sure, but who knows what. And frankly, if Viking’s doing his magic trick of making a body disappear, Crusher and Dawson can suspect us all they want, but they can’t prove jack-shit. They know they have no leverage.”

  “But will they care about proving anything?” she asked. “Aren’t they the types that just do what they want, regardless of proof?”

  “What can they want to do to us?” Silver said reasonably. “Nah. They’ll come at Wolf with accusations, he’ll deny everything and they’ll be bad blood. There’s already plenty of that, though, so all that will happen is we’ll all go back to quietly fucking loathing each other in our respective clubhouses, and carry on as usual.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “And the feds?”

  “What about ‘em?”

  “Won’t they be looking for Brian?”

  “Sure, but I imagine what they’ll conclude with a bit of nudging by Davis is that Brian figured out that he was being investigated and he ran. Left the country to escape prosecution. I mean, it’s the most logical conclusion, right?”

  “Yeeesss,” she said slowly. “It is.”

  “Any other questions, baby?”

  “Ummmm.” She thought about it. “I guess not. No.”

  “Great!” Silver smiled at her, his eyes sparkling. “So then I have a question for you. Tell me the truth, now.”

  “OK.”

  “Did you mean what you said through the door?”

  “I – what? What door?”

  “The front door of your house.”

  “What did I say through the front door of my house?”

  “You said that you love me.”

  “Oh!” She flushed bright red, fidgeted with the bed sheet. “Well… I mean, I was trying to send you really obvious clues that something was wrong, you know.”

  “I know and it was very smart.” He grinned at her discomfort, loving her rosy cheeks. This was how she always looked after they’d made love, all pink and hot and bothered. “You called me Zeke, after all.”

  Somehow, she managed to flush even more. “Ummm, yeah.”

  “So it was all a ploy?” he teased her. “You didn’t mean what you said through the front door about loving me?”

  “You said it too!” she countered with spirit, feeling like she was somehow scoring a point in a game, though she didn’t actually know what the rules were. Or the game. “Did you mean what you said through the front door about loving me?”

  “Yes.”

  “You – uh.” She skidded to a conversational stop, sand and gravel flying up around her. “You did?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh.” She stared at him, astonished. “I did not see that coming.”

  “No?”

  “No.”

  “You’re not very bright then, are you?”

  “Hey!” she said in mock indignation. “You tell me that you love me, then you say that I’m kinda dumb?”

  “Yep, but that’s OK. I love you so I’ll overlook your lack of smarts.”

  “Oh, yeah?” she said pertly, her sass making him grin. “Well, I love you too so I’ll overlook your lack of manners.”

  He leaned forward, gently cupped her cheek in his hand, all joking gone now. His face and voice were both intense as he ordered, “Say it again, angel.”

  “I love you.”

  He sat on the edge of her bed and she moved her hands up to his chest, needing to feel his heartbeat under her fingertips in this moment. Silver stroked her hair back off her forehead, thinking that even with a black eye, even with bruises and cuts and messy hair and no makeup, Jolene was hands-down the most glorious little miracle that he could ever imagine. He needed her like he needed air, and he was never going to let her get hurt again. He leaned closer, gave her the softest, gentlest kiss ever given to a woman.

  “I thought I was going to lose you,” he murmured against her lips. “I thought he was going to take you from me.”

  “Never,” she whispered back. “You’re stuck with me.”

  “Promise?”

  “Promise.”

  He moved his arms around her small body now, just held her close, reassuring himself that she was safe and whole. A bit of damage, definitely some monsters and ghosts, but still… she was here. He could work with that and everything else could be coped with over time and together.

  Against his body, she took a deep breath, exhaled. “Silver?”

  “Yeah, Jolene?”

  “Take me home. Please.”

  “You mean my place, remember?” He held her away from him, looking into her eyes. “You can’t stay at your place again until we get the bedroom sorted out.”

  “I remember,” she said. “And that’s what I meant when I said home.”

  He held his breath, wondering if he was understanding what was going on here. “You mean – you want to stay with me? Even after I get the bedroom sorted out?”

  “Silver,” she said in mock exasperation. “Don’t you know that my home is where you are?”

  “No.”

  “Now who’s not very bright?”

  “Hey,” he said. “You ask to move in with me and then you say that I’m kinda dumb?”

  “Yes.” She smiled at him, smiled
with all her open, golden heart. “I’m a girl with no manners.”

  “My favorite kind.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Hell yeah, baby. Girls with no manners get up to all kinds of shameless things all over the place.”

  “We do?”

  “Uh-huh. In bathtubs, against walls, on kitchen counters, on sofas, on desks. Even occasionally in a bed.”

  She was blushing again. “I don’t remember. My head got a bit banged up.”

  “Well, then,” he said slowly, letting his words just wash over her like a waterfall. “Let’s go home and we’ll see if I can refresh your memory. Just a little bit.”

  “You want to…” She waved at her face. “Even with me like this?”

  “We can’t do much until you’re all healed up, that’s true,” Silver said as he slid his hand between her thighs. “But I can think of a few parts of you that aren’t bruised or battered, though they may well be a bit sensitive.”

  “Yes?” She was breathless as he circled her clit through the thin nightgown. She arched, wanting more, always wanting more. “You can?”

  “I can.” He smiled at her familiar glazed look, her slow gyrations against his finger. “I can think of lots of parts and lots of moves.”

  “Oh, God.” She bit back a moan as her body started to vibrate helplessly. “You are such trouble.”

  “What would you say if I told you that I’m exactly the kind of trouble that can keep a girl with no manners happy?”

  She gave him that shining, beautiful smile, the one that had stopped him dead in his tracks at The Red, the one that he needed to see every day when he first woke up, the one that owned his heart.

  “I’d say prove it, querido.”

  And he did – oh, he did.

  **

  Dear Reader,

  I very much hope that you enjoyed Silver and Jolene’s story, and catching up with The Road Devils cast of characters.

  ‘The Devil’s Viking’ (The Road Devils MC #3), Viking and Iris’ story, will be published in late 2018/early 2019. If you want to know when it’s available for purchase, please check on one of my social media platforms (Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram). I will be announcing its release in all of these places and posting some teaser excerpts.