by A. J. Downey
HER BROTHER’S KEEPER
A.J. Downey
Second Circle Press
Fate introduces people at both the right and the wrong times…
So it is for Maren on the absolute worst day imaginable. When all hope was gone, and she was whittled away to little more than tears and despair, up walks Nox, an unlikely hero to save the day. Maren is about to discover that sometimes the good guys wear black, and there are times that the lines between good and evil blur beyond recognition.
Nox is a bad man with a heart of gold, or so it seems. It also seems that Maren has captured that heart with her wide, tear filled brown eyes. Nox never saw himself going for jailbait before, but that’s just what Maren is, all woman trapped in a seventeen year old package. Still, what he wouldn’t do for her, including taking on the unlikely role of keeper to her unruly preteen brother.
This mess could end beautifully or in some serious time spent behind bars for Nox, but sometimes, it’s worth risking it all.
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 Sarah Ann Scott-Gillespie, because you are one of my most inspiring readers. The time we got together at Glass City was too short. Thank you for pushing me to broaden my horizons.
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
Prologue
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
Epilogue
Brother In Arms
Other books by A.J. Downey
About the Author
Prologue
Nox
Dude, a week into December and the good ole Wally-World was a fucking madhouse. I hated Christmas, it was a family holiday and even though I’d had Rush, Grind, and Archer coming up - when you came up in the system? Thanksgiving? Christmas? Hell, just about every holiday had pretty much been a solid reminder of everything you didn’t have; and never would. The only reason I was even here was to pick up booze. Trig and Sunshine’s wedding had pretty much wiped the club out; we were still waiting on the bulk order to come in. If I was going to have any hope of getting my drink on this weekend, then I had to make a pit stop. I may have hated the corporate bullshit that was Walmart, but I couldn’t deny their booze prices were some of the cheapest around here.
“I’m sorry, Ma’am, but it says it’s declined,” the cashier murmured. I gave her another once over while Joy to the World grated in my ears over the store’s PA system. Fuck I hated Christmas. I dropped my eyes back to the glowing screen of my smartphone and texted Rush back.
“You must be doing something wrong! I have over six hundred dollars in that account; run it again.” I glanced back up from my phone at the bitter old, trailer trash bitch in line in front of me. She’d been giving the poor girl behind the register a hell of a time going on five minutes now. I couldn’t help myself, I glanced back the girl’s way again.
She was a knockout, but you’d never hear me say it out loud because can we say jailbait? The girl couldn’t have been much older than sixteen or seventeen. Her long, chestnut hair in a braid over one shoulder glossy in the buzzing overhead lights. She didn’t wear makeup and she didn’t need to, either. She had a natural beauty and surprisingly flawless skin for obviously being a teen.
I watched her key something into the register and incline her head with some serious grace to indicate that the woman should try again. I watched as the checker waited, those wide brown eyes a little too wide, for the predictable outcome.
“I’m sorry, Ma’am…” she began and the woman exploded at her.
“What’s the matter with you, are you stupid or something!?” I blinked, and the checker tried to stammer out an apology, remain professional and all, but the blonde out of a bottle wasn’t having any of it.
“Seriously? You’re doing it all wrong, I have money in that account! You’re stupid or something,” she crossed her arms over her saggy titties in her low-cut leopard print top and I wish like hell I were joking about that. “Get me your manager you stupid cunt!” the woman demanded and she was screaming at the checkout girl who’d gone completely red in the face, her eyes welling and spilling over and that was the point that I’d had enough.
“Yo! Who you calling a cunt you two bit, crack headed, trailer park bitch?” I demanded and took a menacing step in her direction. “It’s fucking Christmas! Who talks to a kid like that on Christmas!? Look at her!” I barked. “There’s no reason for you to be nasty to this girl when all she’s trying to do is help your skank ass. Now, you’re wasting her time, you’re wasting my time, and you’re wasting all of these people’s time,” I said flinging an arm back to indicate the jammed checkout line. “Personally I think that’s enough. You damn sure ain’t gonna waste her manager’s time on top of everyone else you’ve put out. Now, get the fuck up out of here!”
My explosion set off a round of cheers and applause behind me; the trailer park bitch grabbed her wallet and stuffed it into her rhinestone and fringed black leather purse. She made a noise, tossed her hair that seriously if I had a match, it would have gone up worse than Michael Jackson’s hair during that Pepsi commercial disaster. Before she turned on her patent leather heels in her fake ass leather leggings and clipped towards the exit she shrieked at me ‘Fuck you!’ I glared at her the whole damned way, it wasn’t below me to whoop her ass. I didn’t think that she could technically be classified as a lady, and the club might just let it slide.
And the girl? Well, fuck. The next thing I knew she was around from behind the register and bawling into the front of my cut, my arms held out as I looked down at the crown of glossy brown hair, wondering what was happening.
“Thank you,” she sobbed. “My dad died this mornin
g, and I have to be here, I have to pay the bills and it’s just me and my brother now and she was just being so mean, and I couldn’t help her, and it’s not fair! She’s just being so awful and it’s like I don’t have a dad anymore, why is she being so mean?”
I looked up into the stricken face of the manager standing behind the girl as I patted her shoulder awkwardly, “It’s no problem,” I said hollowly. “It’s gonna be okay.” I lied because, I mean, she was just a girl, and damn sure not even old enough to drink. The fuck?
“Maren, Sweetheart, why don’t you come over here?” her manager called and I let her go. The checkout girl kept her head bowed and someone else slipped behind the register while her manager took her off to the side. I checked my wallet and paid the new guy at the register for the booze using my card instead of the cash I’d planned on using out of my wallet. I stopped wordlessly in front of the girl and shoved every bit of green I had into her hands.
“I’m sorry for your loss, Baby Girl,” I told her, my heart falling flat on its ass in the middle of my chest. She stared at me, wide-eyed, her mouth hanging open in surprise, but before she could speak, I got myself the fuck out of there. I had not expected that. Just goes to show, be kind always, you never fuckin’ know what demons someone’s wrestling on any given day. Fuck.
Chapter 1
Nox
“What’s eating you?” Rush demanded lightly, kicking my booted feet off the chair I had them propped on so he could sit down. One look at my face and he shut it, asking without words in the way that we’d always had, ‘Are you okay?’
Truth be told, I didn’t know if I was. It was over a week later and I couldn’t stop thinking about her, the girl from Walmart who’d lost her dad. I drank some of the Wild Turkey in my glass and sighed heavily. Most of the boys were partied out, and so they weren’t here this week. It was quiet for a Saturday night. They happened around here, not very often, but they did.
Dragon, ever fuckin’ perceptive that that guy was, relocated from his usual table over to ours. Disney and Aaron’s conversation stuttering to a stop over at the bar.
“What’s going on, Nox?” Dragon asked.
I sucked in a breath and let it out in a big fuckin’ sigh, “I stopped in at the Wally-world over on Douglas last Friday before church,” I said and Disney and Aaron wandered over from the bar to hear what was up. I frowned to myself, and Dragon arched an eyebrow.
“And?” he prompted.
I sat up and downed the last bit of booze in my glass and told them what’d happened. About the pain in the ass broad and the heartbroken girl behind the till.
“I can’t stop thinking about her,” I said and my twin’s forehead crushed down into a frown.
“Never seen you like this, bro.”
“It’s the weirdest thing, man. I just can’t shake it. I mean, to lose your pops right before Christmas? I couldn’t imagine.”
“We didn’t have folks, for any of our Christmases. What is there to imagine?” Rush asked, leaning way back in his seat, stretching his arms above his head. I gave him a flat, borderline unfriendly look.
“Maybe it’s hitting so close because of Archer and Mel,” Disney suggested.
“Meh could be,” I said. Mel was pregnant, due in the first week or so of June. Archer was an instant dad with Noah and all, but this was going to be his first biological kid. Honestly, though, I don’t think this had anything to do with my older foster brother. I think it had everything to do with those deep, wide brown eyes, haunting me every time I closed mine.
“You get any information we could use to track her down?” Dragon asked.
I frowned, “Like what?”
“A name is a good start,” Data said from his little alcove, leaning back in his chair to look through the open door at me.
“Maren, that’s all I got, and that’s only because her boss said it.”
“Maren who works at the Walmart on Douglas,” Data said to himself, tipping forward and pulling himself along his desk over to one of the screens and one of the many keyboards laying on its dark surface.
“That enough to actually get you something?” I asked, kind of incredulous.
“We’ll find out,” he uttered, voice distant as he clacked across keys, his eyes rooted to one of his screens.
“While he works on that, how do you want we should help?” Dragon asked and I blinked, falling back in my seat.
“Seems to me she’s worried about getting the bills paid, why else would she be working the same day her daddy died?” Rush said.
“Too right,” I agreed. “She said it was just her and her brother now, I assume that means he’s younger than her…”
“Fundraiser and toy run?” Dragon asked.
“We do things like that out here?” Rush asked.
“Been a minute since we had a cause other than veteran’s affairs, and Trig and Ghost usually head those up. We could do it, though.”
Dragon scratched his beard and Data called out, “Got it!”
“Got what?” I asked.
“Obituary,” he said and began reading off the screen, “Ronald G. Tracy lost his battle with cancer this past Friday and is survived by his two children, Maren Elizabeth Tracy and Sage Hunter Tracy… Services to be held, blah blah blah, looks like they just went down…” He started muttering to himself, “Yeah, thanks for printing their full names…” his volume went back up as he addressed me again, “I should have an address in a couple of minutes.”
“You seriously found all of that out because of her first name and where she works?” I asked.
“No, I found it out because you said the dude died last Friday. I put in ‘obituaries’ and ‘Maren’ and got lucky on the first try.”
“Didn’t say anything about a wife in there, did it?” Dragon asked.
“No, it did not,” Data agreed.
“I got the impression that she was on her own with the brother. Couldn’t tell you what gave me the vibe that he was younger than her.”
“The fact that she said that she had to pay the bills?” Disney said.
“Girl must be carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders,” Aaron murmured and slicked some of his dark hair back off his forehead. “Poor thing,” he added.
“How old d’you think she is?” Rush asked.
“Seventeen,” Data called out. “The younger brother is eleven.”
Dragon sat back in his seat looking smug while the rest of us sat around shaking our heads.
“What’s taking so long to get that address?” I asked sarcastically.
Data came out of his digital kingdom and handed me a printed page with the information, “I was printing it out for you.”
I blinked and the guys around me started to laugh, I took it from the lanky brother and sure enough, he had an address.
“I’ll be a son of a bitch,” I muttered.
“Anything else?” he asked.
“Yeah, remind me to keep as much of my shit off the internet as possible,” I muttered.
He shook his head, “That’s my job, I do what I can to keep us all off the internet.”
“Good to know,” Rush uttered and took a swig of his beer.
“So what ‘cha thinkin’?” Dragon asked me, my gaze lingering on the stark black letters and numbers on the crisp white page.
“I’m thinkin’ I have no idea how to put together a fuckin’ charity run. Charity wasn’t exactly our thing back in AZ.”
Dragon nodded, and Rush piped up, “Man, this jailbait really got under your skin, didn’t she?”
“Bro, I couldn’t even tell you,” I said and I meant it. I literally could not stop thinking about Maren of the soulful brown eyes. I just couldn’t.
“Data, take notes,” Dragon rumbled and Data went back to his little command center.
“Ready when you are, P.”
And that’s how we ended up spending the rest of our Saturday night. Brainstorming and putting together this last-minute charity ride for Maren
Tracy and her little brother I had no idea how I let myself get into this; but strangely, I didn’t regret getting involved, not one bit.
Chapter 2
Maren
I was in the kitchen, making lunch for me and my little brother, Sage. It wasn’t anything fancy, just sandwiches and some soup. It was cold out, and it just seemed like a grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup kind of day. At least, that’s what I kept telling myself. Really, we were getting down to the wire money-wise and I didn’t get paid again until after Christmas. The nice part was, at least I was current on all of the bills, thanks to the man in my checkout line the day my dad had died.
He’d crammed nearly four hundred dollars into my hands just before he’d left and I’d been stunned, staring at his back as he’d walked away, the image of the heart wrapped in barbed wire seared into my memory. The Sacred Hearts, his jacket had proclaimed, he was one of them and I’d been confused. I mean, bikers weren’t typically nice guys were they? I thought if they had those patches on their backs that they belonged to a gang or something. Of course, it wasn’t like I would ever find out or know without ever talking to one of them, right? I’d found the internet as a research option less than helpful for this sort of thing because it seemed that the motorcycling community was just as divided as the rest of the world on the issue.
So, I’d kept an eye out in the intervening week, on my way to and from school, and to and from work. I hadn’t encountered anyone with the same club affiliation since; though I wondered if that was due to the cold and the snow. I raised my head from where I was pouring soup into two mugs at the roar of machines out on the street. It sounded like a lot of them. Probably more than I had ever seen in one place.
“Maren! Maren, come quick! They’re pulling into our driveway!” Sage called from the living room. I rinsed the grease off my hands in the sink from plating the sandwiches and I hurried out of the kitchen. I stepped quickly through the living room drying my hands on a dish towel wondering for the thousandth time, like every time I heard a motorcycle if it was him.
