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.
Deceived 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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TABLE OF CONTENTS
DECEIVED
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
Epilogue
PREVIEW – BETRAYED
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DECEIVED
Chapter 1
Laura
“I can’t believe you are going back there. Why can’t they just send the paperwork and be done with it? Knowing your father, there isn’t anything worth going back there for anyway.”
I rolled my eyes at the tone of my mom’s voice.
“I know mom, but I can’t take care of all of dad’s affairs over the phone. Besides, there’s the house to clean out and the bikes to sell.”
“Those damn bikes,” she muttered into my ear. “That’s all he ever truly loved, you know. Even when I took you away from him, he still didn’t leave those damn bikes and that damn motorcycle club.”
“Careful mom,” I warned, feeling my anger start to rise. “Dad did all he could to take care of me.”
I knew talking about my dad was a sore subject for my mom. Even after the divorce, they never could exactly see eye to eye. That and the fact she thought he loved those bikes more than he had her. By all accounts, from what I saw, he had.
“Fine, I’m sorry baby,” she sighed, the resignation in her voice coming clear through the phone. “I know his death has been hard on you.”
Tears swam in my eyes and I forced them back, refusing to cry for him any longer. He would not want me to cry, nor would he want me to mourn his death, which was why I had his remains cremated instead. In the last weeks of his life, he had specifically requested that I do so, and I fully intended to carry out all of his wishes.
After all, I was the last remaining member of his family, excluding my mom, of course.
“How long are you going to be there?” she asked a moment later. “I still don’t like the idea of you going by yourself. That town, it’s dangerous.”
“A few days, nothing more,” I reminded her, as I had when I had left her this morning. “Besides, Rick needs you.”
Rick was my stepfather, a real estate agent who had just suffered a knee replacement. As much as I loved my dad, Rick had been a pretty decent guy when I was growing up, and he loved my mom.
She sighed. “Well okay. Promise me you will call when you arrive. You are staying at your dad’s house, right?”
“Yes mom,” I said with a sigh of my own. “And I will have my cell phone as well.”
“And your mace?”
“And my mace,” I said with a laugh. “Goodbye, mom.”
“Love you,” she called out as I hung up, throwing my cell into the seat beside me.
I loved my mom, grateful for everything she had given me in life. Because of her, I had lived in a nice house, graduated high school and college.
And Rick. He treated me like his own daughter.
But I was a daddy’s girl.
The ever-present pain in my chest tightened, and I took in a shuddering breath, my eyes on the road. My dad dying was like someone had ripped a hole in my chest, right where my heart should be. Even though his death had been anticipated, the day I got the call still didn’t make it any easier. That and his not wanting me to be there, to watch him waste away with the cancer that had started in his lungs before spreading to his bones, his brain, everywhere. The last time I saw him, he had just found out that his cancer was terminal.
I sat beside him, holding his hand tightly.
“We can get a second opinion.”
He shook his head, rubbing a thumb over my knuckles lightly.
“That’s it, baby girl. My wild ways have finally come to do me in.”
I shook my head, tears falling down my cheeks as I stared at our tightly clasped hands. They were as different as night and day, his fingers decorated with old tattoos and scarred from his fighting days.
“I can’t, I can’t live without you.”
He laughed, a raspy sound from years of smoking that I had grown used to in my teenage years.
“Yes, you can, and you will do a fine job at doing so, baby girl. Just promise me you will cremate this old body when the time comes. I don’t want to be worm food.”
Shaking off the memory, I wiped my cheeks and cleared my throat. Before me was an endless stretch of road, one that I had traveled a few times in my lifetime. I knew what was on the other side, where my destination was taking me, and I hated every thought of going back there.
I’d hoped to never see Paradise, Alaska again. The town where I’d spent my childhood was nothing more than heartbreak for me now, in more ways than one.
I turned up the radio as my favorite song came on, tapping my fingers against the leather of the steering wheel. My mom had moved me out of Paradise when I was eleven, after my parent’s marriage had fallen apart. Too many late nights out for my dad, and my mom had finally got tired of it. She got tired of the partying, tired of the motorcycle brotherhood my dad had lived and breathed, and before I knew it we were heading toward Anchorage.
Well, perhaps that hadn’t been the only reason.
Checking my rearview mirror, I saw exactly what I expected to see. A lonely stretch of road, kind of like my life at the moment. My dad was gone, and, while I had mom and Rick, they also had each other. I was literally by myself.
If only Aaron had been here. Blowing out a breath, I thought about my older brother, what he would have said about our dad’s death if he were still alive today. Aaron had been killed when I was ten and he was eighteen, shot down dead in an alleyway by the same bikers that my mom hated. I barely remembered him now, though there were flashes of his grin, the feel of the wind in my hair as he took me for a spin on his bike. After his death, my mom had blamed my dad for raising their kids in the shadow of a biker gang, which had led to their ultimate breakup.
But he wasn’t the only one that she blamed. She blamed Brendan.
Brendan. I hadn’t seen him in ten years and didn’t care to see him on this trip either. He had been Aaron’s best friend, inseparable in everything they did. My mom believed that it was Brendan who had led my brother into that alleyway that night, where he was jumped and ultimately shot. Of all the people that my brother had trusted, Brendan would have been the
only one that he would have followed into that alleyway.
And now I was going back into the fray, running the risk of seeing him after all this time. Brendan had been my childhood crush, the boy I thought I was going to marry one day. I couldn’t even count the number of times I had written my name as Laura Morrison, planning out our wedding, which would happen when I got old enough, in the secrecy of my bedroom. I had spent every waking moment with him and my brother, hoping that one day he would see me as more than just the bratty little kid and more like someone he could love.
But then Aaron’s death had changed it all, changed the way I felt about Brendan, the way our lives would end up. Blowing out a breath, I hit the steering wheel with the palm of my hand. I wasn’t here to relive any of those old emotions, those old wishes. I was here to bury my father, to move on from this town. I didn’t want Brendan any longer. I wanted to see my brother, not him. I wanted my father back, not to pick up his ashes and close out that chapter in my life.
I didn’t want to be in Paradise, yet I was only a few miles away.
Chapter 2
Brendan
I didn’t want to believe he was really gone.
Sitting in his house, around the scarred table where I had spent so much time in my youth and my adult life, it was still hard to believe that Jonah wasn’t going to bust through the back door at any moment, demanding a beer.
But he wasn’t. Jonah Hall wasn’t coming back.
“That asshole! I remember when he used to run around this damn house naked as a jaybird! Remember that, Brendan?”
I chuckled, staring at the bottle of beer sitting on the table before me.
“He was a crazy son of a bitch.”
“That he was,” Steve responded, holding up his beer. “To Jonah. May his soul rest in that big clubhouse in the sky.”
“Here, here,” I said, raising my beer, watching as the rest of the table did the same.
Over twenty members of the Frontier Reapers were gathered in Jonah’s house, giving him the final send-off that their treasurer deserved. There was no body to view, but that didn’t matter. Jonah’s soul still resided in this place.
I drained my beer and pushed back from the table.
“Gotta take a leak.”
Conversation still buzzed on as I walked out of the kitchen and down the hall toward the bathroom. Jonah’s place had been a main hangout for the club for as long as I could remember, but I imagined that, now that he was gone, the house would be sold.
It wasn’t like Laura was going to come and move back to Paradise.
Drawing in a breath, I did my business and started back down the hall, pausing to look at the pictures that lined the hallway. They were old pictures from when Mrs. Hall had still lived here, when the family had been together and no tragedy had been tearing them apart. There were family pictures, pictures of the kids, pictures of Jonah posing on his beloved motorcycle, grinning from ear to ear. Those had been happy times for all of us.
My eyes drifted toward one of the pictures, the cheesing brunette staring back at me without a care in the world. That was Laura, though behind that smile there was always a girl looking for trouble. With me and her brother as mentors and her father in a motorcycle club, it wasn’t surprising how she had turned out as a kid. She had followed us everywhere, and we had allowed her to, knowing that, if she was with us, she wasn’t in trouble somewhere else. I could still hear her squeals of laughter as Aaron placed her on the back of his bike and rode her up and down the streets, her hair blowing in the wind.
But then Aaron had died, and the light in Laura’s eyes had disappeared. Gone with that laughing pest of a girl, and in its place was a broken sister, crying as they loaded her brother’s casket into the hearse.
Shaking my head, I moved away from those pictures, away from the memories before they could overtake me. I had lived a hard life, pushed those days as far as I could into the recesses of my mind, and locked that door. She wasn’t the only one that had changed that day.
Pissed that I had even thought about it, I stalked back to the kitchen in time to see the women start to move through the doorway, black bands on their arms in memory of our fallen comrade. In fact, we all had them, and later we would add a patch in memory of Jonah, giving him the never-ending ride.
“Hey Brendan,” Alyssa, one of the women that hung with the club, smiled.
I nodded, taking in her tight tank top and even tighter leather pants. Alyssa had been a fun fuck in the past, no strings attached.
“Looking good.”
“You are looking better,” she laughed, moving close enough to run a finger down the front of my vest. “I hate that Jonah is gone. How are you holding up?”
Shrugging, I moved out of her touch. I wasn’t the type to share my feelings with anyone. I had an obligation to this club as their president to move them on. That would be what Jonah would want us to do.
“Get me a beer.”
She nodded slowly and moved to the fridge, making a grand show of bending over to select one. I ran a hand through my hair and looked at the growing party that was pouring into the kitchen. Tonight, we would celebrate Jonah’s life as one of our own and send him off properly.
Alyssa pressed a cold beer into my hand, and I held it up, clearing my throat to command attention of the room.
“Tonight, we say goodbye to a man that gave his all to this club. He was our backbone and will never be replaced. Don’t ever forget what Jonah Hall sacrificed to be a brother.”
Everyone solemnly raised their drinks in the air.
“To Jonah!”
“To Jonah,” I finished, taking a swig of my beer to drown any of the emotions that were threatening to surface.
I had already said my goodbyes, shed some tears for the man that had been like a father to me.
Lowering my beer, I caught a glimpse of a woman standing in the doorway, recognition jolting me into reality. It couldn’t be. Our eyes caught across the room, and hers widened slightly as she saw me, traveling down my body with a familiarity that nearly caused me to blush on site.
This had to be a fucking dream.
Or a nightmare.
Slowly, I allowed my eyes to do the same, blocking out the rest of the activity in the room. She was all grown up, that was for fucking sure. Her curves were visible under the layer of clothing, her long hair draped over one shoulder in a mass of curls.
But it was her eyes that had caught me off guard, the blueness of their depths just as I remembered.
Fuck me, Laura Hall was standing in the doorway.
Her eyes traveled from mine to survey the scene, and I almost yelled for the room to clear, just so it could be the two of us. Thirteen years ago, I had watched her cry in the back window of her mom’s car as they drove away, feeling my chest cave in as I watched someone I considered to be family disappear.
More than that, I knew they blamed me for Aaron’s death.
But now she was here, in this very room, and I was at a loss as to what to say.
I watched as Laura’s spine stiffened and she opened her mouth, her eyes narrowing as she watched the people around her.
“Get out of my father’s house! Now!”
Oh shit. I started toward her as the room fell silent, every eye turning to face her. None of these people would recognize who she was. No one would know that they were looking at Jonah’s daughter, his grieving daughter at that.
“What the fuck?” Steve said darkly as I pushed past him. “Who the fuck does she think she is?”
I knew exactly who it was, and, by the look on her face, the shit was about to hit the fan.
Chapter 3
Laura
I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
When I had driven up to my dad’s house, the bikes parked haphazardly on the lawn hadn’t given me much cause for concern. After all, I had grown up that way, with numerous friends of my dad over at all hours of the day and night. I didn’t know it then, but ultimately that h
ad been one of the final straws that had dissolved my parents' marriage.
That and the grief from Aaron’s death that had never truly dissipated.
But what I was witnessing now… I just wanted them all out. How dare they use my dad’s house, my house now, to party on like he wasn’t dead? How dare they act like their entire world hadn’t come crashing down? They had no right, no right at all to be here!
“I said, get out!” I shouted again, pointing to the door, forcing my arm not to shake.
A few of them looked at me oddly, but no one made any moves to leave, which only pissed me off further. I had expected to have a few hours tonight to reminisce about my childhood home, sleep in my dad’s bed, and shed some tears along the way.
What I didn’t want to do was babysit the entire club while I was still struggling to comprehend his death. These people might have been like family to him, but I was his only true family and I deserved that respect.
