Down & Dirty: Dex (Dirty Angels MC Book 8)

by Jeanne St. James

  “Why did Pierce give up our location?” Dex asked him.

  Sandman bared his teeth. “Fuck you. Gonna kill me. No fuckin’ reason to answer any of your goddamn questions.” The man winced and groaned as Mercy smashed the heel of his palm into one of his seeping wounds, this time on the other side.

  “Yeah, that’s fuckin’ right, you’re gonna die. But how an’ when will depend on how you answer these questions,” Dex told him, figuring that was true. Mercy wasn’t named Mercy for no reason. D’s men were no joke. They probably knew torture techniques that Dex didn’t ever want to know.

  Or see.

  Or experience for himself. That was for fucking sure.

  “So let’s try this again...”

  Before Dex could ask the question, Mercy held out an open palm and Ryder placed a large tactical knife in it. Similar to the one Dex carried.

  Mercy weighed it carefully in his hand before turning it slowly as he studied it. Then in a sudden move, he placed the sharp point against one of the gunshot wounds and sank it deep.

  “Could cut your fuckin’ throat. But we need that right now for you to answer questions,” Mercy growled. “So instead, I can carve those holes in your body a bit bigger.”

  He twisted the knife causing Sandman to hiss and shout out a curse.

  “Why did Pierce rat me out?” Dex asked again.

  Sandman gritted his teeth and said, “Don’t fuckin’ know. Didn’t fuckin’ care. Just knew I could get one of you by yourself. Take you out. You guys,” he glanced up at Mercy, “have been takin’ out my brothers. Time to get even.”

  Dex snorted. “You fuckers started this war. The DAMC didn’t want nothin’ to do with it. You assholes wanted Shadow Valley, a town where my grandfather had founded our club. Was you fuckers who couldn’t keep movin’ an’ find somewhere else to grow roots. Nope. Had to keep fuckin’ with us ‘til good men had to die. You fuckers coulda stopped this war a helluva long time ago, asshole.”

  “Take me out an’ someone’ll step up in my place.”

  “Then we’ll deal with him, too,” Mercy murmured.

  “Warriors will survive.”

  Mercy shook his head, slipping the knife from the wound. “Doubt that.”

  Dex shook his head. “Decades of this shit. Fuckin’ decades.”

  Sandman’s eyes narrowed as he pinned them on Dex. “We’re gonna take your shit. Your businesses. Your bitches. Everything. We’ll take everything you Angels know, everything you own an’ everything you love. Even your fuckin’ kids. Gonna take ‘em all out an’ then fuckin’ give your bitches our dicks an’ make them fat with our own kids. That’ll be the ultimate revenge. All your DAMC bitches spittin’ out Warrior babies.” He laughed.

  Mercy’s spine snapped straight and his fingers tightened around the knife in his palm. “Done askin’ this fucker questions?”

  “No.” Dex turned back to Sandman. “Pierce used you to get to me an’ his daughter.” When the Warrior prez’s eyes widened at that, Dex continued, “Yeah, that’s his fuckin’ daughter he set up.” He had one burning question that needed answered. Even if Sandman didn’t answer anything else, it was a question that he and all his brothers wanted an answer to, one they never thought they’d hear. “So my question is: Why’d you set Zak up all those years ago? He wanted an end to all the murder an’ mayhem. Wanted better for our club. You fuckers could’ve settled elsewhere an’ never had to cross our paths again. But you didn’t. You fuckin’ planted that shit in his place. Shit he did ten years for. An’ for what? Nothin’. Nothin’ fuckin’ changed.” Why was he wasting his fucking breath? This fucker couldn’t give a shit about what they did to Z. All those years wasted in prison for a crime he didn’t commit.

  “You fuckers think we did that. Blamed us. So fuck you an’ fuck your prez. Maybe you better look within your own fuckin’ house. Who benefitted the most from your prez gettin’ locked up?”

  Dex took a step back, his heart thumping as that last question spun in circles in his mind.

  Holy shit.

  That was when Brooke stepped up next to him and held out two handguns to Brick, who took them quickly. She asked Dex, “What’s he saying?”

  “He’s sayin’ someone in the DAMC set Z up. Not the Warriors. Someone who didn’t want the old ways to change when Z earned the gavel. Someone planted a chemical used to make meth in Z’s place an’ then called in a fuckin’ tip to the pigs.” His nostrils flared as he stared at Brooke.

  “Someone. Pierce,” she stated with a flat tone. “Zak did ten years in prison for something that bastard did?”

  “Yeah,” Dex grunted.

  “Fuck,” Ryder muttered, scrubbing a hand over his buzz cut. “The man’s got no fucking soul.”

  “None what-so-fucking-ever,” Brick agreed. “Never do your brothers in battle wrong.”

  Mercy pushed to his feet from his squat next to Sandman, but not before wiping off his bloody knife on the biker’s cut. “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting,” he quoted.

  Dex tilted his head as he considered the scarred man before him. “You came up with that?”

  Mercy let out a sharp laugh. “Fuck no. The great military strategist Sun Tzu. Fucking fitting, though, ain’t it?”

  Yeah, it was. For all these years, everyone thought the Warriors had set Z up. Everyone. And all that time, the enemy was in their midst. Pierce had done exactly like the quote. He stopped—or at least slowed—Zak’s plans for the club without a fight.

  Dex needed nothing else from the soon-to-be-dead fucker sitting on the ground. He needed nothing more to prove Pierce needed to be stripped of his colors.

  But being stripped of his colors was the least of Pierce’s worries.

  When it came to dealing a final blow to Pierce, Dex was sure a line would form and there’d be some discussion who got to stand at the head of it. His gaze slid to Brooke.

  His own daughter probably wouldn’t hesitate for a second to snuff the fucker.

  But like she looked out for Dex earlier—not only taking Sandman down with her shooting skills but by making sure he didn’t get in a jam by killing the fucker—he had to protect her. Even if from herself.

  He couldn’t allow her to take her own father out, no matter what a piece of shit he was or not. He couldn’t let her be burdened with that for the rest of her life. Something that could rest heavily on her soul. Diesel was the Sergeant at Arms, the club’s enforcer. He’d let his cousin figure out how to deal with Pierce. Though, Dex already knew who most likely would do the job. He had a feeling the three men that worked for D currently standing in Brooke’s house, along with the other three not here, might have a part in it. He just didn’t know how it would all go down yet.

  Those men were ruthless, but they helped keep the club clean, above board. Legal.

  D did what he had to do to keep Z’s dream alive for the DAMC.

  Even though they weren’t blood brothers, Diesel and Zak might as well have been. And once D heard that it was Pierce who set Z up? Dex could just imagine the big man’s reaction.

  Bringing a baby into the world wasn’t going to soften D up. Not one fucking bit.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Next time you’re out in the Pittsburgh area, maybe you and me can go shooting,” Brick suggested to Brooke as they stood in her garage. The two now unconscious Warriors had already been thrown into the back of a blacked-out SUV that looked like it had been swiped from the military.

  “You’re a good shot?” Brooke asked.

  Brick only smiled but Mercy and Ryder laughed.

  “Sometimes he can hit a target,” Ryder said, clapping Brick on the back. He eyeballed the two Harleys. “Why does it have to be December and a three fucking hour trip back? I won’t see my fucking balls ‘til spring.”

  “You can’t find your balls now,” Brick told him.

  “Found his balls. They were in your mouth,” Mercy said to Brick.

  Ryder grabbed his crotch
. “Suck ‘em, bitch.” He glanced at the bikes again and shuddered. “Fuck. This ride’s gonna suck.”

  “Sure fucking is,” Brick agreed. “Not sure what you bikers see in riding your sleds in fucking winter. Nobody can be that dedicated.”

  Dex shrugged. “Ain’t a pussy. Unless there’s snow an’ ice on the roads, my ass is on my sled. That’s where it belongs, not in a damn cage.”

  Brick stepped closer to Brooke and lowered his voice. “When you want a real man... One that’s almost as good a shot as you, and’s got more brains to know better than to ride a bike in December, then look me up next time you’re west of here. Yeah?”

  Dex went solid, not only at Brick hitting on his woman, but because he moved to touch her cheek. Dex took a step forward to intervene, but as Brick reached out, Brooke stepped back out of range. He couldn’t help but grin at that.

  Brooke raked her gaze over Brick. “You’re probably not as good as me,” she stated with arms crossed over her chest.

  That got D’s crew laughing. Ryder and Brick mounted the Harleys, kicking them to life. Mercy gave Dex a two-finger salute and headed to the badass SUV he was driving.

  “Thanks for takin’ out the trash,” Dex yelled as Mercy climbed into the driver’s seat.

  “My pleasure,” Mercy yelled back over the roar of the sleds as they pulled out of the garage and down the road. Mercy followed right behind them.

  If Dex had to be in a cage during winter, he wanted to drive whatever the fuck Mercy was driving. It was badass.

  “What was funny? Are they misogynic assholes, too? They don’t believe women can be better than men at anything?”

  “Brick’s a sniper. Or was,” Dex said, raking a hand through his hair. “Fuck. Probably still is.”

  Brooke glanced in the direction the men went. “Oh.”

  Dex tucked a finger under her chin and turned her face toward him until her blue eyes met his. “Yeah. Oh. Ain’t shootin’ with ‘im.”

  “Well, that’s a given since I don’t plan on being in the Pittsburgh area anytime soon.”

  “That ain’t why. But, babe, you’re headin’ back to Shadow Valley with me.”

  “No,” she shook her head, pulling away from him. “I’m not. I have a business to run, a house to clean up and evidence of a shooting to get rid of. I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Babe...”

  “No, Dex. I’m not leaving.”

  It was time for him to step up and take charge, whether she liked it or not. He was not going to give even a little on this point. “Babe.”

  “Dex.”

  He didn’t want to get into an argument about it. He needed to somehow convince her it was for her own good, but he needed do it in a way that didn’t get her hackles raised. “Just for a few days at least. ‘Til shit cools down.” There was no way Dex was leaving her here alone. Not when Mercy just drove off with the Shadow Warrior’s president. The man would never be seen again. However, that didn’t mean the remaining Warriors wouldn’t come looking for their leader.

  If any of them had known Sandman and Crank’s plans, it would lead them right to Brooke.

  He couldn’t leave her alone. Fuck no. He didn’t care how good of a shot she was. He didn’t give a shit if she had the most expensive alarm system in the fucking world. He was not leaving her behind.

  And he didn’t belong here in Harrisburg. He needed to get back home. Z needed to call an Executive Committee meeting and Dex damn well needed to provide not only the evidence of the diary, but tell them what a down and dirty snake Pierce was.

  Standing in her garage, he studied the woman before him. The woman who had flipped some sort of switch inside him. Showed him his true self.

  He never thought that would ever happen.

  His whole life, growing up in the club, growing up around bikers, he knew he wanted to follow in his uncle and grandfather’s footsteps. Hell, it was in his blood. Did he really have another choice?

  Probably. Like Mitch and Axel, he could’ve just walked away. But he never felt that need to separate himself from his DAMC family, from his real family. The DAMC was his tribe. But becoming a prospect, and later being patched in, was all expected. And it wasn’t that he didn’t want it. He did. So he did it without hesitation.

  But he was never like his “brothers.” Not quite. He had a good fucking life but something always felt off. Like a small part of him was missing. But he never could figure out what the fuck it was or why.

  He knew it wasn’t that he wanted to go to college or have some fancy career. He didn’t have any desire to be some rich fucker. To wear suits. Have a nine to five. He was happy with how he lived. He didn’t mind working hard. Even if he had to work for Ace and, in turn, the club and not himself. He was fine with that.

  But again, there was always a piece of him that was left unsatisfied. A craving for something he couldn’t identify. An unscratchable itch.

  No woman—hell, even multiple women in his bed at the same time—ever satisfied him completely. He could bust a nut until he was drained dry, but once he rolled off whoever was beneath him, he felt empty, but in a different way.

  He’d gone through pussy like water. Fuck, more like watered-down beer.

  But the woman standing before him wasn’t beer. Wasn’t even Jack Daniels. Fuck no. She was like a bottle of Johnny Walker Blue. And that quality sip of whiskey was worth every fucking cent.

  She stirred something in him that he couldn’t get elsewhere. And he didn’t want to even try, because he knew it was impossible.

  This woman got him. She understood what he needed. How she fucking did it, he didn’t have a fucking clue.

  She was what he needed. The satisfying scratch to that unfulfilled itch.

  Because of that, there was no fucking way he was leaving her behind. No way he was leaving her vulnerable to the Warriors.

  For if they had raped her earlier this morning...

  If they had injured her in any way...

  If they came back and tried it again... Even if it wasn’t for Pierce this time, but for revenge on taking out their prez...

  His nostrils flared and his chest tightened.

  No. Just fucking no. She was just going to have to let him be in charge right now. Let him make the decisions that were best for her.

  He just didn’t know how to go about it without pissing in her Cheerios.

  “Babe,” he began, stepping up to her in the cold garage, cupping her cheek and running his thumb over her soft skin.

  She shook her head, breaking the contact, her eyes unreadable. “Please don’t declare some sort of affection for me right now.”

  His head jerked back and he dropped his hand like it had been burned.

  “I see it on your face, Dex. I see you struggling with something. I just... I just can’t right now. Not now.”

  Dex heard her unspoken words in his head: maybe not ever.

  She waved her hand toward the direction Mercy and his men went. “This shit is not my life. It’s yours.”

  He dropped his head and stared at his boots for a moment, trying to slow his racing heart, his racing thoughts.

  After a moment, he lifted his head to face her head-on. “Babe, I didn’t bring you into this life, you did. The minute you stepped into Shadow Valley. Actually, the fuckin’ second you decided to find your father. An’ when you walked into the pawn shop, you walked into my life.”

  Her brows furrowed as she stared at him. “I had no idea about any of this. About what that diary would lead me to. I didn’t even realize what my mother’s words really meant until after I was in Shadow Valley. I had read it, yes, but I refused to really see through the words to their true meaning. I wish I never found that fucking diary.”

  Dex closed his eyes at the hurt in her voice and curled his fingers into his palms. If she hadn’t found that diary, read those cryptic words, he never would have met her. He’d still be feeling unsatisfied, still be searching for what he had no idea he was looking for.
Something he’d never find in random snatch.

  That needed to end. Here and now.

  “Brooke,” he began again.

  “No, Dex. I can’t do this with you. I have a very successful business here. I own a house here. In Harrisburg. Our lives couldn’t be more different. Just because we connected,” she waved a hand around, “sexually doesn’t mean we should be together.”

  No way in hell was this all about the sex. “Didn’t fuckin’ say—”

  She stopped him with a raised palm. “You don’t need to say it. I see it written across your face. Even in the small amount of time we’ve spent together, I’ve learned to read you.”

  That’s because he allowed her that. He never would have permitted that with anyone but her. He was himself around her. Open. Not worried about judgement.

  He never in his fucking life felt that around anyone else. Even his family. His brothers.

  That was one reason why he’d always kept his nipple rings a secret and had even forced the sweet butts to keep their traps shut about it.

  Brooke continued, “I understand why you’re feeling the way you do. I do. I...” Her words drifted off and she turned to avoid meeting his gaze.

  Dex lost his breath as he watched her shoulders curve, almost as if in defeat. This strong fucking woman. The strongest one he ever met next to Bella. And all the DAMC women were as strong as fuck. But to see her shoulders round and her head drop into her hands twisted his gut.

  Not once had she broken down with the threat of rape, the threat of death, the threat of two fucking Warriors with guns in her home. But this? This defeated her somehow?

  This connection between them?

  Dex considered this only the beginning. They were only finding each other now. If he left and headed home while she stayed here...

  That connection could be broken. And what scared him the most was that it could be severed permanently. Once he was out of her life, away from her, she could shut that damn door and lock it.