Savage Saviors: The Complete Boxset (Savage Saviors MC)

by J. C. Allen

  But I was right there. Right. Fucking. There. I could suck up less than a minute of pain to rescue the man I loved or die trying.

  I closed my mouth, tightened my nostrils, squeezed my eyes shut, and launched forward, coming to the hallway of my room.

  Immediately, I felt like I had stepped into a microwave.

  But it was the microwave with my floor, and it was undoubtedly the source of the fire.

  “Derek!”

  I screamed. I got no response. I stagged through the hallway, making the mistake of putting my hand on the wall at one point, only to sharply withdraw it, like a toddler making the mistake of putting his hand on a frying pan cooking eggs.

  “Fuck!” I growled. “Derek!”

  Again, I got no response.

  And then, I saw that the door across from my old apartment was open.

  I paused just long enough to work up the courage to move inside. Either Rock was waiting for me, having heard my voice, and was going to kill me, or Derek was wounded and unable to answer me. Neither answer sounded promising, but I hadn’t come this far to cowardly run away.

  “Derek!” I roared, as if saying his name to give myself courage to move into the room.

  Inside, a smoky haze made it incredibly difficult to see much of anything. My foot stumbled into something, nearly causing me to trip. I looked down and began bawling.

  “Matty, no…”

  A pool of blood seeped out of his body. I looked at his face, his eyes open in haunting fashion, but with a determined look that suggested he had gone down fighting. I looked up just long enough to see my stomach roil at the sight of Rock’s eyes.

  “No!”

  But… his eyes didn’t move.

  They didn’t move at all.

  I looked down at his chest and saw numerous bullet holes, blood still pumping out of them. A haze of smoke moved to the side, revealing a clear shot to the forehead, as good a sign as any that Derek had gotten what he wanted.

  He’d killed Rock.

  “Fuck you!” I screamed.

  In a fit of rage, I went over and kicked his fucking ugly face down. For good measure, I kicked it even more, ignoring the flames and the fire around me. His soul would burn in hell, but his body needed a little bit more punishment before I let the flames take it.

  He’d ruined everything about me. He’d broken me. He’d damaged beyond repair, leaving only one man who was even attempting to save me.

  This desecration of his face was the least I could do to this asshole, this goddamn prick, this evil human.

  This man… whom Derek had sought for so long… Derek…

  “Derek!” I screamed.

  Where was he?!?

  Had he gone to the wrong room and gotten trapped? I hadn’t seen him anywhere in here. He wasn’t… he was dead, wasn’t he…

  My own mind was starting to get woozy… a lack of oxygen was… it was killing me… well… at least Rock…

  “Eve…”

  I heard the distant voice of Derek calling me from the other side. I would die, but I’d die having spent my last… days with a man… who cared… for me…

  “Eve!”

  His voice came closer. If this was death, it didn’t seem so bad. In fact… it was almost kind of nice… at least…

  “Eve!”

  I felt a firm grip of my arm as I came to.

  I wasn’t dead.

  I might’ve been dying, but I was getting pulled out of my hell hole now.

  Derek was here.

  He was alive.

  Shot and wounded with some burns across his face, but alive.

  “Derek…” I groaned.

  “Come on, let’s get the fuck out of here,” he said. “Mission goddamn accomplished. Good thing you showed up, too—I’d have let myself die without you.”

  He coughed up blood as we moved out of the burning building, arm in arm, but the sight of each other had given us each strength. Instead of collapsing in a fit of hopelessness, we now had the gift of each other back, and it quite literally gave us everything we needed to move out of the building and to the vehicle.

  When we made it out that front door—barely avoiding stumbling down the stairs—I must have coughed for a good dozen minutes. Derek, too, hacked away for so long that it felt like he would never stop coughing, that both of us would become real life Darth Vaders.

  But you know what? That meant we would be alive.

  And our greatest foe, our greatest enemy, had fallen.

  We had won.

  “Jesus Christ,” Derek said as he sat on the couch of his apartment. “I can’t… I can’t believe it…”

  I smiled gently at him as I did my best not to cough in his face. I’d managed to get him up to his apartment, figuring we could get Tara later. There was no safer place in the city besides where we were, but I think I deserved some alone time with him after what had happened tonight.

  “It’s OK,” I said, handing him a glass of water and gently tending to his one bullet wound. “You got your revenge. You did what you set out to do.”

  Derek smiled and then coughed. It was in my face, but honestly, what did I care? The man had just escaped a meth fire—to talk to him about manners and courtesies seemed more than a little ridiculous.

  “Yeah,” he said, his voice scratchy and weary. “But we lost Roost.”

  I grimaced. I only wished I had known Matty longer than I had. He was a wild one, much like Tara in some ways. But he had that same fierce loyalty and bond that Crystal had to me, and it hurt to know that Derek had lost that. All I had to do was think about what it would be like if I had lost that with Tara—just the thought of it made me emotional.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sure he was a great man.”

  “He was,” Derek said. “Let me tell you, Eve. No man has been more loyal to my family than Matty Rose. No man has done more to protect me and ensure I can become a better man and leader than Rooster. No man has saved our asses more, and tonight was no exception.”

  I wanted to ask him what he meant—what that story entailed—but this was not the moment for it. Tonight was just about being with each other, not having to worry about Rock or any of his cronies. Tonight was about being present, not about digging into and handling a dark past.

  “That man did so much for us without ever asking for anything back,” Derek said. “He loved you, by the way.”

  “Oh, stop.”

  “No, I’m serious,” he said, warming my heart and making me feel emotional. “His last words were ‘treat her well.’ Or, I’m sorry, ‘treat ‘er ‘ell.’”

  I laughed at the gentle ribbing of Roost, especially since Derek joined in, even as we both started hacking like mad in response.

  “Well, we’ll give him the sendoff he deserves soon enough,” I said. “Whatever I can do to help, I will.”

  “Thanks,” Derek said.

  A long pause came as he looked to be exploring the depths of his mind. I waited patiently for him to speak—he might not have last time, but…

  “Actually, it was something else he said before he died,” Derek said. “Something that I wish I’d done earlier. He said that if I was going to fight for you, I had to show it not just to all but to you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Derek swallowed, clearly nervous. I was beginning to feel nervous too, but in the positive way.

  “He said I talked a lot about you to him, and I did,” he said. “But he reminded me—in few words, to be fair—that he wasn’t the one I needed to speak the truth to. It’s you.”

  He gulped.

  “See, right before I left the autoshop and locked you in—sorry about that, by the way.”

  “Yeah, it didn’t work, it’s all good,” I said with a smirk.

  “Well, right before then, there was something I wanted to say to you. But I couldn’t bring myself to say it. I was… I was afraid if I did, I might jinx us or something stupid. There’s no good excuse for it. But here’s what I kno
w. I have another chance. And I’m not going to waste it. So, Eve Kellerman, you deserve to know this.”

  Say it.

  “I love you.”

  My heart warmed, my stomach jumped, and I even got a little emotional as I could only let out a soft, pleasurable gasp. I grabbed his hand, squeezed it as hard as I could, and said what I should have said earlier too.

  “I love you too.”

  He smiled, ignoring the pain in his body, the pain in his heart, and the pain of the night to lean forward to kiss me. Our kiss felt like it had frozen time itself—which felt appropriate, because I wanted to lock away that moment forever.

  For the first time in my life, I felt loved.

  I leaned back and scratched his chest, just so unbelievably grateful for what had transpired. So grateful for Derek.

  And so grateful for a second chance.

  “There’s going to be some bumps on the way, no doubt,” he said. “Now that you’re free, we can finally be a normal couple. And now that Rock is gone, we can move across the city with more ease. But that doesn’t mean it’ll be perfect. But…”

  He took my hand once more. I decided to finish the thought for him.

  “As long as I’m with you, I don’t care how bumpy it is,” I said.

  We kissed once more.

  “Besides, I literally just saved your sorry butt from a meth fire, you think I care about a normal argument?”

  “Oh, so now you’re the savior of the relationship?”

  “I don’t know, Mr. Savage Savior, you tell me.”

  He just laughed, and I just did too. We didn’t have any more words, but we didn’t need them.

  We didn’t need any more battles. We didn’t need any more plans. We didn’t need any more dates sneaking around.

  We had each other, and we had no more barriers.

  And that was all that we needed.

  “I’ll tell you this,” Derek said.

  I leaned forward eagerly. His words put my soul to peace.

  “You’re safe with me. Forever.”

  Epilogue

  Prison sucked.

  Life sucked.

  Everything sucked.

  Life had been nothing but a cruel joke to me. My parents hated me. My sister was a goddamn idiot. The man who’d promised me freedom after my trade had sold me out.

  And now here I was, in prison for some bullshit crime with drugs, doing time when other people were here for rape, murder, and violence—acts I’d fantasized of more than once.

  It got boring as shit in these parts. Without TV, without some cute girl to suck my dick, without the thrill of the streets, I had to create my own thrills. For the most part, I kept it to the shit no one could find me on. But—

  “Hey! Kellerman! You got a visitor?”

  What the fuck. Really. Who the fuck is coming to visit?

  “Who?” I groaned back.

  “Fuck if I care,” the security guard said as he opened the cell. “Says he knows your sister.”

  Fuck, whatever. Maybe they’ll get me out of this goddamn place.

  I dutifully followed the security guard, thinking of all the ways I could kill him and steal his shit as he led me. It was too bad they were smart fuckers—they never traveled alone. They knew they were too much of bitches to take us on one on one.

  I sat down at the glass and stared across at a bald, fat man, smoking a cigar. The guards looked with some trepidation at him. I had a feeling as I sat across from the glass that this was not someone to be fucked with, even less so than that dickhead Rock.

  “You Charles?”

  “Who wants to know? What is this, some—”

  “Charles Kellerman?”

  I sighed, making an exaggerated show of my frustration. If this was some lawyer, some hotshot dealer, I didn’t have time for games.

  “People don’t call me that. What’s—”

  “But it’s your name.”

  I just stared silently at this asshole who thought he could silence me and interrupt me.

  It was a bit telling that he didn’t seem to flinch at all from my glare. In fact, he seemed to enjoy it, although he only gave just enough of a smile for me to pick up on it.

  “What do you want?” I growled, albeit in a slightly less menacing tone than before. Fuck. Don’t cower to this chrome-domed shithead. “What’s this I hear ‘bout you knowing my sister?”

  “Oh, that?” the man said, taking a deliberately aggravating puff of his cigar. “No, no. I more know of Eve than having had the pleasure of actually meeting her.”

  “That so?”

  “It is.” I hated how this man seemed completely unshakable. Even Rock could be pushed to the limits. Not this clown. “Are you aware of her arrangement?”

  “I should say so, since I was the one who arranged it.”

  “Just wanted to make sure you understood that.”

  “Understood what? What’s your—”

  “That you were, in fact, the one who told us to acquire your sister to fulfill your debt.”

  What… what kind of mind fuck game is this?

  “That’s what I just… wait, ‘us’? Y-you with the Falcons?”

  OK, this was bad. There were Falcons in jail, but they were mostly low-life thugs and idiots whom I feared less than choking on my toothbrush. But this man…

  Whoever the fuck he was, he looked like he would not hesitate to break my neck for the fun of it.

  “Mister Kellerman, I am the Black Falcons. In fact, I am The Falcon.”

  “That’s funny.”

  “Why?”

  I hated how this guy seemed to speak so casually, and yet had a very ominous manner about him. I knew answering this question poorly would get me in trouble.

  “Last guy I talked to with the Falcons called himself Rock. Seemed like a funny name. Now I get a Falcon. How’s he doing?”

  “The Falcon”—Jesus, seriously—took a long ass puff of his cigar.

  “Dead.”

  He took another puff, as if he had just told me he wanted his medium fast-food meal upgraded to a large.

  “Oh.”

  “Yes. And your sister was not without a certain degree of involvement in that matter.”

  What? Eve?

  “Eve? You’re telling me Eve was somehow involved in some guy’s death?”

  “That is what I just said, yes.”

  “And don’t you dare think I misspoke again” is what he’s not saying.

  “I’d like to hurry this along. The fact of the matter, Charles, is that your sister has run off from her duties. She was made aware of the circumstances surrounding her arrangements, and she has joined a rival gang. Not just that—we believe she joined the leader of that gang.”

  “A rival…? How many you fuckers out there?”

  I just felt thankful that The Falcon didn’t take offense at swearing like he silently took offense at me interrupting.

  “Just the two. Eve went willingly and saw fit to convince another of our girls to go along. And she blew up a building with Rock inside.”

  “Damn.”

  There was no way my little sister could have blown up a goddamn building. She was a quiet bitch who could be pushed over just by a single look—and I was to believe this Falcon that she’d suddenly found the spirit of Timothy McVeigh and blown up a building?

  “That’s certainly one way to put it. Another way to put it would be that the one thing keeping you alive is no longer an asset.”

  “What do you…?”

  Shit.

  Fuck!

  “Why on Earth do you think I’d be here with you right now, Mister Kellerman, if I was planning to kill you?”

  He let the words linger for a long time. It only just now occurred to me he was saying this in a recorded room, full of cops, security guards, and guns—and he seemed so cool and at home that he might as well have literally been at home.

  “So… you ain’t here to off me?”

  It was the first time all convers
ation I sounded like a fucking coward. But do you think I wanted to fucking die?

  “You think I’d go through all the trouble of coming here if I simply wanted you dead?”

  “I… uh, can’t say. Not like I know you too good, you know?”

  “You’ll have plenty of time to get to know me, Charles. And trust me, there are many of my men who would be more than eager to take on such a task.”

  “That a fact?”

  “It is.”

  Again, complete certainty. I believed every word that he said.

  I could say no one terrified me like this guy did.

  “So… what do you want?”

  “Doesn’t it seem obvious?”

  It was the first time I’d gotten a hint of anger from him. It wasn’t much—out of a normal person, I wouldn’t have thought anything of the inflection in tone—but here, it was evident what it was.

  “We want Eve back. We want the man that took her dead. And we want the other gang out of the picture. Completely.”

  “Not sure I can do all of that, but I guess it wouldn’t be too tough to find Eve.”

  Listen to me, sounding like a coward. “I guess?”

  Fuck, this guy.

  “She’s easy to manipulate. I imagine she’d at least still be willing to answer a phone call from me. You find me a way to get in touch with her… I can get you in touch.”

  The man, for the first time all conversation, smiled.

  “Good, Mister Kellerman. Very good.”

  BOOK 3

  * * *

  BROKEN SCARS

  Prologue

  Four Years Earlier

  The day had finally come.

  I’d known her since our high school days, when I had nervously made a trail of flower petals from the front door of our high school to her car, leading to me holding a bouquet of roses. I’d loved her since our first prom night, when, despite me being so sick that I couldn’t even put on a tie, let alone go to the dance, she spent the entire night with me. I’d promised my life to her nine months ago with a diamond that I swore almost cost more than my Honda Civic—and what better representation of my willingness to leave the family life for her than by trading in the chopper my father had given me for the stereotypical suburban dad four-wheeler.