Savage Saviors: The Complete Boxset (Savage Saviors MC)

by J. C. Allen

There was no threat to the motion; he was just maintaining the distance. Reminding myself that this was family and not a member of the Black Falcons, I suppressed the instinctual urge to withdraw again.

  Then I reminded myself that in some ways, this particular family member might have been even worse than the Black Falcons.

  As I looked him over, I realized he hadn’t changed at all. His blond hair had been cropped short in what could only be a prison-fashioned hair style and his skin had gotten paler since our last encounter. He was still tall and lanky, and he had lost some of the muscle he’d had before getting into trouble—or rather, trouble so obscene it landed him in prison.

  But he had those eyes. Deep and cunning and mischievous; eyes that everyone used to say we shared, but now I hated to imagine that being the case.

  And that was me trying to be nice. If I was honest… cruel, sadistic, malevolent, evil were the adjectives I was more likely to use. I tried so hard to not devolve to that level like Chuck would, but…

  On him they looked untrustworthy, the eyes of a plotter, and I didn’t like the idea of those eyes laid upon me once more. Worse yet, the way those eyes looked at me, seeming to study me, trace me for some future reference. All the while, his gaze appeared sucked in details that made me feel like I was standing before him stark naked.

  Which was exactly how you were when he last saw you—when he sold you out to Rock. That didn’t even disturb him—if anything, he took glee in it.

  The sick fuck.

  “What are you doing here, Chuck?” I demanded, although anyone with an ounce of empathy could see I was scared shitless. “Aren’t you supposed to be in jail?”

  “Got out on good behavior,” he answered with a smirk. “Figured I’d pay a visit to my darling little sister before leaving.”

  “Leaving?” I pressed, uncertain.

  I also had zero reason to believe any of what he’d said, but that really didn’t matter at this point; more so that he had followed me, stalked me, and found me here, and that if anyone was going to pull something dangerous and cruel in public, it was Chuck.

  “Are you surprised? You obviously know what sort of trouble I got myself into, and being out of the big house doesn’t exactly mean I’m out of the real trouble. If anything, being out here makes me that much more vulnerable to those assholes.”

  You? You, vulnerable? At least a person you loved didn’t sell you out, you bastard. At least you weren’t betrayed. At least you got to keep something of your dignity intact. You chose to go to jail.

  You’re a coward. Rather than face Rock and the Falcons, you probably chose jail. I should’ve known you’d pull something like this.

  But if he’s out and saying he is, not was, vulnerable…

  “The Black Falcons are still after you?” I asked.

  Chuck laughed at the question, but there was no humor in it whatsoever. It was an all-too familiar laugh he had—the one that seemed to accept his fate but laugh at it all the same, the kind of laugh that was followed by a “fuck you, God.” Only on Chuck was a laugh the same as a threat.

  “From the sounds of it I’m not the only Kellerman that they’re after,” he said.

  I frowned at that. So he did know. Or, at least, he had strong reason to suspect it.

  “Guess I should thank you for that?”

  He scoffed and shook his head.

  “I didn’t ask you to do anything, Eve. I never even had the chance. If the Falcons came knocking on your door, then what happened next is strictly between you and them.”

  “You, you can’t be serious!” I said.

  It was one thing to have evil tricks played on me. But to so brazenly lie to me? To pull this kind of shit? Did he think I wasn’t awake when he took me to Rock? Or was he just so arrogant and so conceited that he truly believed I didn’t know that he was the one responsible for my actions?

  “You!”

  I started to shout, but seeing people start to look our way, I lowered my finger and went quiet.

  “Same old Eve,” he mused, shaking his head. Everything he said, everything he did, and everything he did not say or do was expressly designed to hate me. I had spent years trying to figure out why, and I had not gotten any closer to a satisfying answer. “Always the victim, right? Boo-hoo! My mean, ol’ brother made bad choices and now I’m a whore for it! If you wanna start blaming me for all that… then you’d better start thanking me for the rest.”

  I looked down at his phone, noticing that he had it pointed at an odd angle, but I didn’t think anything of it. I was just half-surprised that he even had a cell phone after spending all this time in jail.

  But…

  The fuck had he meant by “the rest?”

  “Word on the street is you got yourself rescued by a badass biker boy-toy.”

  He knows? Who… who would have told him?

  Who would have gotten him free, honestly?

  What… what’s happening?

  “Strong, chiseled type with power, money… everything a little girl needs, right?”

  He let out a loud laugh, one projected and out there, and I only understood why when he looked around—he wanted people to stare at us!

  “If it’s my fault that you had a few sore-pussy nights, then it’s just as much because of me that you found yourself this big-deal boyfriend who’s gone and stirred up quite a stinky situation. So, you’re welcome.”

  I actually took a step towards him at that, having a harder and harder time not hitting him. He wouldn’t hit me here, but I could get away with slapping him—and slap him hard, now that I’d eaten and nourished myself like a normal person would, was very possible.

  “And what would you know about this ‘stinky situation?’”

  Chuck did nothing to move away. In fact, he seemed to almost glow as I closed the distance between us. I had forgotten some of his quirks, if never his name or his face, but I’d forgotten how he seemed to just relish confrontation to an uncomfortable degree with me—but, strangely, not really anyone else.

  “I did say that I need to get out of this city, didn’t I?” he repeated. “Do you think I’d fucking stutter? Did the Johns fuck your earlobes deaf?”

  “What do you want?” I asked with a glare, trying to keep him on topic. “Why are you really here? Don’t you dare lie.”

  “I just figured I should warn you that they’re making you a full-scale priority,” he answered with a deliberately slow shrug. “And that, I can promise you, sis, is most certainly not a lie.”

  “Oh, yeah, right,” I sneered, moving myself away from him—unable to bear the closeness any longer—and starting to turn away. “Because what an entire club wants is just one single whore who they got from her brother! You seem really torn up about all of this, just like you were torn up the day I woke up naked with you discussing terms with Rock.”

  I thought I caught a glimmer of surprise from Chuck, as if he wasn’t expecting me to know or remember this… but I was quite saddened to see he seemed unaffected by my knowledge of all that had happened.

  “You’re the worst,” I said, turning away.

  “Speaking of ‘torn up,’” and felt his eyes on my backside.

  “The fuck does that mean,” I growled as I turned around.

  I caught him as his eyes moved across my body, running over me like an oil slick. I shivered at the oozy sensation. I crossed my arms over my chest. Even with the large, baggy tee-shirt I had on I didn’t feel comfortable in front of him then. To say that this felt predatory was an understatement—I felt undressed in front of my own asshole brother.

  “Look, Chuck, I’m done with them, okay! I’m just done. I regret staying with them as long as I did. For fuck’s sake, Chuck, I nearly got killed. You think I enjoyed it?”

  He said nothing, letting silence linger. Fine. I’ll be the bigger person here.

  “Things are better for me now,” I said, steadying my voice. “I’m out of that life, and now that you’re out of jail… you can figure out
your own mess. This was never my problem, anyway. I don’t owe them anything. I don’t owe you anything. I don’t owe anyone anything.”

  The look he gave me in response to that somehow upped the terror scale even more. I knew he took pleasure in seeing me squirm so frequently—and the smirk on his face did nothing to help that cause.

  “That’s where you’re wrong, sis,” he said, his eyes running across my body again, and this time I failed to hold back the shiver. “You see, that may have been true before. But… let’s just say my sources have told me that you and your boy-toy torched quite a lot of product. And, from the sounds of it, there was a casualty, as well. A rather valuable member from the sounds of things, as well as a friend of mine.”

  Rock.

  Just the fact that you’d call him a “friend” tells me everything I need to know about you, Chuck.

  “Not to mention all the other whores you’ve gone and inspired to high-tail it out of their own deals.”

  So Tara has done some good, huh? Good. Suffer a little bit, Chuck.

  “So, yeah, you might not have owed them anything before, but you went and cost them an arm and a leg—and an entire body along with it—and made it very personal, Eve. You could’ve just been a good little slut and gotten off the hook someday.”

  If by someday, you mean never. Don’t even act like it would’ve been any other way.

  “Instead, you decided to look for some happily ever after with the wrong side. And now the only ‘ever after’ is going to be ‘buried six feet under ever after.’”

  “This isn’t my fault, Chuck,” I snarled. “The place blew up because of what was in there, not because of me or Derek.”

  I tried to hide my displeasure at saying Derek’s name—even if Chuck had known, I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing he knew the truth.

  But worse, I knew that he had me on the defensive now. I was feeling weak in comparison, and I wanted nothing more than for this guy to just disappear forever. If I had to take five minutes of shaming from him before he left the state forever, I’d make that deal.

  “And you think they see it that way?” he said, raising an eyebrow. “Your best feature might be between your legs, slut, but don’t go pretending that you’ve got nothing between your ears.”

  “Call me a ‘slut’ again and—”

  “And what, slut.”

  “You a whore or not?”

  “And what, slut.”

  The two sentences merged, the devil and the demon on my shoulders mercilessly taunting me in my head at every opportunity. There was nothing merciful about what was going on right now, nothing that provided an out for where I was.

  I felt my left eye twitch under the storm of rage within me. I felt my fingers curl. I felt my chest tighten.

  I think the only thing that kept me from hitting him was the fact that he looked like he wanted me to hit him—as if he needed me to hit him for him to do something even worse.

  With some steady breathing and deliberate focus on my heartbeat, I finally managed to calmly say words that I believed would finally make Chuck flinch with just a little bit of fear.

  “I’ll make a call.” I said. “I can get Derek’s guys—the Saviors, the good guys—here before you can say, ‘No, warden, don’t let the other inmates fuck my little asshole,’ and then you’ll have twice as much trouble on your head.”

  I at least got surprise registered on his face. I don’t think he expected me to have such viciousness within, but then that was on him for being stupid enough to think forced prostitution wouldn’t have changed me in the months before.

  “The way I see it, Chuck,” I said. “Either you’re here because you’re trying to scare me back into handling your mess… or you think it’ll help put you in good standings with the Falcons. I don’t know why or how you got out, and frankly, I really don’t give a shit. Let me make a few things clear on what I do give a shit about: I am not going back, and if you don’t leave me alone—if I get the Saviors involved with this—then the Black Falcons will kill you just for breathing the same air as their enemies! And if they won’t do it? I’ll get Derek to do it. You better start praying to whatever you believe in that you get the more merciful one, because I’ve seen Derek angry—and I think Rock looked like a pussy in comparison.”

  Chuck stared at me for a long time, the perverse leer gone and nothing but bitterness and hate left in their place. I could see he’d never expected his little sister to stand up to him like this, and it enraged him. He probably never could have imagined that his little sister would be so strong, and for everything that he’d gone through as a kid, it was probably his worst nightmare come true.

  Good.

  “Fine,” he finally said, holding up his hands in surrender and beginning to back away. But he had a look of hatred on me that warned he hadn’t given up the fight entirely. “Doesn’t matter, anyway. They will get you, sis. They will get your fuckboy. What do you think? That it’s going to be okay? That you’ll just have some happily ever after with your ‘Savior?’ You’re dreaming. This is the real world, and in the real world it’s the ones with the biggest guns that win the wars. And from what I’ve heard, the Saviors don’t deal in guns.”

  He spit at me, but his shot came up just short. I almost lunged to slap him, but he would have been able to defend himself in the time I would need to move. So, begrudgingly, I let the asshole move on.

  “Fuck you, slut!”

  “Chuck!”

  And then, turning away and slipping into the crowd of people, Chuck was gone.

  “Goddamnit!” I muttered to myself.

  How… why… everything seemed so perfect, and now this asshole was back? I now had to deal with Chuck, the man who’d sent me to this life, all over again? Why the fuck did this have to happen with Derek in a coma?!?

  “It’s his fault you’re in this mess in the first place, and as far as I’m concerned, he’s just as guilty as that asshole for what happened to you.”

  Speaking of Derek, his words came to mind as I tried to make sense of how this was even possible. I wasn’t sure what Chuck had landed in prison for—the only thing I had ever known was that one day, Rock had come to me to say my brother had gotten thrown in jail like a bitch, and that if ever there was chance before of me getting out, it wasn’t happening now. But he’d never said why.

  It was, I guess, plausible for Chuck to get out early on “good” behavior—he could fake and charm with dangerous ease when he wanted to.

  But he knew the threat the Black Falcons had. If he’d pissed off the Falcons for some reason, he wouldn’t have ever left jail. He’d sooner kill a prison guard for protection than he would have done anything that could have put him back in the Falcons’ line of sight.

  So… why was he free? How was he free?

  And for that matter, why had he stalked me so? How had he known I’d be at the museum? Was someone helping him?

  “For all the good that you are and all the happiness you bring me, he does the exact opposite. I’ve never met him, but I’ve come face to face with the consequences of his actions. Now, he has to face them as well.”

  Yes, he does, Derek. Yes, he does.

  But I really didn’t want to be the enforcer of those consequences, nor did I particularly feel like trying to bring him to justice. He wasn’t a walking shell of empty words and threats, but he wasn’t exactly a hulking menace prone to violence at any moment. He was more likely to undercut someone with his words—just as he had to many of my dates in my high school and college days—than he was to punch me for being something different.

  Derek was right, though. I had to cut him out. I needed a harder, gruffer, tougher side in response to the realities of the world. Maybe I wasn’t that far removed for the amount of violence and danger I’d gotten myself into, but I couldn’t be continuing along my old habits.

  It was time to be tougher.

  It was time to be harder.

  It was time to be a smarte
r, more dangerous Eve Kellerman.

  Then my phone started to ring.

  Something happened. Oh fuck!

  A fresh stream of panic began to run through me as I quickly pulled out my phone. A confusing moment passed as I realized that I didn’t recognize the number, and I answered it with a warring sense of worry and cautious optimism.

  Just before I answered, I had a feeling this was not going to go well—which told me my instincts still veered toward an uncomfortable level of darkness.

  “Hello?”

  In the background, I recognized the context immediately. The hospital.

  “Is this Eve Kellerman?” the voice on the other end asked calmly.

  Calmly, I thought to myself. Calmly is good… right? The nurse would have a certain tone to her if something terrible had happened, and she doesn’t, so…

  It’s good. It’s good.

  I think.

  “This is,” I said slowly, wondering what I might have just confessed myself to. “May I ask who’s calling?”

  “This is Nurse Green,” the voice began. “I see that you are listed as one of the emergency contacts for Mister Derek Knight.”

  “Oh… uh, yes. Yes, I am,” I answered, the panic coming back at the word emergency, even as for a flash I realized it said something that he’d already listed me as an emergency contact. I chose to ignore the possibility that that was just cover for the fact that I had visited so much they knew me already. “Is he… is he okay? Oh, please me he’s not—”

  “Ma’am,” the voice somehow managed to remained calm while still asserting enough force to silence me. “I am calling to let you know he woke up about ten minutes ago. The doctor is in with him now, and he’s just a little, umm, jittery, but we think he’ll be—”

  “Oh thank God!” I groaned as I fell back against a bench on the sidewalk. Finally. Nice contrast to Chuck. “Thank you so, so much. I will be there shortly, no, as soon as I can, I mean, umm—”

  “No problem at all,” Nurse Green replied, cutting of my excessive stuttering and rambling. “We will see you soon.”

  After hanging up with the nurse, I let my arms flop to my side and my head tilt back. He’s alive. He’s alive.