Ellis
Dominic J.
123-45-6790
AB Neg
Catholic
Nic.
Then, she reached for my hand and pressed it to her chest, and as I stared at her, blinking at the fresh ink with shaking fingers, I traced the letters. The shapes. Felt the meaning.
She wore dog tags too, but they were forever etched into her skin.
Only, they weren’t an identical pair. There were three tags.
One was embossed with:
Ellis
Dominic J.
123-45-6790
AB Neg
Catholic
And the other:
Ravenwood
Jameson
123-45-6789
O Pos
Jedi
And the final one was embossed with:
Ravenwood
Alessa
O Neg
Catholic
Old Lady
Satan’s Sinners MC
It wasn’t like a club to my head, a wallop to my system, but the memories came back.
I remembered.
“Alessa,” I whispered, and I broke down. Sobbing.
How could I do anything else?
I shielded my face, unable to deal with what I saw, remembered, felt, heard. But she was there, her hands tracing over me, sliding over my head, drawing me nearer until I was pressed into her in a tight embrace.
The love from her flowed into me, recharged me, regenerated me.
CTE.
PTSD.
An alphabet of abbreviations, all of them destined to take me from her.
“I-I might not always remember,” I whispered, because even as I knew I couldn’t hold on without her, neither could I put her through this. “It might get worse.”
But though my voice was ragged, hers was calm. So calm. “Worse with you is better than the best days of my life without you.”
“You can’t say that.”
“I can.” Then, with a steeliness I felt like she’d slammed a metal bar into my skull, she told me, “I will.”
My mouth trembled. “It was a flashback.”
“You don’t have to talk about it—”
“Nic was there.” My eyes seeped more tears as I pulled back to look at her. “He told me to love you. To let him go and to forget about him.”
She shook her head. “Then he’s dumb. What is it with you men? So self-sacrificing. You don’t need to forget him.” She pressed my fingers to her chest again, the move awkward as we were so close together. “He’s a part of us, Jameson. Forever. And both of us love you enough to protect you from yourself. I’m going nowhere, and neither are you.”
She was so assured, so strong, so fucking confident where I felt nothing but weak. And stupid, as a thought flashed into my mind. Nic—he’d said he wanted a kid named after him. “What if you’re pregnant? We haven’t used anything. I can’t put a kid through—”
“I hope I am. Life is hard and complicated, and painful too,” she conceded on a sigh, “but with you, I’m happy. I’m whole. You gave me a family, you brought me peace, and you made me feel secure. Your child will only add to that. He or she will be one more piece that ties us together. Binds us.”
“That’s not fair to them.”
“It’s not fair, either, if a child doesn’t have the chance of being your son or daughter, Maverick. You’re a good man. The best.”
I stared into those eyes that weren’t Nic’s but were a sharp shade of blue, sharp enough to tell me she meant every word she said. They weren’t dazed with emotion, but were hard with reason. Cold, hard reason.
She believed every word she said, and like Nic, she told me, “I love you, Jameson. We will get through this. Together.”
And as I murmured the same, told her, “I love you, Alessa,” in the background, I heard a cellphone ring.
Then Steel’s voice stormed, “What? You’re fucking with me, Rain.” I tuned him out, but even as I focused on the love in her eyes, on the forgiveness in her beautiful soul for a man whose broken mind would always be fractured but which she’d love anyway, I heard him say, “Follow her. Make sure if he stops, you get to her first. Rain, we believe he’s a pedophile. She’s in danger. Try to send us your location and we’ll be on our way.”
And even as Alessa pressed her lips to mine, I registered a hard truth.
The Satan’s Sinners weren’t like the U.S. Army.
There would never be no backup. No medevacs.
We protected our own.
We killed for them.
We’d die for them.
And that was how it should be.
Forever.
Forty-Three
Quin
For someone who’d recently gained a lot of Irish and Russian friends, the sudden silence came as a surprise. Nowhere was silent in Rikers. That was one of the hardest things about being in here.
There was no peace. Ever.
Serenity wasn’t a thing.
Calm wasn’t either.
So the sudden silence was proof that a storm was incoming, and when storms made landfall here, they were cataclysmic.
Tension had me backing up, moving out of the common area as I knew that avoidance was imperative, and reversing to my cell where there was minimal safety in my bunkmate’s presence.
As I passed an inmate who was notorious for riding correctional officers’ legs, I ducked my chin to avoid looking at him and noticed he did the same. Both off us were frightened jack rabbits at that moment, aware a predator was somehow on the loose, and not sure how to survive it.
The walls felt like they were closing in on me. The narrow corridors and the endless sea of bars had claustrophobia hitting me hard, and I knew if I wasn’t careful, they’d drown me in brake fluid again.
The hope that’d come from Nyx’s visit hadn’t lasted long, and I’d ended up with a visit to the ding wing—the psych ward—for my pains. In the aftermath, a fuck ton of Westies and Bratva had started hanging around me, which I’d taken to be a good sign…
Until today.
On the staircase that led to my floor, I darted up and around the bannister, but as I moved down the hall, someone snatched me from one of the cells.
I started to struggle, hitting out in an effort to fend off the incoming attack, well aware that the silence in the unit was for my benefit.
For this moment.
I was the prey, but I was also a fucking predator, and I wasn’t about to let anyone think otherwise.
Grabbing my shiv from its hiding place in my fucking underwear, I tried to twist around, tried to make it out of the chokehold the bastard had me in, but I couldn’t. So, instead, I struck out, aware from the smell of iron that my aim was true, but it was too late.
I felt his shiv, bigger, colder, and recognized the fucker had a knife.
This was sanctioned.
The COs had turned a blind fucking eye.
A holler went up in the prison, an alarm that triggered lockdown, but just as he twisted me around, shoving me into the wall face first, he dug the weapon deep into my back, and the cunt whispered in my ear, “With love from the Sparrows.”
And that was when he let go of me.
When my knees went out from under me.
When I dropped to the floor, my shiv falling from one hand as I reached up to cup the gash he’d made.
As I dropped back, staring up at a grim ceiling that had probably seen many more deaths than just mine, I closed my eyes.
The last thing I thought of?
Nyx and Indy.
As a result, only one word came to mind, powerful enough that I had to speak it out loud.
“Sorry.”
Epilogue
If your kindle is in danger of being hurled at the wall… read on. If you don’t want spoilers, stop here.
Maverick
“Nic! You gotta keep your eye on the ball!”
I grinned at my wife as I shrugged my arm around her
shoulder. She was brimming with tension, full of it as she watched our son play his first game of tee-ball. For whatever reason, Nic hadn’t inherited my hand-eye coordination. Even though the ball was on the tee, Nic couldn’t seem to hit it.
It was funny as fuck, cute too, but Alessa had to go and make a bet with Giulia, which, of course, put more onto this game than usual.
When Nic struck out yet again, I muttered, “Kid’s only four, babe. He’ll get better.”
She heaved a sigh. “You don’t know what this means.”
I knew the facts.
Giulia was a nutcase, and two sons and a daughter hadn’t made her any more normal than when she’d first found her way back to West Orange.
“What’s the bet for?” I asked her, pressing a kiss to her temple. “You wager our house on it? Five mil? What’s the damage?”
Aware I was amused, she peeped up at me through those long lashes that still ensnared me all these years later, and muttered, “You won’t like it.”
My lips twitched. “No?”
She heaved a sigh, reminding me so hard of Nic when he was two and had confessed to putting his kitten, Triskele, in his potty to do her business.
“I’m supposed to teach them how to pole dance.”
I cocked a brow. “Why would that bother me? Don’t I get a show? Also, how the hell didn’t I know that you could pole dance?”
She wafted a hand. “I’m a woman of mystery. You don’t know everything about me, Maverick.”
I snorted out a laugh, loving her sass. When I’d first fallen for her, she’d been meek, and though my heart had belonged to her since those early days, I loved her more now that she’d gone from being a milk-and-water miss to a sexy, sassy Sinner who had my cock in a clamp and my heart in her hand.
“I just hate pole dancing is all.”
“Because of why you learned how?” I hazarded a guess.
She pulled a face. “That and you chafe like a bitch between your legs.”
I tried not to smile, I really did. “Bad enough to pressure Nic into winning?”
Her scowl was ominous. “I didn’t pressure him. I cheered him on.”
“You pep talked the kid into being nervous,” I retorted with a laugh. “You terrified him.”
Her mouth formed the perfect O that, later on, I’d feel around my cock. Shit, it was good to be alive. “I did not!”
“Did too.” I pressed a kiss to the tip of her nose. “Just let him be, babe. You know he loves this stuff.”
“I didn’t mean to make him anxious,” she whispered, clearly aghast, but I tapped her tush.
“He’ll get over it. We’ve got fourteen more years to screw his head back on right.”
She shoved me in the side. “Mean!”
I grinned. “When he’s twenty-eight and still can’t hit a ball, I’m sure he’ll remember this day and this week where you tried to encourage him to hit paper baseballs with his bamboo straw when he’s bitching at his sports shrink about the yips.”
Her lips twitched, but before she could reply, Kati, who was visiting, passed us with a squalling Lizzie in her arms. As she lugged the toddler onto her hip, she ground out into her AirPods, at whoever was on the other end of her call, “Oh my God! He’s such a prick!”
“Less of the cursing, Kat,” Indy groused from a few feet away, as she peered over at the field where her girl, Nevah, was hustling over to bat.
“She’s Giulia’s daughter. You know that kid already knows what a prick is,” I muttered in Alessa’s ear which had her laughing, even as she tugged on Kati’s hand.
“What’s wrong, zayushka?” she asked.
Kati looked like she was going to shrug off Alessa’s concern, but she didn’t. Instead, she replied in Ukrainian, before huffing, “Men!”
Hugging Lizzie tighter, she stomped off, prompting me to ask, “What was that about?”
Alessa just smiled. “Boy trouble.”
I rolled my eyes. “Great, am I going to have to go all big brother on some fucker’s ass?”
She patted my chest. “Not yet. Things aren’t that dire.”
“Thank Christ, she’s too young for that still.”
“She’s thirteen,” Alessa pointed out with a laugh. “She’s plenty old enough for boyfriends.”
Though the notion had me grumbling under my breath, I turned and saw Nic heading our way, his shoulders hunched, his face loaded with misery at his—there was no kinder way of phrasing it—shitty game. Still, I squatted down and gently nudged his arm with my fist.
“Little man, you did great.”
His bottom lip started to quiver before he hurled himself against my chest.
A sigh escaped me as I felt his tiny form seem to melt into me, and I closed my eyes as I hugged him back. He was starting to get a bit too old for this—wouldn’t always let me or his mom kiss him, would run off sometimes, but when shit got real, he wasn’t too old for hugs just yet.
If it were down to me, I’d be available for hugs twenty-four seven, except kids didn’t always do as you imagined they would. They cried over random shit with such misery and tragedy that wailing over a broken game was as horrendous as there not being enough sweetcorn on their plate, both of which could have my boy sobbing like he’d broken his foot…
Parenthood wasn’t how I thought it’d be. It was terrifying, without a doubt, but it was worth it. It gave me a purpose. I knew I had one in Alessa, but together, we’d made this little human that we needed not to mess up.
I hadn’t wanted to call him Nic, not with all the memories tangled in the name, but it had been Alessa’s suggestion, and as I stared down at the little squalling face, that day outside the diner had come to me.
Nic asking me to name a kid after him in that flashback.
Well, I said flashback, but I knew it was a delusion. Still, that delusion had given me peace, and knowing I’d given Nic everything he asked gave me some more.
Staggering to my feet as I hugged him against my chest, I held him close as I turned into Alessa’s open arms. When Nic started sniffling as she spoke to him in Ukrainian, I wasn’t surprised when he twisted around so he could embrace her instead. I smiled but maintained his weight, not wanting to put pressure on her back. She was so slight still that I wasn’t sure if having more kids was wise, not with the health issues she’d had, but she’d insisted on two and who was I to deny her the family she craved?
I’d give her the fucking universe if that was within my power, but it wasn’t, so I could make her world right, and she wanted my kids, and I wanted hers. A match made in heaven.
My Ukrainian wasn’t that great still, so I switched focus and stared over at the field. The sun beat down, which was messing with my eyes a little, despite the super strength, medical-grade shades I wore, but it was worth it.
The tee-ball team was pretty much made up of Sinners’ brats, with only a few locals mixed in. There were two of Giulia and Nyx’s boys, because they popped out kids like they were bunny rabbits, Link and Lily’s son was there too, and Sin and Tiff’s daughter was jumping up and down with excitement as her turn to bat approached. Nevah, Cruz and Indy’s kid, finished up making her way around the pitch just as the rumble of straight pipes sounded in the distance.
I turned around to see who was arriving and smiled when I saw Rex make an appearance.
The big, bad biker Prez… at a tee-ball game.
How the mighty fell.
Afterword
PTSD.
Not discussed enough.
Not treated enough.
To those who fought for our freedom, to those who are fighting for our freedom, I thank YOU. You honor me with your service. You honor us all with the sacrifices you make.
I think Maverick is a book that befits a November release…
#LestWeForget
Please, don’t misinterpret the ending of this novel. For each and every soldier out there, be they on active duty or retired, you have my humble thanks.
With that
being said, I hope you guys are ready for Hawk. (Now available on preorder here: www.books2read.com/HawkSerenaAkeroyd)
I know, you’re wondering why I’m tormenting you. When the hell Rex and Storm will get their story… which they WILL get, but your patience will be rewarded. :P
And in the interim, don’t forget to read Filthy Sex (www.books2read.com/FilthySex) which will be dropping in January. You’ll get a glimpse at what happens with a certain someone who’s important to the Sinners in that one. ;)
Each series is standalone, but you’ll get a helluva lot more book boyfriends if you read them in order. :P
FILTHY
NYX
LINK
FILTHY RICH
SIN
STEEL
FILTHY DARK
CRUZ
MAVERICK
FILTHY SEX
For your ease, you can just click here: http://www.linktr.ee/SerenaAkeroydReadingOrder
As always, my darlings, many thanks to you for your support.
I know 2020 has been a shitter of a year for the world at large, but I’m sending you all my love.
Thank you so much,
Serena
xoxo
Free Book!
Don’t forget to grab your free e-Book!
Secrets & Lies is now free!
Meg’s love life was missing a spark until she discovered her need to be dominated. When her fiancé shared the same kink, she thought all her birthdays had come at once, and then she came to learn their relationship was one big fat lie.
Gabe has loved Meg for years, watching her from afar, and always wishing he’d been the one to date her first and not his brother. When he has the chance to have Meg in his bed—even better, tied to it—it’s an opportunity he can’t refuse.
With disastrous consequences.
Can Gabe make Meg realize she’s the one woman he’s always wanted? But once secrets and lies have wormed their way into a relationship, is it impossible to establish the firm base of trust needed between lovers, and more importantly, between sub and Sir…?
Maverick: A Dark MC Romance (A Dark & Dirty Sinners' MC Series Book 6) Page 35
