Stolen: Hell's Overlords MC

by Zoey Parker

  This one’s different —

  She’s carrying my baby.

  Chapter 1

  Vince

  I need a cigarette.

  I push through the crowd, ducking and weaving between drunk Inked Angels with their arms in the air. The party is raucous, hitting its late night stride when the booze flows freely and all inhibitions are checked at the door.

  It’s a good enough reason to celebrate, pretty much as good as they come. Club president having another kid, that’s happy news. We need that. It’s been a dark few months otherwise.

  Mortar and Kendra look happier than pigs in shit, reclining on a low couch towards the back of the club. I see the white flash of Kendra’s smile on the far side of the room. Mortar, sitting next to his wife, has his arm wrapped around her. Son of a bitch has hardly let go of her since the day they got married.

  He’s done a damn fine job as president. We needed that, too. After all the shit that went down last year, it’s about time for someone to take the reins. He’s stepped in and done just that. Taken over. Laid down the law. Restored the order. The shit was necessary.

  I’m proud to be his right hand man, and I’m happy about the second kid, too. Their first son, Tucker, is a bright-eyed little devil with a whole lifetime of women and motorcycles ahead of him. To him, I’m Uncle Vinny. To everyone else, I’m Vince.

  Still, despite how truly happy I am, crowds have never been my thing. I’m too big for this shit. Six foot four and I feel like I’m stepping on someone every time I move. I need some fresh air. I bust through the fringe of the crowd and find a side door. When I push through, the salty Galveston breeze slaps me in the face like a dominatrix. I breathe it in, suck it down. Tastes like home.

  There’s an alcove tucked into a corner of the building off to my right. I walk over and lean my back against the wall. Cigarettes are in my right pocket. I pull them out, tap one free, and put it to my lips before lighting it. One big drag and the smoke joins the ocean air mingling in my lungs. Poison never tasted so good.

  In my head, I flash back to last week. My phone had buzzed with a text from Mortar: It’s happening. He didn’t need to say anything else. Poor bastard had been worried for weeks about Kendra. The last stages of her pregnancy had been tough on her. She was in the hospital for damn near a month, just to be on the safe side. As if Mortar needed other shit on his plate.

  The text was a blessing, though. I shot down to the hospital on my bike without stopping for red lights or stop signs. Fuck ’em; the Angels make the law around here these days, and when I needed to get somewhere, I wasn’t about to let a fucking inanimate object tell me otherwise. Busted through the doors, asked the receptionist where to go.

  “Kendra Matthews,” I growled. “Where is she?” Poor thing looked horrified. I’m a big motherfucker, and the tattoos and scars don’t exactly make me the friendliest-looking guy on the block. Sometimes I forget that I can scare normal people. It’s a shame, too—the receptionist was cute. Under other circumstances, I might’ve spent some time bent over her desk, chatting her up until she was the one getting bent over.

  Not now, though. My prez was having a baby. No time to stop and fuck.

  “D-down the hall,” the nurse stammered, pointing a shaking finger to a set of double doors at the end of the corridor. Off I went. Funny how people jump out of a man’s way when he looks like me.

  A few lefts, a few rights, a few scared nurses later, and there I was, knocking at the door of Kendra’s room and stepping through to see her. She looked like she’d been through hell and back. Sweaty hair was plastered to her forehead and big red splotches stood out on her tired cheeks. But there was no denying how happy those eyes were. Mortar, sitting by her side, had the same manic glint in his gaze. They were off in la-la land, pleased as punch. I couldn’t help but grin.

  At first glance, I thought the baby in Kendra’s arms was an ugly little thing. Then again, I’ve never been one for babies. At least not until that moment. It had a bald, lumpy head and chubby sausage fingers, but the second it turned to look at me, I froze in place. I had to will my feet to unstick from the floor and walk over to Mortar. He was too lost in his own parental high to notice my reaction.

  “Congratulations, prez,” I said gruffly as I shook his hand, not quite ready to meet his eyes.

  “Thanks,” he said in a daze.

  Kendra turned her eyes towards me. “Thank you, Vince,” she said dreamily. She turned back to the babe in her arms, cooing at it and pressing gentle lips to its forehead.

  “What’s his name?” I asked.

  “Devin,” they replied at the same time. It was bizarre seeing Mortar this disarmed. He was a man who’d been around the block, been kicked down a few times. He was a tough motherfucker. Hardly ever smiled when he wasn’t with his family. But the second Kendra or his children entered a room, he turned soft as cotton.

  The baby hadn’t looked away from me since the moment I walked in. Giant, glacier blue eyes, almost translucent. They weren’t like any eyes I’d ever seen before. Felt like the kid was staring straight through me.

  “Anyways,” I said uncomfortably, shifting my weight from foot to foot. Every way I stood felt more wrong than the last. What the hell was going on with me? “I’ll leave y’all alone. Just wanted to come pay my respects.”

  Neither one of them said anything as I left the room. I shook my head and gnawed at my lip until I noticed the tang of blood. That baby was having an unsettling effect on me.

  I snap back to the present. The door I’d exited through swings open again, and Steezy saunters out. He’s a tall, thin son of a bitch. The thousand-watt smiled smeared across his face all the time makes him look like the goofiest bastard in the world. Sometimes even I forget that Steezy’s as tough as they come. It takes a special kind of man to carry spring-loaded steel blades on his wrists like he does.

  “Did you forget your dancing shoes?” Steezy jokes as he walks over to me. He collapses on a bench, spreads his arms out along the back, and lets loose a big, contented sigh.

  “Naw. I was just dancing with your bitch for so long, I needed a break,” I fire back. We both laugh, but when we fall silent, the night presses in around us on all sides, almost making me forget what my voice sounds like out loud. It is one of those nights that swallows all sound and leaves no trace.

  I can’t get those eyes out of my head. Devin’s eyes, those huge blue suckers. Every time I blink, I see them again. I shudder.

  “Lemme get a cigarette,” Steezy says. I hand him one from the pack and he settles back with it dangling between his lips.

  “You been to see Devin yet?” I ask Steezy. He’s looking out over the water and blowing smoke rings into the warm night air.

  He nods. “Cute kid.”

  “Can’t believe Mortar has two already.”

  “Motherfucker’s breeding like a rabbit.”

  I chuckle again before drawing another long toke. The smoke is calming the jittery tingle in my veins, but those damn eyes refuse to go away. It’s like they’re seared on the backs of my eyelids. I wonder what it feels like, to have sons, a wife, a family. Shit, I wouldn’t know the first thing about family. With a disappearing act for a father and a fucking lunatic of an alcoholic for a mother, the whole concept is a little bit unfamiliar to me, no pun intended. The state of Texas saw me as a piece of cargo to get shipped around from foster home to foster home in whatever way best suited them. Those places ain’t exactly models of stability, neither.

  A shrink would probably have some real choice words to say about the way I’ve lived my life since I got out of that hellhole of a life. “Ward of the state” was never a title I wanted, and I shucked it as soon as I was old enough to swing my leg over a bike seat. The Inked Angels became my brothers. And as for women, well, they rarely lasted for more than a night at a time. Blonde, brunette, thin, thick—I’d seen all types tangled up in my bedsheets. I never remembered their names, but they sure as hell remembered mine. So did e
veryone else who’d ever lived next door to me. Hearing “Vince!” moaned through the walls at a million decibels every night does a fine job of making sure that nobody in hearing range ever forgets who I am.

  We’re silent for a while, Steezy and I, satisfied to sit and smoke.

  “It’s quiet,” he says after a few minutes have passed without a word from either of us.

  “I don’t fucking like it,” I reply.

  “Me neither, brother,” he says, shaking his head and scanning the dark distance. “Me neither.”

  It shouldn’t be this quiet. At least not according to that fucking cop. After all the shit that had happened between Mortar and Grady Freeman last year, we’d been hoping for some peace and tranquility while we rebuilt our business from the ground up. For a few months, we’d had just that.

  But then the cop had showed up. He was a real nondescript-looking guy, about as forgettable as you could imagine. Hell, I didn’t even know if he was white, Mexican, or whatever the fuck else might be wandering the streets of Galveston in uniform. He didn’t act like a cop, though. Cops don’t usually come to the street races, for starters. We have enough of an understanding with them nowadays that they usually stick to their turf and we stick to ours. The less said to each other, the better.

  But this bastard had come waltzing in, looking slick as rainwater, and dropped a bomb on us. I still remember Mortar’s face when I walked up to him right after the cop had disappeared. He looked like he’d seen a ghost. “Get ready for war,” were Mortar’s only words. I didn’t know what to make of that.

  I’d heard the stories, of course. When Mortar and Steezy had first showed up in Galveston nine years ago, the rumor mill had been working around the clock to justify their relocation. They were Houston boys by birth, but there had been some kind of major drama with a cartel down in Mexico. Some bad shit went down. People got hurt. And by the time it all ended, they were looking for a fresh start.

  The stories churning through the grapevine were unlike anything else I’d ever heard, even to me, and I’ve spent my whole life with at least one foot in the underworld. Foster kids ain’t exactly the most upright and honest of them all. We make our own code. Besides, I wasn’t gonna sit around and let my foster parents serve me fucking dog food while they stole money from the state that was supposed to go towards my needs. I was gonna do whatever it took to make ends meet. That meant running drugs and weapons for the local MCs, bouncing at their night clubs. Whatever they asked, I was game. In all the years I’ve spent on the wrong side of the law, I’ve seen some outlandish shit.

  But the Diablos were something else. A cartel without a conscience. Most of the drug lords down there think they are God, or the closest thing to it. They get a real kick out of dishing out money to the peasants bleeding and slaving away in their fields and factories. I imagine they even fancy themselves as philanthropists from time to time, just doing their little piece to help out their fellow man.

  As much of a load of horseshit as all that was, at least it established some sense of propriety. There were rules, or at the very least guidelines. The cartel council got together and said that this was how the game was to be played. The problem was, the Diablos took one look at that and said, “To hell with it; we’re doing things our own way.”

  And they’d done just that. There wasn’t the slightest bit of pretense in the way the Diablos did business. They didn’t think they were nice guys or do-gooders. They were bloodthirsty and money-hungry, and they didn’t give one fuck about what the goddamn cartel council had to say about it. In the couple years between their beginning and their rise to the top, they racked up a body count that would’ve put Hitler to shame.

  It got to the point that the council was scared to do anything. Imagine that: a bunch of warlords, scared to intervene. If only it was a joke. By the time anyone mustered up the cojones to say something, it was too late. The Diablos were unstoppable.

  They set their sights on Texas, and on the Inked Angels in particular. The war that broke out then made the club’s previous skirmishes look like kids in a sandbox. There was no telling what exactly was true and what wasn’t. This far down the road, the stories had gone from fact to legend. I took them with a heavy dose of salt, but even the pieces that remained were enough to put a little fear in my step.

  Men bled to death, bodies hung from the ceiling, pyramids of stacked corpses…the list of atrocities went on and on. Guys get drunk and like to embellish, I understand that. But goddamn, where was the decency? Well, war is war, I suppose. Some people have no qualms. The Diablos were some of those people.

  At the end of the day, the Angels won out. It wasn’t easy, though, from what I’ve heard. Lots of good men left dead in the wake of all the shit that went down. Mortar still doesn’t like to talk about it. I’ve seen the scars, though. I know it ain’t a pretty past he carries.

  But that’s just what I had thought all this was: in the past. The Diablos were supposed to be dead, every last one of them.

  So what was this cop doing by telling us they were coming back?

  There was supposed to be an accord, an understanding, a goddamn rule that stuck for a fucking change. The Diablos are not to return. The cartel council and the Inked Angels had agreed on that much at least.

  But that’s what vows are for, I guess. They’re made to be broken.

  “You look uneasy, brother,” Steezy said. He’s studying my face. I’m sure I’ve got dark lines written all over it. The cop had delivered the news just a few months ago. To say we’d been on high alert since then would be a massive understatement. There were Angels everywhere, on guard, looking out for enemies eager to come take our territory. Even now, we had armed prospects stationed at every door of the club.

  If the Diablos couldn’t flourish in Mexico anymore, it stood to reason that they’d be on the hunt for some fresh breeding ground. According to the cop, they’d drawn Galveston squarely in their sights. That meant we needed to be ready.

  I sigh and lean my head back on the wall. “I am,” I admit. “Haven’t been sleeping much.”

  Steezy frowns. “What’s on your mind?”

  The obvious, of course. It’s not exactly settling for a man to be told that he and everyone he knows are being hunted by a supposedly dead cartel with a reputation for violent slaughtering tendencies.

  But the not-so-obvious is bothering me, too. There are the eyes, for starters, Devin’s eyes that just will not leave me alone. Everywhere I turn, I catch a flash of them, staring right at me and suggesting so many questions for which I don’t have a single answer.

  But there is also the dream.

  It’s the same dream every night, just like it has been for a dozen nights running. When I finally manage to drift off, after God knows how many hours of tossing and turning in the sheets, it always drops me right back in the same place.

  I’m on a beach. It’s not one I recognize. I’m facing the ocean. The sun is setting in the distance. I think I’m alone, until I realize there’s someone standing behind me. I turn around and see a girl. She’s Hispanic—Mexican, from what I can tell—thin but athletic, with long black hair in a braid draped over one shoulder. She’s wearing a white cotton dress. It looks homemade. Her eyes are a piercing blue. They look just like Devin’s. She opens her mouth to say something, and I lean in. She’s fucking beautiful; my cock hurts just looking at her. I’m dying to know what she’s about to say, just fucking dying to know. She is on the verge of speaking. Then, her eyes dart to something over my shoulder. Her face darkens. She looks panicked, downright terrified. I whirl around. What is it? What’s there? I don’t see anything. But when I turn back to look at her, she’s sprinting away. Her bare feet are kicking up plumes of sand as she runs down the beach. I don’t think. I just take off after her.

  We’re both running full tilt. My muscles are on fire, every inch of skin slicked in sweat. Every breath is agony. But I haven’t closed the distance at all. She’s the same dozen yards ahead that she w
as when I first started chasing her. She keeps looking back at me. Not at me, actually, but at something behind me. I can’t tell what it is. If I look back, I’ll lose her. Something tells me I can’t do that.

  There’s an outcropping of rocks up ahead. The jetty sticks out into the water like an arrow, ramrod straight. She turns to it, climbs up, starts scrambling over the rocks. There are oyster shells clinging to each moist crevice. The waves crash, sending foam spraying high in the air. I reach the rocks and clamber up after her.

  The roar of the ocean is deafening. I’m trying to yell, but she can’t hear a damn thing I’m saying. Even if she could, I doubt she’d look back. She reaches the end of the jetty, the very last rock. When she does, she looks back at me. I freeze.

  We stay like that for a few long beats, just looking at each other. We’re a half dozen yards apart, but even from here, I can see how intense her eyes are. There’s no chance I could look away. For the briefest of moments, her forehead relaxes while she gazes at me. The fear softens from her face. Even her white-knuckled grip on the rocks slackens. The ocean roar subsides as it sucks out to sea, like one inhale before a huge gust.