Angel's Halo: Forever Angel

by Terri Anne Browning

  Copyright © Terri Anne Browning/Anna Henson 2019

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of Terri Anne Browning, except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976.

  Angel’s Halo: Forever Angels

  Written by Terri Anne Browning

  All Rights Reserved ©Terri Anne Browning 2018

  Cover Design by Sara Eirew Photography

  Cover Picture by Wander Aguiar

  Model: Shane Mac & Megan Napolitan

  Edited by Lisa Hollett of Silently Correcting Your Grammar

  Formatting by M.L. Pahl of IndieVention Designs

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  Angel’s Halo: Forever Angels is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  No part of this book can be reproduced in any form by electronic or mechanical means, including storage or retrieval systems, without the express permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  Table of Content

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Epilogue

  Playlist

  Next from Terri Anne

  Prologue

  Tanner

  Three weeks earlier

  Twirling my little brother’s keys around my finger, I whistled as I walked out of the clubhouse toward his truck. Warden was already sitting in the front passenger seat, meaning I was going to hear Raider bitch all the way to his woman’s house and then to Raven’s.

  Raider was bigger than Warden. Longer. Meaner. Warden had his moments, but mostly he was a whiny little bitch. Still, he was grabbing things for some of the other females currently camped out in the main room of the clubhouse, which meant I didn’t have to. I could put up with the bitching to get out of that shit.

  Opening the driver’s door, I climbed in and sat, my fingers drumming on the steering wheel as I waited impatiently.

  The front door of the clubhouse opened, Raider’s large frame coming through the opening, and I started the engine…

  It stalled before catching, and my gaze locked with one of my best friends’. We both knew what was going to happen next. My heart dropped into my stomach, and I started counting down the seconds in my head.

  Fuck this shit.

  I opened the door, jumping out just as the boom shook the world. The force of the blast sent me flying, white-hot flames searing my back as my front connected with two cars parked by the fence, and I fell between them. My head bounced off the asphalt, and I groaned in agony seconds before blackness consumed me…

  I cracked my eyes open as I felt myself floating. The smell of gas hit my nose at the same time the godawful pain made itself known. There wasn’t a single part of my body that didn’t hurt, but the worst was coming from my back. I could feel the blisters, the pain coming off them so intense, I was surprised I wasn’t in shock from the agony.

  Maybe I am.

  I was surrounded by darkness, but my eyes slowly adjusted, and I realized the floating sensation I was feeling wasn’t just from all the pain. I was in the trunk of a car which was moving at a speed that made me think we were on the interstate.

  Fuck, I hurt.

  I twisted, trying to get my big body into a better position that didn’t hurt as much. Bad idea. The worst I’d had in a while. Just breathing hurt; why the fuck did I think moving would make it any better? It was so intense, I saw stars, my stomach heaving from the agony. I managed to turn my head enough that I didn’t choke on my own vomit.

  Knew I shouldn’t have eaten all those eggs.

  The puke made me cough, which had me gasping for my next breath from the torture my body was sustaining. It was too much, and I blacked out.

  A sharp slap across my face had my eyes snapping open. “Fuck off,” I growled.

  Two men stood over me. One of them I knew well; the other I’d only seen from a distance. I was lying on something cold, but the coolness did nothing to relieve the burning on my back. My hands were strapped down, as were my ankles, the way the ties cut into my flesh telling me they’d gotten rid of my boots and socks. My shirt and cut were gone too, but at least I still had my jeans on.

  “You gonna arrest me, Sheriff?” I smarted off, pretending like I wasn’t in the worst pain of my entire life. I was good at pretending. It got me into trouble. A lot. But trouble was fun. Mostly. This, not so much.

  “Got better plans for you than that, Reid,” Bates said with a smugness on his bulldog-like face. “Fontana paid me good money for your worthless ass. Lucky me, I found you stuffed between two cars while your pussy MC brothers were bawling their eyes out thinking you’d burned up in that truck with the other fucker.”

  Warden.

  Fuck.

  A different kind of pain tore through me, but I swallowed it down. Now wasn’t the time to mourn my MC brother. I currently had other problems screaming for my attention.

  The other man’s face pushed closer to mine, his breath heavy on the garlic. I blinked my eyes at him, trying to focus through the haze of bad breath. “Back the fuck up, and get yourself a mint. Go ahead. I’ll wait.”

  Fontana punched me in the stomach as he straightened, his face pale with rage. The hit knocked what little breath I had out of my lungs, making me wheeze and cough. The agony that was my back protested, and I had to blink back the darkness attempting to flood over me for the third time.

  “Reid here has a mouth on him,” Bates informed the Italian seething over me. “Sometimes you have to shut him up before you can get the answers you want.”

  The chuckle that left me felt like it was going to kill me, but I wouldn’t let these bastards see how weak I really was. “I’ll talk all you want,” I assured him. “Whaddya wanna talk about, Bates? The way your momma was sucking my dick last night? You want to talk about that? She’s got a mouth on her, man. The way she gets on her knees and blows me…so damn good.”

  Creswell Springs’s sheriff had ham hocks for fists, and they both connected with my jaw, one after the other. I laughed, fighting the urge to throw up as the action only made me want to scream in misery, and then spit the blood that was filling my mouth at him. “Your momma hits harder than you, fucking little bitch.”

  Another punch to my jaw and I felt one of my molars break off. I spat it out, and it landed on the floor at the sheriff’s feet with a tiny ping.

  Damn, I just got that tooth fixed too.

  The last time it broke off was in the same fight where my little brother broke his arm. Damn college kids thinking they could come into Hannigans’ and play pool with the big boys. We sho
wed them quick why the Reid brothers were unbeatable. They’d gotten a few good punches in and fucked up Matt’s arm before I took a pool stick to their heads.

  Fontana was back in my face, his breath burning my nose hairs. “I like that you’re a talker.” His voice was chilling, but it took a hell of a lot more than him to make me shiver. “It shouldn’t be too hard to get the information I want out of you.”

  This guy was hilarious.

  I might have been a fuckup at times. Running my mouth and causing trouble was what I was known for. But this prick was never going to get a single secret out of me about my MC brothers.

  “Really wish you’d get that mint, man,” I grumbled. “And maybe lay off the garlic sauce. You’re adding to the ozone problem. Don’t you care about global warming?”

  A muscle started to tick in Fontana’s jaw, and I found the energy to smirk up at him.

  The smirk turned into a grimace—the only thing I was willing to give him to show any sign of discomfort—when he punched me in the side.

  Something told me my liver was the least of my worries with this guy.

  Chapter 1

  Bash

  Present day

  I could see my breath in the cold night air, but I was numb to the chill attempting to distract me.

  Beside me, dressed in black from head to toe just like me, including the paint on his face and the hood over his blond hair, Jet gave me a nod.

  I glanced at the night sky again. It was cloudy, keeping the moon at bay and offering us cover from the enemies within the multimillion-dollar mansion in Eureka, just two hours from home. Static filled the earpiece linking me to my MC brothers, Ciro Donati, and Cristiano Vitucci.

  Both men had wanted to be there when we took down Fontana. They showed up with ten of their own men, ready to help us destroy the motherfucker who had caused us all so much pain and grief in the last few months, but even more over the last three weeks.

  Three weeks since Tanner and Warder met the Angel of Death from the bomb Fontana hired one of our prospects to hide in Matt’s truck. Then the bastard shot up the bar and cost us Uncle Chaz, sending Uncle Jack into a massive heart attack that killed him almost instantly.

  And Fontana shot Lexa.

  My rage was already burning bright, but remembering how my baby girl caught a stray bullet because of that motherfucker had me craving blood.

  “Move in on my command,” Vitucci’s voice growled in my ear. “Three, two… Let’s go, boys!”

  I kicked open the side door to the mansion. The place was unimpressively secure for a man who should have been counting down to his last heartbeat. He should have known that I would come for him, that I would kill him with my bare hands if I got to him first.

  Instead, he’d been shacked up in this mansion on the California coast, with only three other men to watch his back. No one patrolling the grounds. One lousy camera overlooking the garage, and windows wired with alarms. It hadn’t made sense when Colt first reported what he found when he, Jet, and Spider followed Hank Badcock here the week before to find out if Badcock’s lead was correct. But after stalking the house for days now, no one could figure out why the place was so insecure.

  Like they wanted us to blow in.

  Like they wanted us to show up on their doorstep looking for retribution.

  Or they were cocky as fuck.

  Lucky for us, Colt’s woman’d had people in higher—or maybe even lower—places than we did. Badcock had come to check on her and brought us the little gem of information about Fontana’s possible location.

  There was no one in sight when Jet and I entered the house from the side door. No sound meeting our ears except for the heavy breathing of the others or the kicking in of more doors. The artillery in our hands went unused as we cleared room after room, looking for signs of Fontana and his men.

  A gunshot filled the air from above on the second floor. Hawk cursed in my ear then laughed wickedly. “This one’s gone,” he muttered.

  Two more shots, then all was quiet again.

  Only three?

  Where the fuck was Fontana? The others would have said something if they’d found him first. They knew he was mine. That I wanted to do to him what Adrian Volkov had done to his brother.

  “Fuck.” I heard Donati growling. “Made it to the basement. Get your fucking asses down here.”

  “Oh fuck,” someone groaned before the distinct sound of puking filled my ear. “That smell,” he gagged. “Is he dead?”

  Cautiously, Jet and I made our way downstairs. Harsh gasps in my ear followed by curses loud enough to be heard without the aid of the device greeted me with each step we descended. When we got to the last step, we found at least fifteen men in the basement, some of whom were standing in puddles of their own vomit.

  All of these men had seen some heavy shit in their lives without flinching. What was so bad that they lost their stomachs over it now?

  The scent of their bile hit me, but I ignored it, pushing past my MC brothers, two of my brothers-in-law, and some of the men Vitucci brought with him.

  I stopped before I reached Donati. I hated the bastard—even now jealousy churned in me as I remembered watching him on his date with Raven all those years ago. But in this kind of situation, I trusted him.

  The look on the man’s face in that moment, however, gave me pause when our gazes locked. Blue eyes the same shade as Flick’s darkened in a way that confused me. Since when did this emotionless monster have compassion in his soul?

  Then his gaze moved, sliding to the table behind him, and almost helplessly, my eyes followed. The first thing I saw was an IV dripping from a coat hanger. My eyes traced the line to an arm that lay at an awkward angle. It was obviously broken, and in more than one place by the looks of it, but the bruises were so bad on the man laid out on the table, I couldn’t even tell what ethnicity he was.

  A new scent that wasn’t vomit hit me when I took a step closer, and I suddenly understood why there were so many puddles of puke on the floor.

  Rotting flesh was one of the worst smells on the planet, and right then, it was coming off the man on the table in waves.

  The poor fuck.

  Flies buzzed around the body as I examined it closer. His other arm wasn’t mangled like the first, but he was missing his pinkie finger, the skin charred from where they’d burned the wound closed. It lay beside him, as if his torturer wanted to taunt him with it, along with all of his fingernails that had been pulled out at the roots. The guy was shirtless, and my eyes caught on the ink of his chest.

  I felt the bile begin to rise in the back of my throat, but I swallowed it down.

  No way.

  It wasn’t possible.

  He died.

  The explosion took him from us just as it had Warden.

  Yet…

  I knew that ink. Had been with him when he let Spider brand it into his skin. The angel wings with the cross in the middle in memory of his parents.

  Blinking to clear my vision, I looked at the man’s face. A beard I’d rarely seen on my cousin mixed with blood and fuck knew what else. His face was pale, his lips cracked, blood dried on an open gash. Part of his left ear was missing, as if someone had been hacking away at it and got bored. One eye was swollen closed, pus oozing out of it.

  None of that explained the scent of rotting flesh, though.

  Donati lifted the body, shifting it to show me and the others the blistered and blackened skin of his back where maggots feasted on the decayed flesh.

  The bile threatened again until I felt someone behind me. Donati carefully replaced the body back on the table at the same time I heard a pained wail coming from my cousin’s lips as Matt pushed past me.

  “Tanner!” He screamed his brother’s name, shaking his arm. “Tanner? How are you here? Oh fuck, what did they do to you?”

  I should have pulled him back, made him go upstairs, and not allowed him to look at his brother’s
dead body like this. But I was unable to make my legs work. All I could picture was that flaming truck, where Tanner and Warden had burned to death after the blast of the bomb nearly leveled the compound. People saw him in there. Raider saw him before the blast knocked him on his ass.

  So how the fuck was he here, in Fontana’s safe house basement?

  A weak cough filled my ears, and everyone in the room stopped breathing.

  He was alive?

  How was that even possible?

  “Ah, fuck.” Tanner’s voice was barely above a whisper, sounding pained, maybe even drugged. It was hard to tell what was in the IV that was feeding fluids into his arm. Fuck, they must have been keeping him alive to get information out of him. His dry lips moved and the gash cracked, blood beading on his lips. “Matt, man. Did they get you too? Are you dead?” A tear spilled down Tanner’s cheek. “Did we end up in hell together, little brother?”

  Chapter 2

  Tanner

  I was pretty sure I was hallucinating.

  Again.

  Why else would I be seeing my baby brother standing over me crying?

  Matt didn’t cry. Not even when I hit a baseball straight into the back of his head when he was five and he needed seven staples to close the wound. Not even when Mom and Dad died. Neither of us did. The tears were there, but they never fell.

  It wasn’t the first time I’d imagined people I loved beside me. Matt. Bash. Raven.

  Her.

  Fuck, I wished it were her.

  I was glad to see my little bro, even if I was sure he wasn’t real. But I wanted her image back. Her smile filling my eyes as the Angel of Death finally took me away from this shitshow.

  The pain was still there. Not as intense thanks to all those kick-ass drugs Fontana and his little bitches kept pushing into the IV they’d used to draw out my death, hoping I would finally break and give them something. Anything other than my smartass mouth telling them to suck my dick or to at least bring their mommas in to do it for them. The morphine or whatever they kept feeding me only took the edge off, though.

  The agony of my back was what told me I was still among the living. The smells coming from me told me it wouldn’t be long. I smelled the death already invading my body. The decaying flesh of my back, the flies that buzzed around, annoying the hell out of me, laying their eggs in the rot.