Demented Sons Series Volume One: Books 1-4 (Demented Sons MC Iowa)

by Kristine Allen

  My eyes popped open in surprise. “Get out? And do what? This is what I know. This is my job. It’s what I love.”

  “Do you? Really? Because if you truly love killing, you’re more of a coldhearted bastard than I ever thought you could be. We all had loyalty and love for every member of our team, but the fucking Marine Corps doesn’t give a shit about you, and they’ll keep sending you out there until you’re dead or wishing you were.”

  He had been out so long he didn’t understand. The adrenaline, the rush, the satisfaction of a successful mission. Had I done my fair share of killing? Yeah, probably, but that’s what I was trained to do. That was what I was supposed to do. It was war. It was the nature of the beast. If I didn’t kill them, they were going to kill my battle buddies, my team, innocent people… and that wasn’t happening on my watch. It wasn’t necessarily about the Marine Corps itself, it was about my team.

  “¡Dios mío! Mi pobre niño… Oh, Kayde.” The sound of my abuela’s tearful voice made my heart hurt. Seeing the tears slipping down her face made me feel like I’d been stabbed all over again. Fuck, it was like being a teenager again and seeing how bad all my transgressions hurt her. It made me feel like shit, and Erik’s words began to pierce through my emotional armor.

  “Abuela, I’m fine.” Except no amount of words would convince her of that for as long as I continued to be strapped to a hospital bed. There was very little I hated more than being stuck in a hospital. It left me feeling trapped. Cornered. Vulnerable.

  Fuck, I could smoke a bowl right about now, even just a hit, and I haven’t smoked since joining the Marines almost ten years ago.

  Okay, that’s a lie. One time. One time, I had foolishly smoked.

  It was while I was on my first leave home. It’d been a shit day because I went over to see Christian to try to make amends. Well, Tyler was there… with Sera. When I saw him tangle his hands in her hair and kiss her, I became so angry, I wanted to break shit. Instead, I went out, got high as fuck, avoided seeing them, then drank water like a fiend the rest of my time home. Luckily, I never got piss-tested after I got back, but I was scared shitless for about three weeks after returning to duty. I never did that shit again. My career had meant everything to me.

  Had. I’d just said my career had meant everything.

  Abuela continued to fuss over me, and my pops tried his damnedest to get her to calm down, but you had to know my abuela. The tiny woman was a force to be reckoned with when she got worked up. On and on went her Spanish tirade that only I understood.

  Erik had gotten up to stand by the window, talking to someone quietly on the phone. That’s when I noticed the leather vest he was wearing, with a patch on it that read “Hacker.” I wondered if it had something to do with his computer skills, which were legendary. When he turned, I saw the big patch with what looked like Hades. “Demented Sons” arched over the top, but the rest I didn’t catch before he turned around to face me again.

  After ending his call, he came over and tapped my foot. “I’m going to go grab a bite to eat, give you time with your family. We’ll talk when I get back.” With my nod of agreement, he shook my grandfather’s hand, hugged my abuela, and left the room. The nurses fell all over him as soon as he walked out the door. Typical.

  When I chuckled, my grandmother poked me in the shoulder. “¡Mira! It’s not funny. I’m being serious right now! You know I was all in favor of you joining the military, mi hijo, but this is too many times we have come to visit you in the hospital. It’s not right. You’re too young to be gone from this earth, and that’s what’s going to happen next. I feel it in my bones and that… that will kill me.”

  Sobering, I looked at my abuela with guilt heavy on my chest. “Abuela, I don’t mean to worry you. It’s not like I planned on some kid stabbing me. I’m careful. Just sometimes shi—uh, things happen. Maybe it’s God’s will. Maybe it’s what I deserve.” Her gasp at my words told me I said them too loud. I didn’t really mean for her to hear that last part.

  Thankfully, my nurse came in at that moment and informed us all that it was time for my IV antibiotics. No matter how much I loved my grandmother, she could be a little spitfire, and she had been ramping up to give me the ass chewing of a lifetime.

  My grandfather wrapped his massive arm around my little grandma and placed his free hand over mine in my bed. “Mi hijo, we love you. What your grandmother is trying to tell you is that we worry about you, just as we did your uncles, but you’re a grown man and your life choices are your own.” With a last pat of my hand, he moved to steer my grandmother out of the room, whispering that I needed rest and he needed food.

  Abuela leaned carefully over the bed, making sure not to bump any of my lines or my injury, and gave me a hug. Raising my right arm up to hug her back pulled on my abdomen, and I winced in pain. She tried to hide it, but I saw the tears in her eyes. It made me feel like shit. It also made me think.

  What was I really trying to prove? As Marines, we all knew the things we did made a difference in the small scope of life, but in the big scope? Yeah, not so much. Most of the people we were helping didn’t give a shit; others had selfish reasons for wanting our help. Only a few were actually grateful. Initially I joined the Force Recon unit because I was young and wanted excitement, danger, and thrills. Lately I’d been feeling every mission. My body felt like that of a seventy-year-old man sometimes. The problem was… what the hell would I do with myself if I got out?

  It was too late for me to be a cop. I’d seen too much. Skated on the edge of morality, sanity, and ethics too many times to be a good cop. My conscience and heart took a sabbatical a long time ago and had yet to return. The patience and commitment to be a doctor didn’t interest me, though when I was young, I had briefly and secretly thought of being a surgeon. The only reason I had wanted to be a cop in the first place was because Christian and Tyler wanted to be cops. Look where it got them. Tyler was six feet under, and Christian hadn’t been able to find his killer.

  No, it wasn’t Christian’s fault the killer hadn’t been found. I got that he was a single man, but you would think when one of their own was shot down in cold blood, they would’ve made a more serious attempt at finding his killer. Instead, most of the detective work had seemed to fall on Christian, when that wasn’t his job.

  All these things I knew because of Erik. Maybe it was wrong of me to ask him, but I had him hack into the police data systems to look for what they had found and what they were doing to find Tyler’s killer. The lack of information pissed me off. The official investigation had been handled in such a shitty manner that the entire force should be ashamed.

  The problem was, even with Erik’s mad skills, he had come up empty-handed. It was like someone intentionally didn’t want to find the killer. Maybe I should get into private investigative work when I finally got out. I just didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what was right for me.

  I had wanted to find Tyler’s killer to give Sera some closure, but I knew I had to do it from a distance. Over the years, any time my abuela brought her name up, I cut her off. There was no way I could handle hearing about her, especially after Abuela slipped and mentioned she was dating. A knife straight to my gut hurt less than that.

  So what I did know was I didn’t want to return to San Antonio. By now, Sera must hate me, and she should. The way I left her that last night was such a dick move. Shit, the whole night was a dick move. It had left me feeling so fucking disgusted with myself, I had gone back to duty reckless. Of course, it hadn’t taken me long to ditch the recklessness, because it almost got me and my team in some deep shit. Thankfully I had pulled my head out of my ass before I compromised our mission or our lives.

  Maybe Erik and my family were right. Maybe it was time. Time to start a new chapter in my life.

  “Iridescent”—Linkin Park

  PULLING UP TO MY dad’s house, I couldn’t help but glance longingly next door to Kayde’s old home. As I sat there wishing Kayde would come walking ou
t the front door, flashing his bright smile and raising his hand in a wave, Ty let me know he was awake.

  “Momma! Grandpa’s house! Help me. Issss stuck!” Looking back through the rearview mirror, I saw my little man struggling to unbuckle his seat belt from his car seat. Despite only being a few months shy of three, he was such a big boy, it forced me to switch him to a boost-seat-style car seat. He simply didn’t comfortably fit in a toddler car seat anymore.

  Ever protective of him, I insisted on getting one with a back that held the strap in the appropriate place and gave him somewhere to rest his head when he fell asleep in the car, as he never failed to do. Since he was a baby, he wouldn’t last five minutes in the car before he was asleep. Unfortunately, he’d been a colicky baby for several months, so I spent a lot of time driving around the neighborhood to allow him to fall asleep. At least that had worked for me; some parents weren’t even that lucky.

  Obviously seeing us pull up, my father came out just as I was setting Ty to the ground. A wide grin splitting his face, he swooped my little boy up, swinging him around until Ty giggled uncontrollably. The simple sound of his laughter was music to my ears, and my own smile spread over my face. Ty’s laughter and innocence were two of the only things that brought me joy these days.

  “I’ll be in shortly, Papi. I just need to grab the bags.” Every other Saturday, I was off and made dinner for my dad at my childhood home. Today, I had stopped at H-E-B, our grocery store, to pick up fajita fixings. Despite me telling him I had it, my dad took the bags from me and headed inside with Ty in one arm and the bags held in the other.

  Just as I was reaching for my purse, Kayde’s grandma peeked out her front door. “Hey, Abuela! How are you doing today?” Everyone in the neighborhood called her abuela because of Kayde, and I was no exception, especially considering I never knew either of my grandmothers.

  “Oh, Sera, I’m just fine. I was just on my way to your papi’s house to see if he could help me get my Easter decorations down from the attic. Gus got down everything but my wire Easter egg tree for the yard before he went fishing, and I can’t very well use the boxes of decorations without the tree.” In frustration, she propped her hands on her hips. Abuela went all out for every single holiday. People literally drove from all over to go past her house to see the latest display.

  “I can help you.” As I walked toward her front door, she grinned at me, causing deep wrinkles to frame her wise eyes, and a small pang hit me at the realization that she was getting old. Her hair was streaked silver with very little of the midnight black it used to be. Anger at Kayde for his absence in her life over the last few years threatened to overtake me, but I shook it off. She looped her arm through mine and smiled up at me as we went into the house.

  As it always did, the smell of something baking assailed my senses as soon as I stepped foot in the front door. She was forever baking bread, biscuits, cookies, pies, cakes—you name it. My stomach rumbled. Passing pictures of Kayde, his uncles, and his mom hanging on the hallway wall, I averted my eyes from a particular picture of all four of us when I was about eleven and the boys were about twelve to thirteen. But not before I absorbed the wide smiles on all our faces, which robbed the one I had been sporting.

  The ladder was already propped up under the attic opening, and I frowned thinking she must have been trying to go up there on her own. “Abuela, you shouldn’t be climbing ladders.”

  “Pssh! I’m not dead, and I’m careful. But I couldn’t move the box from on top of my tree box. It’s in the corner on the left after you get up there.” As if I didn’t know where she was talking about, she pointed up into the attic.

  Holding back my smile the best I could, I climbed up the ladder. It was chilly in the attic, but not too bad. Walking with a crouch over to where she’d directed me, I wondered how Gus maneuvered around up here. The thought of him having to crawl around on his knees had me chuckling as I found the tree.

  The box on top of it was a little heavy, and as I set it to the ground, causing the flaps to flutter, I saw why. Reaching into the top, I pulled out one of Kayde’s old sketchbooks. There must have been at least twenty or more of them in there. Nostalgia had me flipping through the one in my hands.

  What I saw had my breath catching and my eyes bugging from my head. The book was full of sketches of me. There were charcoal sketches, rough and crude, colored pencil renderings that looked like paintings, detailed pencil drawings, chalk—you name it. And every single one was me.

  Some I was laughing, others thoughtful, one I was sleeping in a cheap lounge chair I had bought myself my freshman year of high school when I wanted to “tan” in the backyard. My arm was thrown over my eyes, my other trailing the ground where my glass of lemonade had spilled. I actually remembered that day. He had woken me by tapping the bottom of my foot, then tickling me and telling me I was going to be covered in fire ants if I wasn’t more careful with my sweet drinks.

  My senses had gone into overdrive that day, just from the touch of his calloused fingers on the warm skin of my midriff. The contact left me feeling confused and awkward around him the rest of the day. That was when I began to realize that my awareness of him and Tyler had changed. We were no longer little children, and being around them was embarrassing because I was so worried they would know the crazy things my body did when they were near.

  Kayde was the worst though. My heart would race, and my belly would tremble like a million butterflies were frantic to escape. Strange tingling would happen between my legs and—oh my God, it made me want to die—my panties would get wet. The first time it happened, I thought I peed myself. It was mortifying. There was no one I could talk to about it because all my friends had crushes on the three of them, and I certainly wasn’t asking Kayde. God!

  Tucking the sketchbook of memories away, I quickly grabbed the box I needed and moved to the opening. There was no way I could hand it down to her because it was so awkwardly shaped and heavy that it would’ve knocked her over. Those thoughts had me worried about her safety. It was dangerous that she had even tried to get it down in the first place.

  Climbing part way down the ladder, I had to stretch up to slide it through the opening. My sweatshirt rose as I did, and I heard Abuela take a sharp inhaled breath. “Niña! Whatever happened to your back?” Shit. Tugging my hoodie back down to cover the bruises I didn’t realize she would see, I took the last step down and slid the box to the ground.

  “Oh, I fell trying to rush up the stairs the other day. It was stupid, and I knew better, but I was running late for work and I was trying to get Ty’s boots, and… well, I was careless. Don’t worry, I’m fine. Just some bumps and bruises for my foolishness.” Pasting a bright smile on my face, I kissed her cheek and told her I needed to get over to my dad’s before Ty ran him ragged.

  Her eyes remained narrowed as I left the house and headed next door. Once my back was to her, my smile dropped and I looked at my watch, gauging how much time I had left. While Lawrence allowed me these days with my father, he had strict stipulations on when I should be home. A mere minute late and I would suffer. Thankfully he had left Ty alone, but I was afraid it was only a matter of time before his evil bled over onto my innocent son one way or another.

  Like I had a million times over the past year, I told myself I had to find a way out of this fucking mess I had made of my life. Being an ER nurse, I knew how the cycle of abuse worked. People would say I was stupid if they knew what I had been enduring. The problem was, anytime I tried to leave, he made me regret it. My son being his main leverage.

  It had taken me over a month to commit to a dinner after my initial acceptance. He was sweet and attentive during the dinner and the six or seven months we dated sporadically. After that, he laid the charm on thick. A little over a year after that first dinner, he persuaded me to move in with him. At the time, it had been a bit of a relief, because memories of Tyler had slammed into me in every nook and cranny of the house we had rented.

  Sometimes I blam
ed my lingering grief, being overwhelmed as a new mother, work, and any number of other things for the signs I missed. Then again, maybe he had just been that good. Before I knew it, he had all my things in his name. My phone was on his plan, Ty switched to a daycare he approved of because he didn’t feel the home daycare I had been using was safe, he had bought me a new car—in his name. Essentially, he had control and access over everything I did and owned. He was a police officer—well, detective. He had worked with my husband. Why would I have reason to think he was hiding a dark, malicious side?

  After our first argument, I had tried to call my best friend, Amy, for advice. Before the call connected, he had destroyed my phone and told me our disagreements were our business and we didn’t need to make them worse by involving other people. He had apologized profusely, buying me a new phone, on his plan, to replace mine.

  Things had continued to roller coaster. One week he would be the sweet, caring guy I first thought he was, and the next it was a complete one-eighty. Volatile, hateful, and violent. Initially he would apologize after losing his temper and breaking shit, tell me work had been stressful. It wasn’t long before he cut me off from my friends. Any time I wanted to spend time with them, he informed me we had plans that he had “completely forgotten about.” Before long, they quit inviting me anywhere.

  The first time I tried to leave, he came out into the garage before I could even get the garage door open and took a baseball bat to my lights, windows, and mirrors. That was how I ended up with the shiny black Charger I now drive—in his name. Fucking hated that car. Pretty sure he had a tracking device on it. Besides, I wanted the red one. Asshole.

  The threats continued. If I left he would ruin my brother’s career, or find a way to get my dad arrested and deported, anything to prevent me from gathering up my shit and hitting the highway. Then it progressed. Like I said, I knew things like this got worse, not better, but I was beaten down and scared by that time.