by Lane Hart
Silas
Dirty Aces MC
Lane Hart
D.B. West
Contents
Synopsis
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
Chapter 30
Epilogue
Coming Soon
About The Authors
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue were created from the authors’ imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual people or events is coincidental.
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The authors acknowledge the copyrighted and trademarked status of various products within this work of fiction.
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© 2020 Editor's Choice Publishing
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All Rights Reserved.
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Only Amazon has permission from the publisher to sell and distribute this title.
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This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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Editor’s Choice Publishing
P.O. Box 10024
Greensboro, NC 27404
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Edited by Angela Snyder
Cover by Melissa Gill Designs
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WARNING: THIS BOOK IS NOT SUITABLE FOR ANYONE UNDER 18. IT CONTAINS STRONG LANGUAGE, VIOLENCE, AND GRAPHIC SEX SCENES.
Synopsis
Cora Walsh had no idea how drastically her life would change when a mob boss hired her to cook for him.
After witnessing a bloody massacre, she tries to pretend it was all just a bad dream when she returns to her normal life. That is, until two detectives show up at the restaurant where she works, asking questions about the murder of her former employer and his four guards.
Scared for her life, and certain she’s being followed, she confesses everything she can remember about the horrible night to the police.
A late-night attack at her home convinces Cora that leaving Carolina Beach behind to start over in witness protection is her only choice.
What Cora doesn’t know is that the tough, no-nonsense FBI agent who swoops in to protect her is not who he says he is.
In fact, he’s the last man she should ever trust.
Prologue
Cora Walsh
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A few weeks ago…
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I never thought that there could be anything worse than being invisible.
Then a stranger, a man hiding his face behind a motorcycle helmet, finds me cowering in fear on the floor of a rich man’s pantry. He points his gun right at me and makes the split-second decision that I am so insignificant, I don’t deserve to live.
“Should I kill her?” he coolly asks aloud.
The worst part isn’t that he wants to kill me. No, the worst part is knowing that he could take my life, and no one would care or miss me – certainly not my parents. I had always been a thorn in their sides, their daughter by birth but a huge letdown since I could walk.
Thankfully, though, a deep voice stops my would-be murderer. “No, you shouldn’t kill her!”
Another helmet-headed man appears next to the one who was so quick to end my life, pressing his gun to the floor so that it’s no longer pointed at my face. “Who are you? Do you work for Harry?” the lenient one demands. “Well? Answer me!”
I startle at his raised voice, and it takes several seconds for me to swallow down my screams while the sensible man is distracted. He glances over his shoulder, for whom I’m not sure, while I try to figure out what to say to get out of this kitchen alive.
“I’m-I’m just a-a chef,” I stammer. “He-he forced me to c-come here and cook for him! I swear! Please don’t hurt me!”
“Shh, calm down. We’re not going to hurt you,” he promises, but I have a hard time believing him. “I’m looking for a girl with red hair who was with Harry,” he explains calmly. “Did you see her?”
I think back, remembering the woman with multi-colored hair at dinner before shaking my head no. “He was with a woman earlier at dinner, but her hair wasn’t red.”
“What color was it?” he asks.
“I can’t remember.”
“Try!” he shouts at me.
“I only saw her for a second! I think…I think her hair was a lot of colors, okay? Maybe blue, green and purple all mixed together, but I’m not sure!”
“That’s Jetta. It has to be,” he says with what sounds like relief. “Jetta’s still here,” he tells his friend. “She has to be. We need to keep searching.”
“Fine. What do you want to do with her?” the lunatic asks, pointing his gun at me again as if he would enjoy pulling the trigger.
“Leave her. She’s safer in the pantry,” the calmer one says to him; then to me, “Stay here and don’t come out until we tell you to. Got it?”
“Y-yes,” I reply with a nod, my teeth chattering in fear as I wrap my arms around my knees that are pulled up to my chest.
“Let’s go,” the cool-headed one says to the other. He starts to shut the pantry door again when someone else in the kitchen yells, “Incoming!”
“It’s us! Hold your fucking fire,” a masculine voice calls back before more men in helmets crowd the room and hold a conversation.
“Everyone whole?”
“We’re good. Took out three guards around the side yard and back. You all have any trouble?”
Took out? Oh god! Does he mean…they killed the guards?
Another helmet-head peeks into the pantry. “Who is she?” he asks.
“Chef apparently,” the calmer one says right before a loud blast goes off, what could only have been a gun! The scream I had tried to push down comes bubbling free before I can stop it, thinking the next shot could be going in my face.
“What the fuck, Nash?” someone grumbles as if scolding a small child.
“It was another guard,” a man responds. “We need to get out of here and spread out before more come and trap us inside!”
“He’s right. Let’s move,” another suggests.
“We’ll come back for you soon,” I’m informed before the pantry door is shut, leaving me in the darkness, not knowing if I’ll ever see the light of day again.
Chapter One
Cora
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A few weeks later…
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My parents used to say that if trouble were just a needle in a haystack, I would somehow be able to find it.
They weren’t wrong.
Every time I turn around, I’m being smacked in the face by another one of my bad decisions. And this time, it’s landed me yet again in a police station.
“Miss Walsh!” a man in a dark suit says when he finally strolls into the cold interrogation room with a coffee mug in his hand. A scowling woman dr
essed similarly is hot on his heels carrying a leather portfolio. She closes the door behind her, the audible click sealing the three of us inside. “I’m so glad you could finally make time to meet with us.”
“Well, you didn’t give me much choice,” I remark when the two of them sit down in the chairs on the other side of the small metal table. The jerk called and asked for me at the restaurant where I work, telling me I could either come down and talk to them voluntarily or they would show up at the restaurant and drive me back to the station in the back of their cruiser. Since I love my job at Donatello’s and want to keep it, I decided that driving myself rather than raising suspicions about my involvement in some sort of criminal activity was the way to go.
Not that I committed any delinquent acts this time.
All I did was stupidly agree to cook a very expensive, private meal for a man who turned out to be a mob boss with very violent enemies.
How could I have known that? He offered me a ton of money, which I desperately needed.
“I’m Detective Rollins and this is Detective Ashby,” the woman informs me. “I bet you know why you’re here. Want to take a guess?”
“Not really, no. Could you just tell me what this is about?” I reply rather than admit to anything.
“The restaurant where you work was the last number Harold Cox called. Your manager, Donatello De Luca, has already informed us that Cox called looking for a private chef just a few days before his death, and that you took him up on his request to come to his home and cook for him. We also know that the date of his reservation was the same night he was shot, along with several of his employees, before the residence was burned down with them inside.”
I try not to flinch or show any kind of response at the reminder of that horrible night. Big scary guys coming in with guns blazing, shooting everyone they found except for me and the other girl who was there. I hid in the pantry and thought I was going to die too when one of the men pointed his gun right in my face and asked the others, “Should I kill her?” The way he said it so calmly, I know he would’ve pulled the trigger without an ounce of hesitation. But the others thankfully talked him down, so here I am, still alive and just as invisible and insignificant as I was that night. The detectives don’t care about me or what I survived. All they want is for me to do their jobs for them so that they can arrest the criminals responsible and pat themselves on the back.
“You have two options here, Miss Walsh,” Detective Rollins starts. “You can either cooperate right now, tell us everything you saw or heard, or we can go ahead and charge you for failing to report a heinous felony that killed six men. Or better yet, we could charge you as an accomplice and arrest you right now.”
“That’s right,” Detective Ashby says. “We know all about your prior record, your history of committing arson. Did you know the men who did this? Were you helping them? You do have a thing for bad boys, don’t you?”
“What…I-I didn’t have anything to do with what happened that night!” I exclaim when they start talking about locking me up, charging me for the violence when I was almost murdered too. “All I did was cook the man a meal!”
“And then what happened?” Rollins asks. “You were still there when the killers showed up, weren’t you? Why did they let you live if you weren’t working with them?”
“I-I don’t know,” I tell them honestly, brushing my red curls out of my face.
“So you did encounter the killers that night?” Rollins says.
“Yes, but…”
“How many of them were there?” Ashby demands.
“I’m not sure. Five or six maybe. I didn’t really have time to do a headcount with bullets flying everywhere!”
Rollins opens her portfolio and scribbles down that information on the notepad inside. Then she asks, “What were they wearing?”
“Dark clothes. I didn’t see much or remember exactly…”
“Did you see any of their faces?”
“No.”
“They were wearing masks?” Ashby guesses.
“Not masks, no.”
“So then why couldn’t you see their faces?” Rollins demands.
“They had on big, black helmets.”
“Helmets?” both detectives repeat in confusion.
“Yes.”
“What kind of helmets? Are you referring to a motorcycle helmet?” Ashby asks.
“Yes.”
“But you couldn’t see their faces, so they were closed helmets, not open on the front, like the kind guys on crotch rockets wear but not Harleys?” he questions me like I’m some sort of an expert on helmets.
“I don’t know who wears what. That’s just what they had on, so I didn’t see any faces!”
Rollins is scribbling furiously in her notebook now while Ashby asks the questions. “Describe what you remember about the men to us. What ethnicity were they?”
“No clue,” I answer. “They didn’t ask me to cook any specific ethnic dishes for them.”
“You don’t know if they were white, black, Asian or Hispanic?” Rollins huffs.
“No.”
“Did you see any tattoos? Were they tall, short, lean or fat?” Rollins asks. “Anything about their appearance that stood out?”
“I didn’t see any tattoos. They were all pretty tall, around six feet I guess, and none of them were fat. I don’t remember anything else about how they looked.”
“Did they speak English?” he asks.
“Yes.”
“Did you happen to catch any specific accents or dialects?” he demands.
“They talked normally, a little southern, a few swear words, just like every other man around town.”
“So they were local?” Rollins jots down even though that’s not what I said.
“What words did you hear them say?” he asks.
“They were talking to each other mostly, asking where different guards were, looking for…” I start to say they were looking for the girl, the one who looked like a terrified deer in headlights at dinner. I keep that part to myself, though. It wouldn’t be right to drag the poor girl into this when I could tell she didn’t really want to be there. I overheard Cox telling her he was going to hurt her, which is probably why the men showed up, to get her out of there. Rather than rat her out, I tell them, “They were looking for Harold. I don’t know why. They didn’t say. But it was clear he was their main target.”
“Okay, that’s good,” Rollins says while still scribbling. “What else?”
“That’s all I remember.”
“How did you escape the fire?” Ashby questions me. “I don’t see any burns on you, so you obviously got out before the place went up in flames.”
“I was hiding in the pantry. They found me and told me to leave,” I say, which is only a small white lie. The men actually instructed me to stay in the closed pantry where I would be safe from the crossfire. Then, when it was all over and dead bodies littered the floor, one of them came back and picked me up without a word. He just threw me over his shoulder and carried me outside into the night. When he put my feet down on the ground, he simply swatted my ass hard and said, “Run fast, Red, and keep your fucking mouth shut.”
So, I did.
Harold’s guard had picked me up from the restaurant, so I didn’t have my car. I had no choice but to run for miles through the swampy marsh, like my life depended on it, all the way back to my apartment where I proceeded to throw up everything I had eaten that week, before having a nice long cry.
After that, I pulled my shit together and convinced myself to pretend nothing had happened and that I hadn’t seen people get shot to death in front of my eyes and nearly been killed myself. What else was there to do? I wasn’t going to call and report the crime, putting me smack dab in the middle of trouble. Still, ever since that night I haven’t been able to sleep, and I have panic attacks throughout the day.
“You expect us to believe that these murdering assholes came in and killed everyone in cold b
lood except for you?” Ashby asks.
“It’s the truth. I’m an innocent woman who was paid to cook a meal. Maybe that’s why they didn’t hurt me.”
Folding his arms on the table to lean closer to me, the detective says, “Or maybe you were helping them, scoping out the place, giving them intel so they could come in and kill everyone else.”
“I wasn’t helping them!” I exclaim.
“Then prove to us you weren’t involved. Convince us that you didn’t report the killings and arson because you were, in fact, a terrified victim. Give us something that will help us catch the men responsible, anything, before they kill someone else,” Rollins says. “Did you hear any nicknames or code names, something that could give us a shot at finding these assholes? Right now, you’re our only lead. So, unless you give us something else to go on, you could end up behind bars again for a very long time, Miss Walsh…”
“You’re right, I don’t want to get involved because I am terrified!” I shout at them. “It’s a miracle they didn’t kill me before. How do you know they won’t come after me if I talk to you?” I ask.
“Your name won’t be included in any of the court documents or records. You’ll just be listed as a ‘confidential informant,’ so they won’t know it was you who talked to us,” Rollins tries to reassure me.
