Fighter: The Devil's Highwaymen Nomads #4

by Claire C. Riley

  “There ain’t no good or light inside of me,” I gritted.

  “There is. I’ve seen it.”

  She said it with such certainty, such calm, that my heart stuttered in my chest. Not out of love or any of that bullshit, but out of confusion. Where the fuck was she getting that from? Why was she so calm? She was staring death in the face and calling it her dark angel like that was normal.

  “Would it help if I said I was sorry?” I asked, because I was. I didn’t want to do it. But it was a necessary evil to protect those that I held dearest to me.

  “No,” she replied bluntly. She took a step toward me and I nodded in agreement.

  She glanced behind me to the hallway, her almost perfect façade cracking just enough for me to see her fear seeping in the edges. Her fear made my cock harden, the flush in her cheeks, the way her eyes widened, panic seizing her chest. It was sick—I was sick—but I’d accepted who I was a long time ago so I wouldn’t apologize for my dark tastes.

  She awakened the beast inside of me.

  “You wanna run?” I asked, taking a step to the side, a sick fucking smile on my face. “You wanna see how far you get, Penny?”

  She put her hands on her hips, her chest rising and falling.

  I held the knife up, placing the tip against my chest and digging it in just enough to draw a slither of blood before smearing it down myself. I knew she’d run as soon as she saw the blood. I’d seen that fear on men and women before and I knew everyone’s breaking point. The part where they realized their inevitability.

  She ran, a flurry of arms and legs, long hair, and a flash of golden eyes as she attempted to duck under my arm. I reached for her, grabbing her by the waist and spinning her back around. I threw her against the wall, hearing the smack of her cheek and her grunt of pain. I pinned her to the wall, my front pressed to her back, my knees holding her in place. One hand above her head holding the knife and the other holding her arm flat against the wall.

  Fuck, she smelled good. So fucking good. I breathed her in, taking in enough of her to last a lifetime.

  “I hate you,” she gritted.

  “Think I give a fuck?”

  “Yes, you do. I saw it in you,” she said desperately, her words coming out choked and panicked.

  I chuckled, the dark monster inside me unfurling and coming to the surface. “Is that so?”

  “Yes!” She was close to crying then, and god, the fear in her voice made my balls ache.

  “Scream for me, Penny,” I whispered in her ear, bringing the tip of the knife down to her throat.

  “Fuck you,” she whimpered.

  Death was always imminent.

  A breath away from every action.

  Every decision.

  Good or bad.

  Right or wrong.

  Evil or pure.

  Only moments mattered, only the consequences, not the actions.

  I kissed the back of her neck. “For the record, I am sorry.”

  “Fuck you,” she sobbed.

  “In another lifetime maybe we could have been something good together,” I replied, and her subsequent scream made my nerves spark with life. I kissed the back of her neck again.

  Because yeah, in another lifetime maybe we could have worked.

  Maybe.

  But this wasn’t that lifetime.

  This was our now.

  This was our fate.

  “Please,” she begged, salty tears spilling down her cheeks. “Please.”

  I pressed my nose to her hair and breathed her fear in.

  So much fear it made my head spin.

  It was delicious.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered against her hair, the silky strands pressing against my lips. “I’m fuckin’ sorry, Penny.”

  ~ 17 ~

  Fighter

  “Good to have you back, brother.” Gauge patted my shoulder and pushed a whiskey toward me. “Shit’s been happening that I should fill you in on as soon as possible.”

  I raised an eyebrow as I picked up the glass, throwing the whiskey to the back of my throat in one hit. The door to the clubhouse swung open and Rider stormed in, heading toward Hardy’s office. His long strides and heavy footsteps filled the space and we all sensed the impending doom that his anger would bring.

  “Later,” Gauge grunted, slipping off his stool and heading over to Rider. “Brother, calm the fuck down.”

  Rider swung back, the veins in his arms popping as his hand curled into a fist. Gauge grunted as Rider’s fist hit him square in the face, and he stumbled back a step before righting himself. Blood trickled out of his nose and down over his lips and teeth. He swiped at it with his hand, sucking at his teeth before glaring at Rider.

  “You get that one for free,” he snarled. “Out of motherfucking respect.”

  “Respect?” Rider snapped, his eyes flaring. “Out of fucking respect, brother? So we’re talking about respect now, huh? So where the fuck was your respect when Hardy was fucking up this club?”

  Gauge squared his shoulders and lifted his chin. “Nothing’s fucked up.”

  “Everything is fucked up!” Rider roared.

  I’d never seen the man so angry, and I readied myself to feel the brunt of his anger soon enough.

  “Things aren’t always as simple as you think, Rider!” Gauge argued back.

  “She was a civilian, motherfucker! We don’t touch women, kids, civilians. You can gut and gun down every other fucker that screws this club over, but the others are off fucking limits. You fucking know this!” Rider raged. “Why would you go against the code? Does it mean fucking nothing to you?”

  And he was right.

  We all knew it.

  But when your prez gave you orders, you followed them. Sometimes without question. Sometimes with trepidation. But he was your prez, and you respected him enough to believe that he had everyone’s best interest at heart.

  Hardy’s door opened and he filled the space, a cigar hanging from between his teeth like he was Al Capone and had no fucks to give. He reached up slowly to pluck the cigar out as one of the club bitches slipped past him, slapping her ass like his brothers weren’t ready to go to war against each other. The club bitch giggled and kept on walking, and his gaze followed her ass until she was out of shot before turning his attention back to Gauge and Rider.

  “You two assholes wanna keep this private shit private, or do I need to bust some heads open?” he drolled.

  Rider pushed past Gauge, who shot a worried look at me before following him.

  “I’m your VP, Hardy. You handled shit without me? Without even taking my counsel? What the fuck does that say about me? Or about our relationship? You don’t trust my judgment anymore? You think this dumb motherfucker knows better?” He jerked a thumb toward Gauge. “Can guide you and this club better?”

  Hardy puffed on his cigar, his usual hot-headed temper nowhere to be seen. His calmness set me on edge. “Well it seems that no one in this fuckin’ club knew shit about shit until you stormed in here airing said shit to them.” He waved a hand at the brothers who were sitting around, watching the spectacle. “But I bet that every one of these men would have backed me one hundred percent regardless. Especially now that everything has fallen at our feet like I knew it would.”

  Rider turned to glare at the men in the club, all of them looking away sheepishly as his hard gaze fell on them. Until he reached me. I held my head high despite the hatred I felt in my soul at what I’d done. Rider pointed at me, the full force of his anger now directed at me.

  “Me and you are through,” he spat.

  Hardy walked toward me, throwing an arm across my shoulders. “Brother here did what our club needed. What you couldn’t do.”

  “What I wouldn’t do, not couldn’t!” Rider roared. “Because there’s a big fucking difference.”

  Hardy cocked an eyebrow. “Looks like I picked the right man for the job then.”

  Rider’s nostrils flared as he looked me up and down. Shou
ld have ripped his eyes out of his head for looking at me like that. Should have felt rage deep in my soul for his disrespectful look. Should have done and felt a whole lot of things, but instead I just felt shame. Shame for letting him down, and shame because I knew he was right.

  “And what happens when they retaliate? Now that the code is broken, what happens if they go after our families? Our women?” Rider fumed.

  “They’re off limits,” one of the younger prospects said sheepishly.

  “Not anymore, thanks to these idiots,” Rider growled.

  “Calm down, Rider,” Gauge grumbled, placing his hand on Rider’s back.

  Rider shrugged out from under it and spun on him. “Calm down? Calm the fuck down?!” He was shaking he was so angry, and any normal man would have been fearful, but we weren’t normal men. We were the Devil’s Highwaymen. We were soldiers, warriors, and we feared nothing and no one. Not even our own brothers.

  “My life for my brothers and my brothers for my life,” Hardy said, his grip on my shoulder tightening. “This motherfucker knows how it goes. But you”—he pointed, stepping toward Rider—“you seem to have lost your way, brother. You forgot what this club is about, what we do and why we fucking do it.”

  “I ain’t forgot nothin’!”

  “Benite was cutting this club out. Turning the Reverend on us. Turning other clubs against us. He was the reason that Battle couldn’t come back; fucker was bartering against our brothers like he owned them. He was a fucking weed that needed plucking out of the ground.” Hardy grabbed the bottle of whiskey and a few glasses from the top of the bar and lined them up before pouring whiskey into four glasses.

  “So you pluck him out, not his kid,” Rider said, his anger giving way to disappointment. “Not a civilian that ain’t done nothin’ but be born into this fucked-up mess.”

  Hardy tutted and handed me a glass of whiskey before grabbing two more and walking toward Rider and Gauge. “That would be like cutting the head of a weed. Those fuckers grow back in abundance. I wanted to pluck it out of the ground and make sure that soil was poisoned real deep so nothing grew back in its place.”

  Gauge took the shot glass of whiskey, his wary gaze staying on Rider. Hardy held one out to Rider, who glared at the glass with disdain.

  “Drink with your brothers,” he ordered. “I’m your prez and this is your club. Learn your fucking place, brother. They don’t know it was us. They just know that they treaded on toes that don’t wanna be treaded on.”

  “It’s not going to come back on us,” Gauge said. “Take the drink, Rider.”

  “It’s not right,” Rider said, disappointment and regret lacing his words. “It’s not fucking right.”

  “Nothing in this world is right, but we do what we do in order to survive.” Hardy walked back to the bar. He looked at me and winked, giving me an uncommon smile as he reached for his glass and then turned back around.

  “We did what was necessary, Rider. It’s done. We all either drink over our success or drown in your disappointment. What’s it gonna be?” He waited a beat, his hard gaze on Rider.

  “Who the fuck are you?” Rider asked with a shake of his head. “I can’t agree with what you did.”

  Hardy threw the whiskey to the back of his throat and slammed the glass down on the table next to him. “I’m your president, motherfucker. Now drink your fucking drink, deal with your fucking demons, and get on board with this shit. It’s done. Don’t let it be a waste.”

  Gauge hesitated momentarily before drinking his whiskey, and Hardy nodded approvingly before glancing at me. I drank mine, wishing for a fucking vat of it to drown myself in. His words—his speech—was laced with threats, and we all knew it.

  “Good man,” he said to me before looking back at Rider. “Well? Which way is my VP gonna fall? You going to stand by your club and your brothers? Or turn away from us?”

  Rider took a deep breath before turning his attention back to me. He threw the whiskey to the back of his throat and shook his head.

  “Fuck you all,” he grumbled before heading back toward the door. “Fuck. You. All.”

  The door slammed closed behind him and I stared at the empty space, wondering what the fuck Hardy was doing. He was destroying the club, turning us on each other. And like Rider had said, he was breaking the code that we all lived by.

  And I had helped him do that.

  “He’ll come ‘round,” Hardy said before snatching the bottle of whiskey off the bar and heading back to his office. “Send that bitch back in here,” he said before slamming the door closed behind him.

  I stared after him, unsure of what was really going on anymore. The club had been my everything for so long. Hardy and Rider had been my guides in this life, and now I felt like I couldn’t trust one of them and the other hated me.

  I was a soldier following the orders of my president, yet I felt like a traitor to everyone.

  “You good?” Gauge asked.

  I nodded and turned away, because I couldn’t answer that question honestly. I was confused, angry, lost. I hated myself in those dark moments, not knowing which way was up and which way was down. I needed orders. Needed someone to tell me what to do next.

  As if sensing my thoughts, Gauge spoke. “Head on down to the Pit. Casa needs a hand since Cutter’s gone off with stomach flu or some shit.”

  I nodded, happy to get the fuck out of there and away from disappointed eyes. I turned and headed to the door.

  “Fighter?”

  I glanced back at him. “What?”

  “We still got shit to talk about, okay? I’ll swing by the club later to finish up.”

  “Sure.” I pushed open the door, the daylight hitting my eyes and making me wince.

  “You did the right thing. For the club,” Gauge continued, but I didn’t want to hear it, hear him right then. Because if I’d really done the right thing for the club, why did it feel like I’d helped set a bomb in it and blow everything up?

  I let the door slamming shut behind me be my answer. The right thing? I was beginning to wonder if I’d ever done the right thing in my entire life.

  Penny had called me a monster, her dark angel. And I called myself the Devil. But I feared I was becoming something much, much worse.

  ~ 18 ~

  Fighter

  The Pit’s lights were low. Sparkly lights flashed above the small booths that reflected across the bodies of semi-naked strippers. A girl was writhing on the stage, the silver pole sliding between her thighs faster than a hot knife through butter. She was beautiful, no denying it—firm tits, tight ass, and big pouty lips. She was born to be a stripper. Or a hooker. Maybe both, if she wanted.

  But her eyes betrayed her.

  No other man there saw it though. No one else seemed to notice, or care, how dull and empty they were. All they noticed was how her body moved in sync with the beat, ass bouncing as she bent over, hair flipping as she stood up, tits being squeezed together as she pouted toward the crowd of horny men wanting to fuck her.

  No one noticed her sadness though.

  No one but me.

  I’d always been able to sense it in people; the sadness, the grief, the guilt. All the things that you tried to hide about yourself. I saw it all. Call it a skill if you want, but I called it a curse. It was what made me good at my job though.

  “Girl’s hot, right?” Casa said from next to me. “Hired her last week and we’ve seen a twenty percent increase since she started. Girl gives blowjobs like a fucking pro too. I’ll send her over when she comes off.” Casa continued to yammer away in my ear, oblivious to the fact that I wasn’t really listening to him. Instead my gaze was on someone else. A woman with long dark hair that reminded me of my sins was on the other side of the room. She was grinding down on some prick, her hair flipping over her shoulder as he laughed with his friends and shoved a dollar under the strap of her lacy red bra.

  A dollar.

  A motherfucking dollar.

  Rich fuck was wearing
a suit that was easily worth two thousand dollars and he was handing out dollars to our girls like they were nothing. Fucker needed a lesson learning.

  “’Sup, brother? You look like you’re about to kill someone.” Casa’s gaze followed mine. “Don’t worry ’bout him. He comes in twice a week for business meetings—likes to show his clients a good time. He’ll spend more once he’s drank more.”

  I started toward the rich prick regardless.

  “Aaah, fuck,” Casa grumbled from behind me.

  I marched through the Pit, stopping in front of the table. The girl continued to slam her sweet ass down onto his crotch while he laughed with his buddies. He glanced my way when my shadow fell across him.

  “This one’s taken for the night, asshole,” he laughed, flashing me a wad of dollar bills like they were hundreds. “Go pick another, big guy,” he said when I didn’t move away. He laughed again and his table of friends joined in.

  At least the dancer had the common sense to step away from him, a smirk on her face as she mouthed thank you and took a couple of steps away from him.

  “Hey, hey, bitch, get back here!” he called after her. “I paid for you!” He waved the ones in the air again and I saw red. “Fucking sluts think they own their own asses,” he laughed. “I own their asses!” He stuck his tongue out at his friends and laughed, oblivious to the fact I was about to tear him a new asshole.

  I grabbed him by the shirt before pulling him up to my eye level. Fucker started to realize who he was talking to then and his cocky attitude fell away like wet paper from the walls.

  “Woah, woah, buddy. She your girl? No offense meant.” He patted my shoulder like he was trying to soothe a wild animal, and I snarled in his face like I was about to rip it off.

  “Fighter!”

  I turned and looked to see Jesse and Casa standing together. Jesse had his arms crossed over his chest in a gesture that reminded me of Hardy.

  “Put the prick down.” He nodded at the guy I was about to tear apart. “Brother, he ain’t worth it.”