Steel Cobras MC Complete Box Set: Books 1-6

by Evie Monroe

  I took the money out and pretended to count it. I couldn’t lie. I didn’t lie. “Is this all of it?”

  The next time I caught Cullen’s face he was frowning. “Nix . . .”

  “I couldn’t just fucking dump her on the side of the road,” I muttered. “She has amnesia.”

  Cullen looked away. “Fuck, I should’ve known,” he mouthed.

  What, did he think I was soft? I wasn’t soft in the least. I was just being human. “You really would’ve dumped her? Just like that?”

  He nodded. “Not in the road. At a hospital. Like I said, it’s not a Steel Cobras problem.”

  I shook my head. “If those Hell’s Fury people did that to her, they’ll be after her. If anything happens to her . . .”

  He crossed his arms. “Not. Our. Problem.”

  I shrugged and grabbed my beer. “Fine. It’ll be my problem. Mine alone.”

  He stared at me. I knew him; we were his brothers. He wouldn’t let any of us hang on our own. Finally, he sighed. “Really, Nix? So where is she?”

  “At my apartment,” I muttered.

  Jetson leaned over. “Are you kidding me? You have that girl in your apartment?”

  He said it so loud that the rest of the guys heard. I splayed a hand on his face and pushed him out of my space. “Go back to your crib, baby brother.”

  “So what can she tell you about how she got there?” Cullen asked.

  I shrugged. “Nothing. She has amnesia.”

  “You don’t even know her name?” Hart asked, pulling out his laptop.

  “I do. She had ID. It’s Olivia Baxter.”

  Hart powered it up and started to type away.

  Drake turned the chair backwards and straddled it, planting his chin on his arms. “Maybe it was just a random mugging.”

  “It wasn’t. Did you see her ring? Nothing was stolen,” I thought out loud, as something came to me. “And I saw two bikes pull out of the garage as I was going in. I’m pretty sure they were Hell’s Fury.”

  Jet jumped up, riled. “What? What the fuck are they doing in our backyard?”

  I shrugged, looking at the faces of the other men. The hate for Hell’s Fury was visible on every one of them.

  Cullen shook his head. “I still say this isn’t good. You know I hate Hell’s Fury as much as the next guy. Them being in our backyard is one thing, but they’re small-time, and they’ve never been a threat to us. They don’t go around kidnapping random women for the pure joy of it. It makes no sense.”

  I nodded. I had to admit, he was right.

  “All right, then what?”

  “Bingo,” Hart said suddenly, pushing away from his computer. He pointed to the screen. “Look at this.”

  We all looked. Cullen was the first to react. “Holy shit.”

  I scanned the screen. “Where’d you find this?”

  “Simple,” Hart said, though nothing he ever did was simple in the least. Just a bunch of tech shit none of us could understand. “I just cross-referenced her last name with his; she’s listed on the title for the Mercedes.”

  Jet leaned forward, squinting. “Wait. So, this Olivia Baxter is related to the asshole whose car we took?”

  “Not just related. She’s Michael Anderson’s daughter,” I breathed, studying the screen. I reached forward and scrolled. There were pictures of her, one of them going to some party in a bright red dress, on the arm of that squirrely looking guy from the other night. Shit, her father. She was gazing up at him lovingly, with those big blue eyes and those soft rose-petal lips.

  “Michael Anderson has a daughter?” Drake muttered. “Shit.”

  I continued to scroll through the page, gathering more information on the woman I was hiding in my apartment. She’d graduated from Stanford with a degree in Theater and Performance Arts and was, from what I could tell, a dancer. As I continued my search, pretending not to be interested, I saw a picture of her in a tight leotard standing on one toe, her other leg kicked up nearly to her ear.

  My cock twitched. A fucking ballerina. Well, that explained the legs.

  “You said Michael Anderson had mafia ties,” I said to Cullen.

  “Not just that. He’s one of the city’s most powerful men,” he said. “It’s probably the reason he kept his family on the down-low. He knew she was in danger. It’s clear someone was trying to send him a message.”

  “But who?” I wondered aloud.

  Cullen closed the lid on the computer. “Don’t get any ideas,” he warned me. “Just cut her loose. If someone was sending him a message, we need to stay out of it.”

  I nodded, staring straight ahead.

  He was right. I should’ve just told her who she was and said goodbye.

  But I thought of her, lying on my bed, looking afraid and alone, with no one to turn to. I was already in too deep.

  Chapter Four

  Olivia

  As nighttime fell I stared up at the ceiling and wrapped that scratchy blanket around my body as if it would shield me from the nameless terror that was after me.

  After my conversation with Nix, I had even more questions than I had answers to.

  He told me I should stay in his apartment, that it was as safe a place as I was going to get in this town, since no one knew I was there. I figured he was right, because I bet that most potential assailants would take one look at Nix’s imposing physique, those dark, menacing eyes, and run away.

  So I agreed to stay.

  And then what did Nix do? He told me he had to go to church.

  On a Friday night. “You’re religious?” I’d asked him, confused. To which he just laughed, threw on a beaten leather vest with a snake on the back, and left, leaving me to wonder where the hell he’d gone.

  He told me I could have the run of the house, make myself at home. I hadn’t eaten all day, but my stomach turned at the thought of food. And as tired as I was, I couldn’t sleep.

  And that big blank space that was my memory practically suffocated me. I couldn’t think, except for about the people who must have hated me so much that they’d nearly killed me. Why? And were they still out there, waiting for a chance to finish the job?

  Finally, after tossing and turning, I crept out of the bedroom. He’d left one light on, over the kitchen sink, and it illuminated the whole apartment. He had an old sofa in the living room and a coffee table with an ashtray filled to the brim with smelly cigarettes. There was also an old...engine part in the corner of the room on a bed of old newspapers. Whatever it was, it was coated in grease. Clearly, he didn’t have a woman.

  And clearly, he didn’t want a woman. Nix didn’t strike me as the type of man who’d have trouble getting women to fall all over him. He definitely had that dangerous bad boy vibe going for him.

  I crept to the kitchen table. I leafed through a huge pile of unopened mail—cell phone bills, gas bills, a subscription offer for Popular Mechanics, something for the Lucky Leaf Garage downtown, and more cell phone bills. I realized that some of them were postmarked months ago.

  So he obviously wasn’t the most efficient bookkeeper.

  I opened the fridge and was surprised by a lot of empty shelves. Oh, except for the Coors. There was at least a case and a half of beer. I wrinkled my nose. I didn’t drink beer, or at least, I didn’t think I did. The inside of the fridge smelled like mold. He’d told me I could help myself to anything in the fridge. How generous of him to have offered me up his expired jar of relish.

  Slamming the door, I came face to face with a magnet made to look like a silver button. It had a giant cobra etched into the center. The words around it said Steel Cobras – Forever Two Wheels.

  Steel Cobras? Two Wheels? Was that some kind of a motorcycle club?

  Nix was a motorcycle guy. Of course he was. Everything about him screamed motorcycles—from the tats, to his tanned face, to the way he looked at me like he just didn’t give a crap.

  I might not have had a memory, but something told me I’d lived my whole life away from
men like him. Far away. Looking down at my rings, my silk romper, my Louboutin shoes, I knew that I’d been brought up in a totally different world.

  And I needed to get back there.

  A moment later, I heard it. The roar of a motorcycle, and then the sound of heavy footfalls outside.

  He stepped inside a moment later, the screen door slamming behind him with a crack. He was carrying a paper bag. He held it up and jiggled it a little. “You hungry?”

  I studied it warily. “What is it?”

  “Tacos.”

  “Thank you.” I couldn’t remember if I liked tacos or not.

  He dropped the bag on the table and reached into the fridge, pulling out two beers by their necks with one of his big hands. I thought of telling him I didn’t drink beer, but I figured I didn’t have a choice—it was either that or some gross sink water.

  I reached over the sink for the cabinet closest to me. “I’ll get the plates.”

  He made a sound to stop me, and I realized why. The cabinet was empty. He pointed to a stack of paper plates on top of the fridge, then shrugged. “Don’t have to wash paper plates,” he explained. “But we can just eat off the wrapper.”

  Off the wrapper? That sounded like a foreign language. “Well. . .” I said.

  “Fine. Plates,” he agreed. “We’ll go fancy.”

  I tried to reach for the plates, but I was too short. He crossed the kitchen and reached for a couple paper plates. When he got close to me, I smelled something on him. Motorcycle grease and some spicy aftershave that made my knees go weak.

  I stepped away as fast as I could.

  I figured it was too much to ask for a glass to drink my beer out of. He reached into his jeans, pulled out a ring of keys with a bottle opener on it, and popped the lids. “A toast,” he said. “To being alive, right? Sure beats the alternative.”

  Something niggled at the back of my mind. Someone raising a glass of champagne in a toast. Yes. I’d been somewhere...and we’d been toasting. A celebration.

  But just as quickly as it entered my mind, it slipped away.

  “You okay?” he asked, lifting the beer to his lips.

  I flashed to the present to see Nix watching me, his brows knitted intensely together. God, the way he looked at me should’ve been illegal. I felt it everywhere.

  “Um, Yes.” I tucked a lock of hair behind my ear. “How was church?”

  He took a long swig of his beer and nodded. “Good. As always.”

  “Did you...pray?”

  He laughed. “No. A bike club. We call our meetings church.”

  “Oh.” I got the feeling that it wasn’t just amnesia. I’d never heard that, in all my life. “Why?”

  He shrugged. He reached into the bag and laid one of the tacos in front of me, wrapped in paper. I unwrapped it to see a deformed, greasy half-circle. I hadn’t eaten in forever, and yet this still wasn’t appetizing in the least. I looked up to see him shove half a taco into his mouth. He chewed with gusto, then washed it back with another long swig of beer.

  “You’re not eating,” he said.

  I looked down at the taco, picked it up, and took the tiniest nibble.

  Okay, so it may not have looked like anything special, but yum. I was really hungry. Whatever. I devoured the rest of it in two seconds flat and licked my fingers. I got the feeling I’d never eaten anything so good in all my life.

  “Good?” he asked, studying me with an amused expression as I realized there was electric orange taco juice dribbling down my chin. I would have wiped at it with a napkin, if we’d had any napkins.

  Before I could decide to use the back of my hand, he reached over and, very gently, more gently than I thought a guy like him could be, swiped it away with the callused pad of his thumb.

  All that uneasiness, that fear swirling in my belly? It drained away. I felt that touch clear down to my toes.

  And I wanted more.

  What was wrong with me? I didn’t even know this man. And he was a criminal. He had a gun. He stole cars. I shouldn’t have been so drawn to him. “So, is that what you do for a living? Ride your motorcycle and steal cars?”

  I hadn’t meant it to come out so judgmentally. But it did. And I cringed.

  If he took offense, he didn’t let on. He swallowed, took another swig of his beer. “I’m a mechanic at Lucky Leaf. I fix cars, when I need the money.”

  “When you need the money?” He shrugged. “What can I say? Stealing cars pays a lot better. Want another?”

  He pointed at the grease- stained bag. Hell yes. But I wasn’t talking about the tacos.

  I nodded demurely.

  He opened another taco and laid it in front of me. As I began to dig in, he said, “I have something to tell you. I found out a few things.”

  I stopped chewing. “Bad?”

  “It might help jog your memory. Okay?” When I nodded, he said, “Does the name Michael Anderson sound familiar?”

  My lips worked, repeating the name over and over as I tried to pull it from my memory. It didn’t work. I shook my head. “Should it?”

  He nodded. “He’s your father.”

  “My...father?” Oh, God. Shouldn’t I have remembered my own father? The food in my mouth suddenly tasted bad. I swallowed it along with the lump in my throat. “Where is he?”

  “I don’t know. But at this point, it’s not so important where he is as who he is. He’s a powerful man, Olivia. And he’s in with some bad people. I think one of his enemies might have tried to get to him by getting to you.”

  “Powerful?” I murmured, hardly able to believe any of this. “You mean he’s crooked. Is my father a criminal?”

  He nodded. “It looks that way.”

  I dropped the taco onto the paper and covered my face with my hands. Did that mean I was a criminal, too? “What does he do?”

  “He has mafia ties. Gambling, racketeering...I don’t know. He practically runs the underground of Aveline Bay.”

  I stared at him, horrified. Had I known this, before? Didn’t that make me an accomplice? This was ridiculous. Unbelievable. Impossible. “I...I don’t believe it. If that was true, I’d know about it. I’d remember something of him. Wouldn’t I?”

  “Your father did a good job of covering his tracks, of keeping your relationship a secret. The only reason I found out about it is because one of my brothers is a hacker, and he made the connection. But that information shouldn’t be hard to find by someone else with experienced hacking skills. Someone else found out about it, too, and I get the feeling they mean business.”

  My stomach dropped like a stone inside me. “You mean that they won’t stop until I’m dead.”

  He nodded solemnly, “Or until they get what they want from your father.”

  I looked down at my lap. I felt dirty and gross. I hadn’t showered and now, it felt less important than ever. Someone wanted me dead.

  It was almost enough to make me want to curl up in a ball, forever.

  Instead, I started to cry. I wiped at my face, wishing for the second time since this meal started that I had a napkin. Nix watched me wordlessly. This big, scary, strangely attractive man was all I had right now.

  My voice was small and pathetic when I said, “I’m scared, Nix.”

  He reached over and touched my hand.

  “It’s okay. You’re safe here,” he said to me. “If you want, I can take you to your father.”

  I shook my head fiercely. My father, the criminal? “No. I don’t want to be anywhere near him.”

  “All right. Look,” he said. “You can stay here. All right? As long as you need to.”

  I nodded and pushed the taco away. My stomach was twisting, and I no longer had an appetite. The thought of going to my father’s made me feel physically ill. And somehow, as scary and intense and rough around the edges as he was, I felt safe with Phoenix.

  Chapter Five

  Phoenix

  I slept on the couch that night, thinking she’d want the privacy of my
bed. The whole time, I kept thinking of those pictures of her, in her ballet leotard, in that red dress. She’d looked like the type of woman who had the perfect life. And now it was crashing down around her.

  I couldn’t say I’d ever had a perfect life. Jet and I had grown up in a place called Brawley, California, a little piece of shit town near the Mexican border. My father was a drunk who used to beat up on my mom until I was seventeen and big enough to stop him. When my mother died of cancer a year later, I was eighteen. So I high-tailed it out of there with Jet, living in a hole in the wall in L.A, washing dishes and living off of the kindness of strangers until I was able to afford my first place, and later, my first bike.

  I didn’t know a thing about perfection. Not one fucking thing.

  But I guessed that if that was the life she was born into, to lose it all must have been terrifying.

  Cullen wanted me to drop Olivia. But when I thought about her, I saw my mother. Defenseless. Scared. And desperate for someone’s protection.

  Shortly after the sun rose, she wandered into the kitchen, looking dazed.

  “Oh. Sorry if I woke you,” she said when she noticed me making coffee in nothing but my boxers.

  I shook my head. “You didn’t.”

  I’d given her one of my t-shirts to sleep in, and damned if she didn’t look hot as fuck in it, even swimming in all the extra fabric. Her bare, dancer’s legs were on full display, and the shirt draped across her tits, outlining her nipples. She’d braided her hair, and it hung over her shoulder. She was playing with the ends of it and gnawing on her lip when she noticed I was staring at her. Her eyes trailed downward, fastening on my bare chest. “You shouldn’t have slept out here.”

  I raised an eyebrow. She’d have preferred me in there, with her? I had no objections.

  She said, “I mean, that couch can’t be comfortable. I could’ve taken the couch.”

  I straightened, rubbing out the kink in my neck. My sofa wasn’t the biggest thing. My knees had been hanging off it. “It was fine.”

  “I was thinking . . .” she said, her voice trembling, as small as she was. “Do you think I could go back to my place? Maybe I could pick up some of my clothes.”