by Addison Jane
Kennedy
The Phoenix Club Girl Diaries Book One
The Brothers by Blood MC
Addison Jane
Copyright 2018 Addison Jane
All Rights Reserved
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to real events, real people, and real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, organizations or places is entirely coincidental.
All rights are reserved. This book is intended for the purchaser of this e-book ONLY. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system, without the express written permission of the author. All songs, song titles, and lyrics contained in this book are the property of the respective songwriters and copyright holders.
Disclaimer: The material in this book contains graphic language and sexual content and is intended for mature audiences, ages 18 and older.
Editing by Swish Design & Editing
Formatting by Swish Design & Editing
Proofing by Swish Design & Editing
Cover Design by Kellie at Book Cover by Design
Cover Models by Robert Kelly and Brynn Burke
Cover Photography by Reggie Deanching
Cover Image Copyright 2018
All rights reserved
This one is for my readers.
You made this happen.
Here are all the amazing people who I need to thank!
As always, my family away from home Kay and Kim for just everything. I don’t know where I’d be without you both to keep me focused and curb my stress.
Thank you to Chicki who has had my back through this one like no other! If it wasn’t taking the kid so I could write, it was listening to me blab on and on about plot points and characters like they were actually people who were driving me crazy. Not just figments of my imagination.
As always, massive love to my PA Nicole for keeping things running for me when I am just mentally incapable!
Huge love to my parents for stepping in when they know I’m near the edge and for just always supporting me, and being proud of me, and pushing me to follow my dreams.
Massive thank you to Reggie Deanching and Melissa for spending time with me when I was in the states and taking this amazing photo (among others) while I was there! And for always supporting me and having my back! And a major shout out to Robert and Brynn for bringing these two characters to life!
To my Betas—you bitches are AMAZING.
To all my beautiful friends who work our catchups around my deadlines because you understand!
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Connect With Me Online
About The Author – Addison Jane
KENNEDY
I stepped off the stage pulling dollar bills from my tiny pink G-string and stacking them flat in my hand.
“They love you,” Eva gushed, meeting me at the side of the stage with the rest of my clothes. I smiled, taking my things from her hands and slipping past her. She didn’t take the hint though, falling into step behind me as I made a beeline for the back room. “Honestly, Kennedy, you look so beautiful out there. So strong, so confident. There wasn’t a limp dick in the entire place.”
“Thanks,” I finally managed to force out, the single word seriously lacking in enthusiasm.
She grinned widely and skipped off.
“Is it horrible that I’d like to slap that stupid smile right off her damn face sometimes?” Laken asked, coming to stand behind me, our eyes meeting in the mirror. “Were we seriously that fresh-faced and naïve when we started working the stage here?”
I snorted and grabbed hold of the front of my short, black wig and pulled it back. “No. We were petrified because neither of us were here by choice, and getting up on that stage was the scariest fucking thing I could have ever imagined doing… let alone taking my clothes off while I was there.”
Eva had started her stripping career three weeks ago. She was still young and untainted. All she saw were dollar signs. This gave her independence, this allowed her to be sexual without judgment, and this job made men take notice of her. She wanted to be wanted, she craved it.
“You’re not the only one.” Laken laughed, taking the cap that covered my hair and helping remove the tape from the sides. “Remember, I puked on that one dude.”
I cringed, but it was quickly followed by a soft giggle.
Something we could both laugh at now after a year of taking our clothes off for money—shaking our asses for an extra few dollars and maybe a tip here or there.
I finally managed to get my hair free, shaking it loosely and taking a deep breath. “I give her another month,” I murmured, leaning forward and dabbing at the corner of my eyes where my makeup had begun to smudge.
Eva was all smiles and pep now, but she had no idea that in a few weeks they’d expect more—far more than I think she’d ever be willing to give.
Eventually, selling your body wasn’t enough.
They wanted your soul too.
But at least you could charge extra for it.
What’s fucking left of it.
Laken came around and lifted herself up onto the counter in front of me. She was even less optimistic. “I give her a week. They’ll break her. She’ll go running back to her rich mom and dad, done with her rebellious stage.” She spoke like it was a funny joke, but I bet those words tasted fucking bitter as they fell across her tongue due to the fact it was most likely what would happen.
“I fuckin—”
“Kenz,” Aaron, the club manager, announced as he stepped into the doorway. His hair hung loosely down to his shoulders, parts of it covering his face and making him look like some wannabe rock star from the eighties. “You have a customer in room four. Two minutes, and I’ll walk you down there.” He slipped away as quickly as he had appeared.
For a second, my hands gripped t
he arms of the chair I was sitting in, my fingernails digging into the wood. Then I relaxed, feeling that numbness wash over me. It was practiced, purposeful, and addictive. I didn’t have time to feel anything. This was just my life.
This is what it had become.
Looking up, I found Laken watching me. “I hope he’s hot and has a big dick.”
Laken and I both had different reasons for being here, but neither of us were really given an option. She’d quickly become my best friend, the one person in this world I could trust to have my back and not judge me for what I’d become.
Turned out that hell wasn’t as bad with a friend.
A smile tugged at the corner of my mouth, and I leaped down from my chair, throwing her a wink as I walked toward the door shaking my hair out as I did. “Wouldn’t that be a nice change,” I called over my shoulder.
Aaron met me in the hall, walking silently with me out the back of the club and down the back stairs to where the private rooms were located.
Room number four.
I took a deep breath reaching for the handle and turning it. Quietly, I stepped inside and pressed my back against the door.
It clicked shut.
It was that sound which allowed me to switch off. The second that door closed, this became a job. Nothing more. I went to work, I did what was expected of me in order to get paid, and then I went home. The same as any other occupation—fucking men in the small back room of a classless strip club just happened to be mine.
“Nice to see you again, Kennedy,” the man in the chair greeted, his tone deep and smooth.
My stomach clenched. “Crow,” I greeted tensely. It wasn’t often he came down here himself. The strip club was owned by Red Riot MC, and Crow was the club president, but he had people who worked here and kept things ticking over. “What can I do for you?”
I liked to think I was pretty damn confident. You had to be, doing what I was doing. It hardened you, disconnected you emotionally, and forced you to protect yourself physically and mentally.
It wasn’t very often I let a man intimidate me, but Crow—he was a different breed. It was like I was constantly walking on eggshells in his presence. Like one wrong word or move, and he would open up the ground beneath my feet, and I’d fall right through into the fire pits.
“I need to talk to you about your debt,” he explained, his fingers strumming on the thick arm of the red chair which he was seated on.
I licked my dry lips, wishing I’d taken that extra shot one of the girls had offered me at the bar before I’d gone on stage. “It’s not my debt,” I stated firmly, refusing to take responsibility for the fucking shithole my little sister, Brooklyn, and I had found ourselves in a year ago courtesy of my AWOL father.
When my mom died, he didn’t know how to cope. Day after day, I watched him lose a piece of himself, sinking lower into depression and making bad decisions—like getting involved with Red Riot MC. He was a banker, and they approached him to help them hide and move illegal money, promising him a chunk of the change if he did.
It wasn’t until the MC showed up on our doorstep looking for him one day that we figured out instead of helping them, he’d helped himself to their money and run—leaving Brooklyn and me to foot the bill.
The betrayal stung.
Holy shit did it sting.
Crow offered me two options.
One, I strip and pay them part of what I earn until the debt is gone.
Or two, he takes my fourteen-year-old virgin sister and sells her to the highest bidder.
The decision was easy.
Stripping made me a good amount of cash, but it was about six months ago that I started to realize the hole my father had left my sister and I in was far bigger than we had anticipated. And simply baring my body on stage for dollar bills was never going to be enough to pull us out of hell.
Riot was taking close to half of my earnings every night, leaving me with just enough to pay our rent, but not enough to buy food so my little sister had lunch for school or enough to keep the hot water and electricity on.
Which was how I ended up here.
In the back rooms.
Screwing men I didn’t know for a little bit on the side in the hopes of keeping our heads above water, and the club’s eyes and fucking dirty hands off my little sister.
Crow shrugged as he climbed up out of the armchair. His presence suddenly made the room feel a lot smaller. It was intimidating, but I managed to keep my back straight and my chin up. These assholes had already taken too fucking much from me. I’d given up my body, my soul. I wasn’t about to let them break the little bit of pride and self-respect I was clinging to.
He reached into his back pocket and pulled out some papers. They were folded in half. “We both know this isn’t the life you asked for. I get it. It’s not your debt, and you know what, we both should have been able to trust your father. You should have been able to trust he wouldn’t ever put you in this position, and I should have been able to trust he wouldn’t put me in it either. But he did.”
I gritted my teeth.
I fucking hated that he was right.
His words struck the exact nerve I knew he was aiming for. Crow always spoke calmly and collectively, like he was more than just a biker. He was calculated, and he knew how to get what he wanted.
“I have a proposition for you,” he added when I didn’t answer.
I watched him cautiously, my eyes flicking between his face—which told me nothing—and the papers in his hand which pulled my curiosity. The ache inside my chest was so anxious to find another way around this life I was living. I should have found another way. With every word that came out of his mouth, I knew he was slowly backing me into a corner, I knew with each move he made he was playing me.
But I was desperate.
And I was weak.
So I took the papers from his hand even though I knew I wasn’t going to look at them.
“What’s the proposition?”
I should have known better.
I should have known this was a game with only one winner—him.
KENNEDY
I picked at the loose threads on the bottom of my jean shorts as I scanned over the words in the book for the tenth time, and I still had no fucking clue what they said. My nose crinkled in frustration.
Not that it really mattered because the voice of a soft-spoken woman continued to talk into my ear reading the words for me. Technology at its best, especially for someone like me who looked at words on a page and just saw a smear of letters. Though, I liked to try and follow along with the words.
Academics was never going to be my thing. That was the conclusion I’d come to accept since I was fourteen and dropped out of school to look after my mom while watching her slowly wither away and be destroyed by a disease she had no chance of beating, no matter how hard she fought. And boy did she fucking fight.
A door opening to my left pulled my eyes away from the book in front of me. My heart stopped for a second, and it felt like the air had been sucked straight from my lungs. I glanced over, my hands braced on the table, ready to run. The two teen girls walking through the study room door froze when they spotted me and instantly started backing out again. I frowned and shook my head.
I wish kids these days would learn to appreciate their education and stop skipp—
My mind stopped when I realized that through the glass I could see more kids beginning to file in through the large, hand carved mahogany library doors.
Oh shit.
My eyes flicked to the clock that hung high on the wall across the room.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” I cursed under my breath as I leaped from the chair and started stacking my papers and books into a pile. Sweat was already beading at the back of my neck, and as I grabbed the pile of shit on the small desk I’d been sitting at, everything almost tumbled to the floor. I managed to catch them with my shaking hands as I rushed out of the quiet study room, students ducking and diving out of my wa
y as I made a beeline for the front desk.
The loud thud of the books hitting the librarian’s desk almost sounded like a gunshot going off in the almost completely silent building.
Betty jumped out of her chair and scurried forward with an annoyed frown as I ripped the headphones from my ears and tossed them on top of the pile. “Kennedy—”
“I’m late,” I interrupted her as I began to back away.
I could see the way her librarian scowl quickly transformed, her pursed and wrinkled lips falling open slightly before she managed to raise her hand and shoo me away. “Go! Hurry.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat and nodded once before turning on my heel and throwing my body toward the library door. With both hands, I shoved against the heavy wood, my eyes squinting as they protested against the sunlight. That wasn’t going to stop me, though.
My feet flew down the steps leaping like a professional dancer down four flights and hitting the bottom already running. My body ducked and dived around teenagers who were walking the footpath to the library to study from the high school next door. I was usually gone before they even showed up.
I should have been at the bar to meet Crow two minutes ago, and it was going to take me at least five to get there. My body was already aching thinking about how angry he was going to be. Isn’t it funny how your body remembers trauma. How your memories trigger a certain ache or a sharpness—a reminder of what happened the last time you made this mistake.
Mine won’t let me forget.
It’s usually those memories that force me to keep the peace. They remind me to zip my mouth shut when I get the urge to speak up because I’m no use to anyone if I’m confined to a bed for two days.
My legs pumped hard as I rushed around the street corner and barely looked before I threw myself off the curb and across the road to the alleyway on the other side. The rhythmic pounding of my outdated and taped together Chucks against the pavement fought to keep up with the erratic thumping of my heart. I wasn’t out of shape by any means, but it had been a long time since I’d been late to meet Crow.
