Page 28 of Girth (Marked Skulls MC 1)
It was still strange to hold Lewis’ daughter in my arms, out in the open like that. I could feel the surge of adrenaline in my veins. This would take some getting used to.
Lila giggled as she looked up at me, and we knocked our foreheads together, just as the doors of the bar were thrown open.
“Lewis!” a voice shouted and we all turned our heads to see. It was Marcus one of the MC members I had been introduced to before.
He looked like he had been running. His shoulders were heaving, he was out of breath and his eyes were wild with fear and rage.
“What’s going on?” Lila exclaimed and my first instinct was to hold her back and stop her from going any closer to the door.
Marcus was rushing towards Lewis now, who was staring at the man. We were all expecting bad news.
“It’s Fred. He’s been shot!” Marcus said.
Lewis walked around the bar counter, glaring at Marcus. He was obviously the kind of man who had a tendency of shooting the messenger.
“What the fuck happened? Where is Fred?” Lewis growled and Marcus’ eyes darted fishily around the bar.
“At the front of his house. Hugh got there, to take care of the scene. The Dark Legion did another drive-by shootout, like the one they attempted on Lila,” Marcus said and his eyes sought out Lila in the crowd, who was standing huddled up with me. I could sense her body stiffening with fright.
“Fuck ‘em. Fuck!” Lewis growled.
“Where is he shot? Have they taken him to hospital?” Lila was crying now, and I tried to hold her close to me. I knew that Fred was like a father-figure to her, and I respected him too. Marcus turned to us and drew in a deep breath.
“They got him in the heart. They’re taking him to the morgue,” Marcus said.
Fred was dead. They’d fucking killed Fred. This was war.
THE END
Turn the page for a sneak peak at the next book in the series, Rodeo which releases on June 6th!
They call me Rodeo, ‘cause I was made for ridin’.
When a member of our MC turns up dead, I know exactly who did it.
But when I show up at the witness’s house to confirm my suspicions, she tells me something I don’t wanna hear.
It wasn’t the MC I thought. It was someone else.
So now we have two enemies. And I have to keep her safe from both.
Because she’s beautiful and fragile.
She needs someone like me to take care of her.
And I do, all night long.
Things usually get complicated when I try to rope a girl.
But this level of complicated?
This is a whole new thing.
Chapter 1
Rodeo
Fred was dead, and Marcus didn’t know anything else. We were all in shock, but I had charged right at Marcus, pushing him up against the wall of the bar. He had his hands up in defense, and was struggling against my grip on him.
“I don’t know anything else, man. This is all I know!” he screamed.
“Fuck! How did this happen?” Lewis was yelling behind us, and I heard Lila burst into tears.
“Who told you this? What the fuck do you mean he’s dead?” I was barking right at Marcus’ face and he was shaking his head.
“Little Will. He saw the cops. He said Fred was being carried out on a stretcher!” Marcus yelled back.
“The cops got there first? Fuck! Fuck!” Abe was growling. I could feel waves of rage washing over me as I kept Marcus pinned to the wall. He had given up struggling to get away from me. He knew I was stronger.
“Rodeo! Let him go,” Lewis said, in a calm and subdued voice behind me, but I was seeing red.
“What else do you know? Tell me what else you know!” I barked and some spittle flew out of my mouth and landed on Marcus’ face. He shook his head, his eyes were bloodshot.
“I don’t know anything else. I know whatever Little Will told me. I swear!” he yelled back.
“Rodeo!” Lewis called out to me again, and this time, I released the pressure of my hands on Marcus’ arms. He slid away from me the moment he got the chance and I ran a hand through my hair.
“How is this possible? How did they get Fred?” Abe was pacing around the bar, while Girth had Lila in his arms and he was consoling her.
Fred had been like a father to us, especially to Lila and me. I had nobody before I had Fred. I didn’t even have the MC before he pulled me out of the life I used to lead. He was the one who introduced me to the Marked Skulls. He changed my life, he saved me; and now he was dead.
“I’m going to fucking kill him,” I hissed through gritted teeth.
“Was it the Dark Legion?” Abe asked and Marcus shrugged his shoulders.
“I don’t know man,” he replied.
“It has to be!” Lewis roared and when I looked at him, I could see the rage in his eyes too. Lewis and Fred had been best friends. Fred was Lewis’ right-hand-man, the MC’s vice president.
“When they realized that they can’t get to my daughter,” he continued and swung his head around to look at Lila who was still in Girth’s arms, “they decided to take out one of us.”
“I’m going to fucking kill him. I’m going to hunt him down and kill him, whoever this motherfucker is,” I growled and Lila burst into another fit of tears.
“I can’t believe this is happening. I can’t believe Fred is gone,” she blubbered, while Girth held her tightly. Lila was like a sister to me, I cared about her the same way I would have cared about my family if I had one. I was glad that she now had Girth in her life, so I didn’t have to worry about her.
“Where was he going? Where was he?” Abe asked, turning his heaving shoulders towards Marcus again. Marcus gulped before he spoke. He was clearly getting the wrong end of having to be the messenger.
“Don’t know. All Little Will said was that he was found on the corner of Shelby Street and 42nd, in front of some apartment building,” he replied, just as the doors of the bar burst open and Hugh Ashland rushed in.
He was a young beat cop who had long been working with our MC. He looked up to Lewis and Fred and helped cover up any shit that our MC got into. He was breathing hard when he came in and I charged at him next.
“What the fuck is going on, Hugh? Where have you been?” I growled at him and Hugh clenched his jaws.
“He got shot. He got shot by a drive-by shooter,” Hugh said, walking in towards us. The color had drained from his face. Fred had left his mark on a lot of people’s lives. He was a calm and composed man full of wisdom, who had seen the best in a couple of street-kids like me. Hugh used to admire him too.
He looked apologetic now as he came to a stop in the middle of the bar.
“What else do you know, Hugh?” Lewis asked him and he breathed heavily as he looked at each of us.
“All I know, all anyone knows at this point is that there was a single gunman on a bike and he got Fred right in the chest as he rode by,” Hugh said and there was another burst of tears from Lila. She was uncontrollable in her shock. A couple of weeks before this, she had been in a similar situation when the Dark Legion were trying to get to her to get to us. They wanted to teach Lewis and the rest of us a lesson for dealing weapons in their territory.
I clenched my jaws, fisted up the palms of my hands and tried to control the rage that was bubbling up inside me. We were a small MC, smaller than the Dark Legion and any of the other big players in the city but I wasn’t going to sit back and do nothing when Fred had been shot and killed. I wasn’t going to cower away in fear.
“So, there’s nothing else? We don’t know who exactly shot him?” it was Girth who spoke up now, and Hugh shook his head. Then slowly, he turned to look at me. Everyone knew the relationship I shared with Fred. Hugh narrowed his eyes at me before he spoke.
“But there is a witness,” he said.
Want more? Rodeo comes out on June 6th!
Chapter 1
Knox
“The fuck are they doin
’ now?” I asked.
“They’re knocking on the damn door again, and I don’t like it,” Grave said.
“What the hell did they think they were gonna be doing? Shoving us out of our own territory?” Mick asked.
“What do we do from here?” Rock asked. “Anyone got any ideas?”
The Black Saddles were known for their shitty maneuvers and their pushy tactics. They knew where the territorial boundaries were, but they were startin’ to blur the damn lines. We kept to ourselves and we expected them to do the fuckin’ same, but they weren’t havin’ it. They wanted our territory enough to posture for it, and multiple warning shots had been fired off over the past couple of weeks. We’d chased them out of more alleyways and broken up more fights on our own damn town than we’d ever had to do before, and I was gettin’ damn tired of it all.
“This supposed to be some kind of damn mission? Or are we pow-wowwin’?” Brewer asked.
“The Rebel Skulls don’t pow-wow,” I said. “But you’re startin’ to get on my damn nerves.”
“We’re supposed to be doing surveillance,” Mick said. “So… what do we see?”
“A bunch of pussy assholes who don’t wanna adhere to boundaries,” I said.
“So… a bunch of Graves?” Rock asked with a smirk.
Grave slapped him on the back of the head, almost knockin’ the man off his damn bike.
“Settle down, kids,” Brewer said. “We don’t wanna get too loud. I see some of them up ahead.”
