Page 3 of Under Kid’s Protection

He’d been hesitant to come home to Oklahoma. The state offered him heartache. From his mother overdosing when he was a toddler, to his father dying in his teens. This place had always brought him pain.

He’d never felt freer than when he and his older half brother, Kevlar, took to the road as nomads after the collapse of the Roughneck Riders. Homeless and clubless, they didn’t have a care in the world. That existence would’ve suited him just fine, but Kev always needed to belong to something.

Kid supposed he did too. Though not in the same way. Kevlar wanted purpose. Kid longed for a sense of family. His siblings, two sisters and one brother, were all half. They shared the same father. Not that they treated him any differently, but a dark cloud had hung over him growing up as the other woman’s kid.

He didn’t belong. In Oklahoma, that mattered—small-town nonsense.

However, when they left, that distinction disappeared.

When they rolled into Washington State, amid the debauchery of a biker rally, Kev made friends with the Royal Bastards Motorcycle Club—more specifically, Jameson, the president. The rest became history. While prospecting and patching in, Kid found his true calling in art. Monet, an old-timer with the Royal Bastards, took Kid under his wing and taught him tattooing.

Making his passion profitable became his dream come true.

While he would’ve been perfectly content living out his days in Washington, Kevlar had aspirations. Probably because of their dad—the whole firstborn prodigal son thing. Then an opportunity presented itself when Jameson asked for something. No one denied him a request. In the same vein, when Kev proposed Kid join and be his VP, Kid couldn’t say no.

So they came home and walked right into a scorpion’s nest, because of course they did. Returning to Oklahoma, the source of all the world’s headaches, or at the very least Kid’s, wouldn’t be as easy as leaving it.

However, he couldn’t let that get him down. He’d always been a survivor. Giving up wasn’t an option. Just as Kevlar reclaimed their father’s legacy by establishing a club from the ashes of the old, Kid could start his life.

They’d be there for the foreseeable future, and while he was a decent enough mechanic, that wasn’t what he wanted to do. Besides, their father’s old body shop wasn’t technically in their name. It belonged to Remi, his sister, and the Dixie Mafia—the disorganized, organized crime syndicate taking Oklahoma City by storm.

Kev had an axe to grind with their reluctant allies. He blamed them for the fall of the Roughneck Riders. Kid didn’t. Even as a child, he saw the writing on the wall. Their dad was sloppy as hell, and a coup was inevitable. The Dixie Mafia hadn’t put the bullet in their father’s skull. That’d been one of their own—someone they trusted and called a brother. However, they did burn down their clubhouse.

Though, to be fair, they’d done that to rescue their sister, Harper. History was a mess and best left in the past. Kid appreciated what the Dixie Dudes did for his sisters while Kevlar and Kid found themselves. Someone had to watch over them in Kid and Kev’s absence.

Even more so, for what the Dixie Mafia did upon their return. They didn’t have to help Kevlar and Kid with the Bloody Scorpion problem. That was none of their business. Yet they’d shown up. Whether their alliance was born out of obligation to Harper, who’d been banging one of their guys for years, or because of the sweet deal Kevlar offered them wasn’t the point. They were honorable men who stuck to their agreements, and as such, Kev got an old lady.

But he wasn’t the only one to walk away with a prize.

Kid wasn’t sure what to call what he’d gotten out of all the commotion. A place to stay? Okay. He supposed he could say that. Though sleeping on the couch and paying the bills for someone he wasn’t fucking was an odd arrangement for sure. Especially when Vanessa was more than willing to have him shack up with her.

Not all of their brothers from the Roughneck Riders were shitheads. There’d been a few good eggs. Hitman had been one of them. While Kid and Kevlar had been on a run the weeks things went down, Kid liked to think Hitman wasn’t a part of overthrowing Snoopy, their dad.

Which was why when Kid saw Hitman’s sister at that Scorpion party, he had to take action. Hitman would’ve done it for him if Remi was in trouble. Watching over Hitman’s sister was the least Kid could do.

While they may not wear the same patches today—mostly because Hitman was worm food and died in the fire that ended the Roughneck Riders—they had when he was alive. So, for Kid, that meant they were still brothers, and he’d never turn his back on a brother or the promise he made to him.

3

Carrie

Walking out of her therapist’s office, Carrie pulled her phone from her purse. She’d graduated from individual sessions to group over the last eight months. With two meetings left, her outlook had shifted to a more positive one, better than she had even before all of this.

While blaming herself for what happened hadn’t completely gone away, she wasn’t crippled by the trauma she’d experienced anymore. Her nightmares were manageable. Panic attacks no longer left her curled into a ball, crying for hours. Enrolling in self-defense courses and having her own personal biker bodyguard at home gave her a sense of power and safety.

Balance and security were her new norm. She was in a good place. Taking a deep breath, she scrolled through her contacts until she found the one she wanted.

The time had come to get her life back. Being a reclusive hermit wasn’t her style.

Bringing her phone to her ear, she reached for her door handle as it unlocked. “Hey Suzanne, it’s Carrie.”

She dropped into the seat of her sedan, listening to the woman who owned the salon where she worked greet her and ask how she’d been.

“I’m okay,” Carrie said as she pulled the door closed. “A long road, but I think I’m ready.”

“Are you sure? You can stay part-time. I know your clients are asking for you, but you shouldn’t rush things. Your chair will always be waiting for you,” her boss assured her.

Carrie grinned, appreciating all the support she had never realized she had. The only silver lining to being drugged and raped by several bikers was discovering how many people cared about her. She wasn’t alone.