Page 3 of Biker's Dark Revenge

"You’re a sweetheart, thank you," Taylor told me, giving me a quick hug and then pulling on her jacket and rushing for the door. I grinned as I watched her go and headed over to the radio to turn it up and listen to some silly bubblegum pop to keep me motivated for the rest of my shift.

I mopped the floors, cleaning up the sticky beer spills that the drunken Dogs had left behind, and cleared up the last beer bottles scattered across the tables, dumping them in the trash. I couldn’t help but linger at the spot where Lee had been sitting.

What had been on his mind tonight? I knew it was none of my business, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t a little curious. He always seemed so...reserved, like there was something he didn’t want anyone else to see. Like there was some part of him, some part of him buried deep down inside, that he was worried about giving the rest of the world access to.

But he was second-in-command of the Dogs. What could possibly be under his skin that would warrant that kind of secrecy? I mean, when I think about all the shit I knew the Dogs were involved in, it was hard to believe for an instant that they would let anything get to them. Lee must have been hiding a serious secret...or, maybe, a darkness in his past that he didn’t want anyone to get their hands on.

The truth was so easily used as a weakness in this line of work, and I knew that – you said the wrong thing to the wrong person, and they could twist it all around and use it against you, make you pay for thinking that you could trust them. Lee was probably right to keep it all under wraps, though I wished, just for the sake of my own curiosity, that I could find out a little more about it.

Anyway, I needed to get back to my apartment. I live just a couple of blocks over from the Kennels, and I was already dreaming about how damn good my bed was going to feel when I crashed into it in about a half-hour. I didn’t have to be up till six the next evening, if I wanted to stay in bed that long, and the thought of a luxurious lie-in sounded pretty damn perfect to me.

I grabbed my jacket and slipped it on as I headed out the back of the bar, locking up carefully behind me. The alleyway behind the Kennels was quiet and empty, the air almost eerily silent as I made my way down the sidewalk. After all the raucous noise and conversation in the bar all night, it always felt like a shock to step out into the quiet of the streets.

I started towards my apartment – but all at once, something stopped me dead in my tracks. I felt the hairs on the back of my neck raising up, arching all of a sudden, and I snapped my head around, confused. If there was one thing my father had taught me, it was to trust your instincts. They were usually trying to tell you something.

But there was nobody here. Nobody that I could see, anyway. What was going on? I didn’t usually get paranoid. Maybe it had just been too long a night, and it was starting to throw me off my game.

I shook it off and headed to the end of the alleyway. The silence around me seemed almost deafening, digging in to my skin, warning me of something. Yes, it was usually quieter out here than in the bar, but this kind of silence? Something didn’t sit right with me. Something didn’t feel right...

All at once, I felt a rough sack being shoved over my head. I tried to fight back, jerking my head forward to escape, but it was too late – hands gripped my arms, and the scream I tried to let out just filled my mouth with the heavy fabric of the sack. Shit! I should have trusted my gut...

But, as I was dragged towards God knows where, I knew it was too late for that now.

And my instincts and experience might not be enough to get me through whatever mess I was about to be cast into the middle of.

Chapter Two – Lee

"I’m telling you; we need to go find her," I argued with Chuck, who rubbed a hand over his face and looked up at me.

"It’s been two days," he reminded me. "She could just be busy with her personal life."

"She would have called in," I protested. Chuck cocked an eyebrow at me.

"You know her well enough to make that call?"

I fell silent. I knew he had a point. I didn’t open up to anyone, let alone Liana, the bartender at the Kennels, but when I heard that she hadn’t turned up for a couple of shifts, I had started to worry my ass off about it. I got the feeling that something had happened to her, and I knew I wasn’t going to be able to relax until she was back behind that bar, red hair pulled into the usual braid, those green eyes flashing with amusement as she looked up at me with a smile on her face.

"With everything that’s been happening with Lombardi, I don’t think it’s a risk we can take," I replied, changing my approach. "It’s exactly the kind of shit he would pull. Getting into our space, taking someone who works for us. And Liana..."

I trailed off. I didn’t need to tell him what I was thinking. Liana was a striking girl, and Lombardi used women like her to fulfill all the preferences of his sick client base. He was buying and selling girls across the city, and this new venture of his...yeah, it wasn’t something I was willing to fuck around with. If he had done something to Liana, and I was almost certain he had, then we had to get her out of there. And fast.

"What makes you so sure he’s got something to do with this?" Chuck asked me, leaning back against his chair. He had been distracted with everything that had been going on with his new woman, Abbey, and I got it, I did. But I needed him to give me the go-ahead to get this done. Just to stake out Lombardi’s compound and make certain that there was nothing going on there that shouldn’t be. Of course, I knew his line of work was dark and twisted, but if Liana was involved, we had to get her out.

"Because Liana’s not a flake," I replied firmly. I didn’t know her well, but I knew her well enough to see something steady and strong in her – the way she smiled at the regulars, cracking jokes with them and making them laugh, the way she dealt with the guys who took a shot with her – she was certain of herself, and she wouldn’t have just flaked out on the rest of the staff at the Kennels without a damn good reason. Or without notice.

Chuck eyed me for a long moment. Something in him seemed to shift. The two of us had worked together for the better part of ten years now, since I had stumbled into the Kennels drunk one night and he had seen the state I was in – he'd seen that I needed some kind of purpose, though he had never asked exactly why. He’d just offered me some cash to take care of a job, accompanying a new member of the Dogs on a drop-off, and the two of us had developed our friendship from there.

He trusted me, and I knew I had earned that trust. I worked my ass off in the time that I had been a member of the Dogs, throwing myself into everything he asked of me – at first, it was just to take my mind off everything that had happened with Dina, but as time when on, I felt a sense of duty to these guys. I wanted to do the best by them. I wasn’t going to let them down, I had sworn that much to myself, and I knew there was nothing I wouldn’t do to keep the club on top.

I didn’t normally go against Chuck, I wasn’t that kind of guy – I did better when there were rules around me, something to guide me and keep me in place, so I could focus on what needed to be done and not make rash decisions around it. But, with the way Lombardi had been inching into our territory, I knew we couldn’t risk waiting too long to stake out his compound and check on what was happening with Liana.

Lombardi had mostly kept to himself during the time I had been working for the Dogs, but, ever since Star had joined the club, things seemed to have...shifted. I knew Star’s father had planned to sell his daughter off to Lombardi, and Lombardi had taken that falling through hard. Hard enough that he wanted to buy and sell women on his own terms. He had opened a brothel in the city, a few blocks down from the Kennels, and the place was usually crawling with too many guards for us to get close. I knew none of the girls there had agreed to be a part of that business. He had fooled them or kidnapped them or got them hooked on his product and forced them to work for him to pay back their debts. A good money-making scheme, but I didn’t know how the fuck he could sleep at night knowing he was pimping out those girls to men who wanted to do God knows what to them.

And the thought of Liana being in the midst of that, fuck, it made my skin crawl. Chuck let out a sigh.

"Look, man, you can go out there and stake out the compound tonight," he replied. "But don’t get into anything without the other guys there. If you see Liana, don’t do anything stupid, alright?”

"I won’t," I replied, even though I knew there was no way I could promise that. I didn’t know why, but there was something about her that made me feel...protective. I doubted she even looked twice at me, but she had this kindness to her, this warmth, that made me feel comfortable in a way not many people could. Most of the time, I felt like a coiled snake, ready to strike, ready to make a move and take down anyone who got in my way – she convinced me to put my fangs away, at least as long as it took to get me a beer.

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