Page 2 of Biker's Hostage

By then, it would be too late.

I moved quietly through the streets, my heart slamming against my chest. I still didn’t know if this was a good idea. Deep down, I knew there was no way it would bring my brother back. There wasn’t a chance in hell it would undo the shit that had happened to him. I was already alone.

But I didn’t care. I wanted revenge. And I was going to do everything in my power to make it happen.

I followed her through the dark streets, the cold night air closing in around us as I moved quietly behind her.

Chapter One – Chelsea

“To new friends!” I exclaimed as I lifted my shot glass.

“To new friends!” Star joined in, and the words were echoed around the group as we all tapped our glasses together and then threw back our noxiously strong shots. I pulled a face as the alcohol hit my system, and I saw Lee staring at me from across the bar.

“Hey, careful,” he warned me. “You might need to slow down...”

“She’s celebrating,” Abbey protested as she put her arm around her boyfriend.

“Yeah, exactly,” I shot back as I waved down the bartender to get another drink. “I’m celebrating. You’re not going to get in the way of that, are you?”

“Just tell your dad I tried to stop you,” Lee remarked, and I laughed.

“I’m telling him you brought me a beer the moment I got here,” I reminded him, and he rolled his eyes and shook his head, clearly giving up. He knew there was no way I was going to slow down tonight, and as far as I was concerned, I was just getting started.

It was my first night back around these parts since graduation, and I would be damned if I didn’t have a hell of a good time.

I had spent the last three months up to my ears in my studies, focused on doing the very best I could in my communications degree. When I did something, I never half-assed it, and as the first member of my family to ever go to college, I wasn’t going to screw up this opportunity.

I had worked hard all the way through high school to get into the college of my choice, Atwood Central University, and moved across the state to live on campus for the last few years to complete my studies. I had known since I was young that I would need space from my father and his lifestyle at some point if I was going to establish myself on my own terms, and this seemed to be the best way to do it. Not that I didn’t love my dad. Of course I did, but the Dogs and everything they were involved in... shit, it’s not exactly what every little girl dreams of doing with her life, you know?

Dad had always made sure that I knew I had a home here in the Dogs. He’d started working for them before I was born, when he’d found out that my mother was pregnant with me. She'd made a break for it pretty much as soon as I had come along, and that was the last I had heard from her. He had been left to raise me all by himself. The Dogs gave him the flexibility and the money to make that happen, and he had been a sworn member for as long as I could remember. Lee, Chuck, Jax, the whole group—I had grown up around them, and they were family to me just as much as he was.

But I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t a part of me that was distinctly and disturbingly aware of everything they did. And I didn’t exactly love that part of my father’s life. I knew that he wasn’t a bad or a cruel man or an evil one, but I still... I knew people were scared of them. Scared of the dogs. And I knew they had good reason to be. I had heard stories, caught snippets of battles that had been fought just out of my range of vision, and honestly, it scared me, knowing what my dad was involved in.

The longer I spent away at college, surrounded by normal people, the starker the contrast between their lives and mine had become in the process. How could it not? I mean, I had spent my childhood hanging out at biker bars, holding on to my dad as he drove us through the streets to our tiny apartment after a fight broke out and I had to be evacuated before they started pulling guns. The girls I shared my dorm with, they were sweet, normal, and they’d grown up in this quiet, comfortable suburbia that I knew nothing of.

A few times, I had experimented by sharing the stories of what I had been through growing up, and they had practically freaked out. And that wasn’t even the heavy stuff. Shit, if they knew the truth, I was sure they would have been horrified. They just didn’t get it. My father loved me, of course he did, and he was just doing everything he could to make sure I got the life I wanted.

It was all he’d ever known, growing up with a father in a gang himself. He didn’t know how to make his life work outside the confines of this business. Sure, he could see it wasn’t exactly the kind of life he wanted for his daughter, but he had never learned the skills to do anything else. What else could he have done with his life that would have provided for me? As far as he was concerned, this was the best he was capable of.

I glanced over toward my father, and he flashed me a grin. But as he got out of his seat, I noticed him wincing. Not the first time since I had arrived home, though he tried to hide it from me. He just couldn’t keep going at the same pace he had been all this time, and when he ran out of steam, I didn’t know how he was going to be able to support himself. I didn’t want him to feel like he couldn’t rely on me for support, but I needed him to know that I had a different life in mind than the one he had been living all this time.

“You have to go out tonight,” he had insisted a few hours before we’d arrived at the bar. I shook my head.

“I’m tired, Dad, I don’t know…”

“If you think I’m going to let my daughter go without celebrating her graduation, you’ve got another thing coming,” he’d told me firmly. “I want to show you off, Chelsea. Come on…”

I had been hoping to stay home and start piecing together my next steps.

I was going to start a business. That was my plan. An advertising firm. I knew it wasn’t going to be easy, but if there was one thing I had learned from my dad over the years, it was how to hustle, and I was going to use every inch of that knowledge to get exactly where I needed to go. I would build a life outside of the criminal world. And, sure, I would never forget my roots, but that didn’t mean I had to be tied down by them, right?

And my roots were exactly what I was getting back to tonight as I spent some time at the newly rebuilt Kennels and caught up with all the guys. And their new girls, too. It seemed like everyone had been settling down since I had last seen them. Star, Jax’s new girlfriend, had welcomed me with this huge hug, and she’d been by my side all night, buying me drinks, celebrating my graduation, quizzing me on what college had been like. From what I heard, she’d never had a chance to go herself, but I hoped she would one day. It sounded like something she really wanted to do.

And, yeah, I was a little tipsy tonight. Maybe more than a little tipsy. Being surrounded by all these people, it was hard not to let my guard down a little. And hell, I wanted to have a little fun. Nothing wrong with that, right?

I still hadn’t gotten it out of my father exactly what had happened to the Kennels that had stood before this. There had been some kind of attack on the old place, and that had left it in ruins. But it had been rebuilt on the same spot, and this place was better than ever—well, the floors were a little less sticky, at least. The atmosphere was still the same. A far cry from the dive bars I’d been frequenting at college, but in a good way. Plenty of the people I’d attended classes with would have been terrified to even set foot in a place like this, but it felt like home to me. I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

As the night wore on, I felt my eyes starting to droop. The move back to my dad’s place had left me tired. He wasn’t out tonight, begging off to rest up after he’d helped me move all the boxes into my old room, and I wasn’t going to complain. I loved my dad, and he was far from controlling, but he didn’t want to see me getting drunk with my friends tonight. It wouldn’t have suited him. I had left this place his little girl, and coming back to it as a grown woman might have been a little much for his brain to take.

---