Page 18 of King

Was it possible? Yes.

Was it likely? Hell no.

Who the fuck would want to impersonate a President of a motorcycle club? Even I knew that was suicide. And Czar didn’t peg me as the suicidal type. On the flip side, King wasn’t the only one claiming he was the real President. His whole band of merry misfits were saying the same damn thing.

It was one thing to call King crazy, but the whole club?

The odds of that were astronomical.

Chapter Six

Bailey

It was almost two o’clock when the bell over the front door chimed. Leaving the storage room that I just spent the last hour rearranging three times, I walked out to find a familiar face. A face who promised me I would never have to see again. I hadn’t seen him since I left home all those years ago. Every horrible memory I had after my mother died, this fucker had a hand in. My bitch of a grandmother only rivaled his vicious nature. Two peas in a pod, both of them made my life a living hell.

Quickly looking over at Scribe, who was snoring softly, I faced one of the banes of my existence as I quietly seethed, trying not to wake Scribe. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

“Watch the way you talk to me, missy,” he growled, then frowned, looking over my shoulder at Scribe. “Who’s the freak?”

“My new assistant. It’s his nap time. Talk quietly.”

“We need to talk.”

“How did you find me, Ray?”

He didn’t answer me. Instead, he got right to the point. The one and only trait I liked about Ray. As my grandmother’s youngest son, Ray was nothing more than a strung-out drug addict. In and out of trouble from the moment he could walk, he did nothing in life that didn’t benefit him. The man never held a job, moved from family to family and fucked anything. The man had more than likely populated half of the small shit town I was from, and he was Jamison’s biological father. “I need money.”

“I’m not a bank.”

“You will give me the money girl, or I will tell the bitch where you hid Jamie.”

Jamison Bailey was my cousin. My only legal blood relative I gave a damn about. Born with mental deficits after being denied oxygen at birth, Jamie never got the services he needed, thanks to our grandmother. She would rather spend Jamie’s disability checks on herself than take care of her own grandson. When Jamie became too much for her to handle, she turned him over to the State, who institutionalized him. I made myself a promise when I left that when I could afford to get Jamie, the care he needed, I would. It took some doing, but I petitioned the courts to make me Jamie’s legal guardian. When I had those documents in hand, Dog and I moved Jamie to a facility in Arizona where Jamie was currently staying. He was finally happy and getting the proper care he deserved. There was no fucking way I was going to let this motherfucker disrupt that. “You can’t be that fucking cruel.”

“Not my problem. You want the retard to live. Give me what I want.”

I fucking hated that God damned word. If there was any way to rid that word from every motherfucking dictionary on the planet, I would. People like this ignorant fuck made my skin crawl.

“I have custody of him, dickcheese. You even try to move him. I will have you arrested for kidnapping and extortion,” I challenged. I meant it too. Jamie was the only real family I had left on this planet I cared about, and I would fight till my last breath to protect him.

No one fucked with Jamie.

No one.

Standing my ground, I knew what to expect from this bastard. He was all talk with a nasty meth addiction. All he wanted was his next fix. Hell, my former family was all about their fucking drug of choice. Whether it was alcohol, pharmaceutical or homegrown, they all lived for their next high. They were all trash in my book. Not fit to walk this earth. The sooner the drugs killed them, the better.

“I think you best leave,” I heard Scribe clearly say from behind me. Looking over my shoulder, I saw he was still in the same position, eyes still closed and breathing normally. He gave nothing away. When Ray grabbed my arm, that’s when I realized that my laid back, boy band loving hippie friend was more than he claimed.

One minute I was in Ray’s clutches, the next Scribe was out of his chair and Ray was against the brick wall with a knife to his throat. “I warned you. You didn’t listen.”

“I ain’t saying shit!” Ray shouted as I heard the back door slam open. In the next instant, King and the man he called Priest walked into my shop, heading straight for Scribe and Ray.

King smirked as he took a seat to watch the drama and declared, “Knew you were going to be trouble, Cupcake.”

Scribe moved aside as Priest grabbed Ray, forcefully turned him, slamming him face first into the brick wall of my shop. Quickly handcuffing him, he jerked Ray off the wall, then proceeded to frog-walk him out the back of my shop.

“Get your God damned fucking hands off me!” Ray shouted, cursing Priest who only replied. “That’s ten Hail Mary’s for taking the lord’s name in vain, asshole.”

When I heard the back door slam shut, I turned to King, who was now reclining in one of my chairs, eating an apple. “Wanna talk now?”

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