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  REIGN

  –

  Jessica Gadziala

  Copyright © 2015 by Jessica Gadziala

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof

  may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever

  without the express written permission of the author

  except for brief quotations used in a book review.

  "This book is a work of fiction. the names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.”

  Dedication:

  To the bad boys- where would

  romance novels be without them?

  One

  Summer

  I shouldn't have been able to get away.

  That was all I could think as I hauled ass through the underbrush inside the front gate. There was no good reason I was able to slip out unseen. I should have still been tied tightly to the bed. The door should have been locked. There should have been men everywhere. Outside the door. On the roof. Manning the gate. Even though there was a serious hurricane going on. V didn't give a fuck about his men. They could get tossed from the roof and become splattered, twisted versions of their former selves on the driveway and all he would say was he needed the mess cleaned up. That human remains didn't exactly help the curb appeal.

  I shouldn't have been able to get away.

  I checked behind me, the wind too loud for me to hear anything, including men coming at me with guns to drag me back to hell. Then I rushed forward, hit the button, half hidden by a stupid ornamental bush, and watched as the gate slid open.

  Open.

  I was almost free.

  I rushed to the car closest to the gate, my heart wedged so far up my throat I swear I was choking on it. I wrenched open the door, praying, not so silently praying that the keys were in it. The keys were always in the cars. Because no one would ever think of stealing from V. Not if they wanted to live through the night.

  “Please god. Please god. Please god...”

  Yes.

  Keys.

  I jumped in, slinging my soaked hair out of my face, turning the key, and flooring it.

  I didn't look back.

  I couldn't.

  I should have taken some measure of pleasure from seeing the fortress that had been my torture camp, my prison for the past three months slipping away. But I couldn't look. If I looked, the fear would come back. Terrifying. Crippling. I wouldn't have been able to keep going.

  So I kept my eyes forward. I focused on keeping the car on the road despite the wind thrashing into it, despite the rain pelting so hard on the windshield that the wipers couldn't even make visibility an option.

  I just had to keep going.

  As far as I could get.

  Lose the car.

  I had to lose the car.

  But I had no money. No ID.

  I couldn't call anyone. I couldn't rent a car. I couldn't even pay a cab.

  But I would have to lose the car.

  If I stayed in it, I was a target.

  Hell, knowing V's paranoia, the fucking car probably had a locator device thingy on it. So he could know where his men were at all times.

  Shit.

  I could be tracked anywhere.

  The car needed to go.

  Soon.

  I just had to get back to some sort of civilization. Find some all night diner or store or something. Ditch the car. Find someone who would give me a ride. Or money for a pay phone. God, were there even payphones anywhere anymore? I never knew the luxury of not having a cell phone so I had never even thought to look for such a thing. But my cell phone was back at V's. Along with my dignity. And copious amounts of my blood.

  “Think ahead,” I murmured to myself, trying to shake the memories from my mind. They wouldn't do me any good. I lived through it. That was all that mattered. I lived through it and I got a chance to get away. And I had to get away. Because if they found me, if they dragged me back...

  No.

  Couldn't go there.

  I needed to think ahead.

  I could go to the police. I could do that. But what were the chances that they could help? That they weren't in V's pockets? V's very deep pockets.

  No police.

  Where did that leave me?

  I switched on the heat, cold October rain soaking through my thin white tank top and pink silk pajama shorts. The outfit I had been wearing when V's men took me. Three months. Not one change of clothes. Only given the opportunity for a whore's bath in the sink when I was given five minutes to use the bathroom per day.

  So while, yes, the rain was cold and I was shivering, it was the cleanest I had been in months. Months.

  Which was another little piece of freedom.

  It was amazing how much I had once taken for granted.

  Showers. Soap. Toothpaste. Wrists that didn't constantly ache from being bound. A belly that didn't concave from starvation. A body without scars. A soul without them.

  Never again.

  Whatever happened to me, wherever I ended up, I would make sure I never took the little freedoms for granted again. I knew how hard it was without them.

  I passed through a seedy looking town. And when I say 'seedy', I mean that if there wasn't a hurricane raging wild, I was pretty sure I would have been carjacked, raped, and buried in some dumpster somewhere.

  I didn't stop. I probably should have stopped. Lost the car. Found somewhere to hide. Tried to make it on foot.

  But I couldn't bring myself to pull over.

  So I kept going. Turning off into an industrial part of town. Blue collar businesses. Some apartment buildings. The lights all off. Which could only mean a power outage. Great. That was just great. Nothing would be open.

  I kept going. Past some building with high barbed wire fences and no windows. And then things got rural. Like... rural rural.

  Shit.

  Shit. Shit. Shit.

  I should have stopped in that bad area.

  “Think ahead,” I reminded myself. What was done was done. I had to keep my eyes forward.

  Then...

  Oh my god.

  Shit.

  But it was too late.

  Too late to react on a slick road.

  There was something in the street.

  And I was going to hit it.

  I slammed the brakes, trying to turn the wheel.

  Then I hit.

  It took less than one second for the airbag to deploy, slamming my wrists away from the wheel and burning across my cheek, the sound louder than I could have imagined, making my ears ring painfully. But all I could feel was the impact. The jerking of the car backward as it hit. The sounds, sharp, metallic, and crushing over the howls of the wind and the pelting of the rain.

  Okay.

  I was okay.

  My wrists hurt.

  My cheek hurt.

  But I was okay.

  I needed to focus. I needed to...

  “Fuck,” I said, my eyes going huge, my shock-suppressed heartbeat going into overdrive.

  Because there was a light. A headlight. Coming toward me.

  Fuck.

  I needed to go.

  And the car was totaled.

  I reached over, wrenching the door open. Then I saw what I hit. A downed tree. Great.

  But I had to go. The rumble of the bike was getting closer. I had to go.

  So I did. I jumped over the tree and I hauled ass, my bare feet slapping against the ground as I went, my wet body somehow getting wetter. But all I could think of was escape.

  It was them. It had to be them.

  And they were coming for me
.

  I had to keep going. No matter how tired I was. How weak.

  The growl of the bike got closer. Like it had somehow managed to skirt the tree and was coming up behind me.

  Shit.

  I broke my rule, looking over my shoulder.

  I got to see the outline of a man on a bike before I felt myself falling.

  Then I hit. Hard. Down one side, the road burning the skin down my arm and thigh, the impact knocking the wind out of me.

  I groaned, trying to scramble because the bike's motor cut off. And that could only mean one thing. He was coming for me.

  I had to go. I had to get away.

  So I pushed up onto my hands and knees, trying to scramble away.

  “Babe, what the fuck you doin'?”

  Two

  Reign

  Weird fuckin' night.

  I tore out of the compound. Sick of the shit. Sick of the bitches. And the constant nagging feeling that Mo wasn't the only rat. He was gone. Taken care of. Dead. Body buried in the woods where no one would find him. Put there by me. And Cash, my brother. Literally. A blood brother. Not one of my MC brothers. But Cash didn't seem to be carrying around the heavy load. Which made sense. He was vice, I was prez. It was my fuckin' job to carry that burden.

  And I had a feeling we weren't done with the blood spilling.

  And I needed out.

  So I went to the bar around the corner, breaking up some bullshit fight the Mallick brothers had gotten themselves into, had a couple rounds, the hit the road.

  Only to find some bitch running down the road on skidrow.

  Stopped to help her.

  Wanted to fuck her.

  Lost her to one of those Mallick's I had stepped between earlier.

  Felt the unfulfilled desire stab through me.

  But I wasn't fighting a friend for some random hot bitch.

  Then the crash.

  Even over the rain and wind and my bike... I could hear it. The metal crunching, the glass breaking.

  It was no surprise. Out driving in a hurricane was stupid as fuck.

  I drove up just seconds after, the slick silver late model hammered into a downed tree in the road.

  And then the weirdest fucking thing happened.

  The door opened.

  And some bitch ran the fuck out.

  Like I was the devil and she was trying to save her damn soul.

  Why the fuck she would be running from a car accident was completely beyond me, so I followed. Wanted to make sure she was alright. See if she needed to call someone.

  I might have been a viscous, often violent fuck, but I wasn't gonna leave some chick in the middle of the road in the middle of the damn night during a hurricane with her mangled, un-driveable car.

  I pulled around the tree, closing in on her.

  Then she looked over her shoulder at me. And if I wasn't mistaken (and I fuckin' never am) she looked terrified.

  And, as if in slow motion, she fell. Right down on her side. Hitting the ground with a muffled groan.

  I cut the engine and she was up on her hands and knees trying to scramble away.

  What did I say?

  Weird fuckin' night.

  “Babe, what the fuck you doin'?” I asked, going up behind her, looking down at her scrambling body. And I mean body. Girl was fuckin' blessed. Tiny but with a nice plump ass, thin waist, slim legs. Short though. She was short enough to be mistaken for a kid if I hadn't gotten a glimpse of that ass and those hips.

  “I'm not going back,” she said, her voice fierce, but it shook. “You'll have to kill me. I'm not going back.”

  The fuck?

  Kill her?

  Bitch must have hit her head or something in the crash.

  Great. I had a trip to the hospital ahead of me.

  All I wanted was dry clothes and my fucking bed.

  She finally stopped scrambling, moving to sit her nice ass on the wet ground to look up at me.

  Fuck me.

  Okay.

  I needed to remind myself she had a head injury. Otherwise I'd have grabbed her and fucked her right there in the street. Right in the middle of a god damn hurricane.

  She had one of those faces. Those delicate ones. All plump cheeks, soft chin, and big eyes. Big gray eyes to be exact. And her hair was long. And it was red. Soaked and darkened, but you could make out the red. There was no mistaking it.

  She was fuckin' perfect.

  And I had to be a damn gentleman because she might have brain damage.

  Just my luck.

  “I'm not going back,” she repeated, her voice close to hysterical this time.

  “I ain't takin' you nowhere but maybe the hospital. Think you knocked your brain loose in that crash, darlin'.”

  “I don't need a hospital,” she said, eyeing me funny. Like she was trying to figure something out. “And I haven't knocked my brain loose.”

  That last part sounded almost haughty.

  “Well I ain't leavin' you out here in the street so you're goin' somewhere.”

  “With you?”

  “Yeah, babe. With me.”

  “On your bike?”

  Jesus Christ. Was she dense or something?”

  “Yeah. On my bike. See any other vehicles out here?”

  “Where will you take me?”

  “My place.”

  Wait. What? What the fuck? I couldn't take her to my place. That was the stupidest fuckin' thing I could...

  “Okay,” she said, her face looking... relieved? She was relieved to go to my place.

  Seriously.

  Brain damaged.

  Three

  Summer

  Maybe it was a stupid plan. Okay. It was totally a stupid plan. But I was in the middle of bumfuck nowhere next to a stolen car that belonged to a very dangerous man who would do anything in his power to get me back. To get his leverage back. So I needed to get gone. And Tall, Dark, And Deadly was really my only option.

  Tall. Dark. Deadly. And the best looking man I had ever seen in my life.

  It was almost wrong for one man to possess so much beauty. Strong, chiseled jaw, stern brows over stunning hazel eyes. And then there was the body. Tall, lean, but strong. Which he had clad in black jeans and a dark wifebeater, with a leather cut over it. That was it. In the cold October rain.

  Yeah. Everything about him from the boots to the bike suggested he was trouble.

  But he was trouble who offered me sanctuary.

  “Say again?” he said in that rough, deep voice of his.

  “I said okay,” I said, wiping my hands down the fronts of my shorts, seeing blood. What was a little more blood?

  “You're bleedin',” he observed.

  “Yeah,” I said, trying to get to my feet without touching my cut palms on the ground.

  His hand reached down to me, grabbing my wrist and tugging me onto my feet. “I ain't got no helmet.” Great. I got freedom only to have my head cracked open on the pavement during my escape. “I ain't never crashed either,” he added and I found myself nodding. “Ever been on a bike?” he asked, leading me over to it and throwing his leg over.

  “No.”

  “Get on behind me and put your arms around me.”

  And, with that, he turned the bike over and I climbed on. I paused, not entirely comfortable putting my arms around him.

  “Hold on, babe,” he said, then the bike lurched and all my reservations about holding on vanished. I was pretty sure I was holding on tight enough to start burrowing into his skin. I shut my eyes which years of carnival rides told me was the worst idea possible, but I couldn't take the scenery flying by at god-knew-what speed when it was raining and dark and there was nothing to prevent me from becoming some cautionary tale people tell their kids about motorcycles- getting scraped up off the pavement.

  It seemed like we drove forever before the bike idled beside a huge wrought iron gate connected to an enormous penny brick fence. I felt my spine stiffen, too many memories of gates and wa
lls in my recent past. But I had no time to freak out because he plugged in a code, the gates opened, and we pulled through. I turned my head, watching the gate close, praying I hadn't just made the choice to trade one prison for another.

  We drove up a long driveway. No trees. No there was no greenery whatsoever. The entire space was open. A rolling field surrounded completely by the red brick fence.

  The house wasn't as huge as I had been imagining with so much money put into protecting it. It was a one level rustic cabin, all weather-worn wood with a huge porch perfect for sipping coffee on in the morning.

  He pulled the bike up next to the house, under an overhang, getting off, then reached for my arm, before turning and moving to the front door to unlock it. Then he waited, door open, for me to hustle through.

  The inside of the house was, surprisingly, brick. All the walls, the massive fireplace. Everything brick but the floor which was weathered wood that matched the outside. The main house area had an open floor plan. Kitchen melted into dining room which melted into living room. The living room had two big, worn, caramel colored leather couches with a scuffed coffee table around the fireplace. There was a record player in a corner, an egg crate full of vinyls underneath it.

  “Babe, where the fuck are your shoes?” Tall, Dark and Dangerous asked to my side.

  I looked down at my bare feet, looking for an excuse. “Flip flops. They ah... fell off while I was running.”

  His brows drew together like he didn't quite buy it. But he didn't know me well enough to know I was lying.

  “I'll grab a towel,” he said, walking toward the hallway past the fireplace.

  I felt myself nod though he was already walking away from me. Curious, I moved further inside the door, glancing over at the kitchen, cut off from the rest of the room by a brick island. The counter tops were butcher block, the appliances stainless steel. The dining room was a few feet from the island and...

  Holy shit.

  Holy. Shit.

  What the fuck did I get myself into?