Fox (The Road Rebels MC Book 4) Read online

  He made it clear to me that he wanted better for me, and eventually I came to understand that he was right. I didn’t want to be a lawyer. But I did want to own my own business one day and I did want to help people.

  When I enrolled at the University of Las Vegas, I was still a bit lost. Unsure of what I wanted to do since all I’d ever known were boring English classes and my father’s lawyer jargon when talking about work. But when I took a remedial Psychology class, I was hooked. I devoured every class I could and eventually declared my degree in Clinical Psychology, then went on to specialize in Marriage and Family Therapy for my graduate studies. I became so passionate about it that I realized the University would allow me to enroll in graduate school while finishing my undergraduate degree I jumped at the chance. Because of that, I was able to complete my masters in a year instead two. I commuted to and from school for both of my degrees at my father’s insistence, but now it was time for me to branch out.

  And I could tell my father was struggling with it.

  “Furniture’s here,” my father said. “You keep getting the boxes. I’ll get the guys to help me.”

  “You know I can unload furniture, right?” I asked.

  “I don’t want you getting hurt. Oh, that reminds me. You have our numbers on speed dial, right? Keep your phone on you at all times in case you need us. If you get hurt or something in your apartment.”

  “You know if I get hurt, the first thing I’m dialing in 911, right?” I asked.

  “Then us,” my father said.

  I shook my head as I grabbed another box.

  My father was overprotective for sure. He defended a lot of people others would call criminals. But my father believed that the justice system was as complicated as it was for a reason. There were certain things a trial needed in order to convict someone that stood outside of a jury. Those three things were eyewitnesses, DNA evidence, and video footage. My father believed that the reason our prison system was so overcrowded was because too many people were being put away because of circumstantial evidence. He felt that biases were creeping into the courtroom, and it was because of the idea that everyone was guilty until proven innocent.

  Even though our justice system was founded on the idea that everyone was innocent until proven otherwise.

  I looked up to my father for that. For wanting to help those society didn’t want to help. It was where I got my passion for wanting to help others. I saw him do it day in and day out for people society tried to cast out and degrade. I admired him for his fervor for defending these people. For going into a courtroom and being spat on just to demand that they have the same rights to a fair and honest trial like anyone else.

  My father had always been my hero, even if he was a little overprotective.

  “Okay, sweetheart. The furniture’s unloaded. You want me to stay and help you put it together?”

  “Dad, there’s nothing to put together. It all came assembled because you were determined to keep me from buying ‘the cheap stuff.’”

  “Well, the cheap stuff crumbles away too easy. You could sit on something and hurt yourself if it gave out from underneath you.”

  “How big do you think I am?” I asked.

  “That’s another one of those questions, right? The one where there’s no right answer? You and your mother are good at those.”

  I giggled and threw my arms around my father’s neck.

  “Thanks, Daddy,” I said. “For everything.”

  “You’re welcome, princess. Anything for my baby girl.”

  “Mr. Carmichael.”

  “Yes?” my father asked.

  One of the men helping my father haul furniture was standing at the entrance to my apartment.

  “You need anything else? Or you ready for us to take off?” the man asked.

  “Hold on. Can I tip you guys? Can you take tips?” my father asked.

  “No, sir. Against company policy. But if you could fill out the survey we’ll send to your email, we’d really appreciate it, Mr. Carmichael.”

  “Please, call me ‘Daniel.’ And consider it done. I’ll do it once I get home,” my father said.

  “Thank you, sir. You two have a nice evening.”

  “You, too,” my father said.

  “Well, all I have to do is unpack now,” I said.

  “You need any help with that? I could stay a little longer.”

  “Dad, if you stayed any longer you would live here. I’m only twenty minutes from the house. You can stop by whenever you want as long as you give me a heads up. No randomly dropping in on me,” I said.

  “Right. Okay. Well, princess, if you ever need anything-”

  “I know, I know. Your number’s on speed dial,” I said. “Get out of here already. I want to eat my first dinner in my own apartment in peace.”

  “Love you, kiddo.”

  “Love you too, Dad.”

  He kissed me on the top of my head before he left my apartment. The door closed behind him, and I stood around, surrounded by boxes I had to unpack. My three-bedroom apartment was phenomenal. Just the right size and had just enough room for me to have a blowout bash with my friends. I walked into the kitchen and began unpacking, then broke down the cardboard boxes and stashed them in the laundry room.

  As I made my way around my new apartment, my body was growing tired. The day had been long, and sweat was dripping down my back. I moved to the bathroom and unpacked all my things, setting up the shower curtain so I could clean myself off. I smiled as the warm water hit my skin, melting away the sweat and grime from hauling boxes all damn day.

  But when I emerged into the clouded bathroom I now rented of my own volition; I made my first decision on what to do for dinner.

  I was going to go out, get a drink, and unwind from this long day.

  I dried my body off as I made my way into my room. I wrapped my hair up in a towel as I dug through my suitcases, pulling out the first outfit I could find. I pulled on my underwear and hopped into my jeans, gritting my teeth as I worked them up my wet legs. I slipped on my bra, praising whoever invented the front clasp before I grabbed my blouse and pulled it over my head.

  Then, I started digging around for my hairdryer.

  I wasn’t sure where I was going to go, but I wanted to try something new. My father had wined and dined me all my life at the finest restaurants Las Vegas, and Henderson had to offer. But I always wanted to experience the idea of beer and wings. There was something about that combination that was tantalizing, even though I’d never drank beer in my life. It was always cocktails with my friends or wine with my parents.

  Beer was something they never touched, so it was something I never experienced.

  I leaned into the bathroom mirror, now clear of the fog my shower produced earlier and started swiping on some makeup. I had very little makeup that complimented my hazel eyes, but the little I did have gave me a nice look. A little black eyeliner and some shimmering neutral eyeshadow. A bit of highlighter on my cheekbones and blush on my contours. I had a bold red lipstick that highlighted the auburn in my hair as I swiped it on, outlining my lips and sparkling my eyes.

  I was ready for my first night out in Henderson. And the taste on my tongue for the night was beer and chicken wings.

  Chapter 3

  Fox

  As I sat at the bar with my beer in my hand, the smell of the kitchen trapped itself underneath my nose. Usually I didn’t eat the food they made here. I heard it was good, but I never wanted to ruin my appetite with shit like food when they had the best beer on tap in town. But as I kept thinking about Calais and this shit with the KG9’s, I grew more frustrated at my circumstance. The beer wasn’t working to settle my mind so I could figure my shit out, and now my stomach was growling with hunger.

  This night was getting worse and worse by the second.

  “Hey, bartender. Can I get some wings?” I asked.

  “What kind and how many?” he asked.

  “Ten of them. Hot. With lots of
ranch,” I said.

  “Give us twenty minutes. Want another beer?”

  “Just keep those coming. Open up a tab or some shit.”

  “You got it, boss.”

  “Don’t call me that,” I said.

  The bartender slid me another beer as he put in my order for food. I hunched over the bar, my shoulders spreading against my leather jacket. I never went out in public in my leather cut for the club anymore. Not with the clients, I was wrangling and the connections I was making. The last thing they needed to know was that I was part of a biker gang around town. That was another thing assholes like Calais could hold over my head just to keep me under their thumb.

  I wasn’t sure how I lost control of that situation, but I was determined to get it back.

  Either way, I was pissed at myself for getting into the god damned mess. I knew branching out from the club was going to be risky, but I didn’t think it would lead to shit like this. The KG9’s thought I was one of them, and that shit wasn’t the case. Calais thought he could order me around like his newbie cronies in his fucking street gang. But those assholes weren’t anything. I didn’t even know they existed until a client of mine ditched their shit for mine. It was how I met up with Calais in the first place.

  He tracked me down to beat my ass for stealing his clientele, and I cut a deal with him that worked in both of our favors.

  Nothing in that agreement established a long-term relationship. But something must have in Calais’ eyes. Or at least his boss’s. Now, I was expected to deliver on shit I never promised him. I didn’t promise him a long-term relationship. I didn’t promise him an influx of the drugs I was selling. I was a peddler. Just like they were. I wasn’t a supplier.

  And they were treating me like one.

  Maybe that was my fucking fault. Maybe this whole ‘renting their services out’ thing made me look like a supplier. But I made it very fucking clear that the drugs I was running were limited. There was a chance I could go to Snake and Mac and take what they had left of their stash, but with the way the KG9’s were selling this shit out, that would only buy me another month. If I was lucky.

  The only way out of this I saw was to find a supplier of the drugs The Road Rebels were running. Mac had originally set up the relationship, and since then he had been very secretive about it. I couldn’t use the club’s own connection, but I could try to track down another connection for the same drugs. The KG9’s could be very lucrative for me, which would help me keep up my father’s bills and shit. I couldn’t afford to take a month-by-month dive in my income just so the club could get some fucking bars up and running. That shit would take months. Maybe even years.

  I didn’t have that kind of time to wait for money. My father needed that shit money.

  He needed it now.

  Throwing back the rest of my beer, the bartender handed me another one. My wings were set in front of me, setting my mouth ablaze with saliva. I was hungrier than I had imagined as I dove into the wings, relishing how good they tasted. Fuck. These were the best wings I’d ever shoved in my face. I tore through them, slathering them in ranch dressing as my mind continued to swirl.

  If I were going to continue to sell drugs on my own, that would be a way to keep the club out of it. I could keep these two lives separate, I could switch from drug-running to helping out with the opening of our new bar, and that would help me keep my head low. Opening a legal bar would give me more brain power to focus on running my own drugs, establishing connections, and getting back on my feet financially.

  Plus, getting my own drugs to sell meant I didn’t have to rely on the club any longer.

  Right now, how much I sold was reliant on how many pounds of drugs our club had to offload in order to get out of the game. Once I could clear out the rest of the stash I had, that clipped my ties to the club in terms of drugs. That would keep them clean and out of the loop, and I would no longer have to continue lying to them about what I was doing. When Mac asked me how I was selling everything so fast, I told him it was because I was that good. Untapped potential and shit.

  I wasn’t telling him I had established a connection with a local street gang to help me offload these drugs for a small price.

  The KG9’s and their operation could be very lucrative for me, but it all hinged on establishing a connection with a supplier. If I could gain the upper hand and find a way for Calais to make payments to me instead of the other way around, I had the possibility of making more money than I ever did with The Road Rebels. I could see it now. My father in the best care facility in the state. Money in his account to buy whatever he wanted in the stores they had on the facility grounds. A new fucking bike decked out in gold trim and the darkest black anyone had ever seen. Money to blow on women that wanted to fall at my feet and suck my cock.

  Shit. I’d be the talk of the fucking town.

  That was what I had to do. I had to find a supplier, and I had to rework my agreement with the KG9’s.

  “How are the wings?” the bartender asked.

  “Decent,” I said. “The sauce could be hotter.”

  “Then you should’ve asked for ‘hotter.’”

  “You’ve got a sauce named ‘hotter’?” I asked.

  “Yep. We’ve got Chipotle, Teriyaki, Honey Mustard, Medium, Hot, Hotter, Hottest, and Bold.”

  “Bold.”

  “Yep. You gotta sign a waiver for that one, though,” the bartender said with a smirk.

  “Should’ve given me that rundown before. I would’ve gladly signed a waiver for your pussy chicken wings.”

  “Next time you come in, ask for one. Then I’ll watch you cry like a bitch before the ambulance picks you up.”

  I liked this guy. He was good. But it took more than some hot sauce to send a man like me to the emergency room. I might look like a pretty boy to some. In fact, that was how I got my nickname with the club. They called me ‘Fox’ because of my pretty boy face they were all jealous of. If it wasn’t for the sleeve of tattoos running down my left arm and the sleeve of tattoos covering my neck, I could model. I had people who approached me on the street sometimes and asked if I’d be willing to cover them up just so I could model.

  I wasn’t doing that shit though. I was proud of my tattoos.

  It started with my arm. When I was first inducted into The Road Rebels, I went and got our logo tattooed on my forearm. It was my fucking pride and joy. I loved that damn thing. But I became addicted to ink. The way it felt and how it burned. How it changed my appearance and erased some of the scars, I had acquired during my childhood.

  I couldn’t blame my mother for her addictions. Miscarriages were hard. But for her, it was more than that. Thirty-seven weeks and one day, there was no heartbeat. Just a dead child her body was carrying that she would still have to go into labor for. My father stood by her side, holding my dead sister in their arms as they tried to find the good side to all that shit. The positive side my mother tried all those years to find at the bottom of vodka and pill bottles.

  She was never the same after that, and as much as I hated her for it, I couldn’t blame her.

  Two things happened that day. The day my sister was born. I learned that life was a shithole and I learned that getting attached to people was never a good thing. My father loved my mother, which meant he was incapable of helping her. He fueled her addiction instead of trying to pull her out of it. The pills made her smile, and the vodka made her loose, and it was her smile that helped him heal from the death of my sister.

  From having to bury their stillborn child.

  But then, the addictions turned my mother mean. She threw things that at me and left marks on my arms for the rest of my teenage years. My father’s love went from being enabling to being suffocating, and I watched my mother wither in front of my eyes.

  That was my second tattoo. Her birth and death dates when she finally overdosed on her pills.

  Tattoos were how I coped with everything. The pain and the anger and the confusion that sur
rounded my mother’s death. I hated her, and yet I felt sympathy for her. I loved her, and yet I couldn’t stand her. I got tattoo after tattoo that cascaded up the back of my arm, covering up the scars she left on my skin with things I wanted to see. A portrait of her when she was at her best. My parents’ wedding date. Her favorite flowers shaded in all her favorite colors and random geometric patterns to fill in the blanks.

  Covering up the evidence of her tortured spirit helped to cover up the confusion I felt when her addictions took her under.

  “Those any good?”

  The small voice wafted over my ears as I slowly turned my head. I dropped the empty chicken bone into the basket as my eyes raked over the woman sitting next to me. She was gorgeous. Fucking fantastic. Brown hair with red that shone underneath the shitty fluorescent lights of the bar. Sparkling hazel eyes that would look nice staring up from my cock. Jeans that hugged every curve her legs had to boast about and a yellow blouse that teased the luscious tits she had underneath it.

  And those lips.

  Those bold, red lips.

  I could see them making streaks along the veins of my cock as I stuffed her throat full of me.

  She was radiant. The kind of woman I had been hoping to meet tonight. She had this innocence about her, but behind those sparkling eyes, I knew there was a freak waiting to be set free. I bet she was a moaner. A woman who lost control of all her senses when my tongue hit all the right spots. I wondered what her pussy tasted like. How sweet it would be on my tongue after chewing on these tangy wings all night.

  I watched as the bartender approached her, his eyes settling on her cleavage before he looked her in her eyes.

  He better fucking back away.

  Because that bitch was mine tonight.

  Chapter 4

  Harlow

  I pulled into a place called Chester’s. It advertised good beer and great wings, both of which I was looking to indulge in for the evening. My muscles ached from moving boxes and unpacking my apartment, and I wanted to relax. Unwind. Enjoy my first night out on the town as an employed woman no longer living with her parents. For a place with a massive parking lot, there weren’t many people there to enjoy what the establishment was advertising.