Blizzard (The Brotherhood Journals #1)
Read Blizzard (The Brotherhood Journals #1) Online
Authors: Addison Jane
Addison Jane
Blizzard
The Brotherhood Journals
The Brothers by Blood MC
Addison Jane
Copyright 2016 Addison Jane
All Rights Reserved
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to real events, real people, and real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, organizations or places is entirely coincidental.
All rights are reserved. This book is intended for the purchaser of this e-book ONLY. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system, without the express written permission of the author. All songs, song titles and lyrics contained in this book are the property of the respective songwriters and copyright holders.
Editing by
Swish Design & Editing
Formatting by
Swish Design & Editing
Proofing by
Fiona Dreaming – Proofreading & Formatting
Cover design by
Kari at Cover to Cover Designs
Cover Model –
Drew Truckle
Cover Photographer –
Max Ellis
Back Cover Model and Photographer –
Mandy Hollis
Cover Image Copyright 2016
All rights reserved
For my mum and dad. You never stopped believing I could.
Kaylene Osborn, Kimberly Osborn and Amo Jones - To the three girls who have kept me sane during this book and never stopped believing in me. I love you girls. You know you have true friends when you’re freaking out and they aren’t afraid to tell you to shut the hell up and get on with it. You girls have had my back through everything, and despite you all living across the damn ditch, I just know this friendship is going to last for a long long time.
Sarah Maree – Woman, where would I be without you? I can’t believe I found a friend so amazing, and caring, and beautiful inside and out. Thank you for just getting me.
My mum and dad – I love you guys so much. I can’t believe so much has changed in less than a year, but you guys always believed that I could do something amazing. And now I am.
To my beautiful baby girl – Sometimes things are hard. But I love you so much and we get through it together. I hope I make you proud, because I am so proud of you.
My amazing group of betas – You guys have supported me throughout this book. Your feedback is so valuable to me and has helped me to mold my story.
Andrea and Caroline – You girls have been with me for so long now I’m surprised you’re not sick of me! But I guess even if you were you can’t get rid of me that easily. Bahaha. Thank you Andrea for letting me borrow your family name, I hope I made you proud!
Nicole – Geez woman, you are so amazing! I would have lost my mind by now if you hadn’t been there to take some of the pressure off.
Adam – Thanks for having my back and doing what you can to help. You don’t know how much it means to me.
Drew Truckle – My muse and one of the kindest guys out there. Thank you for making this cover so perfect.
Max Ellis – Thank you for giving me the perfect picture to represent my man!
Kari from Cover to Cover Designs – you always blow my damn mind with these covers. I have no idea how you can see the picture in my head and put it down so perfectly.
Mandy Hollis – If I could, I would use your pictures for every single cover. They always portray so much heart and passion.
To all the authors out there who have taken the time to befriend me – I love that we can support each other and grow together.
To all the readers – There’s not much to say, but thank you. I can’t help but smile everytime I get a message or a comment. You guys are the reason I write.
I threw back the rest of my beer. It had gone warm and the feeling of it slipping down my throat was less than pleasant.
My face twisted and I signaled to Ham—one of the club prospects—to bring me another. He eyed me carefully, but I shot him a glare that shut his mouth pretty quickly and snatched the new bottle from his hand.
I was numbing my body.
It seemed to be a common theme for me at the moment. I wasn’t completely oblivious to my brothers’ worried glances. I was usually the life of the party—cracking jokes and stirring shit up.
This is what fucking happens when you make shitty choices and don’t follow your instincts. You get shit on.
I watched as my president curled around his Old Lady, Chelsea, kissing her passionately and not giving a damn about who saw. It was good for all of us to be able to relax and not worry about whether someone was going to shoot us down or blow us up.
We’d had the Italian mafia riding our asses for the last few months. Not knowing where or when they were going to strike had us all on edge.
Chelsea had been in their sights and as hard as we tried to protect her, in the end, the devil was closer than any of us had anticipated. One of Chelsea’s closest friends and roommate, Rose, had been playing us the entire time.
I felt a small ache in my chest at the thought of her.
Rose hadn’t only wormed her way into Chelsea’s life but mine also.
I knew the attraction was there from the start, but she consistently fought against it. The playing hard to get act was always a turn on for guys like me who could usually get any girl, anywhere, to spread her legs with ease. Turns out, I was just an unwanted distraction in a mission to hurt my president’s Old Lady.
A mission that she fully succeeded in.
Chelsea was on life support for days before she finally took a breath of her own. And even then it was all touch and go.
Rose’s father, Marco DePalma had punctured Chelsea’s lung and we had made it just in time to rush her to the hospital. But by that stage, her brain had been starved of oxygen, and it severely affected her ability to talk and use her body.
Rose disappeared and Chelsea was left with weeks of physical therapy, fighting to get back to the exercise addicted girl she was before.
Her whole life had been turned upside down all because we chose to trust someone who, in the end, stabbed us all in the back.
It wasn’t my first battle with betrayal and I was beginning to question my ability to tell friend from foe. With Rose, my mind was so clouded with want that I couldn’t see all the signs that were now like massive beacons.
My phone buzzed in my pocket and Kev’s name flashed across the screen. I frowned and headed for the side door of the clubhouse as I flicked the answer button.
“Yeah?”
“Come out to the gate. You’re gonna want to see this,” he said cryptically, hanging up before I even had the chance to process what he’d said.
I dropped my once again empty beer bottle into the large bin as I headed past it. The front gate was less than one hundred feet from the clubhouse, so I just strolled out there.
The gravel crunched under my heavy boots and my body felt almost like it was floating due to the amount of alcohol I’d already consumed since I sat down at the bar just over an hour ago.
It felt good and I started contemplating dragging one of the club girls away after this in an attempt to get some of the sexual tension out of my body. The shitty part was that every time I’d tried I imagined her face, Rose, staring straight back at me. Even in my fury, I wanted her more than I cared to admit.
I stepped through the gates and as soon as I spotted her I shook my head, thinking it was just another trick the booze was playing on me. But when she turned to look at me, I knew she was real and standing right in front of me.
My heart raced and I had to stop my body from running to her and wrapping her up tightly. She looked broken, her eyes sunken in like she hadn’t slept in weeks and her already slim body much smaller than I remembered.
I squared my shoulders. We watched each other for a moment, she pulled on her long dark hair, her nerves showing. It was one of the things that had attracted me to her. Rose had always been strong, I could feel it and see it when we’d first met, but when she was around me, she melted. The hard exterior was gone. It was like when she was in my presence it calmed her. I liked that I had such an effect on her body and mind.
I gritted my teeth, fighting through all my other emotions and drawing on the one that would disguise all the others—anger.
“Didn’t do enough damage already? Back for more?” I spat.
I watched as she took the hit from my words, her body curling in on itself protectively.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered so quietly I almost couldn’t make it out. “I-I just came to apologize.”
Her left arm was covered by a dark blue cast which she rubbed at as she spoke. Like it gave her some kind of confidence to say what she needed to say.
I tried to remind myself that we weren’t the only ones who were hurt during our war with her father. Marco DePalma was one seriously fucked up individual. His younger brother Anthony ran the DePalma family business. They were one of the most powerful Italian families on the east coast and had their hands in all kinds of illegal activities. Marco was angry that the family business had been passed on to his younger sibling and had gone all kinds of crazy, killing their father and framing our club for it.
Marco’s plan to bring us down and kill Chelsea had fallen through when we had informed his little brother of what he’d been up to.
Rose had taken a lot of punishment from Marco. He’d manipulated her into thinking she needed to prove herself in order to be regarded a part of his family. And with her mother passing away, she felt like they were all she had left. He beat her, tortured her and in her eyes left her with no other option.
What she didn’t see was what Chelsea and I were offering her. More than just friendship, but family here at the club.
The thought made me furious. Family was more than just the blood that runs through your veins. It’s who has your back in times of crisis. It’s who is willing to stand beside you when you’re facing the firing squad. It’s finding a group of people who’ll love you and support you unconditionally. It’s something we were willing to offer her, but that she’d refused to take.
“Because that makes it all okay, right?” I growled, frustration building inside of me. “Chelsea only just got out of the fucking hospital. We almost lost her. She can’t even walk or talk right. It could take months for her to get back to where she was.”
Her hand went to her chest and I watched as she swallowed back the tears that were building in her eyes. “I shouldn’t have come,” she whispered, turning away and looking like she was about to make a run for it.
But the asshole in me wouldn’t let her have the satisfaction of getting away with what she’d done. I wanted her to feel the pain that I was feeling. I wanted her to feel the way my heart ached when I thought of her. I wanted her to hurt just like I was.
I was selfish.
“You play the victim well. We all believed it. Chelsea was ready to throw down for you. So was I, but it was all fucking bullshit.” I took a step forward.
She spun around and I saw it. The fire in her eyes that I thought was gone. The spitfire was still there inside her, and I couldn’t help but feel excitement build in me. I wanted her to challenge me. I wanted to see that fire burn because then I knew it wasn’t all just an act. There was something real about her.
“I was a victim! Don’t stand there and think because of all this that you know what I’ve been through, the shit I’ve fought through.” Her breathing was heavy and tears began to stream down her cheeks. “You have your family, Blizzard! You have a clubhouse full of brothers and people who’d stand beside you in the blink of an eye. I had no one—”
“You had me,” I crowed, moving closer to her. I wanted to pick her up and shake her. I pounded on my chest, right over my heart. “I was there… Chelsea was fucking there. We had your back, and you still turned around and fucking played us.”
She pulled at her hair as she cried out, “I had no choice!”
She was falling to pieces in front of me and it took all the strength I had not to pick her up and cradle her in my arms. I understood that she’d felt pressured, that her father had forced her hand. But I’d given her so many opportunities to come clean—Chelsea had cared for her, taken her to the hospital when her father had gone too far—but she hadn’t taken them and now she’d made her bed and she was going to lie in it.
“We all have a choice. You made yours.” I spat on the ground ready to end this conversation and walk away.
We both stared at each other, her with tears streaking her cheeks and me with a forced amount of venom and disgust in my eyes.
It wasn’t long before a car pulled up to the curb behind her. She knew it was there, and I instantly knew who it was.
My body went into self-protective mode. I knew there were a couple of my brothers at the gate behind me, but I’d stepped out into the open, chasing her as she had retreated.
She checked over her shoulder as the car doors opened, the wind whipped around her, blowing her hair across her face. My fingers twitched, itching to pull it back and tuck it behind her ear so I could see her beautiful eyes again.
“Rosalie, get in the car.” I recognized the boys as they stepped onto the curb and began to walk forward. Giovanni and Ricardo were Anthony DePalma’s two surviving sons.
His eldest son, Kenneth was once a man who I called a brother.
When Anthony had thought that we had killed his father, he sent his eldest son in to infiltrate our ranks in an attempt to destroy the club from the inside out. After almost killing a brother’s Old Lady, we’d discovered who he was and we had taken him out.
We’d been waiting for retribution.
And my gut was telling me that this was it.
Gio and Rico flanked Rose on either side. I could feel the nerves coming from Rico as his eyes moved subtly between his brother and me. But Giovanni stood firm, unwavering in his anger as he stared me down. A handgun hung at his side, his fingers clenched tightly around it.
“Get in the car, Rosalie.”
Her eyes were bright and wide which told me she hadn’t planned this to happen and she was beginning to panic.
She placed a hand on Gio’s chest in a weak attempt to usher him away, but the kid was angry and looking for vengeance. That was all he could see at this point, and not her or anything else was going to stop him.
I pulled my shoulders back, knowing that this was going to go down but not willing to show any ounce of fear. I’d faced worse and I wasn’t going to let this kid think he was about to bring me down. “Just another trick, huh? When will you boys stop using women to do your dirty work?” I taunted, holding my arms wide and inviting him to take a shot.
“No,” Rose growled, narrowing her eyes at me in contempt. She moved, placing her body in front of her cousin. “We’re leaving.”
Gio ignored her, continuing to glare at me over her head. “You took our brother.”
I clenched my fists. Kenneth, or Target as he was known to the club, was an asshole. He treated women like shit, degrading them and hurting them at every chance he got. It made me angry to think that anyone could stand and speak for him considering what he did to my family.
