DAMON: A Bad Boy MC Romance Novel (15 page)

A
storm was descending
on Miami. Everyone knew it. It wasn’t a metaphor. The storm was as real as anyone who could feel it in the air.

D
amon watched
the greying skies from the gym, where he was getting in his last bit of practice before the real thing. The skies were biblical in their roiling terror. More shades of grey than he ever thought existed. He clicked his jaw a few times, felt the old ache of a bad fight lingering there. It was one of his weak points. It was a bad weak point to have. A bad jaw practically begged to be broken. But if Curly found his way there, managed to land a hit on Damon’s jaw, he’d just fight through it. He’d done it before, fought through much more in fights where he cared far less.

Tricia watched the storm from her car, parked around the corner from the gym where she’d followed Damon. He’d taken a cab. She’d slipped out after him. She didn’t know why – there was nothing she could do. But she wasn’t going to go sightseeing, either. If this was the only way her man –
her man
– could see his way to happiness, she wanted to be there to see him get it. Or to soothe him when he didn’t. She still wasn’t angry. She was still just sad.

She was close to the ocean, and she saw how the storm churned up the sea into choppy, angry waves. The beach was abandoned. Even the sand looked wrong. She rolled down her window for a moment, let the electricity crackle over her cheeks. “
For whatever we lose, like a you or a me, it’s always ourselves we find in the sea,
” she thought, some remembered line, and wished she’d thought of it when Damon was at her side.

S
he thought
about how gently Damon touched her sometimes, and how hard he pushed her other times. She chewed at the end of a strand of hair, an old habit revived from its grave. She rolled the window up and thought about a movie she’d seen once, about a party trapped on an island by a storm. Then she thought about how nice everything felt after a storm had passed.

K
ennick watched
the storm from the driver’s seat, where he kept a steady pace towards Miami. They broke through Pompano Beach and into Fort Lauderdale. If they were lucky, they’d be there in less than an hour. But the storm looked like it would make them unlucky.

I
n the back
, Kim and Ricky stared out opposite windows, and Mina sat with her knees nearly touching the divider between the driver and passenger seats. She had a hand on each knee, her green eyes dead set ahead. Cristov ground his teeth in the passenger seat. He’d told Ricky not to come. Just like Kennick had told Kim not to come. But they’d known from the start it was a losing battle. They should never have told the girls at all.

N
o one talked
about how ugly the storm looked. What would be the use of talking about it? It was coming, whether they wanted it to or not.

J
enner didn’t know
about the storm. He was locked up tight in the back of an unmarked van, and had been for days – at least, it seemed like days. He knew that the few times he’d seen daylight, the sky had looked like morning and then afternoon and then morning again. They’d chosen to bring him along, after all, instead of trusting him with the few young recruits left behind at the clubhouse.

H
e was as much
a prisoner as he’d ever been, but he was closer to freedom than he’d ever get. The variables, though – they were a nuisance.
What if
’s spiraled through his mind in a dizzying array. He had all the time in the world to consider each and every one of them, too.

T
he men driving
the van stayed a safe distance behind the bikes up front. They wouldn’t crowd their brothers in the Miami traffic. They knew where they were going. They worried about the storm, though. Riding in the rain was a bad time. Their numbers were small enough without adding this kind of risk to it all.

R
oper rode forward
, towards the clouds, towards the storm, not caring about what conditions he’d have to ride through. He was going to get revenge for Rig. He was going to show that gypsy fuck and his inbred family what happened when you fucked with the Steel Dragons.

C
urly Gottlieb glanced
out the window. He saw the storm, grunted at it. Another day, another fucking thunderstorm. He hated Florida. But it was cheap, and there were enough scumbags that he didn’t feel like he stood out, walking down the street. He fingered the switchblade sewn into the waistband of his shorts; the threads would give easily when pulled. At the right moment. Always at the right moment. Curly needed to trust himself to find the right moment. He needed the money. That was all he cared about.

S
lowly
, all the parties began to converge. The location of the fight was not the center of the storm, as poetry would want it to be. It was actually quite a ways south of the center of the storm. But life and poetry rarely converge. And when they do, that’s when things are at their most dangerous.

T
ricia watched
the door to the gym until she saw Damon emerge, then started the engine. She kept her distance as she followed him through the strange streets; he kept checking his phone, presumably for directions, which meant he didn’t notice the car moving just a bit too slowly a block or so behind. She hoped that he wouldn’t make any sudden turns, and to her relief, he didn’t. She followed him until he turned down an alleyway beside a boarded-up building with no signage on it.

The other side of the building had a pull-through for cars. She turned down it, saw a parking lot stretching out behind the building. There were plenty of cars there, so Tricia felt confident speeding up and pulling into a space, hoping that Damon wouldn’t pay it any mind. He glanced in her direction as she parked, but nothing registered. He was focused on the fight.

Tricia, for that matter, was too focused on watching Damon enter through the back door to see the car pulling up beside hers. She was still looking in the opposite direction when she opened the door and began to slide out; one foot had just hit pavement when she finally noticed the five sets of eyes staring at her.

“What the…” she said.

“Where is he?” Cristov asked through the rolled-down passenger side window. “Where’s that dumb meathead fuck?”

Ricky, in the backseat, leaned forward and gently smacked the back of Cristov’s head.

“What are you doing here?” Tricia asked, one hand still on the door of her car. “How did you…”

“It took a lot of calls, and a lot of money, for us to find you guys,” Cristov said, opening his door and getting out of the car. “Where’s Damon?”

Tricia rose to meet him, watching as Kennick, Kim, Mina, and Ricky all piled out of the car, vaguely reminiscent of clowns – minus any semblance of jolliness. She didn’t get a chance to answer Cristov’s question before Ricky lunged at her, wrapping her in a skinny-armed hug.

“We were so worried,” Ricky said. “You can’t just go gallivanting off into…”

“Ricky,” Tricia said, returning the hug. “I’m sorry you were worried.”

She pulled away, though, and looked her friend dead in the eye.

“But I
can
just go gallivanting off,” she said. “I’m an adult, not a pound puppy.”

Kim joined the two girls in their embrace, pulling Tricia away from Ricky to hug her.

“You have to tell us
where
next time,” Kim said. “That’s what Ricky means.”

“Alright, alright,” Cristov said, growing more agitated by the moment. “She’s safe, she’s fine, great. Damon’s not, though. Where is he?”

“What do you mean Damon’s not?” Tricia said, her tone sharpening, looking at Cristov with her arms still around Kim.

“This is a set up,” Kennick said, stepping in front of Cristov. “Whoever Damon’s here to fight is on the Steel Dragons’ payroll, and he’s going to fight dirty. Damon doesn’t know, right?”

Tricia’s eyes widened, her jaw falling slack. She shook her head; she couldn’t imagine that Damon did know. Steel Dragons. Those men. Those men who’d…

She swallowed her fear. She wasn’t the one in danger this time. Damon was.

“So where is he? We need to get to him before he goes out there and gets himself killed,” Cristov said.

Tricia’s stomach felt like a cold, icy pit. She’d had a bad feeling about this fight, but for far different reasons.

“He went in the back,” she said, pointing to the metal door that Damon had knocked on and then disappeared into.

“Let’s go,” Cristov said, pushing past the small crowd and stalking across the parking lot, Kennick quick on his heels. Tricia made to follow them, but felt Kim’s hand on her arm, pulling her back. Mina was following Kennick, but looking back over her shoulder at the three women.

“We should let them deal with it,” Kim said softly. “They know how to deal with him best…”

Tricia shook herself free, smiled softly at Kim.

“I don’t know about that, Kim,” she said. “I don’t know if that’s true anymore.”

She trotted off behind Mina, leaving Kim and Ricky to look at each other in surprise.

“Fucking gypsy magic,” Ricky said, shaking her head slowly. “How do they do it?”

“If you figure it out, let me know,” Kim said, leaning back against the hot metal of the car. “We can bottle it, make a fortune off love potions.”

Cristov banged on the metal door, relentlessly. Kennick watched Tricia approach, wondering what had happened between her and his brother on their long trip down the coast. If you gave him three guesses, he’d be right on the first try.
Good
, he thought,
if we can’t get through to him, maybe she can
…

“I’m going around the front,” Mina said, backing away from the door. “If we can’t get in through the back…”

“Be careful,” Kennick warned, not entirely comfortable with the idea of his little sister walking, solo, into an underground fighting crowd. But she was already around the corner and gone. There was still no response from the other side of the metal door, despite Cristov’s unrelenting pounding. He shouted Damon’s name to punctuate each bang, his fist reddening at the same rate as his face. The storm was almost on top of them, a strong wind now blowing stray papers across the parking lot.

“Did he tell you what this was all about?” Kennick asked, turning to Tricia. She opened her mouth, feeling compelled to tell the truth. Kennick had that way about him that inspired honesty. But she knew the story wasn’t hers to tell. She shook her head.

“I was just along for the ride,” she said, looking away quickly. Kennick narrowed his eyes, sensing her dishonesty, but just at that moment, the door opened. Cristov nearly fell forward into the dank, sweat-scented room on the other side.

“Damon,” he said as he moved forward, Kennick and Tricia at his heels.

“No,” Mina said from the other side of the door. “I still don’t know where he is.”

They were in a locker room, a small one.

“I looked for him in the crowd, didn’t see him,” she said. “But I did see something else. Come here.”

“How did you get back here?” Tricia asked, thinking that this was a pretty crappy organization if anyone could waltz into the back rooms.

“I’m good at sneaking,” Mina said flatly, leading them towards the far door. She cracked it open just enough that Kennick and Cristov could see through it to where she pointed. “You see those men?”

There was a crowd of ten burly, angry-looking men in leather vests crowded around one corner of the makeshift ring.

“They’re wearing Steel Dragons cuts,” she said, closing the door again. “We shouldn’t let them see us. But they’re here. It’s for real. Jenner wasn’t lying. Also, the fight is supposed to start in like two minutes.”

“Jenner? Isn’t he that guy who…” Tricia began to speak, confused. Damon had told her about Jenner. Was he suddenly trustworthy now? And still, fear clawed at her stomach. Steel Dragons. The words were like poison to her sanity.

Her question was cut short as the door swung inward; the Volanis siblings were blown backward by the massive shape that stalked in.

“What the fuck are you all doing here?”

Damon’s body seemed larger than usual, his work at the gym paying off in bulk. And his eyes were certainly bigger than Tricia had ever seen them as he looked from face to face.

“What are
we
doing here? What are
you
doing here? You said you were done with this shit and…”

Cristov lunged forward to meet his brother; Cristov was smaller, it was true, but not that much smaller.

“How the hell did you find me?” Damon asked, interrupting Cristov’s tirade; his eyes moved to Tricia, narrowed, a scowl crossing his face. “Did you tell them? Did you tell them, Tricia? You promised…”

“I didn’t,” she said, her tone more angry than pleading. “I didn’t say shit. They came here on their own. And we better be fucking thankful they did, because you’re going to get totally screwed out there. It’s a set-up, Damon.”

“What? What the fuck are you talking about?”

“She’s right,” Kennick said, now moving between Cristov and Damon. He was the smallest of his brothers, his life spent training for leadership rather than battle. If it came to blows, Cristov was the only one who would stand a chance against Damon, having sparred with his brother since they were teenagers. But if Damon was going to listen to anyone, it would be Kennick – or Mina.

“Listen, we got some intel on where you were,” Kennick went on. “The Steel Dragons set this up. Or, they had a hand in it. That guy you’re about to fight, he’s been paid off to fight dirty. I don’t know if he brought a piece, or a blade, or if he’s just gonna go hard on the nut-shots, but he’s not supposed to let you leave the ring alive. They want your blood, Damon. Didn’t you see them out there?”

Damon didn’t answer the question, but the quick glance of his eyes downward answered it for him. Cristov stiffened, but Kennick silenced him with a look.
He saw them, and he was going to do it anyway
, Tricia thought.
That’s how bad he wants it
…

“Who told you?” Damon asked, shaking his head. Tricia recognized the slow acceptance in his eyes, along with a sort of sorrow, a terrible crush as he realized that the fight he’d been waiting his whole life for would never happen now.
Good,
she thought from some deep place in her mind.
It would never have made you happy, Damon…

And now he’ll never learn that on his own
, she thought, wincing inside at the pain in his eyes.

“It doesn’t matter who told us,” Mina said from the side.
They know he’d never go for it if he knew it came from Jenner
, Tricia thought.

“Stop being a stupid prick and come back with us,” Cristov growled behind Kennick. Tricia noted the way his hands fisted, his chest heaved. The man was all fire and rage. That was Ricky’s lover. That was the man who’d saved her once. And this was the man that Damon brought out in him.

“You don’t understand,” Damon said, shaking his head. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t care. Now that I know about it, I can prevent it. I need to fight. I need this fight…”

“We need you,” Mina said, stepping forward. “We need you a lot more than you need this.”

Damon looked at his sister, eyes softening.

“Please,” Tricia said, standing off to the side. “Damon, listen to them. Please.”

He looked at Tricia, and his jaw went slack. His shoulders slumped. She thought she’d never seen him so broken, so sad. It made her heart feel like shattering.

“Fine,” he said, finally, looking down. “Let’s go, then.”

Kennick and Cristov stepped to the side as Damon pushed past them towards the back door. Outside the other door, the faint sounds of a discontented crowd reached them. Damon was at the back door, pushing it open, when a man swept in through the front door.

“Where the fuck do you think you’re going?” the man said, pointing to Damon, who didn’t turn. “I got a crowd out there that wants blood, and fast. We had an agreement…”

The back door slammed shut.

“Agreement’s off,” Cristov said, turning to the red-faced man. “Damon’s not fighting. Whatever he owes you…just send us the bill, huh?”

“What? What the fuck do you mean he’s not fighting? I need him to fight, goddammit, I need him, Jesus Mary and Joseph…”

They left the man cursing and blubbering behind them, all feeling relieved – and yet, at the same time, heavy-hearted. Things didn’t feel finished. The storm was still coming. Damon had given up – for the first time in his life, perhaps, he had yielded.

There would be something owed for that, they were sure.

And when they stepped outside, into the first real slough of rain, they saw what payment was owed.