Starting Over (4 page)

balances are needed man, the same as any corporation that’s well organized. The club

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Starting Over by Ryder Dane

goes more modern and runs like a business in the National level, the chapters gain

respect and learn by the example we project.”

Race found himself liking War, even if the man had just threatened to beat his ass

or kill him, whichever he figured the situation called for. It was fair enough as far as he

was concerned. They wanted the same results, for Lucifer’s Breed to become united

and still continue to live as free people without fighting and fucking with selling and

manufacturing drugs.

“Okay, say I bite, I take the bait, remember something yourself, I don’t fear you, and

if you get too fucking proud of your position, and start shit that tarnishes that position,

you
will be the one with me at your back ready to do what needs to be done, you got

that?”

In answer, War poured their glasses full and raised the remaining shot glass, Race

raised his, and they shot the whiskey and drained their glasses of beer. They left when

the pitcher was empty, and River found two twenty dollar tips on the table when she

went to clean it off.

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Starting Over by Ryder Dane

Now that her goal had been realized, it was time for her to leave the area. She

wondered what Maisey would do now that the men who’d hurt her and taken her life

away were dead. The entire deal was wacked as far as she could tell. She wished her

little comrade wel , but it wasn’t likely the woman would leave. She had nowhere to go

now, and from what River understood, she had very little money to live off to begin with.

She walked into the bar and gril the next day and saw the owner’s wife trying to

mop the scarred wooden floors on her hands and knees. The woman was past sixty,

yet here she was scrubbing the floor as if her life depended on it. River bent down to

get the old girl’s attention and saw such misery on the woman’s face that she took the

brush from her fragile hand and raised them both up to their feet. She held her in a tight

embrace and the woman let loose her grief.

Five minutes of cries and sobs had soaked her shirt, but she held the woman until

the worst of the storm had passed, before asking, “What happened?”

“Darnel had a severe stroke last night, and he almost died. He’s paralyzed on his

entire right side, and I’m scared.” Dena sniffed, and drew away from River. “I don’t

know how to run the bar, and if they let him come home at all, I’ll have to be with him.”

Well hell
, how could she abandon the nice old woman now? She came in early

today to give Darnell her two weeks notice, and she knew as certain as the sun would

shine that she would stay on and help.

Three months later…

The bikers were throwing a party, and she was bringing the housewarming gift from

Double D’s.

In the past weeks she had taken over managing the bar, she had actually enjoyed

herself changing things up. The music was a good mix of old and new, and she hired

Maisey to work as the kitchen assistant. The girl now had a set of brand new teeth that

she showed off every time she could find a reason to smile, and had moved out of the

trailers that the bikers had set up until they relocated into the old winery almost directly

across from where the old clubhouse had been located. Today was the day that the

little woman worn her new prosthetic eye to fill in the space that had been vacant for so

long, and she looked beautiful in River’s opinion. More importantly, Maisey felt

beautiful. She’d cried once the eye was in place, and only stopped thanking River once

she’d been told to shut it.

“You’ve more than earned it, my friend. I love the hair too. Stella did a great job

streaking it with that beautiful shade of blue.”

Maisey was at the bar today supervising the cleaning and making sure the crew

they’d hired to clean the exhaust blowers and kitchen ceiling didn’t help themselves to

the liquor or anything else. Since she’d come to work for Double D’s, she avoided the

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Starting Over by Ryder Dane

Breed members like the plague. She mostly hid out in the kitchen when one of the

brothers showed up, and River understood and let her get away with it.

The housewarming gift was a case of whiskey and a keg of beer, five gallons of

potato salad, and thirty loaves of bread for the barbequed meat Kink had told her the

club was providing for their guests. The best part of the giving was that the bar’s logo

was on the stickers that she’d put on everything she was bringing. It was good

promotion for the bar, and tax deductible as advertising. The Breed were good

customers and she planned to keep them that way.

She had to admit to herself that knowing she might see the two handsome bad

asses that had been frequently coming into the bar to eat dinner caused her heart to

speed up and her nipples to harden when they walked in the door.

Race was handsome, six foot three or four inches tall, with chocolate brown eyes,

and the man had serious muscles clearly visible under his cut. He began wearing a

new patch on the front of his cut a week ago that stated President, Mother Chapter.

His friend, War, now sported a Vice President patch, and he was perhaps an inch

taller than Race, but clearly the men worked out or did some heavy type of lifting to

keep the muscles so defined. War had blue eyes and she liked to imagine that those

eyes followed her when he was in the bar.

It didn’t matter to her which man spoke to her, she was getting used to changing her

panties in the employee bathroom whenever they were around. It sucked because she

had no intention of getting involved with any man for a while at least, and definitely not a

biker at that. She’d found her hormones had other ideas, but she told herself she could

control them. Darnell would get back on his feet and want to resume his position at the

bar, and it would be time for her to move on.

The place was hidden behind the small woods she remembered so well while she

had stalked the place to find vulnerable spots. It was a huge old winery that had been

closed for ten years now, so the township was probably glad to have it occupied, even

by a group known to frighten-the-daylights-out-of-John-Q-Public. The taxes would be

minimal because of the building being obsolete, and would cost a small fortune to have

demolished, so everyone won in the deal when the Breed bought the place for pennies

on the dollar.

The group had been pretty quiet since the fire, and she wondered if things had

changed so drastically, or if they were just waiting to see if further attacks would begin

once they’d settled into a new spot. As far as she was concerned, her enemy was

dead, and according to Maisey, the people who killed Tuck had been killed in the

explosion. Wolfman had enjoyed a lingering pain-filled death, and her only regret was

that she hadn’t stuck her knife in his guts to deliver him into hel . The funerals were

held at one time, and she didn’t bother to attend. Knowing she would have been smiling

and clapping her hands while his brothers grieved, kept her at the bar that day. Over

the weeks, she had heard all about the funeral, and the vows of revenge from men who

paid lip service to loyalty to the scum of the earth.

She’d become a sick bitch one night, she took a drive and saw the markers forming

crosses, and several tributes in the small patch of ground the ashes of the dead had

been buried under several tons of fil dirt and grass seed. She’d stopped the truck and

gotten out to walk around the spot. The brilliant idea popped into her head, and she

grinned as she pulled her jeans down and pissed in the middle of the square plot. That

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Starting Over by Ryder Dane

had been the last time she’d gone near the place, and thinking about how satisfied she

felt after pissing on Wolfman’s grave stil made her smile.

As far as she was concerned, it was over, and in a few months she would leave this

place and not look back. Her revenge was complete.

She was still smiling in remembrance of that night as she pulled the van into the

parking lot of the new clubhouse. The Prospects that looked inside the rear of the van

had obviously called ahead, because there were three young men waiting for her and

they began unloading her cargo as soon as she cut the engine.

The lot was filled with bikes and muscle cars. A dozen pick-ups were lining the

back row, and she ended up parking next to a deep sapphire blue dual cab that had a

lift kit under the body that was so tall, someone her size would need a ladder to get into

the cab. She couldn’t imagine any man tal enough to open the door and step into even

with the silver running boards that covered the rocker panels.

She walked through the lot and admired the bikes, wishing she could bring her old

scoot from Kansas to enjoy while she was here. She had the Norton, Indian, and the

Harley with the suicide shift in storage back home. They had belonged to Dallas

McCormick, and now they belonged to her. Her Sportster was in storage with them. It

wasn’t fancy, and it wasn’t the top of the line, but Tuck had given it to her to learn to ride

on, and she wouldn’t give it up.

The front doors were wide open and she walked into the building, immediately

feeling the cooler temperature, and shivered. There were people everywhere, and her

height was hindering her progress, but eventually she found herself at the bar in what

used to be the Wine Tasting room, and climbed up on a stool to see the crowd of people

at the gathering. Big men. Big hairy men, short men with chains hanging from their

pockets to their belt loops, club patches plastered on almost every cut, and rockers

listing the chapter they were from were represented.

She saw at least three different club patches, so the Breed had invited affiliates to

join in the celebration. The wisdom of that decision was yet to be determined to her

way of thinking. A loud squeal from the back corner of the room drew her attention, and

when she final y saw what was going on, she wished she hadn’t seen or heard a thing.

One of the passarounds named Noodle was getting a spanking. It wasn’t so much

a playful slap on her ass, as a true ass whipping. Two bikers had her bent over a table

with her knees on the chair and her bare ass exposed while they took turns smacking

her ass cheeks with their hands. River had spoken to the woman a few times when she

came into the bar, but didn’t actually know her. She was a tough woman with an even

worse vocabulary than some of the bikers who came to town.

River turned back to the bar. Watching the woman getting off on being spanked

wasn’t her idea of a good time.

Goody was behind the bar with Yo Yo and a Lucifer’s Breed brother that she didn’t

know. His cut had the name Flats embroidered on the chest. She liked most of the

women she’d met that were part of the club, but seeing the woman they cal ed Queenie

stomp into the space where Yo Yo and Goody manned the beer flippers made her

watch the evil Bitch closely. The woman was pretty, but she was also a wannabe

Queen Bitch, and the others sneered at her when she pretended to be busy while they

conversed. Anyone watching could see she was filing away every bit of information she

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Starting Over by Ryder Dane

heard, and from the narrowed eyes Flats was staring at the woman with, River wasn’t

the only one that noticed her blatant eavesdropping.

Yo Yo finally saw her sitting there and waved. She yelled over the noisy voices that

she’d be right there, and River nodded. She wasn’t in a hurry, but she planned to be

gone from the place once the sun began to set. By that time most of the bikers that

drank would have a good buzz going, that’s when shit usual y went downhill fast. She

wanted to be long gone before that happened.

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Starting Over by Ryder Dane

Winning the coveted numbers one and two spots at the top of the Breed hadn’t

been easy. They faced stiff opposition from some of the chapters that had been