Devil's Despair Box Set: Books 1-3
DEVIL’S DESPAIR SERIES
ACE’S REDEMPTION
HAYDEN’S VERSE
TRAVIS’S STAND
A.C. Bextor
Devil’s Despair Series
Copyright
© A.C. Bextor 201
5
Ace’s Redemption, Devil’s Despair Book One
Copyright © A.C. Bextor 2014
Hayden’s Verse, Devil’s Despair Book Two
Copyright © A.C. Bextor 2015
Title ID: 5259850
Travis’s Stand, Devil’s Despair Book Three
Copyright © A.C. Bextor 2015
Title ID: 5419629
This book is a work of fiction. Names and characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
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Other titles by
A.C. Bextor
Vengeance Duet
TRUTH
Tied To You
Devil’s Despair Series
Ace’s Redemption
(Stand Alone)
Hayden’s Verse
(Stand Alone)
BOOK DESCRIPTION
Cherry
Memories alone can ruin you. Fear has a paralyzing effect, and love isn’t always enough to keep you safe.
Ace was the gateway to a freedom I hadn’t known since I was fifteen. He offered his protection from the demons that haunted me, both living and dead.
Although I knew I wasn’t enough to keep him, this didn’t deter my hope that one day he’d love me for who I was, not the broken girl he tried so desperately to save.
In the end, the ghosts of my past found me. Their malevolence knew no bounds, and I was forced to succumb to their will of darkness. Each threat named against those I loved made any escape impossible; choosing my life for theirs became my desolate absolution.
Inevitably, my own weakness and self-doubt became my undoing.
Ace
Emotional ties are sometimes severed. Friendships don’t always endure their hardships, and love offered isn’t always returned.
I was in love once. For me, leaving her back in Ohio was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. For her, moving on with her life that included her son and the man she loved was no less than she deserved - unconditional happiness.
My reasons to bring Cherry home to California were obvious. I needed help with my family, and she needed help staying clean and convincing her parents she was ready to give her son the life he deserved.
It was a perfect plan. However, the best-laid plans often get lost amidst their best intentions.
Cherry fell in love with me, and in return, my love for her acted as the catalyst to her destruction.
Authors Note
: This novel contains material that is not suitable for individuals under the age of 18. Content includes: drug use, explicit language, violence, rape, and other scenarios with content that readers may find offensive. Please use caution when deciding on this book, as every reader has the right to understand the product before purchase.
Ace’s Redemption is the first standalone novel in the Devil’s Despair series. Although the main character of Ace was introduced during the Lights of Peril trilogy, you do not need to read that series in order to follow this one.
DEDICATION
To the readers: Your excitement and support have brought Ace’s story to life. Some of you are looking forward to a happy ending, while some of you wish for him to bleed. Hopefully after reading, you agree that this man finally got
everything
he deserved.
REDEMPTION:
An act of redeeming or atoning for a fault or mistake or the state of being redeemed.
PROLOGUE
Cherry
SECONDS...
Minutes…
Hours…
They create memories that can last a lifetime.
It takes only a moment for a single event to change a person’s life; making them stronger or weaker depending on the circumstance that surrounds its mark at the given time. I think that’s why I used to write so many poems and short stories. I measured their plots twists and turns. It was the only way I was able to control any ending.
Although I had no one else’s to truly compare it to, I knew my life hadn’t been an easy one. I had lived through a lot of sadness and despair during my twenty-one years that I wouldn’t wish on even my worst enemy.
I had little to call my own, but my son was always mine, even when he wasn’t with me. I dropped Decklan off at my parents just five days after giving birth. They agreed I wasn’t able to care for him the way they could. My mom was disgusted with me and my dad was concerned for me, so they did as I asked without objection. There was no way possible I would have been able to raise a child, deal with Vinnie, and try to get clean all at once. The sacrifice I made for him nearly broke me, but I never lost hope that he’d be with me again.
Decklan’s father, my former pimp Vinnie, taught me a lesson in a ‘moment.’ This moment turned into an hour of humiliation and disgrace. I was sixteen and was coming back from working up one of his clients. I had stopped on my way back to pick up some orange juice at the convenience store. I was longing with thirst. Giving head and letting someone come down my throat for cash caused a thirst that I used to believe only orange juice could quench. I still hate the taste of both.
After my stop at the store, I had walked into Vinnie’s posh condo off the strip. He came to me, striding in his sexy and confident way, taking from my hand the money I had rightfully earned. Seconds passed as he counted it, out loud and in front of me; he saw I was exactly $2.18 short. His reaction to this was to beat me without consequence. I had always preferred Vinnie’s rapes to his beatings; the mob man was skilled in his ability to hit a woman.
Vinnie was beautiful - deceptively so, full-blooded
Italian
kind of beautiful. Dark eyes, black hair, Italian suits, shoes, and car; he was everything a young girl dreamed about. I fell for that exact disguise, but it wasn’t tough considering he bought me jewelry, clothes, purses, and shoes. He romanced me, even at my young age. He had me believing he thought I was beautiful.
I was just fifteen when we met. I didn’t finally break free of him until I was seventeen and stole my parents’ car. Reluctantly, leaving my son behind, I drove as far East as I could until I finally felt safe enough to start over. That’s where I met April, also known as Kegs.
Greyson Meyer. He was another ‘moment.’ When he took me from my own home that night back in Ohio, I knew that night would forever change the course of my life. Not so unlike my times with Vinnie, but much worse. Vinnie was predictable and wasn’t nearly as demented. Greyson spent
hours
trying to break me into giving him information I didn’t have, giving me blow, delivering beatings, and worst of all, raping me into submission, only to return me to my miserable life to carry on with even more damaging memories of it. I was used as a pawn in a vicious war between two rival motorcycle clubs, each seeking vengeance against the other. Lights of Peril versus Angels in Hell.
Mark “Ace” Jensen was the light of my life and meant something to me since the day we met. I loved him. I had made no secret of that. As far as I was concerned, if he had ever given me the chance, I would have spent my days and nights loving him how I knew he deserved to be loved. If only he could’ve seen me, well and truly
saw
me for the person I was and let me love
him
for exactly who he was to
me
.
He never understood what circumstance I meant that love to be in, though, and I always knew I wasn’t enough to keep him. My love for Ace was never going to be strong enough to shadow his constant heart-rending longing for Sadey. So many nights I had spent wishing I was her; to look like her, to love and be loved like her, to have what she had in her Peril family. She had Ace. So to me, she had everything.
Sadey Lyons holds Ace’s heart. Distance, measured in miles, won’t change anything; she knows this. As much as she tried not to hurt him, she never could love him back with the same passion and intensity he deserved. There’s only room in Sadey’s heart for one man, and that’s Hem. Anyone who gets in the way of Hem’s love for his Sadey Girl goes into that risking mental torture, heartache, and despair. That’s the kind of life-long bond those two have. It’s epic. The problem was that Ace adamantly refused to see it.
Patrick “Hem” Collins is President of the Lights of Peril motorcycle club, Sage, Ohio chapter. I’ve come to know him as dedicated, brave, and loyal to a fault. He and Sadey have lived a beautiful love story; one that has stood the test of both heartache and suffering. Sadey would never let go of Hem, even if he were no longer living. Her heart beats only for him and his for her.
When I asked Ace if I could follow him back home to California, I was hesitantly worried of his reaction. He looked at me, shrugged, and said,
“If you can cook, clean, watch my sister, help my grandma, and not be a nagging bitch, fine. You’re gettin’ clean first and if you can’t do that, you’re out. Don’t want that life around my sister, so I’m not bringing it home for her to live with.”
There was no way for Ace to have any idea what his words meant to me at the time. No one had ever taken a chance on me before. In his grief, I wasn’t sure if his decision to let me come with him was branched from the heartache of losing Sadey or that he really liked me enough as a person to use whatever skills I had to assist him. Looking back, though, I now know it was because he needed someone there who reminded him of a love he would never have, his Sadey Bug.
I don’t remember the exact ‘moment’ when I decided that enough was
finally
enough. The pain Vinnie had caused in keeping me from my son. The haunting memories of a monster in disguise, Greyson Meyer. The grief I felt leaving my friends in Ohio. Finally, came the last arrow to the chest. Ace’s angered words shouting at me in exasperation that I would never be anything but a lost and willing victim. That was the final assault on my already emotionally damaged sense of self. There was nothing else to do, nowhere else to go, and no one around to care.
Therefore, I died in a ‘moment’, and it’s the last one I remember.
CHAPTER ONE
Five months earlier…