Ruined #4 (The MC Motorcycle Club Romance Series - Book #4)

RUINED
#4

THE
MOTORCYCLE CLUB ROMANCE SERIES

By
Alycia Taylor

Copyright
2014. All rights reserved.

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CHAPTER
ONE

OLIVIA

I opened my eyes and it took me a few seconds to
remember where I was. I was back at my uncle’s house. I sighed, I felt like I
was constantly going backwards with my life. I felt like since the day Dax was
arrested that my wheels had been spinning but I never got anywhere. I needed to
get off this crazy ride once and for all and take the route that would lead me
away from all of these people who kept holding me back.

I put on my robe and went out to the kitchen to
start the coffee brewing. I was trying hard to look ahead instead of backwards
but my mind wanted to run over and over what I had lost…which right now seemed
to be everything.

I’d lost Terrance, which was mostly good news.
 
With him, I could at least tell myself I
never really had him. He was nothing but a fake and I knew that I never really
knew anything about him. I felt so stupid when I thought about how I believed
for so long that he only ran parts for his dad and Bull. He helped set Dax up
and he was involved in the drug side of the business. Scariest of all was that
he was the guy they called to bring in the big guns when there was a report of
a member of a Mexican drug cartel running around.

I had been living with a man I knew nothing about
and the fact that I could be that naïve scared me to death. Maybe I should have
been grateful to him for opening my eyes. I wouldn’t trust that easily again,
that’s for sure. Terrance was out of my life for good so I guess I could at
least give myself credit for that one step forward.

I poured myself a cup of coffee and as I poured the
cream and sugar into it, I thought about Dax. When he came to see me yesterday
he seemed like he was upset with me, like I was the one doing something wrong.
Maybe it was only to appease his own conscience. I wasn’t the one choosing
something over him. I wanted to be with him…more than anything. I just couldn’t
keep compromising my own values and beliefs for those men.

I washed my hands of my own father because I didn’t
believe in the way he was choosing to live his life. What was I doing
continuing to pick these men that wanted to lead me right back into it? I knew
Dax said repeatedly that he didn’t want to live the MC life and I wanted
desperately to believe him. But how much more needed to happen before he was
willing to just make a clean break and walk away? Was someone going to have to
pull the trigger the next time a gun is in our face for him to get how
dangerous this quest for revenge had become? He had a choice, revenge or me. He
walked out yesterday. He made his choice and now I had to accept it and move
forward….I had to.

I pulled myself up out of the chair and went to get
into the shower. I had to work and I didn’t have any more time to waste sitting
there wallowing in what should have or could have been.

I showered and dressed in a black and pink Harley
t-shirt and jeans, put on my tennis shoes, pulled my hair into a ponytail and
headed off to work.

My uncle wasn’t working today so me and the new guy
Tyler opened up the shop. He was working in back doing some detailing and
mechanic work and I was working the parts desk. As soon as he had gone in the
back, the front door jangled. I looked up, right into Terrance’s brown eyes.
Damn! I knew I would have to run into him sooner or later since I was working
there, but I was hoping it would be on a day when someone else was working with
me and I didn’t have to be the one to help him.

“Hi Liv,” he said, like I might possibly be happy to
see him.

“I’m surprised you wouldn’t be ashamed to show your
face around here,” I said. “Yet, you just walk in here like any ordinary
citizen.”

“Come on, Liv. It’s just me. I’m still the guy I’ve
always been.”

“And who is that guy, exactly, Terrance? Is he the
guy who pretended to care about me when my boyfriend got locked up, but who was
only looking for the opportunity to get into my pants? Or, maybe he’s the guy
who carries an automatic rifle and busts down doors looking for the Mexican
cartel?”

Terrance looked around the shop like he was looking
to see if there were any witnesses to our conversation. Then he leaned in close
to me….too close and said, “First of all, you should be really careful who’s
around when you say things like that. Second, I was your friend. I wouldn’t
have ever turned my back on you. You chose to walk away from me, remember?”

“After I found out what you did to Dax, remember?”

“I explained that to you,” he said, like it made it
all better. Those guys were all crazy and I didn’t have the time or the
patience for their shit.

“What did you come in here for, Terrance? Do you
need one of those parts you buy in order to cover up what you’re actually
running for your dad?”

“Knock it off, Olivia. I’m serious,” he said. He
actually sounded a little scary when he said it. I guess I should quit thinking
of him simply as an ex-boyfriend and remember who he really was. Proving it, he
said, “I don’t need any parts today. What I need is for you to pass on some
information. Let your new boyfriend know that what he’s doing could have fatal
consequences. If he wants the business to leave him alone, then he needs to
stay out of the business. This revenge crap is going to get him dead.”

“Are you threatening Dax?” I asked him. Just saying
it made my heart pound in my chest.

“No, I would never hurt Dax. I know you and Dax both
don’t believe this, but I still love him like a brother. My father on the other
hand, does not feel the same kind of loyalty. He’s not a guy you want to mess
with. Do you think I chose this life?”

I suddenly felt bad. I knew I shouldn’t have felt
bad for him, he was a grown man. He could choose to do whatever he wanted to do
with his life. But I felt bad for the little boy who grew up thinking so highly
of a father and Bull and the others, only to find out who they really were.
But, that’s when he should have walked away and he didn’t. That’s the guy that
I didn’t feel sorry for.

“No, I don’t think you chose it to begin with,
Terrance. I know how you grew up. But, I also know that you’re grown now and
you continue to choose to stay. Is what your father wants that important to you
still? Or, does he threaten you if you leave? Or, do you just choose to stay
because this mess is your life and you don’t want to have to go out and work
for a living the way everyone else does?”

“I do what I have to do,” he said, in a matter of
fact tone. “Tell Dax to back-off, Olivia. I followed orders and I put those
drugs in his bags. I was willing to do that to save my own ass. I’m not willing
to see Dax hurt or killed. That’s what’s going to happen if he doesn’t leave it
alone.”

“So it is a threat, then?” I asked again.

He looked pissed off and said, “Just tell him what I
said, unless you want his blood on your own hands.”

I didn’t say anything. Terrance looked at me again
for a while like he was waiting for confirmation that I would talk to Dax. I
would, as much as I didn’t want to, but as far as Terrance was concerned, I was
finished talking to him. I watched him walk out of the shop and drive away on
his bike, knowing that I was going to have to talk to Dax.

CHAPTER
TWO

DAX

I woke up in my room behind the bar and thought
about what I was going to do today. I couldn’t do what Olivia wanted me to and
give up my quest to find out exactly who had me set up and why. I felt like if
I did, I’d be telling them it was okay to fuck with my life…and it was
definitely not okay. Even though I wasn’t giving up trying to figure this all
out, I still needed to get on with it at some point. Sleeping in every day in
the back of a bar was probably not going to get me anywhere.

I pulled my ass out of bed and got into the shower.
While I was in there I prepared the spiel in my head that I was going to give
my mom. I had almost three thousand dollars in my savings, but I was probably
going to need three or four times that much to start. I was starting from
scratch, so I’d need money for licensing and all of the equipment. I’d also
need rent and deposit money for a building and probably deposits for all of my
utilities.

I got out of the shower and pulled on a black Harley
t-shirt and jeans. I pulled on my boots and went out through the back to get my
bike. My dad and Bo were in the shop working on a couple of bikes.

“Hey! Decided to get out of bed today, huh?” my dad
asked.

“Very funny.” I grunted.

“Where you headed out to?”

“I need to talk to Mom. Is she at home today?”

“As far as I know,” my dad said. “She was there when
I left. What’s going on with you and your mom?” he asked.

“I just haven’t seen her in a day or two,” I said.

I straddled the bike and I was putting my helmet on
when Bo said, “Missin’ his Mama! Ain’t that cute?”

Bo had something coming for him in the near future…I
hoped.

When I got to the house my mom was out in her garden
again. She had her back to me when I walked out and she had her earphones in. I
knew I was going to startle her, but the little boy in me couldn’t resist. I
went up behind her and touched her on the back. She was on her knees and she
jumped back, landing on her ass and screamed. When she looked up and saw it was
me and that I was laughing, I got smacked in the leg.

“You little punk!” she shouted as I held my hand out
to help her up.

“I’m sorry,” I told her. “I couldn’t resist.”

She let me help her to her feet and then she reached
back to brush the mud off her jeans. When she finished, she looked at me and
said, “What’s up?”

“I just wanted to see my mom,” I told her. She
rolled her eyes like she didn’t believe me.

“Have you had lunch?” she asked.

I grinned and said, “I haven’t had breakfast. I just
got up.” She gave me a disapproving look. “I know. I’m burning daylight.” It
was what she used to tell me and Brock when we were younger and didn’t want to
get out of bed.

“You want a sandwich?” she asked me.

“I could eat,” I told her.

We went into the house and while she went to clean
up and change I sat down and turned on the television. I stared mindlessly at a
game show until she came back in. She had a tray with a ham and Swiss sandwich
on a Kaiser roll, potato salad, a fruit cup and iced tea.

I shook my head when I saw it and said, “It looks
awesome Mom, but you shouldn’t have went to all of this trouble.”

She waved me off like I was talking nonsense and
asked, “What are your plans for the rest of the day?”

“Well, that really depends on you,” I said, taking a
bite of my sandwich. Damn it was good. Way better than prison food.

“What do you mean?” she said, suspiciously.

“I’m still thinking about the tattoo shop thing we
talked about a while back, remember?”

“Yeah, I remember,” she said. “Did you ever finish
the list of what you’d need? I think I only got a partial one.”

“I did,” I told her. “I actually sat down and went
online and priced out things like the tables and chairs and all of the
equipment. There’s a little place right in town that’s for rent. It’s pretty
cheap and I have about three grand left in my savings. So…this is what I think
I’d need to borrow to get started.”

I handed her a piece of paper I had brought with me
with the numbers on it. I ate my lunch and watched her face while she looked at
it. She didn’t look enthusiastic, but she didn’t have a “no way” look on her
face either. After a few minutes, she put the paper down and looked at me with
a serious look on her face.

“Are you still trying to solve the mystery of who
set you up?”

“Yeah, I’m doing what I can to figure it out."
I thought I knew where she was going with this and I wasn’t sure I liked it.

“I wish you would stop that, Dax. You know that I do
my best to stay out of that business of your father’s, but I’ve been around it
long enough to know it’s not safe to cross these guys. They got you put behind
bars for over two years, for what? You don’t even know, which means you didn’t
really do anything. If you keep after them on this revenge binge I really don’t
think they’d hesitate to hurt you…or worse. I don’t believe your father would
have any part of that and if it happened he’d probably be on his own revenge
quest. It would be too late for you. Please leave this all alone and get on
with your life, Dax.”