Ryker (Kings of Korruption MC Book 1) (7 page)

I pull in a deep breath through my nose.
 
I can’t even think of going through Smokey’s things right now.
 
I just nod.
 
“Thanks man.”

“No problem.”
 
He takes a swig of his beer and looks around the room.
 
Swinging back to me, a wide grin splits his face.
 
“Gonna miss seein’ some of them hot fuckin’ nurses every day, I must admit.”

My chest tightens.
 
Charlie.
 
Am I ever going to get that girl out of my head?

Jase keeps talking.
 
“You see that tall one with the short blonde hair?
 
Ellen?
 
Fuck me.
 
Girl has the tightest ass I’ve ever seen.”
 
He laughs, shaking his head.
 
“Or better yet, you see the one with the dark, curly hair?
 
Charlotte, I think her name was?”
 

I nod my head, praying that he’ll shut the fuck up.
 
He’s not helping me not think about Charlie.
 
He doesn’t shut up though.
 
He keeps talking.
 
“Now she’s fucking hot.
 
The tits on her?”
 
He pulls his lip in between his teeth.
 
“Mmm.
 
Fuck.
 
She can be my naughty nurse any day.
 
She was busy when I left, but I’m thinkin’ ‘bout goin’ back tomorrow and askin’ her out.
 
I’d break my no datin’ rule for a chance at tappin’ a bitch like that.”

I’m trying so hard to ignore him.
 
Trying not to go ballistic on him for even noticing Charlie’s tits.
 
He’s just Jase and Jase is a dog.
 
He talks shit about women all the time and he fucks a new one almost every night.
 
I’m surprised the fucker’s dick hasn’t fallen off yet.
 
But when he talks about tappin’ Charlie, I can’t take it anymore.
 
Maybe it’s the booze, but I can’t help it when I spear his eyes with mine and growl, “Charlie’s
mine
.”

Jase’s eyebrows raise high in surprise.
 
“Yours?
 
Since when is she yours?
 
You claimin’ that bitch?”

I hold his shocked eyes with my glare and keep growling.
 
“Since now.
 
She’s mine.
 
Off limits.
 
Got me?”

Jase’s face breaks out into an ear to ear grin.
 
“Well fuck me sideways.
 
I never thought I’d see the day when little Ryker Cole would meet himself a nice girl and become a family man.”

I keep scowling at him which causes him to burst out laughing.
 
“Ok.
 
Ok man.
 
I hear ya.
 
She’s yours.
 
I’ll go ask out the blonde one instead.”
 
He wags his eyebrows at me and then stands.
 
“Gotta take a leak.”

I watch him walk away, my mind running back over the conversation we just had.
 
Jase had called me a family man.
 
I’m no family man.
 
Why the fuck had I called her mine?
 
I have no intentions of ever seeing her again, but there’s no way I’m letting that slutty fuck anywhere near her.
 
She’s a nice girl, just like Jase had said, and nice girls didn’t belong to guys like me … or him.

All my life, I’d stayed away from people that weren’t related to the MC.
 
This included women.
 
I slept with a lot of them, but they were all club whores or friends of the MC, looking for a good time.
 
From a young age, I’d promised myself that I wouldn’t be responsible for ruining the lives of decent people by involving them in our chaos.
 
It was something I’d seen happen before and I’d be damned if I was going to live through that shit again.

My mother had been a civilian.
 
She’d met my father at a bar and they’d had a one night stand.
 
That one night had turned into many nights and once she found out she was pregnant with me, he moved in with her.
 
He never settled down though.
 
He never married her.
 
He continued to fuck any woman that looked in his direction and left my mom at home, alone, to raise me.

She was a good mother – great even.
 
I can remember many little things about my time with her.
 
I remember her reading me stories at bedtime and singing silly songs with me while giving me a bath.
 
I remember her taking me to the park and out for ice cream.
 
I also remember them fighting.
 
It would wake me up in the middle of the night.
 
It was always him screaming at her, her crying and the sounds of objects being hurled across the room.
 
The next morning, he would be gone and she would be full of smiles, acting like nothing had happened, but even as a kid, I could see the sadness in her eyes and the bruises on her body.

One night, when I was six years old, three men had broken into our house and dragged me from the bed by my feet.
 
When I cried out in shock and fear, one of them had drove his fist into my temple, causing my head to swim and my belly to hurl up everything I’d eaten that night.

They dragged me down the stairs to the living room where my mom was tied up on the floor.
 
She was crying and saying something to me, but I couldn’t understand her through the gag tied across her mouth.
 
The three men had demanded to know where my father was, but neither of us knew.
 
We hadn’t seen him in over a week, which wasn’t uncommon.

One of the men, the biggest one of the three, had pulled out a gun and pointed it at my mother’s head.
 
He screamed at her about his wife, saying something about how my father had taken her from him.
 
I was too young to understand what he was talking about at the time, but now that I’m older, I know he was pissed because my father had banged his old lady.
 
She’d cleaned out a substantial amount of money from their bank accounts and left him, taking off with my old man, and now he wanted to make him pay.

I’d watched, eyes wide with fear, as my mother cried and pleaded with her eyes.
 
I knew all hope was lost when he placed the gun at her temple and she squeezed her eyes shut.
 
He pulled the trigger.
 

Watching my mother being shot in the head is an image I see in my nightmares almost every night.
 
I’d been a little kid and helpless at the time.
 
Now, in my dreams, I’m a grown man and I fight back.
 
I fight with everything I have in me, but I never save her.
 
She always gets her brains blown all over the carpet.

My mother dead, the man turns to me and places the gun under my chin.
 
“You tell your old man that we’re even now.”
 
Then they left.
 
I’d lain on the floor for a long time, staring at my mother.
 
After what felt like hours, I went to the phone and dialed the only number I knew.
 
Smokey.

That’s why I don’t get involved with civilians.
 
My mother had been a good, ordinary person.
 
Just like Charlie.
 
She’d met my father and her life had gone to hell.
 
She’d been brutally murdered because of him.
 
That’s the way it goes in my world, and that’s why I can’t claim Charlie as my own.
 
No matter how bad I want to, I need to leave her to live her life free from that shit.

Chapter Six

Charlotte

Only one week after Smokey had died, life has gone back to business as usual.
 
I haven’t seen a single biker since that day I’d found Ryker shouldering his grief in the garden.
 
I’m not exactly sure why, but that thought makes me anxious.
 
I wonder how he’s doing and how Smokey’s funeral went, wishing that I could have said goodbye to him too.
 
I don’t like how we’d left things.
 
Something feels ... incomplete somehow.
 
I keep reminding myself that I was just his friend’s nurse, but there’s no doubt in my mind that we’d made a connection, and now that connection has been severed.

Walking home from yet another evening shift, I feel those eyes on me again.
 
Fumbling my pepper spray out of my oversized purse, I hurry to my building, dropping the keys on my first attempt to unlock the front door.
 
My heart beats frantically, panic clawing its way up my throat as I look around, convinced that someone is coming up behind me.
 
Nobody’s there.
 
I feel foolish.
 
My imagination is running away from me again.

Once the door is unlocked, I dash inside and push the security door closed, effectively locking myself in from the outside world.
 
My chest heaves and my head feels light as I turn and rush to my apartment, locking the door once I get inside.
 

Relief washes over me as I lean my back against the barrier between me and whatever threat may be, but likely isn’t, out there.
 
After my breathing returns to normal, I push myself off the door and remove my shoes and jacket, placing them in the front closet.
 
Sticking with my normal routine does little to calm my nerves.
 
I’m shaking like a leaf and my nerves are shot.
 

Anna’s at work and won’t be home for a few more hours.
 
About a month ago, she took a job at a local bar as a waitress.
 
It’s not the best job, but it pays the bills and she seems to enjoy it.
 
I just hope that she doesn’t fall back to her old ways, getting involved with more dangerous men.
 
They are exactly her type and I fear she will get herself into even more trouble.
 
She may be my older sister, but it seems like I’m the one that’s always looking out for her, and it’s been that way ever since I was old enough to talk.

After double checking that the door’s locked, I head to my bedroom and change from my scrubs to a pair of cute and lacey pajamas.
 
The pale blue tank top has a fringe of lace along the hem and around the chest.
 
The tiny matching shorts are a bit darker, and covered in white and light green polka dots.
 

As I enter the bathroom to brush my teeth, I hear a click from the living room.
 
What the hell was that?
 
It sounded like the lock on the front door, but the only other person with a key to this place is Anna and she has about 4 more hours until her shift is over.
 

I stand in the bathroom, toothbrush in my mouth, frozen.
 
My heart pounds frantically, causing the blood to rush behind my ears.
 
I listen in petrified silence for any other noises.
 
My mind goes back to that night a couple weeks ago, when I found the body outline on my rumpled bed.
 
I don’t know what to do.
 
Do I lock myself in the bathroom and wait for whoever it is to take what they want and go?
 
Do I rush to my bedroom, lock the door and call the cops?
 
Do I rush out and see who the fuck dares to enter my apartment without permission, scaring the shit out of me in the process?
 
My mind races to come up with a plan, while I stand there like a deer caught in the headlights.
 
That’s when I hear it.

The sound is so quiet, I almost miss it.
 
A floorboard squeaking.
 
The floorboards in the hallway squeak all the time when you step on them.
 
Someone is out there, and I am in the first room of that short hall with the door wide open.
 
My phone’s in my bedroom, and the lock on the bathroom door is useless; anyone could break it down with little trouble.
 
I need to get to my bedroom, which is at the end of the hall, not even ten feet from where I am standing.
 
I can do this.

Quietly putting down my toothbrush, I face the door and clench my jaw in determination.
 
My heart is pounding in my chest as I lean forward to peek around the corner to the living room.
 
A jolt of fear shocks my body when I see him standing there, looking directly at me.
 
Krueger.
 
A Devil’s Reject notorious for cutting people up with his favorite knife when they pissed him off or got in his way.
 
He had always been the one that scared me the most.
 
I never did like the way he always stared at me – like I was a piece of meat that he couldn’t wait to take a bite out of with those nasty crooked teeth he had.

A yelp of surprise and fear escapes my throat as I dash towards my bedroom.
 
My only thought is that I have to get to a phone and call for help.
 
I haven’t even made it halfway when his arms wrap around me, crushing me back into his chest.
 
One hand covers my mouth and the other squeezes the breath right out of my lungs.
 
I kick my legs frantically, struggling to break his hold, my screams muffled behind his giant meaty hand.