Exiled (Anathema Book 2)
Read Exiled (Anathema Book 2) Online
Authors: Lana Grayson
Exiled (Anathema
Series
)
Copyright © 2015
by Lana Grayson
Published by
Lana Grayson
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof
may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever
without the express written permission of the publisher
except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work
of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are
either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner.
Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely
coincidental.
This book is
licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or
given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another
person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you’d like to share
it with. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.
Cover Design
: Rebecca Berto
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Please Note:
This story does
include some darker themes involving abuse and non-consensual situations.
Certain scenes and descriptions may be uncomfortable for some readers.
To My Husband
…he’s been doing
all the dishes
Table Of
Contents
I
had two choices—exile or a bullet to the head.
Either
way, I’d end up bloody.
Either
way, I deserved it.
Three
months on the road, but I was already up forty grand. Pretending to be dead
wasn’t a bad gig. Pretending like the money made any bit of difference? I’d
work on giving a damn once I got done with my next job. At least the open
highway gave a man time to consider his career goals and how to get the money
to his family, where it mattered.
But
I was doing too much thinking about that lately.
The
exile wasn’t a punishment. I told myself it was an opportunity, a way to end a
life of heartache, misery, and guilt. I wasn’t a good man, but I used to be
better at hiding it. Names changed, faces shaved, tattoos hid, but genes dug in
as deep as a rusted blade. If my exile prevented me from becoming the monster lurking
in my blood, I’d put enough road between me and the innocence I ruined to wear
out my tires and destroy my engine.
No
one else would get hurt—except the one who deserved it.
Pennsylvania
was a long ride from California, but the more miles between us, the less chance
anyone would recognize a supposedly dead man. The work was good, and the money
even better.
My
delivery went quickly. They all did, by design. I rode in, made the trade, and
used the cover of night to speed away before any addict with more bullets than
brains decided to test my accuracy while driving. And I was damn accurate.
The
men waited for me in a slag dump outside the two stop-light town. The three
rivers knotted about sixty miles south of me, where respectable civilization lived
far from the stench of ammonia and methyl alcohol that leeched from the
dilapidated houses dotting the countryside.
It
wasn’t like home, but the drugs were familiar. Then again, meth cooked anywhere
people were down on their luck. That didn’t change, no matter what side of the
country I lurked. Only the weather shifted. The lake chilled the region and
threatened snow. It iced the men and made the deals quick. Everyone wanted to return
to something warm.
“Didn’t
think you’d show.” My contact sounded like he used more drugs than he traded.
The tag on his cut read VP, and the patch beneath called him Rivet. It was a
good handle. He looked beaten down—a holdover of the abandoned steel industry
framing the rivers.
He
didn’t offer a hand to shake, and I didn’t extend mine. He might’ve been from
the Kingdom MC, but chivalry was dead in this part of the state—a region which now
forged more illegal deals than steel and metal beams.
Two
of Rivet’s men lit cigarettes behind him. They drew long and puffed a curl of
white smoke into the darkening afternoon. Rivet snapped his fingers and
gestured for the men to grab the bag in his bike’s saddle.
“Noir?”
Rivet laughed. The sound rasped like the cough of a smoker fighting the chest
cold that would eventually kill him. “That your name?”
It
wasn’t, but I answered to it. “Yeah.”
“You
don’t look black.”
Observant.
“It’s not the color.”
“Then
what? Like a detective or something?”
“Pinot
Noir.”
“What?”
“The
wine.”
It
didn’t take a connoisseur to realize the only thing people drank in this region
came in silver cans packed in cases of twenty-four. Cheap, watered-down piss.
They couldn’t tell an IPA from the ATF, and just hearing the initials would
blow their labs from here to Lake Erie.
“What
kind of fag drinks wine?”
I
shrugged. “I’m a man of taste.”
“We
don’t do taste around here,” Rivet said. “Ain’t got the money for it. Round
here, you gotta earn before you can appreciate the finer things.”
“I
wouldn’t be here if I didn’t want to earn.”
“Good.
My president says you get shit done. You don’t ask questions and ride fast.”
“Just
tell me what you need to be moved.”
Rivet
wasn’t a subtle man. His hands lingered too close to a belt that weighed heavy
with weapons. I understood the kind of man who preferred two guns at his waist
and the knife in his pocket, but I just escaped that type of warlord. Not a
minute went by I didn’t curse his name for leaving me alive.
Rivet
leered through bloodshot eyes—sickly, meth binge red. I wished I hadn’t
recognized the color. I wished more he didn’t remind me of my brother.
“You’re
gonna keep your mouth shut about what you see, what you hear, and what you’re
haulin’.”
“That’s
a given.”
“Don’t
get smart.”
He
tested me. Three months ago I’d have kicked his ass out of the slag dump, past
the Wal-Mart, and dumped his body behind one of the Amish built barns in the
nearby cornfield. But if I was risking another bleed out in an alley, his
wasn’t the blade I wanted. Age was supposed to bring wisdom. Thirty-eight years
and all it gave me was grey in my hair and the instinct to duck instead of
punch.
“This
ain’t my first time doing business with Kingdom MC,” I said. “You tell me what to
do, I’ll do it. Show me the cash, give me the address, and I’ll deliver the
goods.”
Rivet
laughed, bumming a cigarette from one of his men. He cupped his palm over the
lighter. The flame flickered over his face. Pure, untaxed vice. It wasn’t the
most lucrative of transports, but, in this region, a cheap, bootlegged smoke
would entertain them until the next Klan rally.
“Head
south. Toward the city. Meet with Harbinger, president of Sacrilege MC. You
don’t talk to other members. You don’t look at other members. Only Harbinger.”
“Fine.”
“You
don’t get followed.”
“No
one can keep up with me.”
“That
a fact?”
“Go
ahead. Test me.” I nodded to my bike. Black. Stripped of any identifying marks
and polished of the grime from the road. It was the only thing that still
belonged to me, and I hardly recognized it. Fresh paint covered the former
emblems, but the decals bled through. I doubted anyone else saw them. “You can
ride pretty damn fast when you got nowhere to go.”
Rivet
blew the smoke in my face. “You ain’t rushin’ this. And you ain’t bringing any
attention to it. No speeding. No night runs without lights. You got a
reputation, Noir. Heard about you running border to border with your bike at
the red line the whole fucking way.”
“What’s
your point?”
“You
want to splatter onto the pavement? Get your brains blown out? Go flip off a
cop and hop the median
after
you do this delivery. After we say we’re
done with you. You got me?”
Kingdom
MC wasn’t using their normal couriers for this trick, but I transported far
more valuable goods than what they handed me. Drugs and guns, stolen jewelry
and cars. I lived by two rules—accepting the fate of the road and never
refusing a job. But after three months of high-speed, full-throttle races from
sundown to sun up, I wasn’t some punk errand boy.
Rivet
pushed the bag toward me. “Open it.”
The
laptop wasn’t new, but that was all I cared about. I built my first bike engine
when I was nine with my old man, but I left computers to the one who used them—the
one who recorded songs and uploaded her shows and pestered me with emails and texts
and all the bullshit family obligation that went with it. But her equipment was
more up-to-date than the scuffed laptop Rivet had stuffed in the bag.
“You
get that to Harbinger. Eight o’clock Friday night. Until then, that bag doesn’t
leave your sight.” Rivet coughed and spat against the ground. “You open that
laptop, and I will skin you alive. Anyone sees you, you’re gonna wish I skinned
you.”
His
threat wasn’t worth a hot air that managed to escape his tar-thickened lungs.
“Harbinger
will get his goods.”
Rivet
stared at me, but he had to look up. He wasn’t a short guy, but the world
hadn’t beaten me down that much yet. He puffed his chest. I was approaching forty,
but so far they were my best years. A ball-breaking moment passed, and he
backed down. One of his men fished around his cut and handed me a thick
envelope. Rivet flicked the cigarette filter away.
“Two
grand. You do your job, lose any tails that follow you, and you’ll get another
three from Harbinger.”
I
tucked the envelope in my jacket without checking the contents. Not that I
trusted them. I didn’t. I hoped they cheated me. I needed an excuse, that one
opportunity to solve problems by crunching bones and bleeding someone dry.
I secured
the laptop case in a traveling pack. The bag fell over my un-patched leather
jacket. Black. Solid. I no longer wore the insignia of the Anathema MC, and I
banished every label and emblem that ever marked me as the Sergeant-At-Arms of
the 1% club. That part of me died—buried and lost.
At
least my newfound business partners felt familiar. They were a little taste of
home as I accepted dirty money and transported the un-transportable for men who
either belonged in jail or in the ground. The gigs offered me a purpose and
kept me sharp while I waited for my reason to live again.
I
gave up everything when I left Anathema.
My
revenge would be worth it.
I
started the bike. Kingdom MC’s finest watched with sneers as their money and
package rode away. Five grand was a small fortune to me. I lived nights in
different motels, never stopping for long or settling down. I ran from
everyone, including myself. What money I earned, I saved. As far as I was
concerned, it didn’t belong to me. Once the time came and the guns were drawn,
I’d leave everything to Rose. It wasn’t much, and it wouldn’t ease her
nightmares, but at least she’d know I cared.
How
I had
always
cared.
Only
a few headlights traveled with me. Not much existed this far north of the city.
Cornfields and meth labs, trucks and the occasional diner. I grabbed a motel
closest to the interchange. Enough truck traffic passed through the region to
hide the location in a veil of industrial anonymity. Bikes too. Men who shared
my enthusiasm for the road, and men I knew to avoid, wove from the main roads
and into smaller stops. Some made it out. Others got trapped.
The
girl tapping her feet in a chaotic rhythm against the bench outside the motel
was one of the ones trapped. The longer she stayed, the shorter her skirt got.
The makeup around her eyes darkened black. What might have been dramatic now
became a calling card. She spotted me. Ruby red lipstick glistened as she
smiled.
“Hey.”
She sounded interested if only because I was a new face and she needed new
business. She looked me over. I did the same.
Christ.
The girls were getting younger. The grey in my hair only made it more
noticeable. Still, the perk of her eyebrow wasn’t for show. Neither was the
finger she twirled in her hair. She liked what she saw at least. Didn’t
surprise me. I packed on the muscle, and women got off on the tattoos.
“You
look lonely,” she said.
I
felt it too. She arched just enough to peek her stomach from where her sweater
pulled away from her denim skirt. It wasn’t a bad sight until she rolled up her
sleeves. The bruises in her elbows signified more than her temptress red
lipstick. I made time for vice, but my patience for that brand of suicide ran
out.
“Thanks.
I’m fine,” I said.
“You
sure? You look wound tight. When was the last time you had any fun?”
A
question for the ages. I teetered between deserving peace and striving for
penance. The road hadn’t given me either yet. No clarity. No finality.
The
girl bit her lip. She swayed her hips in a way that must have worked on others.
“Come
on.” She took my arm. “Let me help.”
I
doubted she’d help me, but I wasn’t opposed to her brand of therapy. I led her
to my room and locked the door behind us. She didn’t even glance over the space.
Not that there was much to see. Standard bed. Coffee pot on the counter in the
bathroom. Remote tethered to the television. I assume she’d been here before.
In the light, her makeup didn’t look so heavy.