SPARROW (ODIN’S FURY MOTORCYCLE CLUB Book 2) Read online

  While his father was vice president, that didn’t mean shit when it came to the club. They were all family. It sure as shit didn’t guarantee him a permanent place in the club if he fucked up. And if Monty summoned him to church—he’d fucked up somewhere. So, he stood and his gaze landed on each individual brother, finding nothing in their stone-faced expressions.

  “Sit,” Monty ordered. His nearly black eyes were locked on Romeo. With long, light gray hair he always wore tied back in a biker’s braid with multiple colorful rubber bands, and matching beard and craggy face, the President of Odin’s Fury was intimidating, even to Romeo, who’d known him all his life.

  The young club member did as he was told, taking the empty seat.

  “Put it to a vote,” the President said. “Tex’s boy has been a member for a few years now. Jailed three times for club business, stayed loyal, stayed quiet.”

  Biting his lip, Romeo’s eyes flicked from face to face again. He didn’t know what the call to vote was on, other than him, so he did his best to keep quiet while they decided his fate. His knee bounced with nerves no matter how hard he tried to stop it. Sitting on pins and needles, he scanned them for a sign.

  He wanted to be their brother more than anything he’d ever wanted in his life. This was his destiny. His father raised him in that clubhouse. It was in his blood. They couldn’t take it from him over a prospect’s mistake.

  “He’s only twenty-six,” Rooster, the red-headed, potbellied Road Captain said, narrowing his eyes on Romeo. “Feels like we’re fast-tracking him.”

  “You sayin’ my boy ain’t been loyal cleaning up your shit?” Tex stood, growling in a slurred drawl. There had been a time or two Romeo had to make a body disappear, and the one time he took a fall, it’d been for Rooster.

  “Didn’t say that.” The Road Captain shook his head.

  “He is young,” Clark, their superman-looking Sergeant at Arms, echoed the sentiment. “But this ain’t some jack-off from the street. Romeo’s been with the club since birth.”

  The gavel came down and they quieted, looking to their president. Monty’s jaw slid left and right as he looked out to his men, and then his gaze landed on Romeo. “Vote starts now. Unanimous decision, he gets it.”

  Romeo’s heart stopped. It? What the fuck is it?

  “VP,” Monty said, not breaking his stare with Romeo.

  “Aye,” Tex declared proudly as he stroked his Fu Manchu.

  “Aye,” Clark followed. Rooster, Teller, Dash, and the rest of the club officers voted.

  The gavel came down. “Settles it,” Monty declared before turning his cold gray eyes onto the young biker. “Romeo, you’re Odin’s Fury Montana Chapter’s newest Enforcer.”

  “Fury forever. Forever fury!” bellowed the men around him.

  Dumbfounded and slack-jawed, Romeo sat at the table amid his brothers while they cheered for him—the youngest member of Odin’s Fury to ever obtain an officer’s position.

  Chapter 2

  Sparrow

  1 Year Before

  It’d been a never ending night at The Broken Spoke, the bar The Roughneck Riders owned and ran. Well, ran seemed pretty generous lately. Considering Tut couldn’t be bothered to show up most days—too busy with club business, apparently.

  Either way, every part of Sparrow hurt. Her feet ached, screaming to be released from the leather prison she called shoes. However, she knew better than to let them go too early, they’d be a swollen mess. She’d like to soak them a bit and put them up before she went to bed. Not to mention putting a warm compress across her shoulders. Her neck had an awful crick in it.

  If her damn boss would bother to show the hell up to work, she wouldn’t have to work like this. She wouldn’t have to run herself ragged being a waitress and a bartender if he bothered to schedule people properly or even care when people missed shifts. But, no. He was too busy with club business.

  Club business. Club business. Sparrow wanted to shove club business up his asshole sideways. She’d heard about club business her entire life—first from her father, until said business took his life. Then from the men who supposedly stepped up in his stead to help raise her and now she heard it from her boyfriend on a near hourly basis. At least if felt that way.

  The way she saw it, all club business seemed to do was fuck shit up. It took her dad. It ruined her boyfriend. It made her already dick head of a boss into a bigger dingus. Yeah—she’d had it up to her damn eyeballs with club business.

  Pulling her sedan into her assigned parking spot in the apartment building lot, she peered at the bikes crammed into the other space. Groaning, she rolled her eyes. What the fuck were they doing there? She didn’t want to have to deal with a party. Her feet were sore, her body ached. She just wanted to go to bed.

  The life of a biker bitch seemed glamourous in theory—the never ending party, right? Yeah, except no one ever mentions bills still have to be paid. Someone still has to go to fucking work. Especially, when the man isn’t high on the food chain within the club. This means he isn’t exactly flush with cash. He’s a damn grunt—doing fucking shit work and making fuck-all pay. He takes all the risks and sometimes gets locked the fuck up. Then whatever little bit of savings they have gets spent bailing his stupid ass out of jail.

  She felt locked in a never-ending cycle.

  So, yeah—whoo-hoo party time. She was over it—so fucking over it.

  Fuck the fucking shit. She did not want to fucking party. She wanted to go the fuck to bed.

  The heavy bass of the music inside the apartment thumped through the wall and pounded against her chest. If her entire building weren’t terrified of Pipes and the cut he wore, they’d probably have called the police. People don’t normally tolerate music so loud it can be felt, not just heard. Perhaps, that was a silver lining. She wouldn’t have to deal with the cops tonight.

  Wouldn’t that be a blessing?

  Testing the knob, Sparrow slumped her shoulders forward. Of course it was open. Why would he lock the door? It wasn’t like they lived in a shitty neighborhood or anything.

  Opening the door, she braced herself for what she might find inside. It could be anything from men taking bets on two women naked lube wrestling to coked out idiots playing video games. She’d walked in on both and everything in between.

  Nearly colliding with a guy wearing a suit—that she wasn’t prepared for. Stopping short of her nose flattening against the chest of a tall stocky man wearing a “don’t fuck with me” expression, she closed the door behind her and pressed her back against it. “Hi,” she greeted skeptically. “Pipes home?” she asked, pointing behind the wall of pissed off man.

  This could be bad—like super big time bad. She didn’t know this dick weasel from a hole in the wall. Which meant Pipes was into some shit.

  “Who’s asking?” the man asked in a thick Columbian accent.

  Quick decision time. How did she answer this? Holding up her key, she jingled the ring and its accessories. “I live here, just want to know if he’s home. Is he okay?” She peered around him, but didn’t dare to try to step past him.

  He grinned and stepped aside.

  Wary, she eyed him for a moment. This didn’t seem right at all. Something about this smelled funky as shit, but she wasn’t exactly in the best position here. So, she did her best to walk past him and keep as much distance between them as she could—hard to do in their small entryway.

  “Pipes?” she called out into their apartment.

  Four steps in, her mouth fell open.

  She’d seen it plenty of times on TV and in movies. The white bricks wrapped in plastic and taped up. She’d seen the scales and the briefcases of money. It all seemed so cliché in the movies.

  On her kitchen table, the only thing missing was the briefcase. Also, the neatly wrapped bills. The money was there. It wasn’t nearly as impressively stacked or anything. Just sloppy bills rubber banded together. They weren’t crisp clean bills fresh from the bank or anything.
br />   Slack jawed, she felt like she’d stumbled onto a set for some production. This couldn’t be real life. There was no way Tut, Jackal, and Pipes were doing deals with some sleek man in a suit who had a goon at her damn door. There was no fucking way in hell.

  “Well, hello,” the man in the suit purred as he spoke in a similar accent as the man at the door. His warm chocolate colored eyes grazed over her with appreciation. “Eres hermosa con esas pecas.” His head canted to the side as his expression took on a more scrutinizing twist.

  “What is she doing here?” Tut demanded.

  “This is supposed to be hush hush,” Jackal commented.

  “She won’t say nothing,” Pipes assured before turning his eye toward Sparrow. “Why you home so early?”

  Balking at the pissed off look in his eyes, she planted her hands on her hips and glared at him, the strange man eye fucking her forgotten. “It’s nearly three o’clock in the goddamn morning. I think I’m allowed to come the fuck home now.”

  Snickering, the man in the suit covered his smile as she sneered at him, which only made his shoulders jiggle more as his stifled laughter continued. “You remind me,” he said as he pointed a finger at her, waving it. “I do business with these men.” He gestured toward the bikers now bickering amongst themselves in muffled voices. “For many years. They had a man who had fire like you.” He grinned, lifting his chin.

  “Her dad,” Jackal interjected. “You knew her dad—Ducky Oliveira.”

  The man frowned and nodded. He made the sign of the cross before kissing his knuckles. “Condolences, Princesa,” he said. “It is sad for a daughter to lose her father at any age, let alone so young.”

  Sparrow dipped her chin and did her best to accept his words with grace, but the sight of the drugs on her table out of the corner of her eye spurred an anger in her, which made it difficult. Inhaling deeply, she did her best to swallow it down. Instead of turning it on the stranger, she eyed Pipes. “I’m going to my mother’s.”

  Without so much as a fuck you, she turned and headed for the door. She’d rather spit on Tut’s grave at this point than be cordial to him. Jackal could rot, too, for all she cared. She needed to leave the apartment.

  “Dixie’s got a mouth big enough to park a buick,” Tut’s comment carried.

  “But she sure as hell knows how to use it,” Jackal wheezed on a laugh.

  Pinching the bridge of her nose, Sparrow’s stomach lurched at the idea of her mother and Jackal shacking up. Her mother was too damn good for that weasel looking fuck. She needed to get out of there before she lost her dinner.

  As she went to take her next step, iron fingers curled around her arm and yanked her backward. “The fuck!”

  Turning, her fist cocked and ready, she threw it in time to see Pipes had grabbed her. His other hand caught her fist before it met his jaw.

  “You didn’t see a motherfucking thing,” he said as he squeezed her fingers tightly.

  She peered at him.

  Pinpoint pupils. Blood shot eyes. Oily hair, gray skin. He looked like death warmed the fuck over. Using again. Using hard-goddamn-core again.

  His jaw ticked. “They’re bringing me in on a huge deal. This could be major for me. For us.”

  “I don’t want it in our house. I don’t want it where we live.” She needed to set some boundaries. “If I’m not supposed to know shit, stop bringing shit home.”

  The grip on her hand lessened, as did the hold on her arm. She turned toward him fully and flexed her fingers. Pipes scrubbed at his chin as though mulling over her words.

  “Club business is not my business,” she reminded him. “If I’m supposed to have plausible deniability if you get arrested…” though at this point, it felt more like when he got arrested. How the hell hadn’t he been arrested yet? A question for another day. Maybe she didn’t really want to know. “You can’t be bringing that shit in my house,” she whispered while gesturing to the door. “I fucking know shit now.”

  He glanced over his shoulder. “Fuck,” he hissed before turning back to her.

  “I can keep a secret,” she said, looking into his pinpoint eyes. “But only if you promise me to keep it out of our apartment.”

  He nodded.

  Taking hold of his face with both her hands, she did her best to make him focus on her. “I mean it. Say it.”

  “I promise. It won’t come to our house no more,” he said as he brought his hands up and cupped her face as well. “No more club business at our place.”

  Chapter 3

  Sparrow

  1 Year Later

  “What is this?” Sparrow demanded, holding up a small baggie with several pills in it. Her brows lifted high, her hand was on her hip, and fury radiated off her in waves. Blocking the doorway of the small bathroom of their one-bedroom apartment, she glared at Pipes.

  One rule. She had one fucking rule: don’t bring club business home. He agreed to the stupid rule. If he didn’t want her involved, he needed to stop bringing shit the fuck home. Yet, there it was—in this tiny bit of plastic—in their home.

  Standing in a towel, Pipes pumped his toothbrush back and forth over his teeth in response. With his free hand on the sink, he leaned over it so the toothpaste wouldn’t splatter on the counter. The irony of his consideration with that might’ve been comical if she wasn’t livid.

  He wasn’t huge, but he was chiseled, with muscles clearly defined on his lean frame. Water still dripped down his heavily tattooed chest from his shower. He kept his dirty blond hair shaved on the sides, with all the length on the top. In that moment, he had it combed to one side, covering one of his ears. Despite his on again, off again drug use, the man wasn’t lacking in the looks department. There were times she tried to make that enough.

  His pale blue, almost gray eyes flicked to her in the mirror. Then he spat into the sink and turned toward her. He cocked his head while his eyes narrowed on the baggie. “Put that back where you found it.”

  “Why do you have this?” she pressed, as he didn’t answer the original question.

  “You know why,” he said without a hint of remorse, only impatience.

  The club. The stupid fucking club. She’d had it with the Roughneck Riders. Hell, with bikers in general.

  On good days, or maybe they were bad days—hard to tell the difference anymore—her mind wandered to when she’d strayed away from the Roughneck Riders. Perhaps this was her penance for her disloyalty—who the fuck knew. Jacob sure as shit wasn’t worth it. His Montana, Odin’s Fury ass punching walls hissy fit having ass—ugh—they were all frustrating as fucking hell. Fucking bikers—fucking men.

  In a huff, she tossed the pills onto the counter. “I don’t want that shit here. We’ve talked about this. We agreed. No club business here. Especially after what happened.” Two years ago when he overdosed.

  Frothing at the mouth. His body shaking. The sound of his head thunking against the back door of her car while he seized in the backseat on the way to the hospital still haunted her. She heard it sometimes if it got too quiet in her car.

  It’d been the scariest moment of her life. She thought she’d lose him. Yet, somehow, he survived it.

  After he came home from the hospital, they didn’t talk about what’d happened. The club gave him a few weeks’ break from runs and jobs. He did a few days of rehab or detox. She wasn’t sure—probably because it didn’t last all that long. She thought things were going to turn around. She’d been a fucking idiot.

  The club. The fucking club. He got a new sponsor. She didn’t think anyone would be worse than Tut. However, as soon as he started with the VP of the Roughneck Riders, he got Pipes using again in days. Days. He gave up sobriety like it was nothing for the club.

  For a brief moment, his gaze shot to the baggie, watching it slide on the counter toward the sink. Then he lifted his eyes toward her, and they were glacial, and not in the good way. So cold she practically shivered. “I don’t give a tiny rat’s ass what you want when it c
omes to that shit.”

  He tossed his toothbrush into the sink and stalked toward her. The look in his bloodshot eyes, menacing and filled with rage, had her second-guessing her actions. Shocked, she backed out of the doorway and into the small bedroom. She’d never seen that look before—not on him. With their increased fighting as of late, she wasn’t sure what he’d do.

  “You got me in the fucking door, but if you think you can dictate what I do, you don’t understand your place,” he hissed through gritted teeth.

  Pulling his hand back, he struck her. It happened in slow motion. Crippled by disbelief, her eyes widened as his hand flew toward her, and the back of it slapped her cheek. The sting plumed through her face, and the force knocked her off balance, so much so, she stumbled to the floor.

  With her fingertips touching her heated, most likely, red cheek, she looked up at him with tears in her eyes. Cowering on her knees at the foot of their bed, she blinked, unable to move or speak. What had just happened? Shock stole her voice.

  “This.” He held up the baggie she hadn’t realized he’d snatched off the counter. He jutted his index finger at her. “Is fucking club business. That makes it none of your goddamn business.” His jaw ticked while he stood over her. “I need to do this to earn my bones. You think we’re gonna survive living off your pathetic waitress salary?” He snorted before he shook his head and ran a hand through his hair. “I shouldn’t have to explain this shit to you. You’re supposed to know this life, club daughter.” He sneered down at her as he mocked her with that last bit. “Remember what the fuck you are. Property of Roughneck Riders.”

  Pure hatred reflected in his eyes as he glared down at her, chest heaving. With white knuckles, he gripped the baggie and his nostrils flared. Alarm bells rang in her head as she stayed down, pinned by his gaze. In silence, save for the sound of the two of them breathing heavily, they stared at each other.