I felt the kid’s eyes on me and I eyeballed him over the rim of my glass to see his focus drawn to the brutal scar in the center of my right hand. He’d seen it before, because I’d been in here enough times, but he just couldn’t get past it. It wasn’t the most appetizing sight, honestly. And civilians were so fucking fragile.
“Wayward power drill,” I told him.
A hell of a lie, but revealing the truth would endanger me, pointing towards what I truly was.
A dangerous son of a bitch.
A killer.
A man who used to get paid a mint to deal out death to the worst of the worst, the most despicable human beings to ever walk this fucked-up earth.
I’d been really good at it.
The best.
Fuck. Another life now.
I chugged back all of my bourbon in a couple of gulps.
Slapping down a few bills in front of the bartender, I told him to keep them coming. He nodded and hurriedly served me another, before heading off to deal with a couple that were trying to get his attention at the other end of the bar.
“Rough day, Wraith?”
My fingers tightened around my glass, my body tensing.
That name. That alias.
I hadn’t heard it in a long time.
I was well and truly out. Retired from all of it.
That name had suited me well for a long while now, though. I barely existed. I was rarely visible to the world and not truly a part of it. During my time in black ops, I’d also been the last thing many people had seen before death took them. Hell, I’d been the bringer of their deaths. I was a ghost, a fucking apparition.
“More like rough life, yeah?” the voice continued.
He pulled up a stool right beside me. I heard the squeak of hard leather as he settled himself upon it. The thump of his elbow on the wooden bar top had me drawing in a calming breath to brace myself, before turning to see who the unwanted visitor was.
Well, damn.
Scott “Spartan” Tate.
“Scott,” I ground out, more than a little surprised to see the President of the Iron Kings Motorcycle Club in my neck of the woods, miles from home.
He looked me up and down. My hoodie under my black leather jacket, jeans, and my gray long-sleeved tee visible beneath. He smiled as he took in my motorcycle boots.
“It’s been too long,” he said, earnestly. He clapped his hand on my shoulder. “Missed you, brother.”
Brother.
I knew how much that word meant to him. While I wasn’t one of his club brothers, we went back way further than that, before he’d even founded Iron Kings.
We’d fought together. We’d suffered together. We’d survived together. We were brothers-in-arms and it wasn’t something either of us took lightly.
Pulling my hood back a little, I took him in.
Those odd slate-gray eyes of his got me every time. It was creepy, the way they seemed to pierce right through a man. His dirty-blonde hair, all wild on top, yet closely cropped on the sides. He was normally clean-shaven, but he was sporting some serious stubble. It was more evidence that something was very wrong, because Scott was a stickler for routine. He was still heavy with the piercings with three in each ear and a stud in his nose. He’d added a hoop through his right eyebrow now too. He was going incognito, wearing an unmarked brown leather jacket, instead of his cut with the insignia of the Iron Kings MC. I glanced down past his worn jeans, surprised to see that he wasn’t even wearing his motorcycle boots. Come to think of it, I hadn’t heard the roar of his Harley pulling up outside either.
What was going on? “Spill it, Scott.” If he was bringing trouble my way, I needed to know immediately so I could formulate a plan and minimize the potential damage.
He leaned in, dropping his voice low to tell me, “We got trouble.”
“No shit,” I muttered. “Why else would you come all this way?”
“I don’t wanna be calling in favors and keeping score with you, but I need your help.”
For six months, he’d allowed me to recover at his clubhouse, bringing in the best doctors and nurses on his payroll to see to me. The injuries I’d sustained had been too incriminating to head to a real hospital with. The cops would’ve been called right off the bat and I’d have been done for, given that I’d been in no condition to make one of my miraculous escapes. But, without hardcore medical attention, I wouldn’t have survived. He’d basically saved my life.
“The situation is that dire?”
“Yeah,” he rumbled. “It’s dire all right.”
With a heavy sigh, I shifted on my stool to face him head on. “I’m not the guy you knew. Not physically.” I gestured to my hand, then pointed to my side. He knew well about the extent of the damage I’d suffered. “Not mentally either.” I took a large gulp from my drink. “I’m not getting back into all of that.”
“Ain’t asking you to.”
I frowned. Why the hell else was he here then?
He snatched up my drink and downed the rest of it, gulping it back, anxiety rolling off him. “The Rogues are back.”
“Jesus Christ,” I choked out.
The Rogues, known officially as the Rogue Riders Motorcycle Club, were a rival club to Scott’s. Brutal, down ‘n’ dirty bastards without conscience, without restraint.
The bitch of it was that they hadn’t always been.
Many of the members, including their president, had been part of the Iron Kings MC at one point. But when Scott had settled down with his wife, Andrea, and had a family, he’d made the call to take the club legit. That one decision had been the beginning of the end.
It’d kickstarted a war that’d waged for years, causing brutal collateral damage, widespread carnage, torment, and actual death. Scott’s decision to shakeup the club had infuriated his right-hand-man at the
