The good stuff.
I didn’t think my life expectancy was all that good. I had money, and I spent it. I might as well enjoy the time I had left, right?
So no cheap booze and no cheap women. Those were the rules. Everything else was up for grabs.
I didn’t have time and it wasn’t worth it. I ate well, too. Every damn time I got on my ride, I was prepared to meet my maker. Never thought twice about it. I only ever had one regret in this life, and that was not protecting my baby brother. I should never have let him move so far away from me. I should have been there, watching over him.
I hadn’t been able to save him.
But I would avenge him, dammit.
The biker on the ground was rubbing his head. He looked around stupidly as he stood up and took a swing at the closest guy. I took another swig of tequila. I knew what was about to happen.
And I couldn’t fucking wait.
All hell broke lose. I grinned as bodies started flying. People were punching each other, not caring who they were hitting. I took another shot and jumped into the fray. I took a hit to my kidneys and swung around, throwing my fists in every direction. I grabbed a guy by the throat and threw him to the ground. Then I took another shot.
I stared at the bottle. It was half full. I took another swig and then went down as three guys stumbled over my way, kicking and choking each other.
Twenty minutes later, I was sitting gingerly on a chair with three legs. I still had the bottle somehow. I took another pull of sweet, numbing tequila. The room was full of moaning, stumbling men. I hoped someone had called Doc. Most of these guys wouldn’t bother to go to the ER, even if their arm was hanging by a thread.
Thankfully, we had our own MD. Covered in tats and leather, Doc didn’t look like most doctors. But he was damned good at his job. He’d served in the military and had combat experience along with a license to practice. So even though he didn’t have a traditional practice, he was more than qualified to perform surgery. He could stitch you up even if he was three sheets to the wind, with bullets flying around you, in the back of a jeep flying full-speed down a bumpy road.
Doc was pretty much a badass.
I wasn’t going to wait around for him. I made a quick call and went outside to wait and smoke a stogie. Two shitfaced bikers opened the gate when the taxi showed.
I crawled into the cab. In the old days, I would have taken my ride, but I figured the kid didn’t need me to die tonight. I was conked out cold by the time we pulled up to my little shack in the woods.
The driver had to wake my ass up.
I tipped well and stumbled up the steps to the house.
Chapter Eight
Parker
I woke up with a snap, my survival instincts going haywire. I froze for a moment, holding perfectly still. I didn’t even breathe.
Something was wrong. Someone was in the house.
A loud crash and a curse from the kitchen made my eyes widen. The voice sounded familiar. Not threatening. Just aggravated.
Was that . . . Shane?
He sounded weird. Drunk, I thought. Another crash and a muffled curse. Actually, he sounded extra wasted.
I heard a groan and threw my covers off, running to see what was wrong. I never in a million years expected to see him lying on the kitchen table with a bag of peas over his entire face. His jacket was open, and his shirt was ripped, revealing a smooth expanse of skin across his chest, dark with tattoos and what looked like the beginning of bruises.
An almost empty bottle of tequila dangled from one hand.
“Are you okay?”
He mumbled something, so I tiptoed over and lifted the bag of frozen peas to look at him. I gasped. His face was already turning black and blue, but worse, it was covered in blood. His nose looked like it might be broken.
“What did you say?”
“I said, ‘You should see the other guys.’” He grinned at me. “All three hundred of them.”
“Three hundred?”
“Are you impressed?”
“Who did this to you?”
“Whole club got into a brawl. Good times.”
“This is good?”
He grinned at me.
“Gotta teach you how to fight. Pretty kid like you is gonna need to defend yourself.”
I couldn’t help it. I felt my insides turn over when he called me pretty. I was weirdly pleased that he thought I was easy on the eyes. There was nothing flirtatious about it, though. I was convinced he still thought I was a boy. I hadn’t taken my baseball cap off. My shoulder-length hair was the last thing I had from my old life. I had come close to chopping it a hundred times, but I couldn’t.