Chapter 1 – Hammer
Ishallhavehimunder my boot. Blood will stain his pale beard red and slowly soak into the patch at the front of his leather vest. Our president. Crushed glass fills up his eyes, his lips are in shreds, all because he couldn’t fucking shut up.
Hammer flinched and scribbled a garbled line on the paper when their club president, Lion, tossed another glass at the wall. A prospect would take care of the clean-up later, but why make such a giant fuss over a slight delay? Did it really matter whether the cocaine reached their clubhouse a day later? It wasn’t like the Demon Brethren MC were scrambling for cash.
Exhaling, Hammer put the notebook and pen into the pocket of his jeans and fixed his gaze on the graffiti of a demonic entity riding a Harley, the emblem of the club.
Some of the other guys, seated by the coffee table below the mural, seemed to share his opinion on the matter and hid their grins behind bottles of beer. But when he raised his hand to acknowledge them, their faces fell, as if they were children spotted too close to the cookie jar.
No one wanted to be too close to the club’sexecutioner.
In moments like this, Hammer understood why in the olden days men who shared his profession wore hoods. They could melt into the crowd once their job was done. For him, that cat had been out of the bag for several years now. Not that he’d ever been good at making friends. Or making women stay at his side for longer than a couple of weeks. The property patch he’d offered to the first girlfriend he’d considered serious still bided its time in the bottom shelf of his nightstand, because his last woman didn’t want it either.
As Lion continued his rant with beer foam stuck to his bushy beard, Hammer glanced to his phone where his earlier text to Stefani was languishing unanswered, so he reread it to make sure he hadn’t unknowingly offended her with his apology. Last night had been a bit of a shitshow, but the last thing Hammer wanted was having to get the attention of another woman when he’d already put so much effort into developing an ongoing-but-casual thing with Stefani.
[I was thinking a lot about what happened, and I just wanted to say that I’m sorry. I may have been too rough, but you seemed to enjoy it, and you didn’t say anything until I arrived back at my house and read your message. Can we talk about it?]
Maybe he shouldn’t have suggested that she’d liked it? Too late now. He’d been left on ‘read’.
“Hammer. Are you listening?” Lion’s voice cut through the buzz in his head and made him look up at their club president’s flushed, round face.
Hammer cleared his throat. “I did, just got a message that I had to look at. Did anything change?”
The prolonged silence told him that he might have sounded annoyed.
Lion put his hands on the table and leaned forward. “Yes. Go get my brother.”
That made Hammer sit up straighter. He needed to go see Stefani, and didn’t want to end up as a glorified errand boy. “Just send a prospect if he’s not answering his phone.”
Lion’s nostrils flared, and if it wasn’t for the fact that he’d lost his mane of hair over the years and was now bald, he would have looked like an agitated king of the savannah.
“A prospect won’t rattle him, and I want him to shit his pants a little, so he doesn’t ignore my calls next time.”
That was fair. Nobody was as good at making grown men lose control of their bowels as Hammer. “Should I trash something at his place or just be my charming self?” he asked.
At least for that he got a hint of smile out of Lion. “Take the sledgehammer and give him something to fix. I will not be ignored.”
Hammer smirked. “All right. I’ll let you know,” he said and walked past his three other friends, who followed him with their gazes. Were they unsettled? Amused? Who the fuck knew when they only talked to him when not given another choice?
Not that it bothered him.
He picked up his red sledgehammer along with the leather harness he’d had custom-made for easy access and transportation. The clever contraption enabled him to grab his weapon of choice by reaching back and tugging on the handle, as if it were a massive sword. Most of the time, that very gesture struck such fear into people that things did not need to get any more unpleasant.
Most members weren’t in today, and only six bikes were parked alongside the facade of the building. His steel-gray cruiser stood in its usual place, under an oak tree, and while he appreciated the leaves keeping the vehicle in the shade, the fact that it was always separate from all of the other club members’ rides was a fitting metaphor for his situation.
He was useful, competent, and feared but didn’t quite fit in with the other guys, and at this point he’d stopped trying to force something that wasn’t there. Invisible walls surrounded him from all sides, and while he could communicate through them, nobody was ever determined enough to open the single, dusty door keeping him shut out.
Maybe it just wasn’t meant to be. They might be even more afraid once they found out what hid inside Hammer’s head.
Ryker would know Hammer meant business once he saw the sledgehammer, so without wasting any more time, Hammer rode off, straight through a pile of fallen leaves.
The prez’s brother lived in a quiet area half an hour’s drive away from the clubhouse. His home, a bungalow with small rocks where all his neighbors had a lawn, was unassuming. Boring. Everyone’s old lady thought it was the absolute shit.
Charming. Cozy. Inviting.
Though what the women really wanted to say was that they’d loved to be banged on the marble kitchen island by the MC’s hottest stud. Maybe that was why Ryker hadn’t arrived at the clubhouse on time? He found it easy to get into lacy panties at any time, so why not today? But whether Ryker had a woman in there or not, Hammer would gladly smash his fancy coffee machine. The lazy bastard would then have to stop bragging to his hook-ups about making the best morning coffee.
Hammer wasn’t jealous. Because what would he be jealous of? He was handsome, with longish dark hair around his face, and a stature that made grown men wary. He smelled good, washed his clothes, and cleaned his nails. But while some women were attracted to his size and got a thrill from flirting with danger, the reality was, most hangarounds found a man like Ryker much more palatable as their fantasy biker fling.