PROLOGUE
Harper
Victim.
I hated that word. I always felt like it carried a connotation of defeat. I wasn’t defeated. I fought like hell, and for the most part, I won. No, I was not a victim. I was a survivor.
I fought hard to overcome the demons of my past. I was lucky to have a supportive family, even though it wasn’t a traditional family. My mother passed away from cancer a few months before I was kidnapped. During the few weeks before my older brother rescued me, my father passed away.
When Duke found me and took me out of that horrible house, he went straight to our Aunt Leigh for help, and she welcomed us with open arms. Her husband was my father’s brother and died the year before Duke and I showed up in Devil Springs.
Duke only lived with us for a few months, just long enough for him to save enough money to get his own apartment. When he moved out, it was just me, Aunt Leigh, and her son, Judge, who was 15 at the time. He instantly became another brother for me, and Aunt Leigh took on the role of pseudo-mom. They did everything they could to help me deal with the loss of my parents and the kidnapping.
The first year was rough. When I wasn’t crying, I was too scared of my own shadow to leave the house. After two disastrous attempts at trying to drop me off at school, Aunt Leigh and my therapist decided home-schooling would be a better option for me.
For the next few years, Aunt Leigh homeschooled me, and I continued to see a therapist twice a month. By the time I reached high school, I was on my fourth therapist and had learned how to manipulate them by saying the right things. After six months of listening to my carefully chosen words, my therapist told Aunt Leigh I was ready to attend public school. Honestly, I was ready, even though I had to trick the therapist into agreeing with me. I loved my family and was greatly appreciative of everything they did to help me through my ordeal, but I was a teenager and needed teenage friends.
I also needed to be around people who didn’t know about my past and didn’t treat me like I would shatter into a million pieces if they said or did the wrong thing. Yes, I was fragile to some extent, but I wasn’t that fragile. I had no desire to do anything to intentionally frighten myself, like watching horror movies or going to a haunted house, but I was perfectly fine going to school and hanging out with kids my own age.
I made it through all four years of high school with no traumatic events. Well, none that weren’t part of the typical high school experience. Despite Duke’s and Judge’s best efforts, I even managed to go on a few dates.
After graduating from high school, I planned to attend college in Sugar Falls. Aunt Leigh was very supportive, Judge was skeptical, and Duke was totally against it, which didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things because I was legally an adult and could do whatever I wanted.
During my first year of college, I lived in the dorms on campus and became friends with several of the girls that lived on my floor. I did my best to fit in with them and have a normal college experience. And, for the most part, I did. I didn’t care for the outrageous drunken frat parties, but I did join them when they went to clubs and other bars.
One particular night, my roommate, Courtney, was convinced her boyfriend was cheating on her and wanted to catch him in the act. Our suitemates joined us as we piled into Courtney’s car and followed her boyfriend to a strip club. Instead of confronting him face-to-face, she wanted to do it by entering the wet t-shirt contest, but she didn’t want to go up on stage alone. We all agreed to enter with her and the next thing I know I’m named the winner and handed five hundred dollars in cash.
As it turned out, Courtney’s boyfriend, Brad, wasn’t cheating on her. He worked at the club as a bouncer and didn’t tell her because he didn’t know how she would feel about it. She didn’t care one bit, but he forbade her from entering any more strip club sponsored contests.
I, on the other hand, found the experience exhilarating. I continued to enter the contests and won first place every time. After my fifth win, Courtney’s boyfriend told me the manager of the club would like to speak with me in his office. I was hesitant to go, but Brad assured me he was a nice man and promised to wait right outside the office door for me.
Reluctantly, I followed Brad to an office in the back where he introduced me to the manager, Scott, and promptly offered a job. After giving it some thought, I accepted the offer on a trial basis. The contests had done a lot to boost my confidence, and I thought performing on stage would, too. And that’s how I came to be the headlining performer at The Booby Trap during my college years.
While it wasn’t conventional by any means, working as an exotic dancer seemed to be just what I needed to bring me out of my shell. I fought hard over the years and managed to overcome most of my childhood traumas. I only had one major issue that I hadn’t been able to completely overcome. Whenever men started yelling or fighting, I would curl into a ball or cower into myself and completely shut down as a flashback or panic attack consumed me. Thankfully, it never happened while I was performing. As the years passed, the time between flashbacks grew longer and longer, but they never completely went away, and I wasn’t sure they ever would.
Carbon
I was getting angrier and angrier by the day. Fucking, fighting, and riding were no longer keeping the red haze just below the surface. After my family’s unavenged murder, my only surviving sibling moved in with our grandmother, and I joined the Blackwings MC. My dad was a patched member, and I’d always planned to follow in his footsteps, but I never thought I would be doing it without him.
On the one-year anniversary of my family’s murder, I lost my shit and nearly beat a man to death in a matter of seconds. Granted, he deserved a few hits, but nothing like the ass-whooping he received from me. If Phoenix and Badger hadn’t been there, I would likely be spending my foreseeable future behind bars.
The next morning, Phoenix called me into his office and told me, in no uncertain terms, I needed to get myself under control, or I would lose my patch. Then, he said the words that ultimately saved me. “I think you should consider joining the military. Your patch will be here when you get back, and we’ll look after your grandmother and sister.”
I knew I needed help, so I took his advice and joined the Marines. He was right. The structure and discipline did help me learn some self-control. I also learned new skills, honed old ones, and found ways to channel my anger when I couldn’t suppress it. Or so I thought.
As it turned out, I hadn’t dealt with anything. I pushed it all to the back of my mind and managed to keep my anger locked down, only losing control a handful of times. Thankfully, my club was there to rein me in each time. Then, I lost another member of my family. Grandma’s unexpected death was the catalyst that sent my bottled-up emotions into dangerous territory. I was drowning, but there was no lifeline in sight.
CHAPTER ONE
Carbon
I pushed the door open and let myself in, surprised by how quiet it was inside. “Mom? Dad?” I called out. Where was everyone? They knew I was coming over. Dad and I were going to look at a bike I was thinking about buying and Mom asked me to come over early to have breakfast with them. “Mason? Sage? Reese?” I yelled as I made my way upstairs. At the top of the stairs, I stopped dead in my tracks when I saw the blood…everywhere.
I shot up in bed, gasping for breath and covered in a light sheen of sweat. Even though I was expecting the memory to appear in my dreams, it still felt just as real as it did when it actually happened.
The memory of finding my family murdered in their home often haunted my sleep. At first, the hellacious scene played behind my closed lids every night. As time passed, the dreams didn’t occur as often and finally dwindled down to only special dates like birthdays and anniversaries.