Ride Hard (Savage Saints MC Book 1) Read online

  Ride Hard

  Hazel Parker

  J.C. Allen

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1: Trace

  Chapter 2: Jane

  Chapter 3: Trace

  Chapter 4: Jane

  Chapter 5: Trace

  Chapter 6: Jane

  Chapter 7: Trace

  Chapter 8: Jane

  Chapter 9: Trace

  Chapter 10: Jane

  Chapter 11: Trace

  Chapter 12: Jane

  Chapter 13: Trace

  Chapter 14: Jane

  Chapter 15: Trace

  Chapter 16: Jane

  Chapter 17: Trace

  Chapter 18: Jane

  Chapter 19: Trace

  Chapter 20: Jane

  Chapter 21: Trace

  Ride Hard © 2019 Hazel Parker & J. C. Allen

  All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Warning: the unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.

  Ride Hard

  No matter how far you run...

  Your demons always find you.

  The Savage Saints took everything,

  leaving me orphaned, my dad bleeding out in my arms.

  I couldn’t get away fast enough.

  I took their money—

  they owed me that much after everything they stole from me—

  and left to start a new life.

  Go to med school.

  Forget the past.

  But how can I forget everything—

  everything that happened,

  everything I lost—

  when my new life is built on their dirty money?

  Everything I own is tainted.

  The only way out is to pay it all back.

  There’s a hitch in my plans I didn’t take into account, though.

  Trace, the Savage Saints president.

  He’s gruff, but betrays a gentle side.

  At least where I’m concerned.

  Our attraction is instant,

  Our chemistry undeniable.

  But giving in to him means riding straight back into the life that destroyed me once already.

  Will I survive a second time?

  Prologue

  Ten Years Before

  Underneath the shining stars of a warm December night in my hometown of Green Hills, California, my first semester of college having just wrapped up, I sat at an outdoor ice cream parlor with my father, who had raised me on his own ever since birth. He was my only living relative, quite possibly the only person I truly and fully loved, and the person who made my life what it was.

  He was my everything.

  “So you survived the first semester in New York,” my father said with a laugh. “A little bit different than here in Green Hills, huh?”

  “Well, for one, there’s actual cold weather there,” I said, smiling back as I took a bite out of my cookie dough ice cream. I shouldn’t have said what I said next, but I couldn’t help myself. “There’s also not a lot of bikes out there.”

  My father, a proud man, simply smiled at me, but I knew that what I had said had hurt him. I hadn’t meant to, but when I knew all the dangers of his current lifestyle, I couldn’t help it. He’d come home with bandages and bruises more times than players on our high school football team did, and I hated the prospect of something ever happening to him.

  “You know that the bike is my world, Jane,” he said. “Plus, let’s be honest. If not for that bike, you’d be working here in Green Hills still. And I don’t think you’d want that.”

  “Pops,” I said with a smirk. “You know I like it here.”

  “I know, but you don’t love it here.”

  I went silent, unwilling to dismiss the truth in my father’s words.

  “Green Hills is a different type of town than most, Jane, and I don’t blame you for leaving here,” my father went on. “It’s a small town for small folks who don’t have or don’t believe they can succeed on their ambitions. You’re a rare one. You want to be a doctor. Our nearest hospital is, what, twenty minutes away? If you stay here and you’re not there, the dream job is working as an associate at the cigar shop. You’re too smart for that, Jane, and I know you know it.”

  I smiled guiltily, trying not to come across as snobbish for the city. Pops was right, although he hadn’t hit on everything, partially out of self-defense for his motorcycle club, the Savage Saints.

  I just thought the town was too dangerous. I’d begged my father to retire for years, to help me move to someplace like Oregon or Nevada, but he kept telling me that he loved his brothers and sons and couldn’t leave them behind. I never understood that; I certainly didn’t feel like his “sons” and “brothers” were anything other than beefy jerks who liked to push their way around.

  Some of them weren’t bad. There was one guy named Vance, whom they called “Sensei,” like a karate master, an older gentleman about fifteen years younger than my Dad, whom I found honorable and nice.

  Then there was Tracy “Trace” Cole, one of the youngest members of the club, only a few years older than me. Though we weren’t the best of friends, he was someone that I always admired and looked up to… and, admittedly, as I got a little bit older, I found pretty hot. The age gap was too large in childhood for it to ever feel appropriate, but now?

  Well, it didn’t much matter since I wouldn’t be here for long, but at least there was one guy my age I could relate to.

  But the rest of them seemed a bit too eager to shoot their guns, talk about the fights they got in, or brag about the women they secured. At the very least, they made it a point to drive their Harleys around at an obnoxiously loud level.

  “There is a hospital here though,” I said, trying to appease him. “Hospitals need doctors.”

  “Jane,” my father said with assurance. “You’re not the only one who wants you to stay away from here.”

  “Pops…”

  My father wasn’t vulnerable much.

  But when he was…

  “There’s a reason I told you to go out of state, darling,” he said. “And that’s…”

  His voice trailed off as he looked over my shoulder. I turned back to see about a half-dozen bikers driving over.

  “Shit, get down, Jane!”

  I wasn’t sure what happened first, my father yanking me back with his beefy hand or the machine gun fire roaring to life, but it all happened so fast that all I could think to do was curl up like a turtle, put my hands over my ears, and beg for it to stop.

  I’d never gotten caught in a shootout like this, though I certainly heard them from a distance. Now that I was here, though, I was sure I was going to die. Gunfire didn’t just erupt from the street—it came from the other side of me too. I didn’t feel any pain, but I knew that adrenaline had a way of masking it.

  “DM fuckin’ scum!” I heard a familiar voice say very close to me—Burke Kyle, someone my father called his armed sergeant or his sergean
t in arms or something—as he lobbed a series of shotgun blasts over the table we’d taken cover at.

  I screamed and wailed as I begged for it to stop. This was why I had to get my father out, had to get both of us the hell away from Green Hills. They had nicknamed the town Red Hills for a reason.

  Just as quickly as it had started, though, I heard the rival gang, the Devil’s Mercenaries, riding away, saying something about, “Got him, get out!” As they rode out, I heard more bikers coming, presumably Pop’s men for backup.

  “Oh, shit! Jane, you OK?”

  Burke “BK” Kyle tapped my shoulder twice to pull me up. I looked up in a daze, whimpering in fear.

  “You’re OK; they’re gone,” he said, seemingly oblivious to the wound in his shoulder.

  “BK… BK, what. What…”

  But my voice trailed off even more when I looked behind BK.

  My father was on the ground, blood pouring out of him. I hoped and hoped that this wasn’t the end, even as every rational bone in my body was telling me he was losing too much blood.

  “Pops, pops, no, no, no,” I said, tears streaming out of my eyes. “No! Pops! Come on!”

  My father, my only remaining family, looked up to me with weak eyes as I scooped him up in my arms, blood pouring onto them. He gave me a faint smile.

  “Stay far away, Jane,” he said. “I… I love you.”

  “Pops!” I screamed. “Pops! POPS!”

  But he didn’t say another word, slipping out of my arms as I crumbled at the weight of his limp body. My knees shook, my hands trembled, and my eyes blurred as I heard the rest of the Savage Saints run up, many of them gasping and a few of them weeping too.

  “This is all your fault! All of you!” I shrieked, refusing to look at them. “You guys let him stay in this life! I hope you all rot in hell!”

  No one dared to respond. I just kept sitting there over my father’s body, wondering how it had all gotten to this.

  Only one of the Saints dared to come closer to me—Tracy. He put his hand over his mouth in horror. I shared a look with him, but I could not bring myself to hate him as much as the rest. He was…

  Different.

  But I still had no words.

  Sirens blared from afar, but at this point, everything sounded like a distant echo. It was all drowned out by my father’s last words.

  “Stay far away, Jane. I love you.”

  I love you too, Pops.

  And that’s why I’m never fucking coming back to this hell hole again.

  * * *

  The Next Morning

  None of us wanted to come to the hall of the Savage Saints.

  None of us wanted to get out of bed the morning after losing our leader and founder, Paul Peters.

  None of us wanted to have to deal with the inevitable, necessary club business required after the loss of an officer, most especially the club president.

  But we were left with little choice.

  The visual in my head of Jane screaming, blood on her arms, tears in her eyes, and her white dress stained with her father’s death was the kind of thing that I knew would haunt my dreams for the rest of my life. It was the kind of sight that made a man question the purpose of what he was doing, even if he’d grown up indoctrinated in it. I had always loved the Saints for what they did to protect Green Hills, but it was some debate if we could even protect Green Hills when we couldn’t protect our own.

  I had always seen Jane as something of a little sister, one who had blossomed, frankly, into a very attractive and successful woman, although I always kept my thoughts about her appearance and attraction to myself. I did my best to set the example for her, however possible, and though we didn’t hang much, I always felt there was a little something there.

  That sure as hell, though, was gone now.

  When I first walked into the private room with the Savage Saints’ insignia on the table, I instinctively sat in the vice president’s chair as I always had. It didn’t feel right. Even when I consciously recognized it, it didn’t feel right.

  It was only when Sensei entered, shut the door gently behind him, and nodded to the chair that I knew I had to take a seat.

  “The boys won’t ever take you for what you need to be if you aren’t sitting there,” he groused.

  I nodded, gave the weakest “yeah” that I ever could, and slid over.

  “No one’s expecting you to come out like Cicero or Lincoln here and rally the troops,” he said. “Hell, I don’t think that anyone wants to be rallied about now. But you gotta at least make them know you will eventually rally them.”

  I didn’t respond as the rest of the officers filed in. There was the sergeant-in-arms, BK, a man so reserved that in all of the years I had known him, I still wasn’t quite sure which branch of the military he’d had a stint in before coming here. Despite this, there wasn’t a man alive I trusted more to take a bullet or fire one on behalf of the club. He was the only person with Paul last night before the attack, and I knew that he was likely drowning in guilt.

  But I also knew too well that any attempts to comfort BK would be met with stony silence, a shrug, or a dismissive “got it.”

  There was Sensei, the calming voice of the club, but also quite possibly the man most attached to the club. His wife had perished a few years back, and with a four-year-old daughter, he might have spent all of the previous night thinking about if it had been her. Undoubtedly, if so, by now he would have gone on a suicide run to the DM’s base. He was the one who made sure that the club kept itself contained and out of jail during our legendary parties and celebrations; in fact, I was pretty sure that half of those nights, he kept himself to just a half-dozen drinks, practically sober in comparison to the rest.

  There was Splitter, one of my best friends and the man I intended to make my VP once I took over as president in the meeting. Splitter was a mean motherfucker, the kind of man who would slice off a DM’s fingers and then force feed them to him to get him to break. But Splitter also had an unreal soft side, the kind of person that would cry at the animal shelter commercials. He’d never do it in front of us, of course, but it was an odd contrast how he could be hyper-masculine one second, and then a soft, mushy teddy bear the next.

  And coming in last were Sword and Mafia, the treasurer and a well-connected officer of the club. I waited until everyone had taken a seat before speaking up.

  “I don’t think anyone wants to be here,” I said. “I certainly wish I didn’t have to be in this chair. However, Paul would not want the club to wallow in its sorrow. We’re not going to get our shit straight for a day or two, but let’s handle some early business first.”

  I nodded to BK, who cleared his throat.

  “All in favor of swearing in Trace as president?”

  No one bothered to wait their turn. Everyone said “yea” in conjunction, wanting to get this over with. I thanked everyone, but it was the most half-assed thanks I had ever given. It was too soured with the emotions from the day before.

  “All right then,” I said. “We could go home now, but I want us to discuss one thing before we go. Jane Peters, Paul’s daughter.”

  The room visibly tensed at that. Everyone loved Jane as Paul’s daughter, and I wanted now more than ever to watch over her and be near her, but everyone else had an odd relationship with her in part because of her outspoken disdain for the club as an entity. She liked all of us as individuals, but she had long wanted the club gone. She thought it was too dangerous.

  Damn shame she’s right.

  “Paul was using club funds to pay for her education; I don’t think that’s a secret to anyone.”

  No one said a word. I looked at Sword, who nodded that I was right, and I went on.

  “We need to continue to do so,” I said, feeling like I was tasting venom as I spoke my next words. “Get a club critic out of town, make her Pops happy, and ensure that a girl who can actually do something worth a shit can continue to do so. Anyone in dissent?”

&
nbsp; I knew more than one person was thinking about arguing against it, but anyone who did had the same thoughts as I did—to argue otherwise felt like a slap in the face of her father’s wishes. There was going to be no chance.

  “Good, it remains as is,” I sighed. “I don’t have anything else.”

  I looked around the room, giving anyone who needed the chance to wail, speak, or bitch the opportunity to do so. It was Paul’s way of allowing everyone to feel ownership—at least, in non-emergency situations—and I hoped to continue it, even if it felt a little bit like letting the inmates run the asylum.

  For at least one meeting, I could pretend to just be a fill-in, not the real thing.

  “We gonna let her speak at the funeral?”

  All eyes shifted to Splitter in surprise.

  “She’s not gonna give us kind words. Can’t let her destroy the club’s image like that.”

  I bit my lip. I knew how many people would come to that funeral—the mayor, Sheriff Wiggins, the entire police force, some of the biggest names in town. Hearing the daughter of the former MC president rip the club to shreds would be something of a bad PR move.

  I had my feelings. But I had to put it to a vote.

  “Six of us here, we need a majority to gag her,” I said, feeling sick even as I said the words. “BK?”

  I nervously waited for BK’s word. Since he was the only one there the previous night, I felt whatever he said would set the tone for the rest of the vote.

  “Nay.”

  Thank God, though I tried not to show my relief.

  “Yea,” Sensei said, drawing a surprised look from me.

  But the vote proceeded on.

  “Yea,” Splitter said to no one’s surprise.

  “Nay,” Sword said.

  “Yea,” Mafia said.

  It was left to me. All eyes fell upon me. How appropriate, I thought, that on my first day as president, I’d already get tasked with a controversial measure that half the group would judge me for and half would love me for. And that didn’t even include all the members of the club just outside the hall, waiting to hear word on what was said. In theory, everything in these walls was sacred and silent.