Anything For You Read online

  So, yeah, the first day of quiet freaked me out.

  Three days later, and I was starting to rethink that train of thought. Birds woke me in the morning instead of screeching alarms or the sounds of someone puking up the alcohol they’d consumed the night before. No bikes revving inside the compound, fuck, in four days, I had not even heard a motor until this morning. I didn’t even go to the window to look and see who it was, and I didn’t hide behind the heavy curtain to do surveillance without being seen.

  Nothing … because I didn’t give a fuck. I had no family; the brotherhood I had been a part of for most of my adult life wasn’t coming for me.

  That debt had been settled.

  I was free from every branch of my past.

  Free to live in the peace and quiet of Pike’s Bluff.

  Shaking my head, I let out what could be construed as a chuckle and grabbed a log from the pile I stacked up last night and tossed it on the open fire. Standing there, I watched as the fire crackled underneath it, spitting out sparks and embers onto the worn-out hearth.

  Shit, that ain’t good.

  Reaching for the fire screen, I propped it against the stone and brick surround, feeling the heat of the flames leave my thighs immediately. There was something about a fire that didn’t consist of using petrol and old outdoor furniture that was so much more soothing. My years gathered around an out-of-control bonfire with naked women dancing around it, trying to get the attention of a patched brother all of a sudden seemed not as appealing as it had at the time.

  Hearing the hiss of the kettle on the stove, I walked slowly to the attached kitchen to make myself another cuppa, my third for the morning.

  Replacing cigarettes with coffee was a poor substitute for my nicotine addiction, but it was all part of my plan to forge a better path for myself. Giving up smokes and grog had been the easier choices to make. The others, not so much.

  Rolling my shoulders, I waited for the sting at my shoulder blades and grinned when I felt nothing. Thank fuck for that. The pain had been tenfold, the physical pain much easier to deal with and overcome. The mental anguish still lingered, still haunted me.

  Walking away from the prison gates six years ago, I vowed it would be the last time I ever passed through them as an inmate or a visitor. Never again was I going back inside, and that meant I had to make the ultimate change and leave the only family I truly belonged to, ever.

  Going to my Pres had taken a little longer than I first intended. That day I walked away from Port Phillip Prison; my only focus had been to go straight to Dogg and tell him I was out. Three stints for the club, one five years and two a little less, I wanted out—the final one being the five-year sentence for possession and having an illegal firearm on my person. Of course, it didn’t help that I had been pointing it in some dude’s face when the cops came around the corner and happened upon me threatening to blow his head off if he didn’t pay up the money he owed to my club. Where my fucking backup was, I didn’t know. Scooter was supposed to be lookout while I did the night’s shakedowns.

  My patch proclaimed me as the enforcer for the Iron Serpents, so it had been up to me to make sure no one crossed us. And, I had been fucking good at my job until that night. When a brother broke the cardinal rule of the club and fucked up royally. As far as I had been concerned then, and still now, Scooter dropped the ball, and instead of acting like a biker, he aided in sending me down for five big ones. With my record, the judge didn’t take into account that I had not, in fact, shot the stupid prick. The fucking sawn-off didn’t even have any shells in the thing, but that didn’t factor into his decision that I was a menace to society and locked me up.

  Being incarcerated, I could handle, ya know? My first time in prison had come at the tender age of fifteen, then three more before my eighteenth birthday. So I was no stranger to being in a cell. What I did not expect, and what fuelled my fire to get out, was that not one fucking brother or family member of the club fucking visited me. I had to hear on the prison grapevine that Scooter had not been kicked out for his fuck up. I guess being the nephew of the President meant special privileges over a long-time member and an officer–a patched one at that.

  Five years gave you a lot of free time to think and fester.

  And fester I fucking did.

  It wasn’t until I walked back onto the compound grounds that my decision to leave started to waver. The second I walked through the gates and heard the noise and saw my brothers again, my resolve to give up the life took a detour … that lasted another four years as a member. Yet, I continued to carry out my duties, resumed my role as enforcer, and somehow, miraculously, stayed out of prison.

  Life in the club started to slow down a bit when Dogg found himself a woman. He put a ring on her finger, and suddenly we were travelling down a more legal road earning clean and less violence. Now, don’t get me wrong, I am no pussy. I am the first man in the fight and the last one to leave. I know how to keep my mouth shut, and in my opinion, I am the very definition of loyalty.

  Three stints for the club under my belt as proof.

  Earning clean meant staying out of prison and alive, and for a while, it had been working. But then, Dogg’s wife thought it’d be a good idea to cheat on him with a brother, and the fallout could only be described as brutal and swift. Dogg went on a six-day bender, came back to the club, kicked out his wife, beat the shit out of the prospect she let stick his dick into her, and the club went back to the old ways.

  That was the day I was done.

  The legit business ventures were suddenly forgotten about, the illegal ones back on the agenda. Guns, drugs and hookers. The shakedowns started up again, and as the enforcer, it fell on my shoulders to lead. Unfortunately, the conversation between me and Dogg didn’t go completely in my favour when I told him I wanted to leave the Iron Serpents.

  “I don’t get it, brother, we dealt with Scooter for his fuck up. He coped the beating coming to him and has progressed well in the club while you were in prison and since you have been out,” Dogg muttered, his almost black eyes glaring at me, piercing me.

  “It ain’t about Scooter, Pres, it’s about not wanting to go back inside. I have spent enough time in a fucking cell, brother. I don’t like it all that much.”

  “I get that, Bandit, but for fuck’s sake, patching out? That comes with some heavy consequences.” Dogg stared at me, using my road name for what could very well be the last time in this room. The meaning behind his words loud and clear. I knew the deal, the process coming my way to achieving my goal, and fuck if I was looking forward to it, but if the end result was going to get me the future I wanted, then so be it.

  Standing from my assigned seat at the table, the chair I’d fought hard to call mine and proved myself day after day, night after night, stint after stint; I ploughed my fingers through my short hair.

  “It’s been coming a while, Dogg. You had to see that?”

  Nodding at me, Dogg gave me a slight smile. “I know, brother, that last one should never have happened, but it did, and there is no way to take it back for you.”

  “But you can make it right,” I replied immediately, jumping on Dogg’s admission.

  “Blacking out and having the crap beat out of you? That what you want, Bandit?”

  Leaning down over the table, I planted my palms flat on the scarred wooden surface.

  “It’s better than going out in a wooden box, Alec,” I answered him, using his given name. Dogg and I pretty well grew up together in foster homes. Most of the time, we were sent to the same ones, but on occasion, the system split us up when we got into too much trouble, which happened a fair bit.

  “I’m fucking forty-four years old, mate. It’s time to slow down before it is forced on me.” The tiredness in my voice did not go unnoticed by me or my pres.

  “This is all you know, Beau, life in the MC. What are you going to do?”

  Smiling at Dogg, I told him the truth.

  “Fucking anything I want, brother,
but I’m going to do it without looking over my shoulder. I reckon I have earned that, don’t you, Dogg?”

  Dropping his head to the table, Dogg let out a frustrated breath, the tension in his broad shoulders visible. Looking up at me without lifting his head, Dogg gave me a grim smile.

  “We do the blackout, but not the beating,” he offered, but I was already shaking my head at that suggestion.

  “No fucking way, brother. We do it like we always do it. I go out the way the club demands. I relocate like the law dictates, hand in my cut for you to do a burnout on, and that is that,” I growled firmly and loudly. “I didn’t spend over half my life in the life to go out like a pussy.”

  “Once a biker, always a biker, hey Beau,” Dogg chuckled at my outburst.

  “No, Alec, once a brother, always a brother,” I corrected him, my hand going out to him, “that ain’t gonna change, is it? Not for you and me?”

  Rising to his six foot, seven-inch height, Dogg towered over the majority of people, and definitely everyone I knew.

  “No, brother,” Dogg rasped, his ham-hock-sized hand engulfing mine, “that ain’t ever gonna change.”

  So, as the written law of the Iron Serpents degreed, I had my club tats blacked out painfully, crudely and unceremoniously. No cover-ups were allowed, just ugly black ink blacking out the snake and my road name, the whole time, I thanked like fuck I didn’t get a full back piece like Dogg and a few of the other guys had. I copped a beating by the five men Dogg picked for the job. You were allowed to fight back, so the first man I went after was Scooter. I knew that Dogg chose him so I could exact some revenge on him for sending me in for five years, and for that, I have to say pleased the fuck out of me. Breaking that fuckers nose and cracking three of his ribs made the beat down all the more worthwhile. Then my cut got the rubber treatment, Dogg took that honour himself. I guess he thought it would be disrespectful to me if anyone else did it.

  After two weeks in the hospital recovering from various broken bones, a punctured lung, bruised and broken ribs, and a fuck lot of everything else that came with five men beating you up, I got on my bike and took off to lick my wounds. For seven months, I rode around Australia, not under the protection of the club, my cut or my brothers, but I was free.

  Free to go wherever the fuck I wanted. Free to sleep all night without being woken to do a job and free from the darker side of being in an MC.

  Ending up in a country town in Southern Victoria called Pike’s Bluff.

  A far cry from the club compound.

  My mobile phone started to chime with an incoming call just as I finished the last of my coffee. Walking over to the small nest of tables by the recliner, I smiled big when I saw who was calling me.

  “Dogg, how the fuck are you doin’, brother?”

  “Probably not as good as you mate, that picture you sent me last night in your message looks like you are living on another planet.”

  “You ain’t wrong there,” I chuckled, walking back into the kitchen to look out of the window over the sink. The scenery before me was nothing short of spectacular, even if it was missing some noise. Birds were fine and much more soothing to wake up to, but hearing the roar of a Harley or the smell of burning rubber would be nice occasionally too.

  “You likin’ the quiet, Beau?” Dogg asked me, the use of my given name still sounding foreign to my ears and a little hurtful.

  “Yeah, I am Dogg, it’s what I needed, ya know?”

  “Yeah, I kinda wish for some peace and quiet for myself,” Dogg muttered and my focus returned from the outside view back to my former pres.

  “Got yourself a problem?”

  “You could say that. Elana is pregnant, she is sure it’s mine.”

  “Yours? How the fuck can it be yours? You two have been split for months, haven’t ya?”

  Dogg growled down the phone, and in my mind’s eye, I could see him running a frustrated hand through his hair.

  “I kicked her out when I found her sucking a brother’s cock, but according to her, she was already pregnant at that time, left without telling me. She is over seven months along and I only found out by accident. She wasn’t even going to tell me Beau, wasn’t going to let me know that I am going to be a dad.”

  “Fuck me, Alec, that is some underhanded shit,” I agreed. I didn’t have any kids, at least none that I knew of, and didn’t really have any desire to be a dad. At forty-five and not in a very good place mentally and financially, I didn’t see that changing any time soon.

  “Yeah it is, but now that I do know, I have Elana at my private residence off the compound and so far, she is toeing the line and keeping her arse put.”

  “You worried she is going to do something drastic?”

  There was a brief pause over the line before Dogg let out a tired sigh.

  “Na, she ain’t like that. She might have cheated on me, but she isn’t a cunt. Not to that extreme.”

  Thinking back to meeting Elana, I had to agree with Dogg’s assessment of his ex-wife. Leaving the cheating aside for a minute, Elana did love Dogg and seemed to be just as committed to making a good life with my pres as he was. Why she cheated was anyone’s guess, why she did it with a brother … that shit I would never understand.

  Worried for my mate, I went ahead and said something a biker would never say to his president, but seeing as though I wasn’t one anymore, and he wasn’t my pres, I decided to broaden my horizons and cross that imaginary line.

  “You still love her, don’t ya, Dogg?”

  Silence greeted me, so I delved a little deeper.

  “Is it possible for you to get past the cheating and make a second go of it with her?”

  “Did you grow a vagina when you patched out, Beau?” Dogg grumbled at me, but his chuckle at the end saved me from defending my questions. During my years in the club, Dogg and I had the best mateship of anyone. Growing up in foster care, we learned to lean on each other, and that continued in the Iron Serpents, but only behind closed doors and only the two of us present. Showing any kind of weakness did not bode well when you held a president and enforcer patch. Speaking about your feelings didn’t exactly make a tough, gritty image for a biker.

  “Don’t dodge me, Dogg, if you and Elana can work your shit out, that can only be a good thing, especially with a kid thrown into the mix.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I’m hearing ya, Beau. The only thing is seeing your wife with another man’s dick in her mouth isn’t something you can get past in a hurry. The baby is due in less than two months and even though she is under my roof, she and I barely talk.”

  “Then talk to her, yell at her, ask her why the fuck she did it. Pull your fucking head out of your arse, mate, and work shit out. Club life is exactly that—club life. It isn’t always going to be there, brother. At some point in your tough life, you are going to have to accept that one day all the shit, all the violence and illegal side of things won’t be as important as it once was. And remember, Dogg, it takes two to make a marriage work, but …. it also takes two to fuck it up. Talk to Elana, mate, find out where her head was when she made that decision.”

  Down the line, I could hear a tapping sound, making me think that Dogg was either drumming his fingers on a table thinking about what I just spewed at him. Or, he was filling his gun clip with bullets and preparing to get on his bike and make the four-hour trek to come to shoot me.

  Finally, Dogg gave me an affirmative grunt—his way of agreeing with me without actually saying it.

  “You got a job lined up?” he asked, changing the subject, which made me chuckle.

  “Fair enough, mate,” I allowed Dogg to dodge this time, “yes, I have a job lined up. A bloke in the township I landed in is looking for someone to take over his wood delivery business for a few months while he recovers from a broken back.”

  “Wood delivery?”

  “Yeah, chainsaws and shit. I cut down trees, cut them into logs and stack them so they can dry. Then I take orders and deliver. This place
is fucking cold three out of the four seasons, so I am assured it is a good money maker and will keep me pretty busy,” I explained, just happy to be doing something that didn’t involve shaking down some poor sap who had the bad fortune of being trapped by a drug habit.

  Trading a sawn-off shotgun for a chainsaw seemed like a good trade-off to me.

  “Well, if you think that is going to make you happy, then you have my support,” Dogg said quietly, and listening to him, I could swear I heard a hint of jealousy in his voice.

  “That’s the plan, mate, that’s why I walked away, painfully, I might add, from the only family I ever cared about. I gotta make that worth something.”

  There was another long pause, but this time I wasn’t worried. Dogg and I had known each other long enough to know when the other was pissed off and when he wasn’t.

  “I admire your guts, brother. Take care of yourself, Bandit. I’ll give Nan a kiss for ya on Sunday, mate.”

  The sound of nothing came next, and I knew that Dogg had ended our call. Dropping my phone to the bench, my mouth split into a wide smile. That was Dogg for ya, abrupt and cantankerous, but not stupid. He heard what I said and was listening, that much I was sure of. I knew that because he wouldn’t have called me by my old road name if what I said didn’t resonate with him.

  Suddenly, the mobile phone given to me by my new boss rang, pulling me back to where my mind needed to be. The club was now firmly part of my past, and now it was time to move forward. Riding around the country gave me time to heal my physical injuries. It was time to heal the rest of my life.

  Time to get to work.

  CHAPTER THREE

  NATALIE

  “George, what would I do without you!” I crowed out loud, looking at the pile of rusty metal with glee, running my hand over a particularly gorgeous car door that looked to be from an XY Ford. Since I started working at my metal sculptures, I had become quite the expert on old cars and machinery. George had a mate that was a scrap dealer and he talked him into passing me the stuff that was worthless to sell for money. To me, it was anything but worthless, and I insisted on paying for my loot of goodies. Checking for an invoice, I found it taped to a box of wheel hub caps. Running a critical eye over the handwritten bill, I huffed when I saw that the total was not even close to the value I would have expected to pay. Even in the rusted and beat-up condition, the estimate was at least two hundred dollars too cheap.