FORBIDDEN: The Stowaway PART ONE

Chapter Twenty - Riggs

I shouldn't have done that. I regretted it again after I finished inside her on my bed.

Then again in the shower.

She's different. I like different.

I want her more than I can explain.

I want to show her I can be different, too. Get out of this business. Away from the guns, the drugs, the women, and the violence.

A new life with someone I love. Kids.

Someone who doesn't know this business. Who doesn't want to be a part of this business.

Someone who will make me whole.

I'm not saying Zay is that someone. But she's a start.

She's the push I need to get out of a club I didn't want part of, but my daddy had other plans for his kids. Loads of other plans.

I'll never forget my first kill. All the others blend together, but my first, it's crystal clear.

My daddy brought us down to the shitty part of town no cop would ever set foot in. Snakes run them streets. Judas, Crew, and I were at my daddy's side. I was still a prospect. Still a newbie.

Daddy said I needed to start from the ground and work my way up. Earn my patch, earn my tattoos.

A woman was brought to her knees in tears, holding onto a man. "Whores. The two of them." That's the only explanation I remember my daddy saying.

Heavy tears. Wailing.

My ears started ringing.

I couldn't hear them speak. Couldn't hear my daddy spitting orders at us.

I couldn't breathe.

I didn't want this. I was born into it and told this was what I had to do.

But I didn't want it.

My daddy grabbed the back of my neck and yanked me forward. "I said, take your fucking gun out."

I whimpered but pulled it from the back of my jeans. "Yes, sir."

He pulled me to the screaming couple and held his gun against the woman's head. "Hold it like this." He jerked his head at the man. "On the count of three, you'll earn your patch."

I didn't want it. But I wouldn't dare disobey him with a gun in his hand.

My hands were shaking. I remember the gun moving around so much I had to press it into the guy's temple to steady it.

"Ready?" Crew asked. "Ready to become a man?"

They had different versions than me of what becoming a man meant. To me, it meant the first time you stick your dick inside someone. I'd been a man since I was fifteen. I'd been a man with more than one woman already.

Killing wasn't becoming a man.

It was torture.

Murder.

Something I didn't want a part of but had no choice.

The woman looked up at me. Her deep brown eyes filled with tears. But she accepted her fate.

She closed her eyes and breathed, letting the smallest grin spread to her lips as if she knew the end wouldn't be that bad.

My daddy cackled when he saw me staring at her with furrowed brows. "Don't be a softie like your mother. Grow a set and pull the fucking trigger."

He did. He pulled it and the woman collapsed. Blood was leaking from the hole in the side of her head. Her husband yelled frantically. I didn't know what to do.

I panicked and looked up at my daddy for reason. All he did was hold the gun to his own head and tilt it to the side.

Telling me to blow this fucker's brains out without saying a goddamn thing.

I did.

I shot the man and ended his screaming.

Screams that still haunt my dreams.

Screams no one should have to hear.

But to my daddy, I became a man. I became a man three more times that week.

Four deaths by my hand in a matter of five days.

I was only seventeen.

*

I called Judas. Lip. Crew. Banks. And even Mick. Not a single one of them is answering me.

And I got a funny fucking feeling the reason I'm here with her is because of the guy she killed.

I don't know who he is, but actions have consequences, and I think we're connected because of her dumbass mistake.

She pokes the fire, tossing a log onto it.

"Can I ask you something?"

She looks back at me and grins. "You've been inside me a handful of times. I think you can ask me anything you want."

I wet my lips, thinking about the right way to phrase this. "The guy you killed, how do you know no one saw you do it?"

She pauses as she reaches for another log and straightens her back. "Because I planned that night for weeks. I knew his schedule, his roommate's schedule. I knew where his friends would be and what time everyone on his floor got home. I killed him knowing I'd never get caught."

I grumble, grabbing the beer from the coffee table. "How'd you do it?"

She stalks over to the couch and sits beside me, facing me with her leg bent under her. "I'll tell you about my first if you tell me about yours."

A smirk sprouts on my lips and I nod, moving hair off her shoulder to reveal those collarbones that drive me nuts.

"My daddy led the club before Crew. He molded me into who I am. Told me that not everything has to be solved with violence or death. Things can be solved with goodness. Kindness. Everything Crew is not. Everything I found out my daddy isn't, either. Brainwashed me to be part of something I didn't want to be a part of." I clear my throat and guzzle down some beer. "It was cold the night I made my daddy proud. We had a deal downtown, the dingy part. Hookers on street corners, not the classy kind, either. The ones you'd catch something from. Drug addicts shooting up with dirty needles they found on the streets. Disgusting place. But Crew likes it because no cop sets foot in the alleys. They'd get eaten alive. My daddy and Crew had me front and center, seventeen years old without a purpose and the wrong direction. I'd held a gun before. But never a gun I was ready to use."

I catch her eye and the corner of my mouth twitches, trailing my gaze to her hands. I take one, threading our fingers together for comfort. I think she likes me telling her about my past.

Makes her feel normal, I guess.

"I aimed right at the poor sap begging for his life, then shot. Killed him like it was nothing," I finish, draining my beer.

She looks at the fire, taking a memory that flashes through my mind every time I close my eyes. Those big brown eyes of the woman that wail.

Crew's laughter still echoes in the far depths of my brain.

I pulled the trigger, a single hole between the man's eyes.

Blood leaked from it down his face.

I was scared shitless.

I had to pretend to be brave.

But that night, they set the monster free.