Page 31 of Rider Daddies (Venom Vultures MC #6)

RYDER

I sip on coffee mindlessly like it’s a drug I don’t need.

I don’t need caffeinating, the same way Saint doesn’t need to light up another cigarette.

Adrenaline is already running through our bloodstreams at an all-time high.

Either we give Lucia over to Tristan, or we lose the clubhouse. I can hate that man until the cows come home, but it doesn’t change the facts. He might be a distasteful sleaze, but he’s resourceful and knows the right people. People who have the power to end us in a heartbeat.

“Do you mind?” I address Saint sitting opposite me. He has no regard for my lungs this morning whatsoever, blowing cigarette smoke directly my way.

“You don’t hear me complaining about your coffee breath.”

“Take it easy.” Ash takes a seat beside me, sipping on a beer. “We need to reserve our energy for tonight.”

“What if Tristan brings friends?” Lucia asks, sitting rigidly next to Saint.

“Do psycho stalkers have friends?”

“Funny.” She rolls her eyes and turns away, eyes focused on the door.

“You’re obviously going nowhere.” Saint takes the cigarette from his mouth, clipping it between his fingers. He takes a drag of oxygen this time. “I still don’t know why he went and kissed that other girl if he’s in love with you, like he claimed.”

“Best not to question how a fucked-up stalker brain works.” Ash takes another sip of beer. “The only logic a man like Tristan has is how to throw together an outfit.”

“And even that’s a stretch.”

Saint is the only one who chuckles at my joke.

“We gotta kill him.” Lucia bites into her lip so hard that it looks like it could split. “It’s the only way.”

She wants to stay here at the clubhouse that bad?

Surely there’s more to life than stupid bar work out in the desert.

“You look on edge, darling,” Ash states.

“I could say the same for all of you.”

The question is: Why?

We all look like we wanna hang ourselves this morning. No amount of caffeine, nicotine, or alcohol is gonna change that.

And it’s all because of Lucia.

Three days without her was enough for me. It fucking kills me to admit it, but no girl has ever been in control of my feelings as much as Lucia.

She’s the last thought I have before I go to bed.

The first in the morning.

I pinch the bridge of my nose and find the area bursting with pain again, like I’m reliving the events that occurred two decades ago.

When I was twenty years old, a fucking college drop-out.

“Where have you been for two days?” Ash asks, with a fresh pint of beer in his hand.

“Out.”

“Elaborate.”

“Mom and Dad aren’t here.”

“Need I be reminded.”

“So, stop pretending to be them.”

Ash clutches the glass harder. “You can’t keep disappearing for days and reappearing like nothing has happened. What was the name of this one…oh, right. You’re probably too up your own ass to have heard her name.”

He should make that sentence plural.

Last night, it wasn’t just one girl.

“Stop getting so involved in my life.”

“It’s not healthy to live like this, Ryder.”

But what is healthy these days? Hooking up and getting high on the orgasm drug is better than drinking away your sorrows. It’s usually cheaper too, depending on which nightclub you go to.

“You wanna talk about a healthy lifestyle?” I snort. “Let’s go, full steam ahead.” I snatch the drink out of his hand and pour it over his head, drenching him in his own Budweiser. “That’s better.”

I stand back to admire my wet dog of an older brother.

Pathetic.

It’s been three years since the car accident.

I kinda understood it before when things were fresh, but we’re all adults now.

Saint is eighteen, with a DJ job in the city.

I’m taking a break from college.

Ash is doing whatever Ash does, if there’s a name for drinking on the couch all day reading too much into the news.

He swipes a piece of his drenched hair aside and looks at me, pissed as ever. He tries too hard to be our father, giving it the cold blue eyes, tough love combo.

“You don’t get it, do you?” he says.

“No, because I’m not drunk out of my mind every second of the day, like you.”

“No,” he snaps. “That’s right. You’re too busy fucking yourself numb, drowning in your own swollen ego every time the hookup you can’t even remember the name of screams your name during climax.”

I need another pint of beer to pour over his head.

Scrap that—next time, I’ll smash the full glass right in his face.

“You should watch your mouth.”

“Why?” Ash rubs the beer from his eyes. “Because you’ll set all of your shallow college followers onto me?” He steps in. “I’ll tell you the reason why you dropped out of college.”

“Taking a break,” I correct.

“You dropped out because you don’t give a fuck about yourself. All you give a fuck about is how high up you are on the ladder of social hierarchy.”

“It’s better than being a loner, sitting on the couch all day talking to the inanimate object in your hand.”

Ash bares his teeth like a wolf. “You’re so fucking ungrateful.”

“Ungrateful?!”

“I gave up my life after Mom and Dad for the pair of you. The least you could do is not throw yours down the drain.”

Ah, a life in the military. He’s been obsessed with joining for a couple of years now. He thinks it’s an honorable thing to do, but I think the complete opposite.

The bastard has always had a knack for control, ever since our parents were killed.

Ash thinks he takes the moral high ground because he’s older, but he’s a control-obsessed fool who can’t stand to see his two younger brothers doing better than him, scoring more girls than he could ever dream of.

“Face the music—your life is already down the drain.”

Not so cocky now.

Ash looks at me with venom in his eyes. Instead of trying to win the argument, he goes in for a cold, hard punch that knocks me straight to the ground.

There’s no way he’s winning this…

I try to stand myself back up but the pain is too great, throbbing. I take my hand away from the bridge of my nose where it hurts the most, and see blood.

Like, a lot.

I yell, because I’m pretty sure he’s just broken my nose.

Looking up, I see him standing over me. If I wasn’t looking at him for this length of time, I’d miss the micro expression of guilt that flashes across his eyes for a millisecond.

Instead of helping me up and taking me to the emergency room, he does what all kind, caring, nurturing big brothers do—he walks away.

And despite the pain, I burst into laughter. He got violent, which means I got into his head…

Which, in turn, means that I won.

“…Ryder?”

I unpinch my nose and turn to see Ash, Saint, and Lucia all looking at me. Their stares suggests that they’ve been anticipating my response for some time.

“What?” I reach for my mug of coffee.

“Do you think it’s worthwhile to kill Tristan?”

It’s a simple question, but it tugs at my brain.

We lose Lucia or the clubhouse. Which one hurts the most?

Answer—the first.

I wish I fucking knew why.

When you do a lot of the same thing, you become indifferent to the activity.

Ash’s hobby was drinking on the couch—mine was fucking.

For my entire fucking forty years of living, no strings were ever attached.

It grew to become the only thing I excelled in—being an emotionless fucker who always got my desires satisfied.

I was never the guy who went to sleep dwelling on girls and relationships, unless it involved me imagining taking off their clothes.

But now I go to sleep at night, haunted by the picture of Lucia’s beautiful smile.

It’s the complete opposite of sex.

And I wish I fucking knew why.

I know that all three of us have claimed her, but it doesn’t help that Ash and Saint feel the same way toward what should rightfully be mine.

I turn to Lucia and study her pretty Italian face. Something unfamiliar twangs in my chest when I think about her being returned to Tristan.

He coaxed her into a relationship once…

I’m sure his master-manipulating mind will find a way to control her again.

“I think it’s worthwhile, yes,” I say. “We need to kill Tristan.”

“And the evidence?” Saint asks, cigarette back between his pursed lips. “What do we do when evidence of his death all points toward the clubhouse?”

“We kill him outside of the clubhouse,” Ash says.

“Sounds a lot easier than it is,” I point out.

Ash gives me a look. “You got a better idea up your sleeve?”

“Not right now.” I stare back at him. “But we have a full day ahead of us to figure something out.”

“Tristan is unpredictable,” adds Lucia. “I know him. His mind is his greatest asset. He might throw a wrench in the works that would stump us all.”

While this is all true, we’re forgetting the main point. Tristan is powerless without his brain.

“We gotta get violent.” I turn to Ash to emphasize my point. “Like, really violent. And then, once he’s dead, we bury him away from the clubhouse, in the desert somewhere.”

“God, sounds like a true crime documentary waiting to happen,” Lucia scoffs.

It’s a big plan. This can’t be easy on her. Tristan might be a deranged bastard, but what Lucia had with him, as much as I hate to admit it, was once real.

I watch as the chuckle dies on her face, seeing a part of myself in her.

She maintains eye contact. “You guys are really planning to risk the clubhouse and all of your biker buddies…for me?” She narrows her eyes suspiciously. “Is this in the fine print for the tattoo —do whatever it takes to save subject ?”

“No,” Ash says. “It’s not in the fine print.”

Lucia searches Ash’s face for a sign that he’s lying.

She’ll be searching all day.

It’s safe to say that the connection each of us have with Lucia is different.

Up until a few weeks ago, I didn’t think it was possible to be this obsessed with a woman.

I’m addicted. I want to own every single inch of her.

I look into her eyes and get this desperate urge to move mountains.

I want to know why, but I’m starting to believe that there’s no answer.

At the end of the day, you don’t get to choose who you?—

“I want to stay here,” Lucia says. There’s a pause. “For good. If you’ll have me.” Her eyes flicker between us three. “That doesn’t mean to say I trust you all of a sudden. I want to stay here because…California sucks.”

My chest flips. “You don’t want to go back to all that sunshine?”

“No,” she says. “Why would I go back there when I get a much better tan here?” She folds her arms over her chest as if to play it cool.

But I know Lucia Bianchi…

Maybe even more than I know myself.

“A tan is why you’re here?” I cock my brow. “So, this has nothing to do with us?”

“Humble as ever.” She rolls her eyes. “No. Nothing to do with you at all .”

I’d believe differently if her eyes didn’t linger like that over all three of us, like she’s calculating how it might feel to live a life without us.

I got a taste of how it would feel to be without her for three days.

And it sucked ass.

The conversation dies after that. With nothing left to do, I finish the rest of my coffee. To my surprise, it’s a struggle to swallow. A lump has formed in my throat, making it hard for even air to get down my esophagus.

I can beat around the bush all I want and trick my mind into thinking otherwise, but the truth always finds its way back home.

I have feelings for a girl, and the feelings are telling me to forfeit the club just to keep her by my side.