ROYAL BASTARDS CODE
PROTECT: The club and your brothers come before anything else, and must be protected at all costs. CLUB is FAMILY.
RESPECT: Earn it & Give it. Respect club law. Respect the patch. Respect your brothers. Disrespect a member and there will be hell to pay.
HONOR: Being patched in is an honor, not a right. Your colors are sacred, not to be left alone, and NEVER let them touch the ground.
OL’ LADIES: Never disrespect a member’s or brother’s Ol’Lady. PERIOD.
CHURCH is MANDATORY.
LOYALTY: Takes precedence over all, including well-being.
HONESTY: Never LIE, CHEAT, or STEAL from another member or the club.
TERRITORY: You are to respect your brother’s property and follow their Chapter’s club rules.
TRUST: Years to earn it…seconds to lose it.
NEVER RIDE OFF: Brothers do not abandon their family.
One
Prologue
Willa
I can’t even remember the first time my brother used me as a tool to make money. Being traded for favors to make rent was such a regular part of my teen-hood. I didn’t realize how abnormal I was until I met the man who saved my life.
Gabe Cohen crashed into my world, obliterating the foundations to rubble. He built me a new life. A safe one. A protected one. The kind fairytales are made of. But fairytales don’t last, and like a cruel, twisted villain creeping out of the shadows, the old life found me and set fire to my happily ever after.
I was left dying in the embers.
My prince couldn’t find me amongst the ashes. His Willa died that day…but my heart kept beating.
Stories don’t always end once the final page is turned. There’s so much more left to be written. Sometimes the final page is just the start, and it’s up to us to determine whether it remains a fairytale or a tragedy.
The essence of the true love stories, the big ones, the beautiful, bright, epic loves, are always grown from the darkness of a fucked up beginning.
This is ours.
Two
Willa
Fifteen years old
Fear trickles into my veins. My heart quickens as my eyes plead with my brother to release me.
“Who takes care of you?” he demands as three of his friends gather around to watch the show. His fingertips pinch into my skin, his grip on my jaw punishing. They were waiting for me when I walked through the front door. I’d only been gone thirty minutes, but it was enough time for him to notice my absence.
“You do,” I grit out through clenched teeth, trying not to look at all the other eyes on me. It’s an odd thing to feel both invisible and under a microscope.
“Don’t you ever leave this house without my permission again.” He shoves me backward, relinquishing his hold, and my body hits the wall, my hair whisking around my face, offering a veil to conceal the tears threatening to fall. My chest heaves with anger and sorrow. I’m a prisoner in my own home—my own life. I’m running in place, being held down while silently screaming into a void.
Since my father walked out on us, Milo has had to provide and take care of us. He was sixteen. I was nine. Crime was how he kept a roof over our heads and food on the table. I became a possession. The deeper into crime he delved, the more he began to see himself as a king while everyone around him became his lowly subjects. Many-feared Milo, and he fed off it, breathed it into his lungs, and expelled it into those who surrounded him. Including me. It’s been six years since my father ditched and never looked back. I can’t even blame him. If I had the means, I’d run too.
Milo turns his attention to Anton, one of his boys who does errands around here—and who happened to come across me sneaking out the back door. “Where the fuck have you been with my sister?”
Anton’s face turns whiter by the second, his teeth puncturing his bottom lip. I feel bad for him, but he insisted on coming with me when I tried to leave, so he got himself into this situation. I have one brother, but all his sheep think they have a right to keep me locked up inside this godforsaken house.
“She was creeping out. I thought it best someone be with her,” Anton offers, but it doesn’t matter what he says. Evil screams from within Milo’s eyes. There’s no getting out of this without violence.
“I wasn’t creeping out. I needed something from the store,” I fume in defeated misery.
“Why didn’t you just go get what she needed?” my brother asks him, like my voice isn’t even being spoken into the room.
Slipping his hands into his pockets and shrugging his shoulders, Anton says, “She wouldn’t let me. Said it was personal stuff.”
My brother’s eyes cut to me, narrowing. I grip the shoulder strap of an old purse I found buried in dad’s closet. I’d convinced myself it belonged to my mother, but it was probably one of the one-night-stands he used to bring home regularly. I don’t remember our mother. My father said she’s dead, but I’m not sure if he just wished that was the case. Milo said he doesn’t ever remember having a mother, but it didn’t make sense. He was seven when I was born, surely he would have some memory of her.