Inked in Lies (The Fallen Men 5)

He was a member of The Fallen MC.

The most notorious outlaw motorcycle gang in Canada, not to mention their factions in the States and across the Pacific in Europe.

They were no joke and trust me, this guy didn’t look it either.

I swallowed hard past the fear lodged in my throat, not because I was uncomfortable, but because I lived for this.

The edge.

One steep enough I might not survive a fall off of.

I picked up my phone, shoved it in my pocket, and affected a lean against the brick wall. Jerkin’ my chin up at him, I asked, “Not bad? Clearly, you’re no art lover.”

It coulda been my imagination, but I thought I caught a twitch of a smile in his dark beard.

“Nah, don’t think I’ve ever set foot in a museum or gallery. Doesn’t take an art lover to appreciate sheer beauty, though, does it?”

His praise burned in my gut like a straight shot of whiskey. “It’s just some Disney shit.”

He stalked forward, his gait a threat because of his sheer size even if he didn’t mean to be intimidatin’. He stopped at my side and tipped his head back to take in the art from close up.

“Don’t care what it is, it’s fuckin’ good.”

“Yeah,” I agreed easily. “I’ve got natural born fuckin’ talent.”

He slanted me a look, thick brows arched. “Just a kid and you already got an ego the size’a the Pacific.”

This time, I cocked a brow. “You’ve seen my work, it’s good shit. Don’t see any point in bein’ humble if it’s just for show.”

He made a noise that was half-laughter, half-grumble. “Gotta fuckuva lotta confidence for a kid so young.”

I eyed him critically. “You’re what, thirty?”

He had the permanent tan and crow’s feet of a man who spent too long outdoors in the sun without protection and the kinda lived-in ease that said he’d been a self-assured man for a long fuckin’ time, but he wasn’t old, that much was obvious.

“Nail on the head,” he confirmed. “And you’re what, twelve?”

The need to lie burned through me even though I knew he’d call me on my shit. “Nineteen.”

Amusement flared in his pale, eerie, silver eyes, but he didn’t argue with me. Instead, he slapped a ham-sized hand on my back and squeezed my shoulder. “You’re lucky Eugene’s a fan’a the can. He’ll like the addition, but you best come in and meet ’im. He doesn’t take too kindly to random punks taggin’ his building.”

“This is his art?” I asked, shocked because the designs on the sides’a the building were nearly as good as mine. “He’s not bad.”

He chuckled and started to lead us toward the door. “Can’t wait to see you say that to his fuckin’ face. He’s gonna lose it.”

Forty minutes later, I was sittin’ at a red leather booth in the dim, neon-punctuated light of Eugene’s kickass bar. It was one’a those places that played like a dive bar but was infinitely cooler, racked with personality from the graffiti and neon signs, to the collection of straight-up characters litterin’ the stools and open floorplan. Bikers, off-duty strippers-off-duty, a booth fulla cops in plainclothes sharin’ buckets of beer, and a sexy group of college girls titterin’ behind their hands and throwin’ back shots as they slid side-eyed looks at my table.

My table where Zeus Garro and his brothers sat surrondin’ me.

They were all big men, huge across the shoulders, long in the limb, big hands scarred and tatted and be-ringed, layin’ like discarded weapons on the table. They were rough and scowlin’ when they weren’t smilin’, only because they had the squint’a men who’d spent too long in the sun and they gave zero fucks when most other people flapped their mouths.

They were the fuckin’ shit.

I was seventeen, the son of an immigrant fisherman and a homemaker. My skin was inked with pen, not permanent pigment, and my swagger came from knowin’ a good life, not a bad one.

But they didn’t give a shit. Zeus saw me, and I mean fuckin’ saw me. He saw somethin’ in me that didn’t have a voice or a name until he dragged me inside the dark bar and sat me at a table with his men.

Somethin’ that yearned for brotherhood and chaos and freedom.

Somethin’ The Fallen men had in spades.

“Workin’ at Stella’s to save money so your family can foster two neighbor kids,” Zeus confirmed slowly, spinnin’ a big silver skull on his finger. “Not often a teenager thinks’a someone other ’an himself, let alone two kids down on their luck with no connection to ’im.”

Guilt and anger burned through me harder than the three beers I’d already consumed. Apparently, if I was with the bikers, Eugene didn’t give much of a crap if I was of age.

“They’re family,” I said, wishin’ I could burn the words into the air, into the fabric of the fuckin’ universe so no one would try to take them from us again.