Existential (Fallen Aces MC Book 4) Read online

  Table of Contents

  ALSO BY MAX

  QUOTE

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  THIRTY-THREE

  THIRTY-FOUR

  THIRTY-FIVE

  THIRTY-SIX

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  THIRTY-NINE

  FORTY

  FORTY-ONE

  FORTY-TWO

  FORTY-THREE

  FORTY-FOUR

  FORTY-FIVE

  FORTY-SIX

  NEED HELP?

  BOXSET SPECIAL

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  EXISTENTIAL

  Copyright © 2017 Max Henry

  Published by Max Henry

  All rights reserved. No part of this eBook may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, including electronic or mechanical, without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. Max Henry is in no way affiliated with any brands, songs, musicians, or artists mentioned in this book.

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this eBook with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you are reading this eBook and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return it to the seller and purchase your own copy.

  Thank you for respecting the author’s work.

  Published: April 2017, by Max Henry [email protected]

  Edited by: Love n Books

  Cover Image: Ian Pettigrew

  Cover Design: Sara Eirew

  Formatted by: Max Effect

  You wake up every morning

  to fight the same demons that left you so tired the night before,

  and that, my love, is bravery.

  - Unknown

  ONE

  Hooch

  Numbers were never my thing. The day the gavel passed to me after my old man’s death, I appointed Digits as my treasurer for a reason: he likes equations, problems, and solving the riddles they present. He thirsts for the challenge.

  I just get thirsty.

  As it is, I’ve downed half a bottle of Jack during the course of his latest financial report in an effort to keep myself from crawling back to bed. I don’t get up for much these days; the fact I’m here now should be an honor to the fuckers sitting around me.

  I pour another two fingers of whiskey and swirl their amber beauty in the tumbler as I listen to Digits wrap up our profits and losses for the month from his spot at the far end of the table.

  “Overall, if we carry on down this path then I think we’ll be looking at the Wingmen making a move sooner rather than later.” Digits presses his index finger to the bridge of his glasses and pushes them higher on his nose. Fucker looks like Clark Kent with those things on. “Decline in sales versus increase in what’s comin’ in from across the border confirms that somebody else is pickin’ up the slack, which also means we’ll be seen as weak and vulnerable if word gets out that we’re on the losing end of these figures.”

  “Who you think it is?” my road captain, Murphy, asks. “Last we had anything to do with the Wingmen they were involved with the Koreans, but coke’s never been their style.”

  “You’re right,” I say before tossing back the drink in my hand. “Koreans don’t deal with anythin’ but ice. Those vigilante Wingmen fuckers are probably onto a new alliance.”

  The Wingmen. The enemy every gang and club in the greater states loves to hate. A ruthless group of mercenaries hashed together out of the men too smart to get imprisoned for the crimes they commit. The elite. The best of the best, and the men you want on your speed dial, even though they might be the next to take you out in exchange for the right price paid by your foe.

  The Wingmen come to visit, you’d better hope it was because you called them.

  “Only Carlos and Eddie distributed coke around here,” Murphy says. “We took both those assholes out.”

  “Exactly.” I shove the tumbler further along the table before I pour myself another and fall off the fucking chair. “We’ve got new competition, men. Some cockroach who’s crawled out of the wreckage after the fire.”

  Grumbles ripple around the table like the incoming tide, growing louder as they return back to where I sit at the head.

  “Crackers, you and Digits better head down to San Antonio for the night and see what you can get out of our mule friends out at Floresville. If there’s somebody sniffin’ around the border, they should have heard about it.”

  “Sure thing.”

  “King’s going to want details, and I want us to have the answer to any question he might have.” I bang the gavel down and lean back as my VP collects Digits on the way out of the chapel.

  The room clears out, all but Murphy, the stocky Irishman sitting hunched over the table as his hands lay clasped before him. He avoids my pointed stare, choosing instead to run his eye over the lacquered emblem in the center of the table made from three different types of wood.

  “Somethin’ you need to talk about?” I swivel to face him dead on, reading the unsaid concern in the curve of his spine, the stiffness in his shoulders.

  “You think we can pull this off?” He turns to face me.

  I sigh, looking him in the eye. Murphy’s been with the club as long as my father. The two of them started the Fort Worth chapter together, recruiting from jaded ex-servicemen and wayward teenagers lined up outside the welfare office. The time stateside has dulled Murphy’s accent, but it’s done nothing to his ability to read a situation for what it really is.

  If a meet is about to turn south, Murphy’s the first to pick it. A member isn’t quite acting himself? Murphy will call it before they can be coerced to flip by opportunistic law enforcers. Hell, you’re about to have a bad day? Yeah, Murphy will let you know before it even hints at turning to shit.

  Which is why his concern over our plan to eliminate the coke in Fort Worth has me worried. Not that I’ll let him know that.

  “King’s managed to reduce usage in Lincoln while chasing out the competition. Don’t see why we can’t do it as well.”

  A slight twitch to Murphy’s jaw is the only indication he’s not buying my false confidence.

  “You think they’ll find anything by diggin’ around San Antonio?”

  “A man’s got to try.”

  “Whoever’s taking up the slack, if they’ve got the wherewithal’s to hire the Wingmen, then they’re not the kind to take it lightly if they hear we’re sniffin’ around.”

  “Well aware of that, brother.”

 
He heaves out a laden breath and leans back, fists still clenched on the timber before him. “You and I might be flyin’ solo, but most of these men have family in the area. We start a conflict, it’s more than just us we need to worry about.”

  “You got a point to this?” I snap. I mean, I love the guy, but talk about stating the obvious. Does he think I lie awake at night for fun?

  “My point,” he says, pushing his chair out and standing, “is that we need to tread carefully. Every decision leads us down a very different path. The people we’re dealin’ with, the Wingmen, they ain’t as forgivin’ as our petty crime pals.”

  “I know.” Everyone thought Carlos was dangerous when the fucker was still alive. Thing is, one madman can be contained. Two can be controlled. But when you have a dozen or more crazy bastards who, although they’re not quite at Carlos’s level of insanity yet, are dangerous in their own right working a dozen separate agendas, it’s kind of like facing down a bullet versus a spray of shrapnel; there’s shit flying at you from all directions. Takes one hell of a man to keep that sort of mess under control. A man like my father was, like King’s becoming, and like I sure as hell ain’t.

  Murphy offers me a tight nod in reply to my apparent silence on the matter, and leaves the room, closing the doors behind him. I drag a hand over my face, pulling the snakebite piercings down as I do. My lip snaps back into position with an audible pop as I let go of my beard and look down to where my phone rests in my lap.

  One unread message.

  I tap in my passcode and swipe through to the simple sentence.

  One week.

  Yeah, this club’s got more to worry about than a fucking bunch of wannabe gangsters taking over the coke distribution in Texas—one that gets around in a black suit, brandishing a business card bearing three simple letters: D, E, and A.

  Donovan motherfucking Jessup.

  A.K.A. Satan’s bitch-boy.

  TWO

  Dagne

  I can count nine times I’ve gotten this desperate, and yet the anxiety never goes away. Palms sweaty and wrapped around the strap of my tote bag, I head for the exit, feigning interest in a stand that displays sunglasses. The clerk shifts behind his plexi-glass enclosure and watches as I slip a purple-framed pair out of the holes and try them on.

  Not bad. Might have considered buying them if I had a spare twenty dollars, too.

  Hands hot and heavy, I slip the plastic arms back into the display holes, carefully aligning the bridge over the hook. The God-awful roar of motorbikes outside matches the incessant thump of my heart while I weigh my options.

  Do I fake interest in another aisle to shake the clerk’s attention? Or would that be too obvious? Perhaps I’m best to do what he probably expects least: head straight for the door?

  I thrust a hand in my pocket one last time, and shake out the few coins I have in my palm. One dollar, fifteen. No way is that enough to buy something and pass off as legitimate.

  Damn it.

  I hastily stuff the change back into my denim cut offs and beeline for the exit, sure that if I can make it as far as the sidewalk the heat will halve. All I have to do is get through these doors and I’m—

  “Woah there, little lady!”

  My breath hitches as the tall, broad biker raises both hands over his head, sidestepping me in my haste to get out the door.

  “Sorry,” I manage to mumble as I narrowly avoid collecting the dark-haired accomplice who has his head down to put on … glasses? Odd.

  You don’t often see bikers who wear glasses.

  “Hey!” My heart rate triples at the less friendly cadence of the clerk who follows me out the door. “You gonna pay for that?”

  A thick arm sweeps around my middle and spins me on my heel so that I’m neatly tucked into the side of the spectacled badass. “You at it again, baby?”

  Baby?

  “Sorry man, she does this all the time,” he continues. “Gets so excited to see me that she forgets she hasn’t paid yet. Ain’t that right?”

  I hazard a glance at the guy’s strong jaw and perfectly defined lips as he smiles down at me, hand relaxing a little as though to test if I’ll bolt.

  “Yeah,” I murmur. “I—I forget.” Turning my attention to the clerk, I fake a hasty search of my bag, knowing damn well I have no money in there. “Shoot.”

  “Forgot your purse again too, babe?”

  “Yeah.” Thank God for shortsighted Harley riders.

  “I got it. How much you owe?” His boot shifts forward, his body weight coaxing me back into the store as the clerk visibly relaxes.

  Ten minutes later, I return to the sidewalk after upending the lifted items and racking up twenty-seven dollars and sixty-five cents worth of debt to a man that could easily demand for it back in ways I don’t want to offer.

  “Why did you do that?” I say as I tear myself out of the biker’s magnetic hold.

  “How many times you done it?” he asks as the big overbearing guy I walked into first leans against a streetlight to spark up a cigarette.

  “A few.”

  “Yeah?” His eyebrow quirks behind his glasses, somehow making him even more dashing despite the worn leather hanging over his shoulders. “You looked as nervous as a virgin.”

  Fuck my telltale cheeks.

  Asshole grins. “Really?”

  “No,” I snap. “Not ‘really’. I just don’t like people talking about things so private to me.”

  “Shame,” the smoker murmurs.

  I shiver, opting to put my full attention on the less creepy of the two. “You from around here?”

  “Nope. Why?”

  My hair slides over my face and offers some respite from their judgment as I mumble, “I need to use a shower.”

  “Ain’t there some shelter around here you could hit up for that?” Smokey asks.

  I shake my head, looking at him again despite every cell in my body warning me not to.

  “You could share one with me.” He grins.

  And that’s why.

  “Knock it off, Crackers.” Figures that’d be his nickname. Guy’s mad as a hatter. Twitch in his eye really sets the whole look off.

  My spectacled savior takes a step back and clearly scopes me out, eyes roving head to toe and taking in the bag I have slung across my body.

  “You homeless?”

  “Free-spirited,” I retort. Homeless indicates I had no control over how I ended up in this predicament. I had every ounce of control. It was my choice to walk away, and my choice to keep going.

  “Like a hippie?” Crackers asks as smoke billows from between his lips.

  “If you were hoping for free loving, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but …”

  “Damn.” He smiles, and then turns his attention to the guy next to me. “We need to hit the road soon.”

  “I know.” The dark-haired biker flinches, eyes still on his buddy. Something passes between them, some unspoken question and answer. “All right.”

  “Where are you heading?” I ask everyone I meet the same thing. Only this time, there’s a certain flutter in my stomach that warns I should probably keep my trap shut.

  “Fort Worth.” Crackers eyes me suspiciously, pushing off his light post. “You wanna ride, little lady?”

  “With him.” I thumb at four eyes. “If he’ll let me.” No way I’m getting that close and personal with a guy who was just sizing me up for a shared shower.

  “You know the rules?” he asks.

  “What rules?” I meet Crackers’ challenge with folded arms.

  “You ride the machine, you ride the man too.”

  A snort sounds to my right. I regard the guy I’ve apparently just propositioned with wide eyes.

  “He’s messin’ with you.” A smile splits his lips to reveal perfectly white teeth.

  “Aw, come on, Digits. I had you in with a grin, then.”

  “Fuck off.”

  The two punch each other lightly in a playful way, chuckling as the
y start down the sidewalk. I stare after them, guessing the answer must have been no. Never mind. I have nothing but time on my side, so if it means I need to spend a day longer here while I beg for enough change to catch a bus then so be it.

  I take a step back and look down into my bag for one of the granola bars Digits had bought me, when the chinking of chains and the steady beat of boots on the concrete whips my head up. This is it. Nice guy act is over. I look around and try to spot the alley they’ll drag me into so they can assault me. If I know where it is, I at least have a crack at making it in the opposite direction.

  “You comin’?”

  I didn’t expect the soft tone to his voice.

  Or the way he ducks his head to level his gaze with mine.

  Or the fact that I automatically nod like an excited kid who’s been told Christmas is early this year, and take Digits’ outstretched hand.

  Guess I’m going to Fort Worth, then.

  THREE

  Hooch

  “What the fuck is this?”

  “Legitimate business, that’s what.” I turn the tinderbox over in my hand and look up at the plain store frontage with my sergeant at arms, Jo Jo, to my right.

  My old man ran the Fort Worth chapter pretty damn well at the start. Rules were respected, everyone kept their shit under wraps, and there was no need for a front to hide and launder the money we earned through illegitimate enterprise. Stolen goods exchanged hands, contacts were vetted and trusted, and we buried those who caused a ripple in the smooth surface of our tranquil lake.

  Then my oldest sister, Mel, split after the Sawyer incident. She didn’t take too well to being told who she could and couldn’t see, even though she damn well knew her partner would be handpicked for his suitability at the table. It crushed the old man, losing contact with his oldest daughter. He drank, he smoked, and he drew further and further into himself. He bundled up all the discipline he spared on Mel and dumped it on my baby sister, Dana, pushing her away, making her resent the club and the protection it offered her.

  I loved my father, but the truth that I’ve never told another soul is that I hated him just as badly the day I stood outside Carlos’ estate and realized what he’d slowly done to our family over the past year. He’d been the poison, the illness that wore us down and tore us apart until all that was left alive was me, the cancerous lump that he lived with yet wished he didn’t have to.