Blood Revealed (Brimstone Lords MC Book 6) Read online

  Blood

  Revealed

  Brimstone Lords MC

  Book Six

  Sarah Zolton Arthur

  When the world goes mad

  Got you feelin’ bad…

  Hold on babe, I’m coming.

  When you’re feeling doubt

  That we can work things out…

  Hold on babe, I’m coming.

  The only words for you to heed

  Are the ones I’m speaking now

  I’m the only lover you’ll ever need

  On that you have my vow

  If the cold, dark night

  Ain’t got you feeling right

  Hold on babe, I’m coming.

  Through death and life

  Through pain and strife…

  Hold on babe, I’m coming.

  -Hold on babe, I’m coming

  Blood: Revealed © 2020 Sarah Zolton

  Arthur and Irving House Press

  All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Warning: the unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.

  First Print Edition: October 2017

  Irving House Press

  P.O. Box 5738

  Saginaw, MI. 48603

  More by Sarah Zolton Arthur

  Adult Romance Series

  Brimstone Lords MC

  Bossman: Undone (Brimstone Lords MC 1)

  Duke: Redeemed (Brimstone Lords MC 2)

  Chaos: Calmed (Brimstone Lords MC 3)

  Scotch: Unraveled (Brimstone Lords MC 4)

  Hero: Claimed (Brimstone Lords MC 5)

  Blood: Revealed (Brimstone Lords MC 6)

  Immortal Elements Series

  Flight: The Roc Warriors (Immortal Elements Bk. 1)

  Soar: The Warrior’s Fight (Immortal Elements Bk. 2)

  Run: The Viking Pack (Immortal Elements Bk. 3)

  Adventures in Love Series

  Skydiving, Skinny-Dipping & Other Ways to Enjoy Your Fake Boyfriend

  D.I.E.T. (Did I Eat That?)

  Standalones

  Summer of the Boy

  The Significance of Moving On

  Audio

  Summer of the Boy

  Skydiving, Skinny-Dipping & Other Ways to Enjoy Your Fake Boyfriend

  YA Titles

  The Princes of Stone and Steel

  You can find me at:

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  1.

  Hannah

  Seven years ago…

  “Hannah, get your ass in here.” I pinch the bridge of my nose to steel my temper before I go in the conference room at the clubhouse. Using fits of temper to clip someone else’s temper seems like an odd teaching method to the outside world, but that’s the way of it on the inside. Whether from my dad, our president or our vice president, I’ve been on the receiving end of a backhand enough times to know the only one ever hurt by me showing temper is me. I bear a couple of scars to prove it, but I hate this place. Hate it. It’s never been fun. The Black Pythons, my dad’s club—club? Ha! That’s a laugh. They’re a gang of bikers with absolutely no scruples or morals in the bunch. I’ve been watching my back around them since I was seven. What kind of man looks at a seven-year-old and thinks, “Damn, baby… I’d hit that”?

  I was a late bloomer sporting an A cup until about a year ago, when boobs grew like fast-growing tumors and they just kept growing until I ended up a C+ to a D-. You know, that halfway point between a C and a D cup where it’s impossible to find a bra to fit properly? You’re either hanging out or gapping.

  That was my first time being summoned to attend a Python party. They’re awful. All these gross men making me feel on display, like one of those dog shows. It makes me shudder to think about it.

  The club’s president sits at the head of the table, in his usual spot, when I enter. They call him “Grizzly” and it fits. He’s covered in a coating of brown fur and looks like he’s been packing on fat to sustain him throughout hibernation. Next to him, on the right, is first lieutenant Dred. Dred’s a good-looking guy, medium dark hair, pretty blue eyes, nice physique, and not at all hairy. But he also openly cheats on his old lady and beats the living shit out of her and their son whenever the mood strikes, it seems.

  I’ve taken food over to feed the little guy enough times when either of them has been too injured to cook for themselves.

  My dad stands against the wall because he hasn’t earned a seat at the table. But there’s a man sitting at the foot of the table who has the hairs on the back of my neck standing on edge. A Mexican man, could be Mexican-American, but judging by his clothing and the Pythons’ associations, my guess, from Mexico. He’s dressed in an expensive suit. Handsome face. He wears his hair slicked back, a thin moustache and his fingernails are trimmed and impeccably clean.

  His eyes, though. They found me the minute I walked into the room and I knew it before ever seeing him. I felt them on me, like a thick goo spreading over all my curves. When I did turn to look at him directly, his black, beady eyes glared predatorially.

  I recognize him. He was at a party last month. Normally, I don’t pay attention to the men at Python parties. They usually host men from other clubs and tend to go all Caligula real fast, which means I spend my time hiding from grabby hands or worse. But this party was different. It was at a venue I’d never been to before and for the drive over, my dad kept me in the back of a van with no windows.

  The whole night unnerved me. From the way I’d been ordered to dress—sexy dress to show my curves, no jeans or the like, heels, hair down, and light makeup—to the way they kept trying to force drinks on me. Most eighteen-year-olds would probably love being offered alcohol, but it’s too hard to keep on guard when you’re tipsy.

  Now he’s here.

  Why is he here?

  “Are you a virgin?” he asks in a thick accent.

  “Excuse me?” I ask back.

  “Fuckin’ answer the question, cunt,” Grizzly snaps at me.

  I don’t want to talk about this in a room full of nasty bikers. Immediately, I turn to my dad, hoping he’ll help me out here. What a joke. My dad is still handsome, but with the drugs, he’s losing his looks fast. When he was younger, he was downright hot. We have the same sandy-blonde hair, same blue eyes. Though the rest of me is my mom, wherever the hell she went to. When I was five, I woke up one morning and she was gone. No note, nothing. She left me to my own devices.

  She was young when I was born, sixteen I think, and my dad had already moved on to another woman, Cassandra, who ended up taking me on despite having a daughter with my dad, too. My younger sister, Brinley. I called Cassandra “Mom.” She was beautiful. My sister looks exactly like her, except for one glaring difference. Cassandra was built more like me, streamlined and curves where
necessary. Whereas Brinley, she always said Brinley got the genes from the Eastern European side of the family.

  Then one day she up and left us, too. This isn’t a life for everybody. It’s a tough life for women.

  “Are you a virgin, my dear?” the man in the suit asks again, not yelling, but his voice sounds tight.

  This is embarrassing. I look between the man and my dad again. My dad pushes off the wall, stalking over to grab me harshly by the arm, and he shakes me. “Fucking answer the question, girl. We don’t got all day.”

  I should lie. I should, but I can’t discern whether it would be better to be a virgin or not to be.

  Biting my lip, I suck in a sharp breath through my nose and answer, “Yes.”

  A sly, sexy smile spreads across the man’s lips. One of those not-to-be-trusted smiles. The kind that makes me think I just screwed myself over by answering honestly. But that’s not the worst part. It’s when he leans his chin on the hand of the elbow he has propped up on the table and uses his other hand to order me to turn for him by spinning his finger in the air.

  That’s the part that gives me the heebie-jeebies. I spin in a slow circle for the man, feeling down to the pit of my stomach that if I turn faster, I’ll pay for it.

  “Come here,” he orders me, and as I walk over to him, he pushes back from the table, again using his hands to gesture me to sit on his lap. He’s gentle when he speaks to me and with all the other men glaring daggers my way, I decide my safest option is to sit on the man’s lap. “My name is Carlos Escalante,” he continues. “But you will call me ‘el maestro,’ is that understood, my dear?”

  “Y-Yes.”

  “Yes, what?”

  Right. “Yes, el maestro.”

  “Good. Good…” His soft lips press a kiss to the pulsating artery in my neck and I shudder. No one has told me what’s going on here and when I think I have an idea Carlos Escalante pats my bottom to get me up off his lap. “I like seeing the sweet American girls when I come to visit, and you are one of the sweetest,” he says. “Now be a good girl and go home.”

  “Um… okay,” I answer, and I notice his raised eyebrow so I quickly add on, “el maestro.”

  He smiles again, nodding, and that’s it. I’m dismissed.

  That was weird.

  Now on to bigger fish to fry, namely, my baby sister is seventeen today and I have to do something for her. My eyes need to adjust when I walk outside the clubhouse; they keep the lights so damn low in there. But it gives me a good excuse to check my purse for cash. When I unzip my wallet, it’s so empty that imaginary moths fly out, like in those old cartoons.

  I hoof it to the closest ATM to withdraw the last fifty dollars that I have to my name. I wish I could do more for my sister, but with my minimum wage job at The Pork Pit, once she and I split the bills for the month, there’s not much left over.

  Brinley loves to cook. It might sound cheap and lame, but I walk over to the grocery store closest to our crappy little apartment and purchase baking supplies—flour, sugar, baking powder, that kind of stuff—as well as canned fruit, chocolate chips, nuts, a new mixing bowl, and a rubber bowl scraper/spatula in one.

  Lastly, I pick up a package of cupcakes because I can’t afford anything more now. It’s the thought that counts anyway. With my bags in each hand, I walk the four blocks back to our place and up the flight of stairs.

  When I open the door, I’m greeted with the most divine smells. Once again, my sister took a toothpick, two olives, and a can of beans and made us a miraculous spread of deliciousness.

  “Brin, it’s your birthday. You shouldn’t be cooking,” I say, bending in to give her a peck on the cheek.

  “What? I like to cook and I was home. It’s fine—anyway, what’d Dad want?”

  “First.” I hold out the grocery bags to her. ”Happy birthday.”

  She smiles big and broad, and as always, beautiful. “You didn’t have to do this,” she says, taking the bags from me and looking inside them as she walks them over to the counter. Her “ooh” and “ahh” are more than enough thanks.

  “Girl, you only turn seventeen once.”

  “Unless you’re old lady Mahoney,” she points out, and we both throw our heads back laughing like chittering chipmunks. “She’s been seventeen for what? Fifty years?”

  “At least.” I wipe a tear from my eye. Old lady Mahoney, the wrinkled old woman who lives downstairs from us, she has to gum her food and has more hair on her chin than on her head, and she uses a scooter to answer her door. But she decided years ago that she loved being seventeen and has no intension of aging. Every year on her birthday, she turns seventeen again.

  While Brin opens cupboards to put her birthday gifts away, I open the package of cupcakes, then pull open the junk drawer to rummage around for candles and a lighter. Neither of us smoke, but Dad does, so we have one, it’s just a matter of finding it.

  Okay, so it’s cheesy, but when Brinley turns back around, I have her cupcake on a plate with a single candle lit in the center. “Make a wish, Brin,” I say, handing the plate over.

  “Sissy.” She sort of sniffles the word out along with some tears.

  “To the best year ever.”

  She nods. “To the best year ever.” Then Brinley closes her eyes to make her wish, sucks in a small breath, and blows the candle out.

  We gorge ourselves on a snack dinner while watching a How I Met Your Mother marathon until Brinley passes out. I get up to put the dishes in the sink and put away any food we didn’t finish when my phone buzzes on the counter. It’s a number I don’t recognize, but one of those trilling feelings runs up the back of my neck, like I need to answer this particular call, so instead of letting it go to voicemail, which is my normal response to an unrecognized number, I hit the green answer button.

  “Hello?” I say softly into the receiver so as to not wake Brinley.

  “Hannah, baby?” The voice on the other end asks back and I swear my heart stops. I haven’t heard that voice since I was nine. It sounds older, like the person attached to the voice has lived hard, but it’s a voice I’ll never forget to my last breath on this Earth.

  “Mom?” Not my biological mom, but Cassandra. Brinley’s mom. “How—what?” I stutter, unable to form a coherent thought.

  “Baby, I don’t have much time. You have to get out—now. They’re coming for you.”

  “Who?” I ask, still not following.

  “He sold you to el maestro,” she whispers. That’s a name I recognize. “You’re his.”

  “What?” I ask. “Sold me? Who?”

  “Your sonofabitch da—” Her words get cut off by shouting in Spanish and I hear a thud. She screams. Her screams and the thuds turn liquidy. “Go.” The word is gurgled and hardly audible.

  There’s rustling on the other end, as if someone is about to speak, and I can’t have that. I jam my finger excessively hard against the red end call button.

  I think excessive is fully called for in this situation, but that’s the only thing I allow myself to think because I’m pretty sure I heard my mom’s murder on the other end of the line.

  Here I’d thought she left us, but she’d been there—wherever there is—with Escalante, or someone who knew Escalante and would speak openly about him freaking buying me and coming to collect on his purchase.

  How long had the Pythons been dealing flesh? I’ve known for years Grizzly was a bad man, but this—this takes the cake. And it hits me. Stupid Hannah. Stupid, stupid Hannah. That party last month. Why hadn’t I put it together then? Maybe because who wants to believe they know people into that stuff, let alone being forced into it by no fault of their own?

  I run into my room to pack a few things. Clothes mainly. A couple of pictures of me, Brin, and Mom. Tampons and stuff. Silent tears roll down my cheeks. Leaving Brinley kills me, but bringing her will only slow me down. It’s harder to thumb a ride with more than one person. Passersby get edgy, nervous. And it’s not as if they’ll touch her here, not
at her size. If there was even a chance that one of those men would want my sister, Cassandra would’ve told me to get Brin out, too.

  She didn’t.

  While Brinley sleeps, I take the two extra minutes I don’t have to spare to tuck a blanket around her, leave a quick note, and slip out of the front door, making sure to lock it before I leave, jogging down the stairs.

  One last, quick look at the apartment of the best friend/little sister I’ll ever have and will probably never see again, then I run. Run like my life depends on it—because it does. With hardly a cent left to my name but a bus pass with money on it, I hoof it to the closest stop. The bus shuttles me across town toward the safest place for a girl like me to find an escape.

  Thirty-five minutes later, I disembark out front of Trucker’s World—the giant truck stop near the onramp to the interstate. It’s like a city unto itself, lighting up the nighttime sky to almost daylight overhead.

  White lights flood the massive parking lot while white lights and bright neon colors advertise everything from a truck wash to a convenience store to a 24/7 restaurant.

  It’s still a crapshoot. Most of these guys have a daughter or sister and will treat you well, but then there are the ones who wouldn’t mind taking advantage of a situation when it presents itself.

  One of the best ways I’ve heard to vet the truckers is to hang out in the restaurant and listen to their conversations.

  “What can I get you?” the waitress asks me before I ever even take a seat. She’s pretty. Dark hair and bright blue eyes. She looks about the same age as me. I wonder if her life is as complicated as mine. Tonight, I feel a hundred years older than her.

  “Just a Coke,” I answer while slinging my bag from my shoulder to the seat next to me.

  The waitress snickers. “Be right back.”