The Ties That Bind 1 Read online

“Thank you for being my mother. For teaching me to be both graceful and fierce. For giving me a strong spirit then feeding and nurturing it. I can only pray to become at least half of the woman you are. That I make you as proud as you’ve always made me, Mommy.”

  Melody’s tears fell in her daughter’s thick tresses, and her frail body rattled under the weight of her suppressed sobs. “The most important thing to remember is that you only get this one life. Live it passionately is all I’ll ask of you, sweet Billy. Run at it, full tilt, but also know when to pace yourself.”

  An hour later, the thunder closed in, bringing lightning with it, promising a great storm to come. The weatherman predicted it would be an epic one, the likes of which hadn’t been seen in the last decade. It was the kind of weather mother and daughter normally enjoyed as it was rare for sunny Los Angeles. Junie came by twice to check on them, but Melody tiredly waved her away. Her throat ached and her energy was fading fast. Still, she talked, until Billy eventually drifted off to sleep. In her ear, Melody whispered a lifetime of love and happiness, praying her daughter could hear her as she, too, drifted into a peaceful place. A place devoid of pain, luring her in with its coziness.

  Afternoon shifted to early evening when Melody Lashay, enclosed in the arms of her greatest achievement in life, ultimately drew her last breath, and the heavens above finally opened up and welcomed her home.

  Chatham, New Mexico

  “I want my baby-back, baby-back, baby-back ribs,” Lucas “Shakes” Gomez sang the popular restaurant jingle at the top of his lungs as he settled comfortably into his chair. Grinning with anticipation, he watched his best friend and brother for life, Ransom Lawson, a mutual enforcer for their motorcycle club, the Immortals, remove his leather cut and white tee-shirt and place them on an empty chair. Ransom rolled his neck side-to-side and shook his arms loosely to relieve any kinks.

  “For some reason, I’m suddenly in the mood for a slab of Chili’s ribs. Big, greasy, pork ribs, loaded with tender, juicy meat and fat, dripping in barbecue sauce. What about you, footloose?”

  “I ate breakfast earlier, but I could eat again. Gimme about thirty minutes to work up a solid appetite,” Ransom replied.

  “Yeah, sure. Don’t mind me. Do your thing, brother,” Shakes encouraged him.

  Ransom threw a haymaker punch, followed by a long fist and another haymaker, earning him enthusiastic clapping from Shakes, who praised him with, “Ohhhh, shiiit! The brother never misses! You see that, Harley?”

  “Hell yeah! Who’d you think taught him everything he knows?” Harley Lawson responded cockily. He shifted in his chair, stretching his long legs out in front of him. “Not bad for a wet-behind-the-ears youngster!” he heckled his twin brother.

  Ransom dropped his fists at his brother’s comment. Harley was born seven minutes earlier, twenty-two years ago, and never missed an opportunity to remind his ‘baby’ brother of the fact that he was older. “Fuck off with that youngster bullshit, Harley. You know damn well that I was born with this shit. Only amateurs think it can be taught.”

  Harley gave Ransom both middle fingers, making Shakes snicker, and retorted, “Let’s just get this over with, pretty boy.”

  Considering they were identical, his name-calling could hardly be taken as the insult it was intended to be. The brothers shared the same heavy-lidded, moss-green eyes with sweeping lashes, long, aquiline noses, firm lips, and angular jawlines. Standing at six-feet-four-inches of lean muscle, the only physical difference between them was the way they kept their espresso hair. Ransom’s was shoulder-length and wavy while Harley’s was a long, tangled mess that hung down to his elbows.

  Ignoring him, Ransom went back to working on Dibsy Bishop, the ex-manager of Club Flex, the strip club they were in and owned by the Immortals MC. It was the only strip joint for miles and turned a healthy profit, thanks to the truckers, bikers, and occasional law enforcement passing through. For reasons unknown, Dibsy felt entitled to a cut of that profit for sitting on his fat, sweaty ass, inhaling Buffalo wings all day while the girls shook their assets. He began skimming money from the till and shaking the girls down for the tips they made. Fed up with the unfair treatment, the girls rallied together and complained to the president of the MC’s Southwest Chapter, Slade Lawson, Harley and Ransom’s father. Once Dibsy found out the club was aware of his shady dealings, he tried to run. Unfortunately for him, he didn’t get very far, only making it halfway to Santa Fe. He was dragged back to Chatham, kicking and screaming by Shakes and Harley.

  Dibsy’s current situation was upside down. Literally. Harley and Shakes had him strung up, feet first, from Club Flex’s rafters in the middle of the stage. His hands and mouth were bound with duct tape as Ransom used his bulbous frame as a punching bag. He was going to town on the fleshy body, delivering punishing blows that hit their target with precision. Occasionally, a cracking sound could be heard, notifying the trio that Ransom had broken a rib.

  “You missed a spot on the right,” Harley pointed out helpfully. He filled his shot glass full of Cuervo tequila and passed the bottle to Shakes, who skipped using his glass to guzzle straight from the bottle.

  “I’ve only counted ten cracks, so you’ve still got a ways to go. Or are you losing your touch?” Shakes joked. His blue eyes danced with humor as he and Harley yukked it up, black curls flopping wildly on his forehead with every laugh. “It normally doesn’t take you this long.”

  The enforcer snorted at the insult. “Come find out for yourself, bitch. In case you haven’t noticed, he’s the size of a fucking baby orca! Didn’t it take two of you to hoist him up there? There’s a thick layer of lard for me to penetrate.”

  Ransom peered down at Dibsy whose face was red from agony and exertion. His tears flowed backward, past the receding hairline and into his lank, greasy red hair. “Everything okay down there, shithead?”

  Dibsy tried to speak, but the tape was too restricting. Ransom grabbed a corner and ripped it off unceremoniously. His prisoner screamed as part of his mustache peeled off with the tape.

  “Shit!”

  Ransom backhanded him, splitting his bottom lip open and he sniveled.“Shut your bitch-ass up, you fucking pussy.”

  “I’m sorry, man! I won’t ever do anything this dumb again! Lemme make this shit up to you! I’ll get you guys the money! Tell Slade I’m sorry!” Dibsy wheezed through the excruciating pain as blood seeped into his mouth. From his upside-down position, and with busted ribs, it was hard for Dibsy to concentrate on talking his way out of the clusterfuck he’d covetously landed himself in.

  The wintry green eyes glaring down at him were unsympathetic to his plight. “You’re gonna give us triple what you owe, Bishop.”

  “But that’s fifteen thousand dollars!” Dibsy whined. “I ain’t got that kinda money! Make me a deal!”

  “Is fat-boy for real?” Shakes guffawed.

  “Smoke that ass right now, baby brother!”

  “If I kill him, then we don’t get our money back,” Ransom logically reminded Harley. “Prez wants his money.”

  “I’ll get it for him; I swear to you I will! Just let me down!” Dibsy begged frantically. “My head feels like it’s gonna explode!”

  Ransom produced a switchblade from his pocket and cut the tape from his wrists and lastly, the rope. Dibsy howled miserably when his body hit the floor, broken bones jarring against each other.

  “You have seventy-two hours to get our fucking money.” Ransom tugged his shirt back on and slipped his cut over it. “Oh, and just in case you’re thinking of running again…”

  Ransom caught the foot-long pipe Shakes tossed him and cracked it against each of Dibsy’s ankles until they gave in.

  Ignoring the piercing wails of anguish behind him, Ransom casually announced, “Now, I’m hungry. Inferno?”

  “Let’s do it, brothers.” Harley clasped them each around the shoulders, and they exited the strip club.

  Inferno was the local watering hole and a Chatham institution.
Although the town was small, consisting of a mile-long row of establishments, it was prosperous and considered a man’s town. After all, it was mostly men who frequented the bar, Petal Soft Brothel, Club Flex, and Lawson’s Automotive.

  The bikers entered the dimly lit bar, hollering greetings and shooting the shit with the other patrons before settling down at a long table reserved only for the Immortals. It was a tradition started by the bar’s previous and original owner, Jonah Razney and continued with the bar’s current owners, his longtime friend and former employee, Marcus “Rage” Glover, a lone wolf biker who finally put down roots, and his lady love, Lorelai Fitzgerald.

  “I think we should do something for Pitch when he gets out,” Harley suggested, ignoring the way his brother and Shakes cut their eyes at each other.

  Kevin “Pitch” Wallace was Harley’s good friend who’d grown up with them. Currently, he was serving a sixteen-month sentence for armed robbery in Albuquerque’s Metropolitan Detention Center. He was somewhat of an entitled dick in Shakes and Ransom’s opinion. The Lawson twins and Shakes were born and bred into the MC life. Blaze, Shakes’ dad, was VP, like his father before him, and his son was expected to succeed him, just as the eldest Lawson son would succeed Slade as Prez.

  Pitch entered the MC life at the age of ten with his mother Eloise. She was a club sweetheart who got hooked on drugs when she and Delta, a retired Marine turned MC enforcer and alcoholic, hooked up. Delta had no time for Pitch. He was only interested in the contents of a liquor bottle. Especially after Eloise became a junkie. It killed him in the end when he drunkenly careened his bike off the side of the Cajon Pass located between the San Bernardino Mountains and San Gabriel Mountains in Southern California.

  In Ransom’s opinion, Pitch didn’t see people—he only saw stature and how it could benefit him. He coveted what Shakes had. What Ransom and Harley had. Power. The only person who couldn’t see it was Harley. He was completely oblivious to Pitch’s cocktail personality. Perhaps, it was because the bastard did nothing except boost Harley’s ego and lick his wounds when Slade cut him down.

  “If that’s what you feel like doing, go for it,” Ransom said dismissively. “He’s your friend, and we’ll back you. I’m not crazy about the idea, but I figure if I drink enough, I’ll be able to tune him out.”

  Shakes’ head bobbed in agreement. “I’m with Ransom. I don’t care for him either, but we’re brothers, so I’ll ‘support the cause’ as my pops would say. Or better yet, exclude us and just treat him to a night with one of them hoes at Danny’s place across the way. I’m sure he’d appreciate the gesture. Anything’s gotta be better than all the jacking off he’s been doing.”

  “Petrified dog shit has more value than your loyalty, assholes,” Harley growled.

  “You’ll get no argument from me.” Ransom winked at Lorelai as she sauntered up to their table. “Hey, Lore.”

  “If it isn’t the “Wonder Twins” and “Boy Wonder”,” the older woman kidded, ruffling Ransom’s hair affectionately and winking at Harley and Shakes. “What’ll it be, fellas? The usual?”

  “Lorelai, baby, when are you gonna run away with me?” Shakes demanded. His eyes deliberately appraised the statuesque, honey-hued goddess with the large, fluffy afro. With a slow lick of his lips, his voice dropped an octave. “I promise you wouldn’t regret a single moment of our time together.”

  Harley elbowed him sharply. “You got a death wish or something? Marcus will grind your tiny dick to dust if you fuck with his woman.”

  Lorelai patted Harley’s shoulder. “Oh, baby, don’t tell him nothin’. I got this.”

  She leaned over the table, getting in Shakes’ face, affording the raven-haired biker a view of the juicy pair of tits nestled underneath her low-cut, black tank top. “Honey, I would have you calling me ‘Daddy’ and crying ‘Uncle’ by the time I was finished with you.”

  To the twins, she said, “I’ll get your orders started, and Tanika will bring your drinks over.”

  She sashayed away from the table. Leaning around Ransom, Shakes’ eyes were glued to her curvaceous ass. “Damn! I’d be perfectly alright with that scenario, too. As long as the lights were off and we kept the name-calling between us, that is.”

  “What the hell is wrong with you? In our world, that kind of shit only happens in prison,” Ransom reminded him. His eyes narrowed when Shakes’ hand slipped under the table. “Swear to God, you better not be jerking off over there.”

  “And to another man’s woman at that.” Blaze Gomez’s statement was accompanied by a smack upside his son’s head. “Respect when a woman is taken, fool.”

  “What’d I do?” Shakes smiled innocently at his father, his hand miraculously reappearing.

  The mountain-sized, brown-eyed Hispanic male with the long salt and pepper braid down his back and cowboy mustache frowned down at him suspiciously. Next to him stood an equally large male, this one with fading blonde hair threaded with silver and an equally long beard, his skin darkly tanned from overexposure to the sun.

  “You boys get shit done with Bishop?” Slade Lawson interrogated them. His blue eyes fell on Ransom for the answer. A fact that didn’t go unnoticed by Harley, whose expression immediately turned sullen in his father’s attendance.

  “He has seventy-two hours to get us fifteen thousand dollars, Prez,” Ransom reported .

  “Fifteen thousand?” Slade’s brow furrowed in concentration. Puzzled, he turned to Blaze. “Who ordered that? I only asked for ten thousand.”

  “Don’t look this way; I was on the phone with Bimmerman.”

  “I did. We need to start adding in labor fees.” Ransom held his hands up to his father and VP, showing them that they were red and slightly swollen from executing his enforcer duties. “Gotta take care of our people, right?”

  The boy was thinking like the future, like a real leader. Although there was logic in his son’s rationale and Slade liked what Ransom was saying, he kept his expression impassive. “That ain’t your call to make. What else happened?”

  “Busted ankles,” Harley volunteered eagerly, and Ransom barely managed to keep from rolling his eyes. He wondered how Harley was even able to talk around their father when his lips were permanently glued to Slade’s ass.

  In a sweeping glance, their father evaluated his oldest son’s uninjured hands. “You’re speaking out of turn, boy. I was asking the person who did all the work.”

  Lorelai swung by the table again with beers for all of them. “Fellas, the pork platter, baked beans, and slaw will be out shortly. Slade, Blaze. Are y’all hungry too?”

  “Hey, sugar. Can we get two racks of ribs with honey barbecue sauce?” Slade planted a kiss on her cheek then he and Blaze pulled out chairs. They looked puzzled as the young heads cracked up laughing.

  “Sure thing. Be right back.” This time, instead of engaging, Lorelai deliberately avoided Shakes’ heated stare.

  The young man reluctantly pulled his eyes away from her and spoke up. “He didn’t do all the work, Prez. We were just recovering from stringing fat boy up. Damn near broke our fuckin’ backs, right Harley?”

  The older twin wisely remained mute when Slade shot him a contemptuous look. “So, you put a fat bitch’s legs in the air. Whoopty-fuckin’-do if you finally got that cherry popped. Listen up! We got a new gig I wanna go over. We’re gonna be riding security to Las Cruces. Now, I want everyone to pay attention because there can’t be any fuck-ups…”

  Santa Barbara, California

  “She’s funny-looking. There’s too much going on with her face like she’s had lip injections and plastic surgery. It looks like she’s trying too hard,” the blonde girl in the peach, floor-length satin dress announced spitefully. “I heard she’s from the ‘hood’. Do the Stantons really think because she’s wearing an expensive gown that she fits in? Just because you put lipstick on a monkey--”

  “Would you shut up, Ambrosia?” another blonde, this one in blue velvet, fumed quietly. “Stop being such a w
itch! She just lost her mother. Show a little respect.”

  “Ambrosia’s just mad because she’s not as…exotic-looking,” a well-modulated, male voice laced with admiration quipped.

  The girl in question was standing not five feet away with her back to them. At the word exotic, she rolled her eyes. That was just a fancy word white folks made up for anyone with skin darker than their fake tans.

  “I’m not surprised you caught a case of “Jungle Fever”, Clay. Everyone knows your father chases the help. Like father, like son, right?”

  “Screw you, Ambrosia. Tina’s right; you are a witch!”

  “Pay them no mind, love,” the older black woman cutting roast beef at the carving station kindly advised the girl. She placed a succulent slice of beef on the waiting plate and added her two cents. “They’re just spoiled rich kids who ain’t had a lick of sense knocked into them. You look very nice, by the way.”

  The girl smiled at the older woman. “Thank you. My mother selected this dress for my prom, but I didn’t get a chance to go…”

  The woman smiled with compassionate understanding as the light dimmed from the girl’s dark eyes and her voice trailed off. Their attention was recaptured by the mean girl’s words.

  “Truth hurts, doesn’t it, Clay?” she taunted. “Anyhow, how do you suppose her mother died? A drug overdose or stealing money from her pimp?”

  “Ambrosia!”

  The older woman watched the subject of their attention’s eyes narrow to slits and her face calcify with fury. The young woman was so angry that the silverware on her plate was shaking. Calmly, the woman took the plate out of her trembling hands.

  “Handle your business, honey. I’ll keep your plate warm for you.”

  Ambrosia rolled her eyes as the impostor calmly approached her group. While everyone else greeted her warmly, she deliberately ignored her to select a strawberry from the dessert table behind her. Ambrosia was just about to pop the fruit into her mouth when the hateful smirk was knocked right off her face, the right side of it exploding in pain. It left Ambrosia stunned, and open for another attack. She was the only one to witness the victorious grin that stretched across Billy’s face. Her next blow smashed, full force, into Ambrosia’s nose, sending her flying backward over the buffet table.