Cruz (Dark and Dirty Sinners' MC #5) - Serena Akeroyd Page 0,91
all backward, I hit my head on one of the kegs, and that was the last I fucking knew about anything.
Lodestar
I'd never liked working as a sniper, but just because I didn't like it, didn't mean I wasn't fucking good at it.
I'd always been a good shot, and that was something my daddy had cultivated in me after momma had died.
We'd gone hunting together since the time I reached his knee, and I'd grown up hunting and butchering our own venison.
Death was a constant companion of mine, and that was why, after he died of a heart attack when I was sixteen years old, I found myself enlisting.
I'd lost my family. I needed a new one.
Death wasn't something I was scared of. And I loved my country.
What better career path than that of a soldier?
They never told you you'd do shit that even someone who wasn't squeamish would find hard to handle.
They didn't tell you it would fuck with your head, being turned into a killer.
Hunting and killing were two very different things.
But when you became a hunter of humans? That changed you. Twisted you. Fucked with your head and made you a ghoul.
I'd been a ghoul for a long time, and that was why I could see the scene playing down around me with a cool head.
Anyone else, except maybe Mav, who was resting on the clubhouse roof, watching shit unroll, would feel the need to warn the men and women under me.
But I didn't.
Death was the casualty of life.
I respected that, just as much as I knew that if any of my new family died, I'd kill the bastards behind this attack, and I'd do so with a smile on my face.
That was why I hovered the laser sight on the biker who'd just rolled up.
My finger caressed the trigger as I held my breath, calmed my heart. I took note of wind speed, calculated the variables even though it was a close shot, and used the discomfort of my position to ground me as I made a decision whether to end the man's life or not.
Then, I heard Stone gasp, "It's Bear!"
Bear.
Rex's father.
Not a threat.
I struck him off my list even as another gun went off, only it wasn't aimed at Bear, but at his bike.
And I wasn't the one behind the hit.
Quickly, scanning the environment, I happened to see the piercing red light of another’s laser sights, and just as I took the shot, all of this taking place within a second, the blast struck.
As glass shattered, and screams soared, I was pushed back off my precarious perch on the roof and hurtled into the darkness of the back yard.
The screams, the fear, the pain, all of it took me back to another time, another place, where the heat of the desert was unending, the scent of terror polluted every breath of air I took, and the promise of freedom could only be found in death.
As I collided with the ground, I wasn't sure what I hoped for when I closed my eyes.
For this to be the end?
Or the only thing that had kept me going for the past five years—vengeance. Because my enemies had made a fatal mistake tonight.
The Sinners wouldn’t take this lying down.
And neither would I.
Sixteen
Rachel
It was quite by chance that I saw it.
I wasn't the kind of woman who took a seat on the deck, resting her feet on the railing as she took in the view, the otherwise silent night, and an aria from Madame Butterfly that surged through the house's smart speakers.
But tonight, I was that woman.
I'd had a bitch of a week, a bitch of a six months if I was being honest. Just sitting down, taking a moment to smell the damn roses was something I deserved. Something I'd earned.
I was, I'd admit, a complete workaholic. I loved my job, and even though my employers were a bunch of criminals, it enabled me to donate a large chunk of my time to the charities that mattered to me.
And, though I'd never admit it to Rex, the overbearing prick, I liked my work with the Sinners.
They presented me with a daily challenge, much like a newspaper provided a daily Sudoku puzzle.
They also paid all my bills.
Generously.
In fact, generously was an understatement. That wasn't to say I didn't earn every goddamn cent, because they kept me more than busy, but it enabled me to do what really mattered—my NGO work.