Hammer (Heartlands Motorcycle Club #9) - Dani Wyatt Page 0,5

seat on the floor next to the washing machine, leaning against the cool metal as it shakes and lurches. The buzzing fluorescent lights above aren’t soothing but they are fucking bright enough for reading, so as usual I’ve brought a book. I’m about three quarters of the way through Pride & Prejudice, my mother’s favorite.

She read it to me the first time when I was probably ten and I groaned and complained every night. I’ve read it a couple times since, because it makes me feel close to her when we are so far apart. Fucking Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth can’t get the fuck out of their own way to make things happen.

My mother was a high school English teacher, and from as far back as I could remember, she always read to me. And not kids’ books, either, we’re talking classics. Adventures and angst. Love and betrayal. I’d battle with her to read me what I wanted—fun, kid stuff—but she always told me I was better than that.

If she could see me now, not sure she would still agree.

My father was a working guy and always said he married above his pay grade with my mom. He was crazy for her, and she was for him, even though their beginning was hard. She was from the other side of the tracks, the rich side as they say, and got pregnant with me when she was just seventeen.

Her family disowned her when she and my dad ran away and got married. I’ve never met them, and they never spoke to her again. The hatred I had for how they treated her was a ball of fire in my belly from when I was old enough to understand what happened.

What makes it worse, is I did the same thing. I bugged out. I had to, to protect them. I got caught up in a bad fucking deal with my former club, Satan’s Seminoles out of Philly. They were dirty and I’m no saint, but they got into some shit that didn’t sit right with me.

I tried to keep my distance, but when the President gives you an order, you either carry it out or suffer the consequences, which with my former club included threats to everything that mattered to you.

So, one night, I was supposed to be heading to a hit on some rival members that had disrespected the President’s old lady. It was just dumb ass shit to me, but Lukas, the President, was a rage case and took no shit.

He planned to take down the three dudes that set her up for embarrassment. They didn’t hurt her, but he wasn’t going to stop at that. He sent me and two other guys for their old ladies, and what he wanted us to do was not just embarrassing.

I knew if I bailed on the deal, as wrong as it was, I was out. And if I stuck around, went back home to Pittsburg to my family, he could well bring them in and fuck them up, so I just took off. It was the only solution I could think of that would keep my family safe and save my ass at the same time.

I sent notes and postcards to Mom and Dad, and I call them now and then to check in. They don’t ask a lot of questions and I don’t know how I’m so lucky, because they always say they love me and as long as I’m safe and happy, that’s what matters.

Fuck. What is happy?

I settle into my reading, lost in that world, when I hear the bells jingle on the front door of Luann’s Laundra-Palace, and my heart rate doubles as I put my book down, peering around the corner of the washing machine and already reaching for the five-inch blade I keep in a special sheath inside my boot.

Without standing up, I can’t see anyone, but I hear steps and what sounds like the slap-slap of flip flops—which calms me a bit, because no one that would come looking for me would be wearing rubber sandals.

Then I hear it.

Humming.

Fuck, I know that sound.

It’s Robin.

I’m on my feet and scanning the bright room, and as soon as she sees me her eyes snap wide and a gasp releases from her lips as fear crosses her face.

Then fury.

“Seriously?” She shakes her head on a sneer. “Enough is enough! If I was interested in you, you’d know, okay? This following me everywhere and turning up all over is