Knight Read online

  Knight (Anathema MC Series)

  Copyright © 2015 by Lana Grayson

  Published by Tika Lake Publishing

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof

  may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever

  without the express written permission of the publisher

  except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  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.

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you’d like to share it with. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.

  Cover Design: Rebecca Berto

  http://bertodesigns.com/

  Cover Images Purchased from: www.depositphotos.com

  Other Works By Lana Grayson:

  Legacy Series

  Takeover

  Controlling Interests

  Capital Risk

  Anathema Series

  Warlord

  Exiled

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  To My Husband

  At least there aren’t step-brothers in this one. ;)

  Thank you so much for your interest in the Anathema series!

  All three books are a standalone romances, but the overall story is much more fulfilling if you read the books in order. I’ve included both Warlord and Exiled in this file so you don’t miss a pulse-pounding moment of action.

  Click below to read the Anathema Series from the beginning with:

  Book One

  Book Two

  Book Three

  I hope you enjoy reading as much as I enjoyed writing these books!

  ~Lana

  Knight - Table of Contents

  Warlord Book One

  Exiled Book Two

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  Sneak Peek-Saint, An Anathema Novella

  Sneak Peek-Takeover, Book #1 Legacy Series

  Nothing worse than waking up early on the day of your execution.

  I ran out of friends after a punch to the gut and lost the rest of my luck when the burlap sack tightened over my head.

  I never figured I had a lot of time left. Nights spent riding shadow to shadow didn’t promise much, but landing on the floor of a stolen truck flashed my life before my eyes quicker than dumping a bike on the highway.

  Those flashes weren’t good images. Mostly bad decisions wrapped in poor judgment racked with impulsive choices. I might have done a lot of things different if given the chance.

  But, knowing me, I’d end up in the same damn place.

  I wasn’t bleeding. I didn’t believe in signs, but a wise man read the writing on the wall when the letters spelled his name. If the Anathema MC grabbed me, I’d be dead. What they lacked in patience they made up for in good aim, especially for their reviled traitor. Instead, my captors kicked my ass just to load me onto a truck. That meant I wasn’t dying today.

  And living would be a hell of a lot harder.

  I spat blood and avoided staining my cut. The President patch hadn’t faded yet—still cocaine white. I aimed to keep it that way.

  The truck barreled over the road. I struggled to my feet only to be tossed against the metal walls. My knee jammed against the bolted-down containers. The storage cabin smelled rough—bloody, sweaty, and hiding drugs too hard for anything Anathema ever ran. Hell, the haul was too dangerous for anything my splintered faction could run. The Coup had connections, but nothing this good.

  Neither Anathema MC nor The Coup was big enough to move the drugs that graced the truck.

  But Temple MC could.

  And, apparently, this was how we met now.

  I thought we settled this shit. My men hadn’t pissed on Temple MC, and Temple ordered no contact between us unless they initiated it. The arrangement benefited everyone if only because it kept me alive after the world burned and I was forced to sift through the ashes to make a living.

  I expected men to go bad, but never the deal.

  I might have freed my wrists, but unless I was smoking a cigarette before this hanging, I couldn’t do much with unbound hands. I never looked for mercy, and I accepted hospitality whenever it was offered. Ropes over my wrist were a hell of a lot better than one tight around my neck.

  An hour passed. We didn’t drive straight, but I knew where we headed. The desert warehouse situated on a border of two municipalities, one paid to look the other way, the other smart enough to set the police details off the dirt road. Privacy was expensive, but Temple MC had the money to exist in perfect solitude.

  Hard hands with harder intentions hauled me from the truck. They pushed me to the ground, but as long as I didn’t land six feet beneath it, I had a chance.

  They didn’t need to kick. I moved on my own. Only dogs and whores waited on the ground.

  I didn’t know where traitors belonged.

  The sack was ripped from my head as the metal doors slammed shut. The echo raged through a warehouse that specialized in their import/export business. I doubted many men saw the inside of Temple’s distribution hub. I wasn’t stupid enough to think they trusted me or that it was a political move. The Coup didn’t have money for a ransom, and our splintered mother chapter, Anathema, couldn’t afford a bounty. Hell, they’d raise the funds just to kill me.

  “Luke Halley. Figured it was time for a business meeting.”

  I blinked. It cleared my vision, but I blinked again, expecting a far different man.

  Heathen wasn’t my usual contact. I didn’t think Temple would let the psychopath handle much besides blood, bones, and the occasional whore who chose the wrong bed that night.

  If insanity had a face, Heathen slashed it. If violence could be personified, Heathen gave life to it.

  If the Temple MC completely disintegrated, Heathen would be the first to gain control.

  We were fucked.

  The leather-bound men at my sides let me move because I had no weapons to defend myself. They stripped my guns and trashed my bike when they captured me. I held up my hands. A show of good faith and a delay while I figured out what happened to my goddamned life in the last four months.

  “Sit him down.” Heathen took as much pride in the caterpillar mustache engulfing his face as he did the ink scaling his arms. The tats revealed how many bones he broke and men he killed. Not a lot of unmarked skin remained. “Knight and I got a lot to discuss.”

  Yeah, right. My contact from the T
emple MC was only their president, Toviel Aren. But he hadn’t surfaced for a month. That meant a couple things in our world, and none of those possibilities spelled retirement.

  They led me to a table, slamming me into the seat as if they impaled my head on a pike. I didn’t need the warning. I was nothing to them, just a man from a tiny club made smaller through an internal civil war. But I had offered them a plan with generous percentages, a pledge of loyalty, and a guarantee to get the job done.

  A year had passed, and everyone was still breathing.

  For now.

  Heathen rapped the table. The thick gold rings obscuring his knuckles pounded the rhythm—unstable, like everything else nowadays.

  “Knight, you comfortable?” He wasn’t polite. I didn’t answer. “This shouldn’t take long. Just looking for a few answers.”

  “Don’t need all the theatrics, I’d have made arrangements to meet with you.” I was honest. At the end of the day, a man had two things to call his own—his balls and his word. The lucky kept both. “Where’s Toviel Aren? I do my business with him.”

  “Our president...” Heathen smirked at his men. “He ain’t been feeling too good. Had an accident. Decided to walk in front of a couple bullets.”

  Son of a bitch. “Sorry to hear that.”

  “These things happen. Toviel traveled to Pittsburgh to handle a problem. Got a little too close to the wrong girl and humped the shot gun.”

  That didn’t make sense. Toviel was more cautious than that. So was I.

  I didn’t answer.

  “The girl pulling the trigger was some whore, a sweet-butt belonging to one of your friends.”

  “You gotta be more specific. I don’t have many friends.”

  “Can’t imagine why.” Heathen paced the table. “You’re a traitor, Knight. Sliced the Anathema MC right in half when you left. Inherited the club once your usurper president died, but the bullshit with Anathema hasn’t gotten any better, has it?”

  “My issues with Anathema have nothing to do with Temple. I run my club. They run theirs. You run yours. It’s worked that way for a while. No problems.”

  “You sure about that?”

  I shifted. The men at my side reached for their weapons. This wasn’t going to end nice. They bound my hands, but they didn’t bind my tongue. Either they wanted to hear me scream or they needed information.

  And I wasn’t feeling very cooperative.

  “Why the hell am I here?” I asked. “You don’t want a history lesson on why I split from Anathema.”

  “Always heard you were a man of few words, Knight. That’s fine by me.”

  Heathen flipped a knife from his belt. The blade shimmered clean before imbedding in the table. I wasn’t a betting man, just profited from the vig, but I’d place money that my chest would become the knife’s next sheath.

  Christ. What the hell else could go wrong from buddying up to Temple? We were down a president, up a psychopath, out a shit-ton of allies, and in harm’s way. My only remaining move was to bend over and take what was left.

  Heathen pulled a chair, his legs too long for the table. Whatever junk he injected amped him up. His feet bounced worse than a bike on Highway 9.

  “Why don’t you talk to me about Blade Darnell?” he said.

  Hearing the name soured my mouth, like I suffered from one of Blade’s benders but without the high and just the misery of the crash.

  “What about him?”

  “Where the fuck is he?”

  “Do I look like his keeper?”

  Heathen leaned in close. “You don’t wanna know what you look like right now.”

  I knew exactly what I looked like. Pissed off. And I had every right to curse that cocksucker Blade Darnell. The founding member of Anathema and current VP should have rotted in jail. Instead, I busted my ass, broke my bones, and plotted my life to get Blade out.

  Temple refused to do business with us unless they had that son of a bitch presiding over the deal. Said he was the only one they trusted. I ruined everything trying to save his miserable hide from County.

  “Blade’s probably knee deep in meth and banging two whores.” If we were lucky. Blade’s taste in women ran too close to his home. “He’s partying it up now that he’s out of jail.”

  “You got a specific place?” Heathen asked. “Name it. We’ll take a little ride. Get our man.”

  “I don’t know where the fuck he is.”

  “You sure?”

  “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  Heathen ripped the knife from the table. He rubbed the silvered edge over his fingers, pressing the blade but not drawing blood. Yet.

  “Because you do know where he is,” he said. “And if I were you, I’d start thinking pretty fucking hard about your answers.”

  I wasn’t a liar. I was a traitor. It wasn’t a big distinction, but it was all I had. Blade Darnell wasn’t worth a knife to the back, even when I thought he was our only hope of appeasing Temple and preventing war.

  Heathen exhaled. “Knight, you and me have some things to discuss. Right now, I got this thorn in my side. Digging in. Making problems.”

  Yeah, I had one of those too that I tried to avoid. “I have problems of my own. Difference is, we used to work them out man-to-man.”

  “Sounds good…except, Knight? You are my problem.”

  “I’ve done everything Temple asked.”

  “You ain’t telling the truth.”

  “Don’t accuse me of being a liar.”

  Heathen scowled, but I wasn’t dead yet. I hated to tell him no one was around to hear whatever message he hoped to send. The Coup fractured and existed in controlled chaos. Killing me was doing a favor to Anathema.

  Temple wanted to rule Cherrywood Valley, and the only thing preventing their strike was the agreement I made with Toviel Aren. If I died, nothing would stop Temple destroying our club.

  So I tried again. “You made a mistake—”

  I expected the punch to the kidney, but I hoped they wanted to make me wheeze, not piss blood.

  Heathen ordered his men. “Go get the girl.”

  What girl? What the hell was going on?

  Temple’s men moved, slinking to a secondary door to escort yet another visitor inside.

  Their prisoner didn’t protest. She didn’t swear. She didn’t let them touch her.

  She didn’t have to.

  I’d murder the son of a bitch for involving her.

  Jocelyn Hart reigned like an executioner masquerading as a queen. She didn’t fight the men forcing her to the table. A strike would only break her nails, and she’d need the perfect manicure to scratch out their eyes later.

  The kidnapping was an inconvenience she probably wouldn’t forget. Judging by the lacey silk costume hugging her curves, the interruption cost her more than pride. Lyn was as good an accountant as she was a stripper. She’d remember every man who dared to challenge her and every penny she lost.

  “You!” Lyn hissed, less like a viper and more like a hellcat. “I knew it’d be your fault, Luke!”

  The Temple brother escorting her now had to restrain her. He laughed. I didn’t.

  Lyn wasn’t a part of Anathema or The Coup, but that made her more dangerous than any meth-head biker trying to make a name for himself. Her troublemaker, red lips charmed and insulted with the same smirk, and it once cost Anathema a thousand well-spent dollars to prove she was a natural blonde.

  Lyn was one hundred and twenty pounds of pure dynamite, and every man prayed she’d blow him instead of her fuse. She was alive and unhurt, which meant she hadn’t mouthed off. That was lucky. If someone had called her a whore, they’d face a bitch, not a stripper, and her heels hurt like a motherfucker when she corrected those insults. Her Highness just had to grovel with the peasants for a few minutes, and I’d get her out of there.

  I’d no idea why they kidnapped her.

  But they’d die for it.

  “What the hell is this?” Lyn’s pout disarmed the men, but
it was calculated, letting her count guards, exits, and weapons. “A gun to the head is not normally how I take appointments.”

  “Sit, beautiful.” Heathen offered her a chair. He was no gentleman, and Lyn was no lady. She sat because she knew a smile would get her farther than a fat lip. “We got a lot to talk about.”

  “Men don’t normally want to talk with me.” Lyn crossed her legs—beautiful, toned, tempting. She took the motion slow. “Better make it worth my while.”

  “You’re breathing. That worth your while?”

  “It’s enough to make me listen. That’s more than most men get.”

  Lyn didn’t cover herself or the lacey scraps of her costume. Her skirt belonged in a harem, not a warehouse. It protected her most dangerous asset. Her hips would put a man in debt, but it’d cost him his soul to get in her thong.

  “I ain’t paying for your company,” Heathen said.

  “No charge for a conversation, and I’m not in the mood for games. Where the hell am I, and why did you bring me here?”

  Heathen snorted. “Mouthy little thing.”

  “Not my mouth you need to worry about. It’s my teeth.”

  Yeah, and if she wanted to keep them, it was time to tuck her tongue behind her fangs. I motioned for her to quiet. Lyn saw the bindings and tensed.

  “She’s not involved in this.” I pretended the woman at my side didn’t squeeze my heart just to rush the blood to my cock. “She’s not under The Coup’s protection.”

  Heathen nodded. “Who you paying off then?”

  Lyn dropped the name like it’d intimidate him. “Anathema MC.”

  “You outta get your money back, beautiful.”

  She didn’t flinch when he leaned close. “With interest.”

  “How is Anathema?” Heathen twisted his finger in her hair. That mistake wouldn’t cost him money. One of us would earn it in blood, depending on if Lyn or I got there first. “Down a VP from what I hear.”