VENDETTA: A Bad Boy, Motorcycle Club Romance by Lauren Devane

rat-infested hotel. Something about tomatoes blushing and ranch dressing. My lips curved into a smile. For the first time in years, I had someone to think about other than myself and The Fallen, and I wasn’t going to fail her.
    No matter what it took.

Emily
    When I woke up, he was sleeping next to me.
    One thing I’d never been able to enjoy with Tommy was a full night of silence and rest. Either he was up running errands for my uncle at two, three, four in the morning, or he wasn’t able to sleep over because his father didn’t like his whipping boy to be gone. The few times we’d been able to stretch out and sleep, it had always been interrupted and left me feeling jittery. By the time he decided to crack his dad’s jaw and get his own place, it was too late for me to want to stay over, even if I’d been allowed to.
    “You can’t go out tonight, girl,” Uncle Dale said one of the first nights Tommy had been set up alone, looking up from the show he was watching. “Got a shipment here bright and early.”
    “Cut it yourself,” I snapped, hating my entire life in that moment. The sofa had been nice when we’d purchased it to replace one that had burned a year before. This one wasn’t going to make it much longer, though. Holes were burned into the cloth where my uncle or one of his junkie friends let a cigarette go a little too long.
    “Can’t do it.” He sighed and stretched out, his small eyes cutting into me like a dull blade. “I got places to be. Besides, you’re so much better at it than any of my other guys. Can’t leave anyway. I’ll just get the police on your ass.” Dale laughed like it was a big joke. As if he’d call in the police to drag his underage ward back to the house.
    The greatest tragedy of my life was that I’d learned how to cut and bag meth with brutal efficiency. When I was 12, I’d escaped from one of his workers with a black eye and a cut on my head after I made a smart remark about his lack of personal hygiene. Dale said that if I wanted the man gone, I’d have to take up his spot in the production line—it was a joke, of course. He didn’t expect me to pick up the razorblade and chop meth that was almost perfect even before it was weighed.
    Then I’d made a suggestion offhand a year later after reading a book on economics that some college student left behind and Dale had taken it seriously.  I’d increased profits by changing our price against other the price of other local suppliers. Turned out that undercutting them just a little boosted what we would sell—which Dale crowed that he’d thought of before, but hadn’t had the time to try. Right. So I cut the product, bagged it and pushed it out with his dealers every night.
    Maybe I was ruining lives, but I was saving mine. Since Dale wanted to keep me around to bolster his profits, he kept the other guys from beating me for sport. When I got a little older, his protection became even more important.
    That’s when we moved down to Malibu. He had saved enough to move us into a gated home with a few guards who allowed us to do our job without any clients showing up with a grievance and ruining a whole day. Trouble is, the gates did something else too: they kept me inside. I was allowed to leave for school, but if I wasn’t home at the right time or if I tried to leave to do something else—see a movie, go to the park—I’d get a taste of Dale’s belt before being sent to work without food.
    The memory of hunger turned over in my stomach and I let my shoulders slump. “I just wanted to go hang out with Tommy.”
    “Nothing doing. You need to stuff those teddy bears and ride with Joe to drop them off for shipping in the morning. It was your idea, girl. Don’t bail now.”
    The teddy bears was one of my greatest ideas, even if I hated myself for it. The more money Dale had, the more often he was out of the house. I loathed working with the meth that rolled in, but it was better than working right under his