Cruz: Motorcycle Club Romance: Sleepless Spades MC, #1

By Nikki Riker

Cruz is a bad boy biker dude, Holly just wants to help her brother stay alive. Can she deal with him and how his bike club handles business?

 

After Holly tries to help her brother with his gambling problem, she is forced to give herself up as some kind of servant to put off his death. She has no idea what she's in for - but Cruz, her Keeper, is as gentle as he is brutal. If only his enemy didn't know of his growing feelings for her.

 

This is a steamy motorcycle club romance with a HEA and can be read alone.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Majestic Owl Publishing LLC
• Release date: Jan 19, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215845035

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

holly

This is turning into the most god awful day of my life. Whoever is in charge of distributing misfortune gives me an unhealthy helping of it, and I want to scrape the shit right off my plate into someone else’s lap.

I came in this morning to find my lunch stolen, an official reprimand slapped onto my desk by HR for shouting at a patient who’d grabbed my ass, and had coffee spilled down my front by a fumbling intern.

I bang through the doors of the South Hollens Free Clinic at half-past eight, and I’m already so bone-weary I could nap on the concrete sidewalk outside the doors. Sleep is a long way off for me yet. I still have a shift at the women’s shelter on eighth street and after that, I have to stop by to make sure that Yasmine hasn’t relapsed. She’s only just received the 30 days sober chip, and I know her control is tipped on a knife’s edge the last few days. I need to be there to talk her through the night.

I’ll probably end up catching three hours in my car before the clinic opens again. I climb into the black, dinged up little bug that my mother left to me after she passed. I’ve just pulled onto the freeway when my phone rings.

The shrill tone makes me jump, and I grip the steering column of my car. I reach into my bag—which is more of a tent than anything else, given how much shit I carry around—and fish out the phone after a few seconds of frantic searching.

It’s on the third ring when I finally retrieve it and glance at the screen.

Harvey Madden. My brother is calling, and for a guilty second I consider letting the call go to voicemail. If my brother is calling me, he’s probably trapped at the casino, too broke to call for an Uber. His car got repossessed by the dealership when he’d failed to pay for it the third month running, and I’d been unwilling to pony up the cash to save him, once again, from his own stupidity. Allowing him to keep a car would only give him more opportunity to gamble away his paycheck.

With a sigh, I answered the call with a curt, What now, Harvey?

Labored breathing on the other end of the phone and then a muffled sob. Fuck, fuck, fuck, Harvey whines into the receiver. I can’t tell if he’s speaking to me or not. Wind rushes past, making loud crackling sounds on my end of the phone.

Harvey, you better not have butt-dialed me, I warn.

I didn’t have the patience to deal with this tonight. I should have been on the road fifteen minutes ago if I wanted to make it to Yasmine’s house by eight. Gabrielle from HR seemed to take malicious glee in reprimanding me for inappropriate workplace behavior. When I emerged from her office, everyone else had clocked off already.

Harvey! I snap when there was nothing but another litany of fucks.

He let out another sob and croaked, Holly?

Harvey, what’s the matter? What’s going on? Why are you crying?

I should have registered that first. I’d seen my brother cry three times in my life. When mom died, when dad died last year, and again when he gambled away his own wedding ring. If my brother cries, there’s a damn good reason for it.

Cool fear trickled into my veins as I awaited his response. What had he done this time? What fresh hell was I going to catch because of it?

I messed up. God, Holly, I was so stupid.

His shoes beat a thudding tempo against the pavement and I can tell over the sound of the wind that he’s running. From what? Oh God, is he being chased?

Harvey, what did you do?

I slam to a stop in the middle of the intersection, taking a hard left back the way I’d come. I’m nearly t-boned by a Jeep Grand Cherokee as I do so. Wherever my brother is, I am almost certain he started near the Black Spade Hotel and Casino in downtown South Hollens. It’s smack in the middle of what we locals affectionately term MC Country, riding the line between the west side, dominated by the Sleepless Spades, and the east, which is run by the Calamity Kings.

Though they started out as motorcycle clubs, they’d evolved over the years into thuggish gangs, all of them thoroughly corrupt and doing their level best to ruin lives. Half the kids that filtered through the rehab center I volunteered with had gotten their first hit of smack from a drug mule working for the Kings. I could only assume the Spades were just as bad.

I ran out of money at the Black Spade, Harvey choked out. The whole damn paycheck. I gotta start paying child support again since Gina left me. I don’t got it. But I knew where I could get some money. I was gonna give it back once I’d hit the big one, I swear to God.

My chest feels clammy and my stomach pitches. It’s a good thing I haven’t eaten since breakfast, because the fear that seizes me is nauseating. Oh God, oh God, oh God. What has he done?

Harvey, who did you take the money from? Fear steals the volume from my voice, though I want to scream at him. I know addiction does strange things to people. But even my bone-headed brother couldn’t be stupid enough to cross someone in the west side?

They moved it to the clubhouse, my brother panted. I only took a couple grand, honest. I didn’t think any of them Spades was gonna miss it. And I was gonna put it right back.

But he didn’t. If he’d pulled off his latest bout of idiocy, he wouldn’t be calling me. My voice sounds hollow when I ask the only follow-up question I can think of.

How much did you lose, Harvey?

Palpable hesitation on the other end of the line. I wait, hands trembling around the wheel. The buildings that flash by in my periphery are grimy and sagging beneath the perpetual slam of rain that pelts South Hollens, Oregon. We get less than Portland, which is only about an hour away. The neighborhood will only get shittier from here. While city hall keeps promising change, no one counts on renovation anymore.

Not for the first time, I wish I were settled anywhere but here. In my private fantasies, I see myself in a cozy New England town, a nurse in a respectable clinic, not a tech in South Hollens. But Harvey makes those dreams impossible. How can I tear myself away from this shitty little town when my brother seems so determined to get himself buried in its small graveyard, right next to mom and dad?

Five grand, he says. Another sob. Oh God, Holls, they’re gonna kill me. We have to run. Pack up all my shit and we’ll go. I swear to God I’ll do nothing like this again. We can start over someplace new. I’ll get clean, I swear.

My chest tightens and I bite my tongue so hard I taste blood. He says those words to me every time he asks for money. But this time, I don’t have it to give. I’ve barely got enough to cover the run-down studio apartment we’re living in now. I’d have to sell a major organ to afford what the son of a bitch just stole from the most dangerous MC gang in town.

Harvey, you fucking idiot, I whisper, furious tears hazing my eyes. I want to slam his head into a wall. But undoubtedly someone else is already planning to do it for me. Where are you? I’m coming.

I’m on 22nd and Crescent. Hurry up, Holly, I think they might be—

A loud, basso voice booms my brother’s name in the background and then the phone hits the ground and the line goes dead.

It’s hard to swallow. Is my brother dead? I didn’t hear a gunshot, but that means nothing.

I blow through a stop sign, belatedly surprised I’m not being tracked by a cop for my illegal turn or the twenty miles over the limit I’m driving. Acid creeps up the back of my throat as I take a turn into the west side and into Spade territory. I don’t come here. Ever. Rule one in South Hollens: Don’t fuck with the MC gangs. Harvey just had to trample over the last taboo, didn’t he? Bad enough he spent every cent he had fueling those bastards. He had to put himself in their sights.

I fly past the Black Spade Hotel and Casino. I know its profile well. It’s probably the ritziest place in South Hollens, a jut of glass and steel that towers over the rest of the surrounding landscape. It’s ablaze with gold and red light, the flashing signs a siren call for addicts like my brother. I glare at it as it flashes in my periphery. How many people have ruined their lives in its lavish interior?

I don’t have time to dwell on it at the moment. My brother could be dead or dying. The craziest thing is, I don’t even know how I’m supposed to help him. A group of gangbangers won’t stop just because I say please. The rain slams against my battered car, beating a staccato rhythm on my windshield. My heart keeps pace, trying to escape me.

I come to a screeching halt at 22nd Street and throw my car into park in a very illegal spot, straining against my seatbelt before it’s undone. I throw myself into the rain, getting soaked to the skin almost at once. The ivory top with its fringe of lace is one of my favorites and one of the few nice things that I own. It’s gonna get ruined by the rain, and the petty grievance just increases my irritation with Harvey. Couldn’t he have kept himself out of trouble for one goddamned second?

I sprint up Crescent street, slipping in the muck as I go. My leg goes out from beneath me and my left knee hits the pavement in an explosion of pain. I let out a small whimper as the pant leg splits and the asphalt strips off at least a layer of skin. I can’t focus on it, not with the almost inhuman wail that echoes down the alleyway to me.

Harvey. Oh God, what are they doing to him?

My stride is more of a stagger by the time I find him. At first, he’s all I can see. His face is a mess, the nose twisted entirely the wrong way. Blood pours from his lip, and his eye is swelling shut. His back is pressed up against a dumpster, and he huddles in on himself, crouching like a child afraid of the dark. His arms are raised to protect his head from further blows.

And the nightmare is here all right. Three men are arrayed across from Harvey. The closest to me is huge and somehow familiar, though my panicked mind can’t identify why. Easily six and a half feet tall, he’s probably the closest thing to a giant I’ve ever seen. His arms are all rippling muscle and covered in tattoos. A grinning skull leers at me from somewhere around his elbow. I squint and a patch on his leather jacket catches the eye.

Ryker.

My gaze shifts to the next. He’s smaller than the other two, probably the same height as me at 5’6. His clothes aren’t what I’d have expected either. He looks like a clerk of some sort, wearing a red shirt, dressy slacks, and a tie. A tag in the shape of a black spade is pinned to his lapel. Leo it reads. He must work at the Black Spade Casino. He’s probably the one who ratted my brother