Vice

  Vice

  Sentinels MC Rebels, A Bad Boy Sweet Romance, Book 2

  Elana Johnson

  Contents

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  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Sneak Peek! CRASH Chapter One

  Sneak Peek! CRASH Chapter Two

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  Chapter One

  Jordan Waterhouse didn’t like the way the trailer connected to the back of his motorcycle sounded as he navigated to Market Fresh. He’d struggled to get it hooked up this time, and he needed to tell Maverick that they needed a new hitching system.

  He’d mentioned it before but mentioning things to Mav rarely got things done. So Jordan would come right out and say it once he finishing delivering the dents and dings. As Vice of the Sentinels, he could’ve farmed this job out to someone else in the motorcycle club. There were plenty of new recruits lately, both old and young.

  The Sentinels had picked up eight guys from the Hawks after their Vice had called and won a contest vote over his President. Then he’d burned the clubhouse to the ground.

  Jordan liked Tyson a whole lot, but he hadn’t joined the Sentinels. He worked at Ruby’s, the motorcycle shop and retail store on the southeast side of Forbidden Lake, and he was awesome with older-model bikes that needed repairs.

  He’d never gone by Vice, but Bulldog. Jordan reminded himself that he went by Vice around the club because it was more than a title. He’d overcome several vices in his life, but one still lingered like an annoying cough that hung on for weeks after he’d started feeling better.

  “Felicia is not annoying,” he muttered to himself, glad he’d worn full leather tonight. The autumn wind whipped into his face, and he’d have to start wearing goggles too—unless he liked freezing his eyeballs. Which he did not.

  Felicia Cheswick had been running the dents and dings program at Market Fresh for the past couple of years. Jordan had been smitten by her shoulder-length auburn hair that fell in gentle waves, her big, brown eyes, and her purely female laugh the moment he’d met her. They’d started dating only a few months after that, and then one day—done.

  “That’s not true either.” He really needed to stop talking to himself, but riding a motorcycle was a solitary event, and Vice was used to being alone with his thoughts.

  Most of the time, his audibles to himself were truer than his thoughts, so he didn’t actually want to stop talking to himself. Because he knew why Felicia had broken up with him. She hadn’t ghosted him or refused to say.

  She’d had one rule for him when they began their relationship, and he’d broken it.

  But he was a member of a motorcycle club—“Not just a member,” he said as he made a wide, right turn. “The Vice-President of the club.”—and sometimes, when the club called, he had to answer.

  They weren’t an outlaw club, but Felicia hadn’t seemed to be able to make that distinction. She didn’t want Vice involved in any club business, and he’d ridden up to Grand Central with Maverick and several others as part of club business. He’d been taken captive and beaten too, though not nearly as bad as Maverick.

  The man had endured several surgeries and was just starting to come out on top physically. But Vice had suffered through a set of five fractured ribs, a broken nose, and a sprained knee.

  The ribs had taken eons to heal, and his heart was still barely beating after Felicia had stuck to her rules and broken up with him. She simply didn’t want to be involved with someone who could bring any danger into her life.

  Vice couldn’t blame her; Felicia had endured a rough and unsafe childhood because of her father, and she wasn’t willing to perpetuate a relationship with any danger or unrest whatsoever.

  Market Fresh sat at the end of this block, and Vice slowed his motorcycle as he approached. There weren’t many cars in the lot tonight, and Vice was a bit later than normal. He’d learned that if he went to Rosco’s first, he arrived at Market Fresh after Felicia had left the back room. He could then load up the cans for the dents and dings program without talking to her or seeing her.

  It wasn’t a perfect system, but it had been working for them for a long time now. Vice wouldn’t mind seeing Felicia, but awkwardness exuded from her every time Vice even got within sight.

  He didn’t want to make her life more difficult or make her feel uncomfortable, so he’d been sticking to their little game of cat and mouse.

  The thought of a cherry-filled pastry made his mouth water, and he considered parking out front and going inside to get the treat first. Market Fresh put their doughnuts on a half-price sale after nine p.m. every night, and it wouldn’t be the first discount doughnut Vice had enjoyed.

  Vice watched the entrance of the store for a few moments, and no one came out. There was toasted marshmallow ice cream at the clubhouse, and Vice didn’t want to take the time to park and go in. The lights in the front window of the store went out for a moment, and he realized it was almost closing time.

  Forbidden Lake didn’t have any twenty-four hour grocery stores, and if he didn’t get around to the back and get the cans, he’d have double the work tomorrow night. And tomorrow night was the concluding fall celebration at the lake, and he wanted to go to that.

  He’d vowed to find someone new to date by that event, and he hadn’t done it. House brought it up every single day, and Vice was determined to attend the event and leave it with a date.

  “Have to do something to get over her,” he told himself, revving his bike and going around to the back door of the store. Employees parked back here, but there was a no-parking zone with stripes on the asphalt in front of one of the entrances to the back of the store. A large bay was where the semi-trucks pulled up to unload the boxes and barrels and pallets, but Vice never entered and exited that way.

  He pulled up to the door and turned so the trailer was right by the door. He’d learned a lot of tricks over the years to make this job go faster, not that he minded the work. With the engine off, the silence in the air almost sounded deafening, and it definitely made his ears ring.

  Vice whistled to himself as he pulled open the door and went into the huge, industrial storage area at the back of the grocery store.

  “Hey,” someone said. More like a hiss, really.

  Vice froze and looked around, trying to find the person who’d spoken. But they were hidden. Something felt off about the store, almost electric, and he didn’t dare take another step. His pulse pounded in the back of his throat as he said, “Hello?”

  “Jordan,” a woman said, and he recognized that voice. Not to mention that Felicia was the only one who ever called him by his
real name. “Get down.”

  He looked to his left, and he caught sight of her terrified face. “Get down?”

  “Get over here,” a man growled, and Vice moved toward them. He found three people huddled behind an enormous freezer, fear the only emotion on their faces.

  He dropped into a crouch, confused. “What’s going on?”

  “I can’t believe he didn’t lock that door.”

  “I told you he didn’t.”

  “And I told him it didn’t lock.” The man looked at the other two. “But why wouldn’t he at least check it?”

  The three of them looked at one another, and then they all looked at Vice.

  “What’s going on?” he asked again, slower this time. He looked from Felicia to the two men, almost willing one of them to start talking.

  “We called the police.”

  “I can’t believe they’re not here yet.”

  “It’s only been three minutes.” Felicia looked at Vice. “There are a couple of guys here, robbing the store. They’re taking cash from the registers and trying to get the bank open.”

  “Right now?” Vice’s first instinct was to stand up and look. Find out for himself.

  “Right now,” the man said.

  Vice pulled out his phone. “I’ll call Mav.”

  “You will not,” Felicia hissed. “And stop talking out loud.”

  Vice looked at her and lowered his voice when he asked, “Why don’t we just go out the back?”

  “He said if we weren’t here when he came back, he’d hunt us down and kill us.” The man—Vice thought his name was Dante Chappell—looked like a deer caught in the headlights. Wide eyes. Pure fear.

  Vice hadn’t been here when that threat had been issued, and he wasn’t sure he’d had believed it. He could just walk right out the door. Get back on his bike. Leave.

  One glance at Felicia, and he knew he wouldn’t do that. She was still as beautiful as ever, and his attraction to her crackled like bottled electricity. Could she feel it too? Did she even care?

  He couldn’t tell, because she looked like she was about to throw up. A fierce desire to protect her flowed through him, and he jerked his head up as the black plastic door that led into the main storefront banged against the wall.

  “Where are you?” a man called, and all three people in front of him whimpered.

  “You go,” he whispered to them. “I’ll figure something out.” He moved then, no hesitation as he stayed low to the ground and snuck away from the trio.

  He had no idea what to do. He didn’t know who he was dealing with, or how many of them there were. Details like that would’ve been nice to know, and he paused as he caught sight of movement through the gaps in the shelves.

  Only one guy, he told himself. At least he hadn’t spoken out loud that time. A glance toward the plastic door confirmed that no one else had come through it.

  Vice almost smiled. One guy? He’d been fighting since the age of twelve, and he’d taken on more than one guy so many times he’d lost count.

  He crept along the shelf, his footsteps silent. All of the boxes here were taped shut, and Vice couldn’t get his hands on something he could throw without making some noise.

  Voices and cries came from the end of the aisle, but Vice didn’t look that way. He ducked around the end of the shelving unit so he wouldn’t be seen.

  “Popeye,” a loud voice came over the loudspeaker. “Pigs are here. Time to roll.”

  Vice’s brain whirred. He needed to keep Popeye from getting back to his friends, though he supposed he could just as easily go out the back door.

  He didn’t though.

  Vice knew the large cardboard container that held the dents and dings usually sat in the middle of the aisle he’d been going down before getting hissed at. Plenty of cans—missiles—there. And they were already dinged up.

  His heartbeat hammered in his head, and he drew in a deep breath. When he moved around the end of the aisle, he was running, and he searched the area down by the freezer. A man stood there, his face a mask of anger.

  Vice yelled, drawing the man’s attention, a moment before he reached the cardboard container. He had two cans, one in each hand, before the man had even looked up. Vice launched the cans, one right after the other. He continued to yell as the loudspeaker sounded again. But his voice was too loud inside his own head for him to understand the words coming through the speakers.

  The man screamed too, but Vice didn’t stop. When the man clutched his face with both hands and fell to his knees, he did.

  “Come on,” he said, sprinting toward the guy, who wore a leather jacket and plenty of ink on his skin. He wasn’t a Sentinel. He wasn’t a former Hawk.

  The back of his jacket had a patch that struck fear right behind Vice’s heart—a skull with a snake coming out of the mouth, which then wisped into what looked like smoke.

  The Devil’s Breath.

  In Forbidden Lake. This was bad, and this guy shouldn’t be here. He was starting a war with the Sentinels. Were the Breath that hard-up for cash?

  It didn’t make sense.

  “Focus,” he muttered to himself. “Get up, guys. Go, go, go!” Vice went right past the outlaw biker on the ground, wanting to kick him or clock him over the head with a sizeable can of green beans. He did neither as he continued by, reaching for and grabbing Felicia’s hand.

  “Time to go,” he said. “Now.” Thankfully, the other two guys were aware enough to jump to their feet and go in front of him. Vice shielded Felicia with his body as they followed the others out the door, and when the heavy metal door slammed closed, Vice slowed a little.

  But he didn’t stop. The four of them ran toward the back of the lot and ducked behind a pickup truck parked there. His breathing hitched in his chest, but he could still smell the flowery, rosy scent of Felicia’s perfume.

  Her hand in his stayed, and Vice squeezed it. Their eyes met, and even under the glow of the orange streetlight, Vice thought Felicia was the most beautiful creature he’d ever laid eyes on.

  Maybe… he thought. But he didn’t let the thought do much more than that.

  Sirens filled the sky, and red and blue police lights filled the darkness. Vice didn’t want to get involved, but he supposed he’d already made that choice when he’d rounded that shelving unit.

  “Come on,” Felicia said. “We have to go talk to them.”

  Vice stood up with her, glad when she put her hand back in his. He cut a glance at her out of the corner of his eye, but she wouldn’t look at him. He led her toward the two police cars, freezing when the officers jumped from their vehicle and said, “Stop! Put your hands up!”

  “Whoa, whoa,” Vice said at the same time Dante said, “Don’t shoot! We were trapped inside.”

  “Hands where I can see them,” a cop barked, and Vice was forced to let go of Felicia’s hand. His heart sank down to his expensive motorcycle boots, because he knew that voice and there was no love lost between Vice and Brit Hill.

  “Names,” he barked next, and Felicia went first. Then Dante. Then Marc Scott.

  “Jordan Waterhouse,” he said, and Brit looked at him.

  “I should’ve known.”

  “I’m not involved in this,” Vice said. “I just pulled up to get the dents and dings.”

  “He’s right,” Felicia said, but Brit held up his hand.

  “Do you know the guys doing this?”

  “Why would I?”

  “They’re your kind.”

  Vice’s anger flared, and he clenched his teeth. “And what kind is that?”

  “Look, there were three of them,” Dante said. “I saw all of them, and we were in the back room for about five minutes before Jordan showed up. He has nothing to do with this.”

  Vice lifted his eyebrows and gestured toward Dante. “See?”

  “We only have two guys,” Brit said.

  “Did you get the one in the back?” Felicia asked.

  Brit stepped away and spoke int
o his radio. A moment later, the police officers who’d gone through the front doors confirmed that they were still making their way through the store, front to back.

  “He’s right through that door,” Dante said. “Jordan took him down with cans.”

  Brit glared at Vice as if he’d done something wrong, and Vice stared steadily back. “Don’t move,” the cop growled, and Vice held up his hands in surrender, though he would like to call Mav and let him know what was going on.

  The Breath, right here in Forbidden Lake. This was bad business.

  “It’ll be okay,” Felicia said, but she sounded nervous. “He’ll see when they go in.”

  “Thanks for having my back,” Vice said to the others.

  “Hey, you took that guy down with cans,” Marc said, a slow grin spreading across his face.

  “I just did what anyone would’ve done,” he said, but by the way the three of them were looking at him, he wasn’t so sure.

  Hey, he’d take Felicia’s eyes on him. Maybe him throwing a few cans would somehow get her back into his life.

  Shouts happened from the back of the store, and Vice spun and stepped in front of the others. The biker in the leather jacket sprinted toward them. The cops yelled for him to stop. Behind him, Felicia screamed.

  Vice couldn’t let him get away. The Sentinels would have a lot of questions for him. So he curled his fingers into fists and braced himself.

  This was going to hurt.

  Chapter Two