CRAVED (By the Alpha Billionaire #1) (4 page)

PRESENT

“Ain’t shit in the house for breakfast.” I slammed the refrigerator door. “Nash!”

My stomach rumbled, and I shook my head. He was probably still passed out in bed. Three words summed up the only things Nash Daughtry loved in this world: booze, bikes, and broads. And at twenty-one, all three of those things were readily available to him any time he liked.

I strutted down the hall of the apartment we shared for the past seven years. The day I turned eighteen I got us out of that hellhole trailer Big Nash had us living in and moved us to a neighborhood in Bolton with good schools. For the first time in our young lives, we knew what it was like to have hot water, ice cold air conditioning, and a kitchen free of roaches and other critters. It was nothing fancy by most people’s standards, but the day we moved in I’d never seen my kid brother smile so big.

Big Nash didn’t give two shits either, that was the sad part. He’d helped us move, seemingly glad to be rid of the two burdens he’d been saddled with the day our mother died of a heroin overdose.

Apparently to our father, eighteen was a perfectly acceptable time to spread your wings and fly away, even if a guy was still in high school. And he didn’t care that I took my brother with me, though I suspect he was well aware Little Nash was better off with me anyway.

I knocked on his bedroom door and let myself in, half expecting to see some buck naked girl twined up in a mess of musty bed sheets.

His bed was empty.

I checked my watch. Nine o’clock. Nash never slept anywhere but his own bed. He’d been that way his whole life. He was very particular about where he stayed, and he’d been known to ditch sleepovers as a kid and walk home in the dead of night just to stay in his own bed.

“Gray!” his voice yelled from down the hall as the door to our place opened and slammed so hard it rattled the walls.

“You stayed out last night,” I said with an entertained smirk as I strutted to the living room. “Who was the lucky lady?”

My face fell when I saw that Nash didn’t have the confident swagger of a man who’d been balls deep in tight pussy all night. His ashen face was bathed in trepidation. He held a hand out, as if to stop me from coming closer.

“Look at me, Gray,” he said, his voice nearly shaking. “I’m going to ask you a question, and I need you to answer me honestly.”

“Always do.”

Nash lowered his hand, resting it on his hip and hanging his head to the ground as if to gather his thoughts. He raised his head, our matching green eyes locking. “Where were you last night?”

“Is this some kind of a joke?” I asked with a laugh.

Nash raised his eyebrows.

“I was home,” I said. “Came home after the chapter meeting. Ordered a pizza. Drank some beer. Passed out.”

It was just a typical Tuesday night for me. I lived a simple existence on purpose. My tumultuous, unpredictable childhood morphed me into a man who lived for the comfort and familiarity of his routines. And going out every night got old about the time I turned twenty-two anyway. A man could only get liquored up and fucked six ways to Sunday so many times before it lost its luster.

“Can anyone attest to that?” Nash asked, brows still raised.

“Shit, Nash, now you’ve got me all worried,” I said, raking a hair through my dark hair. “Stop pussy footin’ around and tell me what the fuck you’re asking me about. We’re not speaking the same language right now.”

“Big Nash is dead,” Nash blurted. “Rumor is you killed him.”

Nash’s words were a blow to the head and a shot to the heart all at the same time. I shook my head. “Never liked the guy, but I’m not the killin’ type. You know that.”

My lack of sadness told me what I already knew. His death meant nothing to me, but it meant something to the group of fifty men he presided over. Big Nash Daughtry was the president of the Hell Valley MC which consisted of fifty loyal, ruthless rebels-without-a-cause who would bash in the skulls of anyone who dared touch a hair on the head of their fearless leader.

“Why would anyone think I did that?” I scratched my head. “That don’t make sense, Nash.”

“After the meeting last night, everyone went out but you.” Nash looked down at the ground. “Someone found Big Nash shot in the back of the head in his bed this morning. No one can account for your whereabouts last night.”

“Just because I didn’t go out last night don’t mean I killed the bastard.” I sighed. My stomach twisted in knots as I realized I had no control over something that was about to turn my entire world upside down. I broke out into a cold sweat, the kind that used to consume me when I’d hear Big Nash beating on Tammy-Dawn and I knew I was next.

“Yeah, but everyone knows you hated the man,” Nash said. “And since you’re the VP.  You’re next in line. That gives you two motives.”

I never wanted that life. I loved bikes, but I never wanted to be in the gang. The eve of my nineteenth birthday, Big Nash took me out to his bar, The Big Steer, bought me drinks, got me hammered, then told me I was joining the club. That it wasn’t an option. When I protested, he tried to kick my ass for the first time in a year, but I’d grown stronger. I had several inches and thirty pounds of pure muscle on him by then, and for the first time in my life we were ill-matched in my favor. I beat the ever-living shit out of him, even in my drunken state, and he never laid a hand on me again after that.

Later that night Big Nash broke down in front of me for the first time in his forty-odd years. He apologized for raising us the only way he knew how. He talked about our mother, Laura, for the first time and about how beautiful she was and how much he missed her. Said she was the only woman he ever truly loved. Her death broke him, he said. Her death turned him into the monster he was, forcing him to live a life with ice water in his veins. He didn’t want to feel the pain that coursed through him like an incurable disease, so he drank until his feelings went numb and inflicted his pain on others instead.

It was that night, standing in the gravel parking lot of his bar, that I saw my father for who he really was: a pathetic, miserable asshole. And it was that night I realized he was only human, and he was incapable of ever being the kind of father we needed. Seeing Big Nash cry didn’t erase the decades of lousy parenting and abuse he’d inflicted on us, but when he begged me to join his club, I accepted with reluctance because he’d just poured his heart out to me. I felt sorry for him. That and I wanted him to love me for the first time in his life.

I never saw that side of Big Nash again, and I regretted joining the club every single day after that, vowing to get out the first chance I got. No amount of heart-to-hearts would ever change him from a monster into a man.

“Who’s side are you on?” my voice boomed. I crossed my arms and widened my stance.

“Yours,” Nash insisted. He stuck his hands up in the air. “I’m just telling you what people are saying as of this morning. And I’m here to tell you to get the fuck out of town, Gray. They’re going to come for you. It’s only a matter of time. They think you did it.”

“I didn’t kill him.”

“I know.”

“Fuck, man.”

“Gray, go. You have to go.”

“What about you? They’re going to know you tipped me off.”

“Don’t worry about me,” Nash said. I stared into the eyes of a grown man who was now perfectly capable of defending himself. Sometime around his sophomore year of high school, he’d hit a growth spurt and no longer needed my defense. He damn near towered over me, though I liked to remind him I was still the bigger Daughtry. Nash clenched his jaw, remaining strong. “Go on now.”

I threw some clothes in a bag and grabbed the keys to my cycle. Nash stood by the living room window, peering out from behind the curtains to make sure the coast was still clear. We weren’t the touchy feely types, so a simple head nod served as a goodbye. Within minutes, I was riding towards the only highway that led out of town. I didn’t know where I was going. I just knew I was headed west.

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