PROLOGUE
WILLIAM–Age 7
I started at the loud bang and burrowed closer to my older brother, Sam, who wrapped his arm around my shoulder. My best friend, Drew, pressed closer to me on my other side. None of us uttered a sound as we listened to the glass breaking, shouting, screaming, and flesh hitting flesh.
I often wondered what Drew’s home was like. He spent more time with us than at his home. The fighting that we were listening to was a regular occurrence in our home, so his home must be ten times worse.
As soon as my parents had started arguing, Sam had got us out of the lounge and into the cupboard in his bedroom. We’d long since made it comfortable as we spent a lot of time in here. Sam had found a foam mattress, likely from a cot, and we’d put that on the floor. Over the years, we’d added blankets, pillows, a torch, and when we could get our hands on them, we’d started a stash of breakfast bars for those days when the fighting continued for hours. Once inside, we pulled the empty packing boxes in front of us, hiding us from whoever opened the cupboard. We’d learned long ago to get out of the way or get beaten. We opted to get out of the way, but sometimes we weren’t fast enough.
Today, the fighting stopped quicker than usual, and the moans, groans, and slapping sounds of flesh that made their way toour hideout were of a completely different type. Sam sighed and reached above his head for a couple of bars. Our dad interrupted our dinner because he disliked the way it was cooked, and he started arguing with our mother, who never backed down; thus, we lived in a war zone more often than not. Sam handed out the bars.
Opening it up, I bit into it, knowing it was going to be dry and not tasty, but at least we’d not go to bed hungry tonight.
WILLIAM–Age 14
Picking myself off the floor where I’d fallen after my dad punched me and then laid into me with his boots while I was down, I’d curled myself up as much as I could to protect my head. Until Sam had ripped him off me.
Sam was laying into our dad, and I knew I’d have to pull him off so that he didn’t kill him. Framed in the open front door, Drew stood looking uncertain, and I knew I had him to thank for finding Sam.
We’d walked in the door after school, and I should have read the room better. I knew all the signs and had ignored them. From the empty cans of beer to the pipe on the coffee table to my mother passed out on the couch with a needle in her arm. I’m still not sure what had set my dad off, but I was no sooner in the door than he was laying into me.
He’d stopped going after Sam when he started to tower over him and had bulked up during the summer when he got a job on a building site.
Unfortunately, Dad still saw me as fair game. And it wasn’t hard, not with how skinny I was from not having enough food over the years.
Walking over to Sam, I laid a hand on his shoulder, pulling at him slightly, “Stop, Sam, you’ll kill him.”
With one last punch, Sam sat back, chest heaving in anger. “Stupid fucker, I should kill you,” he growled at our father before he stood up to check my face.
“You can’t,” I reminded him. “Not if we want to get out of here.”
We both knew that the only way we could get out of the hell we lived in was to join the military. At least there we’d have food, a roof over our heads and training. Sam could have joined the year he turned sixteen, but he wouldn’t leave me home alone. Not with the way our parents had escalated from only drinking and maybe smoking a bit of weed to using hard drugs.
The next two years were the hardest. Our freedom was nearly within reach. They got slightly easier when I started doing some small-time hacking and computer work. Between the three of us, because there was no way we were going to leave Drew on the estate, we managed to rent a small bedsit. While both Drew and I were still minors, as long as we attended school and kept under the radar, we knew nobody would check on us. And as long as our parents kept getting their benefits for us, they wouldn’t report us as missing.
As soon as Drew and I turned sixteen and finished school, the three of us signed up and spent the next eight years in the military. I’d been so thin when we joined that I’d quickly earned the nickname Skinny, but that soon changed with enough food and the right exercise. Sam became Bull because he only got bigger and bigger. What most didn’t realise was that his heart was as big as him. I couldn’t have asked for a better big brother.
And Drew got the name Bond not long after we joined up because of how neat and tidy he was, both in appearance and with his belongings.
Our childhood scarred us all, and these scars followed us into adulthood, but the three of us remained friends throughout the years, even when stationed in different places. When Bull decided to retire, Bond and I weren’t far behind him. When he told us about the motorcycle club he was thinking about joining, I was sceptical until we met them.
It turned out to be the best decision we could have made, even if it came with its own danger. We all finally felt a sense of family and coming home.
The next few years would bring hardships and the loss of close family members, but we would remain supportive of each other. It didn’t take blood to make brothers. I’d learned that at the age of four when I’d met Drew.
CHAPTER 1
SKINNY – Flashback to the day that changed my life.
“Hey, girl,” I grinned as Cinder, the dog I’d saved all those years ago when someone burnt down Molly’s barn, pressed her nose to my cheek, huffing slightly and making me laugh.
I’d never had a dog as a kid. It never even crossed my mind, not with the war zone we lived in. Now I knew what I’d been missing out on, though. I’d loved Cinder from the first moment I’d seen her. I didn’t mind damaging my hands to pull her from the burning building, even though they were still scarred and hurt some days. More often than not, I kept them covered with fingerless leather gloves. Not only did the gloves keep prying eyes away, but they also seemed to help with my residual nerve pain.
Rubbing my hand over Cinder’s head as I pulled into a parking space in front of the vet’s office, I shook my head in amusement at her as she started to do her happy dance and bark out the window. Most dogs would cower when it came to visiting the vets, but for some reason, it never bothered Cinder, almost as if she realised that they were only trying to help. Not that there was a problem today; we were only here for a check-up.
Opening my door, I whistled, and she hurried towards me, jumping down from the vehicle and dancing around my legs, making me laugh. Slipping my cut over my shoulders before I bent and attached her leash to her collar, even though she didn’treally need one. It was more for the other clients than anything else.
Opening the door to the vet’s office, I smiled as Shona, the elderly receptionist, cooed as soon as she saw us, making a fuss over Cinder, who, of course, lapped it up, taking the treat that Shona offered.
