Salvation’s Bane MC
Motorcycle Club Romance, Age Gap, Suspense
To Be Released: August 5 2022
Publisher: Changeling Press
Jolene: I’ve lived my entire life in the shadow of a feud that ended
over a hundred years ago. But try telling that to my family. To them, the
Hatfields and McCoys were never met to mix. Or be in the same town really.
So when I gave my virginity to a Hatfield, my McCoy family disowned me
entirely. And that Hatfield I trusted? He set me up to be raped by his kin.
So yeah, my life’s a shit show. Then another Hatfield picked me up out
of a ditch and saved me. I thought he’d hurt me, too, but he turned
out to be the kindest man I’ve ever met. Now I need to shake him long
enough to get the revenge I need from those who hurt me. I just hope when
I’m done, he’ll take me back.
Styx: I just came for the car — a rare Mercedes Maybach the club intends
to sell for a good chunk of change. I long ago left any family I had in this
little hick town in West Virginia and only came back because I knew the
area, and the man who had the car was my family’s rival, Marshall
McCoy. So when I found his daughter in a ditch on the side of the road,
beaten and bloody, my first instinct — and that of my MC brothers –
was set up. But I can’t leave her to the mercy of her family. I know
there will be hell to pay. I just didn’t count on my sweet little
hillbilly being hellbent on revenge. As I fall deeper and deeper under her
spell, I find I can’t deny her anything. Even if what she wants might
break her.
Warning: Styx includes scenes of sexual abuse and vigilante justice that
may be triggers for some readers. Guaranteed HEA.
EXCERPT
All rights reserved.
Copyright ©2022 Marteeka Karland
Styx
How could one place be so God-awful redneck? Always had been. Every fucking
neighborhood in town had at least one car up on concrete blocks and numerous
pink flamingos in the front fucking yard. Nothing had fucking changed since
I was a teenager.
Red had a tip on a Mercedes Maybach that was supposedly being held in
storage until the right buyer came along. In this fucking hick town. I had
my doubts, but Red said it had been confirmed by our intel guy, Ripper. If
Ripper said that’s the way it was? Well. I’d gotten on a plane
to fucking West Virginia, hadn’t I?
My job was to scout. Using the little gizmos Red’s woman, Rosanna,
had developed, I had no doubt I could steal the car. The problem was getting
it out of storage and into the enclosed trailer. Again, Ripper was on the
issue.
Poison and Lock pulled up to the designated area about half a mile from
where the car was being stored. They’d driven a nondescript Ford with
a beat-up-looking trailer, and another, smaller car to act as lookout for
the payload on the way home. Smokey and the Bandit style. The car was rough
looking, but souped up under the hood. Hopefully, the extra horsepower
wouldn’t be needed, but better to have it and not need it than to need
it and not have it. Neither looked new, nor did they appear in disrepair.
The vehicles were designed to blend in. To not stand out anywhere they
went.
The plan was to load the car and get out of this place as quickly as
possible. Use the app to give the thing a new VIN number and program our own
FOB. Lose ourselves on the interstate, then the lesser traveled highways off
the interstates on a roundabout route back to Salvation’s Bane and
Red’s underground garage. Once that was done, we’d ditch the
truck and trailer and begin the rest of the cleaning process on the car.
Which was the easy part.
I studied the area around the storage building from the remote screen
provided by a drone. It wasn’t more than a barn on the outside, but
the reality was, inside the barn was a climate controlled warehouse with
state-of-the-art security. I knew the place well because it was owned by
Marshal McCoy. I’d been poking my nose in the business of the McCoys
since I was a kid.
McCoy was well off, having a legitimate business of some sort in the
community. But his real money came from smuggling. This barn and a couple
others like it were the reason for that success. From the outside, it looked
like a big tobacco barn. Inside, the place was locked down tighter than a
snare drum. Which was the beauty of it, I supposed.
Security outside the building was just as tedious. There were cameras all
over the place. And traps. Thankfully, McCoy believed in electronics.
Heavily. Always had. All the scouting we’d done had turned up a few
rudimentary things, but nearly every single safeguard relied on electricity
and electronics. Ripper had scoffed and told us it was too good to be true,
that we needed to really recon the hell outta the place. We’d found a
few pits and spikes and other simple shit that looked like it hadn’t
been well maintained. We’d left that part until the evening we’d
planned to do the job. Just in case someone did a manual security
sweep.
Our planning was meticulous. Starting two months before we were ready to
make our move, Ripper had messed with security at the same time he kept
anyone interested in the car off the scent. If McCoy was going to upgrade
things or do an extensive check, we’d know it well in advance. Ripper
had the guy’s entire place bugged. House, office and every car they
owned. McCoy thought he was the smartest man in the room, but the fact was,
he was on the verge of losing everything to a rival. Montgomery
Hatfield.
Made me snicker to think about it. Generations of Hatfields and McCoys.
They’d officially ended the feud in the eighteen nineties,
symbolically in the early two thousands. But here in Appalachia, it was
alive and going strong. Just… more civilized. At least on the
surface.
Which was why we were here. Montgomery Hatfield was a half brother to my
father, the bastard. While I didn’t associate with that side of the
family — other than my half brother in Black Reign, Shotgun — I did enjoy
taking them down a peg or two. If I could take down Marshall McCoy while I
was doing it? So much the better. Call it a character flaw.
“How’s it going, Ripper?” I’d been touching base
with the tech guy regularly. If there was a problem, we needed to identify
it before we backed the trailer in.
“All’s quiet. Same as always. They raised a fuss the first few
times I blacked them out, but once they got used to their network coming
back up, they quit worrying about it. Made a couple calls to the company,
who charged them a bunch of money to go to each site and check on things.
After that, they sent one of old man McCoy’s boys out, and he’s
not the most thorough tool in the box. Last three times it’s gone out,
no one bothered to check.”
“Good. Where is everyone now.”
“Far enough away you’ll have at least an hour before anyone
could possibly show up.” The man snorted. “Bit of a ruckus
goin’ on with one of his girls. Not sure what, but it’s keeping
everybody busy.”
“So, we ready?” I was anxious to get moving. While I had
confidence in the operation, something else was bothering me.
“Get into position. Once you’re ten minutes out, I’ll
throw the switch.” Ripper had everything bugged at Salvation’s
Bane, including all our vehicles. He said it let him know when one of us was
in trouble. I figured he was just a control freak.
“Guess we’re good to go then.” I signaled to Poison and
Lock. “Move it out.” My two MC brothers were in the truck
pulling the trailer while I was in a separate truck we’d had waiting
when we started scouting two months ago. Last thing we wanted was for the
two vehicles to be seen together before the heist.
It was just past four in the morning. The darkest part of the night. The
moon was covered by clouds. The night was still. Even the nocturnal
creatures were settling down for the day to come.
There were two routes into the place where we were going. Poison and Lock
had taken a different route than me. Mine took me past the McCoy family
home. Remembering that place from my early childhood made me want to fire my
gun at the windows as I passed. I hated that fucking place. Old man McCoy
was a fucking bastard. Always was. Being a Hatfield, I’d never
actually been in the house, but I knew some of his kids. The boys were all
bullies. Some of the girls, too. His wife had died a few years back,
I’d heard. And now he was starting a whole new brood of kids to mold
in his image. That massive house represented everything in Williamson I
hated.
I’d gotten about six miles away from the house when something caught
my attention. A small form huddled on the side of the road. I almost missed
it. Looked like a boy or a small woman wearing a backpack. The figure was in
an orange jumpsuit, which was the only reason I’d seen it.
I started to just go on. We didn’t have a lot of time here. But,
Goddammit, I couldn’t just pass this person by.
“Guys, I’ve got a problem. Keep to schedule. If you don’t
hear from me in five minutes, abort.”
“What’s going on?” That was Ripper’s voice. Of
course he was monitoring.
“Not sure. Switching on my body cam so you can see what I’m
seeing. Get an ID on the guy.”
“Guy? What guy?”
“There’s someone on the side of the road. Could be someone in
trouble,” I said.
“Could be a fuckin’ trap. What the fuck, Styx?” Ripper
didn’t get upset too often, but when he did, he tended to go
nuclear.
“Just keep an eye out. Give me five minutes. I’ll either leave
him or load him in the truck.”
“Fuck!”
“Don’t give yourself a nosebleed, Ripper. If it’s a trap,
I’ll fucking kill the bastard.”
“Take an earwig. I want to stay in communication every fuckin’
second, Styx.”
“Roger that,” I said, putting the truck in park and stepping
out. Though the truck’s headlights shone brightly, I snagged a
flashlight along with the gun at my hip. If this was an ambush, I
wasn’t getting caught with my fucking pants down.
The figure held up a trembling hand, blocking the light of the vehicle from
her face. And I could tell by the small, delicate hand it was a female. I
shined my light around the area but didn’t see anything. Just to be
safe, I turned my body, letting Ripper get a good look around in case I
missed something. With his computer enhancement shit, he’d see danger
long before I did.
“Don’t see nothin’,” Ripper murmured. I could hear
him typing and flipping switches. “Can’t say a hundred percent,
but I think you’re alone.”
I eased toward the figure huddling in the ditch. “Hey, there,”
I called. “You good?” No response. “Girl?” Still
nothing. The hand blocking her face from the light still fluttered
violently. That’s when I noticed the blood on her fingers and
streaking her hand. “You OK?” The hand dropped, and there was a
slight whimper as she lay still once more.
“Ripper?” I had a sinking feeling this girl was in a world of
trouble. There was no way I could leave her. At this point, I was praying
for an ambush, because I absolutely could not afford to be held up by
someone in real distress. And I was certain that, if this woman was as hurt
as I thought she was, she’d need medical attention.
“You’ve got four minutes. Get her in the truck.”
About the Author
Erotic romance author by night, emergency room tech/clerk by day, Marteeka
Karland works really hard to drive everyone in her life completely and
totally nuts. She has been creating stories from her warped imagination
since she was in the third grade. Her love of writing blossomed throughout
her teenage years until it developed into the totally unorthodox and
irreverent style her English teachers tried so hard to rid her of.
Author Contact Links
Instagram & Twitter: @marteekakarland
Publisher’s Instagram/Facebook/Twitter: @changelingpress
