Unholy Trinity (Rebel Kings MC Book 6), page 1
UNHOLY TRINITY
REBEL KINGS MC
GARRETT LEIGH
Copyright © 2023 by Garrett Leigh
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Editing by Posy Roberts at Boho Edits
Cover art and formatting by Garrett Leigh at Black Jazz design
Proofing by Con Riley, Annabelle Jacobs, and Valerie
NO AI/NO BOT — The copyright holder does not consent to any artificial intelligence (AI), generative AI, large language model, machine learning, chatbot, or other automated analysis, generative process, or replication program to reproduce, mimic, remix, summarise, or otherwise replicate any part of this creative work, via any means: ebook, print, graphic, sculpture, multimedia, audio, or other medium. The copyright holder supports the right of humans to control their artistic works.
CONTENTS
Foreword
Playlist
The Rebel Kings MC
1. Locke
2. Nash
3. Locke
4. Orla
5. Nash
6. Locke
7. Locke
8. Nash
9. Orla
10. Locke
11. Nash
12. Locke
13. Orla
14. Nash
15. Locke
16. Locke
17. Orla
18. Nash
19. Nash
20. Nash
21. Locke
22. Nash
23. Locke
24. Nash
25. Orla
26. Nash
SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT
About the Author
FOREWORD
This is a dark romance, featuring characters caught up in the world of MC gangs and all that comes with it. These characters are not always nice and they do things that are not nice. It is a romance, so the sweet moments we crave do come, but bear these words in mind before you dive in.
This is the sixth book in the Rebel Kings MC series. It is the long awaited Why Choose poly romance, featuring Locke, Nash, and Orla.
Unending thanks to Packy, my sensitivity reader, and my husband for sharing his family history with me. And to Pipey, who I’m still trying to persuade to let me fall off the back of his Harley sometime.
Also, because this came up in the wake of Devil’s Dance and I forgot to include it then: the same fluid principles of street language I explained in my Darkest Skies series apply here. In particular, the word fed is a well-known term in the UK underworld used to describe the police/authorities of any kind. It has nothing to do the American FBI, I promise.
Content warnings: violence, drug use, past sexual trauma/abuse, historical and implied self-harm and suicidal ideation, serious illness survival, domestic violence, war, murder, infertility, and off-page historical pregnancy loss.
PLAYLIST
Runway Blues — Greta Van Fleet
Empty Corridors — Ben Howard
What’s Going On — Marvin Gaye
Big Exit — PJ Harvey
And So It Goes — Billy Joel
What Have You Done — Gerry Cinnamon
You’ve Got Nothing To Lose — Michael Kiwanuka
I Spy — Mikhael Paskalev
Next Time Around - No Strings — Sandy Denny
The Archer — Greta Van Fleet
Holy Smoke — Palace
LISTEN ON SPOTIFY
THE REBEL KINGS MC
The Rebel Kings MC
President: Cam O’Brian (33)
Vice President: Nash McGovern (33)
Sergeant-at-Arms: Saint Malone (31)
Enforcer: Mateo Romano-Carter (28)
Treasurer: Alexei Ivanov (31)
Secretary: Seth “Decoy” Greene (32)
Chaplain: “Father” Embry Romano-Carter (26)
Road Captain: Rubi Matherson (34)
Brothers
River O’Brian (Cam’s brother) - 27
Locke Halliwell (40)
Folk Whitlock (35)
Nomads
Ranger
Family
Orla O’Brian (Cam’s sister) - 30
Ivy Greene (Decoy’s daughter)
Juana Romano-Carter
Liliana Romano-Carter
Hope Romano-Carter
Willow Halliwell
Nicky Halliwell
Logan Halliwell
Remy
Galen
Kara
Joe Carter
Harry Carter
Clementina Carter
Emma Carter
Finch Whitlock
Poet Whitlock
Jekka Whitlock
Iggy Whitlock
Crows
Rocco St John (deceased)
Frank Crow (deceased)
Butch Crow (deceased)
McGif (deceased)
Priest
Club associates
Skylar Buchanan (A&E nurse)
Oscar Kuznetov (Porth Luck fisherman & River’s former housemate)
Sol Bosanko (Porth Luck fisherman)
Sidorov Pavel (deceased)
Viktor Petrenko
Jakov Kalashnik
Bear
Axel
Sambini Family
Mario Sambini (deceased)
Gianni Sambini (deceased)
Lorenzo Sambini (deceased)
I’d ridden out to protect them from the past … as the future lay in ashes at my feet, I knew I’d failed.
[ 1 ]
LOCKE
Six years ago
I miss my brother.
It was my sole thought as Priest wedged his fists between my shoulder blades and shoved me out of the van. That, and I was getting too old for this fuckin’ shit.
I hit the ground, jarring every bone in my body, knowing I was lucky the van was stationary. My back still hurt from the fuckery of last time, melding with the ache in my heart, a dull, dragging pain that seemed to be my entire personality these days.
“Dad, you’re no fun anymore.”
“Get moving.” Priest jumped out behind me. “Pick a weapon and find some fucking balls.”
I heard him spit.
Somehow that offended me more than anything else.
I miss my brother.
Fuck.
And my kids. The only comfort I found was the sick reality that they were beginning to miss me less and less. By now, I was just that dickhead who never showed up when he said he would and had fuck all to show for it.
“I said move.”
Priest kicked me.
Anger flared hot in my belly, muscles bunched to retaliate. But the energy was fleeting, eclipsed so fast by apathy that I almost laughed.
Kill me. I don’t give a fuckin’ fuck.
Not a new thought, but the silence that greeted it was deafening, and the ache in my chest grew deeper roots waiting for my brother—my twin—to step in with the grounding authority I’d spent my whole life clinging to.
It wasn’t going to happen.
Not tonight.
Logan never came to brawls—in person, or in my loopy head. Cos on nights like those—like these—I wasn’t his brother. I wasn’t Willow and Nicky’s dad. And I sure as hell wasn’t anyone worth the fuckin’ effort of a telepathic lecture.
Priest nailed me again. I took the hint and trudged my feet faster to the other vehicle. Yet another beat-up van where brothers of the Dog Crow MC queued up for pipes and bats from the open boot, Bishop and some other cunt handling the inventory.
Bish cast me a sympathetic glance. “What do you want? Pipe? There’s a couple of coshes around here somewhere.”
He spoke like he was offering me a choice of sandwiches. And I accepted a heavy bat as if it was nothing more than a cigarette, cos that was the life—the one that flew in the face of every day I’d lived before I’d found myself in this hell pit.
“Keep your head down,” Rocco murmured as he passed the spot I’d been relegated to that night. “Don’t fight the Kings too hard. It’s not them you want to kill.”
I didn’t want to kill anyone, and I’d made it this far without ending someone’s life.
Not that it mattered. What I wanted had fallen by the wayside too long ago for me to contemplate without taking the bat in my hand to my own skull—a state of mind Rocco would’ve seen if he’d been here, but the VP of the Dog Crows was somewhere else. Priest had made sure of that when he’d brought his thick-as-shit plan to the boss.
If I did ever want to murder anyone, it was him. And Drummer. The club’s enforcer. The handjob with the bad beard who called us into a huddle.
I stood off to one side, knowing my place. But he yanked me forward, and in another brief flash of anarchy, it took everything I had not to weld my boots to the ground. A raging heartbeat that let me know I was still fuckin’ breathing.
Drummer smacked his fist to his palm. “They ain’t got no council on the road tonight. Just that baby enforcer and the pretty VP. We’ll hit ’em hard and fast. Take their load and their fucking bikes. Let them know they can’t ride on our roads without cutting us in. Right, boys?”
A collective roar of stupid greeted the battle plan, and I suppressed a heavy sigh. There were two major
flaws in Drummer’s brilliance.
One: we were ambushing the Kings muling crew on their return journey. There wouldn’t be any load to take from them.
Two: the enforcer and VP were very much on the council of the Rebel Kings MC. They mattered, and on the slimmer than slim fuckin’ off chance that we caused them real damage tonight, fucking with them would cost more than blood.
The huddle broke up. Drummer jammed his pipe into my ribs and nudged me to the sparse hedgerow he’d decided would give us cover from the approaching bikes. “No funny business. Remember what happens if you piss off me and Priest.”
I had scars that remembered more than my brain did. On my back. On my legs. They used to throb when fear burned me alive, but I was pretty much dead inside these days. I had to be to survive, and Drummer’s growly voice became white noise.
Bikes rumbled in the distance. I crouched next to Priest, searching for the eerie calm I needed to fight, or the fury Rocco had been so sure I carried in my heart.
Neither were forthcoming and I ran out of time to find them.
Headlights broke the darkness on the deserted country lane. Crow bikes loomed out of the shadows, forcing the Kings off the road, and all hell broke loose.
Bikes skidded.
Tyres squealed.
Shouts pierced the air, but none of them were mine. I was a quiet brawler, resigned to pain and chaos, not caring too much who won.
Just as well.
We outnumbered the Kings two to one, twelve of us to their six, but it didn’t take long for them to gain the upper hand. They’d always been better fighters. Lethal to a man, from their president to their new enforcer. From their burly road captain to their fuckin’ glorious VP.
McGovern. That was his name. He had curly surfer hair and big eyes. I’d never seen him in daylight, so I didn’t know the colour, but every time we met in a brutal scrap like this, I saw him any moment I wasn’t preoccupied with not getting killed.
And as the years rolled by, those moments grew less and less. Only my kids kept me from letting a King wrap a brick around my skull.
My brother.
“I love you, bro. Couldn’t live this life without you.”
A faceless King rushed me. I body-slammed that fucker, going down with him and wrapping my legs around his neck until he was out cold, rolling away as more boots pounded the earth.
I scrambled to my feet and put down another King. Not the enforcer. In my peripheral, I saw him annihilate Drummer, and I couldn’t pretend to be sad about it.
My next sweep of the scene was for a mop of blond curls, and my heart gave a little lurch when I found it. When I found him, fighting like a fuckin’ gladiator, all wild hair and sun-kissed muscles.
Fuck me. I didn’t need any help defining my sexuality—that horse had bolted years ago—but it had been a long time since I’d set eyes on a man who made my blood rush like he did.
I watched him incapacitate two Crows with savage efficiency, one-punch wonders. Then he spun around, checking on his brothers, searching out his next opponent, and his gaze had nowhere to land but on me.
We locked eyes, chests heaving, skin smeared with dirt and blood. Three fights scattered the ground between us, but the heat that surged inside me had nothing to do with the violence in the air, and the skip in my heart accelerated, sending my pulse straight to my fuckin’ ears. A clattering roar that swamped every sense until it was just me and him staring at each other across a messy biker brawl.
His eyes were blue. Still couldn’t see well enough to tell, but somehow I knew it, and I took an unconscious step forward in the same split second the shout of a King turned his head. The same split second I found myself toe-to-toe with Priest.
In the dark, his eyes were piss-hole small, his teeth as black as they were when he inflicted his favourite nightmares on me. In this arena, he was too stupid to be truly frightening, but my blood chilled all the same.
“What are you waiting for?” he hissed. “Kill him.”
“Who?”
“McGovern. He ain’t even watching you no more.”
I knew that. I felt it. But I didn’t give Priest the satisfaction of glancing over my shoulder. “Are you fuckin’ serious? You kill a King, you start a war—a real one.”
“I’m not going to kill him.” Priest thrust a knife at my gut, forcing me back. “You’re the expendable one. Stick a blade in his throat, then dump his body at their gates. Who gives a fuck if you get caught?”
He wasn’t wrong, but madness swept over me. I shoved Priest hard, sending him sprawling into Drummer as he staggered out of the hole the King’s enforcer had dumped him in.
Drummer was bruised and bleeding, eyes pointing in different directions. He used Priest to steady himself, confusion marring his ugly face as he struggled to focus. “Get the vans,” he slurred. “We’re done here.”
Fury raged in Priest’s vicious gaze. He was far from done. But before the shout let loose from his fat mouth, a brick smashed into him, knocking him to the dirt, and a victorious howl pierced the air behind us.
Drummer was right. It was over.
It wasn’t in me to pluck the wounded Crows from the ground.
I strode back to the vans and slid behind the wheel of the one some fucker had been dumb enough to leave the keys in.
It was a rusty piece of shit. The Crows didn’t take care of their vehicles any more than they looked after each other. It started on the third try. Wounded Crows heard the sputtering roar and crawled towards me while the Kings watched.
All but one.
McGovern’s attention was on his men, checking their injuries. Their state of mind. Embracing them, and I swear to god, he planted a smacker on the cheek of the enforcer Priest had been boneheaded enough to call baby. That dude was kinda hot too, but whatever he had to offer was dulled by the beauty of the man beside him.
McGovern.
McGovern.
His name became a drumbeat in my chest, a welcome distraction from the clusterfuck my existence had become six years ago when my unbending, principled twin brother had unwittingly chucked a grenade under his life.
I was still lying flat over that fucker. Every damn day. But staring at the blond-haired, blue-eyed dreamboat across the way made it easier for the long seconds I got away with it.
Then he caught me looking, and that was the moment I should’ve pulled my shit together. But I didn’t. Not until his enforcer stooped and swiped the knife I’d refused from the pot-holed tarmac. The jagged blade Priest carried around like it was fuckin’ Excalibur or some shit.
The enforcer twirled it in his long fingers, and I probably knew before he did that he was gonna launch it.
McGovern stopped him. A big arm around his shoulders, a low murmur in his ear. Warmth. Kindness. Everything my life was missing.
Jealousy was a bitter thing. I forced myself to look away as Priest hauled himself into the van, blood and discontent seeping from him in equal measure.
“Fuck it,” he spat. “We’ll get the girl instead. Wait for her to leave their place and drive home. Rancid Kings’ snatch, but it’ll do.”
Priest talked about all women like that. But I knew who he meant. Orla O’Brian, sister to the president of the Rebel Kings MC. I’d never seen her, and to my knowledge, neither had Priest, but even less vile Dog Crow rumours had her beauty on the same level as my secret obsession with McGovern.
Not that it made any difference to her right to exist without the constant threat of fuckin’ gang rape.
Priest fired off directions. With one eye on the Kings’ bikes, I put the van in gear and moved off, disgust and despair warring for dominance in my heart.
But if there was one thing I could rely on the Crows for, it was terminal predictability. I’d seen this coming from the moment Priest had brought his plan to Drummer’s ear, and I’d already crocked the van.
Two miles tops before it conked out at the side of the road.
Ten minutes before Priest realised he wasn’t getting his rape game on and came for me instead for throwing hands at him in the field. He didn’t have his blade, but he still carried a pipe and those fuckers hurt. A fact as real to me as a summer sky being the same colour as McGovern’s eyes.
A fact that didn’t matter. Cos I didn’t give a shit. If playing Priest saved a woman I’d never met from the curse of his dirty hands, I’d take whatever he threw at me until the end of fuckin’ time.
