Curly (Hell's Handlers MC Florida Chapter Book 1), page 1
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Author Note
Blurb
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Epilogue
First Comes Loathe Preview
Author Note Amazon
FB Group
About the Author
<$Curly>
Hell’s Handlers MC
Florida Chapter
Book 1
Lilly Atlas
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Copyright © 2021 Lilly Atlas
All rights reserved.
In case you haven’t caught on, first in series always goes to my husband, who has encouraged me every step of the way.
<3
Other books by Lilly Atlas
No Prisoners MC
Hook: A No Prisoners Novella
Striker
Jester
Acer
Lucky
Snake
Trident Ink
Escapades
Hell’s Handlers MC
Zach
Maverick
Jigsaw
Copper
Rocket
Little Jack
Joy
Screw
Viper
Thunder
Hell’s Handlers MC Florida Chapter
Curly
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Travis Bryant, known in the biker world as Curly, spent thirteen hard years behind bars for a heinous crime he didn’t commit. When the truth finally sets him free, nothing remains of his previous life. Curly doesn’t know how to live without the brotherhood of a club. After visiting the Hell’s Handler’s MC, he’s given the go ahead to open a charter in his home state. Claiming an ol’ lady is the furthest thing from his mind until he meets Brooke, the beautiful, hardheaded, dog trainer bent on ending a violent dog fighting ring near her home.
After ten long years married to an abusive narcissist, Brooke vowed she’d never live under another man’s thumb again. Accepting help doesn’t come easy, but when abandoned dogs begin popping up with fatal injuries, she’ll do anything to put an end to the fighting ring responsible. Even enlist the assistance of the most attractive man she’s ever met, and his outlaw MC brothers.
From her feisty, independent spirit to her shapely legs, Brooke appeals to Curly on every level. He can’t keep himself away, but he’s been burned before, and has no plans to tie himself to a woman. Brooke is in the same boat, having promised herself no man would ever have control over her life again. Unfortunately, she can’t kick the curly-haired man in the biker boots out of her head or her bed.
As Brooke and Curly grow closer and danger strikes, will they be able to overcome their past traumas and find strength in each other? Or will they remain stubborn and stick to their guns as their lives crash and burn?
PROLOGUE
14 YEARS AGO
“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, have you reached a verdict?”
“We have, Your Honor.”
Travis Bryant sat as motionless as a marble statue and just as cold. Beside him, his attorney shifted papers on the desk while squirming in his seat. If he’d been able to move, Travis would have smacked the fucker upside his head until he calmed, but handcuffs and shackles around his ankles prevented most movement.
Chained like a fucking animal.
That’s how the world had seen him for the past six months. But people had viewed him like a rabid animal for far longer—the chains and locks only fortified people’s pre-formed opinions.
No one knew or cared he had a college degree.
No one gave a shit that he rescued dogs and donated to the local children’s hospital.
No one cared how he’d taken care of his grandmother until she’d passed.
All they saw was his loud motorcycle, leather clothes, and tattoos.
Okay, fine, they saw a load of laws broken by his one-percenter motorcycle club. The club he led. He sure as fuck wasn’t a saint, but he wasn’t an animal either.
“Please deliver your verdict to the bailiff.” The pinched-faced judge’s expression never changed. Her mouth looked like a clenched asshole resisting entry.
“Yes, Your Honor.” The jury foreman, a rail-skinny man with thick glasses overtaking his entire face, passed a folded paper to the bailiff with a trembling hand.
That’s right, motherfucker. You should be scared of me.
Or at least fear the rest of his motorcycle club. Travis was pretty confident he’d be spending the rest of his life behind steel bars. But no one fucked with his club and got away with it. Revenge for this bullshit investigation would rain down on everyone involved, from the DA to the grunt of a beat cop who’d first arrived at the murder scene. And that included each of the twelve jurors if they voted to convict.
The stern judge glanced at the paper, nodded once, then handed it back to the bailiff. Then, like a good little sheep, the uniformed bailiff returned the form to the foreman.
“Please announce the verdict,” the judge ordered.
Travis had spent more than a few nights in jail over his thirty-two years. First time had been a few nights in juvie when he’d gotten pinched swiping cigarettes from a gas station. He’d been fourteen at the time. That judge assumed he could scare Travis straight with a formal arrest and a few nights away from home. It hadn’t worked. From there, his rap sheet read like a laundry list of typical biker crimes. Assault, battery, drug possession—they’d tried for intent to sell on that one, but somehow his lawyer pulled a miracle out of his smarmy ass and knocked the charges down—illegal possession of a firearm and a few additional charges.
Murder of a minor was a new one for him.
One that would fuck him right in the ass. Hopefully, only figuratively. But the sinking feeling in his gut had him sure he’d be showering with his back to the wall for many years to come.
“In the c-case of the State of Florida vs. Travis Bryant, we f-find the defendant, g-guilty of murder in the first degree.” The sound of rustling paper accompanied the foreman’s voice as his hands shook so badly, he couldn’t keep from crinkling what he read. Not once did he shift his focus from the page.
Could he feel the burn of Curly’s gaze on his face?
Gasps of both pleasure and shock went up in the courtroom with murmurs and a few shouts of furious disbelief from his brothers.
Guilty.
As the judge banged her gavel and bellowed for silence, Travis didn’t twitch.
A guilty verdict.
He blinked.
Huh, he’d expected to feel more. To stand up and rage against the injustice of it all. To scream at the twelve assholes in the jury who’d fallen for this sham of a trial. To shout promises of retribution and the fires of hell on everyone who’d participated in framing him. He’d expected to fear his impending time behind bars. This was different than the past. This was permanent, as in for the rest of his miserable life.
Hell, he’d assumed he’d feel something, anything, but there was nothing. His insides were hollow as he sat there with chaos erupting around him.
Of course, his brothers were outraged by the verdict. They screamed obscenities and threats at the jurors, stomping their boots and promising death. If they kept at it, the entire jail would be full of unruly bikers that night.
Travis gazed across the courtroom aisle where Joy Lane’s family expressed their relief and elation at what they thought was justice with long hugs and tears. As Detective Lane held his sobbing wife to his chest, his gaze connected with Travis’s. As the city’s lead homicide detective, he’d had to step aside on this case because his daughter was the victim, but that didn’t mean he’d kept his nose out of the investigation.
No, the man had had it out for Travis for the past decade. He’d had it out for the True Outlaws Motorcycle Club, where Travis went by the handle Curly due to his long, curly hair. He also happened to be the MC’s president. Though the detective didn’t have a lick of proof, Curly knew deep in his bones that Lane played a significant role in
Over his wife’s shoulder, Detective Lane smiled a smug, victorious grin. Travis swallowed down his hatred for the bastard who’d ruined his life. Shackled and in a courtroom, he may not be in a position to exact revenge, but he’d get it. No one fucked with the True Outlaws and lived to talk about it. The arrest of the club’s president for a gruesome crime he damn well didn’t commit wasn’t only an attack on Travis. It was an attack on the entire club. If he knew his club, and he sure as fuck did, the whole police station would go up in flames in a matter of hours.
Bang, bang, bang.
“There will be order in my courtroom, or I will have each of you held in contempt of court,” the judge shouted as she glared over Travis’s shoulder, no doubt at the members of his club still railing against the verdict.
“Get the prisoner out of here.” The judge waved to the armed guards hovering only a few feet away. That dismissive wave irked him more than the damn verdict. Fancy judge treating him as though he were nothing more than an irritating gnat in her courtroom.
A guard hauled him to his feet by his upper arm with as little care as possible. Travis ground his molars together. He didn’t much like being touched, something that would only intensify behind bars, and the instinctive urge to fight whoever put their hands on him flared to life. He’d had decades of resisting those urges and managed to keep from swinging his cuffed hands into the guard’s fat face.
“Let’s go, Curly-q,” the guard said with laughter in his tone. As security tugged Travis out of the room, he focused on his furious brothers. The violence-promising scowl on his VP’s face let him know the club would be in good hands during his absence. His VP, Mutt, nodded once, which Travis returned. Then he shifted his gaze to his former sergeant-at-arms, Prick, and like a sucker punch to the gut, his air whooshed out in a painful exhale.
Prick wore the same self-satisfied smirk as Detective Lane. As though Travis’s conviction was a personal victory.
And then Travis understood. He’d figured out exactly how the police had framed him. Prick had been banging some bitch on the police force for the past year. She was a young cop with a penchant for being fucked hard by biker cock. In exchange, she passed along info, which had kept their club one step ahead of the cop’s bullshit for quite a while.
But then Prick had gone and stuck his dick in Travis’s ol’ lady as well.
That’s right. He’d fucked his president’s ol’ lady. Travis and Jana hadn’t been the stuff of fairytales, but he’d loved her in his way. More importantly, he’d trusted her with his heart and his club’s livelihood. She’d shattered that trust, as did Prick.
It had fucked with his head more than he’d been willing to admit. More than he could think about right then.
After kicking his ol’ lady to the curb, Travis had stripped Prick of his SAE title, and they’d been on the outs ever since. Prick hadn’t been silent about his newly developed hatred of Travis. His attitude had become so toxic for the club, Mutt recently suggested meeting to vote on booting out him from the club altogether.
But it appeared Prick had been quicker to draw blood.The vengeful bastard had helped the cops frame him. The betrayal cut deep into Travis’s flesh.
And then it came. The reaction he’d expected when the jury declared him guilty. White-hot rage flashed through him, taking his anger nuclear. Self-restraint flew out the window. The only two people who existed in the courtroom were him and the soon-to-be lifeless Prick. “You motherfucker,” he shouted as he sprung forward, slipping out of the guard’s grasp.
“Oh, shit.” The guard barked as he dove for Travis, regaining his hold with ease. “What the fuck, Curly?”
“You’re dead!” Travis screamed as he wrenched his body in all directions, trying to shake the guard loose again.
“A little help here. He’s lost his shit.” Another guard rushed over, and together they dragged him backward by his arms toward the exit.
“Fucking dead, you hear me!” Travis screamed.
Prick turned until his gaze met Travis’s. He lifted his hand and wiggled his fingers in a cheerful wave.
“Fuck you!” Travis shouted as he thrashed against the guard’s hold. He’d have bruises from their iron grip and the metal abrading his ankles and wrists, but he didn’t give a single fuck. All he wanted was Prick’s blood coating the courtroom floor.
“Christ, man, calm the fuck down.” The guards struggled to keep a hold of him as he fought like hell.
A sharp jab to his kidney had him doubling forward as pain spread from his back into his gut. The guards used his momentary slackening to drag him from the room.
Once in the quiet hall, the pissed-off guards started berating him for being as stupid as he was ugly. Travis let himself go limp. Why bother making their job easier by trotting along like the dutiful prisoner he’d been so far?
Sentencing would be held in a week or so. Then his life would be over. No way the murderer of a police officer’s kid would get anything other than life without parole.
It didn’t matter how loud he’d proclaimed his innocence or the fact it was true.
He’d committed almost every crime in the book at some point in his life, but even he had a moral code. There were three things he didn’t stand for. Three lines he’d never cross.
Rape, beating on his ol’ lady, and killing of the innocent.
He’d spent most of his childhood listening to his father violate and pound on his mother. Now, as an adult who most of the world feared, he had no tolerance for that shit and no problem booting someone from his club for mistreating their ol’ ladies.
And as for killing the innocent? Well, it didn’t get much more innocent than a twelve-year-old girl with her entire life ahead of her.
Like that poor murdered child, he had no future. But he did have one thing she didn’t, and that was the hope of revenge. Travis’s reach was vast. Even from prison, he could wreak havoc on the men who’d set him up to take the fall for this vicious crime.
And he’d do just that.
Not only for himself, but for Joy Lane and her twin sister Holly.
CHAPTER ONE
PRESENT DAY
Curly lingered at the bar, nursing a beer as the Hell’s Handlers Motorcycle Club partied around him. The pint had warmed a while ago and no longer held any appeal, but his mind wouldn’t quiet. Having something to hold in his hands helped give him something to focus on besides his spiraling thoughts.
“Hey.” Someone bumped his shoulder, and he turned to find a cute young blonde smiling at him with genuine affection. “What are you doing over here all by yourself?”
Holly Lane, the twin sister of the girl he’d been convicted of murdering, scooted onto the barstool next to him. She was the reason for his second chance at life. As a child, she’d never believed him guilty of murdering her twin and best friend but had been powerless to do anything about it. As an adult, she’d been integral in exposing her father’s corruption and facilitating Curly’s recent release from jail. He owed her his life. There were no lengths he wouldn’t go to to ensure that happy expression remained on her face for the rest of her life.
“Hey, Little Miss,” he said, smiling back at her. In the eight months since his release, Holly had become one of the most valuable people in his life.
The daughter he’d never had.
And never would have.
Bitter at the world and forty-six years old, he sure as fuck wouldn’t be having kids of his own.
“Where’s your ol’ man?” He sipped the tepid beer then grimaced as the flat warmth went down.
Holly raised an eyebrow. “You couldn’t possibly be implying that I shouldn’t be wandering around the clubhouse without LJ, could you?”
Sweet as the baked goods she was famous for, Holly wasn’t a pushover. Curly raised his hands as he spun her way. “Never. Just used to the big guy following you around. He’s worse than your dog.”
The lovesick smile she beamed warmed him. Despite losing her twin at an early age then finding out her father was a dirty cop who used his daughter’s death for personal gain, she was remarkably well adjusted. Much of that was owed to her ol’ man and the family she’d found in the MC. “I’m sure he’ll be along soon. I just wanted to check on you over here brooding all by yourself.”
