The Queen of Carnage Read online

  Copyright © 2019 by Candice Wright

  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.

  Also by Candice Wright

  THE INHERITANCE SERIES

  Rewriting Yesterday

  https://books2read.com/u/3JVj6v

  In this Moment

  https://books2read.com/u/bxvnJd

  The Promise of Tomorrow

  https://books2read.com/u/bowEy1

  THE FOUR HORSEWOMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE SERIES

  The Pures

  https://books2read.com/u/mdGl1y

  For my Son

  You will always be the hero of my story.

  Peoples judgments say more about them than you.

  Let them underestimate you.

  They will only do it once.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  My grandpa always told me there were times in our lives where we should stand and fight and there were times when we should run and hide. Running when you knew the odds were stacked against you didn’t make you a coward, it makes you smart. This is one of those times.

  I’m wearing little silver ballet flats and a knee-length navy blue sundress with spaghetti straps. Although the dress does amazing things for my legs, it doesn’t give off a particularly intimidating vibe. Not that a five-foot woman with white-blonde hair in crazy ringlets and blue eyes that are a touch too big for her face could ever really be described as intimidating. Badass maybe, but not intimidating. The hulking biker chasing after me certainly doesn’t seem to find me intimidating in any way.

  The gorgeous huskie beside me is keeping pace despite the pain he must be feeling from the swift kick to the ribs he received earlier. A kick which ultimately led to my current predicament.

  Let me back up a bit. My name is Luna Cartwright. I’m twenty-eight years old and I was born to two awesome parents, James and Kate, who were the very definition of hippies. Now, before you laugh at my name, you should know I have two older brothers named Ziggy and Cosmic. Yep, you read that right, Ziggy and Cosmic. I happen to love my name, largely because I know it could have been so much worse.

  The five of us lived in a tiny town in Ireland, just outside Dublin, up until the summer I turned eight. That’s when both of my parents were killed in a car accident, leaving my brothers and myself in the custody of my wonderful, yet slightly insane, grandpa.

  Gramps was a retired Vietnam War vet who lived on a farm deep in the wilderness of Tennessee. My mother had left home as soon as she could get her student visa and study abroad, which is how she met my father. But me? Well, I loved it here. We were taught to hunt and shoot and tend the farm and I was treated just like one of the boys. In fact, the only girly thing I owned until I was about seventeen was a box of tampons. When I was eighteen, my brothers enlisted, so I decided to move closer to the city. That’s where my love of all things girly came from. Seeing shop windows filled with everything from beautiful dresses and intricately designed underwear to soft fluffy throws and pretty trinkets meant my little studio apartment had looked like the center page of a women’s magazine. But it was also how my business got started. I began to make custom gift baskets as presents for my friends and family—baskets full of goodies for moms-to-be or bottles, blankets, and bibs for baby showers.

  When Gramps got sick, I moved back in with him, staying by his side until his frail body eventually gave out. By then I had my own website and, although I still deliver the odd thing personally, most of my stuff is shipped online. There are even a couple of shops in the neighboring towns that have started stocking my goodies.

  This is how I accidentally met my furry friend beside me. I have, as a general rule, no sense of direction and without the use of GPS, I’m pretty sure I would have ended up in the wrong state a time or two. I was making a delivery to a cute little shop that had opened in Neavsham, which is a twenty-minute drive from where I used to live, when I got turned around and my GPS decided to have a meltdown on me. Even with my lack of direction, I still managed to figure out pretty quickly that four lefts had me turning in a circle. After a fair bit of cursing, I had pulled over next to a large industrial building that was partially hidden by trees, to text Megan, the shop’s owner, when I became aware of a dog whining. I got out of my truck and followed the noise until I came upon a huge white and gray huskie on the other side of a six-foot chain-link fence. He heard my approach and growled at me a little, not in an I’m-going-to-rip-your-arm-off kind of way, more in a back-off-and-leave-me alone-I’m-having-a-shitty-day kind of way. I sat on the grass on my side of the fence, pulled some beef jerky out of my pocket (don’t judge) and poked a piece through the fence for him. He whined a little but wandered over, scooped up the jerky, and lay down right in front of me. In a moment of bravery or stupidity, I stuck my fingers through the fence and started stroking his beautiful coat until his tongue lolled out and he was panting. That day I fell a little bit in love with him and anytime I was in the area making deliveries, I came to visit.

  That’s how I happened to witness a tall wiry man with a pockmarked face and long greasy black hair kick the shit out of the poor dog when he hadn’t respond fast enough to the asshole’s commands. I felt my blood boil beneath my skin. No way was I going to leave him there to be subjected to that kind of treatment. I made my delivery to Megan’s and then asked her if I could leave my truck there for a little while. She kindly agreed, so I pulled wire cutters and old gloves from the toolkit in the cargo bed, courtesy of my brothers, and retraced my steps on foot to save my furry friend. It was getting late by the time I got there but he was waiting by the fence, sitting in the humid evening heat when I returned, like he knew I was coming for him, and my heart melted a little more. Using the cutters, I made an opening in the fence big enough for him to get through without scraping himself on any sharp edges, when I heard a shout from the side of the building. I dropped the cutters, urged the dog through the fence, and then I took off like a shot through the woods with my escaped prisoner.

  Which brings me to now—huffing, puffing, and stumbling over the uneven terrain as I run blindly through the woods in ballet flats. Not my finest hour, for sure. Out of nowhere, I find myself wrapped up in leather-encased arms and pulled back hard against someone’s chest. The dog snarls ferociously at my captor but calms when the voice behind me, with a Texas drawl, tells him to settle.

  I wiggle and kick my legs, trying to gain some leverage, but with my arms pinned to my sides, my movements are limited.

  “Settle down, sugar,” the deep voice rasps out.

  His arms are firm, his grip strong, but he isn’t hurting me. He isn’t using more force than necessary and he isn’t trying to grope me in the process, so I calm myself down and take stock of the situation. I have always been able to read people, ever since I was a kid, and something is telling me this guy isn’t going to hurt me. He loosens his grip as he feels me relax and leans down to speak softly into my ear.

  “Want to tell me why you’re stealing our dog?”r />
  I’m about to answer him when the pockmarked asshole who started this whole thing by kicking the dog comes running toward us. He must have circled around and come from the other direction.

  “You fucking cunt,” he shouts. He surprises the shit out of me and the biker at my back by swinging his arm out and slapping me across the face with the back of his hand.

  Now, let me tell you, that shit hurts like a bitch. Before I can even get my bearings, I find myself facing the burning deck of cards logo on the back of biker man’s jacket as he places me behind him. Before either of us can say or do anything else, though, my furry friend is on the pockmarked biker, dragging him to the ground, pinning him with his teeth in his shoulder and growling a warning that if he moves, he’s dead.

  I smile as my face throbs, taking a small amount of satisfaction from the fact that the dog now has the upper hand. The biker that grabbed me calls him off, unfortunately.

  “King, heal,” he commands.

  King, huh? Great name. It suits him. Oh, right, focus.

  King obeys immediately, clearly trained and familiar with my pseudo protector.

  Biker dude steps forward, then bends down and, I kid you not, he picks up the pockmarked asshole around the throat like he weighs nothing. If I wasn’t so busy looking for a way out of this mess, I would be totally impressed. Okay, so I’m still a little bit impressed.

  “Do you want to tell me what the fuck you think you’re doing?” he growls—the biker, not the dog.

  “That bitch stole our dog,” the idiot with the hand wrapped around his throat manages to reply, which is actually quite impressive as his face is turning an alarming shade of purple.

  “You never put your hands on a woman in anger, you piece of shit,” my biker tells him. He pulls back his right arm while still holding with his left and sucker punches the guy in the face. The pockmarked ass drops to the ground like a sack of bricks and doesn’t get back up.

  Biker man then turns to me and, holy shitting hell, this man is pretty, although I probably wouldn’t say that to his face. He looks a little like Chris Hemsworth with his blond hair in a man bun, his faded denim eyes, and chiseled jaw covered in day-old stubble. He’s taller than me, but then, everyone is, but at around six feet two he towers over me and he’s built in a way that screams “I work out.” I didn’t even know men this gorgeous existed in real life. I’m tempted to pinch him just to make sure I’m not dreaming. He ignores me checking him out and gently runs his thumb over my cheekbone, causing me to wince and him to frown.

  “Come on, let's get you to the compound and get you cleaned up.” He grabs my hand and starts pulling me back through the woods with King following behind us. I’m so busy marveling at how hands that size could be so gentle, it takes a while for his words to penetrate my thick skull.

  “Hey, um, yeah, I’m not going anywhere with you. Thanks for sticking up for me back there, but I’m going to just go now.” I pull my hand free and manage to take a couple of steps away from him before I find myself upside down and over his shoulder.

  “Hey, put me down.”

  He slaps my ass, hard enough to make it sting, effectively stilling my movements. “Settle down. I don’t want to drop you and cause any more damage to that pretty face of yours. You stole our dog, sugar, I can’t just let you go. Besides, you need to tell my president what just went down.”

  We walk, well, he walks, I bounce, for what seems like forever but is probably closer to five minutes, while I mentally berate myself for getting trapped in this situation to begin with. We end up at a huge gated entrance to what I’m assuming is their compound. It’s hard to see much from my upside down angle. He slides me down his body and shouts over my shoulder to the guards, I’m guessing, to open the gates. I’m thinking this is a very bad idea and I can tell he has noticed my train of thought because he places both hands gently on either side of my face.

  “Nobody is going to hurt you in here, sugar. Your punishment will more than likely be a favor of some sort.”

  My eyes must be the size of my head as I guess what kind of favors they could ask of me. He takes one of my hands in his and tugs us toward the door.

  “Not what you’re thinking, sugar. Nobody here would ever put their hands on you without your permission, okay?”

  I nod because what else can I say? Despite my small stature, I’m quite good at defending myself but unarmed and in a compound filled with god knows how many bikers, I’d be screwed. I just hope that doesn’t mean literally.

  Chapter Two

  We push through two heavy oak doors and find ourselves in a large room that has a bar running almost the length of the far wall, as well as tables and chairs scattered everywhere. In the far corner, there are a couple of worn brown leather sofas. It reminds me of an Irish-themed pub my brothers took me to a few years ago. It’s cooler in here than it is outside, making me wish I had a cardigan or something to slip on. I look around. Although a few of the tables are occupied, the room itself is quite quiet. I let out a relieved breath. Maybe I’ll survive the evening after all.

  “Rebel!” pretty boy shouts across the room to a table of four men. “Can you find King for me?”

  I look down at King, who is sitting at my feet, then up again at my biker and give a little tug on my hand that is firmly encased in his to get his attention.

  “Dude, he’s sitting on my feet.” I nod my head in King’s direction.

  Mr. Pretty just smiles and shakes his head before the guy named Rebel returns from wherever he went with another man in tow. The new guy, a handsome man in a silver fox kind of way scowls in my direction. Crap, this must be the president. He takes me in, his eyes pausing on our linked hands, and quirks an eyebrow.

  “Pres, this is our local dog thief.” Pretty boy looks down at me, waiting for me to fill in the blank with my name.

  With a grumble, I answer, “It’s Luna and I am not a dog thief. I’m a dog liberator.” I huff, trying to snatch my hand away, but he just laughs at me and holds on tighter.

  “I don’t really care what you call yourself, little lady. You can’t come onto Kings of Carnage property and take something of ours and not expect there to be repercussions.”

  Pretty boy tries to interject. “Listen, King, she didn’t know.”

  But that’s when I interrupt because something else dawns on me.

  “Your name is King?” I ask for clarification but don’t wait for an answer. “And you named your dog after yourself? Isn’t that a little”—I wave my free hand around for dramatic effect—“narcissistic?” The entire room goes silent, except for the stupid chuckling biker attached to me.

  I lean into his shoulder and whisper, “I probably shouldn’t have said that out loud, huh?”

  “Probably not, sugar, and besides, the pres didn’t name him,” he tells me, finally letting go of my hand.

  I look up at him when he doesn’t continue. A deep voice vibrates from behind me. “I did.”

  I spin around and nearly fall on my ass before I’m pulled forward, making me face plant against another hard chest.

  I suck in a sharp breath as the side of my face connects with a wall of leather, reminding me of pockmark’s handiwork.

  I wince. “Ouch.” Strong fingers lift my chin and I find myself face-to-face with what can only be described as an Adonis. Whereas Pretty Boy, and I really must stop referring to him as that in my head, is gorgeous and fair, this man is breathtaking and dark. Taller than my biker friend at about six four with inky black hair and cerulean blue eyes that are currently checking out the mark on my face. He has a slightly crooked nose that looks as if it’s been broken a time or two and full lips he slowly starts to lick when he notices me looking. I feel myself flush. Jesus, what is in the food around here?

  I try to take a step back to compose myself but he refuses to let go.

  “What happened to your face?” he asks me.

  There is a loud boom but when I look around nobody else seems to have heard my o
varies exploding, so I sigh in relief.

  “Erm, that would be the pockmarked biker asshole.”

  He looks up and over my shoulder to my friend for a clearer explanation.

  “That would be Weasel’s handiwork. I’d caught up to her and had her restrained when he runs up and smacks her in the face, calling her a cunt.” The room goes wired at this and I can feel the animosity pouring off Adonis in waves.

  “What the fuck? Where is he? That little fucker’s dead! He’s already had his last warning.”

  “Out cold, still in the woods at the back of the compound if the fucker’s lucky,” Pretty Boy answers, sounding pleased with himself.

  Adonis looks down at me again. I don’t know if he wants me to confirm the pretty biker’s story or what, so I shrug and tell him.

  “It’s true, Pretty Boy knocked him out with one punch. It was kind of awesome.”

  Adonis looks at me in question. “Pretty Boy?” he growls at me. What is with bikers and growling?

  “Well, I didn’t mean to say that out loud, but that’s what I’ve been calling him in my head. I couldn’t just call you biker one and two, could I?”

  Pretty Boy is laughing so hard he looks as if he might fall over.

  “Shut it, Halo,” Adonis barks at him.

  I look back at Pretty Boy. He has the face of an angel for sure. “Halo, huh? It suits you.” He winks at me, making me blush before Adonis is turning my head to face him again. He leans down until he is so close I can feel his breath upon my face.

  “And what have you been calling me in your head?” he asks in a seductive tone.