Prologue
Cipher: A way of changing a message to keep it secret. Decipher: Uncovering that secret.
Every MC has a code. Whether written or unspoken, you live by it. Ours is secret to other clubs not only because it’s personal, but because we don’t like them much. We don’t need their approval. We don’t need to spread the word about what we do. We hide it. We keep it secret.
But that doesn’t mean we don’t get heat wherever we go.
The patches warn weaker spines to back off.
The stronger ones see them as a beckoning.
Bring it on. Gives us someplace to put the itch-to-hurt that we men all share.
It’s in our DNA.
The Ciphers – we live by our code without spreading the word. But the word spreads. Because that’s how things work when you’re saving people from shit they can’t fix on their own.
We consider ourselves servants to our code.
We put our mission first.
We live it. We breathe it. We search for it.
We are given it by a force outside ourselves.
The same force that drives storms, tornadoes and hurricanes. Just like those, we arrive without warning and level shit.
When we leave, rebirth is possible.
It’s messy. It’s fucked up. It’s beautiful.
It’s The Ciphers.
I almost gave my life to boxing. I was this close to going pro. Imagine my finger and thumb held up with a little space between them. But I dropped it because I don’t fight to make other people rich.
I fight to make them better than they thought they could ever be.
I fight because I like it. I fight to give life where there was nothing but shit.
When I was a boxer, I had to live by society’s laws. I don’t want to. Ever.
It’s why my dad hates my guts.
And why women love me.
The rule-makers don’t obey their own rules when they’re in the way, but they expect me to?
Fuck. That.
They can suck my cock if they think I’m stupid enough to bend to laws that don’t make sense when you’re dealing with men who ignore them. Men way worse than I.
I follow no one.
I travel with The Ciphers, but I don’t follow.
I move with them.
In tandem. In sync. In purpose.
Together.
“Hey Jett, put that thing away,” Scratch says as he struts into my hotel room.
Glancing up, I mutter, “Fuckin’ thought I locked that.”
He glances to the door. “Guess you fuckin’ didn’t.”
Closing my tattered notebook, I lean back in the shitty chair not meant for a big guy like me. “What’s up?”
“You’re not gonna believe it.”
Now my brain’s spinnin’ around possibilities.
“Try me.”
He throws down a wrinkled piece of paper balled up so many times the ink is nearly incomprehensible. I read it and raise my grey eyes to meet his. “You’re shittin’ me.”
“We leave in an hour.”
After I give him a grim nod he strolls out, shoulders tense.
Reopening my journal, I scrawl a quick finish to my previous entry:
We’re about to face our biggest battle. All the years traveling with The Ciphers has led to us coming face to face with something nasty like this. Let’s hope what they say about ‘practice’ is true.
The ones left standing will never forget these coming days.
Ever.
Luna
“When was this coffee made?” I point at the stale and bitter cup of crap.
“Hour ago,” is the diner waitress’s dry reply.
“Bullshit.” I push it toward her.
Her lips get even thinner as she sizes me up with an irritated glare that would shrink a normal woman. But I’m no normal woman.
She repeats, “Hour ago,” this time with a pinch of loathing.
I lean back and throw my arm over the worn 1960’s booth, that kind of yellow-brown that should never have spread through the design community like it did back then. “How would you know that…when you just started your shift?”
Now we’re in a standoff.
“Phyllis told me,” she snarls.
My mouth twitches upward. “There’s a diner waitress named Phyllis? Of course there is.”
I’d expect it of a diner in Bakersfield, but not here in pretty Studio City, California, on the valley side over and across from Beverly Hills.
I slowly push the cup closer to the edge. “Either she lied or you’re lying.”
She watches what I’m doing, with eagle eyes, wondering if I’m really going to send it to its shattering death. My face is telling her I will have no hesitation in doing exactly that.
And it’s going to be a bitch to clean up.
Her eyebrows pierce the center of her forehead. She doesn’t move. Not until it’s almost too late. Reaching quickly to capture it, she swears under her breath and shoots me a death glare. She’s about to demand, “What’s your problem?” but a riotous interruption stops her.