Vengeance’s birthday was tomorrow. He was turning the ripe old age of forty-five, and he was feeling every single one of those years.
What did he have to show for it?
Nothing.
His life had been partying, fucking, fighting, and riding the open road.
There was nothing left in his life now.
Get your head out of your fucking ass, and stop being a moaning bastard.
He turned to the door, needing to get some fresh air. He was tired of the smell of booze, stale cigarette smoke, and sex. It had its unique feel of depression about it. That’s what was wrong with him.
He was depressed. Another year older, and life was the same old shit.
Men around him were risking everything, loving life, relishing the time they spent with the women they loved and the kids they had helped create.
That was another thing. He didn’t have any kids.
Every bitch he slept with, he made sure to bag his dick up. He hadn’t wanted any consequences along the way. The only problem was now his life was completely empty, and he was having a lot of hard revelations right now.
Leaving the clubhouse was easy. Ignoring anyone who wanted to talk to him, he straddled his bike and headed right out of the clubhouse parking lot.
He didn’t care where he was going, only that all of his troubles fade away. The last thing he wanted to be thinking about was life, and what little he actually had of it. Life was not about having regrets. It was about living life to the maximum, and that was exactly what he’d done.
Constance Belling stared at the gravestone of her dead parents and her dead fiancé. They had been gone for six months now. Putting the roses on each gravestone, she stared at their names, and not for the first time wondered why the hell she had survived. She had been in the car with them when it had overturned and plunged into a lake.
Her father had a heart attack at the wheel; the shock of the accident causing his already fragile organ to fail. She had seen it happen but before any of them could react, the car had gone over the ledge and rolled down the rocky verge, smashing all the windows on the way down. There had been a piece of glass embedded in her eye, and she was now completely blind in that one because of it.
Her fiancé, Brando, had been able to save her. He’d disconnected her belt buckle and pushed her out of the broken back window. She had swum to the surface and collapsed on the edge of the water.
No one else had come up after her.
She had been found a couple of hours later, she had been told when she woke up. They had pulled her father’s car out of the water. Brando hadn’t been able to unhook his own belt. He had drowned, along with her mother.
God, a tragedy of the worst kind.
Horrible. Her engagement dinner turned into the worst night of her life.
What made it worse? She hadn’t cried, not once. Not for her father, mother, her fiancé, or even her eye.
Everything had changed, and yet, she couldn’t bring any tears.
She sat down on the path, staring at the gravestones. It was late at night, and she had a torch, which she used to light up the three people who meant everything to her.
“You’re a strange person, Constance, but I love you.”
Brando would always say that to her.
She couldn’t cry, and she had always struggled in so many situations. From the time she was a kid, she wasn’t like anyone else. They always wanted to fit in, and be like each other. She was happy to run around the school playground playing fairies. There was never a best friend for her, and she didn’t need one either.
Life just seemed so much more fun being alone.
There was no one to judge.
No disappointments.
No expectations.
Life was just what she made it, and that was fun.
Then Brando had come along. Sweet Brando. He was charming and nice. Her first and only crush, and even now she couldn’t be sure if it was so much as a crush, or just because he was the first guy who didn’t strike her as an asshole. Either way, it didn’t matter.
She touched her cheeks, expecting to find some tears, but once again, they were dry.
The sound of the main gate opening had her turning, pointing the flashlight at a dark figure.
“What the fuck? Get that shit out of my eyes.”
She moved the light and shone it on the headstone of her loved ones. “Sorry,” she said. “No one usually comes here late at night.”
“It’s probably a good thing.”
She stared at the headstone and knew it was time to leave. She had to go back home and get prepared for the rest of the weekend. Only she couldn’t bring herself to move.
She stood, the flashlight catching the man again. Constance saw his leather jacket with the logo. He was a biker, an MC member.
“Do you spend a lot of time alone in graveyards?” he asked, moving next to her and rubbing at his eyes.