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    Forsaken: The Punishers MC, #1
    Forsaken: The Punishers MC, #1
    Forsaken: The Punishers MC, #1
    Ebook119 pages1 hour

    Forsaken: The Punishers MC, #1

    By APRIL LUST

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    About this ebook

    Forsaken is book 1 of The Punishers MC trilogy. Books 2 and 3, Forsaken Ride and Forsaken Bride are available everywhere now!

    I BOUGHT HER TO SAVE HER. BUT I MIGHT HAVE DOOMED US BOTH.

    She looked like an angel on that auction block.
    Perfect for a devil like me.

    I came here to kill my enemies or die trying.
    But I can't pass up the chance to claim her.

    This started off as a suicide mission.
    But now that I have something to live for…
    I'll do whatever it takes to get us both out alive.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSopris Page Press
    Release dateNov 6, 2018
    ISBN9781386582045
    Forsaken: The Punishers MC, #1

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      Book preview

      Forsaken - APRIL LUST

      FORSAKEN: The Punishers MC (Book 1)

      By April Lust

      I BOUGHT HER TO SAVE HER. BUT I MIGHT HAVE DOOMED US BOTH.

      SHE LOOKED LIKE AN angel on that auction block.

      Perfect for a devil like me.

      I came here to kill my enemies or die trying.

      But I can’t pass up the chance to claim her.

      This started off as a suicide mission.

      But now that I have something to live for...

      I’ll do whatever it takes to get us both out alive.

      Chapter 1

      Nicholas

      The first thing I remembered was white. White everything. Blinding, imposing white, closing in on me from every side like a huge, pale hand pressed over my eyes.

      The second thing I remembered was a noise. It was a steady beep. It chirped every few seconds, as steady and reliable as a heartbeat. That’s because it was a heartbeat. My own, to be exact. The monitor to my right showed a skittering blip that tracked the ups and downs of the organ pumping in my chest.

      A nurse came by, though I didn’t know at the time that was what she was. I thought she was just a warm voice and a soft hand mopping the blood from my forehead and picking out the bits of glass that stuck out from my skin.

      It was a miracle the crash didn’t kill me. At least, that’s what they used to say, back when I was in the group home. My parents’ bodies had been all mangled to shit, hardly recognizable as the people who had once walked and talked and more than likely did things that were at least a little bit valuable for polite society as a whole­—like jobs or volunteering or whatever. But little baby Nicholas had made it out with just a few nicks and scratches. Hell, I hadn’t even cried. That’s how the story went.

      It wasn’t even a particularly good story. We were headed down the road; a drunk driver swerved across the partition doing ninety in his pickup truck. Boom, bang, life over. Happened every goddamn day. No dignity in that shit.

      But if you didn’t remember something, how could you be sure it was real? I didn’t remember my parents one bit, and for all I knew, the bastards at the holding facility for state wards, the place where I grew up, could have invented the whole damn story. I wouldn’t know the difference.

      A head-on collision at ninety miles an hour seems like something worth remembering, but maybe the impact shook up my soft, underdeveloped baby brain and turned that particular memory into mush. I guessed it doesn’t matter much. I woke up in a hospital, and that was where it all really started for me. White all around, electric beeps, and not a single person in the world who gave a fuck whether I lived or died. Not much had changed since.

      For as rough of a start as that was, it got worse. Most of the time, babies get adopted into foster families way quicker than anyone else. They’re cuter, I supposed, or else would-be parents just didn’t like the idea of picking up a child who’d already gotten someone else’s fingerprints all over it. Kinda gross, goes the thinking. Like using a fork that another poor sob just slobbered all over. Babies were preferable. That way, they were a clean slate. You got to fuck them up yourself.

      But I didn’t get adopted at all. I lingered there. I liked to imagine there was something to me that scared away the people every visiting day, a big shadow haunting those baby eyes of mine. I’d seen shit. One look at me and you knew it. Parents didn’t want that. They wanted innocence, purity, childlike wonder. I didn’t ever have any of that bullshit. I was then the same thing I was now: a cold-blooded son of a bitch. I was an outcast from day one.

      When you grew up in the shadows like I did, you learned a lot about people. Folks act differently when they think no one is looking. They get sloppy, show you who they really are. They steal and pick their nose and scratch wedgies out of their asses. But that’s just the little shit. Sometimes, you saw truly fucked-up things.

      Like when I peeked my head around the doorway of the state facility late one night and saw the teacher, Ms. Leon, bent over a desk with her skirt hiked up high while the security guard plowed into her with his fat, greasy dick. I’d never seen someone moan like that before. Shit, I thought she was getting killed at first. Took me a minute to connect the shit I was seeing with the rumors the older kids were always going on about—sex. Fucking. You know, the good shit.

      This prim little teacher getting rammed by an illiterate semi-retard making, what, eight bucks an hour? How could she do shit like that and then pretend to get mad when I drifted off during her stupid ass lessons? Fucking hypocrite. Fucking liar. Most of all, fucking whore. I didn’t have the words back then to say all that out loud or even to think it, but I knew I wanted out of that place. It wasn’t for me.

      Which was how I came to be tying together bedsheets in the middle of the night. Eight years old and I was working like a goddamn slave, knotting those things together and pulling on them as hard as my scrawny arms would allow to test the strength and make sure I wasn’t gonna end up four stories below with a sudden and undesirable right turn in the bones of my neck.

      Psst! hissed Robbie. He slept in the bunk above me. He’d been there just as long as I had. He wasn’t about to get adopted, either. A club foot was bad enough on its own, but when you have a lazy eye, too...well, I guessed some kids just had shitty luck. Robbie was one of them. He was gonna be a lifer in the group home. I almost felt bad for the guy. But I was even more determined to get the hell out.

      What do you want? I whispered back.

      What are you doing? he asked.

      I answered immediately, Getting the fuck away from this place. I’d never cursed out loud before. It felt good. A nice meaty, grating tone to the word. It came out of my mouth ugly and grim, just like I wanted. Fuck. I liked that one.

      I heard the sound of sheets thrashing, then the clunk-slush of Robbie struggling his way down the ladder. He hobbled around the bed to stand in front of me. You’re leaving? he asked, bug-eyed in awe.

      I nodded fiercely, not looking up from the long rope of sheets passing under my hands. I pulled hard on every knot, making sure it would be able to hold my weight.

      What are you gonna do? Where you gonna go? he said.

      I paused and fixed my gaze on him. I did everything I could to screw a serious expression to my face, clenching my jaw as I spit out, Anywhere but here.

      I hated the white everywhere. Not everything was so light and happy all the time. The shit they tried to make us see and think was so fake. Bright primary colors and stories about kids with puppies who went home to their families? What a load of bullshit. Every time Ms. Leon tried to reprimand me to pay attention, all I could think about was her bent over that desk, legs spread wide as the man in the jumpsuit fucked her through a torn hole in her pantyhose.

      But how are you gonna, like, eat? Robbie persisted. And where will you stay? You can’t just leave!

      Quiet, I said, you’re yelling. He bit his lip and shushed. I took one end of the rope in my hand and squatted by the bedpost where it stood on the floor.

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