Tyrant (KING Book 2) Read online

  Tyrant

  The King Series, Book Two

  T.M. Frazier

  Copyright © 2015 T.M. FRAZIER

  All rights reserved

  ISBN-13: 978-1512273991

  ISBN-10: 1512273996

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events, is purely coincidental.

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Prologue

  1. King

  2. Doe

  3. Doe

  4. Doe

  5. Doe

  6. Doe

  Ray

  7. King

  8. Doe

  Ray

  9. King

  10. Doe

  11. Doe

  Ray

  12. King

  13. Doe

  14. Doe

  15. Doe

  16. Doe

  17. Doe

  18. Doe

  19. Doe

  20. King

  21. Doe

  22. Doe

  23. Doe

  24. Doe

  25. King

  26. King

  27. King

  28. King

  29. Doe

  30. King

  31. Doe

  32. King

  33. King

  34. Doe/Ray

  35. King

  Doe

  Epilogue

  Doe

  Acknowledgments

  Also by T.M. Frazier

  About the Author

  Lawless

  For my Popop.

  And for everyone who has to live each day

  without the love of their lives by their side.

  When the love of your life passes on,

  the person may be gone,

  but the love rages on.

  –T.M. FRAZIER

  Prologue

  King

  The average time spent between incarcerations for a career criminal is six months.

  I’d only been out three.

  I’d expected to find Max in that car. Instead, cold metal clinked around my wrists, and the asshole pig had the audacity to laugh when he tightened the cuffs to the point of pain.

  I didn’t wince, though. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. He pressed down on my head roughly and shoved me hard into the back of the old police cruiser. I landed on my side, and my cheek slammed against the sticky seat. It smelled like vomit and bad decisions. My hands tingled from the loss of blood flow.

  The motherfucker was lucky I was in cuffs.

  Three years. They already had me for three fucking years, and they were going to have me for a whole lot longer.

  Kidnapping wasn’t exactly rewarded with a light slap on the wrist, especially for someone whose record was as long as mine. I promised I was never going back, but keeping my promises is just another thing I was never very good at.

  I was all out of fucks to give though. The system could have me. I belonged to them, but they didn’t fucking own me. They would NEVER fucking own me.

  She owned me.

  Heart and black fucking soul.

  I will walk to the fucking chow line with a shit-eating grin on my face wearing my scratchy orange jumpsuit every motherfucking day. I will play cards with the worst of the worst and make nice with the guards who are willing to cut me some slack. At night, when I’m alone in my windowless cell with my dick in my hand, I will remember what it was like to have her in my bed; how her innocent wide eyes stared up at me as I moved inside her. The way she arched her back into me as I made her come over and over again.

  I kept telling myself I didn’t have anything to offer her, but that wasn’t true.

  I had love.

  Pup. Doe. Ray. Whatever the fuck her name was. I loved her more than what was normal, rational, or sane, and I would gladly rot in fucking prison with a smile on my face if I knew my girl was going to be okay.

  But I didn’t know that. I couldn’t know that.

  I should have known that motherfucker was going to fucking cross me.

  “The notorious Brantley King,” the pig said with a smirk as he got into the front seat. The plastic-like leather squeaked against his belt as he closed his door and started the engine. “You’d think you’d have learned your lesson by now, boy.”

  He laughed and shook his head. It was obvious this guy was getting some sort of sick pleasure out of being the one to put me in cuffs.

  “King,” I corrected him defiantly. Nobody called me Brantley but her.

  “Excuse me?” he asked, raising an eyebrow at me through the rearview mirror.

  I sat up straight, meeting his gaze with mine, as if I were staring straight through to his pussy-ass soul. “They call me King, motherfucker.”

  The rage inside me grew to epic proportions. That’s when I noticed the detective didn’t turn onto the main road but instead drove straight onto the path through the woods.

  This guy was no fucking cop. I spotted his gun; he’d set it on the dash. It was a Judge, not the kind of gun that was standard police-issue. This guy wasn’t taking to me jail.

  He was taking me to ground.

  There was no time to waste.

  My girls needed me.

  More than that, I needed them.

  The moron had cuffed me in front. That should’ve been my first indicator that something was off. A real cop would’ve never done that unless he was transporting a nonviolent criminal.

  Which wasn’t me.

  Using the chain that connected my cuffs, I trapped the fake detective’s neck against the headrest and yanked back with all my might until I felt like my biceps were going to explode.

  His hands left the wheel and flailed about as he tried to connect with my head, but I dodged him by lowering myself behind the seat.

  The car veered off the path and bounced from side to side as it ran over a patch of knee-high roots.

  The pressure mounted behind my eyes as I tugged back on the cuffs, squeezing tighter and tighter. I didn’t release my hold until the car came crashing to a stop and every inch of life had drained from his body.

  The fake cop was right; I would never be anything more than the notorious Brantley King.

  That was fine by me because the senator had a lesson to learn. You did not take what was mine and not expect to pay in blood, sweat, or pussy.

  He took my girl. He wanted to take my life.

  His payment would be in blood.

  Chapter 1

  King

  Revenge is sweet.

  That’s what they say anyway. But it wasn’t until I crawled out of the wreckage, picking shards of glass from my skin, that I realized how true that saying really was.

  I could practically taste the revenge on my tongue, I was salivating in anticipation of the moment I would be able to unstrap a belt from my arm and wrap it around the senator’s fucking neck for crossing me.

  It had only been minutes since I’d killed a man.

  But it had been a long time since I’d taken pleasure in it.

  Adrenaline like I’d never known, in an amount great enough to wake a corpse, coursed through my veins.

  I was high on it.

  I fed off of it.

  It was like I’d pushed my nose into a bowl of blow and inhaled over and over until I felt like I was invincible.

  A motherfucking god.

  And until I fixed the fucking mess I’d made, I wasn’t planning on coming down. I felt sorry for any motherfucker who had big enough balls to try and stand in my fucking way.

  That was the moment I’d first heard it.

 
; Him.

  Preppy.

  “Time to show those cock suckers they fucked with the wrong kid from the wrong side of the motherfucking trailer park.” Preppy’s voice was as clear to me in my head as if he stood beside me.

  I was going fucking insane.

  By the time I’d crawled out from the woods and made my way back to the house Bear was just getting off of his bike. When he saw me, he tossed his cigarette to the ground. He marched toward me with hard, angry steps; his forehead creased with lines, his fists clenched. The dry grass crunched under his heavy steps. “Listen, motherfucker, I didn’t want it to come to blows, but the way you fucking handled that shit just ain’t fucking right. She deserves better than that, better than this, better than to be fucking lied…” Bear stopped when he saw the mud and blood I was covered in. “What the fuck happened to you?”

  I pushed past him, ignoring his question, running toward the house, taking the steps three at a time. I threw open the front door so hard, the screws from the top hinge shot out and clanked down onto the deck. “Pup!” I called out. A small part of me held out hope that somehow she had found a way to stay. But the second I entered the house I didn’t have to search the rooms to know she was gone. I felt the emptiness. “Fuck!” I roared, picking up one of the kitchen chairs. I launched it across the room, where it skipped over the glass coffee table, cracking it down the center, punching a basketball-sized hole in the thin drywall as it came crashing to a halt.

  Bear followed me into the house. “Are you going to tell me what happened or you gonna tear the fucking house up some more?” I moved passed him on my way to the garage. I needed my bike and some provisions.

  The kind of provision that required bullets.

  “Nothing a fucking body bag couldn’t fix.”

  One handcuff was still locked on me, the other end was open and dangling from my wrist, the chain stained with the fake cop’s blood. As soon as that fucker was dead and the car crashed against the tree I’d pulled myself over into the front seat. Thank fucking God the handcuff keys were still in that fuckers pocket. “I see that,” Bear said. “Where the fuck is Doe?” There was a protective tone in his voice, which rubbed me the wrong fucking way, but I’d deal with that later.

  After I got my girl back.

  “The good senator fucked me over. There was no Max. And the last time I saw Pup, she was kicking and screaming as I was being carted away by a guy hired to take me out.” The image of her struggling in the senator’s grip made me see red. “Make a few calls,” I clipped. “Find out where he might be taking her.”

  “Fuck,” Bear said. Instead of pulling out his phone he bent over and rested his hands on his knees.

  “What the fuck now?”

  Bear pinched the bridge of his nose. “There was a reason why I came back here, man. Besides to kick your ass for fucking shit up with Doe. I’m thinking that before you solve this problem with a spray of bullets, you should probably know that it might not have been the senator who was trying to put you to ground,” he said, standing up straight and leaning up against the wall where he lit a cigarette.

  “What the fuck is that supposed to mean? He was the one who had the guy arrest me. Of course it was him.”

  Bear shook his head. “He’s a problem, but he’s not our only problem. Rage called not twenty minutes ago, and as you know, that fucker’s got eyes and ears everywhere. Word is that the shit that went down with Isaac isn’t over. Far fucking from it.” He ran his hand through his hair and the ash from his cigarette fell to the carpet.

  “I made that fucker’s head explode myself. Looked pretty over to me,” I argued.

  “No, not Isaac. He’s fucking worm food, but someone who’s fucking pissed about Isaac not being able to continue selling his shit in Florida on account of him being dead. Someone who ain’t afraid to kill entire families to get to the people who wronged him.”

  I stiffened, knowing exactly who he was talking about. “Eli.”

  “Yeah man,” Bear confirmed. “And if I was a betting man I’d put my money on it being Eli wanting to take you out over daddy dearest.”

  Eli Mitchell was who Isaac had filtered his drug money up to. Well, he did until me, Preppy, and Bear ended him and most of his crew. With his thick rimmed black glasses and his short stature, no one would ever think the guy was capable of half the shit he did on a daily basis.

  When you wanted to scare a rabbit out of a hole you sent in a smoke bomb. Eli’s version of a smoke bomb was killing anyone you’ve ever loved until you showed yourself and he could finally kill you too.

  “The intel I’m getting says Eli’s still in Miami, but he’s making a move, and soon. The MC is on lockdown, afraid of the blowback. Pops is pissed as fucking hell.”

  “First Isaac and now fucking Eli,” I said. “Can’t catch a fucking break. Sometimes I feel like I would have been better off staying locked-up.”

  “I feel ya, man. Same here. This isn’t just biker shit anymore. This is cartel shit. Bigger, badder…deader,” Bear said. “And I can’t put Grace on lockdown. I know she’s more a mom to you than your cunt of a mother ever was, but Pop’s ass is all sorts of chapped lately. He don’t want no one in the MC bringing civilians into the club, especially during lockdown, but we need to find somewhere safe for her to stay for a while.” Bear looked up at me and as he spoke, I realized what he was trying to tell me. “I ain’t got anyone close enough to me that warrants killing, who isn’t in the MC, but you sure as shit do.”

  Pup.

  “Fuck!” I shouted, realizing I couldn’t bring her home. I turned and punched the wall, making a dent clear through the drywall to the cement stucco on the outside of the house. Pain shot up the bones in my arm all the way to my shoulder, but pain was a better feeling than the feeling lying just underneath it. The feeling of failure. “It’s my fault Prep’s dead. Should have never let him start the Granny Growhouse shit. Should have…” I ran my hand over my hair. There was too much to list. Happiness, sadness, and regret filled every inch of space within the last few months of my life. There was so much I would go back and change. I thought all that was missing from my life was Max. But now it was Max, Pup…Preppy.

  And no matter what I did, who I killed, Prep was never coming back.

  “What’s the plan, man?” Bear asked.

  “We’re going to get to him before he can get to us…tonight,” I said, cracking my knuckles. The time for a pity party was over. I had more people to kill.

  “Ballsy move, man.”

  “Maybe, but I have to find out where Pup is first. I may not be able to get her the fuck out of there, but I have to get to her. Tell her what’s going on.”

  Bear nodded. “I can find out where she is. Get a message to her,” he offered.

  I shook my head. “No, this message needs to be delivered personally. It’s the only way she’ll listen.”

  “I can understand that, ’cause if I were her, I’d want to chop your fucking balls off by now,” Bear said. I flashed him a look to remind him he was stepping close to the edge of whatever patience I had left. “I’ll find out where she is,” Bear mumbled, pulling his phone from his pocket. He stubbed his cigarette out into the ashtray on the windowsill and lit another one. “All this shit, it’s fucking ballsy, man. You got a head injury or something?”

  I stepped onto the deck and leaned over the railing, breathing in the salty night air. “Yeah, as I matter of fact, I do. I suffer from the same condition Pup does.”

  “And what’s that?” Bear asked, following me out and leaning up sideways against the railing.

  “We both forgot who the fuck we were.”

  Bear dialed a few numbers; I could hear the ringing through the speaker as he held it up to his ear. “You remembering now?”

  “Yeah, I’m remembering now.”

  “And who exactly are you?” Bear asked.

  “I’m the fucking bad guy.”

  Chapter 2

  Doe

  Shock. />
  Mouth gaping. Can’t find the words. Overwhelming. Stunned.

  But shock was the word that best describes how I felt in that car.

  I had a million questions and couldn’t find my voice to ask a single one.

  And I certainly couldn’t bring myself to make nice with the two men who called themselves family. They were just strangers, who, when I wouldn’t go with them willingly, brought out the big gun.

  A little boy with blond curls and icy blue eyes that matched mine.

  A little boy who’d called me Mommy.

  My life since waking up without my memory has been a cluster-fuck of unbelievable events strung together in one monstrous knot. Every time I was stupid enough to think I could untangle it, the knot just wound tighter, until it consumed every ounce of available space around me, wrapping itself around the potential for anything good to result from my being alive.

  Strangling it to death.

  It was shitty of them to bring the boy. It was only because of him that I sat in stunned silence, unable to ask my usual million questions. Too afraid to scare him or say the wrong thing and traumatize him for life.

  The silence in that Town Car was deafening; so quiet that I’m sure if you listened close enough, you could actually hear my state of shock. The sound of the tires spinning against the asphalt as we accelerated onto the highway was a welcome reprieve.