Bound by Lies (God's Reapers MC Book 3) Read Free Page A

right.”
     

 
     
     
     
     
    CHAPTER THREE
     
    “Do you have any idea where he could be?” Olivia asked Hillary. There was desperation in her voice and her eyes, and Olivia didn’t even try to hide it. She was done pretending and sneaking around and worrying about her pride. All she wanted was to know that David was safe. Even if in the end he chose the gang over her, Olivia still wanted to find him and know that he was alive.
     
    “There are so many different places he could be. Mind if I smoke?” Hillary asked, and when Olivia shook her head no , the other woman dug around through her purse emerging with a white lighter and a pack of Virginia Slims. She lit the end and took a deep drag, inhaling the smoke and then releasing it from her mouth like a dragon.
     
    “Can I have one of those?” Olivia asked, looking up Hillary.
     
    “Of course, girl. I didn’t know you smoked.” She handed Olivia a cigarette and a lighter, and Olivia tried to steady her hands enough to light it.
     
    “A little bit when I was in college and for a few stressful weeks at the academy.” The smoke burned her lungs, and Olivia resisted the urge to cough. However, as she exhaled the smoke, she felt that familiar lightheadedness that comes with an infrequent smoke. It made her body feel slightly numb, and it relaxed her. “It’s just a very expensive poison, you know?” Olivia said, gazing at the lit tip of the cigarette. “At a certain point in time, you have to start asking yourself why you’re paying so much for something that is so obviously bad for you.” Olivia had been lost in thought until she was aware of Hillary’s eyes on her and her face reddened with embarrassment. “I didn’t mean—” she began, but Hillary just waved her hand, both clearing away the smoke and the awkwardness.
     
    “It’s fine,” Hillary said. “And you’re right, but quitting is hard for some of us.”
     
    Olivia nodded in understanding. She had learned at the academy how dangerous drugs were and how addiction drove people to crime and prostitution and a host of other bad things.
     
    “I’m so confused; I want to help David and the rest of God’s Reapers, but I know that they’re the reason that there are drugs in this town in the first place. I need to find David but then what? Do I throw away my job and my principles for him? Who will I be after that, other than someone’s girlfriend? I love him, but I don’t understand his loyalty to the club.”
     
    “Did anyone ever tell you the history of the Reapers?” Hillary asked.
     
    “No,” Olivia said.
     
    “They started after the Second World War. The first members were all men who had seen combat. They were men who had spent months living in trenches and waiting for the bomb that was going to kill them to fall. They watched, as the men around them were killed without rhyme or reason. My grandfather used to talk about it; he told me once he had been shaving at a mirror with a buddy of his, he bent down to grab a towel, and suddenly he heard a thump and looked over and realized that his buddy had been shot. The bullet went straight into the brain. They had been standing only inches from each other, if even the tiniest of things would have been different, my grandfather would have died instead. They spent years of their lives on the edge like that, thinking every minute would be their last, until the next minute came. Can you imagine living like that for years?”
     
    Olivia shook her head; she couldn’t imagine it at all.
     
    “And then they came home, and they were supposed to just go back to work and be normal. Try to ignore the nightmares they had and the flashbacks. How were they supposed to go back to their normal, boring lives after they had just returned from months of professional killing? Some of them were airmen, and they missed that feeling of flying, of being high above the earth. Motorcycles were the closest they could get to that. So men started buying