Unbeloved (Undeniable #4)(10)
It was about . . .
Freedom.
But Hawk didn’t have that same freedom. It wasn’t the same for him. And it never would be.
Like a lot of his brothers, Hawk was just another piece of shit Deuce had fished from the gutter. But unlike Cox or Dirty, Hawk hadn’t had a hard life spent living on the streets. At least, not at first. But neither did his upbringing resemble Ripper’s, who’d lived a good, solid life, the American dream, until he’d lost his parents at the age of seventeen.
No, Hawk had been born a spoiled and privileged son of a bitch, his mother a cocaine-addicted burlesque dancer who’d fatally overdosed when he was only three years old, his father an infamous member of the Bratva, a Russian mob boss, the one and only Avgust Polachev of the Polachev cartel.
For eighteen years he’d been a gluttonous whore, reveling in a life of overindulgence, seduction, and sin. Spoiled was putting it mildly. He’d had more money than he could have spent in ten lifetimes, as well as cars, drugs, booze, and women, all at his self-destructive disposal. He’d had it all.
Until he’d lost it all.
The summer he turned eighteen, his father was gunned down inside the man’s own home during an FBI raid. His father had gotten greedy and that greed had made him careless, and that carelessness had landed his father with an undercover federal agent on his crew. Actually, several undercover agents.
After the FBI, fitted in bulletproof vests and armed to the teeth, had broken down their door and stormed their home, they’d informed Hawk’s father of the stack of evidence they had against him. They told him he’d never again see the light of day, and that a lethal injection would be his last memory of life.
Hawk would never forget what happened next. His father, his only family, had turned to him and mouthed one single, solitary word.
Begi.
Run.
Turning back to the agents, his father had reached for his gun, as had every other man in the room. A flurry of bullets had cracked through the air, and Hawk hadn’t waited around to see what was going to happen next. After pulling his own piece, he’d run from the house as fast as he could.
He ran, and because he was a wanted man, not one of his father’s former associates would take him in. He was deadweight. His picture was all over the news and there was a price on his head. So he kept running, living in the shadows for two years until Deuce found him hiding out and digging for his dinner inside a casino dumpster.
Hawk had recognized Deuce and Deuce him, having met each other several times in the past. The Hell’s Horsemen motorcycle club president hadn’t been a friend of his father’s, but a loyal buyer, and because Deuce knew what had transpired in the wake of his father’s greed, he’d taken pity on Hawk and took him in.
Deuce’s connections provided Hawk with a fake birth certificate and driver’s license, giving him a new identity. He’d become James Alexander Young, a New York native who for all intents and purposes was a big, fat nobody. Deuce burned off his fingerprints, gave him a Harley and a haircut, nicknamed him “Hawk,” then took him home to Miles City, Montana, where he’d begun the second chapter of his life.
His Russian accent had been the first thing to go. Luckily it was slight compared to the heavy Slavic intonations of his father and friends, developed only because he’d grown up around it. But even so, his transition from mob prince to homeless grifter had been easy in comparison to his transition from homeless grifter to biker.
Learning to ride a motorcycle hadn’t been the hard part; the most difficult transformation had been learning to live and breathe leather and chrome, to talk the talk and walk the walk. The Hell’s Horsemen, while still a highly profitably criminal organization, were the underbelly of the world Hawk had come from. Whereas his father had once been at the top of the food chain and considered men like Deuce and his boys necessary trash, Hawk was now at the mercy of them. Funny how life worked out sometimes.
As a Hell’s Horsemen prospect he’d kept his head down, stayed quiet, kept to himself, and did what he was told. That diligence and intense survival instinct ensured he acclimated quickly, gained loyal friends among his brothers, and was unanimously voted in a full-fledged Horseman.
No one but Deuce knew who he really was, something that Deuce had told him was for his own protection from other MCs looking to make a quick buck or weaken another club. Therefore no one, not even Deuce’s top boys, were allowed in on the secret. Which was just fine with Hawk, since even the most loyal of brothers could turn on you.
It was the reason he was in Las Vegas.
Just this morning Deuce had gotten a tip on ZZ’s whereabouts, a former brother of the Hell’s Horsemen who, if Deuce got his way, wasn’t long for this world.
Over the last year ZZ had been spotted repeatedly across the country, part of the underground fighting circuit. He’d been made a few times in Vegas, only by the time the information had been passed down the line, the fights were over and ZZ had been long gone.
Not this time.
Blowing out a long breath, Hawk toed his kickstand down and dismounted his bike. He didn’t want to be the brother to find Z, he didn’t want to be the man to have to take the guy out. As f*cked up as it was that ZZ had shot Deuce’s son, Cage, Cage had freely admitted that ZZ hadn’t drawn first, and had even spoken in his defense.
But Deuce wouldn’t be swayed. The guy had shot his son point-blank in the chest. Twice. Then he’d taken off, turning his back on what he’d done, and on the club altogether. Now he wasn’t just wanted by the law, but by Deuce. The president of the Horsemen was out for blood, and when Deuce had his mind set on something, you didn’t question him. You did as you were told or you ended up in the same sticky situation ZZ was in. Sticky with your own f*cking blood.