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Dare
Brothers of Ink and Steel
#1
by Allie Juliette Mousseau
Copyright © 2015 by Allie Juliette Mousseau.
All Rights Reserved
Published by Allie Juliette Mousseau
ISBN
All characters and events in this publication other than those clearly in the public domain are fictitious, and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Edited by Nicole Hewitt
Formatted by Mike Mousso
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And get all the info on the
Brothers of Ink and Steel series and the True North series at www.alliejuliettemousseau.com
Author’s Note
Although fiction, this novel is based on true and actual events.
I’m excited to bring you the Brothers of Ink and Steel Series—a gritty, sexy spin-off of the True North Series.
Dare is the book that bridges the two and is Josh North’s story.
All of the books in either series can be read as standalones.
Of course, I definitely encourage reading every novel in both the
True North and Brothers of Ink and Steel series
because the men are delicious bad boys and the women are sassy bad asses!
Dare Playlist
on Spotify
Prologue: “Face Down” The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus
Chapter One: “Savin’ Me” Nickelback & “We Own It” 2 Chainz with Wiz Khalifa
Chapter Two: “Glad You Came” The Wanted
Chapter Three: “Wonderwall” Oasis
Chapter Four: “Till I Collapse” Eminem
Chapter Five: “Contagious” Trapt
Chapter Six: “Down” Jason Walker
Chapter Seven: “Hysteria” Def Leppard
Chapter Eight: “Show Me What I’m Looking For” Carolina Liar
Chapter Nine: “Why Don’t You & I” Santana with Alex Band
Chapter Ten: “E.T.” Katy Perry
Chapter Eleven: “The Other Side” Jason Derulo
Chapter Twelve: “Stronger (What Doesn’t Kill You)” Kelly Clarkson
Chapter Thirteen: “The River” Good Charlotte with M. Shadows
Chapter Fourteen: “Can’t Help Falling in Love (Fools Rush In)” Michael Buble
Chapter Fifteen: “Survival” Eminem
Chapter Sixteen: “Beautiful Pain” Eminem
Chapter Seventeen: “The Fighter” Gym Class Heroes
Chapter Eighteen: “Strong Enough” Sheryl Crowe
Chapter Nineteen: “Are You with Me” Trapt
Chapter Twenty: “Empire” Shakira
Chapter Twenty-one: “You’re Going Down” Sick Puppies
Chapter Twenty-two: “Safe & Sound” Taylor Swift with The Civil Wars
Chapter Twenty-three: “Unpack Your Heart” Phillip Phillips
Dedication
For the girls and women who deserve better.
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Epilogue
About Allie Juliette
Prologue
Bella
Three years ago
I hear his car pull into the parking lot of my apartment building. I know it’s his car because of the angry, violent screech of the tires. My body begins to shake from an adrenaline spike as I race to the window to confirm it—I’ve been on high alert since I moved into my own place after Emma was born, two months ago.
The car is bathed in the glow of the streetlight, and I watch as his silhouette rises out of it—hulking, imposing. He leans into the back seat for a moment and pulls something out before he slams the driver’s door shut, making me jump. That all too familiar pounding of my heart kicks into high gear. Thank God Emma is sleeping.
Quickly, I dial 911 and position the phone into the crook of my shoulder to hold it against my ear. The operator answers.
I almost whisper in an attempt to keep Emma asleep and control my breathing, but the blood is rushing through my ears, making my heartbeat sound louder and louder.
“I’m at 511 Blue Grass Apartments and my husband, who has a restraining order against him, is coming up the stairs, and he has a weapon.”
The operator says something in an attempt to comfort me and begins peppering me with stupid questions that are just a waste of time, and even worse, a distraction. I reach into the kitchen drawer while grunting yeses and noes into the receiver until my fingers find the cold metal I’ve been looking for.
Holding the pistol carefully, I check the clip, load the chamber and remove the safety. Cupping my left palm under the hilt to steady my grip, I move soft-footedly toward the front door and peer out the peephole. He comes up the stairs noiselessly. Bile comes into my throat when I see that his right hand stays hidden behind his back while his left hand wraps around the doorknob as he tests the lock. The bolt holds fast.
Horror washes over me. He would have broken in if he could have. I swallow and try to force the image of what would have happened if that door hadn’t been locked and I hadn’t been ready out of my mind.
He swears under his breath before knocking on the door. “Hey, Bella, are you home? I need to talk to you.” His voice is sickeningly sweet.
His right arm is still tucked up behind his back, and I wonder what he’s hiding.
When I don’t answer, he knocks harder and repeats himself louder.
I bend at the knees and set the phone down on the carpet in front of the door. I’m waiting—for his next move, for my own courage, for the police to show up. He’s quiet for a moment. Slowly I come back up to look out the peephole again. In that moment he pounds on the door with the full force of his fist.
Startled, my breath hitches as I jump back and aim the pistol at the door.
I wonder if all of this would just end if I sent a bullet sailing into the dark grain of the wood. It’s not that thick of a door, so the bullet would go through. It would prove to him that I mean business. If I got lucky it would kill him.
Is there a law about self-defense and shooting your attacker through a door? Probably, but we both know he exists above the law.
“LET ME THE FUCK IN, BELLA!” he shouts.
When it was only me, he could make me quake and beg for mercy, but Emma has given me a new will, a new strength and a new sense of power I won’t let him strip me of. For the past year I’ve tried to protect myself from him and failed. I will protect her from him with my very life.
My index finger curls around the trigger. I feel the give of the weapon as I press my flesh against the crescent shaped steel. He shouts obscenities at me, every vile word he can think of. If the police won’t come for me, they’ll certainly come for my neighbors, who I’m sure have called them. Of course, not one will open their door to confront him, but I don’t really blame them. We live in low-income housing, and the other three apartments in the building are occupied by a disabled man and his family and single moms and their kids.
“Hey, what’s going on?” I hear a male voice ask.
> I freeze, the pistol still aimed. Who the hell is it?
“Nothing. Just trying to get my wife to open the door so I can see my kid!” he roars scathingly.
“Why do you have the butt end of a pool stick behind your back?” another man’s voice questions.
So that’s what he was hiding, the thick half of his pool stick. I shudder, realizing what it must have been intended for—beating me.
“How about you hand it to me, Jim? I don’t want any trouble.”
The man calls my husband by name. I bring the gun to my side and look out the peephole again. Three police officers have him surrounded and seem to be trying to talk him down. I know these officers—they’re Jim’s coworkers and friends.
“Let me talk to you for just a minute,” Jim says more softly, and I realize he’s slurring his words.
Two of the officers, one named Chris and another guy whose name I can’t remember, move away from the door with him, to talk by the stairs.
Arrest him! I breathe out, silently screaming.
A moment passes and Chris nods like he understands whatever Jim is saying, then knocks with an air of authority against my door.
I quietly step back into the kitchen, hide the pistol in the drawer and speak against the only barrier between Jim and myself and my daughter—the door.
“What do you want, Chris?” I’m incredulous. “Why isn’t he being hauled off in cuffs?”
“Bella, I need you to open the door,” Chris says semi-ordering.
“I can’t open that door,” I respond firmly.
“Bella, he only wants to see the baby,” Chris urges. “And we’re right here, so nothing’s going to happen. But he won’t leave until you let him make sure Emma is all right.”
“She’s fine,” I hiss through my teeth. “It’s after midnight, so she’s obviously sleeping.”
“We’re going to have a problem if you don’t open the door,” Chris warns. “I don’t want to have to get a warrant to search the premises.”
And there it is. They’ll side with him. Again. They’ll make up some bogus reason to get a search warrant and they’ll bring Jim in with them, restraining order be damned.
The anger rises volcanically within me as I let my fingers twist the locks and turn the knob. I throw open the door. Chris enters first, his blue police uniform betraying his true loyalties. Jim follows him and glares at me threateningly while the other uniformed officers bring up the rear.
“She’s sleeping,” I remind them.
Jim doesn’t care. He takes long strides into Emma’s room, escorted by his own parade. Officer Chris Blakely looks down at his shoes. I think he must have had a mother to teach him right from wrong, and he knows what he’s doing right now is not only wrong, but illegal.
“Just because he’s your friend doesn’t change what he’s doing,” I say, folding my arms over my chest furiously.
“He didn’t hurt you; he just wants to see the baby,” Chris deflects, picking his arrogance back up like a shield.
“You’re breaking the law! You know I have a restraining order against him,” I retort. “He doesn’t even have visitation rights—they were revoked!”
He winces a little. “We’ll make sure we escort him off the property as soon as he’s satisfied.”
“You’re kidding, right!?” I keep my voice down for Emma’s sake. “What do you think he was going to do with the butt end of his pool stick? Do you see a pool table in here?” My tone is sarcastic.
“He stated that you had the other half.”
“I don’t have anything!” I snap. I can see I’m not getting anywhere, so I try reasoning. “Do you know how he came up here? He tried to break in silently, working the door until he realized he couldn’t get through the bolt. He was going to beat the shit out of me—either that or kill me. How could you let him in?” I feel the heat of rage rise into my cheeks, reddening them. I pull my fingers through my hair and feel my hands shaking.
“He’s a good cop, Bella.”
“Right, and so are you,” I say cuttingly.
I watch my soon to be ex-husband walk back out into the living room. He makes himself at home and sits on my sofa, holding Emma’s sleeping form.
A cop I don’t know stands over him like a babysitter. Jim doesn’t even care; he knows he has the department wrapped around his finger. He grew up with these guys, went to school with these guys; they have history together. They’ve all been friends for years. In this town, I don’t stand a chance. It’s his town.
“Bella, you know he’s an ingrained part of our force. He had a little too much to drink, but he didn’t see it through,” Chris continues. “No harm, no foul.”
I want to spit on him. “Have you forgotten he pointed his shot gun at my head and threatened to kill me? Or that when I tried to leave him, he told me if I didn’t stay he’d make me a paraplegic?”
Shame passes over Chris’s features.
“Can I talk to you in the other room?” Lee, Chris’s partner asks me.
When I look back toward Emma and Jim, Chris assures, “I’ve got this. He’s not going anywhere with us here.”
Even though I don’t like it, I follow Lee into the nursery. He checks over his shoulder, and when he feels confident we’re alone, turns to me and quickly says, “Watch your back, Bella. He’s out for blood. He says the first chance he gets, he’s going to take the baby and run.”
I let my mouth form the word, “Kidnap?”
Lee nods his head. “He said he’d kill you if he has to, but he’s going to get Emma one way or the other.”
My breath rattles in my lungs. “Arrest him! I have a restraining order; he broke it tonight and confessed to you what he’s planning on doing next.”
Lee’s eyes trail away from mine to graze over the large, colorful alphabet I made that hangs on the wall in Emma’s nursery. “He plays golf with the police chief. And the judge you got to give you that order moved back to the city last month. None of the judges here now will hold him in contempt.”
I can’t believe what he’s saying. Is he actually saying I have no protection?
Lee catches my eyes. “He’s insulated here, Bella.”
“What am I supposed to do?” I whisper as the feeling of desperation wraps itself around my mind.
Chapter One
Josh
2005
All my shit is packed and ready to go for me, I think with sarcastic malice, seeing the two fucking suitcases at the bottom of the stairs, right by the door.
You’re welcome to get the fuck out.
I’m furious with my parents. “How could you do it? How could you send me away?”
“Because you’re in trouble, son … and it’s a kind of trouble even our love ain’t fixing. Cade is family and he deals with this kind of thing every day. He’ll be able to help you through this pain, Josh.”
Fuck my pain! Fuck Uncle Cade. “It looks like you’re giving up on me, that’s what it looks like! I’ve heard of the kids who get sent to those places—no parents, no families who care about them—they get dumped! Because their parents don’t want them anymore! And why would they, after they fucked up so bad they can’t be forgiven!” A tornado of fury tears me apart from the inside out.
My dad firmly holds my shoulders straight and makes me look at him. “Joshua Levi North, we are family. There is no stronger bond than that. We love you and want you more than our own lives, boy! This is temporary, so you don’t have to be surrounded with it every day—it’s here at home, at school, the arcade, the skateboard park, every street you walk on in this town— the memories are only making you angrier.” My dad’s eyes soften. “It wasn’t your fault, Josh.”
“I wasn’t there when he needed me! If I’d been there he would’ve talked to me, he would have let me know what happened. HE WOULDN’T HAVE DONE IT!” Rage I have no control over and can’t stop pours out of me. “IT WAS MY FAULT!”
My dad looks calm … and sad. I hate that I’m putting him throu
gh this, and my mom and everybody else in my family. It makes me hate myself more.
He doesn’t stop the discussion. “We all have our own choices in this life. He chose a direction—you had nothing to do with that decision, and you couldn’t have stopped it once he decided it.”
I don’t buy it. It’s too fucked up! He was my best friend. I could have stopped him. I could have changed it. I could have made it right! I could have reminded him what he meant to me …
“Fuck this shit!” I hate my dad for doing this to me. “I’ll just be like the bastard son you all don’t talk about.”
Dad grabs my chin in his big hand—it’s a strong hand, powerful, just like the man it’s attached to. I’m being a mouthy, sixteen-year-old asshole and I know it; this isn’t how I speak to my father.
But I’m not me anymore, am I? Isn’t that what this is all about after all?
“We love you, Josh,” he assures me.
It’s true, love radiates from his eyes. But I can’t feel it. It doesn’t touch me.
“But I’m trash now,” I say. “The kind you take out to the curb on a Sunday night and never see again.”
“Colt, maybe this isn’t the best idea.” My mom has been listening. She comes around the threshold and stands to the side between us. She’s looking at me—her face is tear-streaked, and her hand shakes next to her mouth.
I’m hurting my mom. I’m. Hurting. My. Mom! I might be sixteen years old and have already had a string of girlfriends, but I don’t love anyone as much as my mom. I’m hurting too many people. Me. I am. I don’t know how to stop!
And that brings out the son-of-a-bitch kid. “And what about the other kid, Dad?” I ask quietly. “Is there forgiveness for that, Dad? ’Cause I don’t think God forgives for that! That I did on purpose. I threw the punch, and I can’t go back and undo what I did.” I laugh and it’s maniacal. “I can’t even feel sorry about it! How fucked up is that? And don’t you lie to me! I hear people talking. I’m a big, ugly stain on the North name and reputation in this town … maybe that’s the real reason you want to get rid of me.”