Benelli's Elle: Unfortunate Souls MC Book One Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  About the Authors

  CHAPTER ONE Elle

  CHAPTER TWO Elle

  CHAPTER THREE Benelli Vice President

  CHAPTER FOUR Elle

  CHAPTER FIVE Benelli

  CHAPTER SIX Michelle

  CHAPTER SEVEN Elle

  CHAPTER EIGHT Elle

  CHAPTER NINE Colt

  CHAPTER TEN Benelli

  CHAPTER ELEVEN Elle

  CHAPTER TWELVE Ruger

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN Elle

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN Benelli

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN Elle

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN Elle

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN Benelli

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN Elle

  CHAPTER NINETEEN Benelli

  CHAPTER TWENTY Benelli

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE Elle

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO Benelli

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE Elle

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR Elle

  10 Years Later

  25 Years Later

  Benelli’s

  Elle

  Unfortunate Souls MC

  Book One

  By Debbie Mitchell

  & Leslie Staffey

  Benelli’s Elle (Unfortunate Souls MC Book One)

  By Debbie Mitchell & Leslie Staffey

  Copyright ©2020 by Debbie Mitchell

  All rights reserved.

  No part of the publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted

  in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic

  or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission

  of the authors, except in the cast of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews

  and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents

  are either the product of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner.

  Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  All references to brands, song titles, artists, movies, characters,

  and actors made in this book are the property of their sole copyright owners.

  WARNING

  This book contains possible triggers, including rape, trafficking and killing. There is also sexual content.

  Cover Design: Sweet Fifteen Designs

  Bike on Cover supplied by Black Diamond Harley Davidson

  Models: Matt Milligan and Jamie Goetz

  ISBN:9798582415190

  Dedications

  I would like to give Black Diamond Harley Davidson a huge shout out for allowing us to use your space for the cover shoot and letting us use that beautiful machine! The support you have given two unknown authors will never be forgotten! John Quigley and the rest of your staff were so helpful.

  Oh, our dear sweet KC, we cannot thank you enough for all that you have done. You’ve taught us Scrivener, hours of video chats helping format and compile, how to do POV’s, our cheerleader, we could go on and on. Without a canceled book signing, we may have never met. Who would have thought a trip to New Orleans would give us one of our dearest and best of friends, from Canada to boot.

  Some of the authors we need to thank for all their help, advice, & support: Darlene Tallman, Liberty Parker, MariaLisa Demora, Dove Cavanaugh King, Christine Michelle, Jessica Coulter Smith, B.b. Blaque, Teagan Brooks and Avelyn Page. You amazing authors who took us newbies under your wing, for that, we thank you.We can’t forget our facebook friend Fabiola Cadet-Destil.

  We would like to thank the Beta Readers that sent us feedback, Karen Laurent, Becky Jean, Brandy Goodman, Brea Cagle Trundle, Sha Dagley, Shannon Heighton Hicks, Mary Jo Porter, Melissa Burke, Melissa Kristy and Trish Kranawetter.

  (Debbie) I need to thank my kids, Randy, Jamie, and Lanie and my grandson. You believed in me and never questioned if your mom could write. Thank you Jamie, for the photo shoots, twist your arm, right? Thank you, Lanie for letting mom spend countless hours writing without disturbance. Thank you to Brenda and Joe, my sister and brother for believing in me and Brenda, anytime I needed you, you were there. Now, get to writing that mystery, you’ve got this!!! Mom, thanks for being you. I love you all so much.

  I want to thank my dear friends Thad Bailey, Karen Laurent, Mark Reeves and Crystal Lipe who were some of the first people I told and without question believed in me and were excited for me. I want to thank Debbie and James Clover for their advice. I also wants to thank coworkers, Blake and Sara for their support. I would like to thank Matt Milligan, a RN, who answered my Ambien induced message of posing for the cover of our book and saying he’d love to. You have been such a good sport about photo shoots and posing.

  (Leslie) Thank you Sam, for always standing by my side, cheering me on and loving me. You will never know how much that means to me! Love you more, my Superman.

  To Jaclyn and James, and Jessica, thank you for always being there for me, for encouraging me to write a book and for just loving your momma, you don’t know how proud I am of you, love you always. To my Natalia, Nolan and Nathan for giving me absolute joy of seeing your faces, and those faces you make, lol. Mimi loves you. I want to thank you Laura for being my person. You have always been in my corner. Love ya, L. Marty, our awesome Marty, thanks for always listening to me talk about the book and always being there to bounce ideas off of.

  Thank you to each and every person that we haven’t mentioned but asked how our book was going, it meant a lot.

  About the Authors

  Debbie and Leslie grew up going to the same high school. They later began working together and that’s when the real fun started. When Leslie transferred, the two lost touch but one day Leslie called Debbie up and invited her to an Indie Author Event in Indianapolis. She brought Debbie into a world she didn’t know existed. The world of binge reading, MC romance, and fun. From there the two dove headfirst into this world and even took a road trip to New Orleans, that is where the two decided to start co-writing an MC series. Writing has become a new passion and this is the first of the Unfortunate Soul series.

  For anyone out there that has a dream, no matter how crazy it may seem to you…go for it, you won’t regret it.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Elle

  Staring at myself in the intricate oak mirror, curling my long, dark reddish-brown hair into spirals, I didn’t know how dramatically my life was about to change. Looking at the vibrant teal-blue eyes in the mirror, then at the photograph of my father, they are the same. The dad I’ve never known. I look down at the old, worn picture of my mom and dad when they were young, and I smile. Mom was only 18 then. She has come so far in life and it fills me with pride, and she’s made a glorious life for the two of us. She sent me to college to follow my dreams where I studied business management and photography. The business classes were mom’s idea, but she was definitely right because I learned so much about owning my own business. I made a promise to her that I wouldn’t look for him until graduation and today is that day. I wanted to go when I graduated high school, but life got in the way. Something horrible happened to my friend Zen, and there is no way I wouldn’t drop everything to help her. This is the right time now, and I’m going to find my father. I came outside with two bags, set them down, and I popped the trunk up on my red VW Beetle convertible.

  “Elle, I just don’t understand why it has to be the second you graduate,” mom pleaded following me to my car. “Can’t you spend a little of summer with your momma
before you go out and search for your dad, move out, grow up?” my mom, Michelle, says as she is getting teary-eyed.

  “Mom, you know I’ve been wanting to do this ever since you told me about him. It will be fine,” I stated. “I just don’t get why you never told him about us. Maybe things could have been different.”

  “Baby girl, we’ve had a great life, right? I mean, no there wasn’t a man in it but we did okay. I was so young, and you know your grandparents would have never accepted me being with a biker. That’s if Johnny would have even accepted me and being pregnant. I didn’t find out I was pregnant until I was back home for a month. It was a fling, and that’s all it was. A foolish fall romance that gave me the most beautiful, smart, mostly well-behaved girl I could have ever hoped for. I’ll never regret having you,” she gently spoke the last as she cupped my face in her hands and kissed my cheeks. “I love you, my baby girl.”

  “I love you too mom, and you know I think you are amazing, it’s just that you’ve never married and maybe he never found the one either,” I say hugging my mom back tightly. She really was the greatest mom, and to raise me on her own was something, even picturing me doing that now seemed crazy. Sure, she dated sometimes, and a couple even proposed, but she always turned them down. I honestly don’t think anyone turned her into goo like my father. They took a lot of pictures that fall because sometimes when she thought I was in bed I’d sneak out of my room and see her sipping a glass of wine and looking at an old photo album. She didn’t hide it from me. When I was little and asked about having a dad, she pulled it out and showed me the pictures of my father, the club, the other club members and some of their kids and pictures of her friend Izzy who she went to visit back then. She even took one out of the album and gave it to me, and I’ve had it on my mirror ever since. They were sitting, him behind her and their legs stretched out and his arms wrapped around her. You can tell how in love they were.

  We let go of each other and I gave her a kiss and went back inside and continued going back and forth to grab stuff loading my small trunk like never coming back was the goal. My plan was the couple months like mom had and genuinely believing everything would go great.

  Michelle

  Watching my daughter gather her things, I started drifting off into my own memories of my first trip alone. It was fall; the leaves were changing. I was going to visit my friend Izzy for a couple months after high school and summer vacation. Not seeing her in years, she suggested me being there in October because the nearby town went all out with festivals, haunted houses and all things witchy near Halloween, so we decided all of September and October would be good. I had decided to travel the first year before starting college, and my plan was talking Izzy into going with me. My family sent me to Europe during the summer thinking if I traveled all summer studying art, I would not take the year off to “find myself.” Well, that was my plan anyway.

  Two weeks after being in New Freedom, IL, we ran into each other. The most handsome man I had ever seen. I was walking down the sidewalk with my friend, eating ice cream and jabbering as young girls do, and ran smack dab into him. Smashing the cone right between my Prince T-shirt and his cut, I didn’t know that’s what they called it at the time. Seeing his cut initially frightened me, but he just looked into my hazel eyes and stared. I was stammering around frantically trying to wipe it off and apologize. He just chuckled and took my ice cream drenched fingers and licked them clean. That’s all it took.

  We were inseparable from that moment on. The next six weeks you wouldn’t see one of us without the other. Him with his dreamy rocker look about him, except with more muscles of course. Damn those arms, those eyes. Yep, I was a goner. I still spent some time with Izzy, and she got to know some of the club members as well. Remembering she had a crush on one of them, but not remembering his name.

  He had been out of the army a couple years and started a motorcycle club with some of his army buddies, Ruger, Winchester, and several others. I really enjoyed my time with them, and they were nothing like what my parents had me believe bikers were like. There was Ruger and Malibu Barbie and their two young boys Matteo and Dante, and there was his brother Winchester and his wife Tequila Sheila and their son Luca. Sheila was a hoot. She was about 6 years older than me with wild blonde hair, big boobs, and an even bigger personality. They were all older than me, but they welcomed me with open arms even though I was just a teenager.

  I remembered that last day before I left for home. The club had a Halloween party, and us ladies had talked the men into dressing up in costumes. I went as Diane Lane/Cherry in the Outsiders. It was easy because people always said I looked like her. The guys all dressed in hair band attire, Reaper as Jon Bon Jovi, Ruger as Eddie Van Halen, Tank was Sammy Hagar and Winchester as David Lee Roth. I laugh out loud thinking about how Sheila talked him into bleaching his hair for the part. Of course, it was dyed back to almost black the next morning when I said my goodbyes. After the party he took me to the banks of the Mississippi River where he laid down a big blanket and we made sweet love in the light of the full moon but that thought quickly subsides when I remember Cuda being dressed like Angus Young from AC/DC. I am outside in my driveway laughing like a lunatic when my daughter slams the trunk and jolts me out of my thoughts.

  “What on Earth are you laughing at?” Elle asks, looking all around.

  “I was just thinking of the Halloween party at the clubhouse the night before I left. One of the guys was dressed like Angus Young,” and I bust out laughing again.

  “Who?” she asks, and I shake my head.

  “Please tell me I raised you right, Angus Young, you know, the guy in AC/DC in the schoolboy shorts and tie?” I plead that she knows this, or I’ve seriously lacked in parenting all these years.

  “You Shook Me All Night Long?” she asks with her head cocked like a little cocker spaniel pup.

  “YES! I have NOT failed as parent!” I say excitedly, bringing my elbow down as I raise my knee.

  “Mom, you are cracking me up,” Elle says, laughing with me and tossing her purse in the passenger seat.

  Elle

  “I’m all locked and loaded” I say as I sway anxiously from foot to foot, dreading saying goodbye to my mom. I’m kind of nervous about leaving her, but excited. She’s had to be two parents, and she rocked at both. She taught me strength, courage, and gave me so much love. My mom is beautiful inside and out. I look at my mom with her curves and shiny, light brown hair glistening in the sun. She could have had the pick of any man around. Many men tried to date her, but she wouldn’t give most the time of day. Now that I’m older, I know what she meant. Some men are only after one thing and aren’t worth it. If you aren’t going to get to know me, I’m certainly not going to jump in bed with you. I’m fairly certain with Mom’s looks, she encountered the same problems.

  “You be careful! Call me 3 times a day and let me know where you are,” mom says.

  “And don’t pick up hitchhikers and don’t take candy from strangers” I laugh and tell her, “I know mom, I’ll be fine.” I give mom one last hug before I hop in the car, start the GPS, crank up the radio and leave Cottonwood, Arizona to find my dad. It’s a small little town about 30 minutes from Sedona. I’ve lived here all my life. Mom moved here shortly before I was born, and she started her art studio. She fell in love with Mingus Mountain, Slide Rock, and our favorite burger place in Jerome, Haunted Hamburger. Mom asked me to stop by her art shop in Sedona to drop off a couple pieces for her. I love these red mountains and the vibe in Sedona. It’s became a real art mecca over the years and mom got in on the ground floor.

  I whip into the parking lot and Christopher, her assistant, comes out to meet me. “Your mom said you were on your way, let me help you carry that in,” he says about the heavy sculpture that rode shotgun with me from the house. I unbuckle the seat belt around it as he opens the passenger door. “Dang, this sucker is heavy! Be a love and grab the dolly for me.”

  I run inside and grab it and push i
t out to the car. “Mom said she’s already got a buyer for this one,” I say.

  “Yes, this one is commissioned by that fancy lawyer in Phoenix,” he says.

  “Oh God, please don’t tell me it’s the one she’s about to dump!” I say.

  “The very same. You know your mom, no one will give her the butterflies like…” he says, but I finish him.

  “Like my dad. I know. I think she just needs to give up on trying to find someone that does that and just find a decent guy,” I say, “I’ve never felt butterflies for anyone in my life so I think she’s just stuck in the past. I’m going to meet him, ya know?”

  “Your mom told me. She’s so nervous. Part of her wanted to go with you, did you know that?” he asks as he gently lifts and sets the sculpture down with my help.

  “No, I didn’t. Maybe I should have asked her to go,” I say hesitantly, feeling bad for not thinking of it myself.

  “Do not do that! You need to have an adventure on your own. Your mom knows that and that’s why she didn’t say anything,” he says, “besides, she’s afraid if she sees him again, she really won’t be able to let go and move on.”

  I snort, “Yeah, like THAT’S ever going to happen!”

  Christopher laughs with me, “I know right, I really liked that Bill guy from a few years ago. He proposed, and she broke it off.”

  “Yeah, he was pretty cool. We got along great, but she gets melancholy in October. All I can say is he must have been one hell of a man to be that hooked. That’s another reason I want to meet him so bad. I mean, how could you love someone that much and not just try to be together? Did he search for us? I mean mom, since he doesn’t know about me. Won’t that just blow his mind,” I try to shake off how me introducing myself is going to go as we walk into the studio. I haven’t quite figured out how I’m going to do it. All these years dreaming about meeting him and I haven’t planned the perfect introduction.