Unstable: An Unacceptables MC Standalone Read online

  Unstable

  An Unacceptables MC Standalone

  Kristen Hope Mazzola

  Copyright

  Unstable

  Copyright © 2018 Kristen Hope Mazzola

  Published by Kristen Hope Mazzola

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, including electronic or mechanical, without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.

  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.

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return it to the seller and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.

  Published: Kristen Hope Mazzola 2016

  Cover Design: Kristen Hope Mazzola

  Formatting by: Kristen Hope Mazzola

  Editing by: C. Marie [email protected]

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Note from the Author

  Unacceptables MC Logo

  The Unacceptables Bar and Pool Hall Logo

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Did you enjoy what you just read?

  Want more of the Unacceptables?

  The Unacceptables Series Box Set

  About the Author

  All books by Kristen Hope Mazzola

  Unspeakable

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Note from the Author

  Thank you so much for picking up a copy of Unstable. I appreciate the time you spend allowing me to entertain you through my books. I genuinely hope you enjoy this story! If you do, please consider leaving a review! Reviews help authors!

  Please note: This is meant for audiences that are 18+ for sexual situations, language, and adult content.

  This story is not for the faint of heart! But if gore, violence, and extreme sexual situations are your cup of tea, this is the read for you.

  Also, Unstable is a fast-paced, action thriller full of suspense. This is NOT a romance novel.

  Unacceptables MC Logo

  The Unacceptables Bar and Pool Hall Logo

  An outlaw’s code:

  Never say die and never give up.

  Whether in a fight, debate, or curve too tight,

  No matter how bad it gets, an outlaw never shows weakness and never gives up.

  The Unacceptables motto:

  Fear none. Respect few.

  Chapter 1

  I’d never had that feeling before.

  Never had I felt the sting of bloodlust, the twinge of an overwhelming need for vengeance that plagued me.

  Never until the moment, when I was fifteen and I walked into my home to find my mother’s lifeless body sprawled out on the living room floor. She was laying there motionless with a needle hanging out of her vein, blood trickling out of her nose and vomit filling her mouth.

  My body went completely numb.

  My knees buckled.

  My throat went dry.

  My heart pounded in my ears.

  I collapsed next to her.

  My life had stopped.

  I was in utter disbelief. She had been clean—for months.

  She had finally started to turn her life around.

  Then with one fucking dose, she was gone, ripped from this world and I didn’t even get a chance to say goodbye.

  The scream of heartbreak broke free from my chest like a hellhound leaping from the gates of Hades.

  I clambered to her side, pulling her into my lap.

  There was no pulse.

  She was already cold.

  I shook her limp body.

  I didn’t know what else to do.

  I downright panicked, utterly unnerved.

  Right there, for the first time in my life, I knew what it felt like to be unreservedly helpless and absolutely alone.

  Scrambling into the kitchen, I tore the phone off of its cradle and dialed the only number I could think of. The police should have been my first instinct, but that was not where my teenaged brain went.

  I called Abel.

  He’ll know what to do.

  And if Abel didn’t, his old man would.

  Abel’s mother, Sherry, was the one to answer. I did my best to keep my voice level, swallowing my nerves as much as humanly possible.

  “Hi, Mrs. Hellock. It’s Holt. Is Abel home?”

  “Oh, hi, sweetheart. He’s out in the garage tinkering with his bike. Let me go get him for you.” Her singsong voice shot daggers into my ear. She was an old lady; maybe I should have just told her something was wrong. She was used to turning a blind eye to the things her husband and the rest of the members of his club did. She probably would have snapped right into action. I just didn’t have it in me to bring her into this mess.

  “Th-Thanks,” I stammered as my entire body trembled.

  It was the longest wait of my life—a few seconds felt like a million years. Shuddering in the kitchen, internally freaking the fuck out, I damned the fact that Sherry had been the one to answer my fucking call.

  “Hey man, what’s going on?” Abel asked coolly into the phone.

  “Shit, dude—I need you to get over here right now!” I was yelling at the top of my lungs—my throat shredding as the words leapt from deep within me.

  “Is everything all right?” He was still too calm for how much I wasn’t.

  “No. Nothing is all right. Get the fuck over here and bring your damn father. I need fucking help.”

  I sucked in a few sharp breaths before

  slamming the receiver down and sinking to the floor. Staring at my mother in the other room, I curled up in a ball like a damn foolish coward.

  It felt like a lifetime before Abel and Odin came busting in the front door.

  “What the hell?” Odin’s broad, menacing frame stood in the middle of the small room, staring over at me.

  “I just found her like this,” I mumbled, my voice cracking in the back of my throat. “I didn’t know who else to call.”

  Abel pulled me to my feet, pushing me against the wall. “Get a grip.” His eyes bored into mine as he slammed my shoulders harder than necessary.

  Without warning, I burst into uncontrollable sobs.

  What a fucking bitch move.

  “My mom is fucking dead,” I howled into his face. “She’s gone! How the fuck am I supposed to get a goddamned grip?”

  My best friend looked down at me as his face softened. “Yeah, man. It’s fucking awful to say the least, and we need to deal with it. Either sit in the corner and be a pussy about this or grow a pair, call the cops, and let us help you.”

  Odin put a hand on his son’s shoulder before turning to me. “Do you know who her dealer was?”

  I nodded, refusing to make eye contact or tell him who it was. I knew what he was capable of and if anyone was going to make Marcus pay for my mother’s death, it wasn’t going to be anyone but me.

  “Kid, we’re going to handle this, but you’re going to have to help us. Can you handle that?”


  I nodded again before muttering, “Yeah. I think so.”

  Odin’s hardened glare shot from Abel to me before he picked up the phone, dialed, and was barking out orders to his number two within seconds. “Rave, I need you at 390 Walnut Street. Hurry, and come alone. Don’t tell anyone where you’re going.”

  Being the president of the Unacceptables Motorcycle Club had its many perks. Being the best friend of his son had them too.

  It only took minutes for us to hear a roaring bike pull up out front of the small house. Without even knocking, Rave came onto the scene like an archangel in a leather cut: boots stomping, gun drawn, ax in its sheath strapped to his back. I didn’t know why they called him to butcher until that moment. He was ready for a fight, not for what he walked into.

  “Holy shit,” he muttered, holstering his weapon before running a hand over his grizzled jaw. “Cops?”

  Odin picked up the phone again. “Yeah.” After he made the 9-1-1 call, Odin sank onto the couch. “Now, when they get here, just be honest. You found her like this, got overly flustered, called us, and we came to help you out—nothing to worry about. If you tell the truth, there’s nothing to remember when they start in with the standard third degree.”

  I stood by the open front door, waiting for the blaring sirens to arrive. Everything was never going to be all right ever again and standing there in silence, it sank in hard.

  How is this happening?

  This can’t be real life.

  This has to be a nightmare.

  What am I supposed to do now?

  My mom was my entire world. It had been just the two of us as long as I could remember. It wasn’t until the year before when I met Abel that my family started to grow. I never really had any friends. I was a total cliché outcast—bullied and pushed around until a senior with a chip on his shoulder and a scary old man ducked into my corner and started sticking up for me. I relied on Abel too much and there was I asking more of him than any friend should ever have to.

  After the cops took statements and processed the scene, the coroner came in with a body bag, and my brain snapped. Focus lost, all fucks flew out the window, I saw red.

  Rave and Odin had to deal with some business back at their garage, leaving Abel and me in the empty house, just staring at the ceiling, silent. I didn’t want them to leave, but there was nothing more they—or anyone—could really do for me at that point. It was done. My mother was gone. Nothing was going to change that.

  Finally, Abel broke the silence. “You should come stay at our place for a while, at least until we figure out what’s going to happen. You’re a minor—CPS isn’t going to let you live here alone.”

  “Yeah, okay. There’s just something I have to do first.” I grabbed my leather jacket from its hook and made my way out of the front door.

  I knew Abel could see it all over my face, and he didn’t stop me. He just followed me out into the front yard.

  “Where are we going, Holt?” Abel asked, getting onto the hand-me-down Chief his dad had been helping him restore since he got his license.

  “I think I need to do this one alone. It’ll be better that way. You’ve already done too much for me.” I stood next to his booming bike, arms crossed, feet firmly planted.

  He patted the back seat. “Not a fucking chance in hell am I going to let you out of my sight right now. Whatever you’ve got in that damn head of yours, you’re not going to do it alone. Now get on before I knock you out, drag you back to my place, and chain you up in the garage for safekeeping.”

  I knew he wasn’t joking. Abel would do whatever he thought he had to to keep me from making a huge mistake unaccompanied. He was a ride-and-die type of friend—not that ride-or-die bullshit people told themselves.

  Reluctantly, I gave in. We were losing daylight and he wasn’t going to back down. Sitting bitch on his bike, I gave him the directions.

  “That’s the house.” I pointed up the street. “That’s where my mom’s dealer lives.”

  We watched from down the block as the scumbag who had sold my mother her last bag of dope fucked around in his garage. He looked so much smaller than I had remembered.

  “Stay here,” I barked, climbing off the back of Abel’s bike.

  To my surprise, Abel let me go in solo.

  I didn’t have a plan. I just knew an ass-beating was in that fuckface’s extremely near future.

  What have I done?

  Staring at my blood-covered hands, still gripping the wooden handle of a now broken ball-peen hammer, I stood in the wake of my mayhem in disbelief.

  Flashes of the fight assaulted me over and over: how I snuck up behind Marcus with a two-by-four that had stupidly been left on the side of his house…how I didn’t even give him a chance to defend himself before I let the wood connect with the back of his head…how the dull, rounded head of the hammer I grabbed from his workbench cracked right into the guy’s temple as blood sprayed everywhere, bits of skull and brain matter erupting out of the side of his head.

  A life for a life. I kept repeating the mantra in rapid fire in my head as I fell to my knees next to the body of the man that I had just killed.

  In one day, I had become an orphan and a murder—two things I never would have dreamed were possible.

  “Holton! Fuck, man! Get up! Holt!” Abel was shaking me, blood transferring onto him as he tried to get me to snap back to reality. “We have to go—now!”

  Chapter 2

  Decades later

  My cell blared on my nightstand, waking me up at what felt like the ass crack of dawn even though it was nearly one in the afternoon. Working the late shift at the bar had started to really fuck up my sleep schedule and it had been taking a nasty toll on my body.

  “Yeah?” I answered before hacking up a lung.

  “Holt? It’s Sherriff Kelley. I think you need to come on down to the hospital. Rave’s been in an accident and I can’t get Abel or Crickett on the phone.”

  “On my way.” I barked before hanging up and throwing the phone onto my bed.

  I got dressed as fast as possible and was at the hospital within minutes, but I was too late. They had lost Rave. My heart broke into a million pieces. Rave had helped raise me, helped me when I hit rock bottom and brought me back to life more times than I could count.

  I tried Abel and Crickett a few times each, but neither of them answered. They didn’t even answer the bar’s phone.

  Fuck.

  I paced around the waiting area.

  I knew I couldn’t call any of our other members. Abel and Crickett needed to know first. The death of a president needed to be handled very carefully.

  Right as I was about to leave and drive to the bar where I knew Crickett was working the day shift, Raine was calling. I hesitated—Raine was Abel’s teenaged daughter. It wasn’t the way I should have handled it, but I did it anyway.

  I answered just before the call went to voicemail. “Raine?”

  “Hey, Holt. I am about to drop Collin off at your place. Dad said you’d be able to bring him to the bar when you went in for your shift, and it would really help me out. If I’m late for this study group again, they’re going to kill me.” Her voice was so sugary and innocent.

  “Sweetheart, I think you’re going to be missing that group today,” I admitted without thinking it through.

  “What’s wrong?” Raine was a smart girl; she would have known something was going on even if I had rushed to my place to meet her and lied through my teeth straight to her face.

  “Rave was in an accident and your folks aren’t answering their phones. I need you to head to the bar and tell Crickett to get down here. Can you do that for me?” I did my best to keep my tone upbeat and calm.

  “I-is ha-he…?” she stuttered before trailing off.

  The crack in her voice broke my heart. I didn’t want to lie to her. She was like a daughter to me, and she was going to find out about her grandfather sooner than later no matter what I did to try to shield her from it
all.

  “Oh my god!” she shrilled, knowing what my silence truly meant.

  “Raine, honey, I need you to get to your mom and dad and have them meet me at the hospital. Can you do that?” My voice was low and composed.

  I heard her sniffle a few times before answering, “Yes, of course. We’ll be there soon.”

  Raine ran through the front doors right into my arms with her parents and little brother following close behind her.

  “I am so sorry, Abel.” My voice shook as I hugged Raine back with one arm and put my hand on my best friend’s shoulder with the other. I had helped Abel raise Raine until Crickett came into their lives; she was more than a friend, more than a niece, she was like a daughter to me, and all I wanted to do was comfort her and the rest of the family as much as possible.

  “What happened?” Crickett cried as she gripped her husband’s and son’s hands as her body shook and all of the color drained from her face.

  “He was run off the road. There was no way he was going to make it through that even if he had laid his bike down,” I explained.

  “Do we know who did it?” Abel gripped his stepfather’s cut in his right hand, running his thumb over the patch that read President.

  “Not yet. But don’t you worry, we’re going to take care of it.” I didn’t know if I was making empty promises, I just didn’t know what else to say.

  Abel took a in a harsh, deep breath. “We need to have a meeting, now. Crickett, take the kids home. I need to take care of this.”