Biker's Sin: Stole His Best Friend's EX!

2

Elijah Vega.

Would it be sin, a thing of covetousness to say I wanted Paloma the first day I laid eyes on her?

Maybe in her little moral rulebook, she would call it so. I think that’s the kind of woman she is—too soft, too principled in a world full of gangsters like me. I can tell by the way she looks at me, my tattoos, the irate pattern of my voice…that she is the type who would only dare look when she thinks I am not watching.

To Caden, she once said, “I don’t know why you’re his best friend. He’s a bad example.”

That was the first time she made me smile. She wasn’t wrong. I’m the kind of man she wouldn’t choose in a hundred lifetimes. I am Elijah Vega and I do not play by the rules, never have. I grew on the back of a bike, breathing in gasoline and gunpowder, knowing that respect isn’t given—it’s taken.

I come from a powerful family of mafias—no, a dynasty of it. A lineage of men who don’t just run businesses but the city. Mafia blood flows through my veins, as natural as breathing. Rossetti Falls is the city where money flows like the tide of a river, where power is both a currency and a weapon. It is the place for the biggest investments, the most impossible turnovers—this is where they happen.

Most business deals happen under tables, with a handshake or a bullet. Here, fortunes shift hands in the dark. Legal. Illegal. Everyone here is fighting for a bigger piece of the pie, and the only thing keeping it from turning into outright war is balance. Balance that men like me, a Skull rider can enforce.

The Don of Rosetti Falls is none other than my father. So, you must know that at the ripe of sixteen, while other boys clutched video game controllers, he put a gun in my hand. There was no stopping my father from shaping his sons into soldiers, no mercy in the way he hardened us like iron under fire. He trained us like militants, like war dogs bred for the front lines.

An insufferable bastard.

He put us through hell. It’s why I don’t sleep at the faintest sound. It’s why my body still carries scars from training wounds from bloody Iraq, where he sent us through military training.

By eighteen, Rosetti Falls was becoming harder to control by my father. Population was increasing, too many gangsters, too many mafias, too many shifting allegiances that police authorities had no control over. As the Don, my father couldn’t hold it alone anymore.

So I made my move.

I became the precedent. The surgeon force that would keep the mafias, the dons, and every other gang in this city in check. With a system I sketched out in the back of a damn notebook, I was able to gather at least a thousand people in the first month to become a part of what I call Skull riders—a necessary demographic to control the chaos. Sometimes, we are chaos yet we decide who rises and who burns.

And seven years later, at the age of twenty-seven, our numbers have quad-drippled.

“What the hell was that!?” Caden angrily stands in front of me with misplaced anger. So, I light a cigarette in his face.

I’m not a priest, I don’t do confessionals—but I also won’t stand by while he makes a damn spectacle of bullying her because he cannot control his ego.

“What’s going on between you two?” Alex, another friend finally shows up. He was supposed to meet us at the bar, but now, looking at Caden, I see why we’re really here. It wasn’t for a bourbon. This was about Paloma. Caden wanted to make sure she saw him, wanted to rub it in her face that she’s back to square one—right where he found her.

“Elijah is upset over nothing and even had the nerve to defend f*****g Paloma! Can you believe that?” Caden scoffs.

“Wait—Paloma’s in there?” Alex glances at the bar across the street. We crossed over to where our sport bikes are parked. “How long are you going to go after every damn job she gets?”

Is that what Caden has been doing?

I stare down at him and remove the cigarette from my lips. “It’s one thing for you to play your daft little games, but you don’t use me for them. You know better than that.”

“I brought you there because you intimidate her. That’s the whole point. You didn’t even have to speak!”

“You’re f*****g stupid. You must have been born with a bullet in your brain if you think you can use me like that.” I hook a leg over my bike to leave.

If I have nothing, check again, I have some arrogance left.

“For god’s sake, Elijah—don’t let her fool you with that innocent face. She deserves to be afraid. To be embarrassed. She divorced me after everything I did for her!”

“She divorced you because you cheated.” I blow smoke and it disperses right into his face. “Let’s not rewrite history just because your pride can’t take a hit. And if we’re being honest—it happened more than once. I’m no priest, but even I see the rot in that.”

I fasten my helmet over my head. I had a packed schedule, meetings lined up from here to the south docks, but Caden said it was important. Urgent. And what did I find? That he wanted to use the monster I apparently am—to make her flinch.

If he weren’t my cousin—if he weren’t blood and friend—what’s stopping me from putting a bullet in his head?

I start my Kawasaki Ninja. The engine roars like thunder and every eye on the street is caught up. I twist the handle off and rev out of the street as smoke leaves from both lips and nostrils.

In a few minutes, I hit a red light and I wait, fingers drumming the handle until I see Paloma.

She left the bar?

She is standing at the side walk like some broken ghost. Black, passionate hair is parted down the middle of her scalp, falling in perfect halves on either side of her porcelain face. Yes, Porcelain for her skin is an illusion of snow.

She’s not just soft. She must be the softest of God’s creations.

I turn my face away. It’s none of my business what’s going on between her and Caden. Usually, I yearn for things I can’t have until I get them. So even though when I first met her, she was a constant in my mind—it’s never been that deep with me.

I look at her again, just the last glance. Her lips are the color of crushed beets. Her cheek is round where it meets her jaw but when she’s upset? Oh, it goes sharp. The perfect resistance of two worlds.

But her eyes—big. Glacial blue. Doe-like, like they could swallow the sky.

She folds her hands and starts crossing the street, right when the light turns green. It’s obvious she’s dazed in sorrow…so dazed that she does not realize all the vehicles are coming at her, horns blaring at her.

Then a car near me inches dangerously close, and I see the split-second where her life flashes before her eyes. She stumbles and falls to the ground when it screeches to hit her but stops. When she doesn’t get up immediately, the driver’s hand curls back onto the wheel, ready to keep going.

I rev my bike to his side and pull out a pistol from the waistband of my pants. I point it right at the driver’s face and his hands flies up, leaving the damn wheels.

“Get up.” I say to her.

She looks up at me, eyes wide, as she scoots away. Maybe it’s the gun in my hand. Maybe it’s me. Or maybe it’s both.

“Get up or you’ll be crushed!” I repeat myself and it comes out wicked as coal.

She hesitates yet starts to get up and I look down to see why. The slit in her dress has torn higher, exposing her milk-pale lap that is marred by a fresh bruise from her fall. When she finally stands, she quickly grabs her bag and pulls it against her legs.

I should walk away. I do walk away, back to my bike, leaving her stranded on that curb.

The cars start moving again as soon as I’ve set her on her feet. I see her look left and right, trying to cross at the middle of blaring cars but no one is stopping.

The road is so busy, she’s trying to keep her torn skirt from spewing apart. If she wanted to take a taxi, she would’ve done so before even attempting to cross this damn road. It’s a few miles before the next bus, and if she doesn’t a ride, she’ll end up walking with that shredded skirt.

I fire up my engine and begin to drive past when I hear her voice.

“Please... can you... can you give me a ride?”

I take off my helmet and pass it to her. That means I said yes. She collects it and after some seconds, I feel her hand on my shoulder as she pulls herself up and sits.

“At Blackstone Estate.” she murmurs.

Is that a coincidence? I’m headed that way.

When I start the bike, she wasn’t expecting the power of the engine. So, her hands—timid—trying not to touch the scary monster digs into the spandex of my shirt. For the first time in my life, I’m not driving like a savage. I try to be meticulous so she doesn’t come flying off.

Security doesn’t stop us as we enter the estate because they recognize me. As I wind down the black asphalt private road of the estate, it stretches for miles with great trees and imported blossoms.

I take the curves slow. Security cameras pivot as we pass. Sprinklers hiss from somewhere in the background and then—finally—I can see the estate, cresting like a hill before we reach the iron gates.

As I slow, her body moulds against my back and like any man with blood in his veins, I feel her femininity do the same. She slides off, only to stand in front of me, mumbling a thank you. But mercy, my eyes find a way to glance at her chest. Perfect. Not just round, but full—the kind that would make a man’s hand rich if he dared to squeeze.

What the hell am I doing? As if I haven’t felt the touch of a woman before.

I fold my arms on my bike. “Are you sure this is the address?”

“Why would you think it’s not?” she squints, fixing her hand on her forehead against the sun. “Because a poor girl like me has no business in such a place?” She jumps ahead of herself.

“No, because—”

“You’re one powerful person in this city, yet somehow, you and Caden have the time to dictate what I do with my life.”

“Miss girl, I do not like to be accused of things I play no part in.” I keep my voice gracious but I know there’s no reducing whatever I do. It will always be maximized for what I’m known for.

“Of course—”

“I’m not Caden. You will not speak back to me.”

There goes my nerves but at least it brings her lips to a stop. She frowns.

“Regardless, the reason I ask is because this is my house.”

Her face completely pales when I say this. Wait a minute… is she here for the domestic vacancy my mother put out?