Shakedown Read online

  Table of Contents

  Shakedown

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Other titles by Lani Lynn Vale

  Blurb

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Epilogue

  Always Someone's Monster

  Text copyright ©2021 Lani Lynn Vale®

  All Rights Reserved

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  To everyone that begged for Bruno’s story.

  Acknowledgments

  Golden Czermak - Photographer

  My Brother’s Editor & Ink It Out Editing- My editors

  Cover Me Darling - Cover Artist

  My mom - Thank you for reading this book eight million, two hundred and thirty-seven times.

  Kendra, Lisa, Laura, Penney, Brandi, Jen, Kathy, Mindy, Barbara & Amanda—I don’t know what I would do without y’all. Thank you, my lovely betas, for loving my books as much as I do.

  Other titles by Lani Lynn Vale

  The Freebirds

  Boomtown

  Highway Don’t Care

  Another One Bites the Dust

  Last Day of My Life

  Texas Tornado

  I Don’t Dance

  The Heroes of The Dixie Wardens MC

  Lights To My Siren

  Halligan To My Axe

  Kevlar To My Vest

  Keys To My Cuffs

  Life To My Flight

  Charge To My Line

  Counter To My Intelligence

  Right To My Wrong

  Code 11- KPD SWAT

  Center Mass

  Double Tap

  Bang Switch

  Execution Style

  Charlie Foxtrot

  Kill Shot

  Coup De Grace

  The Uncertain Saints

  Whiskey Neat

  Jack & Coke

  Vodka On The Rocks

  Bad Apple

  Dirty Mother

  Rusty Nail

  The Kilgore Fire Series

  Shock Advised

  Flash Point

  Oxygen Deprived

  Controlled Burn

  Put Out

  I Like Big Dragons Series

  I Like Big Dragons and I Cannot Lie

  Dragons Need Love, Too

  Oh, My Dragon

  The Dixie Warden Rejects

  Beard Mode

  Fear the Beard

  Son of a Beard

  I’m Only Here for the Beard

  The Beard Made Me Do It

  Beard Up

  For the Love of Beard

  Law & Beard

  There’s No Crying in Baseball

  Pitch Please

  Quit Your Pitchin’

  Listen, Pitch

  The Hail Raisers

  Hail No

  Go to Hail

  Burn in Hail

  What the Hail

  The Hail You Say

  Hail Mary

  The Simple Man Series

  Kinda Don’t Care

  Maybe Don’t Wanna

  Get You Some

  Ain’t Doin’ It

  Too Bad So Sad

  Bear Bottom Guardians MC

  Mess Me Up

  Talkin’ Trash

  How About No

  My Bad

  One Chance, Fancy

  It Happens

  Keep It Classy

  Snitches Get Stitches

  F-Bomb

  The Southern Gentleman Series

  Hissy Fit

  Lord Have Mercy

  KPD Motorcycle Patrol

  Hide Your Crazy

  It Wasn’t Me

  I’d Rather Not

  Make Me

  Sinners are Winners

  If You Say So

  SWAT 2.0

  Just Kidding

  Fries Before Guys

  Maybe Swearing Will Help

  Ask Me If I Care

  May Contain Wine

  Joke’s on You

  Join the Club

  Any Day Now

  Say it Ain’t So

  Officially Over It

  Nobody Knows

  Depends Who’s Asking

  Valentine Boys

  Herd That

  Crazy Heifer

  Chute Yeah

  Get Bucked

  Souls Chapel Revenants

  Repeat Offender

  Conjugal Visits

  Jailbait

  Doin’ A Dime

  Kitty, Kitty

  Gen Pop

  Inmate of the Month

  Shakedown

  Battle Crows MC

  Always Someone’s Monster

  Make Me Your Villian

  Rattle Some Cages

  Not a Role Model

  Get Tragic

  Strange & Unusual

  Never Trust the Living

  Blurb

  Wanted: someone to hand feed me Doritos so my hands don’t get orange. No weirdos.

  Belle Pena was an editor. Not a writer.

  When her brothers challenge her to create a dating profile, she makes up the most random biography she can think of. She never, not ever, thought she’d find anybody to respond. But she was sorely mistaken.

  Sadly, she finds that she has way more interest than she ever could’ve imagined.

  But only one profile catches her eye.

  Bruno never meant to take the dating app seriously. Being the last single man in his band of misfits, he’s happy being the odd man out. Women spelled trouble, and he had enough trouble in his life to last him through the next decade.

  Only his newfound family doesn’t feel the same. One innocent ‘sure’ has the women of the Souls Chapel Revenants MC creating him a dating profile that is too spot on to be comfortable. And just when he decides to delete the app entirely, a particular face catches his eye.

  One innocent question of ‘Belle is that you? Do you remember punching me in the throat in high school?’ has him stepping into trouble neck deep, and he doesn’t even realize it until it’s too late.

  CHAPTER 1

  Pennywise isn’t special. I swallow kids, too.

  -Text from Belle to her brothers

  BELLE

  “You won’t,” Bourne challenged, his eyes gleaming with mischief.

  I sighed. “I will.”

  “You won’t.” He shook his head. “I know you, Belle. You talk a good game, but you’re weak. You’ll overthink it when you leave, and then you’ll stop yourself before you can fully pull the trigger.”

  I sighed. “Fine. I’ll do it before we even leave our parents’ house today. Happy?”

  Booth, my other brother, snickered.<
br />
  Like a little bitch.

  “Yes, I’m happy,” Bourne said. “I have a great life. Meanwhile, you’re practically Old Maid status, and you’re not even trying to get out there and find someone.”

  I narrowed my eyes.

  “Boys,” my father warned.

  But the ‘boys’ didn’t listen.

  My oldest brothers, who also happened to be twins, had taken it upon themselves to make my life a living hell recently, and I didn’t know why.

  Every time that I came home there were always comments from the peanut gallery about how I’d ‘not gotten out’ or I continuously tried to ‘wiggle out of dates.’

  Well, when the dates that I was wiggling out of were duds, I didn’t see the problem.

  It wasn’t my fault that I had an IQ of one hundred and forty-three.

  I was, by all accounts, a genius.

  I wasn’t in the top tier of IQs or anything, but I was definitely better than above average.

  Though, my father likes to tell me the only reason I had an IQ of 143 was because I’d ‘gotten bored’ with the line of questioning.

  Which, technically, I had.

  I’d gotten extremely bored with it, and instead of answering the last few questions, I’d kind of… guessed.

  Though, just sayin’, I didn’t need some test to tell me that I was smart.

  “Dad,” Booth tried to explain away his ‘teasing’ as he liked to call it. “She literally made her date cry.”

  Okay, so I had done that.

  But the guy had been so freakin’ full of himself.

  “I didn’t make him cry.” I rolled my eyes. “I made him emotional. And it was only because he kept trying to talk about himself, his cat, and his mother. So I told him that the statistics of men finding their soul mates when they lived with their mother was very low.”

  “I heard that you told him that men who owned cats generally had an estrogen imbalance.” Booth reached for a roll and buttered it before continuing. “You also told him that using a heated laptop on your thighs all day could cause infertility. And this was after the guy told you how much he wanted kids.”

  “He told me that he lived out of his mother’s basement, she cooked and cleaned for him, and he had no reason to leave it.” I paused. “And the laptop thing was serious. It can cause infertility.”

  My father started to chuckle. “Just leave her be. The guy sounded like a loser.”

  “Last week, she told her date, who also happened to be a man that I set her up with, that fifty percent of all women murdered are offed by their ex-husbands or ex-boyfriends,” Booth added.

  “They are,” I said defensively.

  “He lost his last wife by murder,” Booth said. “You basically accused him of murdering his own wife.”

  I sighed. I had not, but there really was no reason in telling these two jerk-offs anything. They’d think what they wanted.

  My phone buzzed, and I thankfully pulled it out of my pocket to read the text that flashed across the screen.

  It was a one-word text from my best client.

  Hastings: Mayday!

  I sighed and replied.

  Belle: What’s up?

  Hastings: I lost my entire book. It’s just gone. G.O.N.E. Can you send it to me again? I can’t access my email.

  I’d do absolutely anything to get out of this particular family dinner.

  Belle: Yes. I’ll get it to you as soon as I can get home. You saved me from my brothers. Again.

  Hastings: Glad that one of my lowest moments could be beneficial to you.

  I kind of felt bad, but kind of didn’t.

  She should know better.

  You always, always, always used two forms of backup when you were writing.

  Always.

  Most people found out the hard way, like she was doing now, to do that.

  Because usually, when authors were first starting out, they’d think that it could never happen to them.

  They would think wrong.

  It happened to everyone that ever used a computer eventually.

  The only thing was, most people didn’t lose what an author lost—hours and hours of hard work.

  “I gotta go,” I said to my dad. “Hastings lost her entire book and she needs me to send it to her again.”

  Bourne started to make chicken noises. However, I was able to ignore him.

  Mostly.

  After giving my dad a kiss on his cheek, and my brothers the finger, I walked outside and headed in the direction of my car.

  It was raining, and like always, the two assholes inside had ridden in with each other.

  Grinning like the loon I was, I walked over to their left front tire and pulled a set of needle-nose pliers out of my purse.

  Removing the valve out of the stem, I watched with glee as the massive truck tire dwindled until the rim was sitting on the concrete.

  That’s about when the bottom started to drop out of the sky.

  I laughed and started to run to my car, not caring in the least about the rain.

  I loved rain.

  Even more, I loved when the rain turned into a torrential downpour.

  I loved it even more when lightning flashed and thunder rumbled.

  It took me ten minutes to drive home, five to get dry, and two to send over Hastings’ file, leaving me with almost an entire night to do what I wanted most: read.

  Most people wouldn’t like reading if it was their job, but I loved it.

  I loved even more that the book I was reading was about murderers.

  Why did I like reading books about murderers? I didn’t know. But I’d always had a bit of a fascination with them.

  I was deep into the psyche of the murderer’s mind when I got a text pulling me out of the story.

  Bourne: You play dirty. Still, don’t be a little bitch all your life and chicken out of the dating profile. I’m going to bother the hell out of you until you do what I want.

  The bad thing was, I knew he would.

  Bourne was a stubborn jackass like that.

  Even worse, I’d promised him that I would.

  Which meant that I owed it to him and myself to keep that promise.

  Penas didn’t break promises.

  And I’d be damned if I would be the one to start.

  So, though I was engrossed in my book, I put it down and pulled up the dating app that my brother had suggested I use.

  Then I started to write.

  Wanted: Man to feed me Doritos so my fingers don’t get orange. No weirdos.

  I highlighted that sentence and sent it to my brothers and their wives in the group chat that I was in with them.

  I knew that they’d want to add their input, so I would allow it.

  For now.

  Too bad I had no idea that by doing so, I’d be giving the longest, weirdest bio for a dating profile ever.

  CHAPTER 2

  I would call my fashion style: clothes that still fit.

  -Bruno to Laric

  BRUNO

  “Why Farmers Only?” I asked, wincing when I read the website’s name.

  “Bruno, you have pigs. You’re a farmer. This is perfect,” Six assured me. “It’ll work out great. You can invite your date out to meet you at your farm. Y’all can go feed all of the animals. Then you can cook her dinner.”

  I looked at Six.

  “I don’t want to do this,” I told her bluntly.

  “If you do this, I’ll never bring up you leaving me behind again,” Six declared.

  I stared at her, wondering if her words were true.

  I’d do just about anything for her to never bring that up again.

  A long time ago, when we were in high school, her father had given me an ultimatum.

  Leave Six alone, and never contact her again, or he’d make Six’s life a living hell.

  The bad thing was, I knew that he could do it.

  So like any dumbass seventeen-year-old, I’d done it.

  I’
d left her behind, gone my own way, and had never looked back.

  At least, for appearance’s sake anyway, that was what I did.

  In reality, I kept an eye on her from a distance, making sure that she was always okay.

  At least, until Lynn, the man that might as well be my very own father, had taken a liking to her.

  Then Six had come back into my life with a vengeance, and ever since she and Lynn had married, I’d found it almost impossible to get back into her good graces.

  Which, might I add, was bullshit.

  I’d done it for her.

  Sure, once I’d ‘grown up’ I could’ve come back into her life, but who the hell would want an ex-con in their life?

  I knew that I wouldn’t want anyone like me in Six’s life.

  Hell, it was bad enough that I had to allow her husband, Lynn, to have a part of her life. If anything, Lynn was worse than I was.

  But at least he loved her and would protect her.

  That was more than I’d done for her.

  “That’s not going to matter to him, honey,” Lynn said. “He believes that he deserves your ire, so he won’t care if you stop.”

  That was true.

  I did deserve her ire.

  I’d left her, like she’d said.

  Then again, I’d left a lot of people behind in my thirty-two years. Six was just one of many.

  “Fine,” she said. “Then just do it because I want you to be happy.”

  My eye started to twitch.

  “I’m an ex-con, Six,” I said. “No woman’s going to want anything to do with me on Farmers Only. Or any website for that matter.”

  Six rolled her eyes. “Bruno, you’re hot, successful, and you’re unattached. Trust me when I say that any woman is going to go for you, ex-con status or not.”

  I sighed.

  “I shot and killed someone. On purpose. There was no ‘oh, I might or might not have been high on adrenaline because he beat up my sister.’ I shot and killed someone. On. Purpose. People don’t just get over that because I’m hot,” I argued.

  “You shot someone because you had to.” She waved my worry away. “And trust me when I say, someone out there will understand.”

  Hell, I didn’t even understand.

  And I’d been the one to do the shooting.